‘Doctor Who’: Tom Baker Explains Why He Quit the Show

Tom Baker may be best known for his legendary portrayal of the fourth incarnation of the Doctor in the classic era of the Doctor Who series, but he hasn’t always had the best experiences playing the Time Lord. According to Baker, it was issues the series’ then-producer John Nathan-Turner that led him to quit the show back in 1980.

In an interview with Digital Spy, Baker revealed that he found Nathan-Turner’s approach to the series to be “unbearable”, claiming that the showrunner took his control as an actor away from him.

“I didn’t like his approach to anything very much,” Baker said. “His approach as a producer, to the scripts and to my performance…he managed somehow — how terrible — to diminish me. He made assumptions about how I should do things, or what lines meant, or how it should be shot, which diminished me, and I found that unbearable.”

It wasn’t the only thing that Baker found to be unbearable and problematic. Nathan-Turner also redesigned Baker’s Doctor costume, including the addition of question marks on the collar of his shirt. It’s a decision that Baker said “irked” him and was “vulgar and cheap”.

“[That idea] struck me as being insufferably vulgar and cheap,” Baker explained. “It was silly of me not to have faced him and spoken to him.”

Ultimately, Baker left Doctor Who after having worked only one season with Nathan-Turner. According to Baker, though, it was Nathan-Turner who pushed him away from the series, so he could put his “stamp” on it.

“He nudged me towards the realization it [Doctor Who] had run its course and I should go somewhere else,” Baker said. “I think, in a way, when I said when I wanted to go he was relieved, that he wouldn’t have that fight. He could get his stamp on it. There was a lot of tension [before that]. But as soon as I resigned, everything was perfect — he adored me, because he’d won I suppose.”

Nathan-Turner remained with Doctor Who until it was cancelled in 1989. While Doctor Who eventually returned to television, first in an unsuccessful revival in 1996 and then in 2005 when it was successfully re-launched into the series that continues today, Baker revealed that his own return — in this case to real life post-Doctor Who — was challenging after playing the character for what remains the longest tenure of all actors in the role.

“Going back to ordinary life, which was a bit muddle din those days… I was happier when I was being unreal,” Baker said. “When I was real, I was sad. It wasn’t always like that — I had wonderful periods where I was ecstatically happy…but the part really became my life — actually doing it, thinking about it. Real life, you know, is not my specialty…[but] I’m happier now than I have ever been in my life.”