ROBERT SIDAWAY - ON ACTING
PART TWO: DOCTOR WHO, OUT OF THE UNKNOWN & CROSSROADS

Why didn’t you return to the programme as Captain Turner?

I was asked to go back, but I couldn’t. I had been out of work for a while when I was offered the opportunity to join the Chichester Festival Theatre for a season – back on stage again! I had signed the agreement, and literally three or four days later I received a call about the possibility of returning as Captain Turner. I was badly disappointed that I couldn’t go back to Doctor Who.

So, you would have returned to the show otherwise?

Of course! I was thinking, “I’m playing one of the principal characters, this is a dream!”

Were you aware at the time that The Invasion was seen as a pilot for a potential new format for Doctor Who?

No. We had no idea. We just knew that, for its time, this was a really big production of Doctor Who. We knew it was important because it had a big budget. We were all just glad to be working!

Did you enjoy making The Invasion?

Sometimes a group of actors are cast and get together and it works – everybody gets on, and everybody enjoys working together. It’s great when that happens because it doesn’t always. But when it does it really helps. At the time it made quite an impact, and The Invasion has since become iconic. And, of course, now I’ve been animated! There aren’t many actors that have been animated! It’s been fun to see those missing episodes of us all in animated form.

And I remember the big action sequence we shot on location by St Paul’s in the City Of London. The classic sequence when the Cybermen came up through the manholes and the invasion was on! It was a hectic Sunday shoot and a tight schedule. Douglas was at his disciplinarian best and we had to be fully concentrated and on our marks from dawn to dusk. I had my 3-year-old son bought to watch the filming. To this day, when Ashley walks in the street he always avoids manhole covers!

Are you surprised that Doctor Who is still running after all these years?

Back in the sixties, I knew that Doctor Who was popular, but it was just another teatime series in those days. But when you look at the quality that started to develop, I can understand exactly how it survived and has been revived successfully and is now part of television’s cultural history. Especially because people like Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis really came along at just the right time. It was exciting.

Actually, back in the 90s, the private bank Coutts & Co. had a financing division for film and television. They were going to be part of the finance to produce a fantasy film called Rainbow in 1994. In the end they didn’t back us, for various reasons. But my son and I got to know the guy who was running the film division very well, and he asked us if we could come up with some ideas for reviving Doctor Who. Contacts of his were looking at how to reimagine the programme, as the BBC were at that time looking to freshen it up with outside partners. So, we were sort of semi-commissioned to come up with ideas and storylines for the new Doctor Who.

We did some work on the project at a time when there was no definite decision to bring it back. Especially after Steven Spielberg’s involvement fell through and a Doctor Who TV movie didn’t turn out too good. The BBC delayed longer any decisions on a revival. Who knows what happened to our work! 

Why have you never given an interview about your time on Doctor Who?

I don’t think I had ever realised how iconic Doctor Who had become - even when I started getting offers to sign autographs and talk to the fans some years ago. And the other thing is that I was so involved in writing and producing my own films and television over the years. You start from scratch with a script, and it demands 100% dedication to get it developed, produced, and released, whilst everything else from the past was something I just hadn’t got time for, which I know now was a mistake – I should have made time.

I still get fan letters which somehow find me wherever I am in the world. I came to Montreal a few years ago because of a tv series and was sharing an office with a local producer. One day his assistant approached and said that there was a letter for me, which was a surprise since I’d only been there a few weeks and not yet given out the mailing address. It was a fan letter from Sweden asking for a signed photo and telling me she’d followed my career since Doctor Who, and would I ever be coming to Sweden! I was left thinking, how on earth did she find me here? How does that happen?

I’d put my acting past aside, because for the last forty years it’s been film and television writing and producing. That’s been my life, behind the camera.

You also featured in many television programmes that continue to attract a great deal of interest – do you remember of your appearance in Out Of The Unknown?

Yes, I do! Peter Sasdy directed an episode called The Midas Plague. I didn’t have a big part, but he really gave me encouragement. He tried to cast me in other things, but again I was in the theatre a lot. Peter was a very talented director, and Out Of The Unknown was an interesting series. At the time, I felt that they were making some brave television, adapting classic science fiction short stories, as well as getting contemporary authors on board to write some of the episodes. 

You were also featured in, and wrote for, the afternoon soap opera Crossroads?

I was in a few episodes of Crossroads in 1973. Noele Gordon was a difficult woman to work with - some of the regulars dreaded going into rehearsal if she was in a bad mood. I also discovered that the audience took the show very seriously. Although I was only in three of episodes, I immediately had a fanbase. I used to wonder how people could be so dedicated to an afternoon series like Crossroads and believe that the characters were real.

What made me realise how seriously some people took a programme like Crossroads was when the character of Sheila Harvey, played by actress Sonia Fox, was heavily pregnant with an illegitimate child. Sonia and I were in a Birmingham department store, paying at the counter, when a woman came rushing up to her and punched her in the stomach. She was shouting “I hope you lose the f*****g child, you whore!” I remember helping to pull this woman off her. Sonia was dazed and in pain. The woman really did believe in the character. It was a shocking moment. After this I always made an effort to reply to fan letters!

Peter Ling (who was co-creator and main writer of the soap) asked me one day if I had ever written anything. I showed him a script, and he called and offered me a chance to join the writing team. At that time, I was a single dad, and I couldn’t do much TV or theatre, so I joined the team for six months – until Noele Gordon got me sacked!

I thought I would like to bring an element of light and fun into the storylines, as well as all the drama. It went down well with everybody, except Noele Gordon. Comedy was always a thing that I’ve loved and enjoyed writing, but she didn’t like my style of comedy, and felt that some of the characters that I had created with the team in the writers’ room were not to her taste! We developed the character of Benny Hawkins, which was quite brave at the time, but she didn’t like it at all. So that was the end of me on the team, and Peter Ling reluctantly had to let me go.

Why did you quit acting?

I quit finally because I was a single dad, and I couldn’t cope with theatre as well as television and film as a single father. I’ve never regretted it, but I’ve always missed it. Ironically, I have missed acting on stage more than television. Work that one out - after my young dreams of being a film star!