From the archive: When Pauline Collins played Queen Victoria in Doctor Who

This article was first published in Radio Times magazine in April 2006 to promote Pauline Collins's appearance in Doctor Who as Queen Victoria.

I really liked the part of Queen Victoria because she’s humorous and very human," says Pauline Collins, who plays the monarch in this week’s Doctor Who. "I’m sure she was both of these things in real life, but they’re not the attributes you normally see in portrayals of her."

The story sees our time travellers dropping into the Scottish Highlands in 1879, meeting Queen Victoria en route to Balmoral and, of course, encountering the werewolf introduced on the previous page. "I have to say, when I saw the episode, I was genuinely scared!" admits Collins.

It’s not the first time the actress has appeared in Doctor Who. Almost 40 years ago she starred in the original series opposite Patrick Troughton. In fact, after her appearance as Samantha Briggs in the sixpart story The Faceless Ones, she was offered a regular slot on the show. "I was offered 39 episodes as Patrick’s sidekick in 1967," she explains. “I turned it down though, because it seemed such a long time to be tied to a series. I was frightened of feeling trapped. I really loved the danger of not knowing what was coming next. I still do."

Although she has no regrets about not taking up the opportunity, the chance to appear in the series for a second time was a dream come true. "Russell T Davies is a brilliant writer. What he’s done is to create a show with really broad appeal that will go down in TV history. It’s an amazing feat."

Another amazing feat was negotiating the royal regalia during filming: "The most challenging part of playing Queen Victoria was the wonderful but very heavy costume,” says Collins. "There were so many layers to the skirts that it made getting about quite tricky. I felt like I was carrying several small children around with me all the time."

(Billie Piper’s clothes as Rose are worth a close look as well, as costume designer Louise Page reveals: "I’ve got a little twist in the T-shirt, which people won’t see that much of, but there’s something on the T-shirt that for me is a nod to the episode.")

And as for the Doctor, in Pauline Collins’s opinion, David Tennant is the best Time Lord of them all. "David’s Doctor has a darker side to him, an unpredictability,” she says. "You imagine he could take the Doctor to dark places. As Queen Victoria, I don’t really like the Doctor because of this. I don’t know where he’s come from or where he’s really going and it rubs me up the wrong way. As myself, though, I think he’s the best Doctor so far."

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