A Stranger In Custody

**A Stranger In Custody** was an article featured in DWB #128 written by Robert Cope in July 1994. It accounts the behind-the-scenes filming of Breach of the Peace.

"We'll be filming from 8am until 6pm so turn up when you like" said a jolly Bill Baggs at the end of the phone. So on the appointed day I duly made my way to the AST Training Centre in Beeston (on the outskirts of Nottingham for those who like me slept their way through geography lessons) arriving just after l0am. Hmmm, strange me thinks, no sign of life here. So myself and trusty WHO aficionado Simon Biggs had a wander around the building looking for all things luvvie-ish and the sight of a video camera or two. Eventually we spied what I thought might be some extraterrestrial being sent to assassinate our beloved Stranger, but in reality it turned out to he the caretaker whom we then informed of our mission: "Some bloke has phoned up and said he won't be here until half past ten". Obviously some major catastrophe had befallen the filming schedule so we sat down and regaled each other with tales of JFK's shooting (wondering if we'd remember exactly what we were doing when we first saw Dimensions In Time - another of life's great tragedies).

Lo and behold, before long a car pulls up and out gets Bill-pencil behind the ear just in case inspiration should strike. "We were up until I am doing a night shoot so we are starting later than planned. Have you been here long?" After assuring him that we hadn't and exchanging a few pleasantries we watched as various team members began to arrive. I learned that Breach of the Peace, as the fifth Stranger outing was to be called, required a police station as part of its plot, so the AST building was on hand to fulfill that requirement. A series of rooms upstairs had been hired, and as the technical crew and make-up/props assistants set to work the disused offices soon came to resemble an interview room and station common room. With the arrival of the actors, rehearsals were soon underway whilst lighting and sound were checked and cameras positioned.

David Troughton was the first to say hello. Forty-four year old son or the late Patrick Troughton and currently touring with the Royal Shakespeare Company. David was reprising his role of Egan from The Terror Game, so I asked him about his involvement in the project. "My agent phoned up and said ' There's this funny bloke called Bill Baggins who is interested in doing a video which is sort of Doctor Who-ish'. So I phoned him and he seemed a personable sort of chap, on the ball, so I thought 'What is all this?' I phoned Colin Baker who I knew was going to be involved as well, because he was my Best Man years ago - we've been great mates, although I hadn't seen too much of him recently. He explained it was all on the level and where the videos were sold, and as I was doing nothing else I thought 'OK, let's have a couple of weeks working with Colin', because I'd never actually worked with him before.

"That's when I found out about this subterranean underworld of Doctor Who-dom. My father, of course, went to America and did all that but I never thought it was still alive and kicking." I tentatively suggest that I vaguely remembered he'd been in one story a few years ago. "I've been in three, I always ask which is the third one, as everyone gets the first two." Quickly racking my very fallible memory I come up with The Curse of Peladon looking very pleased with myself, but I struggled for the second. "The War Games," David prompts. "Ah yes, that was one," I quickly lie before admitting defeat on the third - so what was it? "I can't remember," he says. "I was hoping you'd tell me, I was only an extra in it anyway." Answers on a postcard! I quickly mutter something about being only three years old when The War Games went out, but I think David was already beginning to suspect that I wasn't the fan who won MASTERMIND on the subject...

So what does this eminent member of the RSC think of the Bill Baggs set up? "Bill is basically doing CV videos. He wants to be a proper director and he's getting all these good actors and he's got us for absolute shite (because) we all have a bloody good laugh, and he sends them off to prominent people in the industry. The reason we're doing this as a police one is that he keeps being told 'Do one like The Bill!' which he has done. I just hope Bill remembers all this when he's as famous as Spielberg and doing his 900th film. But I've really enjoyed it, it is one of the happiest jobs that I've ever done because there is no pressure. I hope he will, he'll go far."

Being a long standing contributor to DWB you'd think that I'd have done a bit of research before turning up to talk to respected actors like David Troughton, but the old Cope knack of putting one's foot in it begins to surface when I ask him if he enjoyed doing THE NEW STATESMAN, Only to be told it was brother Michael who appeared in that series. And then, when he says he is best remembered for A VERY PECULIAR PRACTICE, I have to admit to never having seen it. By now David obviously thinks I'm a real prat but his good nature prevents him from showing any outward signs of such dark thoughts. I struggle on regardless, venturing to suggest that I thought THE NEW STATESMAN has won some awards. "No it didn't. It should have done, it was a cult on BBC2, they put it on BBC1 for the repeat, back on BBC2 for the next series and then sort of 'lost' the tapes because it was too political for the BBC at the time. It was when Thatcher had got her claws into everyone, I think someone high up said "We don't want this Thatcher lookalike on TV because the Vice Chancellor went mad", it was so prophetic. It was just what Thatcher has done, laid waste the countryside (which the Vice Chancellor did to the university) and he went mad. What happened to Thatcher? She went mad! Let's hope we never get anyone like that again but we'll pay for it for the next 50 years. She's changed the psyche of a nation." Talk turns from politics to television and I again hit on a raw nerve when mentioning UK Gold. "l got £10 for an episode of SURVIVORS I did. Normally that would be a renegotiable fee based on today's prices, but the BBC have pulled a fast one. They've got it under overseas repeats because the company they're selling it to probably isn't based in this country. It's extra-terrestrial. Equity managed to up it from 4% of nothing to 8% of nothing but oh, it makes me so angry."

At this point a make-up lady pops in and informs David that he's next in the chair, which coincides with the arrival of Colin Baker and Caroline John. Colin bounds about with his usual loud enthusiasm, his presence clearly enjoyed by everyone on the set. As Colin is only available for a few days' filming, most of today's shoot involves his scenes. "Not still writing for that tatty rag," he jokes, before grabbing a copy of the new DWB to scour for the latest on the Spielberg bid for the show. It isn't long until he, too, is whisked off to rehearse a scene with David, leaving me to talk to Caroline John, who is eating an apple but seems a bit guarded about talking to me for some reason.

Caroline hasn't been at the forefront of fan activity, although she jumped at the chance of working with the gang on Breach of the Peace. "I was asked to be in this by Bill Baggs at Blue Box. He gave me the script to read which I thought was great so I said OK, I'll do it." With her recent emergence into the fan limelight I wondered if she had fond memories of DOCTOR WHO. "It was only a year or so of my life so it sort of becomes part of your career, rather less important than my four years at the National Theater for instance. I did learn a lot about doing television and the technique involved, for which I'll always be grateful. Whilst I was there the show had a change of producers and Barry came in and the powers that be thought the format of having a clever scientist probably wasn't to the advantage of The Doctor - I don't know though, I'm guessing. At the time I didn't think I was particularly good in it but I saw a video of The Silurians a few months back and thought 'That's alright'. I do feel about a lot of them - like the most recent video Inferno - that one has to remember that they were going out week by week, and now when you watch them as a whole you suddenly think 'God, not this scene again'."

Caroline went on to work with Tom Baker on the 198I BBC adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles so I wondered how she found working with Pertwee, Tom and now Colin Baker? "They are very different people. There really isn't a lot of time to get to know people, you just do it and go home. I think Tom Baker was a very good actor but I respect all three of them." Was she surprised at the renaissance of interest in her WHO work, particularly from younger viewers seeing it for the first time? "I think it's because I haven't been around. I'm under no false illusion that I'm just part of a collection, like if you are collecting comics. I'm amazed that they're not disappointed that I'm 24 years older because it's quite difficult to accept that people grow old. In people's imaginations they always see the TV image from so many years ago, looking like Liz Shaw which I certainly don't do now. Nobody has given me the impression that they are massively disappointed so far."

Of her brief appearance in T he Five Doctors she says, "I would have done more if they'd wanted me to but nobody asked me to. It was nice to be there all the same." Most recently Liz Shaw popped up in the infamous Albert Square romp: "That was quite interesting. I remember The Ambassadors of Death and all the new technology DOCTOR WHO seemed to take on board, and this 3D thing was another one. It's very interesting from an actor's point of view. Yes, it was done terribly quickly and it was people's free time, but it was for a very good cause."

Looking back now, what does Caroline think of her time as Liz? "What I think is quite good is that I can now see past what I looked like as opposed to what I'm doing. I approve of what I'm doing in it. I'm playing what I should have been playing and playing it rather well. I should have had a lot more encouragement at the time because I carried around with me a feeling of 'Oh dear, best not talk about that because I wasn't very good in it.' It's like if you're doing this magazine now and nobody ever says well done, that was a good article, and after a year you are replaced. I had to be replaced anyway because I was going to have a baby but you can see what I'm getting at. It's a shame that people who make policies don't explain them to lesser mortals like myself." And with that she is taken off to rehearse her role as DCI Diana Sellers with Colin, or more accurately (from what I heard), to prompt Colin on his lines!

As the unit gathered and the whole set up was ready, Bill took the helm by explaining what he wanted during a scene where Egan interrogates The Stranger, resorting to violence in the process. The room in which tins was done is tiny and to an outsider it looked as if they were going for the record on how many people you could squeeze into a cupboard. As take after take was demanded by the director, it wasn't hard to see why Bill Baggs' efforts to realise his visions had been so successful.

Breach of the Peace is the fourth video to be scripted by Nicholas Briggs, and readers of DWB will perhaps recall some of my tongue in cheek reviews of Nick's Myth Makers appearances, so I was looking forward to turning the tables and finding our about one of fandom's most prominent figures. As with most of us Nick's interest in Time Lords began early. "I have been a fan ever since I can remember. I can recall bits of The Daleks' Master Plan and I clearly remember The Tenth Planet. Sad, isn't it? I'm always appalling friends who aren't fans by being able to navigate through my life by knowing what DOCTOR WHO Story was on at the time! It does add a certain structure to your life. In 1974 I met Nick Layton down in Southampton, who was the first fan apart from myself that I'd ever met, so we were constantly trying to piece together the history of DOCTOR WHO." How, then, did this eager young fan turn into the writer we see now? "I have always found it easier to write rather than read, it was always easy to make things up. I think this stems from a problem in my childhood when my reading age was nine months behind everyone else - I've never recovered from reading being a chore. Inevitably I used to write DOCTOR WHO Stories, in fact when my Grandmother died about a year or so ago my mother found these DOCTOR WHO Stories I'd written her. I'd sent her episodes every two weeks...the poor woman must have been bored stiff. That whole thing about creating stories and fantasies made me want to act and led me to drama school, the Rose Bruford college which coincidentally is the same one Tom Baker attended. When I left there I got a few fringe jobs but eventually descended into four years of unemployment, and you know what happens after a while. They say "You can't do that, it's not working so you'll need retraining' and off you go. I decided to learn to touch type, and I got up to about 60 words per minute. Then I heard through friends that Stephen Payne at Visual Imagination was looking for someone to do the boring end of the job which would probably involve a bit of typing. I thought it would tide me over for a while but once you've got a bit of money coming in - and I must stress little bit - I progressed from putting things in envelopes and typing out the letters page in Starburst to writing articles for them. By the end I was doing a lot because I got to know the structure required, so I could knock out things quite quickly that would fit the format without drastic editing."

Throughout our conversation people sporadically pop in and suggest it is time for Nick to do his one scene in this production as DCI Evans. Off he trots, but keeps returning as plans quickly change and different shots are lined up. Nick is of course best known for his fronting of the Reeltime Pictures' Myth Makers range which have grown steadily in popularity over the years. "I did a convention at Southampton, being a prat on stage and interviewing people and Keith Barnfather had spotted me. He had already done two Myth Makers by then with a guy called Keith Harrison (I think) who was an ex-Channel 4 link man. He did fantastic interviews with Michael Wisher and John Leeson, but he didn't know DOCTOR WHO. He made fundamental WHO Errors, for instance Mike Wisher said that for the Daleks he used to sit in a booth with a microphone doing the voices, so then he talked to John Leeson who said the same about K9, and Keith would say "So you'd be sitting in there with Michael Wisher" which is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to come to, but DOCTOR WHO fans would get annoyed because they all knew the Daleks and K9 never appeared together. They were cringe making errors really, I brought my own cringe making errors by forgetting what I was going to ask next because I was so nervous. So Keith Barnfather wanted someone who knew DOCTOR WHO and was cheap, and I fitted that bill perfectly."

Nick's first contact with Bill Baggs came with the involvement with a local group in Southampton "There was a young 16 year old Bill Baggs bossing everyone a lot older than him about and annoying people, but managing to get things done all the same." I he now-concluded Audio Visuals series of the eighties in which Nick played The Doctor led to him reuniting with Baggs on the videos. "It was because Bill worked with me on the audio plays that I got involved with the videos. He wanted a script for the third one, I think he'd said to Gary Russell that he'd thought of me because he wanted a more action based script which he knew I was good at. We worked on a script for ages that was going to be completely different, nothing to do with the Stranger series, but we realized it would be too expensive to make in the end. So then he said can't you quickly adapt one of your audio plays to which I said no, but I agreed to take one of them as a starting point and go off from there. I took one called Conglomerate which was set in a tube station on another planet, as Bill said he could get a railway station and we could work from that."

Had the scripts changed a lot from the drafted version to final product? "Bill's favorite phrase is 'I must challenge these [scripts]. He really tends to change things during filming and editing. For instance he cut a lot of speeches during In Memory Alone and when I saw the first edit of it I was really frustrated because it wasn't telling the story in the way I wanted it to. I had a long, fairly heated, discussion on the phone and he told me "You've got to learn that not everything you write works!" And when you think about it Bill had been struggling away editing this thing and then a bastard comes on the phone lecturing him on how it should be done. It's so difficult to judge the story on the screen though. With Airzone Bill had gone through my original draft and virtually re-written it into something which vaguely resembled my submission, then I rewrote what he had written which had given me an idea of the direction he wanted the script to go. We had to write Jon Pertwee in at the eleventh hour. Bill phoned me one evening and said 'You know that scene where Peter Davison's character is watching the edit of his Airzone documentary? I reckon there should be an old bloke there, a sort of mentor." By that stage they had started shooting so I asked who he'd got in mind for it 'Jon Pertwee' came the reply. Jon had been on the phone to him and just wouldn't take no for an answer. Bill kept saying 'Yes, I'd like to work with you in the future' and Jon just went on and on 'I want to work on this one please." So that was that. I was very pleased with the finished product. It is more accessible to a viewing audience, The Terror Game we think suffers from having too much science fiction in it so this one has got hardly any in. Colin Baker thinks this doesn't matter because the characters will be known from Terror Game, so I hope he's right." Before we parted company I discovered that Nick will be doing a repertory season in Sidmouth for the summer. "I'm the only actor who is praying for small parts so that I don't have loads to learn". And off he goes to join the others.

From the day I spent with Bill and his team of actors and technicians it was clear that he takes his involvement very seriously and expects equal dedication from all those around him. I had hoped to talk to Bill himself but with the rigors of a tight filming schedule it was not to be. Speaking to him on the phone a few days later he expressed himself well satisfied with the filming on Breach of the Peace and was toying with various options for the next project, which tentatively included a follow-up to Airzone in August. As I write this Bill is editing Breach of the Peace for a July release which will see THE STRANGER saga taking another twist. With the standards achieved so far I wouldn't mind betting that quite a few of us will be awaiting each new release with increasing anticipation. There's just one more thing I'd like to mention...the sponge pudding at the local pub in Beeston was out of this world. Now there is a subject for a major video drama if ever there was one! No hang on a minute, with Colin Baker involved, keeping the props around might be a bit difficult - just ask Tony Selby and Joan Sims!