Sladen, Elisabeth - Elisabeth Sladen - The Autobiography

But what a performance …

Oh, it’s just someone in a horror mask sitting down pressing buttons , you think. Then you watch the hand, study the finger. Michael’s timing is impeccable: with the slightest of gestures, he managed to be threatening. It could have been grotesque,over-the-top, cartoon-like. On the contrary, this was a masterclass in restrained, less-is-more, physical acting.

Michael deserved to be a success – he really put the hours in. He used to wear a kilt and kneepads because the Dalek shell was threading his trousers bare. To achieve the feel of Davros being a loner, excluded from his own society, he got a paper bag and pulled it over his head. It wasn’t quite the BBC’s finest makeup but it did the trick. When you’re rehearsing with someone who looks so different, you act differently – we fed off each other.

I didn’t see his actual mask until we were about to shoot (I think, as usual, they’d been adding bits and bobs over the day). I suppose, too, I was wrapped up in my own thoughts – going over line changes, rehearsing my own performance, cocooned in my private little world. Either way, it completely passed me by in run-throughs. Then it came to the actual take and I can still feel the shiver up my back. I looked through this wall, in full character now, and there was Davros in all his deformed glory. That’s genuine shock you see onscreen. Such a powerful, hideous image!

Those moments are exquisite for an actor, and quite rare, especially when you’re on a show as complicated as Who . There’s smoke all around, I’m concentrating on putting the props in the right place, a hundred things to remember. It’s all very mechanical, extremely calculated. And then you get a thunderbolt like that where your whole body just responds to what’s in front of you. Seeing Davros that first time genuinely terrified me as much as if I were an eight-year-old watching at home. All my senses responded. The smell of the smoke and the machines was so evocative. He sounded horrible, too. And that mask!

* * *

When I read in the script for Genesis that Sarah was to be chased up a large wall as she tries to escape from a missile silo I didn’t bat an eyelid. The ceilings at BBC Television Centre are so low that you can’t go too high without lights or microphones or even the director’s gallery creeping into shot. To get any real height at all, the climb would have to be faked – I wouldn’t be called upon to risk life or limb in any death-defying stunt.

There was just one problem with that logic: the scene wasn’t going to be filmed at Television Centre at all.

So, on 13–14 January, while everyone else enjoyed a few days’ rehearsal at Acton, I found myself at Ealing Studios. Any love I had for the place and its history was temporarily suspended as I looked up at this seemingly never-ending scaffolded wall. I wasn’t mad on heights, but back then I had the arrogance of youth – you think you’re untouchable at that age. And maybe there was a hint of being a woman and trying just that bit harder not to let the side down. You don’t want to give anyone any excuses to have a go.

There’s something in an actor’s psyche that says, ‘If they want you to do this, it must be safe.’ That’s a hell of an assumption, especially after Wookey Hole, but you plod through life trusting you won’t be asked to do things that aren’t safe. Oh God, when I look back at some of the places I ended up! My friend in California, Amy Krell, has a photograph of me where I’m leaning over the edge of a skyscraper with Ian hanging onto me. No hidden ropes, no safety net, just us two clowning a mile above the traffic. Afterwards Ian confessed, ‘Lis, I could never have done that.’

Oh, it never occurred to me to say no. I assumed the photographer knew what he was doing , I thought.

I’ve noticed, though, I’m much more careful about these things since I became a mother – I’m far more suspicious.

At Ealing, it transpired, I wasn’t the one with the biggest problem. We had a hilarious actor on Genesis , Stephen Yardley, who was playing a deformed mutant called Sevrin. His character had this funny arm and he used to come to lunch, dragging his limp limbs around in full costume, and howl, ‘I’m not very well!’

An incredibly funny man – and also, it turned out, quite a timid one when it came to heights.

We were saddled with guns and of course he had his dodgy arm, and somehow we’d scrambled halfway up the wall. Then Stephen looked down.

‘I don’t like this – it’s a bit high.’

If we could have faked it on the blue screen, I think he would have been delighted.

I put a lot of trust in our film cameraman, Elmer Cossey, who was the one calling the shots that day. I remember talking to him at Ealing that morning. Just general chit-chat, and then he said, ‘So, Lis, do you want to see your wall?’ I think he’d been looking forward to seeing my face, the little so-and-so.

The problem with having a technical bod in charge, of course, is they’re never satisfied. The first time Stephen and I managed to fight our way up I thought, That wasn’t so hard, we’ll be finished early today .

Not a chance.

We spent the entire day going up and down, up and down this bloody wall. The distance between bars was just too great to be comfortable for me. Another six inches closer together and I could have managed them. As it was, I’d just get a foothold then really have to overstretch to reach the next rung. The following day I could barely lift my hands to head height.

The only plus side of the whole experience is the end result. There was a chance it could have been another stunt that looked rubbish on telly, like my big leap in Peladon , but I think Elmer captured the scale of the place pretty well.

* * *

Back in the safe arena of the Acton Hilton we rehearsed as normal for six studio days, filming, largely, in episode order, plus the odd out-of-sequence bit if it saved on scenery. Maloney’s inspired idea of only having the Daleks indoors paid off. They’re pretty menacing in the right environment, aren’t they? As usual we had John and Cy but this time round, Murphy was replaced by Keith Ashley. It’s funny to think you can conquer whole galaxies with just three Dalek operators …

As before, the Dalek boys all learned their lines for rehearsal. In the studio, however, as Michael was playing Davros now, it was Roy Skelton who took over. Roy is the master of Dalek voices, he really is. Brilliant to watch as well. He’d be in the studio, headphones on, studying the screen and acting out all the parts. When the Daleks argue among themselves, he’s just hysterical.

One of the more threatening aspects of Genesis is the whole ‘master race’ undercurrent. I think Terry Nation originally worked a lot of Nazi allusions into the show with Robert and Philip’s blessing, although these were watered down in later episodes. (Lovely Guy Siner, who plays Ravon, would of course go on to play a rather camp Nazi in ’Allo ‘Allo !) Spotting the similarities does add that layer of menace, I think. If you’re too young or naïve to spot the allegorical references, that’s fine too.

There’s a hint of a ‘final solution’ in Genesis , of course, which threw up all sorts of issues. The Doctor realises he has the opportunity to connect two leads and prevent the Dalek race from ever existing. Harry and Sarah urge him to act for the sake of the future universe but he can’t.

And Tom couldn’t either.

It was a big moment at Television Centre when, as we were actually preparing to shoot these lines, Tom just said, ‘No, I can’t do this.’

He just stopped the whole thing. Refused to go on as it was written.