| Caroline John | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1940 (age 71–72) [1] York, North Yorkshire, England, UK[1] |
| Occupation | actor |
| Spouse | Geoffrey Beevers |
Caroline John (born 1940) is an English actress best known for her role as Liz Shaw in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, as well as several other television roles.
After training at the Central School of Speech and Drama, she worked in theatre, touring with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre in King Lear, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Merchant of Venice and as Hero in Franco Zeffirelli's production of Much Ado About Nothing.
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She played the role of the Doctor's companion in 1970 opposite Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor. Unlike many of the preceding female companions of the Doctor, Liz Shaw was a scientist and understood much of the Doctor's technobabble. This was perhaps the downfall of the character; Liz and the Doctor discussed things on an equal level of intelligence, and the Doctor respected and rarely patronised her. As the essential role of the companion in Doctor Who is to ask a lot of questions which the viewers might be asking themselves, incoming producer Barry Letts considered her character was unsuitable and decided against renewing her contract. Caroline was pregnant at the time, which would have meant her having to resign anyway.
During her final story, "Inferno", John also played the part of Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw, an alter ego of her regular character that the Doctor encounters in an alternative time stream. John reprised the role of Shaw, albeit as a phantom, in the anniversary episode The Five Doctors, and also appeared in the special episode Dimensions in Time (1993), part of the BBC's annual Children in Need appeal. In the 1990s she appeared in a series of straight-to-video releases including The Stranger: Breach of the Peace, and as Liz Shaw in the P.R.O.B.E. stories written by Mark Gatiss and featuring numerous actors from the history of Doctor Who – including Jon Pertwee, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. In these stories made by the production company BBV, a pipe-smoking Shaw works as an investigator (for the P.R.O.B.E. organisation); John is seen opposite Linda Lusardi in the former model's first acting role. John has more recently appeared in two Big Finish Productions' audio dramas based on Doctor Who; Dust Breeding (2001), although playing a character other than Liz Shaw, and The Blue Tooth (2007) where, as Liz, she recounts in narrative form an adventure she once had with the Doctor and UNIT.
John is married to Geoffrey Beevers, who played the renegade Time Lord known as the Master in The Keeper of Traken. Beevers also appeared in Dust Breeding. They both had roles in the political thriller A Very British Coup though they weren't on screen at the same time. Her most recent notable appearance was a non-speaking role in the film Love, Actually as Sam's grandmother.