THE Doctor. :)

I'm just starting to watch the Tom Baker episodes after a long, long time. I watched old Doctor Who with my dad when they were re-run on TV when I was little, but I'm watching them properly. He really is probably my favourite Doctor :D

That's Jon Culshaw (Dead Ringers), who does a pretty dead-on impression of the Fourth Doctor. The first time I heard his impression of Four was in the Big Finish Fifth Doctor play, The Kingmaker (which I highly recommend, it's one of their best). I was really confused when I first heard that play, because I knew Tom Baker wasn't involved in Big Finish plays, but the impression sounded so accurate.

Which TB eps have you seen?

I know I found it pretty easy to look past the wobbly sets and bad effects with TB around, he was just so entertaining to watch.

I've watched The Ark in Space today, watching the Sontaran Experiment now. :) My dad started watching it with me when he realised what I was doing :lol:

I agree with that. He's amazing! I love his facial expressions :lol:

Yes, this is definitely true for me, too. Sometimes when I haven't seen a classic DW episode in a while and then get back to it, I'm actually surprised by the effects because I've made them better in my mind over time - if that makes sense. Just because when you think back on those amazing stories, you don't think of the wobbly sets and the tinfoil aliens :lol:

Well, I was just giggling at how the Sontaran that died really did look like a deflating balloon :lol: But yeah, it is pretty easy to look past it all. I really need to get the DVDs. But I'm finding it quite hard to find ones that are in stock. :/

Yeah, I think it adds a little something, though :lol: I've gotten quite fond of the shoddy sets and the paper mache baddies, so to speak. And like you said, it's easy to look through that and focus on the actual story at hand, too.

So, watching them through in order then? That first TB series was pretty strong, with Genesis of the Daleks being one of the best Dalek stories they ever had. I also quite liked Ark in Space - the bubble-wrap monsters were a bit distracting, but the story was excellent.

I thought it might be best for me to that, yeah :nod: I've just started Genesis of the Daleks :D I can already see a few parallels with Tom Baker's series and the current one, especially the stories following on from each other.

I really enjoyed Ark in Space. I think I may have watched that one before. The problem is, all the episodes I watched when I was little seem to meld together :lol:

Enjoy Genesis of the Daleks, I really liked that one :)

I always loved the first season with Tom Baker. Four Sarah and Harry are still one of my favorite Tardis crews.

It's funny, but I think through the whole first season of the Tom Baker era they never showed the inside of the Tardis.

I agree. Shame they didn't keep Harry around for longer, though I understand it was more complicated writing for three of them. But it's nice to have some variety in the crew, and not just the older Doctor / younger female companion dynamic all the time.

It's true. They weren't even travelling with the TARDIS most of the time - it got them to the station in the Ark in Space, then they didn't meet up with it again until Revenge of the Cybermen.

Key To Time with Mary Tamm was also great.

Agreed, the Key to Time season was also very strong. I think that's why it was one of the first DW DVD releases for region 1, and the first DW DVDs I owned.

The Fourth Doctor had some of the best companions, including both the Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward Romanas. The only Fourth Doctor companions I didn't much care for were Leela and Adric.

I just finished listening to Hornet's Nest, the BBC audiobook series where Tom Baker finally reprises his role as the Fourth Doctor. It also includes Richard Franklin as Mike Yates, which I thought was kind of odd as he was only around duing the Pertwee era, and not exactly the most memorable character.

While it was certainly great to hear the Fourth Doctor again, I didn't really like the style of this series, it was more audiobook than dramatized play. Although there were multiple actors involved, it mostly consisted of the Doctor narrating the story, and not in a particularly Fourth-Doctor-ish way. And although author Paul Magrs is no stranger to Doctor Who, parts of the story didn't feel very Who-ish to me either. In general, I was disappointed by the plays, though it's definitely worth a listen for Fourth Doctor fans, if for no other reason than its rareity.

But I'm much more excited about the recent news from Big Finish - not only have they renewed their Doctor Who license as they do each year, but it looks like they're finally bringing Tom Baker on board for their Doctor Who range.

Big Finish - News

I love Big Finish's Doctor Who line and spinoffs, and Tom Baker is the only living Classic Who Doctor who hasn't yet been involved in their plays.

As a side note, next year they're also going to be bringing the spin-off series Gallifrey back for another season. The series ended in a cliffhanger ending a few years ago, with a story that indirectly seemed like it could be a prelude for the Time War (although Big Finish are not allowed to do stories that tie in with the New Series according to the terms of their license). And although the series doesn't directly involve the Doctor, it involves several of the Fourth Doctor's companions - Romana II, Leela and K-9 are main characters, and Romana I has made a few appearances as well.

Big Finish - News

After a long wait, Big Finish finally made it official today:

Tom Baker Joins Big Finish

He'll be joined by Louise Jameson (Leela) and Mary Tamm (Romana I), with the first season to be released next year.

Cool. Now that's something to look forward to.

It was originally going to be with Liz Sladen :( and Hornets Nest was going to be with The Brigadier. RIP to the pair of them.

Back to Tom- Genesis of the Daleks remains my favourite episode, along with The Five Doctors. Shame he chose not to appear in it. Wonder if he'd do the 50th Anniversary special...

Hornet's Nest came out in 2009, and the sequel Demon Quest in 2010, before Nick Courtney died in Feb. 2011. I don't think there's any reason that he wouldn't have done it if they'd asked, so I'm not sure Nick was supposed to be involved with those plays. The last audio that Nick did for Big Finish (and, as it turned out, the last time he played the Brig) was The Three Companions, which was also released in 2009-2010.

There was talk about Liz Sladen getting involved with Tom's Big Finish work, but no concrete plans for it had been made before she died. I remember Tom participated in a number of Big Finish podcasts after it was announced he was going to do Fourth Doctor plays, and he mentioned talking to Liz about it, but he didn't know she was sick and was as surprised as anyone when she died. Tom did see Nick Courtney shortly before he died.

The Big Finish folks knew Liz and Nick quite well, and although they tried not to make the podcasts following their deaths too depressing, they did include a few very poignant favourite moments from their Big Finish work. One clip was from the Brigadier story Old Soldiers, which I had difficulty listening to in the weeks after hearing of his death, it was too sad. Liz Sladen's clips were from her Sarah Jane Smith audio series, one of my favourite clips of her in that was a bit where she reminisced about Harry Sullivan.

Heh ... after so long resisting Big Finish's invitation to do audio plays as the Fourth Doctor (they did their first with the other living Doctors back in 1999), Tom finally agreed to do it in 2010. Very delicately, Nick Briggs asked him on a podcast why Tom finally agreed, he said some thing like, "Well, I'm a very capricious fellow". So basically, not even Tom really knows what he'll do. Whatever he feels like at the time I guess.

Yes but the orginal plan was for him to do the audios instead of Richard Franklin and was also set to give Sarah Jane away at her wedding, thereby meeting David Tennants Doctor, but he suffered a stroke in 2009 which prevented it. This was confirmed by Russell T Davies in Doctor Who Magazine.

Well when she died, Tom Baker put a tribute up on his website saying:

Sarah Jane dead? No, impossible! Impossible. Only last week I agreed to do six new audio adventures with her for Big Finish Productions.

So it did look like she would definitely be reuniting with Tom for Big Finish, which I'm sure made her death all the tougher for Tom.

Anyway back to Tom and to cheer the thread up a bit


:lol:

Unfortunately, I can't see the vid on this computer. What is it?

I'm curious, did you listen to Hornet's Nest (and/or the sequels), and if so what did you think about it?

I didn't really like the style and wasn't too impressed with Hornet's Nest, though I did like Demon Quest better. I haven't listened to Serpent Crest yet.

Its comedian Jon Culshaw dressed as Tom Baker interviewing Tom Baker- its surreal :lol:

I haven't listened to them no. As I said on the Mccoy thread, I go for audio/books etc based onthe plot and it didn't really excite me as much as say Terra Nova did. But I'll get round to getting it and listening to it soon, cos I'm interested to see how both Tom and Richard Franklin adapt back into the role they did 40 odd years ago...

I love Culshaw's Fourth Doctor impression, and all the bits he did on the phone or on the street pretending to be the Doctor. He doesn't look like TB, but he sounds so much like him it's kinda scary.

Have you heard the Big Finish audio The Kingmaker? When I first subscribed to BF's monthly DW audios, that was the first one that I got in the mail, and it's still one of my all-time favourite BF plays. And it was in that play that I first heard Jon Culshaw.

I haven't no :lol: I'm not a subscriber to Big Finish so never get round to getting them but I do own some of them :lol:

If you buy one BF DW play, you won't go wrong with that one. It's a Fifth Doctor story with Peri and Erimem, and it takes place in the era of Richard III.

Normally BF will only use the original actors to play DW characters and does not replace them with impersonators, but in this case they allowed a few bits of Fourth Doctor dialogue into the play, and they were performed by Culshaw. When I first heard it, I thought really might be TB, which is why I checked and found out about Culshaw. The play is also written by Nev Fountain, who wrote for Dead Ringers.

The guy who plays Richard III also sounds an awful lot like Chris Eccleston, though it isn't him.