Doctor Who - Documentary s06e15 Episode Script

War Zone

NARRATOR: Who was he, this mysterious wanderer in time and space known only as ''The Doctor''? For six years he'd been an enigma.
The viewing public could only guess as to his true origins.
Who was this man of fierce intellect and impeccable morals, who could regenerate his body at times of mortal stress, who had free movement through all creation in a police box? We were about to find out.
They're coming.
Mercury.
NARRATOR: In 1969, Patrick Troughton had been playing The Doctor for three years and had decided to move on.
At that time, there was a feeling amongst the hierarchy of the BBC that the show had become somewhat tired.
That it had perhaps reached the end of its natural life.
Doctor Who managed always to pick its feet up.
And as such it had a very chequered career, some up, some down, some good, some bad.
Could be where the kids were out playing with a football or whether it was raining and they're staying in and watching Doctor Who.
It, like all shows that are long-running like this, it had a fairly faithful audience of between four and five million.
If it was doing well, it went up to six, seven, eight, and occasionally nine.
There was a general feeling, certainly after Patrick announced, you know, that he was leaving, there was a general feeling that, that would most likely be the end of the show, you see.
'Cause I mean, it had, had what, two, three years with Hartnell and three years with Patrick.
That's a good life for a TV show.
You know, you can retire honourably on that, you see.
NARRATOR: The two stories that were originally planned to take up the last ten weeks of season six had hit problems.
It is an interesting, sort of, period for Doctor Who because, like so many things in life, things get more interesting when you're kind of doing it on the fly and you're not quite sure what's going on.
There had been other stories planned to fill those slots.
It all went horribly wrong and people started having to improvise.
NARRATOR: Recently promoted from being an assistant script editor to script editor proper, Terrance Dicks was given the task of creating a story to fill the void.
Derrick came into my office one day and said, ''Terrence, we need a ten-part Doctor Who and we need it tomorrow, ''or if not tomorrow, at least next week,'' you know.
And I suppose, you know, being young and keen and naive, I said, ''Okay,'' you know.
I said, ''Terrence, we had a tough time coming up with some pretty bad scripts ''which I have got to work on very heavily, ''with the writers and without the writers in some cases.
''Would you like to do a series of script for me? ''Maybe you and Malc Hulke together.
'' DICKS: And I realised that I couldn't do it myself and brought in Mac Hulke who I'd worked with before on Avengers and who was also a very experienced TV writer and my friend and mentor in the business, you know, and Mac sort of came through like a Trojan.
But they went away and a couple of days later he came back and said, ''We want to do something called War Games.
'' I said, ''What do you mean? Get all the old directors in with grey hair ''and let them mess about with toy soldiers?'' And he said, ''No, no, new idea.
'' The War Games was a real eccentricity, you know, a one-off, and, please God, will never be done again.
Oddly enough, sometimes, it can make you be more creative, because you don't have time to kind of sit around and go, ''What about Wouldn't it be good if we could'' Right, I need to get to the story really quickly.
What is exciting, what can keep us going, you've just got to get on with it, and I think something kind of happens in your mind.
At the same time, I think if I had to do Suddenly come up with a 10-episode story, I probably would go away and cry a little bit.
So I'm amazed that the quality of it stands up and it's really great all the way through.
You may have changed your appearance, but I know who you are.
DERRICK: This is one of the few stories I've ever come across that was made on a piece of elastic and you could keep stretching it.
Because it was a never-ending story.
I mean, how many wars have we had? You could always go from the Americans to the Mexicans, to the Romans to World War I, you know.
So we were able to keep it going, but it was immensely difficult, it really was.
NARRATOR: The War Games brief was agreed just before Christmas, 1968, with the formal commission dated early'January, 1969.
This gave the writers a little over two months before production was due to begin.
That particular series was actually being written as I was working on it.
As I was preparing it and as we were actually making it, later episodes were still being written.
And I remember we used to have script conferences about it.
And I was asked what wars we ought to cover.
So I said, ''Well, I'll go home and ask my 12-year-old son.
'' He's interested in history and wars and so he said that he'd like to see something of the American Civil War, of the Romans.
So a lot of his ideas were sort of worked on and incorporated in the script.
The old-time accepted fan consensus about The War Games is that it's nine episodes of boredom and then the Time Lords show up and that's great.
And that's just not true at all.
It's actually a really well-paced story.
It feels a lot snappier and a lot speedier than a lot of the six and seven-episode trudges that we've had in the last couple of years.
The whole point was variety, to go from one to the other.
Have a different look and feel, have different characters.
I mean, one of the, sort of, great moments of which is when the people from the First World War suddenly see Roman soldiers in their chariots thundering towards them out of the mist, you see.
That's a good moment and, you know, you can kind of reproduce that where, you know, Mexican bandits and Southern colonels and all kinds of people turn up, you know, so, it was variety we needed in order to keep the thing going.
It's full of extraordinary twists and turns that are twists and turns, full of reversals, full of character.
Terrence and Malcolm Hulke actually give the aliens an awful lot of conflict within their own ranks.
And not only that, some of the wars chosen are quite unusual ones.
The Mexican Revolution, The Peninsular War.
There are little history lessons spiced throughout, it's really good Doctor Who.
(ALARM BLARING) We used to do a lot of what I later called loop stories, in which they escaped from whoever was holding them at the time, they dashed up and down corridors, or whatever we could afford to do, then they got captured again.
You know, so you'd filled up about 10 minutes and the plot hadn't moved forward one iota.
The war games on this planet are simply the means to an end.
The aliens intend to conquer the entire galaxy.
I think the concept that the aliens are collecting soldiers from different times, making them Kind of putting them in the Champions League of war, having them fight against each other so they can construct one big, mad army.
It doesn't really bear much thinking about.
What would that army be like? Genghis Khan in charge talking to some French people.
But, erm, I don't know, I think maybe that's the weak point.
But we never get to look at the weak point, this is Doctor Who.
The whole idea is we're kept away from the weak point through sleight of hand.
NARRATOR: Returning to direct The War Games for his third story that season was David Maloney, already well on his way to becoming one of the most accomplished directors ever to work on the show.
SPILSBURY: It's a colossal story, so it's a real achievement that David Maloney keeps the thing seeming fast-moving and every episode, every few minutes, there's some extra revelation, plot twist.
I mean, they do go into the Central Zone and they go back to the First World War.
So there's a certain amount of, kind of, going back on themselves, but there is always that feeling of the thing moving on.
And that's a combination of a good script and a good director.
David was very frenetic, he was very intense also.
Up to here with a script and usually had a cigarette in his hand and he was And he would do the motions and say the words with you and Encourage you, you know, run, run, run, run out of here into the Well, he's a past actor, and, I think actors who become directors, they know how actors feel.
They know if an actor's fooling around, it's he's getting something out of his system, he's not just fooling around.
And David, again Lovely man to work with.
Really nice, and you could suggest things to him, and he wouldn't go, ''No, I'm the'' ''Oh, yes, I think I could change that'' He was lovely, he was one of our favourites.
Yeah, he was a lovely man.
Oh, he was such an easy fellow to get on with, but he knew what he was doing, and he knew how to get out of his company what he wanted from them.
And he was patient and interested and full of ideas.
Very professional, which is rather like a school.
Do you know what I mean? A school always reflects the headmaster.
I wouldn't begin to say that David was a headmaster.
But the Doctor Whos that I was involved in with him reflected him.
I think with The War Games, the actual length of the serial and the repetition of certain scenes and sets liberated more money for us, and possibly we could engage the actors from episode to episode.
And that contributed to our budget, in the sense that, as we find nowadays, the one off anything, the accountants will say, is too expensive.
You've got to do six of them or 20 of them in order to get your money back.
But I think, in those days, we probably benefited from doing a long Doctor Who serial of ten parts.
Take cover.
DICKS: The thing aboutThe War Games, of course, it's an epic by definition.
I mean, we did actually do it with like a handful of soldiers.
You don't actually see any armies.
You know, there's half a dozen here and half a dozen there.
So we kept it down to whatever was practical, but, obviously, a thing on that size is going to be expensive.
We did have, you know, two serials' budgets, the six and the four, to blend together, to cover it with, but Whether or not it overspent, I really didn't care.
You know, I just wanted to get the scripts out and see them done.
I say.
NARRATOR: The sheer scale of the storyline required an enormous cast of characters, more than almost another Doctor Who story.
It's one of the most epic Doctor Who stories ever.
They must have one of the biggest casts, because you have all these characters coming in, and what's brilliant about it is they're all such good characters and all so well played.
I don't think much of that as a demonstration.
Patrick is at the centre of all.
Patrick Troughton is at the centre of all, and runs it and he has so much to do in it, which I think is brilliant.
He gets to be funny and scared and weary and tired and broken.
-Jamie, Zoe -Doctor.
What are they gonna do to you? Oh, nothing much.
I expect they'll make me listen to a long, boring speech about being a good boy.
They like making speeches.
NARRATOR: Alongside Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury had also decided thatThe War Games would be their last story.
It's wonderful to see the three regulars knowing it's their swan song working so well together.
Wendy Padbury has a kind of seriousness about her in that coat.
She's a much better actor than most people give her credit for.
She's so good that nobody ever talks about her acting.
People don't think, ''Wendy Padbury, good actor.
'' They think, ''Oh, Zoe!'' And I think it's time somebody did talk about how good she is.
But you haven't heard anything yet! You don't call this a trial, do you? You, young lady, have betrayed your king and country.
You're sentenced to 10 years penal servitude to be spent in a civilian prison.
Oh, but I haven't done anything! NARRATOR: The casting of all the characters was the job of the director.
And David Maloney used several actors he'd either worked with before or knew socially.
These included David Savile as Carstairs, and'Jane Sherwin playing Lady'Jennifer.
I say, are you all right? Well What was her name? Jane Jane What was her name? Sherwin.
What's the producer's name? -Derrick Sherwin.
-Sherwin.
That's weird.
-I wonder how she got the part.
-Do you think they were Yeah, brother and sister.
Brother and sister, they must have been.
How very interesting.
Jane, Jane Sherwin.
Think about it, she's my wife.
Sherwin.
I had been an actress called Jane Parsons, and I met Derrick when we were both actors.
And we got married.
There was a director and he had his wife as one of the extras.
And actors, extras, always bitch about the director.
We were sitting down, and the extras didn't realise that it was her husband.
And that was so embarrassing, I thought, ''I'm taking five years out to look after the children when they're small.
''When I go back, ''just in case anybody ever is in that sort of position again, ''I'd like it to be known if it's nepotism.
''Because it's not so embarrassing.
'' So, that's why I went back under Jane Sherwin.
Well, where are we? Between the lines, I think.
Not quite sure myself.
Actually, it was the director, who we knew, and who'd been to dinner with us several times, ''What about Jane for this part?'' I said, ''Sure.
She speaks good English and she has a nice, plummy attitude.
''She looks like an upper crust lady ''and they did drive these war wagons, these ambulances.
'' And that's how she got the part.
I thought it was great fun.
'Cause, I mean, it was exactly the kind of part that I would like to play.
I would've like her a bit more suffragettey, Vera Brittain.
You know, she was a nurse during the First World War and things like that.
That's the sort of thing that really appealed to me.
And so, I really enjoyed playing the part.
And I loved the old car, which was a real old car, and of course, the foot brake and the accelerator are the opposite way round.
So, you have to be a bit careful because you can stamp your foot down on the wrong one.
She had to drive that ambulance.
'Cause I thought it was an ordinary modern car with a modern engine and everything and with an old body put on it, but no, it was the real old thing.
So, all the handbrake and the (IMITATES HONKING) All of that stuff, you know.
(LAUGHING) No, you see you can't do it.
You do it.
No, girls don't make sounds like that.
It's ridiculous.
CORNELL: The villains in this are absolutely excellent.
Noel Coleman's General Smythe, who is, on one hand, the typical blustering, World War I general, and, on the other, has definitely something odd going on.
And you can see the oddness in the performance from moment one.
(SPEAKING GERMAN) SPILSBURY: David Garfield is Von Weich.
It's interesting 'cause he's the officer in the German trenches in the First World War Zone and then, also, the officer in the American Civil War Zone as well.
But he does have that Very much like Noel Coleman as Smythe, you know, except he's got his monocle.
And once he gets that in, he's irresistible.
You are in the British Army, Private Moor.
The year is 1871.
JANE: David Garfield.
He was a very nice guy to get on with, you know, very companionable.
I think he's the kind of man who tends to sit with women.
Both Wendy and I confessed that we fancied him.
We thought it was quite interesting that he was a short, bald-headed Welshman.
How could You know, in theory, he couldn't be that attractive, but he was.
This is the War Chief to all guard posts.
Close section areas, detain two resistance members.
Edward Brayshaw was doing Demon King acting, you know, I said at the time he ought to have a green spotlight on him really, you know.
And hisses and boos from the audience.
Edward Brayshaw is just a fantastic performance.
It's full of anger and point and direction.
You sort of sympathise with him quite often.
He's clearly more interesting than the aliens he's working with.
He is one of my own race.
Your truth machine cannot work on us if we choose to resist.
He's got that Time Lord difference to him, that Time Lord arrogance.
And when he and Patrick Troughton first meet, you don't get dialogue about it for quite a little while, but they recognise and know each other.
You and I are going to talk alone.
I have nothing to say to you.
Again, without directly telling the audience what's going on.
And that's lovely, the fact that those two actors are aware exactly what they have to do with that and do it.
He was doing, like, stage menace, pantomime menace.
That would wipe out the processed humans.
And Philip Madoc was doing real menace.
The resistance army must be crushed once and for all.
Very, very quiet, saying, ''We seem to be having some problems here.
''Things are not quite going as they should.
'' And you go (IMITATING GASPING) Everybody shivers.
Now, I am tired of this eternal bickering.
Your inability to work together is endangering our whole plan.
The most wonderful voice, I think.
Philip has this lovely growl.
And of course his Welshness.
'Cause I'm partly Welsh, so it appealed to me.
We shall attempt to be rather more subtle than that which will give you an ideal opportunity to prove your loyalty.
And save your life.
He was so controlled, Philip, in that.
He was so cool.
He was playing a baddie so differently to Edward.
You know, they couldn't be more different.
I worked a lot with Philip Madoc.
I first cast him in The Krotons.
Then in The War Games.
And then when I directed The Last of the Mohicans, I cast him as Magua, the villain.
Magua took the hatchet to cover it with blood.
When it is red, it will be buried.
I had great admiration for him and I saw him as an ultimate villain, and we worked together very well.
Barbed wire, Jamie.
Filthy stuff.
NARRATOR: Location filming began in March, 1969, and the locations manager suggested an ideal landscape to represent the First World War battlefields.
We piled in the car and went down to a location which turned out to be a rubbish dump in Brighton.
And you drove down into it, and I was expecting, well, just a rubbish dump, you know, bits of old stuff everywhere.
It was a bit odd, because it had barbed wire and things like that.
(LAUGHING) Which was wonderful.
And some craters.
DOCTOR: Quick! Down there! They just completed, Oh! What a Lovely War.
And when we were looking for locations on The War Games, we naturally thought about the rubbish dump at Brighton, which they'd used as the First World War trenches.
Unusually, when you leave a film location you do tidy it up and try and leave it looking as it should, as you originally found it.
Well, in this case, I think they probably thought, ''Well, why bother, frankly, it's only bits of barbed wire and rubbish ''and posts and splatter and stuff.
'' So, they left it all there, which was a gift.
So, we had a nice, smelly time working down there.
Oh! (ALL LAUGHING) -PADBURY: Oh, it was disgusting.
-There were rats I've never seen so many rats.
I mean, we're talking serious, serious rats.
They were horrible.
And it was freezing cold.
It was snowing, it was absolutely hideous.
Oh! Oh, my! I thought the rubbish tip was great fun.
I don't know what they were on about.
I never saw a rat, I have to admit.
DOCTOR: Jamie! They said, ''Right, you jump up here and you stand there ''and then we have this big explosion.
'' Patrick said, ''How big is the explosion?'' ''Well, we got it set, we got it set.
'' ''No, but how big is it gonna be? Is it gonna be big?'' ''It'll be big.
There's an explosion and then you dive down.
'' ''Well, can we just have a'' ''No, we can't set it off, Patrick.
We can't set it off.
''Because we'll have to Another 10 minutes to set it up again.
'' ''But I want to see how big it is, you know.
'' ''No.
Look, we'll get the guy who's set the explosion to come on up.
'' And this guy came with half a face and fingers like that And he said, ''No, honestly, it's all fine.
'' Patrick went, ''Blow the charge.
'' Blew the charge, and this huge boulder came from underground and, boff, landed right where we would have been.
And Patrick said, ''That's why I wanted to see what it was like.
'' They set off the explosions that were all going (IMITATING EXPLOSION) And because the ambulance, it had a windscreen and it had a roof, but it had no side panels.
So little bits went (IMITATING AIR WHOOSHING) And, in fact, Patrick refused, once more like, you know, the explosion.
He refused to drive the ambulance.
He never actually drove it.
Well, I drove it and I felt that You couldn't see it was me driving it, I wanted the caption underneath saying, ''The actress is driving this ambulance.
'' NARRATOR: In charge of the explosions was Michael'John Harris, the show's visual effects designer.
Michael John Harris was smashing, a wonderfully inventive mind.
And the great thing was that he had, um, an enthusiasm which some people would say was juvenile, but, on the other hand, I think is an essential ingredient for doing the job that he's doing.
I think he'd come down there ready for an actual World War I.
'Cause I think he had a van full of the stuff, of explosives.
At the end of the shoot, it wrapped and he said, ''I've got a lot of this stuff left.
'' And I said, ''Well, it's a rubbish dump.
'' And he said, ''Oh, yeah, okay.
'' As I was driving out and I looked back into the rubbish dump, Michael John Harris was having his own private World War I down there because he'd really let off the rest of the stuff.
(LAUGHING) And there was a terrible black cloud of muck flying over the Brighton rubbish dump.
And, unfortunately, it was blowing back into Brighton.
NARRATOR: The surrounding Sussex countryside provided venues for the rest of the location filming.
And Frazer Hines had the opportunity to indulge his love of horses.
HINES: Yeah, riding the horse was great fun.
He was a lovely horse called Viking, he was a stunt horse.
I said to Peter Diamond, ''What happens if I jump out of the saddle? ''He's just gonna get loose.
'' He said, ''Don't worry, he's a professional stunt horse.
''When he gets past camera, he'll stop.
'' ''I said, no, but you'' ''Yeah, he'll stop.
'' I remember galloping, galloping, jumping out, and the horse went past the camera and stopped.
''Okay, how's that, alright for you? Alright for you?'' We did another take.
(IMITATING HORSE GALLOPING) And he stopped and he just came back to his handler.
Lovely horse, I wanted to keep him, he was a lovely ride, Viking.
NARRATOR: Moving into the studio in April, designer Roger Cheveley had numerous sets to devise.
DERRICK: Roger was great, he always was, he was superb.
I used Roger several times.
In fact, preferably because he'd do the most amazing things with threepence ha'penny.
You know, somebody else would come back and say, ''Oh, I need three and a half thousand quid for that, guv.
'' But not Roger, no.
He'd go out and find a junkyard somewhere or go in the back of somebody's shed and come up with He was wonderful.
CHEVELEY: The trench stuff was interesting to do because it was Like any A lot of design work is research, and knowing where to go, and First World War, one obvious place is the Imperial War Museum.
Went down there, they were very, very helpful.
And gave me dugout photos, which were of trenches, and stuff and so I think probably, although it was fairly small scale, most of that looked pretty good.
NARRATOR: One of the more important sets was the American Civil War barn, which featured prominently throughout the middle part of the story.
But how authentic was it? Which part of the Civil War, were we in the South or North I mean, there's some barn association in America which would probably be very, very helpful.
But, in 1968, I didn't really have access to this, sort of, very esoteric research material.
It was basically a barn, this post and beam structure with wood cladding.
And just who might you be? I think the barn is as about convincing as some of the accents.
(LAUGHS) -Hold -Hold it.
NARRATOR: With so many sets in use throughout the story, studio space was often at a premium.
You see four or five of us behind a desk shooting, bang, bang, bang, bang.
There's not a lot of room.
You're only looking, like, at sort of 15, probably 15x 10 feet before you get into the next set where the general was, and, once again, not much time.
And if the gun doesn't go off, bad luck, you haven't got the time to reload.
MAN: Deactivate the area control.
When Uncle Noel, who we all loved dearly, when his time had come I had great visions of me actually diving horizontally through the door and going bang, bang, bang at him.
I didn't, actually.
I think I tripped up and I fell flat on my shoulder and shot the gun into the floor, which had the same effect anyway, it still killed him, but it wasn't quite the end I had planned for him, but there you go.
So, you've lost them.
They've got away.
The alien complex is the first and only time '60s grooviness hits Doctor Who.
There's nothing groovy about the space pirates.
But suddenly we have pop art design.
CHEVELEY: There were various elements that were into the sets which allowed us to introduce various bits and pieces of nonsense which were quite fun to do.
I quite liked the idea of having the guillotine door, which was a bit different.
And in the centre of that is this vortex thing.
I mean, it'sit's pretty facile but it was all right.
We had the war table which was a transparent war table, because again, as a child, I had been brought up on British war films, where everybody pushed things around on sort of croupier sticks and things like that round the tables.
If my troops make a push here, what resistance can you put up? MORAN: And when you see that map, it's kind of like, "Wow, that's a really cool idea.
" But, oh, my God, how horrible is it that they've got all these different wars to choose from.
You know, what the hell does that say about us? And that they chose us, out of all the You know, like, over the Daleks, for God's sake.
We're worse than that.
We have more wars than the Daleks.
I don't know if it was written as an anti-war story.
But to me it's the most anti-war story I think I've ever seen.
It's so brilliant and I think what's really clever about it is, it's a story where, you know, soldiers are just soldiers.
You even have the Doctor say, "They're just soldiers.
" It's about these people who are just sheep.
They're soldiers in wars.
HORSFALL: It started with some newsreel shots of gunfire.
You don't wanna push too heavy a message.
But certainly watching it as an adult now, the exposition of war was a bit frightening, both at the beginning and during that one.
There is some anti-war subtext in that the writers clearly know that the First World War is not a pleasant place to be.
But it doesn't really have the nightmares of the trenches underlined hugely.
It's much more about (CHUCKLING) wouldn't it be fun if we had a Mexican bandit punching a German First World War soldier.
Jamie, Zoe, this is where we say goodbye.
What are you talking about? Well, the Time Lords will return you home.
Well, why can't we stay here with you? Because when I send this box to them, they'll know where I am.
NARRATOR: For the audience at large, perhaps the most important part of the story came towards its climax.
Finally, the Doctor's home planet was to be revealed.
And appearing in the show for the first time were the Time Lords.
My recollection of the origin of the Time Lords is I remember that Mac and Derrick Sherwin and I were discussing the general premises early on.
Terrance Dicks, who has got a veryremarkably good memory, said he swore it was me.
And I can quite believe him.
'Cause we were trying to pin down the history of Doctor Who, because we were contemplating canning him, and so there had to be something to do with his background.
The answer was to have a problem so big that he couldn't solve it by himself.
And we therefore had to ask for the help of his own people.
When they intervene, it's not as people appearing with guns or anything like that, it's like the hand of God.
Time slows down.
ZOE: What is it? Time Lords! We hear that they could unwrite people from history, which is a bit of a radical idea at that time.
History wasn't regarded as being the malleable thing that we now regard it as, thanks to many popular SF TV shows.
Oh, my word, it's the Time Lords, they're breaking down the defensive mechanism.
We've got to get out of here.
The Doctor really knows he can't escape.
He knows you don't get away from the Time Lords.
But Jamie's saying, "Oh, come on, Doctor, we can do it.
"We've got out of worse things than this.
" And so he kind of humours them.
And they have a little dash about Which they end up, you know, caught yet again, and the Doctor always knew this.
You have heard the charge against you.
That you have repeatedly broken our most important law of non-interference in the affairs of other planets.
What have you to say? Do you admit these actions? I not only admit them, I am proud of them.
The trial process, it's more of a tribunal.
It's a small It's like a court martial, appropriately for The War Games.
It's a small number of people with ultimate power who are deciding the Doctor's fate.
We have accepted your plea, that there is evil in the universe that must be fought.
Their performances are measured again.
There's no big booming voices, even though they are effectively gods.
David must have said, "No, don't overdo it, "or don't start overacting like you do in some of the others, "or let's do it in a calm sort of way, "and let Patrick do all the running about and shouting.
" This is ridiculous.
You're wasting time, Doctor.
But it's not my fault, is it? Is this the best you can do? I've never seen such an incredible bunch.
The point of the last episode, you know, was something I suppose was reflected in real life, that it was the poignancy, that it was the end for everybody.
It was the end for Patrick of being Doctor Who.
And the end for Frazer and Wendy of working with Patrick, you know, being the companions.
And so that was obviously reflected in the story.
They were more or less like a family.
And so, obviously, there'd be a certain sadness.
They'd meet every week, read the scripts together, bitch about this, bitch about that.
So, they were quite the family.
So, there must have been some considerable angst as far as Patrick was concerned about giving it all up.
Patrick, I think, was under family pressure, you know, partly through working such long hours.
And also I think he was feeling that he could get stuck, you know, he could get typecast, he could get stuck.
And, in fact, it proved to be a wise decision for Patrick, because he'd been a well established, much respected character actor before Who.
And he went back to being it, I think almost immediately, you know.
Well, goodbye, Jamie.
-But, Doctor, surely we could -Goodbye, Jamie.
-I won't forget you, you know.
-I won't forget you.
-Goodbye, Zoe.
-Goodbye, Doctor.
Their friendship is torn apart by the events of the story.
It's actually really, really heartbreaking.
I think it's one of the saddest ends to a Doctor Who story there's ever been, really.
There's something really special in it, actually, something that Doctor Who doesn't do that often and if he did do it that often, it would lose it anyway.
It's not something that the programme can do very often, 'cause it's these rare moments where it really is It will absolutely break your heart.
I thought it was very moving, genuinely moving, when Wendy and Jamie were saying goodbye.
Very definitely that was sincere.
As much as to say, we've had a happy time doing this show, and now we're off into the big, wide world.
-They'll forget me, won't they? -Not entirely.
They'll be returned to a moment in time just before they went away with you.
Jamie will never ever remember Zoe at all, again, ever.
Zoe I mean that bit where Zoe is back on the wheel and she says I thought I'd forgotten something important, but it's nothing.
That's a stunning piece of dialogue, that's really heartbreaking.
She's forgotten her entire friendship with the Doctor and Jamie, and she brushes it off.
I think that's so well written.
Our memories are wiped apart from one adventure.
Our first adventure.
-You'll remember the first story -Your first adventure and after And then you won't remember anything.
So, I would You know, there's an ending.
You could always come back.
We could still come back.
We could still come back, yes.
-Yes.
-Look at us.
We could come back.

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