User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1947484-20130805130556/@comment-188432-20130813005938

Hartnell was "fired" in the sense that his contract was simply not renewed. Now, it was mutual, in that he'd been convinced that it was a good thing, and he agreed to not having his contract renewed, but the truth was that he kept acting for several years after he left. He really was "eased out". (The Second Doctor Handbook describes his departure as an "agreement" between Innes Lloyd and Hartnell.)
Troughton has specifically said that he always planned to do three years, and that was the condition of his acceptance to Innes Lloyd in 1966. His notion was that he simply didn't want to get typed. (DWM 78)
It has often been said that Pertwee left because the death of Robert Delgado and the departure of Katy Manning left him feeling that the family was breaking up anyway. However, Elisabeth Sladen has said that he asked for more money for the new contract that would have covered season 12, the BBC didn't meet the demand, and so he resigned. The truth is probably a mix of the two. The Third Doctor Handbook quotes a Daily Mail interview in which he says, "I felt the team was breaking up. It all seemed to be changing and I decided I would change with it. Perhaps it's a bad decision — Doctor Who' would have been a certain bread ticket for another year … I have been out of the theatre for five years. It is time I went back." He gave another 1974 interview in which he largely attributed his departure to his back pain caused by not having "vertebra between the fifth and sixth lumbars" and was therefore in "permanent pain for the last two Doctor Who series". Unlike most other actors,
Tom Baker has said that he routinely submitted his resignation at the end of each season and it was usually rejected. It's a little unclear whether this was literally true, but he did at least submit his resignation after the season 18 contract expired and JNT took him up on it. Of course, Baker has admitted that he was pretty unbearable during this period, so perhaps it's best to think of his departure as a kind of divorce with faults on both sides. In DWM 181, or thereabouts, he says, "…because I was the constant factor [as compared with transient directors], I became more and more proprietorial, and in the end it became obvious I had to go. I got more and more irascible and people seemed to think the programme was me, we became to utterly intertwined. This was very bad, and a sign that I had to go. Also I didn't find rehearsals as funny as I had done."
Peter Davison has said repeatedly that he was influenced by Troughton's advice to only do three years. However, the best reason for his departure is really that he was disappointed in the quality of scripts in season 20. He has repeatedly said that if he had been making the decision on the basis of season 21, he'd have stayed for a fourth year.
Colin Baker wasn't fired. He didn't depart willingly, that's true, but he wasn't fired. Fired means that your employer breaks your contract, tells you to leave the premises, and pays whatever penalties are associated with doing that. That didn't happen. Michael Grade's view of this situation is actually, legally correct. Grade and/or Jonathan Powell said that the contract was for three years, three years elapsed, and the BBC simply chose not to renew. And that's precisely what happened. The contract was for three years, not three seasons, and Baker was paid for 84, 85, 86 (and one story in 83). Thus, Colin Baker departed because his contract was not renewed. Now, there is some question as to what Colin's contract was actually like, and it's never been very carefully described. He claims that David Reid gave him a four year contract, but the way JNT always told the story, as reported in DWMSE 18, was that Colin's contract was not being "renewed". This suggests to me to that he probably had a three-with-an-option-for-four contract. While I've certainly heard that he was paid for 1985, I've never heard he was paid for 1987 — which he would have been if he was truly "under contract" for that fourth year.
Sylvester McCoy has a bigger claim to being fired because he had actually specifically signed for the fourth year — a fourth year wasn't in any sense a part of his original contract — and it didn't happen.
McGann's series option was simply not picked up because the TVM failed to go to series.
Eccleston's departure has never fully been explained, but he has recently indicated that he didn't like the working environment. However, it does seem like his contract allowed for the departure after just one season, as there has never been any kind of word that he broke his contract by leaving.
Tennant has said he wanted to go while he was still having fun and before it became a chore. But we know he was tempted by Moffat's plans for series 5, and that he resigned to Moffat, not RTD.