Peter says he thought he’d “be quickly forgotten”
Peter Davison has admitted that he assumed his incarnation of the Doctor would “be quickly forgotten” when he handed the TARDIS duties over to Colin Baker back in the 80’s.
The actor revealed that he never even imagined he’d still be discussing the role decades later. “I had no idea it was going to be like this,” he explained. “It gradually dawned on me. I went to all these conventions and appearances and Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton would be there. So I realised it would probably stick around for me after I left.”
Although his era in the show was generally a positive experience, Peter also revealed he regrets not fighting to maintain the element of comedy in the show. “We weren’t allowed to put any humour in so that was a great shame,” he said. “I don’t think I fought as hard as I could to get it back again. I suppose it wasn’t a battle that I could win at that point.”
Peter recently suggested the producers “struggled” to write strong female characters.
Oh, it’s an incredible shame that Davison didn’t fight harder to get the humour put back into the show. Sure, Tom Baker had gone overboard with it and a pull-back was needed. But completely removing the humour was horribly wrong. The Davison years are deadly dull and slow because of it. (My opinion only.) Still, there are some great episodes during his tenure, but it’s my least favorite era of the show.
That was the problem with his era, really. It was quite lacking in humour and, for me, that made it boring. That and you could go an average of five-to-ten minutes of the first episode of a serial and not even see the Doctor.
The humour in Tom Baker’s era was what brought Doctor Who to life for me. It embraced the unbelievability of it all in the best possible way. It was strongest when Douglas Adams was slipping in his jokes as script editor. Things kind of started to wane after he left to do HHGTTG and then got utterly boring with the hand-over to Davison. He was a great Doctor, but had the misfortune to join when the writing was beginning its descent in quality.
I thought he was the doctor with the most heart in the classic series. As much as I loved Tom I was ready for a more serious and more personal doctor. I felt like The Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric were a real family there for a while. I thought it was a nice change to the ‘hang out for a spell and them leave em without looking back’ concept. When Tegan rejoined the family after she left I cried I was so happy!