Tom Baker returns to Doctor Who role for newly-released episode

Tom Baker has reprised his role as Doctor Who for a newly-released episode of the sci-fi series.
The 83-year-old actor, who played the Time Lord between 1974 and 1981, reprised his part to complete the unfinished story Shada, 38 years after it was abandoned. Baker donned his trademark stripy scarf to film a scene at the BBC Television Centre in London, while other parts of the 1979 episode were completed with animation and the use of the actor’s voice.
To make the new scene fit in with the older shots, producers used TV cameras from the 1970s and the original Tardis set, as well as the K9 robot dog model.
The original episode was scrapped after a BBC strike, but not before seven hours of filming for the show had been completed. Shada was intended to be a celebratory episode to conclude the 17th series of Doctor Who, and was written by Douglas Adams, most famous for penning book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Speaking about his big return, Baker admitted it was “a matter of regret” that the Shada episode had not been completed. And as to why he decided to return to the role, he explained: “I think it never left me and that’s why I can’t stay away from it. It was a lovely time of my life. I loved doing Doctor Who because it was life to me. My real life was really rather drab compared with the life of Doctor Who when we were making it.
“Doctor Who for me was an asylum and when I was in (it), in full flight, making silly suggestions or pulling funny faces to make actors laugh, then I was happy.”
Producer Charles Norton added that he had been inspired to show Baker as he is now, by a line in Adams’ original script which detailed how the Doctor would be seen as a “nice old man” in years to come.
“It’s a nice way of waving goodbye to an era of Doctor Who and the 1970s and to Tom Baker in general,” he said.