Padders

I venture back into one of my favourite era, Patrick Troughton’s to look at the personage of Wendy Padbury. “Padders” as Frazer Hines calls her.

She played Zoe Herriot, computer genius from the then-future.

Known also for 60’s catsuits on her petite thin frame.

Pat Troughton’s era didn’t do “modern” companions.

Zoe started in “The Wheel in Space” and was there until the end of Troughton’s era in “The War Games“.

Her intellect rivals that of the Doctor’s, and she has a photographic memory. And she showed it off frequently trying to get the scatterbrained Doctor to focus.

She frequently looked the part of the smarter one  of the Trio because of Troughton’s Doctors need for misdirection and enemies to underestimating him.

Part of the reason for her wanting to travel with the Doctor is her chafing at the restrictions and sterile surroundings of her station-bound existence. However, her real world experience is severely limited, and that gives her an ability to frequently get herself in trouble as female companions are want to do.

“Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority.” – The Doctor (‘The Wheel in Space’)

A UNIT soldier once famously said, “Can we keep her Sir? She’s much prettier than a computer” as she computes something faster than there computers could.

She even knows James T Kirk Computer Logic killing in The Invasion

She went onto be a talent agent, She is now retired and is living in France, having previously been a theatrical agent with Nicholas Courtney, Colin Baker and Mark Strickson, all former Doctor Who actors, amongst her clients. She discovered Matt Smith at the National Youth Theatre.

The audio is not the best: so if you go to http://drwhointerviews.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/wendy-padbury-2009/ you can read it.

And if you think Donna Noble is the only character ever mind-wiped, you’d be wrong.

Wendy’s Zoe had a very endearing quality to her, on that a  certain other mathematical genius later on (Adric) wouldn’t have.

She was charming. Wendy Padbury is charming.

Though a lot of episodes from this era are missing some of them have also been restored by animation as in The Invasion where the missing episodes were covered by animation over the original soundtrack.

The DVD The Lost Years Contains 2 episodes of The Wheel in Space and 1 of The Space Pirates.

The team of the charming Pat Troughton, the brave and loyal Jamie, and the Genius of Zoe is one of the better teams in Doctor Who’s history and one of my favorites.

But let’s not ignore the elephant in the room, as Frazer Hines said in 2005:

“He <Patrick Troughton> blew his top once, with Padders and I, because he had this long speech and he kept fluffing it on the third line. Once an actor starts to corpse, it’s very difficult. I said ‘Patrick, you’re paid a fortune to learn these lines, I’m paid to get the girls watching and Padders is paid to stop the Dads doing the gardening, Patrick you’re paid to say these lines’, so then he did the speech again, he got over the line, he looked at us, then he dried on the next line.”

Wendy in 2005:

“Tristan de Vere Cole directed ‘The Wheel in Space’ and he was a great help, because obviously I was the new girl and scared. I looked to him and he helped me a lot. The other nice thing about ‘Doctor Who’ was that with each story, it wasn’t just a new director coming in, it was a new everybody, so after that first one, I wasn’t the new girl, I was the old girl! I liked Zoe to start off with, because I think she was slightly different from a couple of the others, who screamed a lot. She was an astro-physicist and was supposed to know what was what – she was fairly intelligent. Sadly, I think with each consecutive story it was watered down, until I became a screamer again.

“I liked the Ice Warriors – they really gave me the creeps. I don’t know why. I’d sit in make-up with the guys who played them having coffee, and waiting for their make-up to go on, which took hours. But as soon as we started recording one, they really gave me the creeps.

“We never went anywhere terribly glamorous. We did go to Brighton rubbish dump, which was really nice! It was always nice to go away filming, though, it gave you time to think, because it’s much slower, much more like rehearse / record. Everyone was cold – we were filming in constant rain for ‘The Krotons’. There were rats crawling around that you wouldn’t believe! I had a mini-skirt on and my dresser used to bring her fur coat. There was a little bottle of brandy in the pocket, which believe me you needed – it was freezing.

“I remember very little about ‘The Dominators’. I remember Ronnie Allen and I remember the director, Morris Barry. I found him a bit suffocating – we weren’t really allowed to come up with any ideas on that one, we were just told to get on and do it.

“The Mind Robber was my favourite story – there were lots of problems with the script and Frazer got chicken pox and it was all so hectic we just ploughed through it all. But Emrys James was wonderful, and so was David Maloney, who directed lots of my episodes. I really loved that one – I remember the toy soliders, the forest of trees which were like a maze of letters and the set where everything was white.

“I really thought as Pat and Frazer were going, it just couldn’t be the same, so I thought it was an ideal time to leave, really. I’d had no set idea of how I wanted to do it – I can’t even remember how one was contracted at the time. I think we had various contracts along the way and the three of us came to an end at the same time.

And what blog about this time in WHO’s history would not be complete without a practical joke by the team of Troughton and Hines:

“One of the most embarrassing moments actually happened during rehearsals of one of the Cyberman stories, I think I’d had a late night and I came into the rehearsal room not looking my best. Pat, Frazer and I were sat down learning our lines for a scene, and I was wearing a kilt, quite a short kilt, and Pat and Frazer sat either side of me. I have to say here that we were rehearsing in a church hall, which is quite relevant to the story. So we sat down, and because I’d had a late night I sort of nodded off, and suddenly I got two elbows in my ribs, with Pat and Frazer either side of me, saying ‘Quick, quick, you’re on!’, and I shot out of my chair and they’d undone the kilt, so I shot into the rehearsal room in my knickers. I was so embarrassed, I ran out of the doors and bumped into the vicar. I curtsied and ran into the ladies toilets.

Always the Lady, even kilt-less..That’s our young teenage genius…

Season 5:

The Wheel in Space

Season 6:

The Dominators

The Mind Robber

The Invasion

The Krotons

The Seeds of Death

The Space Pirates

The War Games

Season 20:
The Five Doctors (Cameo)

Gallifrey One, Guest Banquet (2009)

She is in the center of the picture wearing black, next to Frazer.