Just over 40 years ago I played the part of Lieutenant Algernon Finch, the British
redcoat officer in Doctor Who and the Highlanders, a story set
around the time of the Battle of Culloden. My memories of this, you can
imagine, are somewhat distant now but looking back over those years I
particularly remember how I got the job because I'd been in a BBC series called
The Newcomers the previous year and I'd been directed in that by a Welsh
director called Hugh David and we'd got on well, enjoyed working with each other.
So when the time to cast this came around he very nicely thought that I
could be right for the part of Algernon and so I was offered it just like that.
Nowadays you tend to have to go and meet a director and read but Hugh David just
came straight through and said, with the scripts, and said would you like to play
this part. So that was how I got the part. The very first filming done was my very
first location filming ever on a television job so I certainly remember
it very well. Previously I'd done television in studios at the BBC and a
few ITV jobs. I hadn't done that much, I'd only been an actor at this stage for
for two years and relatively inexperienced in front of a film camera.
So out to French and Ponds in November of 1966 to film the location scenes and
I remember on my first day I had to fall into a pit in the dark. Now nowadays
there'd be a stuntman doing that for you and there'd be health and safety
regulations and there'd be a whole sheet of instructions on the call sheet as to
whether this pit had been checked for dangerous depth to it or too much mud at
the bottom or the incline was being too steep, things like that. But in those
days no, there's a pit Michael, you jump into that. So it was great fun actually
and I remember that vividly and then the next day we filmed the scene where
myself and a troop of British soldiers advance on this Highland cottage and out
from the cottage comes one of the McLarens, Alexander McLaren, played
by William Dysart, waving a claymore and charging towards us. Now I was on a
beautiful white horse which I was assured by the the horse wrangler guy
that this horse had been in Westerns all over Spain, was immaculately behaved and
gunshots would not frighten it at all and I was going to raise my pistol and
fire at the oncoming Highlander and at the moment of course I did that, the
horse set off on the first take charging over French and Pons. So two very vivid
memories of location filming. We then cut to a week or so later where we started the
studio rehearsals which took place somewhere in West London and that's when
I met Hannah Gordon and David Garth and Dallas Cavell and other actors.
Of course I'd met Patrick and Polly, Annika Wills on location so I had already
met them. It's a very happy time, it was lovely to work with Patrick Troughton
who had been a hero of mine because I think I'm right, he played Israel Hands
in Treasure Island, the famous Treasure Island, the Disney one with Robert Newton
along John Silver. So I had this image of this terrifying man which I'd seen as a
boy and I was acting with him, it was very exciting. Then of course I was
filming, most of the rehearsing, sorry I was rehearsing most of the time on the
floor of a rehearsal room with Hannah Gordon on one side of me and Annika
Wills on the other and I spent a lovely time just, if we weren't doing the
scene, chatting to these two and don't think it's much of a secret now that I
then went out with Hannah Gordon for the following year. So these jobs have their
perks. Other memories, Dallas Cavell, bless him, I've just mentioned Robert
Newton in Treasure Island. Well Dallas Cavell played a full-blooded Robert
Newton as Captain Trask, the guy, the captain of the Annabelle and we were
always sending him up about, ah, Jim Ladden, there was all that because he was
doing a full-blooded Robert Newton performance. Peter Welch who played my
sergeant, I worked with him two or three times after that, very fond of him. Fraser,
Fraser Hines, lovely guy, just joining the Doctor Who stories here for
the first time, permanently talking about horses and girls, I remember that. Michael
Krays and Annika, great fun. Patrick, towering over it all, wonderful actor. So
it was a delight to work with him. I look back on it with much nostalgia, I know
that the Doctor Who stories are so, you know, followed so strongly by various
groups, various fans and I can see why. They hold a certain magic and they
did for me, as I say, it was a potent time and I was very happy playing that part.
The year is 1746 and the TARDIS materialises a short distance from the
aftermath of the Battle of Culloden. The recently regenerated Doctor and his
companions Ben and Polly are about to step through the pages of history and
encounter the Highlanders.