Nine times out of ten, if you mention the words Doctor Who to someone
who isn't a devoted fan of the show, they usually reply, "That's the guy with
the big grin and the long scarf, right?" And while there have been eight very
fine actors who have portrayed our favorite Time Lord over the years, still far
and away, Tom Baker is still the most actor most associated with the Doctor.
Part of it was that during his era, Doctor Who reached new heights of
popularity, part of it was the controversy surrounding the Hinchcliffe years and
the new emphasis of the Gothic horror. And a large part of it was just the
character of the fourth Doctor--decidely looney at times, loveable, a lopsided
grin, the the ability to having nothing in the universe from Daleks to anceint
Egyptian gods phase him as he sought to fight evil, restore order, and crack a
few jokes along the way.
Which may explain a bit of why the Baker years are so popular among the
fandom. And why the BBC thought that putting out a two tape set, full of clips
from each fourth Doctor story as well as Mr. Baker's thoughts, insights and
memories would be such a great idea.
For the most part they are right. One of the intriguing things is that Tom
Baker has no previous knowledge of what the clip from each story is going to be.
It's a nice touch because it allows for a more conversational tone than the
other Years tapes. And Baker is so wonderful candid in most cases that it makes
the insights that much more enjoyable. Another treat is getting to see Baker's
reactions to certain scenes--such as when he laughs hysterically at the Nightmare of
Eden clip.
And Baker is candid and honest. He admits that he felt his performance as
Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles was lacking and how he
thinks he made a mistake by not only leaving Who but by rejecting the
opportunity to come back in The Five Doctors. It's a very candid, open Baker we see
presented before us and it really shows the difference between the actors who
have portrayed the Doctor over the years and stars of other shows who get
swelled egos and think they can do no wrong.
It's also interesting to note which stories Baker would like to dust off and
take a look at again. He specfically sights Pyramids of Mars
and the first three stories of season eighteen as some he'd like to watch based
on the clips he's seen.
...which is amazing, since the clips are rather sporatically chosen. Each
segment comes from either early in an episode or right at the very end, leading
to Baker being a bit confused at times or not able to remeber specifics of the
story. Indeed, the entire clip from Genesis of the Daleks has neither Davros nor
the Daleks, though Baker does remember the famous "Do I have the right?" scene
in detail. In restrospect, a better aprroach might have been a series of clips
that showed the strength of the story but also a bit of the plot to help Mr.
Baker.
In the end, what makes the tape a good way to spend three hours is Baker's
candor. He doesn't gloss over details very much. He addresses Mary Whitehouse's
objections to Deadly Assassin, revealing that he was even a bit horrified by
the cliffhanger in episode three, as well as talking about his mixed emotions
leaving the part. He also talkes about how truly happy he was in the role and
that he misses playing the part. Never does he come across as condescedning or
arrogant. The thought and emotions are genuine.
In all, it's a fitting tribute to the Baker years.
Mention Tom Baker to anyone over the age of 15 (although some younger fans
may also recognise the name), and the majority of people mention Doctor
Who. When they are asked what they remember about him, the answer usually is
toothy grin, long scarf and jelly babies. The Tom Baker Years video pays
homage to the longest serving Doctor in a fitting way. Being the type of person
that he is, Tom wanted to be surprised and have the clips he was to see chosen
for him. And as such, we have genuine memories and spontaneous outbursts of
laughter.
The tapes chronicle every story (including Shada) and
watching Tom`s reactions are the highlight of this tape. The anecdotes are
either clear, as from Robot, of enjoyment, as from Pyramids of
Mars, of shock, as from The Deadly Assassin and of sadness, as from Logopolis. Most
amusing are however, his reactions to the majority of the stories from season
17, which seem to be of great hilarity.
His memories of working with his co-stars, particularly his companions, are
clear and for the most part complementary. Tom is also quick to note lapses in
his own performances, which says a great deal about him as an actor. While the
tape doesn`t showcase the best clips from every story, it is to the credit of
Tom Bake that he can remember so much about them and give such honest reactions,
thus providing an entertaining tape and a candid look at the actor who played
the Fourth Doctor. A fitting tribute to Tom Baker and the time he spent on
Doctor Who.
In which Tom Baker shows how little he remembers about what he himself
declares as the happiest time of his life.
Tom Baker can entertain. It's as simple as that. 3 hours go by and you barely
notice. How many people can you sit and watch for 3 hours? Mind you, if you
think Tom is eccentric after watching this thing, try listening to his Who On
Earth Is Tom Baker? audio. The wit and self-deprecation he delivers here,
with such entertaining flair that you'd find it hard to believe that he really
is like this all the time, and it's not just a clever construction, is what his
autobiography is all about. What you get here is just the tip of the iceberg.
But both the biography and this Years tape go together quite well, since Tom
talks very little about his Who years in the biography and very little
about himself on the tape. Mind you:
"I'm so sorry. I can't remember anything about that one at all."
Some might say that Tom talks very little about his Who years on this
tape. Still, ask yourself how much you can remember about what you were doing
for 7 years of life - 11 years later. Although in some ways, it was probably a
good idea for Tom to have previewed stuff first, we would've lost Tom the person
and instead have had Tom the actor, which we can see plenty of in the clips.
There were times when I thought to myself "Why the hell did they choose this
clip to jog his memory?", like the couple of minutes from Genesis Of The Daleks which
really don't give an impression of that story at all.
"Ha ha ha! That was really rather good!"
I have to say that when Tom laughed at the more... er... daft moments
of the show, I couldn't help but laugh along with him. Perhaps the best example
is when he sees the Nucleus of the Swarm from The Invisible Enemy, or 'the
prawn' as he calls it. Let's face it - that one was silly. But I think
it's easy to laugh along with him because it's very clear that Tom still has a
great deal of affection for the show, something still evident in the 10 years
since the tape was made. It's laughter 'in good humour'. Many's the time you
hear him express an interest in seeing the full story. Ironically, this is
something he says several times while watching Season 18 - the one that made him
decide to leave the show. Watch his expression when he watches himself
regenerate in Peter Davison, something he hasn't seen since he actually filmed
it. And it's a very mellowed Tom Baker who admits that it actually was a mistake
to turn down The Five
Doctors. Of course the viewers are thinking "Oh, you just figured that out
now?!"
Bottom line: although Tom has forgotten much of his 7 years as the Doctor,
what he does remember is more than enough to keep you amused, for far longer
than you'd expect. I also think that this was a much better format for the Years
tapes than the previous one, with each tape basically being 3 episodes you've
probably already got the full story of interspersed with brief mutterings from
the man who's supposed to be the focus of the thing. The Tom Baker Years
is how the Pertwee Years and Colin Baker Years should have been done.
Let's hope that if the Davison and McCoy Years ever get made, it'll be done this
way.
Take a bold idea -- have Tom Baker watch clips from all his stories in
transmission order, but not tell him which clips, or have any sort of prep, and
tape the results.
It could have been an utter disaster, given the wrong person. However,
despite not remembering all the titles of stories, Tom is always fascinating.
The stories he tells are amusing side notes, such as Phil Madoc reading a Latin
text on the set of Morbius, or how learning that Beatrix Leahmann's last
performance was in Stones of
Blood. He talks about the dog who bit his lips at the pub, causing the scars
seen in Ribos and Pirate Planet. Tom also
mentions his regret about not doing the 5 Doctors and tells a touching story
about the day he cut off his famous curls for a role and how on the way out the
hairdressers, he went out unrecognized after being given a hero's welcome on the
way in.
Some of the best bits are watching Tom's expressions as he watches certain
clips -- surprise, laughter. He mentions that he'd never saw the stories after
he shot them, but decides he should check out a few videos after watching the
clips presented to him. There's another great bit where he mentions popping into
a house to watch part three of The Deadly Assassin because
of reservations of the ending. He seemed amazed, still, that he would be
welcomed into a home so openly, and amazed by how the fans treated him over the
years. And although modest, you can tell how proud Tom was to do the show, and
do it for so long.
The Tom Baker Years is a sumptuous treat. Check it out.
This tape set represented a change in direction for the Years tapes,
shifting from presenting a collection of episodes to allowing the relevant
actors to share their memories accompanied by a collection of clips. The Tom
Baker Years has the added twist that Tom Baker had no prior knowledge of
which clips were selected and so can only react and comment upon each one shown
to him. This can bring many good anecdotes and memories to the fore, but has the
disadvantage that there are a number of stories which elicit a merely blank
reaction as Baker admits he can't remember anything whatsoever about a story.
The choice of clips is interesting, with some stories looking extremely good
(Meglos in particular
benefits from the clip selected) whilst others come across as hideous (including
The Armageddon Factor,
focusing upon the Doctor and Drax shrinking, or Revenge of the Cybermen
which shows the Cybermen poorly, especially the Cyberleader's pose). Sometimes
the clips aren't the obvious ones - for example Genesis of the Daleks lacks
Davros or Daleks, instead going for the Doctor's encounter with the Time Lord,
Terror of the Zygons
lacks any Zygons, neither The
Brain of Morbius nor The Seeds of Doom show the
Doctor's violent moments in those stories and The Invasion of Time
lacks both the "tyrant Doctor" and the Sontarans. However everyone has very
different ideas as to which moments show each story at its best and often the
excerpts provide a new perspective. For some reason Shada is completely ignored
at the correct moment, other than the occasional comment that this is something
"for another time" or noting when an actor or footage pops up elsewhere. I
believe that this tape may originally have been intended to come out before
Shada and so this would act as a trailer for the other Tom Baker special of
1992, but as the tapes stand alone there is a clear gap in it. Also notable is
that it's clear that originally the two tapes were going to be released
separately but then the decision was taken to release them in a doublepack. This
latter decision ensured that there was no danger of fans only being able to find
one half, but it also meant that the tape set cost a pricey £19.99 on its
original release - the last doublepack to be released at this price before a
strong fan campaign won a cutback in the price.
The real highlight of this release comes with Tom Baker. He has a reputation
for being utterly bonkers, perpetuated by more recent appearances such as an
edition of Have I Got News For You a few years ago, but here he comes
across as rational and reflective, offering many great insights into his time on
the show. A few onscreen captions are used to answer a question such as what a
story was called, who directed it or the name of an actor that Baker is unable
to recall, but overwhelmingly the emphasis is on Tom Baker. He admits he very
rarely watches any of his work but shows a willingness to take a look at some of
them again, including Pyramids of Mars and The Leisure Hive. The
memories are many, ranging from events on set to his feelings at the height of
his time of the show. He's also candid about his regrets at turning down
The Five Doctors and tells how his fame disappeared when he
had his curls cut off. By the end of the three hours the viewer comes away with
a very strong idea of just who on earth is Tom Baker, more so than many
interviews have ever achieved.
This format for the Years tapes is different from before and
represents a true success. It is a tragedy that just after this was originally
released the project was put on hold and so only one further release was made.
8/10
I picked up my copy of The Tom Baker years during a rainy Saturday afternoon
trip to the ABC - and thoroughly disappointed that the only other Doctor
Who stuff there was an eye-catching Dalek poster and newspaper comic strip
about them. I won't spoil it for you, but it involved stairs. So, I grabbed this
lovely orange colored box with that smiling face, impressed that what was
clearly one video was advertising itself as a two-cassette box. I was either
getting more than my money's worth or less than my money's worth, but at the
time I was so engrossed in working out who the bloke on the back next to Styre
was. Turned out to be Soldeed in the end. I'm still kicking myself, you know.
So, the tape. It's set in that gloomy museum basement that all such tapes are
set in, and Tom Baker wanders in - clearly having just stepped off the Shada reconstruction or just
about to enter it - and gives a clearly scripted spiel that he never liked the
idea of these tapes in general especially as the tape couldn't even follow the
layout set down previously: there are no Tom Baker missing stories, or
highly-regarded ones that weren't on tape back then.
Tom has been seduced into this because he has no idea what he'll be watching.
True, there's an above-average probability it will be a Doctor Who story
featuring him, but the details were live. Reality TV, you might say. And so, he
watches a few minutes from every story he did - in the order it was on TV - and
he regales you with what (if anything) he remembers. No, that's not fair. He
comes to a complete blank only on a few stories, like Planet of Evil or Underworld. Story titles
and dates he's normally quite good with, though a few mistakes are dryly
corrected by captions at the foot of the screen. By the second tape, this is
forgotten, letting him get away with calling Leela's first story The Face of Fear and simply
shrugging over the name of The Androids of Tara. I get
the impression that the captioner was as caught up in watching the stories and
Tom as I was to bother with such trivialities.
Of course, nowadays there's nothing Tom can tell you that Doctor Who Magazine
can't - though, there is an exception but Tom refuses to explain on the grounds
this is a family-oriented tape by God it was fun, though. Apparently. But Tom
recalls something from 90% of stories and it's always interesting and probably
corrected by the next clip. Tom's recall is, altogether very good. While I, fan
that I am, could recite you every working title for his stories backwards
(please, don't hit me), would be rendered open mouthed at having to recall every
anecdote for seven years eleven years ago. Due to my age, it's impossible
anyway, but that's a tall order by anyone's standards.
Tom Baker makes it quite clear that he never watches things he stars in -
with noticeable exceptions like The Deadly Assassin, for
example, which he felt he had to. As such, this is all pretty new to him and he
enjoys it. The early part of the tapes, with Tom grinning in front of us and on
his TV are infectious. A real sense of melancholy falls over the second half of
the tape, Seasons 16-18, but Tom Baker is, like the Doctor, having far too much
fun to worry about things until Romana leaves in what has to be the longest clip
- from her departure to the credits of Warriors' Gate episode
four. From that moment, and the intrusive bit of film footage with the ever
present "the marriage didn't last long you know" quote that Tom, perhaps for the
best, doesn't say anything about, a real sense of... not quite bitterness, not
quite depression sinks in. Mainly to me, as I can't judge Tom; the video has
been edited slightly, I'm certain, as it shows his reactions to The Five Doctors before his
reaction to his death scene, so his pathos moves backwards.
Watching those final scenes, with a brooding older Tom superimposed in the
corner - a stark contrast to the chuckling figure watching the opening scene in
Robot - make Logopolis seem even more
poignant. As the Master shoves the glowering Doctor away from the controls, I
get the strangest impression: denial. This can't be the end of Doctor Who. He's
won before, he'll win now. He's not weak or old... is he? As Tom Baker says, he
could have kept going after this. Maybe for Doctor Who it was best he
didn't, but I don't think credibility would have been lost if the fourth Doctor
survived Season 18.
Tom's final reminisces bring a lump to my throat as he explains he (at least
tried to) leave Doctor Who, head held high and looking for greener
pastures. He had the best part in the world behind him - surely things could get
only get better? They didn't. The final anecdote where he left a hotel full of
drinking Who fans hanging on his every word and return a haircut later to
be barely noticed, sums it up pretty well. "They'd forgotten me," he whispers
gently, "but I hadn't forgotten them."
He's not wallowing in misery, or cursing fate, just looking back at what
happened, old and wise. As he says, no matter what happens to him from now on,
for seven long years he lived the best life he'd ever had, a life that can be
watched again. Proof it happened. How many people can say that? And, as he
wanders off into the sunset again, cheerful and curious, you wonder just how
much of the Doctor is Tom Baker and how much of Tom Baker is Doctor Who?
Well worth the cash, in my opinion, mainly because I didn't pay for it. I got
a bit teary at the end, though.
At the risk of turning into one of those
dreadful thirtysomething nostalgia bores, the Tom Baker incarnation of Dr Who
has a special place in the hearts of those of my generation. Forever fixed in my
mind is the time I queued for hours with hundreds of other grubby pre-teens in a
smalltown bookshop awaiting the arrival of the great man to sign books he hadn’t
written. The cops sealed off the high street, which was lined with kiddies
wondering where the Tardis would materialise to disgorge the tousle-haired
timelord. Suddenly he appeared, striding down the middle of the road in full Who
garb, dishing out jelly babies to the gobsmacked hordes.
My illusions took a slight dent a few years back when I saw one of those
unbroadcastable out-take reels BBC technicians compile to amuse one another at
Christmas, in which Baker was shown getting saucy with an assistant and taking
the piss out of K9. But that’s as nothing compared to the revelations in this
indiscreet autobiography. It seems Baker’s worst enemy during his years of
national fame wasn’t the Daleks, the Cybermen, or any of the other low-budget
latex terrors, but the Shagmonster. And like all the best monsters, this one
turned out to be - gasp! - himself. "While we were on our tours about the
country to promote the programme, I was often pulled by women who were keen
fantasists," he confesses, introducing tales of hotel room bondage sessions ("A
good few of these women wanted to whip or cane me") and general pervery (a
university don insisted on wearing his costume, "and as she threw herself
wantonly on to the wide Holiday Inn bed she growled, ‘Come on, Doctor, let’s
travel through space’"). Alas, the man with the sonic screwdriver had no
advanced defence against venereal disease, and soon contracted a dose of the
clap.
Dr. Who enthusiasts may initially be disappointed to find that the programme
doesn’t get its first mention until page 189, but to skip the first 15 chapters
would be to miss a real treat since Baker seems determined to show himself in
the least flattering light imaginable, as if to demonstrate the veracity of a
remark he once overheard: "He’s quite nice. But there’s something odd about him,
something slightly disgusting." The book opens in wartime Liverpool, where
poverty-stricken young master Baker prayed for a bomb to drop on his mother so
he’d be orphaned and eligible for treats from the Americans. By the age of nine
he’d become a thurible swinger and learned to fake tears at funerals to get
bigger tips. A year later, he discovered the joys of solvent abuse ("I couldn’t
walk past a tin of floor polish without having a furtive snort"), which helped
set him on the path to a lifetime of misery and self-loathing, abetted by
National Service, the National Theatre and a failed attempt to please his family
by becoming a monk.
A recurring theme is that common actors’ lament, the lack of any sense of
identity, which isn’t helped by the fact that he’s so frequently mistaken for
Jon Pertwee, Jonathan Miller and - bizarrely - Shirley Williams. But although
he’s understandably irked to be accosted by strangers about the havoc he wreaked
on the grammar schools, Baker seems curiously flattered when people remark, as
they often do, that he reminds them of a favourite aunt. Not that they want to
be around him for long. "I’m afraid I have no gift for friendship," he writes at
one point. "I quickly get tired of people and off they go. Only the other day I
tried to think of a single friend I had made in my life and drew a blank."
But while Baker wallows in his own perversely appealing creepiness, he
doesn’t get anywhere near an answer to the question posed by the book’s title.
His long-suffering wives, who might have been invited to shed some light on this
mystery, get the briefest of walk-on parts - barely a paragraph in the case of
Lalla Ward, who buggered off to shack up with proselytising Darwinist Richard
Dawkins - when Baker wishes to illustrate his talent for appalling misjudgement
or self-pity. He once even failed to recognise an ex-wife at a party.
Nor does the story end, as one might expect, with timelord totty excess, as
Baker went on to enjoy several Soho Boozing Years with the late Jeffrey Bernard,
Francis Bacon and chums, which provide a further rich seam of anecdotes. These
days he happily potters about in his local graveyard polishing his own
tombstone, enjoying strange encounters with scary fans paying their respects,
and occasionally treats himself to lengthy visits to the household goods
department of John Lewis. "I particularly enjoy the ironing-board section. I
find I can pass an hour or more admiring the various ironing boards. The
Brabantia is my favourite. I have a very good model with a flowered cover,
pretty though fading slightly. It folds so smoothly that all fear flees. It’s
the folding action of good modern boards that has removed the terror that so
many men used to feel at the prospect of opening or closing the old,
temperamental type of ironing board when naked."
Call me a sick puppy if you must, but I closed the book liking him even
more.
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