We had a brilliant time. It was blissful being with Ian and Barry again without the shadow of work hanging over us, although we weren’t alone. Our hosts had pulled out all the stops and I loved meeting lots of ex-Who alumni for the first time. In audiences’ minds we must seem like one big family but the truth is that I didn’t meet most of the other Doctors and their crew until I started frequenting conventions. Even though we’re strangers, we have such a rich shared history and meeting them is like having your own support network. No one else knows what you go through on that show.
A relief for me was seeing Brian fit in so easily. He and Ian really hit it off – it would have been awful if he’d felt like a spare limb. I think they both had their experiences of being at the periphery of the Who spectrum – even Ian – and so they bonded over that. Most of that bonding, naturally, took place at the bar way into the small hours. On one occasion it also included a drunken paddle in the surf.
Ian, Barry and the rest left after a week, then Brian and I drove down to Key West for another fortnight’s amazing holiday. We’d only been there a few days when we were stopped by a policeman.
‘Is everything all right, officer?’ Brian asked.
‘It will be if Sarah Jane will give me her autograph!’
As I’ve said, it’s amazing where you find Who fans.
* * *
Filming on Gulliver in Lilliput began in June 1981. I was so excited to be working with Barry again, and I was even looking forward to slipping into the old rehearsal/record routine at the Acton Hilton and Television Centre.
Technically it was quite a tricky shoot. Gulliver was so much bigger than me that the actor – Andrew Burt – had to stand at one end of the studio and I was up the other end by the blue screen. Luckily the Beeb still used monitors then so I was able to position myself on Gulliver’s outstretched palm. If he moved, I could react – I don’t know why they ever took the screens away.
We had several weeks of filming but time was extremely tight by the end. It was touch and go whether we’d complete on time and Barry’s nerves passed down to the cast. I remember at the very end of our studio time I had to blow Andrew a kiss but I just didn’t do it. I was so anxious about cocking it up and making the whole production run over schedule that I just skipped it.
Costumes on the whole film were stunning – thanks to Amy Roberts – but mine was out of this world. I was scaffolded inside the narrowest corset they could find. So decadent, it felt like being in an opera – people kept wandering in just to see our underwear! (There was one marvellous scene where I had to tease my husband pulling on my stockings. Still a favourite, I believe, for some fans.) The downside is it took so bloody long to get into that outfit there was never time to take it off again. From early in the morning until ten at night, I was trussed up like a Christmas turkey. For lunch I could just about manage a hard-boiled egg and I still felt as though I’d eaten a whole chicken. When I was cut out at night, my body was covered in striations.
It was such a minxy part and there was not a minute of Gulliver that I did not enjoy. I know Barry felt the same. I have a letter from him in which he says that production was one of the highlights of his career. Mine too, Barry.
If only I could have said the same about my next project.
* * *
Unbeknownst to me, John Nathan-Turner had not taken my earlier ‘no’ for an answer. Just because I’d refused to return to the main programme to oversee the transition between Tom and the Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison, he reasoned, that didn’t mean I never wanted to appear as Sarah Jane Smith in anything else. Then at the start of 1981 he discovered the perfect vehicle. Following the announcement that K-9, the Fourth Doctor’s robot dog, would be phased out of Doctor Who, there had been uproar among the fans and in the press so, he decided to give K-9 another show – with me as the human star.
‘We’ll call it Sarah and K-9!’ John enthused. ‘You’ll have your own show – it will be brilliant!’
I had to agree that it sounded a fabulous idea: Sarah Jane striding out into the world on her own, pursuing her journalistic instincts to solve crimes – with her trusty robot dog at her side. Even when they changed the title to Girl’s Best Friend I was still on board. The plan was to shoot a pilot then hopefully be picked up for a full series the following year. ‘That should be a formality,’ John winked. ‘We’re all behind it here.’
I couldn’t wait – I was so intrigued to discover how Sarah would operate away from the Doctor. that was the challenge. I wanted to see how she would interact with other people and how she would save the universe on her own. I didn’t have a clue what K-9 was – I’d never seen him. But, I figured, if Tom Baker had worked with him then it must be all right. Of course, that was before I heard the stories of Tom booting the thing across the studio in frustration every time it ruined a scene.
I signed up in May then disappeared to work on Gulliver. Barry was fascinated that his creation was to get a new lease of life – I really wanted it to work for him as much as anyone. After half a decade away from it, I was suddenly more embroiled in the Whoniverse than I’d ever been. Life was good.
And then the script arrived.
I read it in between shooting as Flimnap. Sadly, it was only her corsets that took my breath away. The script was terrible. I called a meeting with John and Eric Saward, the Who script editor, with a list of complaints as long as my arm. First: it was now called K-9 and Company.
Company? Is that what I am now, John? What happened to it being my show?
More importantly, the characterisation of Sarah was totally wrong.
‘Eric,’ I said, ‘she wouldn’t do or say half these things. This hasn’t been written for Sarah at all!’
Eric agreed. The writer, Terence Dudley, had his own way of doing things and was not exactly keen to bend. ‘But,’ John insisted, ‘we’ll fix it – won’t we, Eric?’
They promised and, assured by their enthusiasm, I returned to Lilliput a happy bunny.
What an idiot I was. When the final script arrived shortly before rehearsals began, nothing had been changed. I think Dudley had refused Eric’s changes wholesale and gone straight over his head to JNT. The politics didn’t bother me – my only concern was injecting some character into my leaden lines.
Costume fittings ran for a fortnight into November. I think most of that time must have been spent on me. I can’t believe how many changes I went through! Three or four different coats, jogging clothes, a journalist’s Mac, a big Sherlock Holmes’ autumnal three-piece suit, body warmers and lots of gloves. There was even a green silk dress bought specifically for the last scene that I seem to recall took up most of our budget. I remember seeing the Sherlock Holmes’ number on a model in a magazine and thinking, That would be good because you can just remove layers rather than keep changing. Of course, the model was about a foot taller than me. When I stepped out of the car in my opening scene, the hem was sweeping the road.
In November we all met up for the first time at the Acton Hilton for a read-through. Delivering some of those lines still grated but I had a few solutions to try during rehearsal. They would have to wait, however. As soon as we wrapped in London it was onto the bus and down to the Cotswolds. As I sat watching the countryside blur past I realised for the first time that I was on my own. There was no Jon or Tom to soak up everyone’s attention – I wasn’t sure I liked it.
My mood didn’t pick up on the first day of shooting. I’d been asked to bring some of my own clothes.
‘Why? There’s nothing in the script.’
‘We’re starting with opening credits,’ the director John Black said.
Oh, it’s nice to be told.
Unusually, JNT had come with us to Gloucestershire for the location work. As far as rallying the troops went, he was a great person to have around; always energetic and busy, busy, busy! I’m not sure it worked so well for the director. Sometimes you need a stronger man in charge but John Black was a bit intimidated by his bo
ss’s presence. So when JNT said, ‘I want the opening credits to be like Hart to Hart’ – all zooming cars and glamorous locations – Black should have told him to clear off. But he didn’t. That’s why I found myself sitting outside a country pub one minute waving a glass of wine, then posing on a rock with a newspaper, then leaning moodily in my Mac against my Mini Metro. It was already ridiculous before they asked me to jog along the country road.
OK, I thought, it’s day one, keep smiling, it will get better from here.
They set the camera up, gave me a mark and then off I set along the road.
‘That’s nice, Lis,’ the director said. ‘But it was a bit fast for the camera.’
So I did it again and John Black said, ‘Nice, but maybe a bit more slowly next time.’
‘Do you have any idea how hard it is to jog slowly and not look like you’re suffering from muscular dystrophy?’ I said, ‘Can’t you move the bloody cameras back instead?’ Would it have killed them to use a longshot instead of a close-up?
My favourite part of the intro was whizzing up and down the country lane in my car. I tend not to drive outside of filming requirement so it’s always an adventure when I get behind the wheel. Forwards I can do – anything else takes a bit more time – and John wanted me to zoom along this road. I thought, I can do that – just clear the road, for God’s sake! Actually I believed it would be a dynamic start to the programme so I was disappointed to see they didn’t use it in the end.
John Black didn’t have the best of luck. As we’d discovered on The Seeds of Doom, filming outdoors in November gives you the shortest possible amount of daylight to cram everything in. A few days before we set off, a second week was pulled from the schedule so that led to frantic re-jigging, which only piled on the pressure. Any hopes I had of reworking my lines while we were out there seemed to be vanishing in the rush.
The weather didn’t exactly help, either. We always seemed to be waiting for a shower to pass. For the night shoots it wasn’t the rain but the unbearable temperatures that were the killer. One of the things I think John and everyone got spot-on was the eerie satanic festival filmed outside a church in North Woodchester. The worshippers wore amazing goat-head masks and the whole scene really captured a bit of tension and energy, which I think was largely missing in the rest of the programme. Of course, by the time we’d been there setting up and then rehearsing and then going for takes from different angles it was two or three in the morning and absolutely freezing. Poor Ian Sears who played the sacrificial Brendan was only wearing the flimsiest of robes. In between takes his dresser would rush over with blankets, hot socks and scarves.
However bad it gets you can always rely on actors to find the black humour. There was one brilliant moment while the ring of pagans were dancing around in sub-zero temperatures calling ‘Hecate! Hecate! Hecate!’ when we realised it had suddenly changed to ‘Equity! Equity! Equity!’ – the name of the actors’ union!
My only contribution to the black-magic scenes was a spot of Kung Fu, meted out to a couple of the villains. When you see something like that in a script you think, Well, I suppose I’ll be all right with training. I got about five seconds’ tuition before John called ‘Action!’ Let’s just say I don’t think I’ll be getting my Black Belt in Venusian aikido any time soon.
That wasn’t the only time the script promised something we couldn’t deliver. There’s an attempt on Sarah’s life when a tractor pulls out in front of her car. I didn’t even bother marking it in my script, I just assumed a stuntman would be doing it.
I remember sitting on the coach with a cup of tea when someone came on to fetch me.
‘It’s time to do your car crash, Lis.’
I said, ‘Pardon? I’m not in this scene – it’s a stuntman.’
‘Oh,’ he told me. ‘John apologises but …’
It was another decision that had come down to money. Why pay a professional when you can ask your actors to risk their lives?
‘We just want you to swerve the tractor, mount the embankment, then bring the car down the other side,’ John explained.
‘You have got to be kidding – I struggle to go in a straight line!’ As far as I could see, one wrong turn of the steering wheel and that car would just flip over.
If I hadn’t nearly drowned at Wookey Hole, I probably would have attempted it but it wouldn’t have made the shot any better. They just wanted to economise, whether I was up to the job or not. You have to draw the line somewhere. In the end they found a stuntwoman to do the dangerous bit.
I do wonder how JNT’s presence affected things. I think the director was especially cowed because the producer controls the purse strings. Nathan-Turner became a true friend over the years but we did have one spectacular falling out on set. One of the crew had been told off for something. I found John and said, ‘I think you’ve made a mistake. I was there, that’s not what happened.’
He went ballistic, storming around, throwing his arms in the air, shouting, ‘Why aren’t you standing up for me? It’s your job to stand up for me!’
Well, no it’s not, actually. I’m probably closer to the crew than I am the producer, I thought, but maybe it wasn’t a good move tactically.
The atmosphere the next morning was frostier than usual – and it had nothing to do with the weather. Nathan-Turner needed to check something with me, but instead of coming over, I heard him say to his partner, Gary: ‘Would you ask Elisabeth …?’
My God, it was so bloody childish. He was pretending I wasn’t even there. Pathetic and unprofessional – and not what I needed on what was already a problematic shoot for me.
I think I got the cold shoulder for a couple of days. Then Gary sidled up to me one evening and said, ‘Look, John is really upset about what’s happening. Would you go and apologise to him?’
‘No, I won’t. I have nothing to apologise for,’ I said. But I wasn’t going to stand for this petty behaviour either, so I did go over and said, bullish as you like, ‘Hello, John.’
‘Oh, Lis!’ he gushed, ‘thank goodness you’ve come over. Let’s just be professional, shall we?’
I said, ‘Well, I thought I was being.’
That just kicked things off again! We made up later and, as I said, we were very close until he died. What a drain when you’re already against the clock, though.
Hindsight’s a terrible tease because so much of K-9 and Company seems wrong to me. In fact, it’s probably just a few tweaks away from being rather good. As Eric Saward told me, ‘I think if it had gone to series then all those problems would have been ironed out and we would have had a hit on our hands.’
Some of the snags just came down to bad communication. You have to bear in mind I’d never seen K-9 before, so one day in Gloucestershire I was introduced to this boxy-looking mutt and two men. Mat Irvine is K-9’s operator and John Leeson supplies the voice – the team behind the dog.
Mat ran over what K-9 could do and we walked our first scene, getting our bearings. Then the director called ‘Action!’ and I delivered my line.
Nothing.
Have I forgotten a cue? Why isn’t K-9 speaking? I wondered.
So we went again and the same thing happened. Nothing.
I looked at John Black, then John Leeson. They stared back at me expectantly.
‘Well, is the dog going to answer?’ I asked.
‘Oh,’ Leeson said, ‘he can, if you like.’
I felt such a fool. Why on earth hadn’t anyone told me that John adds his parts afterwards? How was I meant to know I had to leave a gap? Little things like that can really put a stick in your spokes. How to make the star of the show feel like the new girl in one easy session …
Forget Nathan-Turner, forget Black, forget Leeson – most of our woes originated from a single robotic sources, though.
K-9.
When I’d signed up for the show it had been such a rush, especially as I was head down in Gulliver world at the time. Possibly working with Barry gave me an unn
aturally positive outlook towards everything BBC. I really should have paid greater attention. When I agreed to have a dog as a co-star – or be the co-star to a dog, as some people said! – I had no idea how unmalleable he would be. Honestly, worse than a Dalek! At least you can talk to the person inside a Dalek and get them to try to co-operate. At one point during our ritual scene, K-9 had to be attached to a fishing wire and literally dragged through the mud to save the day.
Expecting this box on wheels to negotiate a winter terrain was one thing but I thought any difficulty would iron itself out when we reached the studio. In fact it just created new problems. If you watch the show you can hear my boots clanging around on the floor. That’s because carpets were vetoed – the bloody dog needed smooth, hard ground before he would budge! That meant doorways were an issue because, of course, they have a runner across them. Watching this so-called futuristic creation struggle to move from the hallway to the lounge was a joke, especially when it was trundling along so slowly.
At one point I had to flee from a room. I did a take, then John Black said, ‘Lis, you need to hold the door open for K-9.’
‘I’m going to save the universe but first I want to stop and open a door for a dog?’ I asked.
It made no sense at all – it’s amazing how that thing saves anyone.
The other problem you have with the dog is that obviously he’s only about a foot tall. So if he’s talking and you want more than your ankles in shot, you have to find an excuse to bend down. When you’re trying to discover a way to save a sacrifice’s life, this can be a slight inconvenience.
Our time in the Cotswolds ended with a photoshoot with me flanked by K-9 – and the giant Alsatian that played Commander Pollock’s dog. Forget my old neighbour’s Rex, I’d been scared of a Dulux dog! At least this time around there was no Barbara Woodhouse to scold me …
Nathan-Turner’s master plan had been to shoot K-9 and Company during Doctor Who’s summer break. That didn’t work with my Gulliver schedule so it was put back. So a lot of the problems could apparently be traced back to me … Great.
Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography Page 28