To promote the new Third Doctor / Sarah Jane Smith story Kaleidoscope, out now from Big Finish, stars Tim Treloar and Sadie Miller chatted with the press, including Sci-Fi Bulletin’s Paul Simpson, about recreating the roles originally played by Jon Pertwee and Elisabeth Sladen…

 

Is it fair to say that Kaleidoscope is quite an action oriented story?

Tim: Oh, it certainly is.

Jon Pertwee did love his cars and his motorbikes.

Tim: He loved his gadgets didn’t he, he certainly did. Bessie and the TARDIS – obviously, every Doctor has a TARDIS.

Sadie, I know you used to go to conventions with your mum. Did you come across Jon Pertwee?

Sadie: Yes, I did. I met him a few times and he was always lovely, always very ‘on’, very the Doctor. I think he did rub some people up the wrong way but I found it quite charming, really. I really liked him, I thought he was a lovely person, very warm and affable and very much there for the fans. He knew what the fans wanted from him and he wanted to give them the Jon Pertwee experience. I thought he was a lovely chap.

Because Sarah was in Doctor Who for quite a long time, you obviously get to play with different Doctors and at different points in Sarah’s time with the Doctor. Does that make a difference to how you might approach it? I know this one is a bit earlier in the timeline, she’s a bit less experienced, a bit more unsure of things. 

Sadie: Yes, definitely and I think she had a very distinct relationship with the third Doctor as opposed to then the fourth. You always want to bring in different shades. I think, with Jon’s Doctor it’s still very much that kind of what I would call a more traditional companion role, where he is the Doctor and she is following him then with Tom, it’s more of a friendship and a bit more banter coming in. With this one, she’s still finding her feet, as a journalist and also in the world of travelling with the Doctor as well.

Tim, you’ve done these releases for a while but with different people alongside you. Does it make it more varied to have different companions?

Tim: Yes, absolutely. The three companions that I’ve had, Katy, Sadie and Daisy, are completely different and all equally brilliant. But yes, there’s a different energy with each of them. I suppose, the Jo Grant period is more traditional Doctor in charge and then he’s challenged more with the likes of Sarah and Liz. You’ve got these all highly intelligent women at different energies so I think the stories reflect that as well.

In an older interview from when you started playing the Doctor it was mentioned that Tom Baker was one of the first people to pick up on the fact that you sounded rather like Jon Pertwee.

Tim: Yes, that’s right. It was actually my first Big Finish job, Destination Nerva, it was called. I was playing this zombie Victorian, quite fey, quite camp. Tom said to Nick, ‘He sounds like someone, who is it?’ And in the end ‘He sounds like Jon!’ So it started there really, so it’s a bit lucky that I got cast in that particular role, which led onto playing the Doctor.

The scale of this seems quite big. I know the last Third Doctor one The Annihilators, was quite an epic story, and it seems like they’re upping the scale of the stories.

Tim: Yes, they went for the seven parter didn’t they? So yes, that was a departure and quite an experience as well, yes. It was great.

Are you back in the studio now, recording?

Tim: Sometimes yes. I’m recording slightly later from home but I go to a studio which is not too far from me, it’s about 40 minutes away outside London, it’s in the countryside. It’s the same studio that Tom recorded in, so that’s quite fortunate they let me do that. I can keep pretending that I’m very scared of going on the tube or something like that.

Does it make a difference in terms of whether you’re recording virtually or in a studio? Is there a different type of energy?

Sadie: Yes, definitely I mainly record from home but I’m online so I can record with everyone else in real time but for this story, I had to record all of it completely on my own, just with another actor reading in. Some of the scenes I had one take and I had to do it to get it all done. So I’ll be very interested to see what I hear and the sound engineers work their magic to get it all spliced together. It is nice when you can be in the studio and get to know people a bit more and feel that chemistry.

Tim: It’s nice. The last one I did was in studio and everyone was down there. It was just great, the actors together and the banter and inappropriate humour. I’d really missed that.

What would you say is the biggest thing you’ve learned through doing Doctor Who with Big Finish?

Sadie: Well, I guess for me, it’s almost like being part of a repertory company. You come in and although you may not be playing different characters, you get to meet a wide breadth of actors but then there’s that core team that you get to work with again and again. I think it gives you that confidence to try different things, even within the same character and the same performance which I really enjoy. You’ve almost got that safety net underneath you and everyone gets on so well and has a lot of fun, so it feels very collaborative no matter which director or engineer you’re working with. It’s always really an enjoyable session.

Tim: I agree completely with Sadie on that. I replicate exactly what she said. That’s what it’s all about and it’s a lot of fun, it’s always a lot of fun.

It’s great when you’re part of the core team because you can welcome people into the culture that’s there. We’ve also got Nick Briggs there as well, who’s very much in the Whoverse. So it’s just fantastic, it’s always a very friendly environment, we create; we help engender and foster that.

Does Kaleidoscope push your characters in any unusual places?

Tim: It’s on Earth and it’s set in the halcyon days of the early 70s.

Sadie: Yes, there’s some kind of military aspect coming in and obviously you’ve seen the snowmobile that Jon is on [on the cover] so there might be a bit of bobbing around to different countries as well. And for Sarah, she has a rivalry with another journalist so it’s quite interesting to have that, in a time when women were pushing on to get ahead. Seeing two women butting heads in that way as well was quite interesting.

Tim: Yes, it’s very Cold War orientated.

There’s been a running theme in the last few box sets of Tim, your Doctor, getting to check everything off the checklist that Jon Pertwee didn’t get to do himself. So, you’ve done everything from hot air balloons to rocket boots to tobogganing through the snow on a tea tray! Is there any particularly mad piece of transport that you would like to see him use – I don’t think he’s been on the Tube at rush hour yet…

Tim: Haven’t been on the Tube at rush hour, no. I did ask Nick if he could meet the Cybermen, so we did that because that was one that scared the hell out of me as a kid. I’d like him to meet K-9, I’d love that. I loved K-9 as a kid, Tom Baker was my Doctor so yes, I’d love to meet K-9.

Big Finish are really good at dancing between creating pitch perfect recreations of very specific eras but they’re also really good at bouncing in other styles, like the recent Classic Doctors New Monsters you guys did together. Is there an approach you prefer or you’d like to see more of?

Sadie: I quite enjoy both really. I don’t feel, as an actor, a huge distinction between the performance aspect because I guess a lot of that feel of it comes after. I don’t know how you feel, Tim?

Tim: Yes, to be honest I haven’t really got a view on that. I just enjoy what’s put in front of me really. I haven’t got any particular needs, I’m not really demanding, in many ways so… As long as you get a lunch, I’m fine with it. Obviously, it would be interesting to add different elements in that respect but no, I don’t mind really.

When I spoke to Michael Troughton a few weeks back about coming in to play the second Doctor, he said that there was a specific couple of lines that he remembers his Dad doing that gets him in the zone, for want of a better phrase, for it. Is there something that either of you has that makes you think ‘Right, I’m now the third Doctor.’ ‘I’m now Sarah Jane.’? And I’m consciously saying that, not saying ‘Being Jon Pertwee or being your mum.’ I’m talking about being the character.

Tim: Yes, you’re not going to like this. [does a great Worzel Gummidge impression that no transcriber is going to touch!]

Sadie: (Laughs)

Tim: I’m half joking, ‘I shall reverse the polarity’, something like that. For me, it’s more in the sibilance; when they put a lot of s’s in the script, I’m delighted. And when he says ‘Good grief’ a lot and ‘rather’, that rolled r, that’s what helps me get in. A lot of it is throat placement, where I place the voice, but then those little tics and the speech patterns he had and the pace at which he spoke and the confidence with which he spoke, that’s my thing. So I haven’t got a particular phrase.

Sadie: No, I don’t think I do either but I try and rewatch, if it’s the third Doctor we’re recording, I’ll watch The Time Warrior, if it’s the fourth Doctor then maybe Pyramids of Mars just a little bit before we start recording because it gets it into your muscle memory and then you kind of feel the cadence a bit more. And I feel Mum as Sarah was quite tight sometimes in the mouth and it was quite a forward placement. So it’s just trying to feel that.

I think the scripts are so well written that once it gets going, your body and your voice are matched together and it finds where it needs to be. It’s difficult to explain, I think, doing these weird hand movements.

Tim: I completely get that. No, I have the same thing, with the hands on the hips or the finger – the mannerisms. I watch things as well like, The Dæmons is my current favourite. So, watching stuff back, like Sadie said to get into your muscle memory is key, I think.

Do you find it easier now, after you’ve recorded goodness knows how many hours, to drop back into it? Or is it still a ‘this is a role, a very distinct role, that you need to be there for.’

Tim: I agree with the latter, yes absolutely. I’d say I’m more confident getting back into it but yes, it is a distinct role, no doubt. You put your interpretations on it, I guess. You certainly have to pay respect to the essence of it, particularly because there’s a certain delivery, there’s a certain style, there’s certain speech rhythms and physical gestures, like Sadie was saying, that you have to almost replicate in the studio in order to express what you’re saying. I know it sounds a bit odd..

I’ve been to a lot of recordings and I think most people wouldn’t believe how physical this stuff is. Everybody has their own way of getting it from the body movement, into the voice so that it comes back out.

Tim: Yes. I used to think, when I listened to audio in drama school, I was at the BBC Radio Rep, ‘This is the easiest…’ And it’s not, it’s the hardest! It’s actually the hardest, to get it right.

Well, you’re only using one sense, aren’t you.

Tim: Yes, so it’s very hard. I find it exhausting, I’m done by about 3 o’clock to be honest. My energy just goes. Usually, TV or theatre I find energising but it goes the other way round, especially doing the Doctor. I don’t know if Sadie would agree with that but…

Sade: Yes, I think that’s true. You don’t have the same adrenaline as when you’re doing something where people are filming you, or when you’re on stage, because you don’t have that immediate audience participation, co-creation with you when you’re doing it. I think you’re both right because it is so much harder especially re-creating a character that people know because there’s no visual clues, it’s all through the voice. So every time you do it, you’re starting from zero again and you’ve got to put the work in or it doesn’t come out as you intend it to.

You’ve got your version that is still very much the third Doctor and Sarah. Do you feel that you’re playing the part, or you’re playing the original actor, playing the part?

Sadie: I think it’s got to be both, a bit, hasn’t it? Because you’re taking the character but you’re doing it through the mask of the person that was playing it originally. So you have to step into them, in order to embody the character. I guess it would be like if you were doing a biopic or something, you have to honour how they interpreted it. Especially because it’s just audio.  I think if it was something on screen, you’d have a little bit more latitude. I don’t know.

Tim: You can’t just do an impression, you know? With an impression, you lose the heart of it, the acting. Jon Culshaw is a fantastic actor. He’s probably our greatest impressionist but he’s also a fantastic actor, so he’s able to bring out a character within, whereas a pure impression, there would be no enrichment, really.

The whole idea of these scripts is it’s producing something that we didn’t see. We don’t just want a straight replication of Jon Pertwee, forty years later.

Tim: No, of course.

Are there things that you’ve read, when you’ve read the scripts whether for this or earlier ones where you’ve gone ‘How on earth would they have done it?’ Or is it always that it’s how you would go into it? Do you ever try to think it through their mind?

Tim: Yes, luckily when I’ve got Katy in the studio, obviously she worked very closely with Jon, she will sometimes help out on that. So, I can only go from my own mind. I I don’t know what Jon Pertwee was thinking at the time, but I think once you get used to a character, you put your own spin on it, it’s in your heart and in your body.

So, I guess it’s symbiotic but I think, I’m lucky, I’ve got Katy who’ll go, ‘Oh, Jon would have thought this’ or ‘Jon might have said it this way.’ She doesn’t direct me or anything but she’s very helpful, she’s wonderful to have around. She can go, ‘Ahh, he would maybe do that.’ She’ll do the hand manner, ‘This would be a hand on the hip moment.’ Or ‘This will be a hand behind the back of the neck moment.’

So that’s always very helpful for me. For Sadie it’s obviously closer to home.

Sadie: I think because I know, not obviously through the original Doctor Who but through The Sarah Jane Adventures, how she would approach it, I guess, that gives me a little insight into that but I think the scripts are so well written that when even when I read them, just the first read, I can already hear the voice, the placement, not just of Sarah but of whichever Doctor it is as well. It all kind of comes together. I find it very difficult to pick it apart, really because I think a lot of it, as an actor, is just that’s something else, that helps you to do it. I find it very difficult to turn it over and analyse it really.

As Tim says, it has to come from the heart. What do you still find to be the biggest challenge of playing the roles?

Tim: I think, for me, it’s pleasing the audience, to be honest because it’s such a fantastical fan base. I’m very hot on trying to get it right and Nick’s always having to babysit me. I get a little bit insecure about it occasionally. If I hear it back, if suddenly I can hear in the studio that they’ve played it back, I’m mortified. Because, to me it sounds nothing like Jon Pertwee, at all, when I hear it back but that’s just me, that’s just my insecurity about it. I always find that pleasing the audience is the biggest thing for me. Making sure they’re going to be pleased with it.

Sadie: Yes, I would agree with Tim. You want to honour the past as well as bringing in new stories. We were recording one, I can’t remember which one it was now, but Nick Briggs told me that Russell T Davies was on the phone and he’d heard some of it. You just die a little inside, thinking, ‘Oh God, please don’t let him think I’m terrible’!

So I think it’s just that wider reach of Big Finish: you want to honour the fans, the families, the people that love it but also the industry as well. You want your peers to think that you’re doing a good job. So it’s not as much pressure as it sounds but I think that’s the energy that I find challenging. Just making sure you’re doing a good job, really.

Tim: Totally.

Kaleidoscope is out now from Big Finish