Doctor Who (15 page)

Despite Whitehouse's protests, the new era of
Doctor Who
was considered a success by many, and ratings continued to rise. The Fourth Doctor was just starting.

12

The Journalist, the Warrior, the Lady of Time

“The Doctor loves being challenged and the best companions are strong, intelligent, adventurous women who challenge him constantly.”

—Matt Smith, Eleventh Doctor (2011 interview with the author)

 

In casting Sarah Jane Smith, producer Barry Letts had a scene written specifically for the auditions, telling actors it was for a part in one
Doctor Who
story. Elisabeth Sladen had no idea that she was auditioning for a regular cast role. After seeing many others do the scene, Letts was impressed with Sladen, saying later, “She could be frightened and brave at the same time. The others could either be frightened or brave. . . . I made up my mind on the spot.” Rather than send Sladen home and have her wait to hear the news, Letts told her that Pertwee was on his way to say hello. Sladen didn't understand why but was happy to meet the actor. After introducing himself and speaking to her, Pertwee discreetly gave Barry Letts a thumbs-up behind Sladen's back, and the producer knew that he'd made the right decision.

Then script editor Terrance Dicks admitted in interviews that he had an “old-fashioned idea” that the Doctor's assistants were there to ask for plot clarification, get captured, and provide a good scream when a monster showed up. He also said that he generally believed people didn't find
Doctor Who
interesting during scenes that didn't showcase him or the villain, so he never saw call to develop the companions. But Letts told him that Sarah Jane wasn't to be an “assistant” but the Doctor's colleague, paralleling the rise of feminism and women's lib.

Despite this intention, the character did seem like a sidekick at first, and Dicks often joked that her career in journalism simply legitimized her
acting as an exposition prompt: “What is this creature, Doctor?” “What's happening, Doctor?” “What will your gadget do, Doctor?” “How is it possible that dinosaurs are randomly teleporting in and out of London, Doctor?”

But with Hinchcliffe, Holmes, and Baker on the scene, Sladen evolved Sarah Jane into a different kind of character.

The Journalist

“There's nothing
‘only'
about being a girl, your majesty.”

—Sarah Jane Smith, from “The Monster of Peladon” (1974)

 

As Elizabeth Sladen explained in her autobiography:

 

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.

 

When Harry Sullivan joined the TARDIS, he held openly old-fashioned views toward Sarah Jane, attempting to be chivalrous in ways that annoyed her as sexist. Sladen appreciated these scenes because they showed the kind of person Sarah Jane often encountered in life and also contrasted against how the Doctor trusted her.

Sladen and Baker instantly clicked, spending much of their time during breaks sharing jokes and discussing old movies. Sladen said they had a near-instant trust and understanding, and Baker claimed that she compelled affection. “There was this understanding between Tom and Lis,” Philip Hinchcliffe commented. “They trusted each other, and they loved their own characters, and they pushed each other in the way good actors do. You could see that the Doctor and Sarah Jane understood each other on different levels, you could feel that special relationship and how they balanced each other.”

Sarah Jane became more assertive, which Sladen credited to the quality of the new scripts and Tom's insistence that the companion must be
capable and special if the Doctor had chosen her to join his adventures. In interviews, Sladen spoke of occasions on which Tom protested scenes that he thought weakened Sarah Jane. “He said, ‘Look, I don't think Lis should do that because that makes her look stupid.' And he said, ‘I would not go round in space with someone who is stupid!' I thought,
Oh, yes, Tom. Go, Tom!
”

Sarah Jane adopted a bit of the Doctor's fashion sense, dressing in odd, colorful outfits more youthful and playful than anything she had worn during Pertwee's final year. Sladen involved herself in these costume choices, wanting to display just how much Sarah was becoming more like the Time Lord. As the stories continued, the Doctor and the journalist became an inseparable pair. In the story “The Seeds of Doom,” Baker added a line in which the Doctor gleefully introduces Sarah Jane as his “best friend.” In all the years of
Doctor Who,
the hero had never before referred to anyone with such familiarity or affection, but Baker believed it fit the relationship developing. In contrast to previous companions, some fans wondered if their connection didn't have a subtle undertone of romance.

As her third year on the show wrapped up, though, Sladen decided that it was time to leave. Like so many before her, she counted three years a good run and wanted to end on a good note, while Sarah Jane was popular. Writers floated the idea that Smith might die at the end of an adventure, but Hinchcliffe didn't care for how the story was written, and Sladen met with him to protest that the character's death would upset many young fans. Along with this, she said that she didn't want her departure to be the focus of the story, as it was still the Doctor's show, and she didn't want Sarah Jane married off, as Jo Grant had been, as it would have been out of character and would, as she saw it, go against the relationship established in the TARDIS.

Holmes and Hinchcliffe discussed the matter with Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen, telling the two actors that only they knew for sure how the Doctor and Sarah Jane would say goodbye. A new script was given to the pair, who altered the finale scene's dialogue to fit the two characters' experience. According to Hinchcliffe, “They were right to object. The ending we had in mind didn't work. They weighed in, and we elongated the final scene to give Sarah Jane a proper goodbye and acknowledge how connected she and the Doctor had become.”

Sarah Jane's final story was “The Hand of Fear,” broadcast in October 1976 and written by Bob Baker (no relation to Tom or Colin) and Dave Martin. After saving the day again, Sarah Jane decides she's being taken for granted and threatens to leave. To seem serious, she packs her bags while the Doctor receives a telepathic summons to Gallifrey. As Sarah Jane returns to the control room with her luggage, the Doctor uncomfortably reveals that they must part ways, possibly because he fears for her safety on Gallifrey after what happened to Jamie and Zoe. (In 2006, we also learned that humans weren't permitted on the planet at this time.) The last time the Doctor went home, he was forced to regenerate and Sarah Jane asks if this will happen again. He doesn't know, but must face it alone. The two share a farewell that many still consider one of the saddest companion departures of the classic program.

Baker later said that during the farewell scene he focused on the Doctor's discomfort and inability to say goodbye directly, experiencing an emotion he wasn't altogether used to. Sladen said in an interview, “I would love to think that the audience gets a subtext from it, that it's the things that are not being said . . . how they felt about each other.”

Sarah Jane's final episode attracted over twelve million viewers. She had been the show's longest running companion in terms of broadcast seasons, with three full years plus two extra stories under her belt. Fans often hoped that Sarah Jane would return. In different ways, they got their wish, first with her appearance in the failed pilot
K-9 and Company
(more about that in Chapter 14), then in radio plays and an unofficial spin-off video, and finally with a return to
Doctor Who
itself in 2006. This led to further appearances on the program and her own spin-off television show
The Sarah Jane Adventures
in 2007. Fans never had enough.

Sadly, Sladen was diagnosed with cancer in February 2011 and then died on April 19, 2011. Her autobiography appeared posthumously, seven months later. In 2010, she had filmed a crossover with the Eleventh Doctor in her own show, entitled “Death of the Doctor.” At one point, Elisabeth Sladen remarked that she had a sense this would be the last time she stood on the TARDIS set.

The Warrior

“I too used to believe in magic, but the Doctor has taught me about science. It is better to believe in science.”

—Leela, from “The Horror of Fang Rock” (1977)

 

After Sarah Jane's departure, the Doctor had no companion at his side for his next adventure. “The Deadly Assassin” took place entirely on Gallifrey and featured the return of the Master after an absence of three years (more about this in the following sidebar).

Baker had expressed a desire that the Doctor not have a companion anymore, believing the character seemed just fine working only with those he encountered when he arrived in places that needed his help, like a cosmic Western hero. If he had to have a companion, he joked that it might as well just be an alien talking cabbage. But Hinchcliffe told him that the companion was necessary for the audience to have a consistent character with whom to connect and to provide humanity to the Doctor through interaction.

The next adventure, “The Face of Evil,” introduced the new traveling companion. The Doctor, having wandered alone for some time and now accustomed to talking to himself, lands on a savage world where primitive people live in the ruins of advanced technology. A ship of humans crashed here generations before, and the technicians and survey team went their separate ways, evolving into two tribes called the Tesh and the Sevateem.

The Doctor soon befriends Leela, a fierce warrior of the Sevateem, who at first thinks he is a god of evil. By the end of the adventure, Leela realizes that what she believes to be magic is just science she doesn't yet understand. Wishing to learn more about the universe, she decides to join the Doctor, pushing her way into the TARDIS and activating the controls as he protests.

Louise Jameson played Leela. She watched
Doctor Who
as a child, and Patrick Troughton was her Doctor of choice. Jameson had attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and spent two years with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She'd also appeared regularly on the TV series
Emmerdale
and was happy to join
Doctor Who
as a warrior rather than a hostage in
waiting. In contrast to the Doctor's manner, Leela had no problem suggesting “knife them in the neck” as a solution to danger.

According to Hinchcliffe, “Instead of a companion who became brave by meeting the Doctor, she was already quite brave, and he had to teach her to hold back, that there were ways to defeat evil without automatically killing people. It was sort of like
My Fair Lady.
Leela still challenged him and quickly came to see him as a man rather than a god. And it was important that she was the one who chose to go with him, she was the one who wanted to learn. Louise added humor and a playfulness at times and an impatience with some of the Doctor's attitude.”

“I think it [Leela's violence] could have gone a lot further,” Jameson said in an interview for this book, “but Tom was very clear that violence had to be used with great integrity. He was always aware of the younger audience.”

Along with always carrying a knife, Leela donned a leather outfit considered pretty revealing for
Doctor Who
—and originally even more revealing before Jameson suggested the addition of leather flaps hanging from her belt. “The reactions were varied,” according to Jameson, “from a four-year-old writing to ask me to put some clothes on to women my mother's age acknowledging that power and sex appeal can go together. In fact, sexy women are indeed very powerful because of what they are endowed with, not necessarily that they have to use it overtly in a gratuitous way. It is perfectly all right to look terrific and be political.”

Jameson enjoyed playing the character and wanted her to rely on instinct in contrast to how the Doctor relied on science. She noted how her dog perked up at certain sounds how it turned its head when investigating a room and copied some of these traits. The name Leela, a variation of Leila, means “dark beauty” in Arabic, and the production office thought Jameson's blue eyes would jar with the character's skin tone and outfit. Jameson was given red contact lenses, making her eyes brown, but they bothered her and exacerbated her nearsightedness, so they were eventually abandoned. At the end of “The Horror of Fang Rock,” Leela witnesses a bright explosion, and the Doctor notes that her brown eyes have turned blue as a result.

While many fans welcomed Leela, there was tension behind the scenes. Baker hadn't wanted a new companion, and Jameson sensed his dislike for
her character. In an interview for
Doctor Who @40,
Jameson said, “Tom Baker's an extraordinary man to work with . . . but along with that could come some tensions in a rehearsal room. You know, when someone is that talented and that high profile, sometimes they can be just a little bit difficult to work with.”

In later years, Baker has spoken with regret of his occasional bad attitude toward Jameson, admitting that he had not initially cared for the violence that Leela's character seemed to represent and confessing that by this point he felt “drunk” on the fame that the Doctor had brought to his career, which made him resistant to change.

Leela's three adventures in the fourteenth year marked the end of Hinchcliffe's tenure as producer. Graham Williams took over, with Holmes staying as script editor until handing the reins to Anthony Read. Holmes's final story as script editor was “The Sunmakers,” Jameson's favorite. Some scripts made her interchangeable with other companions, but she believed that Holmes and writer Chris Boucher brought out other dimensions in her character and let her display her instinctive tendencies. Holmes would occasionally write other
Doctor Who
stories in later years, making him the author of more scripts for the classic program than anyone else.