Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

choice. No one was dismissive; you can’t be an actor if you’re going to be condescending about your material. Once you stop believing, you’re lost. I don’t care if I’m doing Play for Today or Jackanory, acting against an imaginary dinosaur or Banquo’s ghost – it makes no odds.

Beginning on 15–16 October, we concentrated on the first two episodes as usual, plus some of the underground stuff from Episode 4. As usual it was all against the clock. Ten p.m. was the cut-off point. A second after that and the plug would be pulled. As I said, the unions were so strong in the Seventies, there was nothing we could do, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary to butcher the odd scene just to get something in the can. You’d get to half past nine, see how much was still left to do and know you were going to have to fly through it. Anything, just to get it done – all that hard work, all that rehearsal, being pushed and pushed by Paddy Russell, just to see a terrible last-minute hatchet job of a rewrite rushed through.

Worshipping Harry bloody Roy before the cameras rolled was still de rigueur but something even more disruptive was around the corner. With everyone ready to go at 7.30, a flurry of activity at the back of the studio announced the arrival of the BBC’s press team chasing promotional shots for the serial. Jon and the others were happy to oblige but I found it really disruptive. We’d just spent two days in the studio trying to hone the most realistic performance among occasionally wobbly sets and now here were people with no understanding of the script telling me to act in a completely different way. ‘Lis, can you come out from behind that desk and look surprised?’, ‘Stare at Jon and look afraid?’ The very antithesis of everything we’d been slaving over and over with Paddy to perfect. I really struggled to shake all that artificiality off. When it came to filming my real scenes in the same space I still had the photographer’s barked requests ringing in my ears when it should have been the script.

At the first opportunity I grabbed Barry – ‘I can’t do all this fake posing – it’s ruining my performance. Is there anything you can do?’

And being Barry, of course, there was something.

‘Leave it to me.’

For the next photocall Barry made sure he was there. He let me do a couple of poses cowering at Jon’s side then said, ‘Sorry chaps, I need Lis elsewhere.’ And that was it, I was excused. He did that every single time. Jon didn’t mind going solo, of course – he’d pose all night if he thought it would help the show. But that’s why, if you look, there aren’t many publicity stills of me from the serials.

As each day ended and I trudged home at eight, nine, ten o’clock – or later on filming days – it was only the thought of weekends that kept me going. They were the first chance I got to spend with Brian, if he wasn’t working.

Prior to our first shoot in Studio 6 there were two model-capture days. Bearing in mind the feats Jim and co. had pulled off with the Sontaran costume, I was expecting great things from the dinosaurs. I think everyone was. Unfortunately, the work had been farmed out to an external company. Whispers around Acton were that Barry et al. weren’t happy with the results. By the time Paddy actually had to film the things everyone knew they weren’t good enough. You can imagine how much this improved our director’s mood!

When I saw one of the models I could have cried. We all could. Awful, just so amateur looking! But what can you do? The serial was called Invasion of the Dinosaurs so they had to be included, terrible as they were. I think the scene where I have to photograph a sleeping T-Rex looked OK, but as soon as the creatures needed to move a bit, then any magic was lost. Jurassic Park it wasn’t.

Most embarrassingly, the monsters weren’t even accurate. Shortly after airing I received a letter from a six- year-old boy saying, ‘Your Tyrannosaurus has the wrong number of fingers. Five instead of four.’ The shame.

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Although each serial was one continuous story, working on Dinosaurs was as close to being in theatre rep as I could imagine. Each fortnight of rehearsal and recording was just as punishing as my time in Scarborough. No sooner have you cracked one script than you’re on to the next. Rehearse, perform, rehearse, perform, rehearse, perform … Boy it was tiring. It was like a conveyor belt, really – we were all just hamsters on a wheel.

At least with summer season you could always see the end in sight. No such luck in Doctor Who, though. Drawing towards the finale of Dinosaurs merely meant it was time to begin shooting the next story. Suddenly I was receiving scripts for the following serial, as well as the final Dinosaur updates. In theatrical terms, that eleventh season of Doctor Who was like five or six Scarboroughs bundled together.

After The Time Warrior I’d had a three-month break to get my breath back. Not this time. In fact, I didn’t even get a weekend to recover. Our last studio day on Dinosaurs wrapped on 13 November – the very day location shooting started on the next serial. So after a couple of hours in my own bed I found myself hurtling down to Dorset on an early train, desperately trying to shake Dinosaurs out of my head and get to grips with the new scripts.

And what scripts they were! Some characters take on a life outside of their programmes, don’t they? From the moment the Daleks had first appeared in the 1960s they’d leapt into the wider public’s consciousness. Comedians made jokes about them, kids ran around pretending to be them, non-fans would exclaim ‘Exterminate!’ in imitation. So even as a non Doctor Who fan I was aware of the Daleks.

I was even looking forward to working with them. Quite a few of the darker moments on the Dinosaurs set had been lifted by Jon saying, ‘Don’t worry, Lissie, the Daleks are in the next one. You’ll enjoy them.’ He wasn’t the only one excited by them. There was a palpable buzz about North Acton among the regulars once news of the next serial came in. Partly I suppose because it’s always nice to work with something so iconic but also you just knew, as Barry said, that thousands more people would tune in to see the Doctor come up against his most famous enemies.

Death to the Daleks, I think, is one of the great underrated serials. It tends to get overlooked when people talk about the classic episodes. To be honest, it’s even disregarded when people talk about Dalek episodes. Unfairly, I think.

It was written by Terry Nation, the monsters’ creator, although as usual there was a lot of input from Terry Dicks and Barry, as well as Robert Holmes, who was being groomed as Dicks’ successor.

As well as the Daleks, it was on this shoot that I was introduced to another mainstay of Who folklore – the quarry. If you see another planet being represented on television, especially one with a rocky surface, chances are it’s been filmed in a quarry – and I’ve probably been there. I don’t think Doctor Who would have lasted so long without them.