Michael Troughton’s first full set of audios as the second Doctor is released soon by Big Finish, and during remote recording of the first story, he chatted with Radio Times and Sci-Fi Bulletin about taking on the role made famous by his father – and appearing in the Peter Capaldi story Last Christmas…

 

 

How has it been playing the second Doctor for Big Finish?

It’s been bloody lovely. When Nick emailed me and he suggested he’d been thinking about this casting for a long time, I wasn’t quite sure whether I should do it really. But when I thought about it, I thought ‘This could be fun.’

A lot of the time, when I go to conventions, the fans want me to dress up as Patrick (laughs) and try and do an impression. They’re always very inquisitive and to be honest, the kind of audio that’s being produced here is very fan based so I thought, ‘Why not, let’s have a go.’ It’s quite a big task because he was a bloody amazing actor. That’s essentially why Doctor Who carried on, let’s be honest – if it hadn’t been for him, I don’t think we’d be sitting here getting echo and not having microphones working. It’s that transition from Bill to Patrick that really made it continue.

I’d written a book about him, I know an awful lot more about him now and how he worked, and I just thought ‘Why not? Let’s give it a go. If it’s crap then I’ll stop doing it.’

The fans were very positive about it, because what I didn’t want was ‘Oh, Patrick Troughton’s son’s doing it because he’s the son.’ I want it to be a bit of me as well as Dad mixed in and I think that’s what we’re getting.

I’m having a great deal of fun, it’s been really good. I did a little bit a couple of months ago on another audio as an introduction [the Third Doctor tale The Annihilators] and then I’ve done a couple of days so far. It’s been bloody hard work but it’s great fun.

The real problem with trying to recreate Dad on audio is that he was such a bloody physical actor. It would be looks, it would be movements, it would be various things so I’ve had to grab certain mannerisms he has – like for instance, he used to cough and everybody used to think it was part of his performance but actually it was a cough to give him time to remember the next line. It was that kind of ‘*cough cough* yes, what’s the next line? Oh yes. I’ll do this.’

So I put a bit of that in, I also vary the voice – when he was angry he talked a bit like [sharply] ‘What are you doing?’ And then when he was more gentle and talking to Jamie or Victoria to he was [kindly] ‘Oh dear, he was a lovely gentleman.’ But you didn’t want to cross him, you didn’t want to cross the Doctor.

You have to try and get all that into audio and it’s quite a challenge. You’re sorry you asked now…

(Laughs) No, the more detail the better…

How long did it take you to make that decision? Was it something you discussed with your family?

No, when I decided to write the book, it was that same sort of delay. I thought ‘My mother’s passed away’ – I didn’t want to write a book when my mum was alive because it’s quite a personal book – and in the same way, I took the same sort of time to think about this. I didn’t tell anyone, didn’t tell any of the family.

I talked to my wife, she thought it was a brilliant idea. She said he’d be looking down, making sure I did a good performance and shouting ‘Oh my giddy aunt what the bloody hell are you doing with my voice?’ All that kind of thing.

It took me around about two weeks to think about it and then I decided I’d do it.

Have you tried to just capture the essence with your own spin on it and did you go back and watch old episodes to get that preparation?

Yes, I certainly did look at a lot of episodes, the ones that are available and I did see an awful lot of improvisation (laughs) because when it went into Television Centre it was shot as if it was live. They only had a certain amount of time because it’s very expensive with tape and he had to do an awful lot of improvisation when things went wrong or an actor forgot their lines. It’s an incredibly energetic thing to keep up – no wonder by the end of the first year he just thought ‘I don’t know if I can carry on like this.’ He was the engine behind every scene, essentially, and he would drive it forward.

I’ve talked about the coughing, there were also sudden changes of mood. He’d go from very very gentle to extremely serious and then he would take the edge off it by chuckling to himself, talking to himself and then he would go into, I don’t know, some kind of jolly joke or jape. It’s a kaleidoscope of different emotions and that is what’s so bloody exhausting when you do it.

So what’s it like recreating that era of Doctor Who?

Oh it’s wonderful. The first time I met Frazer [Hines] after God knows how long, we were in Los Angeles doing a convention. It was the first time I’d seen him since I was twelve years old and I was in shorts in the studio. I think the first time I saw Frazer, as a boy, it was the Emperor Dalek one, with that huge great Dalek in the middle – Evil of the Daleks, which is actually part of the first episode [of this] that you hear me in. Which is good and a bit weird really because there I was albeit in the sound booth recreating something that I had watched when I was twelve.

The same thing happened when I did that Christmas special on TV [Last Christmas]: I walked on set and thought ‘Good heavens alive, this is like I’ve gone back to being twelve and I’m coming to watch something.’ It was weird, really was.

Do you feel that you’re playing Patrick Troughton playing the second Doctor or that you’re playing the second Doctor – because they’re two slightly different things.

It is indeed and it’s the latter. I said right from the start, ‘I’m not Jon Culshaw, I cannot do brilliant impressions of voices and people – but what I can do is, act the character.’ It’s a mixture of myself and Patrick and to be honest, because I’m his son it gets quite close I think.

Having listened to that third Doctor crossover, there’s a lovely feel of the second Doctor in those scenes with Jamie.

That’s what I wanted to get, yes absolutely. I’m glad you said that because I’m not going for an absolute ‘Gosh you couldn’t tell the difference.’ I mean, when Jon steps up and does the Brigadier it’s quite extraordinary. I don’t know how he does it, it’s absolutely brilliant, but I know I’m not a mimic, so my only option was to go ahead and do as you say, be myself but enact Patrick’s Doctor as best I could.

There are so many of Patrick’s stories missing that a lot of fans only know them through audio in the first place. Have you gone back and actually listened to some of those episodes?

Well, the problem with just using one, if you like, channel is that you don’t get the full performance. I much prefer to see, albeit the small amount of work that he did that remains as a video so that I can see what he’s doing and hear what he’s doing. Yes, of course I’ve listened to a lot of those wonderful tapes that were recorded, presumably from the tellies with old tape recorders and it does help, but really, the physicality of the man was in his movements and in his expressions. That’s what is difficult to get across and that’s the challenge. It’s a great challenge, I’m really enjoying it.

Has there been a particular scene from his work on the show that you’ve used as a touchstone or is it the fact that his performance is so mercurial that you are going into lots of different things going from The Power of the Daleks right the way through to The War Games?

There are moments. There’s a wonderful moment where he turns to Jamie and just says this single phrase and I almost say it in my mind anyway before we start each scene: ‘Come along Jamie.’ It’s funny: it’s like a trigger, it gets me into the mindset of the Doctor.

There are other wonderful moments that I love to think about, one is a very specific moment – and I think it was probably Pat that instigated it – [in The Tomb of the Cybermen part 1] where Jamie and the Doctor and coming through a doorway and they’re holding hands by mistake. They look at each other and they drop their hands and they go back and get Victoria. It’s the way they do it: there’s something about that physicality that keys me into him again, it’s a bizarre thing, it really is.

I’m finding it quite interesting because I was just having lunch and my wife said ‘Good heavens, you sound half like your father now.’ (laughs) And it sticks, it really does, it’s extraordinary.

You mentioned appearing in the TV show a few years back: is it nice to have such a continuing relationship with the show?

Yes it is. Good heavens, I was twelve or thirteen when Dad was Doctor Who. It really was an incredible moment during my life, one that I remember really well, and of course being offered a role in a special was absolutely brilliant. It was such a great role: what a great death being sucked into a monitor, absolutely bloody wonderful.

I remember walking onto the set and looking at it and thinking, ‘Oh, it’s all going to be green screen’ because I’d done so much stuff on green screen before but bloody hell, no it wasn’t. It was like a Doctor Who set, they had the most fantastic switches and monitors and they had a bloody great Snowcat in the studio.

It was like being transformed back to those days, although they wouldn’t have been able to afford any of that in those days that’s for sure. But it had that feel of it being real rather than how it is now, all put it on afterwards and the actors are acting to absolutely nothing, which is very clever.

What’s it been like working with Big Finish, because you’ve done a bit of audio work before?

Yes, I’ve worked with Big Finish a number of times, playing various different interesting characters. I think I’ve played an Ice Warrior before – well, an Ice Warrior that wasn’t an Ice Warrior, he developed into an Ice Warrior over time. But yes, Big Finish is really good fun! In the early days the actors would get very excited when they got a Big Finish offer because they worked in a studio that had this most fantastic, absolutely brilliant lunch that was done by the man who owned the actual recording studio. So, if your agent said Big Finish you’d go, ‘Yes! I’ll do that’ because the lunch was the most fantastic thing.

I’ve done a number before and they’re great people to work with, especially Nick [Briggs]. He’s such a good director, he won’t let things go if they’re not right but my goodness he gives you such praise when you get it right, it’s wonderful.

Assuming that this is another hit for Big Finish, are there particular things that you’d like to do as the second Doctor or elements from your Dad’s performance that you’d like a chance to have a crack at?

The Five Doctors and The Three Doctors have all the Doctors together again, it would be bloody marvellous [to do something like that], yes. You’d get them all in and some from the new lot would be fun… in fact we could have the Thirteen Doctors, it would be fabulous.

I wouldn’t mind having a go at [something like] where he plays the dictator, Salamander, taking on another character. God, he was good at that.

You know, even if he wasn’t my dad, he was such a brilliant actor that it’s a real honour to be asked to try and recreate him, it really is. I’m sure he’d be absolutely delighted that I was doing it and having fun with it, because he took the business seriously but he wanted to have fun, and he wanted to enjoy what he was doing, and my goodness me he really did. He really put a lot into everything.

There’s a great line: ‘I’m very serious about what I do just not necessarily how I do it.’

(laughs) Now, see that is an excellent key to think about. That’s exactly what I’m trying to get into the recreation of him, that wonderful flippant attitude but underneath you know, my goodness me, he’s either terrified or he’s working on an incredibly clever way of getting out of a problem. But he has this wonderful relaxed, flippant, jokey way of leading his life as the Doctor.

The Second Doctor Adventures: Beyond War Games can be ordered here from Big Finish