@2-- Dr Who - Behind the Scenes in Season 25 ----------------------------------- @3 BACK-STAGE NOTES @1The April issue of "Doctor Who Magazine" has a nice roundup of behind-the- scenes information on the season that just ended. As many of you know, I'm fascinated by all the stuff that happens behind the cameras. I must admit I don't know if any of the rest of you who read this room share that interest but, just on the off-chance you do, I'm summarizing some of the more interesting details (well, I found them interesting) that appeared in the article. @4REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS @1 Production for this story literally got off to a bang. The sound of an exploding Dalek on location near Waterloo set off fire alarms in the area and brought the local fire brigade to the scene. A lot of changes were made to Ben Aaronovitch's script because of budget, time and the usual variety of other considerations. One of the biggest changes was the introductionon of the military headquarters for Gilmore's task force. Originally, all of the action set there was to have been filmed on location at the Totter's Lane junkyard and nearby streets. Because of the expense involved in extended location work (of which there was quite a bit anyhow), many of the expository scenes were relocated to the studio. Aaronovitch also had set many of the scenes at the Coal Hill School at night. Prohibitive expenses forced many of these to be shot during the daytime, which didn't detract from the end product any, but does explain why it's still so light out after 5 p.m. in early winter. (Would *you* have cut out the BBC announcer in-joke just because it didn't look like late afternoon outside?) The Dalek weapons were originally much more formidable than they actually turned out. In the scene where a Dalek gunblast shatters the windshields of the Detector van, narrowly missing Mike, the blast originally hit the van's side dead-on--and melted it. In another bit entirely deleted from the shooting schedule, we would have learned that Daleks have weapons that can fire around corners. The Special Weapons Dalek was originally planned as a floating weapons platform with no recognizable Dalek features; Aaronvitch describes it as a "Masters of the Universe-type thing." The two factions of Daleks, incidentally, were originally supposed to be red and blue. Several key scenes were written but had to be dropped during shooting. Originally, when the Doctor opened the casket containing the Hand of Omega, he reached in and withdrew a parcel containing an advanced firearm which he later used to destroy the black Dalek at the end of the story. (In the aired version, the Doctor taunts, cajoles and basically talks it into self-destructing.) Also gone is a scene where the renegade Daleks attack the Cafe and kill Harry the proprietor and a scene where the Dalek converts the Dalek Confuser into a tracer to locate Ratcliffe's warehouse. The tracer is destroyed in another deleted scene introducing the Daleks' ability to fire around corners. The Vicar originally met the Doctor in the Cafe in another deleted scene. A sequence cut from Episode Three had the Doctor receive a telepathic warning at the Cafe when Ratcliffe plunged the rod into the grave where the Hand of Omega was buried. The idea of having Davros be the Dalek Emperor wasn't Aaronovitch's idea. He says he got it from a member of the Visual Effects Department who always liked the oft-suggested notion that Davros was the Emperor. The idea made sense to Aaronovitch, who rationalized that Davros would have himself implanted into a Dalek shell for greater protection (remember the Doctor holding him at gunpoint in "Resurrection"?). By the way, if you look carefully at the scene where the Dalek command ship explodes, you can just see Davros' escape pod ejecting from its belly. So he does get away in the end. "Remembrance" was the first story in which story editor Andrew Cartmel and the writers began the deliberate redefining of the Doctor's character to regain the air of mystery the show used to have. One of the lines cut from the confrontation between the Doctor and Davros had the Doctor saying, "Oh Davros, I am far more than just a Time Lord." Yes, they have decided who the Doctor really is but they don't intend to tell us quite yet. @4THE HAPPINESS PATROL @1 The production seems to have a headache all through. The scripts came in far longer than they were supposed to be and too much of it was shot, necessitating a lot of editing. Extensive rewriting was also done. The story was the last recorded but rescheduled late in the day to be the second one aired, forcing a lot of scrambling to get it finished. The Kandy Man was a collaborative effort by various in-house and outside artists and technicians. It was deliberately made to resemble the product of a certain British confection manufacturer, which didn't take too kindly to the idea. A couple of the Kandy Man's bits were edited out. In one, he is chopping ingredients for his sweets when he accidentally chops his thumb off. After a good bit of cursing, he sticks it back on. His last line was a poignant "Ah well, I gave it my best shot." The Kandy Kitchen backdrop was a model paintboxed in during post-production. Several scenes involving it were cut, including ones where Ace stumbled inside it and Trevor Sigma, the galactic census-taker, dropped in and got chased out. The deadly fondant surprise was food-thickening agent dyed red, lots of it. The cheesy-looking Waiting Zone set was a stand-in for a prison complex set that was too expensive to build. All the scenes slated for the prison were rewritten for the Waiting Zone. FX work for this work overlapped with "Silver Nemesis," which was shot just before it. The shot of the shuttle leaving Terra Alpha was executed during the FX session for "Nemesis." The weapons carried by the Happiness Patrol are actually the Cyberguns from "Nemesis" in disguise. Deleted for time reasons were introductory scenes for the sympathetic Patrol member Susan Q (while escorting Ace down the street, she overhears Earl's music and confesses to once owning a collection of blues records, which got her demoted after they were discovered) and the tyrannical governess Helen A. and her aide, Joseph C. (in which they listened to one of Helen's broadcasts urging the citizens to put the killjoys out of their misery). Also cut was much of the dialogue between Sid S. and Stan S., the two snipers watching the protest, in whwhich they discuss the films they've seen recently and dismiss them as predictable because the plots are always about female protagonists and have happy endings. In the final version of Episode Two, the climax has the Doctor staring at an ominous poster bill at the Forum. Originally, the episode ended with Daisy K., the Patrol leader, leading Ace and Susan Q. to the Forum with the sinister words, "It's showtime girls!" @4THE GREATEST TIME IN THE GALAXY @1 This is the story that almost got away, i.e. canceled. Studio work originally scheduled for Television Centre was suddenly called off during an asbestos scare that closed down the facility. John Nathan-Turner's people managed to keep the plug from being pulled on the production altogether and relocated interior work to the car park at the BBC's Elstree Centre where a huge circus tent was erected. (Oddly enough, there wasn't going to be a real tent, originally.) "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy" was filmed immediately before "Silver Nemesis" and was supposed to come before it in the show's continuity as well. When the order of the stories was switched, it causes a few continuity problems, for example, Flowerchild gives Ace an earring which she wears all through "Silver Nemesis." There was actual little rewriting on this story and not much was lost. A bridging scene where the Doctor and Ace met up with the Captain and Mags again after separating was lost. Also missing is the tail end of the scene where the panic-stricken Chief Clown tells Morgana and the Ringmaster that they're running out of acts--at that point Whizzkid runs in and asks everybody for their autographs. A few slight changes were made. The name of Mags' home planet was changed from MacVulpine(?) to Volpana. The robot buried in the sand originally begged passersby to release it. Ace and Deadbeat were supposed to escape from the circus by using Nord's motorcycle, but they couldn't get it to start during the shooting. (Incidentally, the FX people didn't build that bizarre machine for the story. They borrowed it--and the Happiness Patrol vehicle and go-cart in a later story--from a couple named Bootsie and Ferret.) The Doctor's closing line was to have been: "Someone down there once said everyone has to hang up their traveling shoes and stop wandering sooner or later. Maybe I'm just the exception that proves the rule." @4SILVER NEMESIS @1 The opening of Episode One differed considerably from how it eventually went out on-air. All of the scenes were there but in different orders. Originally, the story opened with a shot of the Nemesis comet in space (shot on 16mm film later transferred to video where the starfield was added), then went to the Doctor and Ace enjoying the jazz performance, the introduction of Lady Peinforte and ended at De Flores' South American villa. I'm afraid I can't recall how things go in the finished version but I do recall that we begin at De Flores' villa and end with the jazz performance. There's an interesting story behind the futuristic ghetto blaster (complete with holographic viewer) the Doctor builds for Ace: it's a stand-in for the TARDIS control room. All the scenes with the Doctor and Ace on the riverbank scanning for the Cybermen were originally set inside the TARDIS. The decision to do "Silver Nemesis" entirely on location required the junking of TARDIS interior scenes so the ghetto blaster was designed to replace the TARDIS scanner and console. I'll bet you thought the Doctor was just showing off when he built that preposterous contraption. Director Chris Clough was instructed to overshoot for this story because the production team didn't want to take any chances of the anniversary story coming in short. As a result, they ended up with far more material than they could fit into the story and a lot of ruthless editing took place, as has been noted elsewhere. One place where the editing shows is at Windsor Castle where the Doctor and Ace's escape from the security forces is entirely cut out. The Doctor gets away by hypnotizing the security men using the specially redesigned TARDIS key (all scenes with the key were cut out). While running through the castle back to the TARDIS, the Doctor and Ace pass an elegant 18th century portrait of Ace in period dress (painted by designer John Asbridge). Ace is very confused by it but the Doctor tosses it off as a momento of an adventure they haven't had yet. (It's a very nice portrait, by the way.) Many of the scenes involving De Flores and his assistant Karl were cut from Episode Three. Recall that when the two appear again after apparently falling into the hands of the Cybermen (which we never see), they act suspiciously like partially converted Cybermen. They were. In the sequence cut, as the Nazis escape from the tomb, Karl trips De Flores and hands him over to the Cybermen, saying they want to become like the cyborgs. Karl later kills his Cyberguard and frees De Flores, his betrayal having been a ruse. Other bits with the Cybermen were cut, too. The Cybermen didn't actually appear until the end of Episode One in the final version. Originally, after attempting to gun down the Doctor and Ace, the two Walkmen were reprogrammed by a hidden figure with a large, imposing shadow and a silver fist. A sequence where the Cybership landed a second time and let off a group of Cybermen with a Cyberscope is missing, too. It's unclear in the FX work but the Cybership was supposed to be shrouded during most of its flight and only becomes visible when it lands. Most of the close-up shots of the Cybermen were shot at one location, the estate of Arundel Castle in Sussex, but were inserted into the action sequences shot at the Greenwich Gasworks (the neo-Nazi/Cybermen battle and Ace's battle with the Cybermen in the hangar). The most interesting juxtaposition was the scene where Richard plunges the gold-tipped arrow into the Cyberleader's chest unit. That bit was recorded at Greenwich but the Cyberleader's collapse on the floor was actually shot inside Lady Peinforte's crypt at Arundel a week later. Incidentally, visual effects assistant Paul McGuiness was the one who had to get into the Cyberman suit for all the shots of exploding chest units. Paintbox technology was used extensively in the story, to turn one Cybership model into an entire fleet with flashing telltales and to obscure the modern bits on the exterior of Lady Peinforte's house and to hide the fact that it was raining during some of the location work. The pulsing glow of the Validium artifacts was done through front-axial projection, if you're wondering. It's an FX technique where a highly reflective paint is used to reflect light back along the exact plane from which it comes, usually a frame of lights mounted around the camera. Some famous "Who"-related names were among the tourists at Windsor, including Peter Moffatt, Fiona Cumming, Nicholas Courtney, Kevin Clarke, Peter Wyatt and Graeme Curry. Chad Fogg