Doctor Who, Tom Baker, K-9, and the Wars Among the Stars by John A. A. Logan
The first Doctor Who I remember being conscious of as a child was Jon Pertwee, and the story was The Green Death – all about toxic slime, rogue industrial chemists, and malignant maggots. I liked Jon Pertwee, but then the following year his face metamorphosised into that of another actor, Tom Baker, and this new incarnation was such a spectacle of drama and bombastic tour de force that for me, looking back, my “Dr Who years” must be the Tom Baker years. He came into the role straight from a stage of thespian unemployment which had led him to take up a job operating a Kango drill as a labourer on a building site. He must have thought he was never going to get anywhere as an actor during that period, and then the next second there he is in the Dr Who role, hat and scarf in place, and throwing himself so hard and desperately into the performance that the Dr Who sets sometimes shook even more than they always had, perhaps set off just by the timbre of his voice alone, though h...