76 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
76 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
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I SAW THE DOCTOR AS AN
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INTERPLANETARY
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CRUSADER
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By Jon
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Pertwee
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It never occurred to me that I could ever be remotely considered for the
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part of the Doctor. When Tenniel Evans, with whom I was playing in The
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Navy Lark, suggested I put myself up for the part, I thought it was an
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absurd idea. I was widely known as a radio and atage comedy actor and
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they would never take the suggestion seriously.
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What then follwed was quite extraordinary. When my agent approaches the
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BBC and that long silence on the phone was over, we were told that I was
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on their short list and had been ever since they wanted a replacement for
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Patrick Troughton.
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When I was finally offered the part I said to Shaun Sutton, then head
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of drama, "How do you want me to play it?" "As Jon Pertwee," he said,
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"just play it as yourself."
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I then began to worry a little. The problem was, I didn't know who "me"
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was. It was quite a frightening experience. There was I in my fiftieth
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year and I'd never really found myself in life. I'd always used another
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identity in every part I'd played, whether it be by the use of a funny
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vioce or by hiding behind a pair of spectacles. Consequently I found it
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difficult at first and we were well into the first season before I really
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started to relax. So, for helping me to realise who Jon Pertwee is, I owe
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a lot to Doctor Who.
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The impact it made on my career was immense. I saw the Doctor as an
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interplanetary crusader and it was this dashing Pied Piper image that
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appealed to me. I could spread my cloak, take the Earth under my wing
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and say, "It's all right now. . . I'll deal with this." The basic key
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to the programme's success is that it is pure escapism. What can be better
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than to drift away to another world in another time and forget about
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the pressures of everyday life?
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We were such a heppy team. I'm a great believer in making people feel
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at home, and we sometimes behaved outrageously on the set. In fact,
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during my first season, I was taken quietly to one side by the producer
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who was under the impression I wasn't taking the job seriously. But, of
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course, I was. It was just my way of working.
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In a technical show like Doctor Who, things can frequently go wrong
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during a recording, whereupon I would usually stop immediately. But I
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remember one marvellous scene from "The Mind of Evil" when Roger
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Delgado pulled a gun on me and, in the struggle that followed, we
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accidentally knocked a jug of water on to the studio floor. It practically
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turned into a sheet of ice. Roger and I both fell over. Neither of us
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could stay perpendicular and we kept scrambling for the gun. I was about to
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stop then I imagined the producer up in the box saying "Go on! Don't
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stop!" So we carried on, and apparently the whole scene looked superb.
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Jon Pertwee
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November 1982
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