Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

And so it went on.

At some point they even went away for a week abroad where Maloney had a place. I wasn’t there but I did hear that things didn’t go quite to plan. For a start, Tom nearly drowned in the pool. Ian and Maloney saw him splashing around and just laughed. ‘There’s Tom clowning around as usual.’

Eventually Maloney’s small daughter dragged him out!

‘Without her, Lis, I’d be a goner,’ Tom confessed.

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David Maloney may not have been hired for Scratchman in the end – sadly the whole project never got off the ground – but he was the director of our next serial. Genesis of the Daleks was again written by Terry Nation and this time dealt with the origins of the Doctor’s deadliest foes. It was actually drawn out into a six-parter, which could be a little wearing on momentum. How many cliffhangers can you squeeze out of one story? But I think this one was a classic – some really great writing expertly dealt with.

Maloney has to take a large slice of the credit. I would have been happy to work with him every time because he made it such fun. It wasn’t just another commission for him: he had such a handle on how things should be, on the camaraderie at the heart of a programme like this. I just remember him and Tom, Ian and me having a laugh and really going for it.

The talent on Genesis was extraordinary. David Spode’s sets were incredible, Sylvia and Barbara achieved wonders with makeup and costume – and then there were the actors. We had Peter Miles as Nyder, Richard Reeves and Dennis Chinnery – all excellent. But the star of the show, I have to say, was Michael Wisher. It was the third time I’d worked with him – and the third time he’d performed in almost total disguise. On Death to the Daleks he’d just supplied the voices. As a Vogan in Revenge of the Cybermen he’d been covered in prosthetics. Now, as Davros, the creator of the Daleks, he was stuck under a mask made by John Friedlander, who had also worked on Death to the Daleks.

But what a performance …

Oh, it’s just someone in a horror mask sitting down pressing buttons, you think. Then you watch the hand, study the finger. Michael’s timing is impeccable: with the slightest of gestures, he managed to be threatening. It could have been grotesque,over-the-top, cartoon-like. On the contrary, this was a masterclass in restrained, less-is-more, physical acting.

Michael deserved to be a success – he really put the hours in. He used to wear a kilt and kneepads because the Dalek shell was threading his trousers bare. To achieve the feel of Davros being a loner, excluded from his own society, he got a paper bag and pulled it over his head. It wasn’t quite the BBC’s finest makeup but it did the trick. When you’re rehearsing with someone who looks so different, you act differently – we fed off each other.

I didn’t see his actual mask until we were about to shoot (I think, as usual, they’d been adding bits and bobs over the day). I suppose, too, I was wrapped up in my own thoughts – going over line changes, rehearsing my own performance, cocooned in my private little world. Either way, it completely passed me by in run-throughs. Then it came to the actual take and I can still feel the shiver up my back. I looked through this wall, in full character now, and there was Davros in all his deformed glory. That’s genuine shock you see onscreen. Such a powerful, hideous image!

Those moments are exquisite for an actor, and quite rare, especially when you’re on a show as complicated as Who. There’s smoke all around, I’m concentrating on putting the props in the right place, a hundred things to remember. It’s all very mechanical, extremely calculated. And then you get a thunderbolt like that where your whole body just responds to what’s in front of you. Seeing Davros that first time genuinely terrified me as much as if I were an eight-year-old watching at home. All my senses responded. The smell of the smoke and the machines was so evocative. He sounded horrible, too. And that mask!

*   *   *

When I read in the script for Genesis that Sarah was to be chased up a large wall as she tries to escape from a missile silo I didn’t bat an eyelid. The ceilings at BBC Television Centre are so low that you can’t go too high without lights or microphones or even the director’s gallery creeping into shot. To get any real height at all, the climb would have to be faked – I wouldn’t be called upon to risk life or limb in any death-defying stunt.

There was just one problem with that logic: the scene wasn’t going to be filmed at Television Centre at all.

So, on 13–14 January, while everyone else enjoyed a few days’ rehearsal at Acton, I found myself at Ealing Studios. Any love I had for the place and its history was temporarily suspended as I looked up at this seemingly never-ending scaffolded wall. I wasn’t mad on heights, but back then I had the arrogance of youth – you think you’re untouchable at that age. And maybe there was a hint of being a woman and trying just that bit harder not to let the side down. You don’t want to give anyone any excuses to have a go.

There’s something in an actor’s psyche that says, ‘If they want you to do this, it must be safe.’ That’s a hell of an assumption, especially after Wookey Hole, but you plod through life trusting you won’t be asked to do things that aren’t safe. Oh God, when I look back at some of the places I ended up! My friend in California, Amy Krell, has a photograph of me where I’m leaning over the edge of a skyscraper with Ian hanging onto me. No hidden ropes, no safety net, just us two clowning a mile above the traffic. Afterwards Ian confessed, ‘Lis, I could never have done that.’

Oh, it never occurred to me to say no. I assumed the photographer knew what he was doing, I thought.

I’ve noticed, though, I’m much more careful about these things since I became a mother – I’m far more suspicious.

At Ealing, it transpired, I wasn’t the one with the biggest problem. We had a hilarious actor on Genesis, Stephen Yardley, who was playing a deformed mutant called Sevrin. His character had this funny arm and he used to come to lunch, dragging his limp limbs around in full costume, and howl, ‘I’m not very well!’

An incredibly funny man – and also, it turned out, quite a timid one when it came to heights.

We were saddled with guns and of course he had his dodgy arm, and somehow we’d scrambled halfway up the wall. Then Stephen looked down.