It is with great regret that we report the sad passing of our friend Elisabeth Sladen. If you wish to share your memories of Lis, please use the comment box below.

Elisabeth Sladen has been quiet on the acting front since leaving Doctor Who - at least as far as the majority of the public are concerned. She does though have very forthright views on Doctor Who, where it went wrong and why it isn't being made now.

We meet Elisabeth at Panopticon. She begins by recounting why she's doing conventions again these days.
My daughter when she was eight, started noticing things coming through the post. Then she saw an invite and went, "Well, what is a convention." So I explained what it was and she said, it would be really lovely to go to one, so I went, "Well, if the right one comes along..." She's so far fallen in love with a Cyberman.  People are very kind to her, but I haven't taken her to very many.

We hear Louise Jameson and yourself have been busy catching up.

Yes (puts on mock granny accent), talking about the good old days. And I left what - 25 years ago? Bloody hell. Who would have thought? You see, it's a dead programme in one way, so there's no Doctor Who office in the BBC to look after us. But in so many ways, it is not a dead programme. A load of money is still being made out of Doctor Who and that's fine - as long as I  get some as well. There's no one to bring it all together. There's so many options, the contracts we signed at the time never foresaw DVD's or anything like that coming. It's terribly antiquated and outdated and we're (snapsfingers) now stuck .

So you don't get royalties?

Oh yes we do. Royalties for the videos and everything, but the contracts we signed to release those videos will cover everything else that comes out because of that. It's fine, but the contract was done in 1972. It bears no relation to what's going on now. The balls are all in their (the Beeb's) court. I'm very grateful for my royalties from the videos and what have you, but somewhere the line has gone a little silly. It's very, very difficult, because no one is overstepping any contracts, but I won't sign anything now, because there's only one left of mine to release and I won't sign anything until a few things are cleared up - just to be perfectly honest about it. I signed a release for The Hand Of Fear and I thought, "OK it's something like 46 quid in and some royalties." But they didn't tell me that they were only going to do a special release for three months, because there was the Paul McGann film. So all of a sudden we have 'them' and 'us', instead of making for Paul McGann and the film's sake everyone a big, happy family. Jon and I did the radio plays and it went to number one and then they waited 18 months before they did any more, then they waited again because of the McGann film. It went out and it went to number one and they never did anymore. The last time I saw Jon, bless him - he was old and nearly dying and he went, "I'd love to work on more of these, but I've got to do them before I'm under the soil. "But you know - thank you very much to the BBC, I'm very grateful for Doctor Who. Look what I'm enjoying today. We just come here and reminisce - how they want to listen to us, I don't know.

Vere Lorrimer told me when I asked him about the convention circuit, that he got fed up of saying the same thing again and again.

Yes. I started doing them when Sadie was eight. Jon said, "You silly, silly girl, Lissy. You have some new radio to promote and you've got to go and do them". I stopped doing them, because I felt that when Louise came in - actually, it really kicked in after I left - due to video recorders. I didn't realize how truly popular we were until I'd gone. So my programmes were still going in America, so I thought, "Fair play, I can go and promote them" - and get treated wonderfully over there. "But I won't do any here, because that's cramping someone else's style." So I didn't do any here for years, then I did them when Jon said I was being silly, and I got to enjoy them, but then I got to the point where I found myself saying exactly the same thing. Pertwee would start to tell a story about us and I'd nudge him and say, "That wasn't me." "Don't worry, it's still a good tale." So, I've just started doing them again, because I feel a bit fresher and Doctor Who seems to be coming out of the woodwork again.   Basically, I gave up acting, even though Barry Letts said I wasn't to do that. It's not a virtue believe me, but I didn't feel I should hand over part of my life to a baby-sitter, so I had to walk away and I'm sorry that I did but you know - swings and roundabouts. Talking about coming out of the woodwork, there's this guy, Mark J Thompson who's asked me to do something for him and that comes from Who. It generally always does hinge around it. I did three years at the Aylesbury theatre, but no one really knows that. Maybe two people saw me do Desdemona, maybe 1000's did, but they'll never remember it. But they'll remember a massive spider being lodged on your back (recently shown by Paul Merton on Room 101 to spook aracnophobe, Phil Jupitus). They went off and left me for lunch and I'm terrified of spiders. I said, "Whatever you do, don't leave me here with this and they stopped on a freeze-frame, said, "Don't move" and then left me there. I'd stupidly told Jon that I wasn't a fan of spiders and he told the director who got concerned, but they had all these different sized spiders and got me to stroke the hairy ones and so on. I told them that, "Yes, I wasn't frightened of them now, but when I came to do the shots I'd be fine." But I couldn't really get used to them.

As that was a story that saw Jon Pertwee transmogrify into Tom Baker, were you apprehensive at all?

I didn't know Tom from Adam. I had worked with Jon from the beginning and then Jon went, "Well, the programmes doing rather well, I think I'll ask for a rise." So he went to the powers that be and they just went, "No". They didn't say they'd think about it or liase/talk with his agent and he was so cross that he went, "Right I'll leave, then" and he regretted it.

Did he?

Oh yes. He still wanted to continue as Doctor Who and he truly, truly regretted it. I don't think the BBC used Jon again. He was a grafter was Jon, he got Worzel Gummidge up and running himself. So on the final stories with Jon we had this great big rehearsal area and he'd just bring in his fan mail, got a table down the furthest end from anyone that he could. He had to distance himself. I think why you can get so possessive of the characters in Who and no doubt particularly with the Doctor is because when you look at a script, there's usually a detailed description: It gives you all this info, when I got my first script for Doctor Who, it went: Enter Sarah Jane... and that was it. And that's why the Doctors are so much them, so when you go, a little of  you's gone.

Was it the same when you returned years later for The Five Doctors?

Well, you had to do that, didn't you? It's like the royal walk down, but it was a bloody shambles wasn't it? (Director), Peter Moffat, bless him, had all these assistants and Doctors who couldn't stop yanking. And of course they wanted to use far too many people, they started far too late to write it. It always happens - always happens. It wasn't sorted through. It could have been so much better and that's what makes me cross. It was wonderful for what it was and it's Doctor Who and you open a can of beans and what have you got? Nothing really, you've got froth. But somewhere in there you've got a programme about heroes and there's still something in there that captures hold of people today, so in one way we shouldn't dismiss it. You've got good, you've got evil and good wins. It should scare, but it's a good sort of scared and the blood is tomato sauce. I had one director who wanted to turn it into The Sweeney and if you try to make it more like that, you haven't got Doctor Who. It is though, a show that any concept can be hung on. It's a wonderful concept. It isn't dated if you actually think of it in the right way and kids still love it. Maybe it shouldn't have been taken away from the slot where you saw it with parents. It was there for all the family.

So why do you think they're unable to make it now?

You've got to have imagination don't you? I don't know the answer to that. There's the camp that says, Look at Star Wars... But it isn't about that. It's science fiction, but really Doctor Who is about relationships. It's about being made to look a fool every week if you're the assistant:- "Yes Doctor, No Doctor, but... I will look a fool to help my friend and I don't care how stupid I look, because he needs help." I think it's got to be well written. You have to spend a certain amount of money on anything, but I don't think you have to have loads of things going on. You have to have suspense and suspense comes from a good writer, a good director and a good cast. I remember going to the cinemas in the morning and one of the scariest things I saw and what it was, thinking about it now, was Buck Rogers and I just remember these big shadows looming over them - you can still do things like that. You need a slick script, you need an entertaining script - you need suspense and a budget of some sort. What you don't need is people trying to be funny. You need to really believe it. You can't send it up.They lost their way. Exactly. There's a very straight line. You can have fun with it and you can enjoy it - it's not real. You try and find a reality when you're working on it, but it's not good enough to go out of that reality whenever you're bored.

Was it true that you were asked back?

I had had the most amazing time working with Tom and Jon and I didn't know if I could recreate that again. Also, I left Doctor Who at a time when I knew I was the best I could be in it at the time. I didn't want to be asked to leave and I would have been. Philip Hinchcliffe was my Producer, now I was not his choice, he'd inherited me. He was wonderful to me, very complimentary, but I knew that somewhere along the line he'd want to choosehis own girl before his time ran out. When John (Nathan-Turner) asked me back, it was not in my life at all. I didn't give it much thought, but I just felt I couldn't go back. I don't know, maybe I made a mistake.

Ever had a bad experience out of the whole show?

You get a bit silly doing stunts, I nearly drowned at Wookey Hole. One of the funniest things was being at a convention and we were turfed out of our hotel in Philadelphia. The guy who organized it wasn't paying the bill. So we had to relocate to the Holiday Inn and Jon's wife Ingebourg was going, "Jon, Jon." Out come the funny pills - valium or something. And we'd started in the morning on Bloody Marys - the hospitality was wonderful. Anyway, between the two things I don't remember anything about that convention whatsoever - probably my best performance ever, I woke up in the shower at 3am. I had no idea what happened in Philadelphia.

Elisabeth Sladen was interviewed by George Murphy & Gareth Gorman exclusively for CulTV.

Interview Transcribed by Gareth Gorman
 

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