WEBVTT 00:30.000 --> 00:43.000 In those early days in 1960 when I first joined the corporation I went in as a group of 24 00:43.000 --> 00:50.680 designers which were brought in by Dick Levin. The idea would be to increase the corporation's 00:50.680 --> 00:57.720 design department for the opening of BBC Two. And after about six months of that we were 00:57.720 --> 01:04.240 given to various senior designers to look after and six of us were given away and the 01:04.240 --> 01:12.800 others carried on still training. And I went to a lovely lady called Fanny Taylor and she 01:12.800 --> 01:19.040 in fact at that time had Barry Newbury and Ray Macusick as part of her design team and 01:19.040 --> 01:24.640 I joined that and was sort of handed over to Ray to be a sort of an assistant to him. 01:24.640 --> 01:30.040 About the time when he was just completing the Daleks, although I was only assistant 01:30.040 --> 01:34.280 on the drawing board stage and not actually working in the studio with him, I was drafted 01:34.280 --> 01:38.680 in to work with him because the amount of drawing he was having to do was getting quite 01:38.680 --> 01:44.480 excessive added to the fact that he was being given another show which was a light entertainment 01:44.480 --> 01:49.920 show and I think he was a little bit like we all were, none of us really wanted to be 01:49.920 --> 01:56.480 completely plugged into one particular thing. We were often type cast as designers and many 01:56.480 --> 02:01.920 of us tried to fight shy of this. Ray was very, very happy that he was probably moving 02:01.920 --> 02:07.760 on to another show, leaving in a way the Daleks with me. And much to my surprise because I 02:07.760 --> 02:12.680 was a very young designer at that time, the only shows I'd done were sort of Zed cards 02:12.680 --> 02:17.860 and things like that under supervision. All of a sudden I was handed this strange thing 02:17.860 --> 02:25.560 which I knew nothing about called Daleks Invasion of the Earth. 02:25.560 --> 02:33.400 When you're producing something which is supposedly happening in the 21st or 22nd century, you 02:33.400 --> 02:39.900 obviously are away from what your normal scope is and your imagination has to be used much 02:39.900 --> 02:45.480 more in terms of fulfilling what you think might happen in the future, certainly with 02:45.480 --> 02:52.600 materials and other things that were going on. I think really we kept up to date as much 02:52.600 --> 02:57.400 as we possibly could with the movement that was going on with computers and other things 02:57.400 --> 03:01.320 that were around us at that time, although at that time as you know computers were incredibly 03:01.320 --> 03:06.960 there, you could see large rolls of tape. But I think one had to sort of concentrate 03:06.960 --> 03:12.160 more on the design side of it in terms of the mechanical side of it, which is something 03:12.160 --> 03:17.320 that I didn't normally have to do with other shows that I'd done. 03:17.320 --> 03:22.640 The move which happened at the beginning of this episode from the normal studios which 03:22.640 --> 03:28.480 the children's shows were done at Lime Grove, which was quite a small studio, upper floor 03:28.480 --> 03:34.040 studio actually, we moved to Riverside Studios and Riverside was for us at that time just 03:34.040 --> 03:39.400 been refurbished and was quite a large studio, especially for a children's programme. As 03:39.400 --> 03:47.040 I say, most of the programmes had been shot in the studios, the old studios at Lime Grove 03:47.040 --> 03:52.040 and to work to that larger studio was great. It gave me a much better opportunity and it 03:52.040 --> 03:56.280 gave us, it produced a scale which I think we hadn't seen with some of the other Doctor 03:56.280 --> 03:58.920 Who's before. One of the things I wanted to do was to get 03:58.920 --> 04:03.860 different levels, that we could look up at Daleks above us or even look down at Daleks 04:03.860 --> 04:08.640 going around and underneath us, just to give us a much more of a spatial quality to it 04:08.640 --> 04:13.000 than normal. And it was being in Riverside Studios that gave me that extra height which 04:13.000 --> 04:18.520 I was able to do that. It did mean quite a lot of extra work reinforcing things but I 04:18.520 --> 04:22.160 think it was worth it in the long run because it gave a different dimension to the ship 04:22.160 --> 04:26.320 which could have been very flat. Also, the very fact is I was able to get two floors 04:26.320 --> 04:31.840 in instead of one so we didn't have to spread over the studio quite so much. 04:31.840 --> 04:36.400 Richard had certain very strong ideas about particular little bits. He certainly had, 04:36.400 --> 04:41.600 I believe the one thing which he was very keen on was a cage which we put everybody 04:41.600 --> 04:46.760 into, the Dalek cage with rods and things. In fact, he made a model of that and we worked 04:46.760 --> 04:51.760 from that on that. He gave me full scope in the, I mean I just designed the ship and he 04:51.760 --> 04:55.440 took that over but there were certain pieces in the ship which he wanted to work. He was 04:55.440 --> 05:01.560 very keen on the shape of the doors. They were very much Richard's ideas. 05:01.560 --> 05:06.120 The other sets, I mean the sort of, if you like, the sets around London and other things 05:06.120 --> 05:10.680 were entirely me and we just chatted and he said, well give me a sort of dirty old room 05:10.680 --> 05:14.280 and I gave him a dirty old room. I don't think we went into any further than that. 05:14.280 --> 05:18.280 Of course, in those days we were very, as a designer, we were much more conscious of 05:18.280 --> 05:23.860 the cameras and getting cameras to move from one set to another. Many of these sets were 05:23.860 --> 05:31.480 dictated to, in terms of the size of the studio and the relative ease of moving one camera 05:31.480 --> 05:36.320 across the floor of the studio to another and what was available with an incredibly 05:36.320 --> 05:43.480 limited budget. I remember most of the props that I got for all the London stuff was really, 05:43.480 --> 05:47.480 quite honestly, was a load of old rubbish which we picked up at a wonderful place called 05:47.480 --> 05:53.500 Trading Post where we got all these sort of odd things from. I believe they circled nearly 05:53.500 --> 05:57.800 every set, had the same sort of old jug in it and other thing. We just moved them around. 05:57.800 --> 06:05.360 Tried to make them look different but moved them around. 06:05.360 --> 06:10.200 Well being in Riverside Studios gave us, as I've said before, a much larger area to work 06:10.200 --> 06:14.680 on and when it came to designing the spaceship I was able to, in fact, encroach onto nearly 06:14.680 --> 06:20.600 three quarters of the studio space. It was decided that we'd try and go the continuity 06:20.600 --> 06:25.080 of the whole thing and build all of the ship as a unit so that all the sections of the 06:25.080 --> 06:29.720 ship were part of the one unit so we could constantly film right the way through. Basically 06:29.720 --> 06:34.320 the sink cut down the side so we could look at it through the side with a ramp going down 06:34.320 --> 06:39.520 to the floor for the Daleks to ramp up and down. 06:39.520 --> 06:44.680 I ran out of money, as one always does on these things, and the extra Daleks were in 06:44.680 --> 06:51.760 fact, I reproduced around about 20 Daleks which were all photo blow-ups on plywood but 06:51.760 --> 06:56.360 in varying size, hopefully to give a feeling of perspective so that the ones at the back 06:56.360 --> 07:01.200 were further away. But I had to end up using an old cloth from Pinewood actually which 07:01.200 --> 07:05.120 was of a street scene. I don't know, it was nothing to do with Sloane Square where it 07:05.120 --> 07:08.440 was but we used that in the background and sort of softened it a bit with a few trees 07:08.440 --> 07:17.400 and things. I think it worked quite successfully there. It had a feeling of scale which was 07:17.400 --> 07:22.280 important and we used the widest possible lenses that we possibly could on the cameras 07:22.280 --> 07:28.440 which at that time were the 48 degrees lens. We had 50 degrees but they were not used in 07:28.440 --> 07:32.240 that studio because we'd just seen all the lamps as well so we tried to get the widest 07:32.240 --> 07:43.720 shot from that point of view as we possibly could. 07:43.720 --> 07:51.120 Yes it was in this sequence where in fact unfortunately Bill Hartnell had an accident. 07:51.120 --> 07:56.240 He was meant to be carried down this slope by one of the robber men and before this sequence 07:56.240 --> 08:03.240 happened there was an army of robber men had to march out of the ship and I and the floor 08:03.240 --> 08:07.400 manager at the time had explained to them not to sort of step in unison because this 08:07.400 --> 08:12.000 is the old army thing about when you're going over a bridge you break step because you only 08:12.000 --> 08:15.920 need around about 20 people. We only had about 15 I know but you only need that number of 08:15.920 --> 08:22.720 people on a rigid construction like that to cause a rhythm that will actually break the 08:22.720 --> 08:29.360 thing and sadly, not taking our advice, we had a rather large crack appeared in it and 08:29.360 --> 08:34.640 it's produced a slightly different shape to the ramp. We blocked it up with blocks underneath 08:34.640 --> 08:39.520 to make it so we could carry on the shooting and just after this happened the robber man 08:39.520 --> 08:47.160 had to carry out of the ship in his arms Bill Hartnell and although he was asked not to 08:47.160 --> 08:52.000 run down the thing and I think being a chap who wanted to show how expert and hackery 08:52.000 --> 08:57.120 was and how strong he was I'm afraid he carried Bill Hartnell quite quickly down the ramp 08:57.120 --> 09:02.960 in fact to the extent that he misjudged it, misjudged the ramp and kept running and unfortunately 09:02.960 --> 09:07.280 he couldn't stop himself with the weight of Bill in front of him rather than behind and 09:07.280 --> 09:11.280 he careered straight into the studio wall and dropped Bill Hartnell on his back which 09:11.280 --> 09:16.280 caused him obviously considerable pain and we had to go an episode without Bill in it 09:16.280 --> 09:23.240 while he was helping himself. It was a sad occurrence but there was no blame to anybody 09:23.240 --> 09:27.560 in that particular thing, it was one of those accidents that can happen in a studio when 09:27.560 --> 09:33.760 you're working on these things. Bill was a nice fellow, I mean Bill was a nice fellow 09:33.760 --> 09:41.600 but not the easiest of gentlemen to get on to, a very professional man who if you like 09:41.600 --> 09:46.760 didn't take falls badly, I think that's probably the best way to explain Bill. 09:46.760 --> 10:00.400 Yes we did a part of the filming of the London Sewers, we did in the tank at Ealing, in fact 10:00.400 --> 10:04.080 this was the first time I'd ever used a tank, I mean obviously coming from the theatre you 10:04.080 --> 10:08.480 don't have tanks but there was I confronted with this tank and building this filling it 10:08.480 --> 10:13.840 with water and we had actually little baby crocodiles which were brought in by I believe 10:13.840 --> 10:19.200 Holmes, it was his first time and he looked after them and they were, one was about I 10:19.200 --> 10:24.840 suppose 500, 600 millimetres long and the other one was about 200 I suppose, no more 10:24.840 --> 10:32.120 than that, maybe 150 and I ended up being the only person that would go down on the 10:32.120 --> 10:35.000 bottom and sort of shove them around a bit to get them in shot and one of the little 10:35.000 --> 10:40.720 baby ones did nip me at one stage but I suppose that was quite fun, something to talk about 10:40.720 --> 10:53.760 when you went home, I've just been shooting with alligators you know. 10:53.760 --> 10:58.720 One of the first locations that occurred was in fact, which happens at the opening of the 10:58.720 --> 11:03.320 story which is in fact a rover man falling into the river and a dalek appearing in the 11:03.320 --> 11:10.680 river which was all shot, was actually shot at Hammersmith near the bridge there and it 11:10.680 --> 11:17.760 came to a point where I had to redesign or at least redesign the look of location of 11:17.760 --> 11:21.680 the original bridge and although Hammersmith Bridge was a little bit too complicated for 11:21.680 --> 11:26.840 that so we moved the sequence on my suggestion up to the railway bridge at Kew which was 11:26.840 --> 11:31.800 Kew Underground Line which was a much easier bridge to work for as far as I was concerned 11:31.800 --> 11:35.280 to reproduce in the studio, it was a simpler bridge than Hammersmith but the reason we 11:35.280 --> 11:39.280 were at Hammersmith which is interesting was because in those days the Thames was a very 11:39.280 --> 11:45.000 very filthy river and it was essential that if anybody went in it, the stunt men going 11:45.000 --> 11:49.200 in for these two roles had to be rushed as quickly as possible to the hospital and Hammersmith 11:49.200 --> 11:53.760 Hospital obviously was next door so that was a reason, not the full reason why we were 11:53.760 --> 12:02.840 at Hammersmith but that was one. 12:02.840 --> 12:06.720 I think the only difficulty of having a lot of locations and in fact matching them in 12:06.720 --> 12:09.920 the studio was probably one of cost more than anything else. 12:09.920 --> 12:16.000 I think we probably had more sets in those six episodes than they'd done previously. 12:16.000 --> 12:20.160 It was a joy for me because it was fun to have different sets all over the place because 12:20.160 --> 12:24.800 it gave me a chance to design them but as I say the only problem for me on that one 12:24.800 --> 12:29.480 was probably the fact that I didn't have enough money to do what I wanted to do. 12:29.480 --> 12:35.620 I'm afraid I've always been an over killer, I was often accused on many occasions of over 12:35.620 --> 12:40.680 designing these sets but I'm afraid if you give me a studio I'll fill it, I've done that 12:40.680 --> 12:41.880 all my life. 12:41.880 --> 12:47.720 I did the various signs that appeared, I do remember It's Forbidden to Dump Bodies in 12:47.720 --> 12:49.560 the River was certainly one of mine. 12:49.560 --> 12:54.440 I designed the bomb and I designed the bomb carrier and because of that designed most 12:54.440 --> 12:58.800 of the whole of that sequence in fact even the slope going down to the thing although 12:58.800 --> 13:04.120 it was built for me by the special effects department and that was one of the few special 13:04.120 --> 13:08.360 effects of that style that I actually worked on. 13:08.360 --> 13:13.800 The other things like spaceships and saucers flying through the air was solely the province 13:13.800 --> 13:25.680 of the special effects design department. 13:25.680 --> 13:34.000 The other locations, some of them were a happy stand so in fact the location of the underground 13:34.000 --> 13:39.080 was immediately opposite the new buildings at White City which was the old White City 13:39.080 --> 13:46.600 underground station, we were able to use that. 13:46.600 --> 13:51.840 I think in London certainly at Trafalgar Square it was very intriguing, we only had a certain 13:51.840 --> 13:57.560 amount of time to finish what we were shooting and after getting the hippies that were around 13:57.560 --> 14:02.320 at that time out of the pools because the early 60s were very much the time when one 14:02.320 --> 14:06.840 went off for a rave somewhere, a different sort of rave that you have nowadays but time 14:06.840 --> 14:10.960 was taken up considerably by that sequence there. 14:10.960 --> 14:15.800 One of the exciting things which is interesting too I think was most interesting was that 14:15.800 --> 14:19.880 Shawcraft who produced all the Daleks had brought them all in a large lorry and it took 14:19.880 --> 14:24.280 quite a long time to assemble them together and get the actors into them and get them 14:24.280 --> 14:29.920 going and I had reproduced just for this particular part of the filming I'd reproduced a small 14:29.920 --> 14:34.960 cycling unit inside so that we could actually move them faster down the road and when it 14:34.960 --> 14:39.440 came to us moving between locations because of the immense time that it would take to 14:39.440 --> 14:42.880 move them back into the lorry and take them down again added the fact that time was actually 14:42.880 --> 14:46.920 going from a point of view of the police had given us a certain time to shoot we decided 14:46.920 --> 14:51.040 that they would all pedal down Whitehall and it was a wonderful sight to see them in rows 14:51.040 --> 14:54.120 pedalling down Whitehall and stopping at the traffic lights. 14:54.120 --> 14:59.480 That was quite fun that was and well as well as the tricycle which we used entirely for 14:59.480 --> 15:03.960 the filming there was in fact other little modifications I made. 15:03.960 --> 15:07.560 We were very conscious of the fact of the little cartoon there was knocking about with 15:07.560 --> 15:11.840 a set of steps with a Dalek at the bottom saying cut it we can't invade the earth there's 15:11.840 --> 15:13.120 too many steps sort of thing. 15:13.120 --> 15:18.480 So I produced a larger skirt on them which at that time the hovercraft was the big thing 15:18.480 --> 15:22.280 you know everybody was doing hovercrafts so in fact we assumed that they had a sort of 15:22.280 --> 15:28.520 hovercraft facility which got them upstairs and I altered the sides of them the sort of 15:28.520 --> 15:33.440 shanks the shank pieces around the top got rid of the gores and put panels of aluminium 15:33.440 --> 15:38.200 in and the main the other thing was I put a dish on their backs because as far as I 15:38.200 --> 15:44.520 was concerned this was the best way of communicating with their mothership when they were in earth's 15:44.520 --> 15:46.880 atmosphere. 15:46.880 --> 15:51.200 We repainted them and in fact produced the different although we were black and white 15:51.200 --> 15:55.240 we produced the different sort of colours of Daleks we had although you never saw them 15:55.240 --> 15:59.280 we had sort of silver ones and grey ones and then of course there was the black one who 15:59.280 --> 16:09.840 was the King Dalek that was a move away from the original ones. 16:09.840 --> 16:16.600 Well we decided that the Daleks would sort of put their mark on various parts of the 16:16.600 --> 16:20.600 kingdom and it seemed very obvious that if we could go on to something which everybody 16:20.600 --> 16:25.880 knew about like for instance one of the lions in Trafalgar Square or even Big Ben or something 16:25.880 --> 16:29.680 like that if we could put the Dalek mark on it that would sort of add a little bit to 16:29.680 --> 16:31.640 the production. 16:31.640 --> 16:37.960 I produced a standard bog ordinary stencil with a stencil paper and we used some Meltonian 16:37.960 --> 16:43.840 sort of Blanco polish which you use for plimsolls in those days you know the four runners and 16:43.840 --> 16:50.400 I went around and put a few of that few bits of pieces of that on some of the monuments 16:50.400 --> 16:54.560 and it was when I was putting it on one of the lions, one of the Lancia lions or at least 16:54.560 --> 16:58.320 the plinth of one of the Lancia lions that I was approached by this policeman who decided 16:58.320 --> 17:05.680 that I was defacing the public buildings and I was to go away and I got really chastised 17:05.680 --> 17:09.320 about that so you can't do that sort of thing here son you know sort of thing. 17:09.320 --> 17:14.400 It was supposed to rub off and in fact I did have to spend quite a few hours after I did 17:14.400 --> 17:21.400 it before I went home cleaning it off but it came off reasonably successfully.