\u201cI try to inhabit these kind of crackpot people who I play, and find a crackpot niche in my crackpot brain\u2026 I slot them in and off we go!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In 2011, three decades after his final TV story Logopolis<\/a> had aired, Baker signed up to reprise his iconic role in a series of audio dramas produced by Big Finish. Three years after that, he was reunited with Philip Hinchcliffe<\/a>, the producer who \u2013 along with script editor Robert Holmes \u2013 had crafted some of the Fourth Doctor\u2019s best-loved stories between 1974 and 1977.<\/p>\n \u201cHe often found my ideas my ideas interesting and sometimes he adopted them,\u201d Baker recalls of working with Hinchcliffe on the television series. \u201cAnd for that reason, of course, I thought he had marvellous taste and insights.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhen I fell into Doctor Who and realised that Philip liked what I was doing, and so did the other actors, I kept on with it. I was always, as an ex-Catholic, looking for new meaning to life. And then Doctor Who came along and suddenly losing my faith in God didn\u2019t seem so serious. Not nearly as serious getting a good part!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Since 2014, Hinchcliffe and Big Finish have collaborated on the \u201cPhilip Hinchcliffe Presents\u2026\u201d range, which in the man\u2019s own words takes in \u201cnew stories that wouldn\u2019t have followed on from my last season in the 1970s, but that kind of have the flavour of what we were doing in those three years\u201d.<\/p>\n The latest, fourth volume is The God of Phantoms<\/a>, which reunites Baker\u2019s Doctor once again with companion Leela (Louise Jameson), his co-star on the TV series from 1977-78, for a ghost story with a sci-fi twist.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody who meets Louise loves her, because she compels affection,\u201d Baker beams. \u201cAnd she\u2019s beautiful and very witty. We absolutely have a wonderful relationship now and are constantly in touch with lovely little messages about what we\u2019re up to. So it\u2019s a happy story, really very happy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n From storytelling structure to music and sound design, these new stories \u2013 adapted from Hinchcliffe\u2019s initial ideas by writer Marc Platt \u2013 seek to recapture the flavour and feel of Doctor Who\u2019s Hammer Horror-influenced TV outings from the 1970s. Recapturing his performance wasn\u2019t a problem for Baker, chiefly because he claims playing the Doctor wasn\u2019t for him a performance at all.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just me, really,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s just me trying to be amusing, or trying to be heroic in an amusing way. <\/span>The Doctor Who character is such a benevolent old fellow and often amusing, and obviously a crackpot in the sense that he doesn\u2019t know how gifted he is, and doesn\u2019t seem to have learned very much about how the magic that he commands. Because of course, if he did<\/em> realise that there wouldn\u2019t be any stories, he\u2019d just solve them straight away. But all heroes have to have a black spot, don\u2019t they?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful, wonderful part \u2013 there\u2019s nothing like it because it\u2019s completely crackpot. There\u2019s no reason or rhyme to it. <\/span>And this kind of crackpot, scatterbrained, rather charming character fitted me rather well. I thought to myself, \u2018You know, I\u2019m really at home doing this.\u2019 <\/span>People say to me, \u2018Your Doctor Who is absolutely fabulous, Tom, and what\u2019s wonderful about it is you don\u2019t appear to be acting.\u2019 And before I can say that I\u2019m not<\/em> acting, they press on with another compliment\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Fans have often identified an evolution to Baker\u2019s TV performance in the seven years he was playing the part, with early confidence giving way to a more experimental and madcap middle period, culminating in a more sombre take in his final year on the show. But if these shifts were happening, he claims not to be aware of them.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you mean there\u2019s a difference in the way I played it? No, I only have one performance. really, and that\u2019s the Doctor Who one. So no, it didn\u2019t change at all\u2026 consciously. Though I<\/em> changed \u2013 I got older and couldn\u2019t run as fast.\u201d<\/p> Baker was the one constant in his era \u2013 other than the Doctor\u2019s familiar police box \u2013 with costumes, companions, styles and producers all coming and going. When Hinchcliffe departed Doctor Who in 1977 to work on the gritty police series Target, he was replaced by that show\u2019s creator Graham Williams.<\/p>\n \u201cHe tried to get his mark on the thing, that\u2019s the way it works,\u201d Baker says of Williams. \u201cSo he tried to influence me and perhaps turn me into his<\/em> version of Doctor Who. It didn\u2019t seem to occur to him that he had the job as a producer, I had the job of being Doctor Who. So he had to compromise along the way.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt eventually dawned on him \u2013 when other actors, and one or two of the directors I was working with, said, \u2018Hey, you know, I think Tom\u2019s got something here, I think we\u2019re onto something\u2019 \u2013 that he had to put up with it. After that, we became quite friendly\u2026 never very<\/em> friendly. I\u2019m not all that good at being very friendly. But we co-existed and on it went. I got more and more confident and they accepted more and more of my preposterous ideas and the audience responded.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Baker\u2019s relationship with his third and final producer on Doctor Who, John Nathan-Turner, was by his own admission rather less amicable. \u201cNow he came and he had an idea of doing Doctor Who\u2026 how it should be done. It was obvious that he saw Doctor Who very much as he saw himself. And I didn\u2019t agree with this.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe was very nice otherwise and very generous. But I didn\u2019t like his style, you know, and he didn\u2019t like my style. So it was a great struggle all the time, which we didn\u2019t have to take to arbitration because that would have been counterproductive, but it made life difficult and it made constantly the need for compromise on both our sides.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Having become the longest-serving Doctor to date \u2013 an accolade he holds to this day \u2013 Baker departed the series in 1980, going on to play Sherlock Holmes in a 1982 BBC adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles and appear in Blackadder II, The Chronicles of Narnia and the rebooted Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). But there was, he insists, a little bit of the Doctor in every role he\u2019s played since.<\/p>\n \u201cI couldn\u2019t leave it behind. It would be like leaving myself behind. I\u2019m stuck with the way I am. We\u2019re all stuck with the way we are and we have to make the best of it and exploit what people like about us. As an actor, some people have rather liked the way I do things, or the way I do anything, because there really isn\u2019t much difference between any of the things I\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n All of which meant that he \u201cwasn\u2019t anxious\u201d about returning to Doctor Who through his collaborations with Big Finish. \u201cI never left being Doctor Who.\u00a0<\/span>I played Macbeth the way I played Doctor Who So naturally, it was not a success. But although it wasn\u2019t a success, the audience laughed a lot and that was a kind of consolation.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t really play a villain any more than I could really play a super sleuth like Sherlock Holmes. I played Sherlock Holmes on-stage as well and people found me utterly ridiculous. I couldn\u2019t quite get his vanity. What I imposed was my anxiety and my notion of how to tell the story. And of course, people did find it very, very funny.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He\u2019s been playing the Doctor for Big Finish for a decade now, surpassing his TV run, and doesn\u2019t plan on stopping. Tom Baker, it seems, is the Doctor for life. \u201cWhat\u2019s kept me coming back is I have the best part and all the best lines!\u201d he says, before letting loose with one of his trademark booming laughs. \u201cAnd the boys at Big Finish like my work, and the visiting actors seem to like it. Lots of the supporting actors who come in, they watched me before they\u2019d reach the age of reason, because it goes back a long, long way, doesn\u2019t it, Doctor Who?<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cFor lots of them, it\u2019s a little sneaking ambition to come and play a part in Doctor Who. That\u2019s what they tell me anyway. They\u2019re actors, so I can\u2019t believe a word they\u2019re saying. But it\u2019s charming.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Doctor Who: Philip Hinchcliffe Presents Volume 04: The God of Phantoms is available now from\u00a0bigfinish.com<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Visit our\u00a0Sci-fi<\/a>\u00a0hub for more news and features, or find something to watch with out\u00a0TV Guide<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n The 87-year-old acting legend reveals why he never felt anxious about returning to the “crackpot” world of Doctor Who. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":3350,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/tom-baker-i-got-doctor-who-right-out-of-the-blue-and-i-didnt-know-what-to-do-with-it.jpg",620,413,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/tom-baker-i-got-doctor-who-right-out-of-the-blue-and-i-didnt-know-what-to-do-with-it-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/tom-baker-i-got-doctor-who-right-out-of-the-blue-and-i-didnt-know-what-to-do-with-it-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/tom-baker-i-got-doctor-who-right-out-of-the-blue-and-i-didnt-know-what-to-do-with-it.jpg",620,413,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/tom-baker-i-got-doctor-who-right-out-of-the-blue-and-i-didnt-know-what-to-do-with-it.jpg",620,413,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/tom-baker-i-got-doctor-who-right-out-of-the-blue-and-i-didnt-know-what-to-do-with-it.jpg",620,413,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/tom-baker-i-got-doctor-who-right-out-of-the-blue-and-i-didnt-know-what-to-do-with-it.jpg",620,413,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The 87-year-old acting legend reveals why he never felt anxious about returning to the \"crackpot\" world of Doctor Who.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/3349"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\""Doctor\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2021\/08\/DW4DPHP04_thegodofphantoms_1417SQ-631e4e5.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C620"\" "\\"\"DW4DPHP04_thegodofphantoms_1417SQ\"\\"")
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