Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

Fear.

Or so we thought.

It was pretty late in the day when Philip and Robert decided the scripts were not in the right state for filming and an emergency replacement called The Seeds of Doom was hurriedly commissioned instead. It was a big gamble. In fact we were halfway through Morbius before the scripts began to trickle in. At least they were by Robert Banks Stewart – you knew it would be a good show with his name at the top of the page. Not only had his Terror of the Zygons been one of the better stories but he also had a pedigree, having worked on The Sweeney, Callan and various other successful series. He would later create Shoestring and Bergerac. Even more importantly, picking up the directorial gauntlet was one of my favourites, dear old Dougie Camfield. If anyone could make this rush job work, it was him.

Plotwise, an expedition in Antarctica discovers two alien pods. One takes over the base before it’s destroyed. The other is taken back to England by a Bond-style villain, Harrison Chase, to add to his ‘green cathedral’ – a private collection of flora. There it converts a character called Keeler into a Krynoid (an alien plant creature), which grows to twice the size of a stately home.

This was a great one to film although very exhausting. There was lots of running, an unprecedented amount of shoots spilling over time and more location work than ever, even for a six-parter. In a first, as far as I know, we were allowed to have a few rehearsal days at the Acton Hilton before our initial outdoor shoot. With the later scripts arriving barely half a week before we started, it seemed the only way Dougie was going to make sense of anything.

On the plus side, at least we for once filmed in some picturesque settings. It wasn’t exactly the South Pole, but luxurious private gardens in Dorset in November have their charm. Athelhampton House was owned by a Tory MP, Robert Cooke: apparently when the house is destroyed at the end of the programme he received letters of consolation from friends. He must have been used to it by then. The same house was demolished by a giant Dougal in The Goodies’ 1975 Christmas Special.

We headed down to Athelhampton for filming in late October. I really think that early run-through paid dividends. The cast had only been in place a week or so and bearing in mind the Dorset shots don’t really come into play until Episode 3, we all needed to get to grips with our characters. The results speak for themselves. We certainly managed to bring areas of the script to life. For example, there’s a tense scene where Tom and I are captured and Tom flipped the usual villain-speak on its head: ‘Get our hands up!’ he yelled. ‘That’s right, grab us – we’re very dangerous!’

After the response we got in Blackpool, I think Tom had a clearer sense of his audience and what they expected of him. I remember going through the same thing. You just have that moment of clarity where you realise, I know this character better than this week’s rent-a-writer or director-for-hire. I’m the one who plays him or her all the time. There’s a little nod to Tom’s character in Episode 1 when the Doctor says he can leave immediately for the South Pole because he has his toothbrush – Tom was quite famous on set for carrying his toothbrush around with him. As an actor, you never know where you’re going to end up sleeping at night!

We had some memorable scenes together. Being lowered down a wall was fun. Darting around the undergrowth is always exciting, and, of course, being confronted by the Krynoid in darkness was breathtaking. Recording so late in the year, darkness fell by 4.30 p.m. so we managed to film all the night scenes during ‘day shoots’. Still, dark is dark – it doesn’t matter what time it is!

Seeds of Doom was such a great story and I think it got the quality of actors it merited. Tony Beckley, who played the villain Harrison Chase, was so prim and perfect, not to mention sinister with his black gloves and smart suits. You could tell Robert Banks Stewart had written for The Avengers – Chase was just the sort of megalo-maniacal millionaire that Steed used to come up against all the time. (Tony has been in so many things but I think most people will remember him as Camp Freddie in The Italian Job.)

John Challis is another household face, if not name. There’ll be barely a person in England who doesn’t know him as Boycie from Only Fools and Horses. To this day, if Tom Baker and I see him around town or at the BBC, we still say, ‘Hello, Scorbes!’ after his character, Scorby. John was really good in it, and so convincing as a hitman. There was a great scene in the laboratory where everything gets blown up and glass shatters everywhere. Scorbes and I are on the floor for most of it and we had a whale of a time. There’s not much you can do when you’ve got things exploding all around you, so we simply had to cower and react a bit. That was a fun scene to do, though, especially because John is such a giggler. Nothing like his Fools and Horses character, you’ll be pleased to hear!

You tend to flag by the end of a week away from home. Not this time. When we piled back to London for studio rehearsals there was such a bubbly atmosphere on the coach you’d have thought we were just setting off. Acton rehearsals seemed particularly inspiring as well, and Tom and I came up with a few nice line adds that pepped things up a bit. When Tom is told, at gunpoint, to turn around, I don’t think anyone expected him to do a full 360- degree pirouette. How John kept a straight face in recording, I don’t know. Sometimes just knowing when to leave lines out keeps a scene on the rails. There are quite a few lines that you can convey in a gesture or a look. When you live and breathe the character, you don’t always need words.

Introducing us all to Chase, Tom decided unilaterally that Sarah was ‘my best friend’ – completely unexpected, but it gave the scene a jab of emotion. During our escape from the killer chauffeur I adlibbed, ‘Over here, cloth- eyes!’ It seemed a very ‘Sarah’ thing to say. Another example is a scene at the Antarctic base, where the script said I had to walk along the corridor and close the external door (after the Krynoid’s escape, although we didn’t know that yet). Well, that’s going to be the most boring scene ever, isn’t it? I thought.

So I said, ‘Dougie, what if Sarah’s carrying something? Then at least I can shove it shut with my bum?’

‘That’s my girl!’ he laughed.

So that’s what we did. It’s not brilliant, nobody really notices, but it adds a splash of colour to the script.

As it was a six-parter, there were three studio blocks and three pairs of filming days. Pretty standard stuff, although this was squeezed a bit because we had to pay back the rehearsal time from the start of production. You’d be amazed at how much these programmes are decided by balance sheet rather than plot.

It was budget, of course, that kept a limit on the number of retakes, although when you’re working with snow machines, you have to expect the odd hitch. One scene had to be redone when there wasn’t enough snow for the so-called ‘blizzard’. Another was stopped when we were literally deluged in the stuff. These things happen. I remember opening a door at Chase’s house when we were being attacked by the Krynoid – a giant plant monster that won’t stop growing – and the trees that were meant to be blocking my exit were nowhere to be seen. ‘OK, let’s try that again …’

As I said, these things happen, but I was really proud when someone told me that I’d made the fewest