5. A Lover Of Life
Once I was doing my National Service and encountering girls, I discovered sex, started practising it in a frenzy and rejected the church very swiftly. It left me with a huge residue of guilt. Sometimes God knocks on the side of my head now and say, lets get back together. But I prefer guilt, lust, anxiety, lies and confusion. I prefer the uncertainties of life. (28th March 1992, Daily Mail extract reprinted in Doctor Who The Handbook, Howe, Walker, Stammers 2005).
Like a full bodied red wine, Tom sees life at one that must be lived to the full. This is no superficial quest for an always enjoyable, happy existence. He embraces with enthusiasm the highs and the lows, the joys and the sorrows. Certain pleasures bring with them guilt but Tom is happy to accept both sides of the coin. The dull and the mediocre are to be avoided in favour of risk. Speaking of his decision to quit Doctor Who he told the Daily Mirror in 1981 he "was looking forward to the unknown, the wonderful idea that anything or nothing could happen to me". In the Time Capsule interview he gleefully delights in recounting Peter Davisons and Paul McGanns embarrassment when in a special reception held to mark the anniversary year they spotted him lapping up the adulation of MPs. Even the everyday can be pleasurable for Tom who in 2009 could say "these days I like nothing better than doing the ironing with my wife, Sue, nearby, in my cottage in Sussex". This love for embracing the moment is something Tom sought to bring to the character of the Fourth Doctor.
The thing about Doctor Who is that he must be eternally in the present. Like when you fall in love. You know, that wonderful sense of... surprise." Radio Times (1975)
It was the realisation that he was no longer seen as current by John Nathan-Turner that led to him offering his resignation from the role he had so completely inhabited. Perhaps he would even admit to living off his past success during that difficult time.