3. The First Time The Doctor And Tom Baker Teamed Up
It's a well-known fact that Douglas Adams, creator of Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy, got his sci-fi start as a script editor for Doctor Who. It's also reasonably well-known that ideas and plots for books in that series and Dirk Gently came from rejected scripts by Adams himself, who pushed for the show to get even weirder, funnier and post-modern. In that vein, the writer searched far and wide for potential screenplays that were totally different to their usual sort, even going so far as to gasp attend a sci-fi convention! It's there that he met Starbust movie critic John Bronsan, who pitched an idea that would have thoroughly demolished what was left of Doctor Who's fourth wall. The Fourth Doctor story would have involved the Time Lord finding himself at modern-day BBC Television Centre, where he met none other than Tom Baker, playing himself. So, he would've played two roles? Just imagine the bad special effects they would've used for that, as the pair battle against an unknown alien threat. Could it get any more meta?
Tom Baker
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Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
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