Monday 25 March 2013

Frazer Hines - I want Doctor Who return

Frazer Hines has signalled his desire to reprise the Doctor Who-companion role he first played in the BBC’s flagship science-fiction drama series 47 years ago. 
 
In an exclusive interview with Benjamin Cook for Doctor Who Magazine (DWM), Frazer Hines, now 68, explains how he’d like to join the Doctor (Matt Smith) and Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman) in the TARDIS. Not only would he like to return to his role as the Doctor’s Scottish, kilt-wearing companion, Jamie McCrimmon, but he’d like to do so full-time. “Jamie would still work,” Hines insists to Cook. “They’ve got a young Doctor now [at 26, Smith was the youngest actor when cast], and a young female assistant; they need somebody [for] the grannies.”
 
  In 1966, when Jamie joined the then TARDIS crew, Hines was a youthful-looking 22-year-old. Now 68, he’s retained his good looks and prides himself at still being fit and active – he recently represented England as part of its team in the Over 40s Cricket World Cup. “If I were old, and bald, and on a walking stick, there’s no way I’d think of coming back as Jamie,” he tells DWM. “But I’m still fit and healthy. I’ve got good legs. And I miss the show more than ever.” It’s no secret that Jamie’s Doctor – Patrick Troughton – is Smith’s favourite, who has to some extent modelled his Eleventh Doctor on him. Hines tells DWM that he’s aware that 1967’s The Tomb of the Cybermen – in which Hines and Troughton both appeared – is Smith’s all-time favourite Doctor Who story, adding: “I’m sure Matt would like to work with Patrick. Of course, he can’t [Troughton died in 1987]. Well, get his assistant back.” 
 
 
With the late Patrick Troughton in the TARDIS
 
 
 Jamie twice returned to the TV series: for the 20th-anniversary special, The Five Doctors (1983), and – when Troughton teamed up with one of his successors, Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor – in The Two Doctors (1985). With a total of 116 episodes, to date, Hines holds the record of playing Doctor Who’s longest-serving companion. 
 
Hines has obviously thought long and hard about returning to the show, and, according to DWM, regrets not suggesting it to the Doctor Who the person responsible for his return in the 1980s. “If I’d said to [Doctor Who producer] John Nathan-Turner, ‘You’ve got Peri and the Doctor, but you haven’t got a male companion. Why don’t I stay’ […] I’m sure he’d have said yes, because JN-T [as he was widely and affectionately known] was like that […] spur-of-the-moment.”

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