Look Who's Got Sex Appeal!

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• Publication: TV Scene
• Date: 1984-04-21
• Author:
• Page: 22
• Language: English

THE latest Doctor Who is earning a reputation as the sexiest 760-year-old ever to flit through time and space at a rate of knots.

Colin Baker, 40, a green-eyed blond with a crow's-nest coiffure and the burly build of a boxer, gets "physical" in his new role.

Colin has taken over from the fifth Doctor in the series' 21-year history, Peter Davison, and the boisterous Mr Baker is definitely the Time Lord with sex appeal.

What an impact he'll have as "the craziest, spikiest, most irascible alien hero yet" — especially on his pretty assistant Peri (played by Nicola Bryant) whom he even tries to throttle in one of his less lucid moments.

But lest you suspected that beefy Baker had been brought in to get to grips with the little lady in a rather more earthy way, forget it.

Producer John Nathan-Turner solemnly intones what he has been adamantly saying for the five years since he took over the controls: "There'll be no hanky-panky on the Tardis."

And this despite the fact that less than 40 per cent of the audience for the show, the longest-running science-fiction series in the galaxy, are under 16.

This makes many grown-up children, (110 million internationally since it has been sold to 54 countries) tuning in to see the Doctor once more smite the enemies of the universe like a bizarre James Bond.

"I don't think male viewers want to see the object of their affections — Peri — mauled by a depraved Doctor," Baker grins.

"It would be extremely foolish to change the Doctor's image radically," says Nathan-Turner, "since the formula has been the most successful family entertainment ever done by the BBC.

"Why has it lasted so long? Because it's the most flexible format ever — he can travel back or forward in time and do whatever appeals to our fevered imaginations within the limits of good taste.

"Except that I have to say the new Doctor's costume has to be the most tasteless ever devised —clashing colors to go with his personality.

"And the general public does like to see good triumph over evil — though I sometimes think they like it the other way round, too, up to a point, since arch-baddie, The Master, seems to be as popular as The Doctor."

And that is why Nathan-Turner pledges that he is thinking about raising The Master from the dead — the poor fellow got burnt to a crisp recently — and is still keeping an open mind about whether to dump the outdated Tardis police box. He is still wading through the hundreds of protesting letters.

"America loves the show because it's so English and eccentric, a sort of Biggles combined with Sherlock Holmes," he says.

"Okay, we haven't got the scientific hardware of things like Star Wars, but we like to think that our stories are strong enough to stand on their own.

"The only place we haven't gone down very well is Europe, which found the series too frightening, would you believe? But we've still got fan clubs in places like Italy even though we don't transmit there."

Doctor Who is certainly one of the BBC's biggest money-spinners, with millions made from the merchandising spin-offs — Dalek bubble baths, mugs, masks, records and a novel published each month, to name just a fraction of the schemes capitalising on the Doctor's good name.

Caption: COLIN with his assistant, Nicola Bryant.

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• APA 6th ed.: (1984-04-21). Look Who's Got Sex Appeal!. TV Scene p. 22.
• MLA 7th ed.: "Look Who's Got Sex Appeal!." TV Scene [add city] 1984-04-21, 22. Print.
• Chicago 15th ed.: "Look Who's Got Sex Appeal!." TV Scene, edition, sec., 1984-04-21
• Turabian: "Look Who's Got Sex Appeal!." TV Scene, 1984-04-21, section, 22 edition.
• Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=Look Who's Got Sex Appeal! | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Look_Who%27s_Got_Sex_Appeal! | work=TV Scene | pages=22 | date=1984-04-21 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=5 April 2025 }}</ref>
• Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=Look Who's Got Sex Appeal! | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Look_Who%27s_Got_Sex_Appeal! | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=5 April 2025}}</ref>