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Today's Doctor Who 'too sophisticated' for former star

Paul Hayes
BBC News, Peterborough
Paul Hayes/BBC Peter Purves, a white-haired man in his eighties, wearing glasses, a dark blue jacket, white checked shirt and light brown trousers, stands behind a desk, holding up a poster reading ‘Adventures in Space and Time’ and displaying an image of a Dalek, a conical robotic creature. Behind him is a large cardboard cut-out of a Dalek.Paul Hayes/BBC
Peter Purves played Doctor Who's companion Steven Taylor for a year in the mid-1960s

A former Doctor Who star admitted he could not understand the stories in the current version of the BBC science-fiction series.

Peter Purves played Steven Taylor, a travelling companion of the very first Doctor, for a year from 1965.

The 86-year-old actor, who lives at Sibton in Suffolk, spoke to the BBC at the opening of a new Doctor Who exhibition at Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery, where he was the guest of honour on Saturday.

Purves said the series had become "far too sophisticated for my simple brain", but believed its production values were now much higher, with far more money being spent than when he was in it.

A black-and-white medium shot of two men sitting in a 16th century tavern set in a 1960s television studio. They are both in period dress. The man on the left is in his late 50s but made up to look older, with a long white wig and a black hat and black cloak. The man on the right is in his late 20s, also wearing a cloak, and a doublet with a ruffled collar.
Purves is pictured here in 1966 alongside the first Doctor, played by William Hartnell

Purves joined the cast of the hit children's show almost 60 years ago, first appearing in a serial called The Chase in June 1965.

His character Steven was a stranded space pilot of the far future, who the original Doctor, played by William Hartnell, rescued and then shared several adventures with.

"We used to have stories that were very simple, you went from there to there, you had a cliffhanger at the end of an episode, the following week you picked up from there and went to another cliffhanger, then end of story, on to another one.

"Very simple, very straightforward, very clear and easy for kids to understand."

He said he stopped regularly watching the series in the early 1970s, when Jon Pertwee was the Doctor.

Despite Pertwee being a friend of his, Purves did not enjoy the show's format of the period, with the Doctor having been exiled to Earth and many of the stories taking place in the south of England.

"I didn't like the serials then because it got embedded in England, which lots of people think is fabulous and great, it just wasn't for me. It had lost what Doctor Who was all about."

A colour photo of a 1970s television studio, with a primarily white background and floor, with some free-standing shelving in the background. Dominating the photo close up at the left of frame is a Dalek, a conical machine creature, dark grey in colour with black trim. On its right, looking away to a camera out-of-frame, is a man in his late 30s with long, greying dark hair, wearing a red shirt and flared blue jeans. At his feet is a slumbering black-and-brown dog.
Doctor Who was a recurring presence in Purves's career, including his time presenting Blue Peter in the 1970s

The actor said he still kept track of the programme's cast changes to avoid any awkwardness with fellow guests at conventions.

"I try to make sure I know who's in it. If I turn up somewhere and there's someone I don't know, it could be quite embarrassing, particularly if they're a principal character."

While almost all surviving episodes of Doctor Who from 1963 onwards are now available to watch on the BBC iPlayer, Purves is not convinced it necessarily opens up the productions from his era to new generations of young viewers.

"I remember being in America at a convention and a woman came up to me and said, 'I've been trying to get my son interested in the classics, but he won't watch it because he thinks the television's broken' because you've got these black-and-white pictures."

Paul Hayes/BBC A white-haired man in his 80s, wearing a dark blue jacket, a light blue shirt and light blue trousers, holds up a pair of scissors having just cut through a ceremonial dark blue ribbon tied between two columns at the ornate entranceway into a public building. Various other people stand around watching and applauding. Paul Hayes/BBC
Actor, Peter Purves (left), officially opens Peterborough Museum's new Doctor Who exhibition

Purves regularly fronted Doctor Who-related features when presenting the children's show Blue Peter from 1967 to 1978 but said he generally stayed away from Doctor Who conventions and events until the 1990s.

He restored his connection to the series in that decade, when he began providing linking narration for audio releases of Doctor Who episodes from his time, which no longer exist in the archives, but for which the soundtracks survive recorded by fans at home.

Despite claiming not to be able to follow the programme's current style of storytelling, Purves told the crowd watching him cut the ribbon on the new exhibition that he was impressed by Doctor Who's longevity.

"It is a remarkable thing that a series could continue to hold an audience for so long.

"And here I am – getting very old – and being able to talk about it 60 years after I first did it."

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