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A mystery: a woman with long hair, leaning against the third Doctor on Bessie. The letter of the answer: the brisk, efficient, perceptive scientist in Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, the self-possessed woman who knew the measure of human frailty in Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters. Finally, the spirit and the substance of the answer: that amused smile, gently authoritative voice, precise body language, expression that was always questing, always determined, whatever terrors arose from beneath the Earth or descended from outer space. The vocal control which showed that even in another universe where a moral compass had been thoroughly brutalised, a conscience remained true.
Much later: an autograph queue, BAFTA. I'd ducked in to see what was happening and buy a book, and found a signing session in full swing. I'd not been at one since a towering actor had placed his hat on my head and wrote that I looked good in it on the short title page of my copy of Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin. Old hands made their way up and down the queue, it was so long and there were so few tables: "Watling? Anyone for Watling?" called a smoke-aged voice like some wine-marinated sergeant-major. A jolly blonde woman remembered people she'd met before, and introduced them to her seemingly more introverted male colleague. I reached the table; a stuntman appraised me sceptically, a practical man gazing on a starstruck fantasist. Then, an even more talkative woman, not falling back on the "Isn't this fantastic!" line it's easy to resort to in these situations, but questioning, wondering how I discovered Doctor Who, and why I stayed with it. I can't remember my reply. I asked her to sign my Television Companion, which she did, under the listing for Inferno which unfortunately detailed her removal from the series. I moved on, and she found something else as specific and new to say to the next person. Good casting, I thought. Thank you, Carry.
Much later: an autograph queue, BAFTA. I'd ducked in to see what was happening and buy a book, and found a signing session in full swing. I'd not been at one since a towering actor had placed his hat on my head and wrote that I looked good in it on the short title page of my copy of Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin. Old hands made their way up and down the queue, it was so long and there were so few tables: "Watling? Anyone for Watling?" called a smoke-aged voice like some wine-marinated sergeant-major. A jolly blonde woman remembered people she'd met before, and introduced them to her seemingly more introverted male colleague. I reached the table; a stuntman appraised me sceptically, a practical man gazing on a starstruck fantasist. Then, an even more talkative woman, not falling back on the "Isn't this fantastic!" line it's easy to resort to in these situations, but questioning, wondering how I discovered Doctor Who, and why I stayed with it. I can't remember my reply. I asked her to sign my Television Companion, which she did, under the listing for Inferno which unfortunately detailed her removal from the series. I moved on, and she found something else as specific and new to say to the next person. Good casting, I thought. Thank you, Carry.
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