Original Doctor Who girl envies modern series

http://cuttingsarchive.org/images/8/89/2013-04-10_Regina_Leader-Post.jpg

Publication: Regina Leader-Post
Date: 2013-04-10
Author: Cole Moreton
Page: B3
Language: English

She was the original Doctor Who girl, the first to fly through time and space with an eccentric alien who would go on to become a great British hero.

"It was instant madness," Carole Ann Ford says, remembering the reaction when Doctor Who was first broadcast, in November 1963. "There was nothing like it on television. We could go anywhere in the universe, and we gave them great cliffhangers."

She played the eerily intense teenager Susan, with an elfin beauty and an unearthly brain. The Beatles were just breaking through, and suddenly this young actor was also the object of adoration.

"It was amazing, like being a pop star," she says. "I couldn't go down the street for a bottle of milk anymore."

Half a century later, the Doctor is a playground legend with a place in popular culture to rival Robin Hood. The revamped Doctor Who is one of the best-loved shows on TV and a gold mine for the BBC, which is gearing up to celebrate the program's 50th anniversary in high style. A special episode in November will bring at least two doctors together.

The story of how the show was created will also be told in a new drama, An Adventure in Space and Time.

"Somebody is playing me, which is hilarious," says Ford, now a sparky 72-year-old.

So what happened to Susan, the first of the Doctor's many young companions? She was left weeping on a planet somewhere in 1964, the first of many hearts the Doctor would break. Ford had walked out of the show at the height of her fame. Not long afterward, she dropped out of acting completely.

"At that moment, it was just another job," says Ford, who was 20 at the time. "You learn your lines, you turn up, you don't bump into the furniture and you take your money, you know? It soon became fairly clear that it was more than that, though."

There was a fight at the BBC. "A lot of people did not want Doctor Who to go ahead. The people high up were against putting money into children's programs, which is how they considered it at the time."

"The sets were very wobbly. They didn't think it was going to last," she adds. "The Tardis interior was very delicate. You could practically blow on the walls like the wolf after the little piggies and it would all fall down."

Ford says promises had been made about her character.

"I was a very good dancer," she says, "and had been an acrobat. They told me Susan was going to be an Avengers-type girl — with all the kapow of that — plus she would have telepathetic powers. She was going to be able to fly the Tardis as well as the Doctor and have the most extraordinary wardrobe.

"None of that happened," she says.

She watches the modern show with envy. "Sometimes I see Matt Smith's Doctor look at these disgusting alien creatures in front of him and say something like, 'Oh, you are beautiful.' It would have been so nice to say that occasionally, instead of running away shouting, Aagh!'"

The women are much stronger now, she agrees. "How I envy them when I look at what they do, and what I had to do," Ford says. They are also more powerful in another way. "They do get very sexy, don't they? I never had such fun in my time."

Caption: William Hartnell, right, was the original Doctor Who when the series launched in November 1963.

Original Doctor Who girl envies modern series

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