Sladen, Elisabeth - Elisabeth Sladen - The Autobiography

I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but this was actually a throwback to the Sixties. William Hartnell’s Doctor had surrounded himself with friends and family in Susan, Barbara and Ian (Carole Ann Ford, Jacqueline Hill and William Russell), and so it continued throughout the decade. As far as long-standing Who fans were concerned, Ian and I were merely our (re)generation’s Maureen O’Brien and Peter Purves.

I suppose I should have worried my screen time might be cut with someone else there to ask questions for the audience, but it didn’t actually occur to me. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be asking Ian to scream ‘Doctor!’ every five minutes.

It was such a rush down to Worcester that I was still in my costume when I was bundled into the car. We arrived at 2 a.m. Call time was four hours later and I didn’t have time to worry about my co-stars.

The new serial, Robot , was written by Terry Dicks as his parting gift to the show – or vice versa. It took the serial number 4A, which I assumed denoted the Fourth Doctor. Rather fittingly, I felt, Planet of the Spiders’ production code had been ‘ZZZ’ – the end of the alphabet and the end of the line for Jon and so many others. The director this time was Chris Barry, who had worked with Jon on The Mutants . They used to call Chris the ‘Mad Monk’ – I’ve no idea why. But later he was so kind to Sadie when we were all in Chicago in 1993, and I still get Christmas cards from him and his wife Venice.

That friendship had yet to bloom, however, when I strolled on to set on 2 May. In my first scene Sarah Jane had to climb over a wall. I was so tired after the big finish on Spiders and then the journey. We did the scene and I was running, not looking, and somehow found the energy to scramble over the wall. Panting on the other side, I was actually pretty pleased with it. So was Chris – at first.

‘That’s awfully good, Lis,’ he called over. ‘But next time could I have your face in camera and not your bum!’

By the time I’d finished I noticed my co-stars had arrived on set. I had no expectations really – to be honest, I was too shattered to think much at all. When I caught a glimpse of Ian and Tom, leaning against a building and just chatting, my mood lifted. They barely knew each other and yet there they were just getting on. No airs, no graces, no coterie milling around them – just two actors, two men, chewing the fat. In that one snapshot I knew I was going to enjoy working with them.

Whereas Jon had always craved company, Tom was content to do his own thing. His Doctor didn’t require a companion to fawn on his every utterance and Tom didn’t expect that from me either, and even though he was the star, it was his name in the opening credits. Watching him so at ease with Ian I realised , I don’t have to walk over and doff my cap with this one. I don’t have to pay my respects. Don’t get me wrong, all actors are vain in a way – Tom’s vanity was just different to Jon’s. Tom loves taking the floor, holding court on his own: the more people watching, the better. Jon preferred his audiences closer to him, that was all – just as I’d known from his first spectacular entrance at North Acton during my audition. It made you feel like you were at his beck and call, whereas Tom gave everyone that little bit of space.

Another positive was that the problem I’d faced joining The Time Warrior , of being an ingénue in an established set-up, had disappeared. Now I was the old hand while Tom and Ian were the new boys feeling their way around. You’d never guess to look at him but Tom suffered terribly from nerves – he got these really gripey stomach aches, coincidentally just before filming each scene. So he had that to contend with every day, and no time left to be concerned with what I was doing. I responded to that. It was like turning up for the first day at a new school – you can reinvent yourself; be whoever you like.

In a way, of course, that’s exactly what each new actor gets to do with the Doctor. I know Tom had worked very closely with Jim Acheson on getting the right look. They were going for something a bit more eccentric, closer to Pat Troughton than Jon’s interpretation. More alien, if you like. (This was going on while we were working on Spiders , so of course Jim passed down all these nuggets of gossip as they went along!) Eventually they settled on the coat, the hat and, of course, the oversized scarf. That came about when Jim sent a bag of wool to a knitter called Begonia Pope – and she used the entire amount! It was Tom who said, ‘No, let’s keep it. I can have fun with that.’ Typical Tom. And the rest is history.

I remember shooting that scene in TV Centre when Tom nips into the TARDIS a few times to trial various looks. He had everyone in hysterics, especially with the Viking outfit. You knew what he was wearing before the cameras started rolling, yet the second he stepped out of those blue doors, sparks flew. It was so damn good I thought, Bloody hell, we’ve got a hell of an actor on our hands here ! I was going to have to seriously up my game or get left behind.

So, in a way, the arrival of a new Doctor actually gave me the freedom to regenerate Sarah Jane as well. If someone comes in who’s the same person but is actually totally different, they do things differently and that in turn makes you react differently. So I discovered all sorts of new things I could do; it gave me a new lease of life and allowed me to expand. I loved that. I don’t know why, but as welcome as they made me during my first year, I always felt on trial, but no longer. Isn’t that funny?

Even the introduction of a new companion couldn’t dampen my renewed confidence. I thought Ian was tremendous. He often gets overlooked, but stuffy naval doctor Harry Sullivan is a very difficult part to play. Modern audiences probably can’t relate to him. He’s like a character from The Cruel Sea . Men like that talk in a certain way, act in a certain way, wear the uniform with such pride. I think Ian was spot-on for that – he never overdid it.

Harry also took the brunt of the Doctor’s venom on occasions. In Revenge of the Cybermen Tom delights in yelling, ‘Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!’ And in The Ark in Space he has another little dig when he says, ‘My doctorate is purely honorary and Harry here is only qualified to work on sailors.’ So from that point of view he got to do a lot of the things that Sarah Jane would otherwise have been lumbered with.

In the car down to Worcester I’d been looking forward to our summer break. Eight months of solid shooting without pause can really take its toll – I wished I could have knocked it on the head after Spiders then started again, fresh, with Tom in the autumn. I didn’t want to be the tired one while everyone else looked so perky and up for anything.

As soon as I arrived all those cobwebs were pretty much blown away, though. There was such a buzz on set from working with the show’s first new Doctor in five years that any end-of-term malaise was simply swept away. By just being there Tom had given us all a shot in the arm.

There is always such a lot riding on the new Doctor’s first appearance, of course. Will he be liked? Will he live up to billing? David Tennant had to follow Chris Eccleston, which must have been terrifying. Then, of course, Matt Smith has had to follow David, arguably the most successful Doctor in history. As good as Tom was going to be, nobody really knew how he would be received. Wisely, Barry and Robert Holmes decided to pack his debut with some Who staples. Apart from me on the acting side there was a return for the Brig and Sergeant Benton; they also brought back Bessie. I thought the car would always be associated with Jon but Tom immediately made it his own. The way he clambered all over it like a Whipsnade monkey was uniquely him, right from the start. And the message to viewers was clear: same, but very, very different.