BBC Cult - Printer Friendly Version
Colin Baker - The Doctor, of course.

Second chances
  Can you tell us a little bit about how you’re playing the character these days?

When I did the programme on television back in the 80s there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to develop the character. I only had two series and there was a kind of long-term game plan which was somewhat frustrated by the curtailment of my time.

A lot of the stuff that I wasn’t able to do and to show when I was playing the part has now emerged in the audio versions, which means that I have been able to examine some of the darker aspects of the Doctor.

The writers have been able to draw on things that I always wanted to show. The Doctor, if he’s a Time Lord, 900 years old, has travelled through space and time, has two hearts and a body temperature of whatever it is, he ain’t going to behave like a bloke who’s on the bus in Tooting.

He’s going to be somewhat different and it’s that difference that we’re beginning to investigate, the unpredictability, the sharpness, the edginess.

Ultimately, it boils down to good scripts. I had good scripts when I was doing it [on television] but not all of them were as good as the ones that I’m getting now, and the one that we’re broadcasting on the web is a thumping good Cybermen story. It’s nice to get back to good story telling, good traditional Doctor Who story telling.

Tinkering with time
  If you had the opportunity what would you want to go back and change about the past?

I might go back in time to the past and see if I could infiltrate the upper echelons of the BBC and reverse one or two decisions that one may not have agreed with – let’s not be more specific than that. That would be kind of tempting, wouldn’t it?

And I’d like to go to one or two casting sessions and be standing by the director when he casts somebody in a part that I wanted, and say to him ‘Have you ever thought of Colin Baker?’

But that aside I love the whole thing of time paradox because when it comes down to it in any Doctor Who story, if things are going badly, the Doctor can nip into the TARDIS, go back half an hour and do something different. Very often we kind of gloss over that because it would make it too easy, but in this story that we’re doing now we actually do engage the whole question of time paradox and I think it’s a brave story for that.

If I was a good enough writer to write a Doctor Who story, and you’ve got to be a pretty good writer to write one, I’d want to investigate all those possibilities.

Frightening with finesse
  What are the key elements that create terror in a Doctor Who manner?

It’s traditional monsters, is a great part of it, Daleks, Cybermen. Not so much the Master, that’s more of a kind of Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty battle of wits. What is scary full stop is the unexpected, and things that carry with them a vast history.

Now, Daleks carry with them a vast history, they look ludicrous but we know what they are, which is upturned pepper pots of implacable hatred and destruction, ditto cyber men, no emotion whatsoever, all they’re interested in is total domination of everything else and everybody else.

Total destruction is all they’re interested in - that’s scary. The whole context of Doctor Who, I still think, is about family viewing, families sitting down together, willingly, to be scared. It’s the willing suspension of unscaryness, if you like, and we love it don’t we?

Kids love to be scared. [That’s] something that Roahl Dahl understood so perfectly. To hit the right level of scariness it’s got to be slightly more than children want to be scared and slightly less than parents will go ‘Oh no you can’t watch that’.

You’ve got to get in that little hinterland between parents stopping them from watching it and children not wanting to watch it and too often it’s either one extreme or the other and Dahl and I believe Doctor Who hit that in the past and still does it just right.

The faithful companion
  As regards companions, what do you think worked best with your Doctor?

Well, I’ve had a nubile American and a scatty red-haired Brit from Pease Pottage and now I’ve got one that I suppose, and with no disrespect to my previous companions, is an intellectual equal.

She’s a lecturer in history, and I mean Maggie herself is a smashing actress, but I think it’s great for my Doctor to have someone that he can bounce off intellectually. Someone who can actually turn the tables on him, unlike the screaming companion or the ‘I’m going to make you lose weight’ child companion. We’ve got one who is interested rather than scared and is actually quite feisty. She stands up to the evil that she encounters extremely well.

I think it’s an inspired choice, and I suspect that in vision there wouldn’t have been many producers who are brave enough to cast an older woman in the role of companion, but it works fantastically well.

Ten men would like to meet…
  As you know, the Cybermen have the strength of 10 men. If you had the strength of ten men at your disposal, what would you do with it?

If I had the strength of 10 men and women or could command the power of 10 men or women, what would I do? Any number of things around my garden. There have been some heavy winds recently and there’s some trees fallen over and rather than pay someone to come and do it I’d come and hump those out of the way.

I think I’d deal with one or two issues in my life, one or two people who could do with a firm hand, that would be quite handy wouldn’t it?

If I had the power of 10 men I think I’d find 10 women probably, I think that’s the answer, isn’t it.