"Fleetie" wrote in message
...
If I were to be facetious, I'd definitely say that Sylvester McCoy
put the "Tard" into "Tardis". He was highly annoying as The Doctor.

I also agree that (for me at least), Tom Baker is the best; I
especially like "The Pyramids of Mars", featuring Sutekh The Destroyer!

Having said that, I don't remember THAT many Tom Baker episodes because
I was still VERY young when he started (1974?) and quite young when
he finished ('81 or '82?).

I have heard people say many Dr Who fans tend to prefer the actor
who was playing The Doctor when they were kids - probably about 10 years
old or so. Certainly it's true in my case.

"Blake's Seven" (BS) was also good in a rather bare, low-budget kind of
way.
Avon and Orac (the irritable, arrogant Perspex supercomputer) were my
favourite characters. Colin Baker featured in at least one episode, as
did Michael Sheard (who was also in Doctor Who IIRC) who was best known
to my age group as Mr Bronson on "Grange Hill". Also David Haig from
"The Thin Blue Line" appeared in both "Blake's Seven" and "Doctor Who".
Also, Servalan (in BS) had sexy shoes on sometimes. Which was nice.


Martin


Oh, Blake's Seven ... I never missed a single episode ... The very last one
of season 3 was so sad when the Liberator passed through that cloud of
corrosive gas, and the ship was eaten alive by it. I nearly cried, big and
ugly as I was, when the ships computer, Zen, finally admitted defeat to Avon
and told him that it was sorry that it was no longer able to repair the
ship, and closed itself down with its voice failing. I think that was the
only time that the computer ever referred to itself as "I". I think that was
supposed to be the last ever episode, but it was resurrected for a fourth
season with a rather revised concept, and a different ship, as I recall.
Pony as it was, with the shaking scenery, and Servalan leering her sexy way
through most scenes, I truly loved that series ...

Going back to Doctor Who, I saw an interview with Tom Baker a few years
back, and he said that although he had loved every minute of working on the
show, it had wrecked his acting career, because after leaving it, he was so
associated with being the Doctor, he just could not get any mainstream
acting work, and apart from a few fairly minor parts, has spent the
remainder of his career in a backwater of voiceover and other similar
industry-related work, which is a bit of a shame really.

When I was in TV repair, as an apprentice, we had a copy, on Philips N1500
format, no less, of an in-house BBC Christmas tape, which purported to have
been made by "VT Shift 3". It was very funny, and had many out-takes from
programmes, long before these were popular as TV programmes in their own
right. One such featured Tom Baker as Doctor Who, propped up on the floor
against the Tardis' console. Robot dog K9 trundles in. "What's the situation
? Give me a prognosis,K9 ! " barks Tom. "Insufficient data, master ..." says
K9. "No, you never f**king know when it's important, do you ...?", says Tom
!

In another, taken from Blake's Seven, Servalan is behind a desk, and a bunch
of her black guards come running in, brandishing their storm trooper ray
guns. One of the guys slips on the studio floor, and takes a couple more
with him. They slide straight into a wall, and bring it down on top of
themselves.

At another point, a spoof weather forcast is being given, voice only over
the BBC logo, like they sometimes used to do at night before closedown
(remember closedown ??) It concludes with "And just remember that red sky at
night, simply means that your auto-chroma is out of range ..." It then cuts
to the BBC TV Centre roof, where a very young Bill Giles (weatherman) is
standing holding his jacket collar up, and someone off-camera pouring water
on his head. He stands there and just announces "It's ****ing down out here
...."

Later on, there is a forthcoming-programme voice-only link piece which goes
"Later tonight, the intrepid time lord, Doug Who, has an encounter with the
Shed Elevenites !"

Clearly, this is some kind of meaningless ( to outsiders ) in-house BBC
joke, and at the time you just dismiss it. However, when the 'production'
finally gets to the end, there are about 10 minutes of slow-rolling credits.
Absolutely everybody gets a mention with entries like 'Take away curries
fetched by' , 'Chinagraph pencils sharpened by' , 'VT helical head
maintenance by' and so on. The final credit passes up and off the screen,
leaving a blank raster that persists for perhaps 5 seconds. Then a final
piece of text rolls up the screen, simply saying "Doug Who?". Now that is
priceless !

One of the credits read 'Dancers - The Memorex Head Cloggers' Which I always
thought was a very clever bit of double meaning ( "cloggers" is a slang term
for dancers in the UK, from clog shoes ).

Sadly, this tape disappeared many years ago. I bet some old BBC engineer
somewhere has still got a copy, though. It must be 25 years since I last saw
it, and I would dearly love to see it again. You shouldn't have mentioned
Blake's Seven, Martin. You're never going to shut me up now ...

Arfa