Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s)

Running Through Corridors

Rob and Toby’s Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s)

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Published by Mad Norwegian Press (
www.madnorwegian.com
).
Cover & interior design: Christa Dickson.
Editor: Lars Pearson.

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First Printing: November 2010.
Second Printing: September 2011.
First e-Book: October 2011.

To Russell. For making me canon.

RS

To the two Mrs Hadokes: Mum, the original, for getting me this far; and Katherine, who became one during this quest, for being quite the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me (yes, better than Longleat), and who will see me through the rest.

TH

Table of Contents

Foreword by Peter Purves

January

• An Unearthly Child
  
• The Daleks
  
• The Edge of Destruction
  
• Marco Polo
  
• The Keys of Marinus
  
• The Aztecs
  
• The Sensorites
  
• The Reign of Terror
  
• Planet of Giants
  
• The Dalek Invasion of Earth
  
• The Rescue
  
• The Romans
  
• The Web Planet
  

February

• The Crusade
  
• The Space Museum
  
• The Chase
  
• The Time Meddler
  
• Dr. Who and the Daleks
  
• Galaxy Four
  
• Mission to the Unknown
  
• The Myth Makers
  
• The Daleks’ Master Plan
  
• The Massacre
  
• The Ark
  
• The Celestial Toymaker
  
• The Gunfighters
  

March

• The Savages
  
• The War Machines
  
• Daleks Invasion Earth: 2150 AD
  
• The Smugglers
  
• The Tenth Planet
  
• The Power of the Daleks
  
• The Highlanders
  
• The Underwater Menace
  
• The Moonbase
  
• The Macra Terror
  
• The Faceless Ones
  
• The Evil of the Daleks
  
• The Tomb of the Cybermen
  
• The Abominable Snowmen
  

April

• The Ice Warriors
  
• The Enemy of the World
  
• The Web of Fear
  
• Fury from the Deep
  
• The Wheel in Space
  
• The Dominators
  
• The Mind Robber
  
• The Invasion
  
• The Krotons
  
• The Seeds of Death
  
• The Space Pirates
  

May

• The War Games
  

Acknowledgements
Credits

Foreword by Peter Purves

I was extremely flattered to be asked to write this foreword for
Running Through Corridors –
and came to realise that had such a request been made of me about seven years earlier, I would have been totally ill-equipped to accommodate it. Toby and Rob have spent this book discovering
Doctor Who
anew after having seen it many times, but it’s fair to say that throughout my life, the time I devoted to making the show has far surpassed the time I’ve spent watching it. You see, when I appeared in
Doctor Who
in the mid-1960s, no domestic recording of programmes was possible, except through the old reel-to-reel audio machines of the time. Consequently, I hardly ever saw any of the 44 episodes in which I played Steven – the show was transmitted early evening on Saturday, when I would be out making personal appearances and the like. My stories were never repeated, so if I missed an episode, then that was that.

When the commercial video era came about, it turned out that the BBC had – in its great wisdom – wiped many of the two-inch videotapes of the show, and so only a few of my stories were available for release. I was sent videos of
The Ark
and
The Gunfighters
, but I only had fleeting and poor memories of the latter, and so I never bothered to view it. (More on that story in a moment.) I did watch
The Ark
– which again, I didn’t see on first transmission – but to be entirely honest, I was dreadfully disappointed with it. The story itself was excellent and imaginative, but the execution – particularly the design of the Monoids – was very poor, almost laughable, I felt.

My first proper re-exposure to my time on
Doctor Who
, as it happened, occurred through the audio rather than the video medium. Luckily for me (and for many
Doctor Who
fans), there were people who liked the show so much, they made off-air audio recordings of the 60s stories. These were eventually tracked down, and it’s very pleasing that a full archive of
Doctor Who
now exists in audio form. And so, when audio producer Mark Ayres asked me to record the narration links on every serial in which I appeared, it was very exciting. In many cases, this would be was the first time I had revisited the show since 1966!

Starting in 1999, we recorded these rather excellent (is that immodest of me to say?) narrated soundtracks. In some cases, I had the occasional recall of the scripts involved, but to a large extent, I came to it all afresh. And the great joy was that I loved these stories! I liked the scripts, I enjoyed the plots, and I threw myself into the narration with genuine pleasure. I was surprised by the extent that the recordings remained (if you will forgive the pun) undoctored, but Mark assured me that the
Doctor Who
aficionados would not be pleased if the pauses, occasional
Billyfluffs
and other extraneous noises were cut out. Everything had to remain in its exact original form. If you haven’t experienced these audios, then I can highly recommend you have a listen. (My favourite
Billyfluff
of all time, by the way, occurs in
The Myth Makers
when Bill Hartnell says, “I am not a dog – a god!”)

I returned to the world of televised
Doctor Who
some time later, in 2003, when
The Time Meddler
was broadcast in its entirety. I can’t say my opinion changed much upon this viewing – I had liked this story at the time, and still liked it upon seeing the final product. Steven’s character was at its strongest (just as Dennis Spooner had envisaged), Peter Butterworth was a joy to watch (and had been a joy to work with), and Dougie Camfield was a super director. The Viking/Saxon fights were admittedly pretty awful – embarrassing really, and patently performed in a set the size of an old sixpence – but there was some good acting, particularly from Alethea Charlton.

Then in 2004, my “journey” of re-experiencing
Doctor Who
continued when I was asked to watch
The Gunfighters
as part of a live commentary at a convention in Chicago. I hope everyone reading this will forgive that I expected to hate watching this story, mainly because I just hadn’t enjoyed making it. How can that be, you might ask, given that every boy of my era wanted to play a cowboy, and this story was my best chance to do so? Well, the director, Rex Tucker, seemed to rather ignore me – actually, not only me, but Jackie Lane and Bill Hartnell too. I now suspect it was because Rex, who had been overlooked as the show’s original producer, felt that directing a
Doctor Who
serial was a little below what his talent deserved. He did, at least, cast the story extraordinarily well – the Clanton gang looked genuine enough, and Hollywood cowboy actor John Alderson was present as Wyatt Earp, so the authenticity was remarkable. The sets were amazingly good, and the mix between Ealing film sequences and the studio matched very well indeed. But, perhaps owing to the fact that Rex hadn’t cast the three regulars, he largely left us to our own devices, and spent much more time focused on the other actors. I also remember being acutely embarrassed at having to sing “The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon” – I shouldn’t have been, because I had always been a singer, but somehow I really found no pleasure in it.

But do you know – as I did that commentary in Chicago, I found myself thoroughly enjoying what I could now see was a subtly funny story. Mind you, there was nothing subtle about my comedy – there were several huge double takes, a couple of trips over my own spurs, I was bumped in the back by the saloon doors – but I think it worked. Having spent some decades thinking ill of this story, I have certainly warmed to it. (
The Ark
, however, hasn’t improved for me on a second viewing, nor a third.)

Having now re-experienced all of my episodes on either audio or video, I continue to find it such a shame that the audience of the time liked the historical and pseudo-historical stories less than the hard SF ones, because they were amongst my favourites. The mix of SF and history in
The Time Meddler
was a delight, and
The Myth Makers
and
The Massacre
were powerful stories – the latter being, I think, my best performance and the best script of them all. What the historical stories lacked in SF content, they made up by being script-led rather than character-led. I’m told that the historical stories did not long survive my departure from
Doctor Who
, but continue to think that the historicals we made (is this also immodest of me to say?) were of the highest calibre.

Throughout
Running Through Corridors
, Toby and Rob have noted the many ways in which
Doctor Who
has kept reinventing itself. My era was certainly one of change – not just for the series, but for television in general. In the early 60s, the theatre was the thing, and actors generally were quite disparaging about “television actors”. I suspect that, deep down, much of this disdain owed to there only being three TV channels – something that didn’t change in the UK until 1982 – so the opportunities to appear on TV were in short supply, and the attitudes towards TV may have contained an element of sour grapes about them. But by the middle of the decade, actors with a good theatrical pedigree were beginning to appear on television more and more – and nowhere more than in
Doctor Who
. To watch and listen to my time on the series, I feel very fortunate to have worked with big names such as Max Adrian, Barrie Ingham, Andre Morell, Leonard Sachs, Michael Gough, Laurence Payne, Peter Butterworth, Stephanie Bidmead and Eric Thompson.

Enough of my reminiscences – the authors of this three-volume study have far more to offer than the ramblings of an elderly actor. I don’t know Rob, but have worked on a number of occasions with Toby, whose knowledge of
Doctor Who
is far greater than mine. The two of them have here produced a book worthy of a degree in
Doctor Who
-ology! It’s always a pleasure to read, and has such tremendous insight into the series. Whether you’re enjoying
Doctor Who
for the tenth time or the very first,
Running Through Corridors
is a must-have for viewers the world over.

Peter Purves
Steven Taylor,
Doctor Who companion, 1965-1966
Suffolk, England, 2010