by Victoria Irwin
Resident Whovian
[email protected]
Regenerations was a Classic Doctor panel featuring Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy and Colin Baker on Friday and Sunday, with Tom Baker joining them on Saturday only. McCoy, Baker, and Davison were candid in the Sunday show, lovingly joking about their difficulties working with Tom Baker. McCoy used his vaudevillian style and regained strength to slide down couches, sit onto the arms of the couch and play with his cane to pretend to hit Colin Baker. Baker and Davison both appeared bright eyed and excited to see their fans as well. All joked and shook their heads when brief clips of their moments on the show were played. “That’s some of my fine acting,” Davison joked, after a clip from the Five Doctors where he spent good deal of time immobilized by a trance.
When asked about their most feared monsters, Peter Davison gravely answered Cybermen. Both McCoy and Baker agreed that the Daleks were their most feared. Colin Baker shared a story about his frightening accidental interactions with that Daleks. “I was never afraid of them until one night in the studio,” he said. When walking across an empty room at BBC studios he came across a lone Dalek from filming. “His eyestalk followed me across the room! I was so afraid.” A prop person had recently used WD40 on the eyestalk, and it had slipped forward just when Baker walked by.
Sylvester McCoy also shared an amusing story of filming with the Daleks. Filming the episode, The Remembrance of the Daleks, ran into Easter Monday. During filming, the IRA has been particularly active in the region. While using prop explosions and effects, locals called the police and an ambulance, fire brigade and series of police vehicles rushed to the scene, believing there to have been a terrorist attack. “As the ambulance driver approached the scene, three Daleks rolled out of the smoke towards him,” McCoy stated smiling. “That is a frightening sight.”
The three candidly spoke about their costumes on the show. Davison exclaimed that his outfit was quite “comfortable” and that he enjoyed not having to take as many costume change breaks as his fellow actors during a shooting set. He joked about being able to have a cup of tea while everyone else changed. Colin Baker had initially asked for something less flashy and more like everyday clothes. “I described what Christopher Eccleston got,” he smirked. Instead it was “totally tasteless. It looks like an explosion in a rainbow factory!”
McCoy praised the tactical nature of his costume. “My pockets indicate what time of day we were filming. I kept my scripts in them. If there is a bulge in the right side of my pockets, we were filming in the morning. I switched my scripts to the left in the afternoon.” McCoy also admitted to accidentally inventing the infamous question marked umbrella by insisting he keep an umbrella like Colin Baker. McCoy disliked his question mark sweater, but felt he should wear it because he was convinced Doctor Who Producer John Nathan-Turner’s grandmother had knitted it.
