Hello, you are hopefully someone who has worked on Doctor Who in front of or behind the cameras, and who has been directed to this website by a friend or colleague. Thanks for popping over, and please allow me to explain my lunatic scheme :
I am a professional actor, writer, stand-up comedian and sometime Doctor Who historian. My one man comedy show Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf went to the West End, got a Sony nomination when it transferred to radio, and toured the world. I currently host The 7th Dimension on BBC Radio 4 Extra. You can check my credentials by having a look around this website. For 2013 I have set myself rather a foolhardy – but I hope fun and interesting – mission.
Doctor Who is 50 this year: my plan is to interview as many people involved with the programme as possible, and to put the results online as an audio podcast (a sort of internet radio show). If memories are scant, fear not. We need not confine ourselves to Doctor Who – in fact, it is you that I am interested in. I want you to feel free to steer the conversation to your wider credits, career highlights, passions, bugbears … anything, but most of all to enjoy yourself. All I need is one anecdote from whichever stories you have first hand knowledge of, so that I can cross them off my list.
I will happily travel to meet you : in and around the London or Manchester areas would be certainly doable, but I’m not ruling out anywhere as comedy involves a lot of travel so I might end up passing by your way anyway. I am a slave to the itinerant nature of being a jobbing actor and comic, alas, so batting about availability might be an annoying process initially: if you leave your contact details as a comment on this blog they will remain private as said comments can’t be published without me doing so (which I won’t). Failing that, I am on Facebook as Toby Hadoke and Twitter as @TobyHadoke. The interview itself will only take about 30 minutes. If we can’t meet up, I can do the whole thing on Skype so no-one even has to leave their house. The podcast will be free, and I am not getting paid, so I’m afraid that there is no remuneration. The best I can offer is to buy you a drink or two, or maybe coffee and a cake. I will ask you to nominate a charity which we will encourage listeners to donate to at the end.
I hope that this is of interest and that you would like to take part. Thanks for reading.
Where was (am) I?
Hi Toby,
My dad worked on the series as a cameraman from it’s beginning until he left the BBC (for ITV) in 1970. He’s short on specific memories (he made a LOT of programs in the 50’s and 60’s) but he has plenty of opinions! He’s great for technical info, worked on the team that developed the famous time tunnel effect from the Pertwee title sequence, was head of cameras on ‘Tomb of the Cybermen’ etc. etc. I’ve worked on merchandise for the show since 2004 (I run a sculpting studio and we’ve created over 300 figures from the series). Anyhow contact me if you want my dad’s details.
Ed
You should check with my friend Steve Manfred (twitter: @drwhoexpert) and see if he’d share anything about The Doctor’s Wife. He helped Neil with any background info he needed. Steve can probably tell you about deleted scenes that didn’t make the final script (like Amy’s comment that the TARDIS had a machine that made bacon & egg candy bars, a direct reference to The Edge of Destruction).
Note: Steve is in the US, timezone GMT-0600, so you’d need to do a Skype call.