Yahoo News Tom Baker is back as Doctor Who – in live action!
36 years since his last major appearance as the Doctor, Tom Baker has reprised the role for a new Doctor Who scene.
The sequence is part of a new version of Baker's classic story 'Shada' from 1979.
The six-episode serial was originally abandoned partway through filming due to strike action at the BBC.
But a new release – available now to download and on DVD from Monday, December 4 – has combined the existing footage with new animation to finally complete the story.
It had previously been announced that Baker would be voicing the Doctor again in the animated scenes, but the new 'Shada' also includes a live-action sequence featuring Baker back as the Doctor.
Rather than recreate the final missing scene in animation, a closing exchange in the TARDIS was filmed with Tom in 2017 at BBC Television Centre.
Delivering the dialogue written for him by 'Shada' scribe Douglas Adams back in '79, Baker says: "I expect that sometime in the future - in about 200 years' time - someone will meet me and say, is that really the Doctor? He seemed such a nice old man."
Baker originally played the fourth Doctor from 1974 to 1981. Since then, he's appeared in the Children in Need charity mini-special 'Dimensions in Time' in 1993 and in Doctor Who's 50th anniversary special, 'The Day of the Doctor', as the mysterious Curator.
Of reprising his role again, Baker said: "When I was doing Doctor Who, it was the realisation of all my childhood fantasies... so I took to it like a duck to water, and I still do. Doctor Who was more important than life to me - I used to dread the end of rehearsal... that's why I can't stay away from it."
'Shada' finds the Doctor in Cambridge working alongside Romana and a retired Time Lord, Professor Chronotis, to defeat the evil alien Skagra who is attempting to steal the secrets to the prison planet, Shada.
You can watch a video interview with Tom Baker, discussing 'Shada' and his reprisal of the fourth Doctor, below.
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