The Tamaras Crisis - Cast and Crew

Peter Clancy was superb as our full time cameraman throughout this story, and he also had a small role as a booming Timelord towards the end, albeit a voice-only part. As much as he enjoyed himself whilst we were filming, he did become tired and frustrated at various points due our lack of preparation and endless takes. . I clearly recall him insisting that we created a proper story board which would have made the actual recording schedule much more organised, but we were far too excited and enthusiastic about every other aspect of the production to worry about it. All that we came up with in the end was a rough list of the order in which we were going to shoot the scenes, and this resulted in our forgetting to film a few scenes as mentioned in the previous post. But he was, on the whole, very patient with us, and would often inject some humour into the proceedings such as referring to our villainess’s tree-like TARDIS as ‘The Rani’s bush’. He also took great amusement from a particular phrase we had used in the script for one of the Rani’s gadgets, namely a Bromide Reguliser Diode. We had no idea at the time that Bromide was a drug administered to soldiers to calm their sexual frustrations…….

As I mentioned in the first Tamaras Crisis production post, I was amazed that my sister and her boyfriend had agreed to take part in The Tamaras Crisis. To be honest I don’t think they really thought we would ever go ahead with it, but when we announced that we were, I think they felt obliged to take part – much to our relief. As is fairly obvious by now, Paula played the Rani and Stewart, her 6’ 4" boyfriend, played the Android. I may be biased in my opinion, but my sister was and still is very attractive, so we didn’t need to do too much to try and recreate the physical and aesthetic aspects of the original character as expertly portrayed by Kate O’Mara. Paula wore a very revealing 2-piece black leather-effect outfit with a wide purple belt and suede boots, and she was made up to be as sexy and powerful looking as the ‘real’ Rani. Pretty she may be, but my dear sister cannot act for toffee (a family trait, I fear), and most of her scenes are very amusing indeed. She did look the part though, and this succeeded in giving the whole production a much more professional feel. The android was quite effective too, complete with a missing hand which was achieved by using the bottom half of a plastic lemonade bottle painted in silver and worn as a glove, and then poking bits of wire through holes in the end. As well as his powerful physical presence, Stewart also made a spectacular fall into a group of spiky and overgrown bushes which was completed in one very successful take, and was certainly not something I would have attempted myself.

The remainder of the cast, i.e. myself, Andrew, his two brothers and his sister, were old hands as far as our Doctor Who stories were concerned, though in no way did any of us think we had any acting ability, and our lack of realism was particularly apparent in some of the scenes which were quite well written and required some real emotional input. Whilst Andrew and I were writing the script, I had a sudden twinge of nostalgia in realising that I was no longer going to be playing the Doctor, so I deftly incorporated a section towards the end of the story where my Doctor would return briefly to assist his new incarnation. Of course I already had a part in the story, but as I was behind a mask for this role I wanted some more screen time in which I could be recognised – how very modest of me, don’t you think?

Next Episode: Looking Back!