Talk:Tom Baker

Tom Baker Doctor Who Advertisements
I Was wondering whether we should include either in this article or on a separate article Tom Baker reprising his role for advertisements such as the Four he did for a New Zealand Insurance agency recently, the two he did for prime computers in the 80's and the environmental one he did for Australia ? Dark Lord Xander 07:36, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

The drug death myth
There isn't a real place for this in the article, but as the one who originally added this information to the Wikipedia article (and in turn it ended up in the Wikia article) regarding the erroneous reports of Baker's death in 1982, it's worth giving a more detailed explanation. In the mid-1980s my mom was a doll collector and we were in a shop that sold dolls and reference books and there was an encyclopedia of character/TV dolls. Basically the book was intended for people who didn't know Mr. Spock from Dr. Spock and so it gave little descriptions of who the actors were, what they did, etc. And Tom Baker was listed because there were some Fourth Doctor dolls in circulation (plus the Dapol action figures had just come out, if I recall correctly). The entry for Tom Baker said he had died of a drug overdose in a New York hotel room in 1982. This depressed me as I was just getting into Doctor Who via the Baker episodes. So for the next several years (remembering this was pre-Internet) I proceeded on the assumption that Tom Baker was dead. It was not until Reeltime Pictures released their interview tape with Tom Baker that I realized he was alive and well. I've been trying for years to identify the reference book that made this error, and when the Internet came along I did some research and found out an actor named Tom Baker did indeed die in 1982, but obviously it wasn't OUR Tom Baker. The funny thing is that my favorite show in the mid-80s, which I never missed, was Remington Steele, and Baker appeared in an episode that aired in either late 1983 or early 1984 -- clearly after his supposed death. But for some reason I never made the connection; then again, I wasn't a Doctor Who fan yet when Baker appeared on Steele... Anyway, I feel referencing this myth is important as there is at least one printed source that includes it, and printed sources last forever. For those interested, the other Baker's IMDb listing can be viewed here 23skidoo 16:18, 23 July 2008 (UTC)