Here’s Jackie Lane, who played Dodo for about a year with William Hartnell’s Doctor, talking about her experience with the show. She tells DWM how she originally auditioned for the part of Susan, and how Innes Lloyd ended up dropping her from the show rather unceremoniously, although she later got her revenge.
“I remember auditioning for the past of Susan, back in 1963. When I realised that it was going to be a long running part, I said I didn’t really want to read for the part. I don’t know if they would have offered it to me, but anyway, Dodo came along a couple of years later when I was more prepared to tie myself down to a television series. I was cast by John Wiles but he gave up being the producer after my first story, and Innes Lloyd took over.
“It was very friendly – although poor Bill Hartnell had put up with a lot of cast changes over a short space of time. It was really beginning to get to him. We got on very well, although I wouldn’t say I ever really knew him that well.
“Dodo was very much a Sixties character – I think I was one of the first girls on television to wear a mini-skirt. Because I am so small, it was quite difficult to find trendy clothes in my size, but I selected this Dylan cap and that really started the character off for me.
“I think (Innes Lloyd) had definite plans for the series which neither Steven nor Dodo really fitted, and half way through my first year I was told that Dodo was to be written out. I would have liked a dramatic ending and my farewell just two episodes into ‘The War Machines’, and not even on camera but in reported speech, was a bit of an anti-climax. Still, I got my revenge. I now run a voice-over agency and Innes Lloyd once asked me to find him work. I reminded him that he had once sacked me from ‘Doctor Who’ and said a very firm ‘no’!”
Doctor Who Interview Archive 