#before the five(ish) doctors and the boyband

[silverfoxstole]

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE 337 10TH DECEMBER 2003

BY BENJAMIN COOK

“He’s imbued with this slice of evil,” explains Paul McGann, when I ask him to tell me about the Eighth Doctor’s current predicament… “I won’t go into the whole detail of it, because I’ve only just recorded it. I’ll still be trying to figure it out tonight! But yeah, the Doctor’s a bit of a bastard in this one. And that’s great. What’s fun, what’s nice to play, is a dark side…”

“You have more fun being a baddie,” confirms Peter Davison, who’s wearing exactly the same T-shirt that he wore for the recording of The Sirens of Time half-a-decade earlier (his own way of commemorating the anniversary, perhaps?). “There are more things to do with a bastard.”

“There’s more space, there’s more latitude, there’s more elbowroom with a baddie,” agrees Paul. “The good guys have to be patently good, if you know what I mean. They have to look noble.” Is there nothing that Doctor Who can’t do? “I don’t think so. That’s the beauty of it, isn’t it?”

“Maybe there are some things,” Colin Baker chips in, “but if we say what they are you can bet that somebody will come up with a script that includes precisely those things – and it’ll work. You can say that the Doctor could never massacre a thousand innocent children, but if someone came up with a script that gave a very good reason why he should…well, then I’d do it.”

“You could have said that Doctor Who can’t sing,” smiles Sylvester McCoy, pointing accusingly at Colin Baker.

“He sang? When?” Paul grins. “Why didn’t they ask me to sing?”

“Actually, when I heard,” says Colin, “that they were doing a Gilbert and Sullivan [see Doctor Who and the Pirates], I thought, ‘This is taking it too far.’ But I read the script and it gave entirely credible reasons why the Doctor would sing. It’s one of the most moving scripts I’ve read in terms of the context in which the Doctor decides to do what he does.”

“A barbershop quartet!” exclaims Peter Davison, quite suddenly. “Wouldn’t it be perfect? It’d be perfect, wouldn’t it?” The Four Doctors, he means. “Yeah, we’d go down a storm.” At conventions, I suggest. “I’m thinking bigger than that. We could be huge…”

“Worldwide domination,” whispers Sylvester McCoy, menacingly.

…..

“The hero has to be unmistakable,” suggests Colin Baker, “but that bad person can be anyone.” His voice drops to a whisper. “They might not reveal themselves. You know what I mean?”

“There’s just more room there,” says Paul McGann, “with a baddie, you know?” Does it ever get a bit dull, then, playing a do-gooder like the Doctor? “I don’t know if he is a do-gooder – in considering, for example, how he was exiled from his homeland. He has a bit of a record. He’s a bit erratic and – what’s the word?”

“Eccentric!” offers Peter Davison. “He could be your uncle, who’s the black sheep of the family, who all the children love and the parents disapprove of.”

“I was going to say ‘fractious’. I mean, sure,” Paul says, “he’s a force for good, and he understands that, and doesn’t mind admitting it, but they never call if good. No one ever talks about ‘good’ and ‘bad’, or ‘good’ and ‘evil’, do they? I mean, there’s never quite that, sort of, quasi-religious thing going on. No, it’s just power corrupting and fights around the universe.”

Peter says: “He’s definitely anti-authority in many ways.”

“That’s why I’m attracted to him,” joins in Sylvester, “and I think why other people are as well.”

….

“Is Paul being regenerated?” frowns Sylvester McCoy, leafing through his script. “Is this the end?”

“Yeah. We decided that’s it.” Gary Russell grins. “We don’t want to do Doctor Who any more. That’s it, it’s finished now.”

“Richard E Grant,” persists Sylvester. “Is he not taking over?”

“Richard Who?” Gary laughs. “No, doesn’t mean anything to me!”

“Yes, well, when people have said to me, ‘Who do you think would make a good Doctor?’, I’ve often said Richard E Grant,” insists Sylvester. “He may be a touch young, but he’s definitely the right kind of eccentric, quirky character. Knowing that people want a younger Doctor, he’ll fit the bill really well, won’t he?”

“And he’s quite well-known in his own right,” says Peter Davison, “so I don’t think he’ll get lost in it – unless he becomes the television Doctor. In that case, it won’t swamp everything he’s doing, but it’ll change his life quite dramatically, I should think. He knows what it’s like to have a fanbase thing, because of what Withnail and I brought him…”

What advice would they give the new TV Doctor? “I wouldn’t presume to give anybody any advice,” declares Colin Baker.

“Why should we help him?” grins Paul McGann. “To hell with him!”

In studio, Gary Russell and Lalla Ward are debating whether Romana would use the word ‘poppycock’. “You’re right, Lalla. It should, of course, be ‘affirmative’. But you did enjoy ‘poppycock’, didn’t you?”

“I loved poppycock!”

“Let’s keep it, then. Maybe you could just - ”

“A bit more ‘poppy’ and a bit less ‘cock’?”

Gary Russell sighs. “It’s going to be one of those days, isn’t it?”

“I haven’t even ravished the universe yet,” bemoans Paul McGann.

“I’ve got two hearts,” Lalla boasts. “I don’t need to ravish anything!”

…..

“There’s a jokey rivalry. Yeah, of course there is,” says Peter Davison, when asked about working with the other three Doctors. “It’s like any actor with another actor, really. When we meet up, it’s not for real. And we do put it on a bit.”

Colin Baker says: “And there’s probably an underlying rivalry that we don’t acknowledge – you know, he has that script and I don’t…”

“A shorthand between any group of people that work together is to be rude,” continues Peter.

“It’s a very British phenomenon, that. You insult your workmates,” says Colin, “and that means you like them! The people you don’t insult and have a go at are the ones that you actually don’t like, so you don’t want to get involved in anything with them. Of course we have a go at each other and take the mick. We’re all terribly disrespectful!”

…..

“Actually,” says Nicola Bryant, scanning through her next scene, “this makes a lot more sense than the last scene I was doing…”

“It isn’t supposed to make sense,” cries Gary Russell, poking his head out of the studio door. “The only bits that make sense are the bits that Alan Barnes wrote. All of my bits make no sense at all!”

Colin Baker says this: “I mean, Zagreus – it’s so labyrinthine and so clever, and, even though there are bits that I don’t understand, I know that I will understand them when I listen to it. It deals with huge issues about the nature of the Time Lords and their history and their future – entirely appropriate for a 40th anniversary.”

“It’s very weird,” says Paul. “That’s nice. It’s good when it’s weird.”

“It’s quite a milestone,” says Peter Davison, “I see no reason why it shouldn’t go on and on. I think it’s rather nice. I can’t think of many shows that have reached that milestone. And like anyone else, I want to know what happens next…or before…or alternatively…or as well. It fills in a lot of gaps.”

……

“I like the Doctor,” concludes Paul. “He wears his background, and he wears his solitude sometimes. He’s a little bit, for some people, hard to get to know, and definitely, for others, hard to get to like. There are the complexities there that we come across daily. But there is, of course, the hero aspect of him – from time to time. He’s the white knight. It goes in and out – he can be very, very good and very, very bad. I’d hate it if he were always the sword of truth and justice – a cleansing agent. It’d be boring. It’d just be boring. It’d be Borax, in fact, folks!

“It’ll be interesting to see what happens next…”