Sladen, Elisabeth - Elisabeth Sladen - The Autobiography

Now that, I would be excited to do: me, Tom and Jon – my two Doctors and me onscreen at the same time – that could be special! Even so, K-9 and Company had left a sour taste in my mouth.

‘Come on, Lis,’ John urged in his usual enthusiastic manner. ‘Everyone else is doing it! You don’t want to be the one who said “no”, do you? Think of the fans.’

That was so typical of John, playing the guilt card. ‘Think of the fans’ might have been his catchphrase. I thought of everything that went wrong with our shoot in the Cotswolds, but then I remembered some of the good times I’d had with Jon and Tom.

‘OK, you’ve got me,’ I said. ‘When can I see a script?’

Ah, now there’s a question. One of these days I’ll learn to ask for a script before I give my answer! In the end I think that’s what Tom did because by the time shooting commenced he was nowhere to be seen. They had to use clips from an unbroadcast serial instead. It didn’t help, I suppose, that by then he and Lalla had separated.

Terry Dicks was given the task of writing a script that incorporated all these changing elements: myriad Doctors, companions and villains. His only stipulations were that there were to be no Daleks – and no K-9. I knew exactly how he felt.

Poor Terry got neither of his wishes. A solo Dalek does appear inside the tower, in a Benny Hill-style chase with the First Doctor and Susan. It was a welcome return for my old friend Roy Skelton as its voice. Then, to tie in with K-9 and Company , my part in The Five Doctors began with the dog warning me of danger. Obviously I then ignored him and got spirited off to Gallifrey. At least he didn’t have to come as well, although it was nice to see John Leeson again so soon. There’s a certain supermarket near my house where I often hear this cry of ‘Mistress!’ Honestly, jumping out of your skin in the frozen meats aisle isn’t all that becoming.

Despite my misgivings, by the time shooting started in March 1983 I was thrilled to be part of such an illustrious cast. Only people who’ve been in Who can really know what it’s like – and here they were by the TARDIS-load. Quite a few of them I’d met at the US conventions. Poor Peter Moffat, the director, really had his work cut out keeping us in check.

‘Would you please stop talking!’ he shouted more than once. ‘I’m trying to rehearse a scene.’

It was a waste of time. As soon as they had a bunch of us in a room the gossip would start and before we knew it, lunchtime was just around the corner.

Meeting old friends was one thing, but I also made new ones. I’d never met Pat Troughton, the Second Doctor, before and what a wonder he was. I think it’s fair to say we were a bit wary of each other at first, I don’t know why. We would eye each other up a lot and I thought, What’s your problem? I think actually he was very shy (he liked to surround himself with his friends), but he turned in a stand-out performance. He really brought a lot of life to it – he knew exactly what he wanted from the part and it was good to see him with Nick Courtney. At the end of the day, Pat was a bloody good actor. It would have been nice to share some scenes with him and get to know the man, though.

Pat wasn’t the only one with friends. Every Doctor seemed to have his clique off-screen; some companions had their own groups as well – it’s inevitable when you have so many people milling around at the same time. It was just as complicated onscreen. Everyone was paired off and at some point we all had our own villains to face. I think a few details got overlooked in the confusion so, for example, when Janet Fielding as the Fifth Doctor’s companion, Tegan, enters with Peter Davison and I walk on with Jon, the men start combining forces and we’re just left standing like lemons. I thought, I’d better go and introduce myself . How implausible would it be if we just stood there ignoring each other? Little things like that were a bit sloppy, I’d say – another sign of a rushed production.

We had some fun on 17 November – a year after I’d recorded K-9 and Company . A photocall was announced for the four Doctors, the Brig, Carole Ann Ford (who played Susan, the Doctor’s grand-daughter during William Hartnell’s time), K-9 and me. Tom had also promised to put in an appearance. However, when push came to shove, he couldn’t be seen for toffee – but Nathan-Turner had already thought of that. So if you look at the snaps from that day you’ll notice Peter, Jon, Pat, Richard – and a waxwork of Tom, courtesy of Madame Tussauds! And if you can think of rude things to say or do to a dummy of Tom Baker, we probably did them. A rare highlight, I have to say, on an otherwise uninspiring shoot.

Location filming took place in Wales and it was bloody cold, as you can imagine in November. There was a team of people armed with hairdryers whose job it was to hide behind rocks, then rush out and give your body a resuscitating blow-dry between takes! So when the photographer requested a few snaps of Carole Ann and me, we persuaded him to come back to the warmth of the hotel. ‘OK,’ he agreed, ‘but I haven’t got long.’ No sooner had we stepped inside than our faces went off the pink scale. Sweating and high-coloured is an absolutely hideous look, but the photographer snapped away regardless.

‘These pictures had better not see the light of day,’ I said.

‘No one would be stupid enough to use them,’ Carole Ann agreed.

And so we promptly forgot all about them.

* * *

Being reunited with Jon was a total buzz. He himself, though, couldn’t find it in him to enjoy The Five Doctors for what it was. He’d never really got over watching Tom Baker regenerate into his part back in 1974. Having to sit back while Tom then went on to become the most popular and long-serving Doctor had been a hard pill to swallow. As a consequence he rarely let an opportunity slide to toss out a catty remark about his successor. Tom not taking part in The Five Doctors couldn’t have given him more material if he’d tried.

‘Oh, he’s too grand for the likes of us,’ he sneered. ‘ Who ’s not good enough for him any more! Charming, I’m sure.’

Delighted as I was to see Jon, there was only so much of this talk I could take. Some of his bitchy remarks when we were posing with the Tom mannequin had been amusing but the joke quickly wore thin. In the end I said, ‘Look, if you can’t say anything nice, I’m off.’

The look on Jon’s face! He’d forgotten how much I loved Tom. I’m not going to let you trample on my memories, I thought.

A lot of Jon’s venom should have been directed at the BBC. They were the ones, he felt, who had tricked him into leaving by their intransigence. More crucially, they had never hired him since – he was very sad about that. He had a proud Dickensian face. They could have used him for all sorts of things but he never got another sniff until The Five Doctors and nothing outside Who afterwards. I guess Tom might have been the easy target but in reality Jon was annoyed at the whole Corporation.

We had some fun together, of course. Jon got to trot out his catchphrase ‘reverse the polarity of the neutron flow’ once again, while Bessie was drafted back in to add an additional blast from the past. Annoyingly, once they’d brought her out of mothballs they needed to use her, so we had this ridiculous scene where I fall down a cliff and Jon has to winch me out using the car. All fine – except when you look at the cliff, it’s about three foot deep and not steep enough to keep a toddler at bay.

Deciding where to tie the rope seemed to take an age, and all the while I was lying on this cold, damp patch of grass. In the end I called out, ‘Shall we not bother?’