Carry on Doctor
There was a new Time Lord in the Tardis 40 years ago as Peter Davison replaced Tom Baker. MARION McMULLEN looks back
THE floppy hat and the long multi-coloured scarf were packed away as Tom Baker said his goodbye to Doctor Who.
He had played the Time Lord for a record seven years, but moved out of the Tardis 40 years ago in the final episode of the Logopolis adventure which went out on BBC1 on March 21, 1981.
He had fought Davros, the Zygons, Morbius and The Fendahl during his time as Doctor Who, but said: “In the end it was not hard to leave the programme. I felt it in my fingertips that the time had come to move over and give someone else a chance. There was nothing more I could do with it.”
Tom starred in 172 episodes of the long-running sci-fi series and once said: “I began to get into the part and then the part began to get into me. I was the Doctor and the Doctor was me. For more than six years I left myself and floated about as a hero.”
Logopolis saw the Doctor form an uneasy alliance with his nemesis the Master, in an attempt to stop the universe from collapsing. More than six million viewers watched the Doctor regenerate after falling from a gantry. His final words were: “It’s the end, but the moment has been prepared for.”
The series finale marked the first appearance of Peter Davison as the fifth Doctor.
He was just 29 at the time and the youngest actor to be cast as the Doctor up to that point.
He said: “I couldn’t turn down the possibility of being the Doctor. I had to accept the part. You just think all the time ‘Am I ever going to work again? I am now playing a 750-year-old Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. Who is going to cast me in anything serious?’”