I remember that it all began with smoked salmon… On 6 April 2011, Tom kindly invited me and Big Finish executive producer Nick Briggs to his home for lunch. The meeting was to discuss Tom potentially recording some stories as the Fourth Doctor for Big Finish, and this was our chance to pitch to him, and also an opportunity for him to find out whether we were people he’d like to work with. I remember we laughed a lot, and by the end of lunch we were all very excited about what might lie ahead – so excited, in fact, that we were in studio just 18 days later, recording Energy of the Daleks!
We recorded all of those early stories at Audio Sorcery Studios in Wadhurst, which was located on a small estate in a remote part of the Kent countryside, a few miles outside of Tunbridge Wells. That first recording day was unseasonably hot – a veritable heatwave! – and I remember a joyous reunion between Tom and Louise, a picnic on the lawn at lunchtime, and much merriment. I know that Louise has first seeded with Tom the idea of working at Big Finish, and there we were – Tom Baker and Louise Jameson making their first episodes together since 1978.
That first year of recordings was a hive of industry as we recorded Seasons One and Two of the audios in no particular order, all jumbled up. So one day we could be working with Tom and Louise, and the next with Tom and Mary Tamm, reprising her role as Romana. We were so lucky to have those days with Mary, who tragically passed away just weeks after completing work on her final story The Final Phase. I thought she was a remarkable woman: kind, interested and interesting and so much fun. Her infectious laugh stays with me to this day.
John Leeson would also return as K9, Lalla Ward as Romana II and Matthew Waterhouse as Adric. We even found new avenues with new companions like Ann Kelso, or Anya Kingdom, played by the wonderful Jane Slavin, who became a much-loved part of the team.
So what is it like working with Tom Baker? Tom is everything you hope he will be, and much more. In the green room, he’s a raconteur who entertains the cast and is entertained by other people, thriving on the bonhomie and joy of it all. He’s also a very hard worker: Tom gets the script a few weeks early, and reads it again and again and again until he’s got under the skin of it. He’s there at the very start of the studio, bright and early at 9am to chat about the day and life in general. He offers his many ideas for embellishments, and we always record them because there is real gold in there. No one knows the Fourth Doctor like Tom – it’s hard to identify where one ends and the other begins – and he’s a creative force in the studio.
It’s been lovely to reunite Tom with some guest stars from his time in the show as Gabriel Woolf returned as Sutekh in The Age of Sutekh/Kill the Doctor and Geoffrey Beevers played the Master in many adventures. We had planned to work with Barry Jackson, reprising the role of Drax in The Trouble with Drax, but very sadly he passed away before recording. I know Tom especially enjoyed working with the great David Warner several times, and with his friend from drama school Nerys Hughes, who played ongoing companion Margaret Hopwood.
As I write this, season 14 of The Fourth Doctor Adventures is being released. Plans for the future are top secret, but it’s safe to say there is more to come. Anyone for another jelly baby?
David Richardson
Producer: The Fourth Doctor Adventures
