Well, I think the character of Jenny was tough on the surface.
She had made herself be tough because of what had happened to her and to her family, but
that really underneath she was still very hurt and she was vulnerable and upset, but
she felt she had to be tough in order to get something done and fight the Daleks and get
her own back for what they'd done to her.
Well, Tyler, it's been suggested to me that he was an action hero, but I don't, no, I
don't think that's true.
I think he was a very ordinary man who was caught up in some quite extraordinary situations
and did what he had to do.
He was a pragmatist.
It's very difficult from thinking about it, no, good and bad don't come into it.
He was an everyman in a way, caught up in these terrifying situations and, I mean, for
instance, he knifed to death one of the robot humans, human robots, and shot another one
at quite close range, but he looked after people, but he looked after them in a purely
practical way.
It had to be done, so he did it.
He doesn't show affection.
He doesn't show hatred.
I think it's implied that he's lost his family because there's no one around him in the meeting
rooms.
So he's not like Dortmund.
He doesn't want to be a leader, but he wants to survive.
I suppose it is fair to say I was the love interest in the programme, but I think there'd
be an awful lot of young girls would be very unhappy about the fact that I kept the Doctor's
granddaughter on Earth because they would look forward to identifying with her throughout
the rest of the series.
Wells, I think Mr. Wells, he was probably called at the time, I don't really remember
it all that well, was a West Country farmer who'd been captured by the Daleks.
And so as I recall, I played him with a West Country accent like that, and he was a fairly
fly sort of a character.
Because one didn't do a Stanislavski rundown or analysis of a character like that, you
just sort of got on and did it.
I think possibly I got the job because I had a lot of enthusiasm for the idea of playing
a character in that situation, which was, they were, I don't know how you'd put it,
they were under terrific pressure from the Daleks.
I knew the director, Richard Martin.
I was in repertory with him in Cleethorpes, I think it was.
And I got this contract for six weeks.
And I thought, oh, oh, he must have thought I was a really good actor.
So I turn up for filming on the Sunday, for which we got £25 for one day's filming.
And I said, well, Richard, it's very kind of you to give me a contract like this.
I don't know what a Dalek is.
And he said, well, we've chosen you because you're so small, we thought you could get
into one of these, and sort of pointed to a Dalek.
And one was a bit taken aback, really.
I'd done a few walk-ons, not for the BBC, but for other companies.
And then I said, hang on, I'm not doing this anymore.
It's got to be speaking part or nothing.
And so I was offered this Doctor Who one episode.
And during the course of the week, I saw the scripts for the next two episodes.
And my character, of course, was not in it.
So I said to the director, what's happened to Farmer, Mr. Wells?
And he said, oh, well, I do need someone to lead the revolt against the Daleks.
Are you doing anything the next two weeks?
And I said, no, no, no, I'm actually free.
And so I talked myself into doing three episodes.
But as far as what it was like, I mean, this was my first television acting role.
So I just sort of did it as best I could, took the money, and ran.
Richard Martin, or Dickie Martin, we called him, I knew him at the Belgrade Coventry,
the Belgrade Theatre Coventry.
And he had been an actor there, and he gradually moved over to directing during his time there.
And he remembered me and very kindly asked me to be in it.
My own approach to a part is just to read it and read it and read it and read it.
And I'm very fortunate with my memory.
So by the time I've done that for a few days, usually it's all in there.
But, you know, in the bath, on the loo, whatever, you read it, read it, read it, and do it aloud,
and drive your wife crazy and all that.
But it goes in.
And when you do that, to me, something happens in your mind, and ideas come out.
I mean, there's just one shot as Tyler, when there's been some action, and he's in this
underground room with Dortmund and the rest, and they're discussing what to do.
And everyone's being very frantic.
I'm speaking now because it's objective.
You know, I've just seen the tape.
And Tyler's just leaning against a wall, listening, quite transparent listening, but conserving
energy.
And I don't know where that came, it just, you know, because everybody else is rushing
around saying, we must do this, we must do that.
And I'm sure, you know, Richard Martin said, what do you, how do you feel about this?
And I said, I just want to, you know, when in doubt, do nothing.
I found out afterwards that Jenny had been considered as a replacement for Carol Ann
Ford as Susan.
But they took time to decide.
I do remember that when Dickie Martin phoned me about it, he said, I can't actually offer
it to you yet.
He was kind of checking whether I'd be interested and whether I'd be able to do it, because
they haven't quite decided how they want it done.
Do they want, well, he said a child, but I think he meant kind of like an early teenager,
or do they want somebody grown up?
So I had to wait.
So I suppose that's what they were deciding then.
Richard as a director, he was lovely, because when you get directors who've been actors,
they go one of two ways.
They either resent the fact they've not made it as an actor, and they become very hard
on actors, or they do what Richard did, which was remember what it was like to be an actor
and treat actors that way.
And that's what he did.
He was lovely.
He had one fault, which was he was too nice.
I met Jackie, again, I called her Jackie, on that show, and she was terrifically kind
and helpful and friendly.
And I really liked her very much, and we got on very well.
And I found her very helpful, because she had been in the series from the beginning.
She knew how it all ran and what the things were that you looked out for and everything.
And she was very generous in helping me and sort of being friendly and saying, well, if
I was you, such and such kind of thing.
But it wasn't until a few years later that she and her husband moved into a house opposite
to us.
And from then on, we became very great friends, right up until the time of her death.
And she died 10 years ago next month, which is unbelievable to me.
We had daughters who were literally a few days apart from each other in age.
They went to the same schools.
We shared the car run.
We used to go to suppers with each other.
We did the OU together, the Open University.
We started that.
When our children grew up, she said, oh, God, what am I going to do?
Now John's going away as well.
That was her son.
And I said, well, I've been thinking of doing the Open University.
And she said, right.
And being Jackie, I mean, we were signed up within about three days, because she had this
wonderful sort of bossy quality.
She was really great.
I remember her once saying to me, well, when you've found out the best way to do things,
it does seem a shame not to tell everybody else.
And I really loved her.
And I still miss her.
I still miss her very much.
She was a great girl.
Well, Jacqueline Hill was just so beautiful and so charming, always in good humor.
My daughter and her partner, who were watching an episode, an old episode, said, God, she
is so beautiful.
And she was.
She was.
She was just lovely.
And Carol Ann Fobb was delightful.
I'd worked with Carol Ann before in Expressive Bongo.
She'd been my partner in that.
So I knew her very well.
And she was a very good actress.
And of course, William Hartnell.
Lots of good actors there.
Oh, and William Russell, of course.
Lovely actor.
So, yeah, we had a happy time, really.
Bill Hartnell was, he was, I think he was a very fine actor.
And he'd done some wonderful work in things like The Warehead and in Carry On Sergeant.
But he was quite quirky about his rights.
And we rehearsed in a room, which was London Transport Training.
And it was the London Transport Training Centre.
And this room, I think you could have got a thousand people in there.
And there were hundreds of identical chairs.
And he had his name on the back of one of these chairs.
Jackie warned me very early on, don't go and sit in his chair, because he will not like
it.
And I did notice that even when he wasn't there, you know, if he hadn't been called
into rehearsal or something, that nobody sat in that chair.
I went to the props department.
I was feeling very wicked.
I went to the props department and got them to make one for each of the cast.
And he was furious.
I mean, he really was furious.
He somehow felt his position was being undermined.
Of course, we all had our names on our chairs.
For me, the good thing about working with William Hartnell was he was always the character
of the doctor.
And off screen, he was the character of the doctor.
So it was good.
It helps the actor to, the actor, me, but it does, it helps you to react and relate
to him in the correct manner for the program.
And that's very important.
I was commuting between London and Madrid.
I was doing Doctor Who and Doctor Zhivago, which was my first proper film.
And he said, what's all this?
Coming in from Heathrow with all your luggage?
What are you doing?
What have you been doing?
And I said, well, I've got a nice little part on Doctor Zhivago.
And he said, oh, oh, they offered me a wonderful part in Zhivago, and I couldn't do it because
of this.
Which I thought was, it was sweet, but there was also something a little bit bitter there.
I quite frankly found him a bit frightening and a bit grumpy, and I just kept clear of
him, to be honest with you.
I liked Bill Hartnell's portrayal of the character.
He was wonderfully detailed and eccentric and true, and very true.
And I got on well with him.
And we were, I think we were driving after rehearsal, I think we were going to a costumer's
or whatever.
We were in a car, and we went on Berkeley Square.
We must have been going to Morris Angel, one of those places, costumers.
And we were driving through the road between Berkeley Square and Bond Street, and it happened
to be where Hartnell, who was the royal family tailor, or was the wrong word, costumer, or
designer.
And as we passed, Bill said, you see that?
That's my cousin up there.
That's my cousin, you know, tailor, yes.
William Hartnell was a perfectionist.
So if at some time he didn't seem in the best of humours, it was because he was worrying
about a problem.
And two, he was much older than the rest of us, and he had those lines to get under his
belt.
So he was a very busy man.
I always found him most charming.
Oh, we used to get betting tips from the crew, and they always said, no, Bill, no, I don't
want to give you a tip, Bill, because, oh, come on, come on, come on, you must know people,
you must know people.
And they'd give him tips.
And if the horse didn't win, he went for them.
He really went to blinder for them.
Well, I always got on very well with Bill.
Not everybody did.
He could be a bristly old character, you know.
I got on very well with him, yeah.
And I managed to handle him all right, apart from one occasion when he came to dinner one
evening.
And my wife had gone to a lot of trouble to lay on a very good dinner.
And he arrived something like two hours late.
We'd given up all hope.
I mean, the dinner was pretty well burned to a cinder and everything, you see.
And eventually there was a knock, knock, knock, knock, knock at the door, you see.
And we went to the door, and there was Bill.
And he greeted us by saying, why can't you put a proper bloody number on your door?
He'd been driving around for two hours, apparently.
So we sat down at this mess of food that was left.
And then he went on till 4 o'clock in the morning.
We couldn't get rid of him then.
But you see, the funny part, he got me drinking scotch.
That's one of the happiest memories I have of him.
I used to drink gin until I met Bill.
He told me scotch was better for me, so I started drinking scotch.
I can't remember which way round it was, but we went to Trafalgar Square.
And I think that was first.
And I was amazed that there were so many people knocking about kind of thing.
But I think they were young people who had kind of stayed up in town overnight and were
sort of wandering about Trafalgar Square.
And they were a bit bemused about us.
I don't think they were especially waiting for us to arrive or anything.
And then we went down to Westminster Bridge.
And that's where we had to push Alan Judd across the bridge in the wheelchair.
And we had to run as though the Daleks were pursuing us.
And that wheelchair was quite heavy, and with Alan Judd in it as well.
You know, we really had to push it and push hard.
It was freezing.
It was coming up to Christmas.
We'd been hanging around for a long, long time.
I think we all felt in need of relieving ourselves.
And there was nobody round about.
Certainly there weren't any loos in Trafalgar Square.
And I hit on the idea of using a grating.
And it was just such a lovely picture, seeing a little queue of Daleks waiting to use a
grating in Trafalgar Square.
But nobody said anything.
And it worked.
Yes, that's the main thing, it worked.
The other thing I remember, which was a location shot, was, I can't remember exactly where
it was, but it was when I had to jump on the dust cart, which was moving and being driven
by Jackie.
And it was a very old, I mean, it was old then.
I think it must have been kind of from the 30s, quite frankly, because, yes, because
it was in the 60s that we did these episodes.
And it was very heavy for her to drive.
And she said, you do realize I can't absolutely slow down.
So you know, do you think you're going to be able to jump on?
And I said, yes, I think I will.
And so I had to sort of leap on.
And she was driving away.
I thought she was splendid the way she drove this heavy old dust cart.
And I leapt on and all went well, thank goodness.
I rather enjoyed it.
It was great fun, that.
On the first day of being a Dalek, it was a bit worrying, because we had the lovely
Jacqueline Hill and Anne Davies driving at us in this lorry, full tilt.
So we, there were all three Daleks, I think, were across the road.
And the lorry was getting nearer and nearer and nearer.
And then just before she hit us, it was stopped.
And I think they put an old Dalek in or something.
And then the lorries went back, came in again, and crashed into the Daleks, standing there.
Ching!
That's quite exciting.
And I'm glad I wasn't in it all the same.
My hair was really dark.
And I had it blonded for the production.
And I think they didn't want to have two dark-haired, youngish women in it.
And Carol Ann Ford's hair was dark.
So when we did the exterior location scenes, I hadn't at that point had my hair altered
in color.
And so that had to be disguised, because we had decided on it.
But I hadn't had it done.
And so I had to wear this terrible balaclava-cum-pixie hat to hide my hair.
And that was the reason I had it on.
Well, I mean, pushing the wheelchair may have been quite tough.
But that was nothing to, for instance, Robert Jewell, who was one of the Daleks.
And I mean, I still don't know whether people know that there were actors inside them and
that they had to push like a bicycle, it really was, inside the Dalek.
And he had to come up out of the Thames.
That must have been really, really tough.
They did it in three shots.
So what they did was to have a full Dalek under the water with a wire attached at the
front.
They pulled it up the ramp until it got to a certain height.
The camera stopped, the machine stopped.
People came down and lifted the top off very carefully so nothing would disturb.
And then they lifted me, locked me inside, being careful not to shift the Dalek.
And then they put the top back on again.
And then they pulled it up with the wire again until it got very low and the Dalek was going
like that with the eyes and things like that.
And then they stopped again because it was getting close to the pulley machine with the
wire on it.
So they had to disconnect that and remove that out of the way so the Dalek could continue
on.
So everything was stopped again perfectly still.
The camera was left there, the machine was left there.
They disconnected everything and then they said, roll, and off we went again.
Originally, the BBC said, well, we're going to have to do a bit of a re-enactment of
the Daleks.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
And they did.
you had to sort of sort out for a start.
You could sit down in the Dalek,
and you moved around with a bicycle chain and pedals.
That's how you moved.
You had a gear stick up here
to sort of guide which way the wheels went.
You had to be put into these things,
they were very heavy, and it was like molded plywood.
It was probably fiberglass or something like that.
So somebody had to put the top on,
then put in your various electrics.
You had the eye up here, which was shifted manually.
You had a gun with sparks on down here.
I think there were a couple of lights on the side.
And that was it.
You could see, it was really quite sort of tunnel vision,
you couldn't see very well,
which meant that you couldn't hear very well
when there were instructions on the floor.
And it wasn't very comfortable.
You really were sort of crunched up inside.
And I'm not very big.
Daleks were extremely heavy to maneuver, as I said.
And there were ramps that we had to go up
from time to time.
And so what they did,
we would sort of try and go up and fail.
And there'll be a small body the other side pushing,
so that, very carefully keeping out of camera, of course,
making sure that we could get up all right.
One of the oddest things about the three episodes
that I was in was a creature called the Slyther,
which was an actor,
not, I remember, a particularly tall actor,
dressed in a rubber suit
with what looked like leaves sticking out all over him.
And he had to sort of walk around slowly, growling.
And he was lovely and rubbery
and lots of tentacles
and really quite scary for children.
And he was sort of like something out of the sea.
But the best part about him was that he throbbed.
So you would see him round corners,
just sort of about to pounce on someone,
generally upsetting people.
And I think the children went for it
because I got lots of Christmas cards sat here saying,
dear Mr. Slyther, do have a nice Christmas.
Love from Rose, Fred and all the kids.
Most extraordinary, but they loved all that nastiness.
And it had absolutely no connection whatever with the plot.
Whether it was a pet of the Daleks
or whether it had dropped in from another planet,
we never discovered that.
And the reason was never about to say.
So this thing sort of walked around growling the whole time.
As far as I know, it didn't do any harm,
but I have a vague feeling it may have killed
a Paddy O'Connell's character in the end.
But whether it ate him or not, I'm not sure.
The first time the Slyther went out on screen,
it was a Saturday night.
And I had the Daily Mail on the phone to me straight away.
Presumably it was a slow news week,
but they wanted to know all about the Slyther.
Well, I didn't know what to tell them really.
I didn't have any photographs of the Slyther.
And he didn't have any lines.
And it wasn't a very big part.
So they came round to the house
and they tried to sort of get a story.
They said, Australian of course.
He said, so Nicholas, you play the Slyther.
I said, that's right.
He said, what does it look like exactly?
And I said, well, not absolutely.
I'll draw it for you.
So I drew this terrible picture of this sort of sack
with tentacles and trying to make it look
as scary as possible.
He said, oh right, yes, I'll buy that.
Now, how can we sort of make this a story
connected to you, Nicholas?
So I said, well, I don't know.
He said, got any children?
I said, no, not so far.
Got any animals?
I said, no, no.
Looking round the wharves and saw various pictures.
He said, I'll see you're into art.
I said, well, not really.
But we went out into the garden
and we took pictures of me being jolly and young
and then pictures of me with a cigarette
with smoke going up, looking all sinister.
Nick Evans, who plays the Slyther.
I must say, I was very pleased to get all the attention,
but very surprised.
And Slyther sort of didn't appear again after that
because that nasty William Russell killed it,
if you remember, with a rock.
Shame, shame.
When you rehearse, you have no problems
from the point of view of the action.
And you rehearse for four days,
but when you go into the studio and the set's built,
then there are complications
because where you thought the camera could move,
it can't move, it's too big.
Or they're knocking into each other
or two cameras are virtually filming in the same direction.
So one of them is redundant, really.
And you can't do that with the cameras.
You must try and use them to get the maximum out of them,
which makes it very difficult for the director.
It's not simple.
It is very difficult in the studio.
There's such a quick turnaround, you see.
If you were filming, you filmed on the Sunday, 25 pounds,
and then you'd start your next script on the Monday.
And on the Thursday, you would have a run-through
for your technicians, and Virgil Lambert would come
and sort of see what had been done,
and all the problems, all the camera angles,
all the, whether the scenery was sort of right
for what was needed for the storyline.
And then you would actually record it on the Friday.
Now, when we rehearse, we rehearse with tapes on the floor.
They represent the doors, the walls, the sewer.
That's in the rehearsal room.
And then when you come into the studio, everything is there.
Until, but not everything is there.
Water isn't there until the actual recording.
And by the time they put the water in and I stepped in,
I destroyed a pair of good shoes.
And that's the main Scotsman in me that remembers that.
There was one wonderful day when about 10 Daleks
had to stream out of a machine,
and they all caught the sides of the,
and adjustments had to be made very hurriedly.
I don't think they realised they were quite so broad
or quite so heavy.
They were extremely heavy.
They're extremely heavy to sort of push along.
Later on, they got rid of the pedals and the chain,
and you just moved it around with your feet.
So that was easier, because it was lighter
and you were more mobile.
There's one thing about Doctor Who in those days,
and it changed a lot later on,
different doctors coming in,
was that it was done very much on the cheap.
I think probably, well, it's only for kids,
so it doesn't really matter, you know.
Don't need to spend any money on it.
And we rehearsed for sort of four or five days,
and then had one day in the studio
to do this very complicated sort of technical stuff.
And there was one sequence in which,
I think, the sort of the three heroes,
the three younger people,
but I couldn't remember exactly who,
were supposed to be fastened to a metallic wall
with these very futuristic magnets.
And somebody had made a sort of three-quarters thing
like this, such as Daleks might have produced.
And the idea was that they fit around your neck,
and with magnets in, were stuck to a wall,
so you couldn't move.
And the props, beautifully made.
I mean, the BBC prop department,
as I know from I being served and so on later on,
were absolutely brilliant, and they could make anything.
But they'd made these, and then someone had said,
oh, Lord, we'd better get some magnets to put in them.
I think someone went round to Woolworth's,
and they got these little tie magnets.
So you put these things on the wall,
and they instantly fell off.
So the characters who were supposed to be irretrievably
magnetised to the wall throughout the entire scene
had to hold these things in place,
otherwise they'd have dropped off.
I was in the wardrobe in the studios one day,
and the monitors were going, you know,
the screens with all the storyline going on,
and we could sort of see what was happening.
And I think I was being changed into the sliver outfit.
And on the screen, we could see the Robo-Men.
They were fighting.
They'd turned against the Daleks by this time,
and they were fighting like fury
and getting really cross with them.
And there's a great close-up of several Robo-Men
throwing a Dalek in the air,
and catching it, and up, and catching it,
and up, and catching it again.
And one sort of rather camp dresser gentleman
said to another, oh, dear, what's going on there?
And the other one said, I don't know.
Perhaps it's its birthday.
The scene with the fish, with Caroline Ford,
I remember that, and it's a strange thing.
I don't remember it happily,
because I was never really happy about doing it.
Mainly because I thought it was a bit twee,
a bit the thing you would expect in that situation.
And I tried never to give anybody what they want
in that situation, the audience, I mean.
But the director wanted it that way,
so I had to do it that way.
But what I felt about it was the scene from the outset
of how I came into the scene with the fish,
the whole scene was leaning towards the end,
which would be, I would end up in a kiss,
or a kiss and a cuddle, or something like that.
I was terribly pleased to have a contract for six weeks,
but I was surprised when I found out
I was being a Dalek operator.
Never mind, never mind, I just sort of got on with it.
But professionally, it wasn't going to do me
a great deal of good.
And this isn't being snobby.
You really try and do a better job each time.
Go up a notch, if you can.
Being a Dalek operator, one really was,
well, on a par with the extras.
Fair enough, good people that they are.
But I thought, what I'll do about this
is have my name taken off the credits,
and then no one will know that it's me,
because they couldn't tell who was in these machines.
And I think they were off three of the credits,
and they were on three of the credits.
That's why people have got a bit confused
about whether I was in them or not.
I think I did a great deal more than people know about.
I mean, I just sort of did it, was pleased to do it,
took the money, I think I got 40 guineas per programme.
A guinea, folks, was a pound with a shilling added on.
The BBC paid in guineas in those days.
I don't know why.
And really, that was the end of it.
I thought no more about it.
And for some 20 or 30 years,
the fact that I'd been in Doctor Who
was just a sort of dim memory.
And then recently, over the last 10 years or so,
I get people asking for my autograph
because I was in Doctor Who.
And they know far more about it than I do.
After doing that programme,
the strange thing was everybody in the business
knew I'd been in it.
But it didn't mean that people just gave me a job
because it was successful.
But the strange thing was everybody knew about me
having been in it.
I'm talking about casting directors, other directors.
That doesn't mean to say they didn't know
that I'd done the plays at the Royal Court Theatre
or other big televisions which were successful.
But everybody knew about it.
When I do pantomime, I have Dalek fans
turning up with pictures of Daleks, pictures of me,
wanting their photographs taken with me.
And I sort of think, how extraordinary.
Perfectly straightforward, nice people in their 30s,
but really keen on Daleks.
More people stopped me in the street after that
than two years earlier I did a thing called
Deadline Midnight, which ran six months.
And there was only six episodes of this programme,
and yet more people stopped me in the street
to talk about it.
If I'm at a party or something and I'm not getting
any attention, and perhaps I feel I would like
a bit of attention, I just drop into the conversation
that I used to be a Dalek.
And suddenly you've got people's interest.
I think that Daleks had this combination of being quite,
perhaps frightening at the time.
You know, I think young children used to sort of hide
behind the sofa every now and again.
And I think that's what's happened.
Young children used to sort of hide behind the sofa
every now and again.
But at the same time, they had a sort of almost comedy
edge to them.
And I think, you know, there were a lot of children
who used to get the kitchen plunger, the sink plunger out,
and pretend to be a Dalek and go around going,
exterminate, and all that to each other.
So I think there was that in those days.
People have talked to me, grown up and children
at that time.
And there's no question they were absolutely fascinated
by them.
But the appeal, the unknown, I suppose.
They just didn't know what was gonna happen next.
And it wasn't a human being you were dealing with.
It was something from another planet that just didn't know
how it was gonna react, how it was gonna behave.
Ooh, exciting.
I think that the voice spoken by wonderful actor
called Peter Hawkins at the time,
with that electronic distortion,
which is, I think, probably about the first time
that it's ever been done.
I think that that tone of voice was the thing
which was very large, was a very large part
of the popularity of the Daleks,
and the fact that the Daleks were frightening.
A machine that spoke, and the fact that they sort of
shot rays and blanked people out,
and had a sort of sink plunger attached to them,
which always made me laugh.
But I think the voice was a very large part of it.
And I think it's the battle between good and evil,
isn't it?
It's the battle between the outsider
and the people in power,
or against the invader.
And that's a story that goes on for always, doesn't it?
Personally, I found them boring.
But if you look at them in terms of the programme,
they were very interesting,
because I don't think anything
had ever been done like that before.
I mean, people like Dick,
I can't remember the initials of the author's name,
the great American writer.
He was writing science fiction stuff of that type.
And people were reading it and were in love with it.
And this was the manifestation of it.
I mean, I got a Dalek exterminate.
I mean, and the kids loved them.
Well, you talk about the Daleks.
I mean, they were rubbish, weren't they, actually?
When you look at them.
They had these funny steel domes that swivelled.
They had flat bottoms.
And sometimes you saw the bottom,
if one got turned over in action or something.
And they had these sink plungers sticking out the front.
And another thing, I think, which sent the rays out.
But they couldn't go anywhere.
I remember being very amused by the fact
that the Daleks could only move on level ground.
And so here are these terrifying machines.
And all you had to do was to go upstairs,
and they couldn't get anywhere near you.
So any time you got,
I mean, there's one shot somewhere where,
I think it was the Albert Memorial.
And they come trundling on,
stop at the top of the flight of steps,
and then you have to cut away
because they can't go down the steps.
There's no way they can go down a flight of steps.
There's no way they can climb a hill with any rocks on it.
And in fact, towards the end of Dalek's invasion of Earth,
when everyone rebels,
they just pick them up and throw them around
like old dolls or something,
and pull them to pieces.
So they were rubbish, but they were wonderful rubbish.
Every now and then, the Daleks would make a Nazi salute
because they wanted to sort of equate Daleks
with Nazis taking over the world.
So I think we did that on the Albert Memorial,
one for it, stating their claim.
Good stuff, very effective, quite dramatic.
The fact that the Daleks used Nazi phraseology,
like the final solution and exterminate and words like that,
must perhaps have added an extra dimension to the story,
a sort of shadow across it,
that it would remind people
of things that had happened not that long before,
or that they had been frightened would happen
not that long before.
MUSIC PLAYS
It's always marvellous in this business,
when you do a job,
you see the script or your cast
and you do it to the very best of your ability.
And often you don't know that down the years,
they're going to become a cult or a classic.
And that's what a classic is,
that after a certain number of years,
it achieves a popularity and a notoriety,
and people just love it.
Doctor Who was successful,
but the Daleks, there'd been one episode of Daleks before,
and that made them very, very successful.
I mean, I knew that, everybody knew that.
But when I say everybody knew that,
I mean, everybody involved in the production knew that.
But when it actually was shown,
everybody was stunned by the viewing figures.
They were fantastic.
I mean, they were, I mean, something 11, 12 million viewers.
I mean, for a Saturday night, for a half hour,
which most of us thought was a children's programme.
So it was a huge success, but we were all stunned.
At least I was stunned.
You could actually have a whole family of kids
and adults watching Doctor Who,
and they go, who?
What's going to happen to our hero?
But it wasn't really frightening.
It did, there was none of this awful kind of gut fear
that you get in some films.
So it was in the best sense of the word,
family entertainment.
There's the quality of magic,
and there's, it's a sort of,
anything can happen, anything can happen.
And you can go inside the TARDIS
and be whisked away to another world.
So it's a form of escape as well,
in the way that films like the Harry Potter films
are a form of escape.
And I think that's always very popular,
especially if it's well done.
They weren't tied down to one situation.
They could go, you know, extra galactical,
or in the earth, into history, into the future.
And I think that was the thing, and it's the format.
The basic format never changed.
At the end, there was a crisis,
and people were going to get wiped out,
or the earth was going to blow up,
and Doctor Who would sort it all out.
But it was done in so many different ways.
And that's what all adventure is, really,
that the 11th hour, all will be well.
♪♪
I really loved it, and I remember it
much more than I remember a lot of other television things
that I did round about that time.
It was just great fun.
You know, the machines are fun,
and I like the people I was working with.
I knew Bernard Kaye and Peter Fraser,
and Jackie became quickly a friend.
So I have very happy memories of it.
With regard to the program itself,
when I saw it after 39 years, it was made in 1964,
I was surprised by how good it was.
I mean, that's looking back all these years.
Things have moved forward so quickly now.
Everything is cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
There was something about the program.
The framing is excellent.
Some of the performances are reasonable.
Some are not so good.
But it had something.
It had a quality.
Let's face it, it must have had something,
otherwise it wouldn't have been a damn success.
It would never go out.
I mean, if it was made today, it would never go out.
Well, nobody would make it today, not like that,
simply because people expect more now in technical terms.
So the only way, actually...
Well, I hear there's a lot of interest in it now,
but it's nostalgic interest.
I think it's wonderful.
I think it's really amazing and wonderful.
And I do get letters even now,
I think probably a lot of the people who were in Doctor Who do,
from people asking for photos and signatures
and little stories about it.
There's a great interest in it still.
It's really amazing.
My own view about the popularity of Doctor Who as a series,
or as a series of series,
is the sort of Merlin character of the Doctor himself,
that he is the old, wise grandfather figure.
He is, as I say, he is Merlin.
He's the sorcerer.
And he's a thousand years old or more.
But watching the story now,
it is such a long time ago.
I've practically forgotten it all.
So it's completely new.
So it's jolly interesting, yeah.
I'm part of television history, aren't I?
If Doctor Who came back and I had the slightest chance,
I would absolutely jump at it.
I would certainly grow a full white beard again.
I'd probably got what hair I've left.
I'd let that grow a bit longer.
And I'd ask the make-up people to age me up.
I mean, I'm 68 now, but he's older than that, you know.
He's a lot older than that and ought to look it.
And if you think Bill Hartnell, Patrick Troughton,
John Pertwee, you know, they were all older actors.
And I'm sure that's what ought to be done.
So putting a plug, Nicola Smith is Doctor Who.