Ask anyone over thirty to describe Doctor Who and they'll probably say "a man with big hair in a scarf". That's because Tom Baker played the role for seven years and established himself in the minds of every child of the Cold War as the Doctor. Frankly, by the end of his time he'd outstayed his welcome – he was phoning his performance in from Gallifrey. But Baker was undoubtedly the most charismatic individual to ever play the part. He was also the one with the most notches on his bedpost.
Maybe this is a good opportunity to correct the popular myth. There was a lot of dross made under Tom Baker. Consider the awful Horns of Nimon: 90 minutes that might be better spent watching paint dry while pulling out your own teeth with a pair of rusty pliers. A two dimension re-write of the Minotaur story, it features the Doctor and his companion Romana battling a race of half-men-half-bulls in platform shoes who come off like the gay chorus to a freudian nightmare dreamed by Liberace. The villain is played by Graham Crowden with enough ham to feed a family of four. The budget is about £9.50 (adjusted for inflation) and when one character falls over and tears his trousers the camera just keeps on rolling (you can see his underpants showing for the rest of the episode). Tom wings it with some gurning and eye popping. His mind was probably on other things – namely the woman playing his companion, Lalla Ward, who he wound up marrying. They divorced after 16 months and she married celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins instead. Ironically, given her husband's politics, this patient wife of maniacs must surely be a candidate for sainthood.
But for every stinker in Who there's some gold. The first few seasons of Baker's doctor were an almost unbroken run of classics. The theme – matching his dark, Bohemian dress – was Gothic dreamland. In Talons of Weng-Chiang, he foiled a plot by Chinese gangsters to unleash giant rats on Victorian England. The Brain of Morbius really belonged to Frankenstein; Planet of Evil was Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; Pyramids of Mars was apocalyptic Egyptology. The best written was Robots of Death, about a robot rebellion on a floating sandminer staffed by men in hairnets. It sounds silly but actually it'll haunt your dreams for days. The sight of an emotionless service droid apologising politely as it throttles the life out of a human is Doctor Who at its darkest.
The stories often work because Tom Baker acts about ten feet removed from them – creating a distance from the plot that distracts you from its holes and keeps you glued to the screen in anticipation of what he might do next. Watch TB closely and you'll see that he often does the wrong thing: grins in the face of danger, turns solemn when everyone else is happy. Scenes from this documentary show that he liked to direct himself – arrogantly shouting down directors and telling them what he was going to do rather than the other way around. It worked best when the story was sufficiently coherent and atmospheric to contain his personality. As the show wore on and it moved from gloomy cellars to floodlit spaceships, he became louder and sillier. He wasn't helped by that wretched dog, K9 – who was always on hand to shoot someone down and save the writers from having to find a more intelligent solution to a cliffhanger. Baker hated it, too.
Who on Earth was Tom Baker? He was a working-class boy from Liverpool who trained to be a monk before losing his faith and dropping out to take up acting. He joined the National Theatre and got a break into movies when Laurence Olivier recommended him for a part in Nicholas and Alexandria. When Doctor Who beckoned he was supplementing his income by working on a building site. What followed was, in his own words, a liberation from real acting into something closer to myth making.From an interview in 2007 with Laurie Taylor:
I've just been in a television series with Susan Hampshire, sort of Crossroads with kilts, and she said to me: 'Are you enjoying it.' And I said 'Yes. But then I can enjoy any old shite because I'm an actor. If you can't enjoy shite you can't be an actor.' And she said: 'Oh Tom, is there something about this part that makes you unhappy?' 'Yes,' I said, 'There is something that makes me terribly unhappy. What makes me terribly unhappy is that I am more interesting than the part I am playing.' That's why my great liberation was Doctor Who, because it was not an acting part. It was like playing one of those cult heroes like Sherlock Holmes. It's not really acting because those cult heroes are never supposed to change. They are predictable. They are always going to win. When I was playing Doctor Who millions of kids were stopping me in the street and sending me presents. They were sending them to me, to Tom Baker, because I wasn't acting. What they found interesting was Tom Baker. That gave me a great deal of confidence in myself.
The whole interview is worth a read because it captures a great deal of sadness mixed with pub entertainer wit. Maybe he lost some of that confidence after leaving Doctor Who because he certainly lost the star power as an actor. Tom Baker and Doctor Who became so entwined that Tom Baker ceased to be as important or interesting. More than any other Doctor, TB gave his everything to that show, and he often seemed to resent it. When they filmed The Five Doctors in 1983, he refused to join the anniversary reunion episode. So the BBC used an unrealistic waxwork of him for the publicity stills instead. He looks like Theresa May, although every waxwork does.
But let's not dwell on the sad stuff. A great deal glittered in the Fourth Doctor era and you can find some of it in the wonderful serial The City of Death, penned by the ingenious Douglas Adams (clip at the top of this post). But for a really fun afternoon, spend some time with Doctor Who and The Seeds of Doom. Look out for Tony Beckley playing, yet again, a posh cockney; a pre-Boycie John Challis as a frightening psychopath; and a 30 foot Rhododendron that threatens to take over the world. Buy some custard creams, boil some tea and settled down to some brilliant TV. You're worth it.