Tuesday, February 4, 2014

A November, 2013, interview with Peter Davison



Every Thanksgiving weekend but one since 1983, there has been a Doctor Who fan convention in the Chicago area. With 2013 being the 50th anniversary since the science fiction classic debuted on the BBC, Chicago Tardis was one of the biggest of the Chicago conventions in many years. Three Doctors were on hand: No. 5 Peter Davison, No. 6 Colin Baker and No. 8 Paul McGann.

I pitched a story previewing the convention to the Chicago Sun-Times, and was given the go-ahead. A couple of weeks before the event, I interviewed Davison by phone at his U.K. home. You can find the story here: http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/24036603-421/story.html

Just as with other interviews posted on this blog, far too much came out of the conversation to include in one 500-word newspaper story. I really had been looking forward to interviewing Davison. My wife and I have long been big fans of “All Creatures Great and Small,” where he played the young veterinarian Tristan Farnon and we love his more recent series, “The Last Detective.”

If I made a list of my favorite “Doctor Who stories,” the Fifth Doctor would rank high with “The Caves of Androzzani,” “Castrovalva,” “Kinda,” “Snakedance” and “Frontios.” And Davison’s “Doctor Who” ties remain strong. His daughter, Georgia Moffett, played the title role in “The Doctor’s Daughter,” where she met her future husband, Tenth Doctor David Tennant. So the Doctor became the Doctor’s father-in-law.

In the interview that follows, you’ll see a reference to a special Davison had been working on involving older Doctors. It had not been released at the point of interview, and we got into no details. By the time the Chicago Tardis convention rolled around it was available online. It’s a 30-minute comedy called “The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot,” with Davison, Colin Baker, McGann and Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy. If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out --- it’s very funny, and filled with Doctor Who spirit.

What follows is the transcript of the complete interview I did with Davison a couple of weeks before Chicago Tardis. I had a good time doing it, and I hope “Doctor Who” fans enjoy.


Peter Davison: Perfect timing! You’ve got me out of washing the dog.

(laughter). JG: Glad to help! (more laughter) We need to talk about “Doctor Who,” of course, but before we get going, my wife insisted that I had to tell you how much we both liked Dangerous Davies (Davison’s role in “The Last Detective”).

PD: (Sounding surprised.) Oh, good!

JG: The DVD set arrived at the office and my editor asked if I’d like to take a look. My wife and I both loved them.

PD: How nice! Thank you very much.

JG: On to Doctor Who, and the big 50th anniversary year. Have you been doing extra stuff for the celebration?

PD: I have been doing extra stuff yes. When is this going out, your article?

JG: The first day of the convention, last Friday in November.

PD: Oh, good. If you can keep still about this. I have been working on something that I have written and ended up directing as well. A feature with three of the classic Doctors in it. But it’s kind of a secret at the moment. It’s not being broadcast on the TV proper. It will be available on various websites and YouTube and things like that. It’s been part funded by the BBC, and we’ve had very good access to the BBC and all things Doctor Who. I felt a gap because we’re not being in the 50th anniversary as such.

Somebody asked, funnily enough, at the convention, if we were going to be in the 50th anniversary. And I kind of jokingly said if I’m not, I’m damn well going to make my own 50th anniversary special. Then I was asked again at another convention and I thought I’d better get down to this. It’s really taken up, to be honest with you, quite a lot of this year.

That banging in the background is probably them trying to catch the dog. Don’t worry about that.

Yes, I have been working on this, and I hope the fans enjoy it.

JG: Going back in time a bit, is there anything you’re particularly proud of in your time as the Doctor?

PD: It’s odd that when I became Doctor Who, I was the first who grew up watching. Of course they were older Doctors then. I felt I was a bit young when I was offered it. I was used to the sort of older Doctors, and for a long time I think probably I felt like that. When the new series came and we’ve had a succession of younger Doctors, now looking at the viewpoint of today, I don’t see myself as out of place at all. In fact, it seems almost like I started a trend. I think if anything, the idea of young Doctors was not a bad idea.


With Doctor who in the old days, because it wasn’t at that time a prestigious program --- it was very popular, it sold to 39 countries and made the BBC  a lot of money --- but it wasn’t considered by the BBC at that time to be a prestigious program. So we didn’t have a great budget or anything like that, but it was immensely popular. I think my final story (“The Caves of Androzzani”), I think it was recently a couple of years ago voted the best Doctor Who story ever, so I’m kind of proud of that. Because it was a good way to leave the program,. I did turn into Colin Baker at the end, which wasn’t quite so hot. (laughs).

JG: “Caves of Androzzani,” --- I’m a fan as well as being a journalist …

PD: OK.

JG: … it reminds me in some ways of a Hartnell story structure, in that the Doctor spends the story just trying to get out of a dangerous situation instead of trying to provide a solution.

PD: That’s in part, I think, because we had Robert Holmes writing it. He was a classic “Doctor Who" writer. Probably we had too few solid “Doctor Who” people writing. They tended to put them out to sort of writers who one day would write a cop show, the next day a hospital drama or a country house mystery. They weren’t hugely devoted to the genre or the program in particular. That was a case where everything seemed to come right. We had Bob Holmes write it, and we had a very different sort of director in Graham Harper and we had a great cast.

JG: You’ve had such a busy career, always in demand. Did you learn anything from “Doctor Who” that you took away into your later career?

PD: Hmmm … I don’t know how much. There simply isn’t time to learn any details. I suppose you learn patience, actually, if anything. Even when you have great scenes, you’re doing them either at a hectic pace or to a green screen, which is the only kind of special effect we had in those days, and the person you’re talking to is not actually there.

You just learn really how to cope with adversity. The things that take the time are things that have nothing to do with you, especially when they’re getting a special effect right or lining up a particular shot. I’d done “All Creatures Great and Small” before, and really, I learned more about the craft of acting on television on that and on subsequent shows than on Doctor Who, if I’m honest. You use very useful technical things. You learn very quickly where the camera is, what the camera’s trying to do, if you’re blocking anyone, if you found your light. So things like that I think learned, yeah,.

JG: How much of the new series have you watched?

PD:  Pretty much all of it, because I have two sons, who are 12 and 14 now, and they are “Doctor Who” fans, We watch it, nearly every episode. I’m about a half an hour short of the last episode. It’s not TIVO, it’s our equivalent of TIVO, and we haven’t finished it. Generally speaking I sit and watch it with them.

JG : Billie Piper [who played Rose Tyler opposite the Ninth and Tenth Doctors] once said that at its heart, “Doctor Who” is a love story in time and space. That’s very different from your day.

PD: Very, very different, yes. I don’t know, in a way, I get slightly envious of the fact that the Doctor seems to get romantically involved with all the companions. In my day, I wasn’t even allowed to put my arm around the female companions for fear that people might think there was hanky-panky going on in the TARDIS. That doesn’t seem to be a concern now.

I have mixed feelings about it really. I think it works very well. That after years of struggling to get companions right, the first companion I think they ever really got quite right was in fact Rose. You want to make a strong character, but also a passionate character, and I think it was a brilliantly written part. And there was this frisson with the Doctor, there’s no doubt about that. It was more of a kind of love story.

JG: The restriction on having the arm around the companion, that was more specific to your younger Doctor. It was no problem for Jon Pertwee to have his cape around Katy Manning.

PD: No, with the previous Doctors that would just have been all right. Indeed, the First Doctor was a grandfather,. So you’re right, it was specific to me, sort of my dashing sort of young Doctor.

JG : Did you feel any special pride when your daughter landed a role in the show? (NOTE: Davison’s daughter, Georgia Moffett, played the title role in “The Doctor’s Daughter” opposite Tenth Doctor David Tennant, whom she later married.)

PD: Definitely. Originally, she went in for a very general casting for the part of Rose. I’m sure many actresses were seen for that part. Well, that didn’t happen. Then early in the same season in which she appeared --- I can’t remember which story and probably shouldn’t tell you even if I could --- she went up for a part and in fact she was offered the part and she was very excited about it.

Then they rang her the next day and said, “If you want to do the part we offered you, that’s absolutely fine, but if you wait for two or three months, we have a much better part coming up down the road.” She rang me up and said, “What should I do?” And I said I suppose if they’re saying it’s a better part down the road, then wait for that. And so she did. Of course when the story came along, it was called “The Doctor’s Daughter.” And I thought really, that’s what was better about it. It wasn’t just that the part was better, it was a brilliant title to have her cast in. Nevertheless, it worked out very well.

Really, yes, I did feel a sense of pride, I guess, because it was a major part

--- uh-oh, they’re showing me the washed dog. (Laughs.) OK – take him away~

I’d never really left “Doctor Who.” When you’re the Doctor and you’ve finished your stint, you are the Doctor plus your number. So I was always Doctor Five. I’d been to the conventions. I was always of involved with the show. So yes, I did feel a sense of pride, and she’s a very good little actress,

JG: Then she became the Doctor’s wife, as well

PD:  Indeed. Which of course made it even more complicated. You should have heard the father of the bride speech. I had to stop when it got to the point where it seemed like she married me. It was a very nice story, because they didn’t start going out together immediately when they worked together. I think they worked together and they left it and exchanged telephone numbers, and eventually he rang her up and asked her to the theater, And she said, “Why does he keep asking me to the theater?” And I said, “Well, maybe he likes you.” It was nice.

JG: How do you like David’s incarnation of the Doctor?

PD: I like it very much. What I loved about it … Chris Eccleston was terrific, but I think what David brought to it was a kind of passion for the show itself because he had grown up being a Doctor Who fan. When I heard his name mentioned first of all, I just didn’t think he’d do it, because his star was rising. He’d just done “Casanova,” and he really could have done so many things. But when Doctor Who came along, he just couldn’t turn it down because in a way like me, he’d grown up watching it, and he was such a huge fan, and probably imagined many times the idea of playing the Doctor, and there he was offered it. It seemed to me like he put his career on hold to play the Doctor, and in fact he made such a success of it, it launched him into all sorts of other things. I think it was a wise move.

JG: Chris Bidmead [a former Doctor Who writer and script editor] has said he likes the new series, he just wishes they wouldn’t call it “Doctor Who” …

PD: (laughs)

JG: Do you think the Doctor in the revived series is the same man as the Doctor in the classic series?

PD: I do, kind of yes,. I know the formula is different, there’s no doubt about that, and if you’re a Doctor Who fan, you either love it or you hate it. I’ve heard many people come up at conventions and say, “I love the classic series, I don’t like this new series, it’s too superficial and they don’t have time to develop the story and they miss the cliffhangers.” 

Personally what I like about it is I think the scripts now are almost invariably written by people with a passion for the genre of Doctor Who itself, and I think that shows. I love some of Russell T’s scripts and Steven Moffat’s scripts and Mark Gatiss’ scripts. They’re all super Doctor Who fans. I don’t think they’ve left the classic series behind. They’ve changed the genre, and I do have some arguments with that. To me it’s a bit too wham, bam. Things happen very quickly and there is no time to develop a story. But the story itself, I always thinks is very good.

JG: The pacing is much, much different than in the classic series.

PD: Yes. Sometimes, it’s just in the last couple of years, maybe I’m getting old and senile, but I used to pride myself that I could sit there and understand everything that’s going on. I have found myself a couple of times this season turning to my son and going, “What’s going on?” But that may just be me. I enjoy it though, I think it’s very good, and I do think it’s the same man, but they’ve made it sort of a different pace.

I’d like to think that I did introduce a certain element of self-doubt into the Doctor, which hadn’t been there before. Which is much more developed in the newer Doctors, that feeling of “Am I doing the right thing? Am I in control?” I liked all the previous Doctors, but I thought sometimes there wasn’t an element of “What’s going on?” and being slightly out of your depth. I wanted to bring that sort of feeling to it.

JG: And you got to reprise the role along with David [Tennant] in the Children in Need special, “Time Crash.”

PD: I wanted to do it. Steven Moffat came to me and said “I’ve written this for the Children in Need,” and asked “Would you like to do it?” “I read it and thought it was a fantastic little script that worked on two levels, It was the Tenth Doctor remembering being the Fifth Doctor, but it was also David remembering watching me as the Doctor. It was just brilliantly done. By that time they were filming in Cardiff, which was a long way from where we were filming in London. And they had what they call a standing set, so they didn’t have to take it down at the end of the studio and put it in a store cupboard. It was left there. And so it was much better, sort of more solid and intricate a set than we had. But nevertheless, I had a great time doing it, and by the time we finished I could have carried on for, well, another couple of years, really. (Laughs) No, but it worked out very well.

JG : In “Time Crash,” David gives the speech with the heartfelt “You were MY Doctor.” Your Doctor was Patrick Troughton, correct?

PD: Yes …

JG: And you got to work with Patrick in “The Five Doctors.” What did you like about Patrick, and his interpretation of the Doctor?

PD: I did work with him, yes, on a couple of occasions, He was in an episode of “All Creatures Great and Small,” and then of course we did “The Five Doctors.” What I loved about him, I suppose, was I watched William Hartnell, and at the time no one had dreamt of the idea of regeneration. It wasn’t in the picture at all. And then William Hartnell became too ill to carry on and the BBC didn’t want to end the program. And they came up with this idea that the Doctor had regenerations.

I remember being very trepidatious about watching Patrick, a new Doctor. Because to me William Hartnell was the Doctor. And I remember sitting there and thinking, “I’m not going to like this, I’m really not going to like this.” And by the end of the first episode he had just won you over. Because he introduced a kind of humor that really wasn’t there before. Not that I’d missed it at all, it just wasn’t there. He was sort of befuddled and it was just an extraordinary character he came up with. He was really to me the reason that the program really became hugely popular, because he was able to inject something different into it, and far from being turned off, everyone just climbed aboard.

JG: What I’ve seen of Patrick’s era is a few complete stories and some bits and pieces, with so much of his time missing. But now they’ve recovered “The Enemy of the World” and most of “The Web of Fear.”.  

PD: Lying on the floor somewhere in Africa, yeah.

JG: Have you gone back and watched?
PD: I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t had time to do that yet. But they look actually in not bad condition. I think they’ve done a fantastic restoration job on it. I look forward to seeing it again.

JG : You mentioned earlier that after “Time Crash,” you felt you could have gone on. How would your approach be different, IF you were to come back to play the Doctor as an older man.

PD:  I think I’d just take advantage of the way they’ve developed his character, his mental state. You see much more of the Doctor than you did in my day. It was really about sort of … I just think the scripts are better. I’d look forward to playing the scripts. Largely I think the scripts are … for an actor, they’re much more exciting to do now.

JG : Almost from the beginning of your association with “Doctor Who,” you’ve appeared at conventions.

PD:  The first one I think I did was a big Chicago convention in uh, 1983, I think it was.

JG: That sounds right. They had the MASSIVE conventions here at the time

PD: Chicago has always been a stronghold of Doctor Who fandom. I always thought they [conventions] would sort of go away, and they just haven’t. They’ve just carried on. It’s very nice now when you go over there, you still have that hard core of fans who have been loyal to the program for years, and very often they bring along their children who they’ve brainwashed. [Laughs] But you also of course get the people who come to the show, you have a slightly wider visibility. So I often get sort of kids coming up. I do worry that they’re a bit shocked when they actually see me because they’ve probably gone back and watched The Five Doctors or whatever from my era, and they see me and go, “Who’s that?” It’s very nice, they’re huge fans of the program and it’s wonderful to see, really.

JG: Obviously, during a convention, you’re working. But besides that, what do you get out of conventions?

PD: I can’t say that it’s not very pleasant to be told how wonderful you are for an entire weekend. Also, I kind of know what it’s like to be a fan,. I can’t put it any more concisely than that. You kind of know when you go along that you meet them and you’re nice to them and you’re friendly, and it’s a nice moment. It would have been a huge moment for me. So I kind of know how it feels. And it’s nice. It makes you feel very good that you’re making people feel happy.
Also, it’s nice to talk about the program,. We talk about it in a fairly irreverent way, quite often. And the fans love it, and enjoy it and seem entertained by it. It’s nice to do it.

JG : With the new series, the convention crowds seem to be getting younger. A friend of mine is on the planning committee for Chicago Tardis, and he jokes about middle-aged men putting on a convention for teenaged girls.

PD: (Laughs). I didn’t know about that. That cant be a bad thing, can it? (Laughs some more)/

JG : No, no, it can’t.

PD: You’re probably right, It’s a younger audience. I;’m not sure that it’s me that the younger female fans come to swoon at, sadly. It’s nice to have a varied bunch of people coming up to take a photograph or have me sign something for them.

JG : I come with my son, who’s 22 and been watching Doctor Who since he was born, really. You’re HIS Doctor, the one he really latched onto when he was younger.

PD: Oh good, that’s really nice to hear.

JG: This has been great, thank you. I really enjoyed talking with you, and look forward to seeing you back in Chicago.

PD: Thank you, I look forward to it, too. I have to go and dry the dog now!




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