I just finished watching the awesome Five Doctors. Loved every minute of it! Cybermen! Daleks! Crazy ninja robot guards! Whats not to love, plus an awesome story. My one question is...what the hell tom baker? Barely in it for 5 minutes. Does anybody know the reason he was only in 5 random gondola pondering minutes?
He refused to participate... they used footage from Shada [the Douglas Adams story left unfinished because of a BBC strike] to fill in for him.
Well the dummy they borrowed from the waxwork museum for the stuck in the vortex scenes got along with the rest of the cast fine, hardly an ego at all to work around. There's a Four Doctors Audio that's fun with 5, 6, 7 and 8 running afoul of the Daleks, but they don't meet. Then there's a 5 companions Audio on the other hand which gas has Ian Chesterton meeting up with 5 where Nyssa says "Are you sure we should let him do that Doctor Doctor? He's an old man..." to which 5 replies "There are things that that man has done in his life which would turn your hair white Nyssa." And lets not forget the fantastic fan-comic the 10 doctors... http://comics.shipsinker.com/?id=18. It's almost the 50th anniversary. Anything can happen in 2013.
If I recall, it was because he'd only been away from the part for about three years. He was trying to move on with his career, so he just felt it was too soon. Of course he's since said that he regrets the decision. But, ah well.
Another reason is he felt his popularity would overshadow Peter Davison, which he didn't think would be fair since this was now Davison's show.
Yea, that's certainly understandable, I would have the same concern for Matt Smith's 50th Anniversary Special, if he was still in his first or Second Series, but, I think after his 3rd Series, he will have made his mark solidly already if the 50th goes Multi-Doctor.
Yeah, at this point Smith has consolidated himself in the role enough that they can bring back David Tennant or Tom Baker or whoever and not worry about them overshadowing him.
As David Tennant stated in the commentry it was basically 3 and a half Doctors and a bloke in a whig.
Well, yes, it really is three Doctors, with stock footage of a Doctor and a guy pretending to be a Doctor. Whatever, it's the most Doctors we'll ever have onscreen.
Not having Baker around was probably a good thing. It gave Davison and the older Doctors more screen time. A good thing sat least in the US, since he was the only Doctor many fans knew.
Did they ever release the unused script the revealed that the first doctor was really a robot working for the Daleks?
I think that was one of Robert Holmes' pitches, but I don't think it ever got past the outline. The script I'd like to see is Dicks' first draft which was heavy on Tom Baker, written at a time when it looked like he was going to do it.
I loved Bakers commentary on one of the DVD where he talks about the wax dummy they got to stand in for him, and how people at the time were prasing his acting in the five doctors and stating how well he was looking.
I haven't seen some of those either. The bottom one with The Fifth Doctor riding K-9 is especially funny. I, too, would like to see Dick's original draft that focused heavily on The Fourth Doctor.
If you didn't know that was a wax mummy they're all looking and smiling at, you'd think that they were all reacting to something amusing Tom Baker had just said. Which makes it funny -- but also deeply weird.