Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

Fortunately for me, so was everyone else. Even though Barry was handing over the reins, I think he had a lot of influence with the new production team. His opinion – very sensibly, I think – was that audiences are comfortable with continuity. It was one thing giving them a new Doctor; replacing his companion as well might be a step too far.

Actually I think audiences are far more forgiving than that (look at Matt Smith and Karen Gillan as the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond). The truth was Barry was as proud as I was of Sarah Jane. Most importantly, from the compliments and comments I’d been fed throughout the year, I know he was very content with the direction I’d been taking her. So, when a new contract for another twenty-six shows was presented on 16 April 1974, I duly signed.

Bearing in mind my value to the show as the cement binding the Third and Fourth Doctors – on more than one occasion I heard Barry say, not for my benefit at all, ‘We can’t do without Lis’ – Todd Joseph went into negotiations on my behalf in bullish mood. ‘Without my client your show will struggle this season’, ‘Lis is already such a popular character – did you see the turnout at Blackpool?’ – he said all the right things, I’m sure. But he was up against the people who had let their star leave rather than even consider a nominal raise. In the end, I think Todd did well to scrape a ?5 a week increase, but it scarred him.

‘Seriously, Lis, it’s like getting blood out of a stone.’

Yet when I saw Barry later that day he looked as if he was still in shock.

‘Your agent drives a hard bargain, Lis.’ He was being deadly serious!

While I hadn’t been replaced, I had been added to. In Barry’s initial casting meetings with Robert Holmes and Terry, they had pretty much settled on going for another older actor as the Doctor – no names at that stage, but that was the feeling. The dilemma facing them, however, was that Jon’s gung-ho energy and hands-on style was very popular with viewers. An older actor might not necessarily want to – or indeed be able to – pull that off. The solution was to introduce a younger male sidekick who could take care of the fisticuffs. In the end, of course, they went with Tom who was more than capable of handling himself. By then, though, they’d already met and liked Ian Marter. So, for the forthcoming series, the TARDIS would have one extra passenger.

I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but this was actually a throwback to the Sixties. William Hartnell’s Doctor had surrounded himself with friends and family in Susan, Barbara and Ian (Carole Ann Ford, Jacqueline Hill and William Russell), and so it continued throughout the decade. As far as long-standing Who fans were concerned, Ian and I were merely our (re)generation’s Maureen O’Brien and Peter Purves.

I suppose I should have worried my screen time might be cut with someone else there to ask questions for the audience, but it didn’t actually occur to me. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be asking Ian to scream ‘Doctor!’ every five minutes.

It was such a rush down to Worcester that I was still in my costume when I was bundled into the car. We arrived at 2 a.m. Call time was four hours later and I didn’t have time to worry about my co-stars.

The new serial, Robot, was written by Terry Dicks as his parting gift to the show – or vice versa. It took the serial number 4A, which I assumed denoted the Fourth Doctor. Rather fittingly, I felt, Planet of the Spiders’ production code had been ‘ZZZ’ – the end of the alphabet and the end of the line for Jon and so many others. The director this time was Chris Barry, who had worked with Jon on The Mutants. They used to call Chris the ‘Mad Monk’ – I’ve no idea why. But later he was so kind to Sadie when we were all in Chicago in 1993, and I still get Christmas cards from him and his wife Venice.

That friendship had yet to bloom, however, when I strolled on to set on 2 May. In my first scene Sarah Jane had to climb over a wall. I was so tired after the big finish on Spiders and then the journey. We did the scene and I was running, not looking, and somehow found the energy to scramble over the wall. Panting on the other side, I was actually pretty pleased with it. So was Chris – at first.

‘That’s awfully good, Lis,’ he called over. ‘But next time could I have your face in camera and not your bum!’

By the time I’d finished I noticed my co-stars had arrived on set. I had no expectations really – to be honest, I was too shattered to think much at all. When I caught a glimpse of Ian and Tom, leaning against a building and just chatting, my mood lifted. They barely knew each other and yet there they were just getting on. No airs, no graces, no coterie milling around them – just two actors, two men, chewing the fat. In that one snapshot I knew I was going to enjoy working with them.

Whereas Jon had always craved company, Tom was content to do his own thing. His Doctor didn’t require a companion to fawn on his every utterance and Tom didn’t expect that from me either, and even though he was the star, it was his name in the opening credits. Watching him so at ease with Ian I realised, I don’t have to walk over and doff my cap with this one. I don’t have to pay my respects. Don’t get me wrong, all actors are vain in a way – Tom’s vanity was just different to Jon’s. Tom loves taking the floor, holding court on his own: the more people watching, the better. Jon preferred his audiences closer to him, that was all – just as I’d known from his first spectacular entrance at North Acton during my audition. It made you feel like you were at his beck and call, whereas Tom gave everyone that little bit of space.

Another positive was that the problem I’d faced joining The Time Warrior, of being an ingenue in an established set-up, had disappeared. Now I was the old hand while Tom and Ian were the new boys feeling their way around. You’d never guess to look at him but Tom suffered terribly from nerves – he got these really gripey stomach aches, coincidentally just before filming each scene. So he had that to contend with every day, and no time left to be concerned with what I was doing. I responded to that. It was like turning up for the first day at a new school – you can reinvent yourself; be whoever you like.

In a way, of course, that’s exactly what each new actor gets to do with the Doctor. I know Tom had worked very closely with Jim Acheson on getting the right look. They were going for something a bit more eccentric, closer to Pat Troughton than Jon’s interpretation. More alien, if you like. (This was going on while we were working on Spiders, so of course Jim passed down all these nuggets of gossip as they went along!) Eventually they settled on the coat, the hat and, of course, the oversized scarf. That came about when Jim sent a bag of wool to a knitter called Begonia Pope – and she used the entire amount! It was Tom who said, ‘No, let’s keep it. I can have fun with that.’ Typical Tom. And the rest is history.

I remember shooting that scene in TV Centre when Tom nips into the TARDIS a few times to trial various looks. He had everyone in hysterics, especially with the Viking outfit. You knew what he was wearing before the cameras started rolling, yet the second he stepped out of those blue doors, sparks flew. It was so damn good I thought, Bloody hell, we’ve got a hell of an actor on our hands here! I was going to have to seriously up my game or get left behind.

So, in a way, 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