Sladen, Elisabeth - Elisabeth Sladen - The Autobiography

At the first opportunity I grabbed Barry – ‘I can’t do all this fake posing – it’s ruining my performance. Is there anything you can do?’

And being Barry, of course, there was something.

‘Leave it to me.’

For the next photocall Barry made sure he was there. He let me do a couple of poses cowering at Jon’s side then said, ‘Sorry chaps, I need Lis elsewhere.’ And that was it, I was excused. He did that every single time. Jon didn’t mind going solo, of course – he’d pose all night if he thought it would help the show. But that’s why, if you look, there aren’t many publicity stills of me from the serials.

As each day ended and I trudged home at eight, nine, ten o’clock – or later on filming days – it was only the thought of weekends that kept me going. They were the first chance I got to spend with Brian, if he wasn’t working.

Prior to our first shoot in Studio 6 there were two model-capture days. Bearing in mind the feats Jim and co. had pulled off with the Sontaran costume, I was expecting great things from the dinosaurs. I think everyone was. Unfortunately, the work had been farmed out to an external company. Whispers around Acton were that Barry et al. weren’t happy with the results. By the time Paddy actually had to film the things everyone knew they weren’t good enough. You can imagine how much this improved our director’s mood!

When I saw one of the models I could have cried. We all could. Awful, just so amateur looking! But what can you do? The serial was called Invasion of the Dinosaurs so they had to be included, terrible as they were. I think the scene where I have to photograph a sleeping T-Rex looked OK, but as soon as the creatures needed to move a bit, then any magic was lost. Jurassic Park it wasn’t.

Most embarrassingly, the monsters weren’t even accurate. Shortly after airing I received a letter from a six-year-old boy saying, ‘Your Tyrannosaurus has the wrong number of fingers. Five instead of four.’ The shame .

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Although each serial was one continuous story, working on Dinosaurs was as close to being in theatre rep as I could imagine. Each fortnight of rehearsal and recording was just as punishing as my time in Scarborough. No sooner have you cracked one script than you’re on to the next. Rehearse, perform, rehearse, perform, rehearse, perform … Boy it was tiring. It was like a conveyor belt, really – we were all just hamsters on a wheel.

At least with summer season you could always see the end in sight. No such luck in Doctor Who , though. Drawing towards the finale of Dinosaurs merely meant it was time to begin shooting the next story. Suddenly I was receiving scripts for the following serial, as well as the final Dinosaur updates. In theatrical terms, that eleventh season of Doctor Who was like five or six Scarboroughs bundled together.

After The Time Warrior I’d had a three-month break to get my breath back. Not this time. In fact, I didn’t even get a weekend to recover. Our last studio day on Dinosaurs wrapped on 13 November – the very day location shooting started on the next serial. So after a couple of hours in my own bed I found myself hurtling down to Dorset on an early train, desperately trying to shake Dinosaurs out of my head and get to grips with the new scripts.

And what scripts they were! Some characters take on a life outside of their programmes, don’t they? From the moment the Daleks had first appeared in the 1960s they’d leapt into the wider public’s consciousness. Comedians made jokes about them, kids ran around pretending to be them, non-fans would exclaim ‘Exterminate!’ in imitation. So even as a non Doctor Who fan I was aware of the Daleks.

I was even looking forward to working with them. Quite a few of the darker moments on the Dinosaurs set had been lifted by Jon saying, ‘Don’t worry, Lissie, the Daleks are in the next one. You’ll enjoy them.’ He wasn’t the only one excited by them. There was a palpable buzz about North Acton among the regulars once news of the next serial came in. Partly I suppose because it’s always nice to work with something so iconic but also you just knew, as Barry said, that thousands more people would tune in to see the Doctor come up against his most famous enemies.

Death to the Daleks , I think, is one of the great underrated serials. It tends to get overlooked when people talk about the classic episodes. To be honest, it’s even disregarded when people talk about Dalek episodes. Unfairly, I think.

It was written by Terry Nation, the monsters’ creator, although as usual there was a lot of input from Terry Dicks and Barry, as well as Robert Holmes, who was being groomed as Dicks’ successor.

As well as the Daleks, it was on this shoot that I was introduced to another mainstay of Who folklore – the quarry. If you see another planet being represented on television, especially one with a rocky surface, chances are it’s been filmed in a quarry – and I’ve probably been there. I don’t think Doctor Who would have lasted so long without them.

ARC Sand Pits at Gallows Hill, Dorset, was our quarry of choice – masquerading as the planet Exxilon – for five November days and, I have to say, despite the cold weather it was a fun time. One of the first people I met when I arrived was Jon. As usual, he couldn’t wait to show off the team, even before I’d caught my breath.

‘Lis, come and meet our Daleks.’

Bloody hell, Jon, can’t I just get my bearings first?

Then he did this weird thing of looking like he was going to put his arm around my shoulders, but actually he just grabbed my neck. It was like he was steering me! There was no hint of menace, and it didn’t hurt, but he needed to be in control.

I’ve met a lot of men like that over the years. They want to impose themselves physically on smaller women. You see them in bars, leading their partners in with firm hands. I’m always amazed at the things I’ve put up with in the past. If someone touched me like that now I’d break their fingers but when you’re young, you don’t want to rock the boat, you just go with the flow.

A lot of people think Daleks are controlled by wires. There were actually men working them from the inside. They weren’t midgets or anything, just actors who were not particularly big. (Russell’s Daleks are bigger and, I believe, Steven Moffat’s are larger still, so I imagine the same restrictions don’t apply.) Our main Dalek operator was John Scott Martin – he was the one who tended to roll out first. We got on famously, actually. John was another Liverpool lad, so we had that in common, and it was a terrible shame when he died from Parkinson’s in 2009.

The other two operators were Murphy Grumbar and Cy Town, who played Baby Dalek. Murphy looks like a munchkin from The Wizard of Oz , but larger and grumpy with it, although nice enough when you got to know him. Michael Wisher supplied those terrifying electronic voices, as he had on the last Dalek story. He was a dear man and, like Terry Walsh, a jack of many trades. Later, he would get his moment in the sun as Davros but also cropped up as Morelli in Planet of Evil , Magrik in Revenge of the Cybermen , as well as making several appearances before my time.

You can make new friends in any walk of life but on Who I was spoilt by the number of amazing older actors who crossed my path. I’m such a glutton for tales of yesteryear – I love the old tradition of passing stories from one generation to the next. You can learn so much, although sometimes it’s just a pleasure to become immersed in that other world. For me it’s as romantic as the tales of knights and maidens.