Colin Baker

Colin Baker
Birth date:	8 June 1943
Work in the DWU
Main roles:	Sixth Doctor
Main jobs:	Actor
Main time period active:	1984-1986 (television) 1999-present (audio)
Career highlights
Notable non-DWU work:	A Christmas Carol, War & Peace, Guys and Dolls, Hamlet, The Brothers, Macbeth, Blake's 7, Private Lives, The Mousetrap, Juliet Bravo, Peter Pan, Privates on Parade, Great Expectations - The Musical, The Famous Five, Jonathan Creek, Dick Wittington, HMS Pinafore, Dracula, Bedroom Farce, House of Ghosts, Dark Shadows, A Dozen Summers, Star Trek Continues
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Colin Baker (born 8 June 1943) played the Sixth Doctor from 1984 to 1986, beginning with an appearance at the conclusion of The Caves of Androzani, continuing from The Twin Dilemma to The Ultimate Foe.

He reprised the role for the 1993 Children in Need special, Dimensions in Time, and has also voiced the Doctor for numerous Doctor Who audio stories for Big Finish Productions.

Profile

Before being selected to replace Peter Davison as the Doctor, Baker was an established television actor. His most notable role was Paul Merroney in The Brothers. Baker also guest starred as Bayban the Butcher in the Blake's 7 episode "City at the Edge of the World".

Prior to being cast as the Doctor, Baker had guest starred in the programme, as Commander Maxil in the Peter Davison serial Arc of Infinity. At one point in the serial, Maxil shoots the Doctor; Baker often jokes that he got the part of the Doctor by killing the incumbent. Before that, he had been considered by director Christopher Barry for the role of Arnold Jellicoe in Robot, which debuted Tom Baker as the Doctor. (REF: The Fourth Doctor Handbook)

Baker's era was interrupted by an eighteen-month hiatus, officially because the show was moved back from the spring to the autumn schedule. He was ultimately dismissed from the part at the insistence of BBC management, who wanted to refresh the show. The Controller of BBC One at the time, Michael Grade, criticised Doctor Who, saying that the programme had become overly violent and its storylines farcical. Baker was offered the first four episodes of the next season in order to pave the way for a regeneration, which he turned down as he did not wish to miss out on other work in the meantime. He did offer to do the whole season and have the Doctor regenerate at the end, but this was refused. As of 2020, he is the only actor to play the Doctor who has been fired by the BBC. Years later, Baker would express regret for this decision, claiming he was being "selfish" and "not thinking about the fans."

Since leaving Doctor Who he has continued to act, mainly on the stage, where he played the Doctor again in The Ultimate Adventure, replacing Jon Pertwee in the part. He returned to television as the Doctor in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time. He has played a Doctor-like character in the BBV Productions video series The Stranger, reprised the role of the Doctor in a series of audio plays produced by Big Finish Productions and played an alternate version of the Doctor in AUDIO: Disassembled. In a poll conducted by Doctor Who Magazine, fans voted Baker the "greatest" of the Doctors in the audio plays.

Post-Who television work during the 1990s included guest appearances in the BBC's medical drama Casualty and Channel 4's adaptation of A Dance to the Music of Time. He appeared as himself as the resident celebrity in 'Dictionary Corner' on the daytime quiz show Countdown, also on Channel 4. He appeared in the first episode of Jonathan Creek (1997). He also appeared in an episode of the George Lucas TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, making him one of four classic series Doctors (the others being Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker and Peter Davison) to appear in an American TV series after leaving the role. In an appearance in an episode of the BBC's long-running medical drama series, Casualty, Baker played a Doctorish patient named David Vincent (named after Roy Thinnes' character in The Invaders TV series) who was a UFO nut and in an episode of Al Murray's pub sitcom, Time Gentlemen Please, made by Sky TV, he appeared as a character named Professor Baker.

In 1994, Colin Baker had the distinction of being the first Doctor to have written a Doctor Who story, penning The Age of Chaos, a graphic novel published by Marvel UK featuring the Sixth Doctor and Frobisher. He has also written several short stories for Doctor Who Magazine and its Yearbooks featuring the Sixth Doctor. Although Matt Smith is known to have written several short stories featuring the Doctor in preparation for playing the Eleventh Doctor, as of 2019 none have been published and thus it was not until the release of the Scratchman by Tom Baker that another Doctor actor has been credited for writing published Doctor Who fiction.

Colin Baker is of no relation to Tom Baker, who played the Fourth Doctor in Doctor Who.

He was once married to Liza Goddard. He had 5 children. Jack is the most well known for activating Baker's support for the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths. Jack died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in 1983. Since then Colin has had 4 daughters including Rosie Baker, all of them and his wife played themselves in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot.

Since 1995, Baker has written a column for the Bucks Free Press. In 2010, Hirst Books published a volume of a hundred of these columns called Look Who's Talking. They announced a second collection, including Baker's Doctor Who fiction entitled Gallimaufry. Baker both wrote and read The Wings of a Butterfly for Short Trips - Volume I.

Since Nicholas Courtney's death in 2011, he has been the honorary President of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society. Although it is said the two didn't really know each other, Baker paid his respects to the late Elisabeth Sladen after she died the same year.

In 2013, Baker appeared alongside Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, in which they attempt to appear in the 50th anniversary special The Day of the Doctor.

In 2015, Baker finally saw a chance to perform a genuine regeneration story for his Doctor in the Big Finish audio anthology The Sixth Doctor: The Last Adventure, putting to bed his jest that he had never handed over the role, which he discussed at length in the commentary featured with the release. At 28 years since his exit from Doctor Who, he holds the record for the longest time an actor who played the Doctor has waited to perform a regeneration scene after leaving the series, even surpassing Paul McGann's extensive wait of 17 years.

In 2019, Baker appeared on the Doctor Who Youtube channel in The Sixth Doctor is on trial AGAIN!, a short video promoting the the upcoming release of the Blu-ray Season 23 collection.

Credits

Television

Doctor Who

• Arc of Infinity - Commander Maxil
• The Caves of Androzani
• The Twin Dilemma
• Attack of the Cybermen
• Vengeance on Varos
• The Mark of the Rani
• The Two Doctors
• Timelash
• Revelation of the Daleks
• The Mysterious Planet
• Mindwarp
• Terror of the Vervoids
• The Ultimate Foe

Mini-episodes

• Dimensions in Time

Stage

• The Ultimate Adventure

Webcasts

• Real Time
• The Sixth Doctor is on trial AGAIN!

Other

• The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot

Audio stories

BBC Radio

• Slipback

Big Finish Monthly Range

• The Sirens of Time
• Whispers of Terror
• The Marion Conspiracy
• The Spectre of Lanyon Moor
• The Apocalypse Element
• The Holy Terror
• Bloodtide
• Project Twilight
• The One Doctor
• ...ish
• The Sandman
• Jubilee
• Doctor Who and the Pirates
• Project: Lazarus - also as a clone of the Sixth Doctor
• Davros
• Zagreus - Lord Tepesh
• The Wormery
• Arrangements for War
• Medicinal Purposes
• The Juggernauts
• Catch-1782
• Thicker than Water
• Pier Pressure
• The Nowhere Place
• The Reaping
• Year of the Pig
• I.D. / Urgent Calls
• The Wishing Beast / The Vanity Box
• 100
  • 100 BC
  • My Own Private Wolfgang
  • Bedtime Story
  • The 100 Days of the Doctor
• The Condemned
• Assassin in the Limelight
• The Doomwood Curse
• Brotherhood of the Daleks
• The Raincloud Man
• Patient Zero
• Paper Cuts
• Blue Forgotten Planet
• City of Spires
• The Wreck of the Titan
• Legend of the Cybermen
• The Crimes of Thomas Brewster
• The Feast of Axos
• Industrial Evolution
• Recorded Time and Other Stories
  • Recorded Time
  • Paradoxicide
  • A Most Excellent Match
  • Question Marks
• The Curse of Davros
• The Fourth Wall
• Wirrn Isle
• The Acheron Pulse
• The Wrong Doctors
• Spaceport Fear
• The Seeds of War
• The Space Race
• Antidote to Oblivion
• The Brood of Erys
• Scavenger
• Breaking Bubbles and Other Stories
  • Breaking Bubbles
  • Of Chaos Time The
  • An Eye for Murder
  • The Curious Incident of the Doctor in the Night-Time
• The Widow's Assassin
• Masters of Earth
• The Rani Elite
• Last of the Cybermen
• Criss-Cross
• Planet of the Rani
• Shield of the Jötunn
• Vampire of the Mind
• Order of the Daleks
• Absolute Power
• Quicksilver
• Vortex Ice / Cortex Fire
• The Behemoth
• The Middle
• Static
• The Lure of the Nomad
• Iron Bright
• Hour of the Cybermen
• The Hunting Ground
• Memories of a Tyrant
• Emissary of the Daleks
• Harry Houdini's War
• Blood on Santa's Claw and Other Stories
  • Blood on Santa's Claw
  • The Baby Awakes
  • I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day
  • Brightly Shone The Moon That Night
• Cry of the Vultriss
• Scorched Earth

Big Finish Special Releases

• The Ratings War
• Excelis Rising
• The Maltese Panguin
• Real Time
• Her Final Flight
• Cryptobiosis
• Return of the Daleks
• The Four Doctors
• Voyage to Venus
• Voyage to the New World
• The Light at the End
• The Worlds of Doctor Who
  • Second Sight
• Trial of the Valeyard
• The Sixth Doctor: The Last Adventure
  • The End of the Line
  • The Red House
  • Stage Fright
  • The Brink of Death
• The Legacy of Time
  • The Avenues of Possibility
  • Collision Course

The Lost Stories

• The Nightmare Fair
• Mission to Magnus
• Leviathan
• The Hollows of Time
• Paradise 5
• Point of Entry
• The Song of Megaptera
• The Macros
• The Guardians of Prophecy
• Power Play
• The First Sontarans
• The Ultimate Evil

Classic Doctors, New Monsters

• Judoon in Chains
• The Carrionite Curse

The Stageplays

• The Ultimate Adventure

Companion Chronicles

• Peri and the Piscon Paradox
• Beyond the Ultimate Adventure

Short Trips

• The Wings of a Butterfly
• The Doctor's Coat
• Murmurs of Earth
• To Cut a Blade of Grass

The Diary of River Song

• World Enough and Time
• The Eye of the Storm

Jago & Litefoot

• Chronoclasm
• Jago in Love
• Beautiful Things
• The Lonely Clock
• The Hourglass Killers
• Masterpiece
• Jago and Litefoot Forever

The Lives of Captain Jack

• Piece of Mind

Gallifrey

• Appropriation - Commander Maxil (cameo, uncredited)
• Diassembled - Lord Burner
• Forever - Commentator Theta Sigma

Audiobook readings

• Attack of the Cybermen
• Vengeance on Varos
• The Twin Dilemma
• Mindwarp
• The Two Doctors
• Fortunes of War

Writing Credits

Comics

• The Age of Chaos

Prose

Brief Encounters

• A Wee Deoch an ...?
• The Deal
• A Tourist Invasion

The Target Storybook

• Interstitial Insecurity

Audio

Short Trips

• The Wings of a Butterfly

External links

• Colin Baker at the Internet Movie Database
• Colin Baker at Indiana Jones Wiki