Doctor Who - Documentary s04e02 Episode Script
Doctor Who Stories - Anneke Wills
1 It was huge.
It was huge.
It had been going for three years before I came into it so to go into it was like these days going into EastEnders or something.
I now know that there were something like 1 50 girls had been auditioned.
I didn't know this at the time.
Thank God I didn't, otherwise I'd have been much more nervous.
It was like, ''Oh, that would be interesting, you know.
'' I mean, I was planning to be the great dramatic actress.
So Doctor who was like, a bit Jolly and sort of something on the side, Saturday afternoons, you know, for a little while might be fun.
(LAUGHING) Little did I know.
And I think they seemed to call back pretty quickly.
I mean, what they were wanting was they were wanting a dolly bird, a '60s dolly bird, right? And I came readymade.
My eyelashes were longer than my skirts.
And I wore all my own clothes.
And I was the swinging dolly bird.
Their idea, I think it was a little bit (EXCLAIMING) For me it felt a little bit like that, that she was the deb, the sort of, you know, the posh deb.
So I had to talk, you know, ''Super!'' But I quickly dropped all that 'cause I found that rather crass.
And then my companion, Michael Craze (COCKNEY ACCENT) was the sailor.
So, you had the, you know, the dolly deb (LAUGHING) and the yobbo sailor.
So, spill the beans, sailor.
We had Honor Blackman and we had The Avengers and we had The new woman was coming out dressed in leather and throwing people over her shoulder and stuff like this.
And I thought no, because when I'm going to meet a Dalek or I'm going to see monsters or whatever it is, I'm going to react in a way that I would react.
Which is scared.
(LAUGHING) Polly's screaming was too much.
But you know, the thing is, what to do? When it's at the end of the story and then the titles are coming up and the last moment is ''Doctor!'' (SCREAMING) (HUMMING DOCTOR WHO THEME) And up come the titles, you see.
I mean, if screaming is in the script, screaming you do.
(SCREAMING) There was one time when I was doing ''The Macra Terror''.
And here is the big mouth of the monster and Polly is being actually having to wiggle my way up into the mouth of the monster.
Little white Courréges boots disappearing inside this mouth.
And my children watching at home with Mick Gough saying, ''Dad, is Mummy coming home tonight?'' Because my hubby Michael Gough had already played the Toymaker, he told me then that, you know, ''You have to watch out for Bill.
''He does He is irascible.
He will lose it.
''So, mind your Ps and Qs and stay on the good side of him.
''And don't misbehave in rehearsals,'' which I was quite likely to do, being, you know, an energetic young person.
But there were times I'm afraid there were times when I, you know, got on the wrong side of him and he would lose it, and it's unpleasant, it's frightening.
So, we had to find a way of making sure that he was cotton-wooled.
Are you sure you're going to be warm enough? Oh, like toast, my dear.
But I had In my career, I had also worked with lots of Herbert Lom and Eric Portman and these old duffers who would lose it at the drop of a hat.
And also, Bill would say, ''Do you know who I am? I am the Doctor.
'' I mean (MUMBLING) So, you can imagine what a relief it was to have Patrick Troughton marching into the rehearsal room with a big grin and saying, ''Okay, the fun starts here, boys and girls.
'' At the time, as an actor, you're Just a lowly actor, you're not told nothing.
You know, it's Just at the very last minute that we hear, ''Actually, next week Bill is going.
''And we're having another Another guy is coming on.
'' So, then, of course, like now, the chat is, ''Who is it going to be? Who is it going to be?'' And it was exciting and for actors, of course, the bottom line is you want the work, you want to continue working.
So this is what worried Mike Craze and me was if we get another actor, this hadn't been done before.
You know, is the public going to Just accept ''Oh, right, now, he's Just changed his body ''and suddenly he's become a Pat Troughton kind of a figure.
'' Or are they going to say, ''Get out of here!'' Then we did this amazingly technical, difficult thing which was, you know, to have them lying on the floor and then the other one lying on the floor.
And then, we blended it together.
And it looked amazing that these two faces kind of changed.
And then, the Doctor sort of emerges, saying (GRUNTING) ''This is a strange sort of face.
'' I think that because Pat was so delightful and so endearing that you immediately Just thought, ''Oh, lovely, oh, good, all right, okay, off we go.
'' Pat came on board, the fun started to happen and the magic started to be made, I think.
Pat was an immensely creative person and deeply intelligent and a totally wonderful actor.
That's what made him so magical.
And for me, I have to say (WHISPERING) Don't tell anyone else.
He was the best Doctor.
It was an immediate love affair between Mike Craze and Pat Troughton and me, we just loved each other.
I had a way, when we were being photographed together, of bending my knees and tucking under his shoulder so that I looked He looked bigger and I looked smaller 'cause actually, he was smaller than me.
And he, at the time, was pretty insecure because he didn't know quite how he was going to play it.
So, he would play off me and Mike ideas.
He was I know that he wanted It was sort of Groucho Marx mixed with a touch of Charlie Chaplin.
He is a sort of Boy Scout Doctor Who.
That he will find in his pockets bits of string and, you know, that he will save whole planets with, you know, his little sort of Boy Scout ways of working it out.
So now we've got the lovely Pat Troughton on board and he's the great practical Joker and so we're having great practical Jokes.
I mean, he would do things We would On the Thursday when we had the technical run, so then what would happen is all the techie boys would come in and they'd all have their scripts and they'd (MUMBLING) like this.
And they're really not watching the action at all.
And Pat cottoned on to this and he said, ''Do you know what? ''They would never know if we completely changed the chat.
''In between the cues, they wouldn't know.
'' So, we were acting out something totally different.
And they didn't.
It's true.
They Just said And then they sort of looked up and looked a bit curious and said, ''But, uh, wait a minute, we don't see this in the script.
'' So, he was always doing things like this.
So, Mike and I thought, actually, I think it was basically me, 'cause I remember going and having them made, which was quite tricky in those days, to have a T-shirt with printing done, you had to go to a special place and everything.
So we thought what we'd do was we'd tease him rotten and then And we did.
We came out from behind a flat and we had the white T-shirts with the black writing on and it said, ''Come back, Bill Hartnell.
All is forgiven.
'' And we marched out.
And the studio knew and so they were all roaring with laughter and clapping.
And Pat! His face fell.
And he looked And he He didn't find it funny at all and he went off then.
And the whole Joke fell completely flat.
It was the first of the Cybermen and they came on and they had these stocking things that came over their heads and you could see all the creases, you know.
And then, they had the we were The prop boys trying to work out how they were going to die.
And so they had this Fairy Liquid shaken up and in their insides, it was supposed to come out in this great foaming In fact, it was Just a pathetic little dribble.
We were rolling around on the floor with laughter, saying, ''This is unbelievable.
'' So, we had the Jokes as well.
And we didn't mind also, because that was the whole Joy of the programme.
It was slightly cheesy and it was a bit, you know, so we loved it.
We loved that.
It's very British, you see.
I had nightmares, actually.
I had nightmares.
When we were doing ''The Power of the Daleks''.
Because there was this long corridor and the Daleks are coming, as you say, that they're Just coming, coming.
And there's nothing that you could do to stop them.
Waves and waves of Daleks coming at us.
And I used to dream about that.
And that dream would pop back into my psyche 20 years later and it would be this long corridor and these mindless machines are coming, coming and there's nothing you can do to stop them and they're going to And the very word ''exterminate'', you know.
This is very powerful, powerful myth, this is.
Yes.
Wipe out the human race.
Good idea.
(LAUGHING) We did the fish people.
And again, these fish people.
It was We didn't have the wonderful makeup, the prosthetic stuff that could be stuck on.
All we had were sort of socks with holes in, with these fish people like this.
And I remember that because my costume was made with actual scallop shells, you know those ones that you use for ashtrays or whatever.
And they were all sewn over my costume.
And they all dug in.
Oh! It was uncomfortable.
Yes, but I can't remember the lovely actor's name who plays the sort of megalomaniac and he has the last line, 'cause the last line at the end of the episode was always the clinger, the humdinger.
And his was, ''Nothing in the world can stop me now!'' And Pat and Mike and the whole studio going (EXCLAIMING) Well, um, they came to me and they said, ''Now, we're going to move Michael Craze on.
''He's leaving.
The character of Ben is leaving.
''We've got Frazer Hines coming in.
''Would you like to stay with Frazer Hines?'' And I searched my soul and I thought, ''Better leave now, ''because if I do another whole lot, ''I'll get so hooked into this, like Coronation Street, ''and then, you know, 30 years later, I'll still be there, ''but old and rattled with my stick, you know, and this would be very sad.
''So, better to move along.
'' At that time, you did get typecast and I didn't get work for six months because people said, ''Hopeless, ''because you are known as Polly.
It would be no good.
'' Sitting up on Hampstead Heath with actually with Peter Cook and our children were playing there and we were And a child came and climbed up on the bench beside me and said, ''Polly, so, what's it like in the Tardis?'' And I'm about to say, ''No, you don't understand.
'' I thought, ''No, wait a minute, this is totally real.
'' So, I said, ''Well, you know, ''it's much bigger than you imagine when you get inside.
'' And it was totally real for this child.
And it gave me another It woke me up, actually, to realise that it was real for the children and they believed in this.
And that was And they saw me as Polly.
Of the sort of, I think it was 32 episodes that I was in, at least half are gone, which is a shame, really.
Of course I'm slightly sad, because it's fun to watch your old episodes.
But for me, I accept these things.
My entire career was wiped.
I rather like it.
It's sort of mystical.
About a couple of summers ago, I'm walking along the edge of a canal in Wiltshire, looking at the longboats going by, the barges, and comes one in navy blue, with a tiny little Dalek on the top.
So I say, ''I can't resist it'' So, it's going to come under the bridge.
So, I call out to the people.
''Hello, you there on the Tardis!'' And the boy comes out of the hatch thing and he looks up and he says, ''Oh, Polly! We'll stop the boat.
Come on board.
'' It was so amazing.
You know, 35 years later, I'm remembered.
There's not many actors who can say that, is there? Especially since I haven't been working for 30 years.
It was huge.
It had been going for three years before I came into it so to go into it was like these days going into EastEnders or something.
I now know that there were something like 1 50 girls had been auditioned.
I didn't know this at the time.
Thank God I didn't, otherwise I'd have been much more nervous.
It was like, ''Oh, that would be interesting, you know.
'' I mean, I was planning to be the great dramatic actress.
So Doctor who was like, a bit Jolly and sort of something on the side, Saturday afternoons, you know, for a little while might be fun.
(LAUGHING) Little did I know.
And I think they seemed to call back pretty quickly.
I mean, what they were wanting was they were wanting a dolly bird, a '60s dolly bird, right? And I came readymade.
My eyelashes were longer than my skirts.
And I wore all my own clothes.
And I was the swinging dolly bird.
Their idea, I think it was a little bit (EXCLAIMING) For me it felt a little bit like that, that she was the deb, the sort of, you know, the posh deb.
So I had to talk, you know, ''Super!'' But I quickly dropped all that 'cause I found that rather crass.
And then my companion, Michael Craze (COCKNEY ACCENT) was the sailor.
So, you had the, you know, the dolly deb (LAUGHING) and the yobbo sailor.
So, spill the beans, sailor.
We had Honor Blackman and we had The Avengers and we had The new woman was coming out dressed in leather and throwing people over her shoulder and stuff like this.
And I thought no, because when I'm going to meet a Dalek or I'm going to see monsters or whatever it is, I'm going to react in a way that I would react.
Which is scared.
(LAUGHING) Polly's screaming was too much.
But you know, the thing is, what to do? When it's at the end of the story and then the titles are coming up and the last moment is ''Doctor!'' (SCREAMING) (HUMMING DOCTOR WHO THEME) And up come the titles, you see.
I mean, if screaming is in the script, screaming you do.
(SCREAMING) There was one time when I was doing ''The Macra Terror''.
And here is the big mouth of the monster and Polly is being actually having to wiggle my way up into the mouth of the monster.
Little white Courréges boots disappearing inside this mouth.
And my children watching at home with Mick Gough saying, ''Dad, is Mummy coming home tonight?'' Because my hubby Michael Gough had already played the Toymaker, he told me then that, you know, ''You have to watch out for Bill.
''He does He is irascible.
He will lose it.
''So, mind your Ps and Qs and stay on the good side of him.
''And don't misbehave in rehearsals,'' which I was quite likely to do, being, you know, an energetic young person.
But there were times I'm afraid there were times when I, you know, got on the wrong side of him and he would lose it, and it's unpleasant, it's frightening.
So, we had to find a way of making sure that he was cotton-wooled.
Are you sure you're going to be warm enough? Oh, like toast, my dear.
But I had In my career, I had also worked with lots of Herbert Lom and Eric Portman and these old duffers who would lose it at the drop of a hat.
And also, Bill would say, ''Do you know who I am? I am the Doctor.
'' I mean (MUMBLING) So, you can imagine what a relief it was to have Patrick Troughton marching into the rehearsal room with a big grin and saying, ''Okay, the fun starts here, boys and girls.
'' At the time, as an actor, you're Just a lowly actor, you're not told nothing.
You know, it's Just at the very last minute that we hear, ''Actually, next week Bill is going.
''And we're having another Another guy is coming on.
'' So, then, of course, like now, the chat is, ''Who is it going to be? Who is it going to be?'' And it was exciting and for actors, of course, the bottom line is you want the work, you want to continue working.
So this is what worried Mike Craze and me was if we get another actor, this hadn't been done before.
You know, is the public going to Just accept ''Oh, right, now, he's Just changed his body ''and suddenly he's become a Pat Troughton kind of a figure.
'' Or are they going to say, ''Get out of here!'' Then we did this amazingly technical, difficult thing which was, you know, to have them lying on the floor and then the other one lying on the floor.
And then, we blended it together.
And it looked amazing that these two faces kind of changed.
And then, the Doctor sort of emerges, saying (GRUNTING) ''This is a strange sort of face.
'' I think that because Pat was so delightful and so endearing that you immediately Just thought, ''Oh, lovely, oh, good, all right, okay, off we go.
'' Pat came on board, the fun started to happen and the magic started to be made, I think.
Pat was an immensely creative person and deeply intelligent and a totally wonderful actor.
That's what made him so magical.
And for me, I have to say (WHISPERING) Don't tell anyone else.
He was the best Doctor.
It was an immediate love affair between Mike Craze and Pat Troughton and me, we just loved each other.
I had a way, when we were being photographed together, of bending my knees and tucking under his shoulder so that I looked He looked bigger and I looked smaller 'cause actually, he was smaller than me.
And he, at the time, was pretty insecure because he didn't know quite how he was going to play it.
So, he would play off me and Mike ideas.
He was I know that he wanted It was sort of Groucho Marx mixed with a touch of Charlie Chaplin.
He is a sort of Boy Scout Doctor Who.
That he will find in his pockets bits of string and, you know, that he will save whole planets with, you know, his little sort of Boy Scout ways of working it out.
So now we've got the lovely Pat Troughton on board and he's the great practical Joker and so we're having great practical Jokes.
I mean, he would do things We would On the Thursday when we had the technical run, so then what would happen is all the techie boys would come in and they'd all have their scripts and they'd (MUMBLING) like this.
And they're really not watching the action at all.
And Pat cottoned on to this and he said, ''Do you know what? ''They would never know if we completely changed the chat.
''In between the cues, they wouldn't know.
'' So, we were acting out something totally different.
And they didn't.
It's true.
They Just said And then they sort of looked up and looked a bit curious and said, ''But, uh, wait a minute, we don't see this in the script.
'' So, he was always doing things like this.
So, Mike and I thought, actually, I think it was basically me, 'cause I remember going and having them made, which was quite tricky in those days, to have a T-shirt with printing done, you had to go to a special place and everything.
So we thought what we'd do was we'd tease him rotten and then And we did.
We came out from behind a flat and we had the white T-shirts with the black writing on and it said, ''Come back, Bill Hartnell.
All is forgiven.
'' And we marched out.
And the studio knew and so they were all roaring with laughter and clapping.
And Pat! His face fell.
And he looked And he He didn't find it funny at all and he went off then.
And the whole Joke fell completely flat.
It was the first of the Cybermen and they came on and they had these stocking things that came over their heads and you could see all the creases, you know.
And then, they had the we were The prop boys trying to work out how they were going to die.
And so they had this Fairy Liquid shaken up and in their insides, it was supposed to come out in this great foaming In fact, it was Just a pathetic little dribble.
We were rolling around on the floor with laughter, saying, ''This is unbelievable.
'' So, we had the Jokes as well.
And we didn't mind also, because that was the whole Joy of the programme.
It was slightly cheesy and it was a bit, you know, so we loved it.
We loved that.
It's very British, you see.
I had nightmares, actually.
I had nightmares.
When we were doing ''The Power of the Daleks''.
Because there was this long corridor and the Daleks are coming, as you say, that they're Just coming, coming.
And there's nothing that you could do to stop them.
Waves and waves of Daleks coming at us.
And I used to dream about that.
And that dream would pop back into my psyche 20 years later and it would be this long corridor and these mindless machines are coming, coming and there's nothing you can do to stop them and they're going to And the very word ''exterminate'', you know.
This is very powerful, powerful myth, this is.
Yes.
Wipe out the human race.
Good idea.
(LAUGHING) We did the fish people.
And again, these fish people.
It was We didn't have the wonderful makeup, the prosthetic stuff that could be stuck on.
All we had were sort of socks with holes in, with these fish people like this.
And I remember that because my costume was made with actual scallop shells, you know those ones that you use for ashtrays or whatever.
And they were all sewn over my costume.
And they all dug in.
Oh! It was uncomfortable.
Yes, but I can't remember the lovely actor's name who plays the sort of megalomaniac and he has the last line, 'cause the last line at the end of the episode was always the clinger, the humdinger.
And his was, ''Nothing in the world can stop me now!'' And Pat and Mike and the whole studio going (EXCLAIMING) Well, um, they came to me and they said, ''Now, we're going to move Michael Craze on.
''He's leaving.
The character of Ben is leaving.
''We've got Frazer Hines coming in.
''Would you like to stay with Frazer Hines?'' And I searched my soul and I thought, ''Better leave now, ''because if I do another whole lot, ''I'll get so hooked into this, like Coronation Street, ''and then, you know, 30 years later, I'll still be there, ''but old and rattled with my stick, you know, and this would be very sad.
''So, better to move along.
'' At that time, you did get typecast and I didn't get work for six months because people said, ''Hopeless, ''because you are known as Polly.
It would be no good.
'' Sitting up on Hampstead Heath with actually with Peter Cook and our children were playing there and we were And a child came and climbed up on the bench beside me and said, ''Polly, so, what's it like in the Tardis?'' And I'm about to say, ''No, you don't understand.
'' I thought, ''No, wait a minute, this is totally real.
'' So, I said, ''Well, you know, ''it's much bigger than you imagine when you get inside.
'' And it was totally real for this child.
And it gave me another It woke me up, actually, to realise that it was real for the children and they believed in this.
And that was And they saw me as Polly.
Of the sort of, I think it was 32 episodes that I was in, at least half are gone, which is a shame, really.
Of course I'm slightly sad, because it's fun to watch your old episodes.
But for me, I accept these things.
My entire career was wiped.
I rather like it.
It's sort of mystical.
About a couple of summers ago, I'm walking along the edge of a canal in Wiltshire, looking at the longboats going by, the barges, and comes one in navy blue, with a tiny little Dalek on the top.
So I say, ''I can't resist it'' So, it's going to come under the bridge.
So, I call out to the people.
''Hello, you there on the Tardis!'' And the boy comes out of the hatch thing and he looks up and he says, ''Oh, Polly! We'll stop the boat.
Come on board.
'' It was so amazing.
You know, 35 years later, I'm remembered.
There's not many actors who can say that, is there? Especially since I haven't been working for 30 years.