All The Tropes

Tom Baker: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

Tom Baker (view source)

Revision as of 11:43, 25 January 2014

74 bytes removed ,  10 years ago
m
Mass update links
VisualWikitext
(Fixed stupid error)
m (Mass update links)
Line 1:
{{work}}
[[File:tombaker.jpg|link=Doctor Who (TV)|rightframe| [[Catch Phrase|Would you care for a jelly baby?]]]]
 
 
{{quote| ''I'm not just a Doctor... I'm THE Doctor! The definite article, you might say.''<br />
'''The Fourth Doctor''', ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'', "[[Doctor Who (TV)/Recap/S12 E1 Robot|Robot]]" }}
 
Thomas Stewart Baker (born 20 January, 1934) '''is''' ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]''. An old story goes that if you don't know what Tom Baker looks like, all you need to do is close your eyes and think of the Doctor... and that's him. Curly hair, floppy hat, long multi-coloured scarf and toothy grin. Instantly recognisable. Even today, over thirty years since leaving the role, he's generally accepted as being the most well known of any of the eleven actors to have played it to date and has only now been surpassed in popularity by [[David Tennant]]; even newer and/or younger Who-fen, for whom Tennant is their iconic Doctor, list Baker as ''the'' Classic Doctor. Certainly he was the longest serving (seven years in total), so he is embedded in the public consciousness better than most of the others.
 
Born in [[Oop North|Liverpool]], Baker initially studied to become a monk, but he dropped out when he realised that a life of isolation wasn't for him. He gravitated towards acting, mostly as an understudy on stage. He gained plaudits for his role as [[Ra Ra Rasputin|Grigori Rasputin]] in ''Nicholas And Alexandra'', and this led to several other film and television roles, among them the evil magician Koura in the movie ''[[Harryhausen Movie|The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad]]''.
 
Nevertheless, the forty year old actor was working on a London building site as a bricklayer (and, by his own account, was of "no fixed abode") when he got lucky. Very lucky. Being known socially to the head of BBC drama and his wife ([[Double Entendre|no sniggering at the back please]]), Baker's name came up in discussion as a possibility when the producers of ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'' were looking for somebody to replace the departing Jon Pertwee. A meeting was arranged between Baker and the two men who were in overall charge of the series, producer Barry Letts and script editor [[Terrance Dicks (Creator)|Terrance Dicks]], both of whom took an immediate liking to the actor.
 
At the time of his casting, Baker was by far the least well known actor to have ever played the Doctor. [[William Hartnell]], [[Patrick Troughton]] and [[Jon Pertwee]] had all been much loved character actors, even before playing the role, whereas Baker had largely been a supporting artist. It's somewhat ironic, therefore, that Baker ended up being the longest serving and most well-known of them all. His portrayal of the Doctor was (and remains) iconic: Baker himself attributes his success to having played the role as that of a [[Man Child]], similarly to [[The Marx Brothers|Harpo Marx]].
Line 22:
In late 2013, he made a new appearance as the Doctor in the ''Doctor Who'' 50th anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor"; surprisingly, {{spoiler|it wasn't, strictly speaking, as the fourth Doctor, but as a future regeneration who had chosen to "revisit old favorite faces", and was now retired and serving as the curator of a Royal art museum}}.
 
Baker married one of his former ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'' co-stars, [[Lalla Ward]] (who played companion Romana II), shortly after they both departed the series. The marriage didn't last very long. Neither wishes to elaborate further, and she is now happily married to [[Richard Dawkins]], whom she met through [[Douglas Adams]].
 
{{reflist}}
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/577121"