Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

The Sontaran Experiment still lingered. I was in no doubt – I didn’t need this work, it was just another job. The world wouldn’t end if I walked away. I stared at myself in the mirror.

Come on now, honestly, Sladen, what’s your instinct? What do you want to do?

I considered it for ages. On the one hand this was my livelihood and I owed it to my husband not to throw away good money because as actors it’s rare that you’re both working at the same time. On the other, it was the perfect springboard to other work. It was make your mind up time. And then the answer came to me.

I want to carry on.

*   *   *

I signed on 25 March. Tom had added his signature to a contract a few days earlier. That was it; we both were tied in. But what a slog it promised to be. Philip was serious about us working straight through, from Twelve to Thirteen. There would be no break: no summer, no Tangiers.

So why carry on?

The feeling I had with Jon when we were doing Peladon – that the stars were suddenly in alignment – was there again. It was a joy to go in to work every day. We didn’t have to work at it any more; any teething troubles in the relationship had vanished. My Sarah and Tom’s Doctor fitted together so naturally, hand in glove. I hope this came across onscreen, although sometimes I wonder if we went too far. When, decades later, I joined Tom to record the DVD commentary for our next serial, Pyramids of Mars, I wondered if we might have been a bit too relaxed! There’s something so comfortable about us together. That story’s definitely one of our better ones and, you know what, when we started filming I was so glad I’d decided to stay.

Here’s a typical example of our partnership. Tom knows I love films. He was always throwing little lines at me and we’d discuss the old black-and-whites. Scenes from the classics became a kind of shorthand between us. ‘You remember such and such …’, ‘Let’s play it like …’ Once we were waiting to shoot a scene on Pyramids where we had to walk up to a door and enter. Nothing terribly exciting, just one of those bread-and-butter scenes that are so easy to ignore. In the end, I think being in a long-running television show is less about how good you are in the big, confrontational scenes and more about how many different ways you can find to hide behind a rock or fall down a quarry; you have to keep experimenting. That’s where we earn our money, I think. And that was what Tom and I were so good at.

I saw the twinkle in his eye. Tom’s up to mischief …

‘Lissie, you remember the Marx Brothers in Monkey Business?’

‘Of course!’ I said.

‘Remember the three of them walk silently up to a door, change their minds, and turn in unison and walk away?’

‘Yes – they see someone they don’t want to bump into.’

‘Why don’t we do that?’

‘We’ll never get away with it!’

‘Let’s try.’

He called up to Paddy Russell, back as director, in the gantry. ‘Ma’am …’ – he always called directors ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ – they seemed to like that – ‘Lis and I have had an idea.’

They listened, as they always did.

‘It’s a great idea,’ Paddy said. ‘But we only have time for one take. That would be too risky.’

‘Right you are,’ said Tom.

But to me he whispered, ‘Shall we do it anyway?’

‘Yes!’

So we did. We had one shot at it, and woe betide us if we messed it up! But it worked perfectly. Nobody said anything afterwards, but they must have been pleased because we didn’t have to reshoot and that’s the version you see on the screen.

Pulling one over on Paddy was quite rare.

As much as I loved Jon Pertwee, I think it’s pretty clear his working methods didn’t always suit me – that need of his for control could get a bit out of hand. So when he locked horns with Paddy during Dinosaurs, you felt the blame was probably 50:50 on each side. But then I saw how she got on with Tom.

As far as I’m concerned, if you’re a director on Doctor Who and you can’t get along with Tom Baker – you can’t get along with anyone.

Paddy had apparently learned nothing about people skills in the two years since we’d last met. Christ, she could wear you down! You can only go over a scene so many times before you start thinking, I hate this scene, it’s like a piece of meat – if you hit it too much it becomes tasteless. Tom hated that attitude. If you crack something first time, why go on? Paddy seemed to think she wasn’t being thorough enough unless we’d explored every potential direction, every blind alley.

‘We’ll just try it one more time …’

Paddy never admitted defeat, never brooked insubordination. Bernard Archard, who I knew from my old Granada days, was playing Marcus Scarman. I remember bumping into him at lunch one day. He was very dry, very measured.

‘I’m being kept in after school today. Are you?’ he asked me.

I never really got a handle on whether Paddy was like she was because she was aware of being a woman in a man’s world or if she happened to be just like that. One episode during Pyramids made me think there was a bit of a chip at work, though. The script said Sarah fires a rifle and I thought, Fine. When the day came Terry said he’d do it, or a stand-in could. But the director was