The Time When the Doctor was fired

On 24 November 1986 Colin Baker appeared on the kids show Saturday Superstore a normal promotional event for the incumbent Doctor promoting his latest season. However something he said during the interview seemed far more significant not long afterwards. Asked where he would go if he had a real working Tardis he replied: “I think I’d probably go back to the beginning and start it all again because I’ve enjoyed doing Doctor Who so much that I would like to go right back to the beginning and do it all again, because I’ve met so many nice people and talked to so many nice people that it would be nice…to go back and start from scratch.” These are not the words of someone nearer the start than the end of his tenure because although it had yet to be announced he knew at this point that he had become the first Doctor to be directly sacked from the role.

In September 1986 Doctor Who had returned after an eighteen month break that was supposed to have given the production team the opportunity to re-energise matters. Behind the scenes though the programme was almost cancelled and only saved by a huge public backlash. Producer John Nathan Turner was wanting to leave but found himself unable to do so while the season that was eventually made was marred by internal disagreements with script editor Eric Saward as well as the death of veteran writer Robert Holmes. The Trial season’s highest rating – 5.6 million viewers - was lower than for any episode of the previous season, the one that had got the series into trouble in the first place. BBC sympathy for what was seen as an ailing warhorse was minimal. Drastic action was clearly needed but in that peculiar BBC way the axe fell on Colin Baker instead of targeting the production team who’d made the season or the writers who’d penned it,.

Admittedly his Doctor had been an acquired taste from the start. JNT had tried to pull the same casting trick that had worked the previous time when Peter Davison successfully replaced the seemingly irreplaceable Tom Baker by being completely different. Reportedly selected after a bravura performance at a wedding little of the wit and charm that had apparently led to JNT choosing his next Doctor made it onto the screen. Instead the new incarnation was chippy and full of himself, belittling Peri and alienating the viewer from the off. That he was sporting a coat which would make Joseph’s threads seem monochrome by comparison certainly didn’t help. “I’m the Doctor- whether you like it or not” he had declared at the end of his first story. Most viewers decided they did not. At least two million of them in fact never bothered to come back for his first full season. On the other hand the actor playing the Doctor does not write the scripts nor do they make the broad decisions about how the role will be interpreted or for that matter dressed. Plus Baker had survived the 18 month hiatus and returned for the meta Trial season.

The actor had been quoted as saying he’d like to break namesake Tom’s seven year record as the longest running Doctor suggesting Baker had no idea that the scenery was being shifted behind him.  BBC Controller Michael Grade was unimpressed with the Trial season but agreed to renew the series on condition that Baker was replaced as the Doctor. The actors’ lack of empathy in the role was later cited by BBC’s Head of Series Jonathan Powell who said the BBC had been looking for "one last chance saloon, for an actor who would take off with the public”. JNT famously called Baker with the words; “there’s good news and bad news”…. 

With the programme having twice lately aired it’s behind the scenes controversies during the 18 month hiatus and again after Saward’s departure, the show’s internal turmoil was now  brought into the open for a third time. In a blistering two part interview with a tabloid newspaper at the start of 1987 titled WHY I’LL NEVER FORGIVE GUTLESS GRADE, BY AXED DR WHO Colin Baker attacked the BBC. The list of allegations were mostly aimed squarely at Michael Grade who he claimed slagged off the show in public, backed out of facing the actor face to face, insulted fans and ordered  Baker to say he had left rather than been fired. Talking of the moment he received JNT’s infamous phone call Baker said: “I couldn’t quite take it in, it was such a shock. I’d fought so hard for the show. I was stunned.” He continued; “If I knew why I was sacked then I would feel better about it all…but I got fobbed off with excuses about Grade thinking three years was enough.”

He mentions an incident in the lobby of the BBC soon after his casting when Grade ignored him despite the fact he was in costume; “there was not a flicker of recognition on his face. He just stomped straight past.” He claimed that Grade had poisoned the atmosphere at the Corporation. Not literally of course. “Nowadays the atmosphere at the BBC is very sinister. Everyone is very guarded and there is a lot of dark whispering.” Further allegations followed including the one that Grade wanted him to say he’d left rather than be fired. “My boss Jonathan Powell.. .strongly suggested to me I should claim to be leaving for personal reasons.” Baker was angry too about being asked back for four more episodes “just so I could be killed off and fit in with their plans. I told them what they could do with their offer.”

It’s strong stuff though the sort of thing the tabloids thrive on. Of particular significance- and highlighted by Baker in the second part- was the involvement of his ex- wife Lisa Goddard. She and Grade were good friends to the point where she actually lived in his house while the divorce with Baker was going through.  It does make you wonder why Grade approved Baker’s appointment in the first place. It has been argued that under the circumstances Grade did not really even have the authority to sack Baker directly and was using a personal grudge to make a professional decision. If he was unhappy with the content of the programme he should have fired JNT and his team. As for JNT he was seemingly unable or unwilling to stand up for his lead actor by declaring that if Baker went he did too. The series had no allies left at a senior level of the BBC so nobody was moved to override Grade and Powell. None of the principals really emerged from the incident looking very good. The second part of the tabloid interview also highlighted how Baker’s sacking would affect charity money, a tactic that I’m sure the actor must have later regretted though knowing the paper they would no doubt have jumped on that statement for a big pull quote at the top of the page.

Colin Baker has continued to grace conventions and events ever since which at least shows some bottle given his treatment by the BBC and the low esteem in which most of his stories are held by fans. He revived his Doctor in numerous Big Finish audio plays offering a less abrasive interpretation which some have taken as evidence that he would have got better had he been allowed to stay. If there is a victim in this, it is certainly the actor who did not agree with some of the creative decisions made for his Doctor (most of all the costume) and was unfortunate to be trapped in a perfect storm of the show’s creative decline, Michael Grade nursing a personal grudge and the changing face of television drama.