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Colin Baker took over the role of the Doctor from Peter Davison in 1984, unusually midway through a series rather than at the end (the only other to date is when Patrick Troughton took over from William Hartnell). The regeneration occured at the end of The Caves of Androzani in a fairly quick manner with little warning, much to the surprise of the Doctor’s assistant at the time, Peri (pictured).
This Doctor was far more flamboyant and argumentative than most, with brightly coloured yellow trousers and a patchwork quilt coat more befitting of a clown. Personally I never much cared for this incarnation of the Doctor, finding him loud and rude, although the blame can’t be laid at Baker’s feet for this, being a product of the writers at the time. I therefore have few memories of any of the stories starring Colin Baker.
Interestingly, Colin Baker appeared in the show before he became the Doctor, in the Peter Davison story Arc of Infinity. In it he stuns the Doctor with a gun, leading to the joke that he got the part by force!
Colin Baker initially hoped to remain as the Doctor for as long as possible, hoping to smash Tom Baker’s record tenure, but it was not to be. Instead, his era was the beginning of the end for the series as it stood at the time. The controller of BBC1 at the time, Michael Grade, had criticised the show saying it had become too violent and farcical, and he wasn’t particularly keen on Baker’s spin on the Timelord. A delay of 18 months between series also didn’t help, and when the show did return it had a reduced episode count and the entire series became one long story arc called The Trial of a Timelord (which I remember seeing long after it first aired, and found it funny that Linda Bellingham, the Mum from the OXO TV adverts, was the judge). Ultimately, BBC management decided to get rid of Baker, and he was replaced by Sylvester McCoy.
Another thing that didn’t help Colin Baker’s chance (in most peoples eyes) was the introduction of Bonnie Langford as his companion Mel. Bonnie had been a child actress opposite Denis Waterman in Just William, where her character had an annoying habit of screaming to get her own way. In Doctor Who, the screaming unfortunately returned. Bizarrely, we never see Mel’s first outing with the Doctor, instead she just suddenly appears at the end of Trial of a Timelord, and is presented as being his companion for an unspecified amount of time. Not wishing to appear mean to poor old Bonnie either, but the fact that Mel was supposed to be a computer programmer seems a little hard to swallow.
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Funnily enough, given how unpopular I’ve heard he was (I don’t think you’re at all alone in disliking him), Colin Baker’s version of the Doctor was one of my favourites, probably second only to the version played by the other Baker, in fact! I think that’s due to a combination of factors eg the fact that I first saw most of the Sixth Doctor’s stories during a particularly happy period of my life (and have therefore come to associate them with that period); the fact that the series finally started to have half-decent special effects during Colin Baker’s time in the role; all the colour and general trippiness of many of his stories; and the fact that I thought most of those stories (as few as they ended up being) were actually pretty good! I even liked the Sixth Doctor’s violent streak (it was refreshing to finally see a Doctor who wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, rather than relying on other characters to do the nasty but necessary work to defeat the bad guys, and then hypocritically lecturing them on the evils of violence), and rather garish ensemble (for some reason, the last thing always reminded me of the clothes worn by an Australian children’s television character called Humphrey B Bear).
Even more weirdly (and to finally convince you I’m a raving nutter whose opinions on everything are probably best ignored), I actually liked Mel! Seriously! I loved the scene in The Trial of a Timelord in which she made her first appearance, mainly, I’ll admit, because it was so ridiculous! Trial… was a bit of an odd story, though, wasn’t it? The way that it was four stories in one (giving it, I do believe, the biggest number of episodes of any Doctor Who story), and the way that each of those stories was frequently interrupted by courtroom scenes (something that I found more than a little irritating after a while). I also found it strange that given the whole premise of the thing was the Doctor being put on trial for alleged past crimes, none of the crimes shown were ones that had been dealt with in previous stories (although I later realized that, if they had been, the whole thing would have been one of those awful, tedious “clips” shows that the American studios seem to love churning out). Not being from England myself, I didn’t recognize Bonnie Langford or Linda Bellingham from those other roles of theirs you mentioned, although one of the other actors – the man who played the captain of the spaceship in the mini-story Terror of the Vervoids, I believe – was familiar to me from his long-running role in an Australian soap opera called G.P.. Terror of the Vervoids, incidentally, was my favourite part of Trial…, mainly because it was one of those aforementioned colourful, trippy stories, and also simply a nice creepy story that could well have stood on its own.
Zosimus, you mentioned in your comment on the Peter Davison years that you didn’t see much of that Doctor because it clashed with your family tea time.
I have to admit the same occured for me with Colin Baker, which probably goes some way towards explaining why I don’t have that many fond memories of his incarnation of the Timelord.
Well that, and you sat through some of me & Matt’s “All 14 parts of Trial in one day” session while we were at University.
Yes, my mind was already kind of decide by then anyway, but I don’t think that experience endeared me any more to Colin’s Doctor.
BTW, how are we liking Matt Smith? He seems to have slipped into the role quite comfortably already from what I’ve seen.
Matt Smith is good, we like him.
i lobr matt smith he reminds me of a guy i had a crush on at colleege only he never fancied me we just stayed best friends matt smith is geting better than david tennant. im 30 i saw one episode of colin baker i throught he was funny mind you i didnt like his dress sense or peter davidson he was cute was colin batter a good actor besides his role of being dramatic brash and loud? he had a cheeky face colin baker just because he acted that way in the role of doctor who maybe he is really a nice guy in real life an actor has to play the part hes given weeathere he likrs the role or not hes got to do his best if his actings crap then its not his fault its thr role hes given or should i say the lines.
You can follow Colin Baker on Twitter now: http://twitter.com/#!/SawbonesHex