Post by DR. QUIST on Sept 30, 2009 11:45:01 GMT -5
Thanks to Jenny Woodall for this!!
Retyped by Scott Burditt
An Archive Interview from TV Zone - Simon Oates
Interview by Anthony Brown (circa 1992)
Twenty-Two years ago a new word was added to the English language - Doomwatch.
Born out of Cyberman creator Kit Pedler’s desire to dramatize the dangers facing our planet, the series shot to the top of the ratings, and made its cast some of the most popular figures on television. With four episodes now available on BBC Video, TV Zone caught up with actor Simon Oates, who played scientist John Ridge.
Career Start
“I did the conventional thing. I started in rep and did four years solidly, came back to London and, concisely, I got into the West End and then television. I was lucky; 1 got into leading roles quite quickly. I did The Vortex with Ann Todd, then The Mask of Janus for the BBC, which went on to become The Spies. They were continuous series, they just changed the name, in which I played the Head of Intelligence, a very square character in a suit, and Dinsdale Landen was the footman, going out and doing the legwork.”
The producer of The Mask of Janus, which began in September 1965 and ran for twenty-six episodes, was the late Terence Dudley, who remembered Simon when he needed someone to play a rather different spy in a new series called Doomwatch.
“Ridge, the character in Doomwatch, was basically me. I was in the Intelligcence Corps, you see, and a lot of the lines were mine too. Terence Dudley gave you a fair amount of leeway in the way scenes were played, and of course Robert Powell and I got on terribly well. We didn’t quite adlib because the cameras were on us, but the lines were loose and they knew Bob and I were going to get there, hit the marks and say most of the lines, so they were ready to pick up things which went on.
“Ridge was an interesting character because he was sardonic, he was arrogant, he had a sense of humour, but he was possibly too aware. He let things get to him too much, but I think that was me coming through.”
No Acting Required
“One could almost say there was no acting required, which is stupid, because they were such wonderful parts to play, with wonderful bits like the end of Tomorrow, the Rat. I refused to rehearse that scene where I come in and find the body because I wanted it to be completely real. I’d never gone into that room before, I didn’t know where the body was going to be, I didn’t know what I was going to see.” That episode is one of four available on BBC Video, and having now seen them again, Simon is impressed. “I hadn’t thought of them for some time, but I’m amazed the BBC haven’t repeated them. The stories are so interesting and tightly written.” Watching the series through again, Simon was struck by one point: “In Tomorrow, the Rat I was surprised to see, when (‘Toby Wren) is sitting on the stairs waiting, he lights a cigarette. That wouldn’t happen today. People lost their bottle in television, and it’s easier to say, ‘No, people don’t smoke’ rather than, ‘Some people do smoke. I smoke, that’s life, for good or for ill.”
Halfway through recording the first season, the opening episode was transmitted, to an astonishing response. “It was a shock to the system. I’d done The Spies and been recognized, but we started to record these and had some in the can before they went out, and there was suddenly a massive reaction. It all hit the papers and, because of the character I was playing, the ladies man, if I had coffee with someone I was having an affair with them. I got fed up with that, being a universal product.”
Toby Wren
The success of the series made it clear very quickly that there would be a second season, but while Simon Oates had signed for two years from the start, Robert Powell had only ever intended to do one year. Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis decided to write out Toby Wren with shocking finality. “Nobody could believe that they would actually kill off one of the leads of a series. The impact of that was enormous, it was like seeing Patrick MacNee get shot, and I got letters about it. I sometimes wonder at the intelligence of people who watch television, because they’d ask me (Simon Oates, not John Ridge) ‘Why didn’t you save him. You shouldn’t have let him be there on his own’. Personally I was extremely distressed that Robert, as a friend, wasn’t going to be around, to have laughs with in rehearsal, to get drunk with and play snooker. We got on terribly well and after that, although I didn’t lose interest in the series, I did feel it had lost an enormous dynamic. His character’s diffidence and rather scholarly attitude, not quite approving of my character, gave a lovely edge to the series. I felt as if somebody had taken a crutch away.”
The second season opened with You Killed Toby Wren (also available on video) which dealt with the aftermath of Toby’s death. “I was able to use my feelings about Robert leaving in that. I could entirely visualize how I would have felt had he been blown up, and it wasn’t difficult for me - though I loved John Paul dearly - to direct that at Quist as a character. I think I threw a chair at him at one point, and that certainly wasn’t in the script.”
Downhill Slide
Unfortunately the scientific idea behind that episode wasn’t as well conceived as it might have been, and this became a common failing in the remainder of the second series, eventually leading to Pedler and Davis’s departure from the series. “You’ve put your finger on one of the reasons why I left the series. I remember some stories were brought before us, I don’t remember which, but they really had little to do with the conception of who we were. They didn’t gel with what we were supposed to be doing as a Doomwatch team, They started to scratch around for ideas a bit. You had to have Kit Pedler - he was an essential for the series. His mind was incisive, he knew what he wanted and he wrote what he wanted. “I’m not saying that Dennis Spooner is a run-of-the-mill writer because he’s not, but you can’t just say to a writer, ‘There’s this government organization, these are the parameters of what they do, write me an episode’. You’ve got to have seen it, you have to know what these people are like. They weren’t writing for us, they were writing for characters called John Ridge, called Quist... You were in the awful dichotomy of trying to fit what you knew you were into what you were given. In the first season there may have been some stories which weren’t as good as others, but the characters were strong. It was when you had to fight a change in your character to make the story work... I couldn’t compromise, and that is why I left.”
The Film
Shortly afterwards the film version of Doomwateh was made. Until recently this was the only exainple of the series which could be seen outside of conventions, but it is hardly typical Doomwatch, with the television cast sidelined or omitted in favour of Ian Bannen’s Doctor Shaw. Simon Oates’ opinion of it is blunt:
“I was ashamed I ever did it. I really should have said no, but they offered me so much money.”
Simon was persuaded, however, to return to Doomwatch for four episodes of the final season. Driven mad with frustration, Ridge threatens to destroy London with phials of Anthrax unless the government starts to take the ecology issue seriously. “They were finding a way to make a decent exit for the character, so I had to be fighting the establishment even more than I was before.”
After leaving the series Simon almost found himself playing another spy, in the form of James Bond. “I was more than a possible for the part. I was told that I was going to do it, but then Sean Connery came back and said he’d do it if they gave his fee to (the Highlands and Islands, and when it came up again I was doing something else. I don’t regret it that much — I’m very happy with the way my life has gone.” Instead he was asked to play John Steed in the ill-fated stage version of The Avengers, alongside Kate O’Mara, Sue Lloyd and Doomwatch co-star Wendy Hall.
Playing John Steed
“I didn’t go up for that. They asked me to do it, and I asked them about Patrick MacNee. I phoned Patrick in America and said, ‘They want me to do The Avengers on stage, why aren’t you doing it’. He said that he wasn’t really in shape at that time, but was happy for me to do it. After that I agreed; I wasn’t prepared to do it until I had heard from him personally, because if they were going to do that without asking him, they could have found another person to do it. It wasn’t a bad show, but it was accident prone - the number of times I had to push that bloody Bentley off the stage, ad-libbing as I went, and then the helicopters didn’t come down... I really ad-libbed my way through the first night, there were so many things that went wrong I was amazed we ever finished it, but the audience were with us — I think they understood we were fighting a rear- guard battle all the way. I was so grateful for having been a stand-up comic before then because you needed to be, but it was great fun.”
Simon was approached as the obvious person to play the stage Steed before even a director had been appointed, and was in fact given a veto over the eventual choice. “I wanted Peter Hammond to direct it. I’d done The Three Muskateers with him (and with Jeremy Brett and Brian Blessed) and we got on like a house on fire, and as he’d directed The Avengers on television I wanted him to do the stage play, but he was busy doing something else.” Instead Leslie Phillips was chosen. though he proved a little difficult to work with. “Being an actor, he wanted to play all the parts himself.”
As the only ‘other’ Steed so far, Simon suspects that it’s still too early to revive the series without Patrick MacNee, but if a revival were made... “Of course, if they did it now, Pierce Brosnan would be the ideal choice. I did a Remington Steele which was never shown over here, and there was a possibility that I might have been his father. He was very funny.”
Nowadays Simon Oates’ work in dinner theatre in the United States has left him comfortably off, und he can afford to let work come to him, though he sometimes worries that his attitude puts producers off. “I don’t go, ‘Oh gosh, it’s a wonder-ful part. . I say, ‘Tell me about it’ and as I don’t gush I think they think I’ m going to be difficult, and difficult I’ve never been.” In recent times he has appeared in an episode of Bergerac and the BBC play Gas and Candles, hut one role in particular would interest him — playing John Ridge in any Doomwatch revival. “You try and stop me!”
Retyped by Scott Burditt
An Archive Interview from TV Zone - Simon Oates
Interview by Anthony Brown (circa 1992)
Twenty-Two years ago a new word was added to the English language - Doomwatch.
Born out of Cyberman creator Kit Pedler’s desire to dramatize the dangers facing our planet, the series shot to the top of the ratings, and made its cast some of the most popular figures on television. With four episodes now available on BBC Video, TV Zone caught up with actor Simon Oates, who played scientist John Ridge.
Career Start
“I did the conventional thing. I started in rep and did four years solidly, came back to London and, concisely, I got into the West End and then television. I was lucky; 1 got into leading roles quite quickly. I did The Vortex with Ann Todd, then The Mask of Janus for the BBC, which went on to become The Spies. They were continuous series, they just changed the name, in which I played the Head of Intelligence, a very square character in a suit, and Dinsdale Landen was the footman, going out and doing the legwork.”
The producer of The Mask of Janus, which began in September 1965 and ran for twenty-six episodes, was the late Terence Dudley, who remembered Simon when he needed someone to play a rather different spy in a new series called Doomwatch.
“Ridge, the character in Doomwatch, was basically me. I was in the Intelligcence Corps, you see, and a lot of the lines were mine too. Terence Dudley gave you a fair amount of leeway in the way scenes were played, and of course Robert Powell and I got on terribly well. We didn’t quite adlib because the cameras were on us, but the lines were loose and they knew Bob and I were going to get there, hit the marks and say most of the lines, so they were ready to pick up things which went on.
“Ridge was an interesting character because he was sardonic, he was arrogant, he had a sense of humour, but he was possibly too aware. He let things get to him too much, but I think that was me coming through.”
No Acting Required
“One could almost say there was no acting required, which is stupid, because they were such wonderful parts to play, with wonderful bits like the end of Tomorrow, the Rat. I refused to rehearse that scene where I come in and find the body because I wanted it to be completely real. I’d never gone into that room before, I didn’t know where the body was going to be, I didn’t know what I was going to see.” That episode is one of four available on BBC Video, and having now seen them again, Simon is impressed. “I hadn’t thought of them for some time, but I’m amazed the BBC haven’t repeated them. The stories are so interesting and tightly written.” Watching the series through again, Simon was struck by one point: “In Tomorrow, the Rat I was surprised to see, when (‘Toby Wren) is sitting on the stairs waiting, he lights a cigarette. That wouldn’t happen today. People lost their bottle in television, and it’s easier to say, ‘No, people don’t smoke’ rather than, ‘Some people do smoke. I smoke, that’s life, for good or for ill.”
Halfway through recording the first season, the opening episode was transmitted, to an astonishing response. “It was a shock to the system. I’d done The Spies and been recognized, but we started to record these and had some in the can before they went out, and there was suddenly a massive reaction. It all hit the papers and, because of the character I was playing, the ladies man, if I had coffee with someone I was having an affair with them. I got fed up with that, being a universal product.”
Toby Wren
The success of the series made it clear very quickly that there would be a second season, but while Simon Oates had signed for two years from the start, Robert Powell had only ever intended to do one year. Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis decided to write out Toby Wren with shocking finality. “Nobody could believe that they would actually kill off one of the leads of a series. The impact of that was enormous, it was like seeing Patrick MacNee get shot, and I got letters about it. I sometimes wonder at the intelligence of people who watch television, because they’d ask me (Simon Oates, not John Ridge) ‘Why didn’t you save him. You shouldn’t have let him be there on his own’. Personally I was extremely distressed that Robert, as a friend, wasn’t going to be around, to have laughs with in rehearsal, to get drunk with and play snooker. We got on terribly well and after that, although I didn’t lose interest in the series, I did feel it had lost an enormous dynamic. His character’s diffidence and rather scholarly attitude, not quite approving of my character, gave a lovely edge to the series. I felt as if somebody had taken a crutch away.”
The second season opened with You Killed Toby Wren (also available on video) which dealt with the aftermath of Toby’s death. “I was able to use my feelings about Robert leaving in that. I could entirely visualize how I would have felt had he been blown up, and it wasn’t difficult for me - though I loved John Paul dearly - to direct that at Quist as a character. I think I threw a chair at him at one point, and that certainly wasn’t in the script.”
Downhill Slide
Unfortunately the scientific idea behind that episode wasn’t as well conceived as it might have been, and this became a common failing in the remainder of the second series, eventually leading to Pedler and Davis’s departure from the series. “You’ve put your finger on one of the reasons why I left the series. I remember some stories were brought before us, I don’t remember which, but they really had little to do with the conception of who we were. They didn’t gel with what we were supposed to be doing as a Doomwatch team, They started to scratch around for ideas a bit. You had to have Kit Pedler - he was an essential for the series. His mind was incisive, he knew what he wanted and he wrote what he wanted. “I’m not saying that Dennis Spooner is a run-of-the-mill writer because he’s not, but you can’t just say to a writer, ‘There’s this government organization, these are the parameters of what they do, write me an episode’. You’ve got to have seen it, you have to know what these people are like. They weren’t writing for us, they were writing for characters called John Ridge, called Quist... You were in the awful dichotomy of trying to fit what you knew you were into what you were given. In the first season there may have been some stories which weren’t as good as others, but the characters were strong. It was when you had to fight a change in your character to make the story work... I couldn’t compromise, and that is why I left.”
The Film
Shortly afterwards the film version of Doomwateh was made. Until recently this was the only exainple of the series which could be seen outside of conventions, but it is hardly typical Doomwatch, with the television cast sidelined or omitted in favour of Ian Bannen’s Doctor Shaw. Simon Oates’ opinion of it is blunt:
“I was ashamed I ever did it. I really should have said no, but they offered me so much money.”
Simon was persuaded, however, to return to Doomwatch for four episodes of the final season. Driven mad with frustration, Ridge threatens to destroy London with phials of Anthrax unless the government starts to take the ecology issue seriously. “They were finding a way to make a decent exit for the character, so I had to be fighting the establishment even more than I was before.”
After leaving the series Simon almost found himself playing another spy, in the form of James Bond. “I was more than a possible for the part. I was told that I was going to do it, but then Sean Connery came back and said he’d do it if they gave his fee to (the Highlands and Islands, and when it came up again I was doing something else. I don’t regret it that much — I’m very happy with the way my life has gone.” Instead he was asked to play John Steed in the ill-fated stage version of The Avengers, alongside Kate O’Mara, Sue Lloyd and Doomwatch co-star Wendy Hall.
Playing John Steed
“I didn’t go up for that. They asked me to do it, and I asked them about Patrick MacNee. I phoned Patrick in America and said, ‘They want me to do The Avengers on stage, why aren’t you doing it’. He said that he wasn’t really in shape at that time, but was happy for me to do it. After that I agreed; I wasn’t prepared to do it until I had heard from him personally, because if they were going to do that without asking him, they could have found another person to do it. It wasn’t a bad show, but it was accident prone - the number of times I had to push that bloody Bentley off the stage, ad-libbing as I went, and then the helicopters didn’t come down... I really ad-libbed my way through the first night, there were so many things that went wrong I was amazed we ever finished it, but the audience were with us — I think they understood we were fighting a rear- guard battle all the way. I was so grateful for having been a stand-up comic before then because you needed to be, but it was great fun.”
Simon was approached as the obvious person to play the stage Steed before even a director had been appointed, and was in fact given a veto over the eventual choice. “I wanted Peter Hammond to direct it. I’d done The Three Muskateers with him (and with Jeremy Brett and Brian Blessed) and we got on like a house on fire, and as he’d directed The Avengers on television I wanted him to do the stage play, but he was busy doing something else.” Instead Leslie Phillips was chosen. though he proved a little difficult to work with. “Being an actor, he wanted to play all the parts himself.”
As the only ‘other’ Steed so far, Simon suspects that it’s still too early to revive the series without Patrick MacNee, but if a revival were made... “Of course, if they did it now, Pierce Brosnan would be the ideal choice. I did a Remington Steele which was never shown over here, and there was a possibility that I might have been his father. He was very funny.”
Nowadays Simon Oates’ work in dinner theatre in the United States has left him comfortably off, und he can afford to let work come to him, though he sometimes worries that his attitude puts producers off. “I don’t go, ‘Oh gosh, it’s a wonder-ful part. . I say, ‘Tell me about it’ and as I don’t gush I think they think I’ m going to be difficult, and difficult I’ve never been.” In recent times he has appeared in an episode of Bergerac and the BBC play Gas and Candles, hut one role in particular would interest him — playing John Ridge in any Doomwatch revival. “You try and stop me!”