WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:07.000 The idea for the web planet was so very different from anything that we had made in Doctor Who 00:10.840 --> 00:12.280 up to that point. 00:12.280 --> 00:17.720 Well this one was very exciting because it was a visual piece. 00:17.720 --> 00:24.720 I was very taken with the idea of having a planet full of what were really virtually 00:24.720 --> 00:25.320 insects. 00:25.320 --> 00:32.320 We were fighting like anything for it not to be talking heads, for it to be a complete 00:32.320 --> 00:40.640 visualisation. 00:40.640 --> 00:46.920 Richard Martin had directed the first Dalek serial with Chris Barrie. 00:46.920 --> 00:53.760 He was splendid I think for Doctor Who. He was extremely imaginative himself. 00:53.760 --> 01:00.760 I felt that this particular serial would be something that he would throw himself into 01:01.000 --> 01:03.420 with great enthusiasm, which he did. 01:03.420 --> 01:08.200 To be honest, a verity, she sort of recognised that I was the right zany man for the right 01:08.200 --> 01:09.120 zany job. 01:09.120 --> 01:16.120 The story itself by Bill Stratton, for me it was the first sort of real creepy science 01:17.160 --> 01:19.280 fiction story that we'd done. 01:19.280 --> 01:24.680 I probably had worked with Dennis Spooner on The Saint, so I suspect that Dennis probably 01:24.680 --> 01:26.000 introduced him. 01:26.000 --> 01:32.800 Dennis I felt very close to. He was a very kind of ordinary guy. He was immensely inventive 01:32.800 --> 01:34.400 and a wonderful writer. 01:34.400 --> 01:40.320 Dennis Spooner and I immediately hit it off. He was a very exciting and accessible man 01:40.320 --> 01:42.320 with a lot of ideas and a lot of humour. 01:42.320 --> 01:48.720 He was very, very funny all the time and always trying to put in gags and jokes. 01:48.720 --> 01:55.720 He was inventive and creative and he wanted the best for the series. 02:00.720 --> 02:05.880 It's a very dark story. It was in actual fact rather grim. 02:05.880 --> 02:12.880 I was very struck by the writing, by the lyricism of the writing. 02:12.880 --> 02:16.040 Break it! 02:16.040 --> 02:18.040 So they cut out the simile and go straight to the metaphor. 02:18.040 --> 02:25.040 A silent wall. We must make mouths in it with our weapons. Then it will speak more light. 02:29.400 --> 02:33.840 I mean this is the most extraordinarily poetic stuff. 02:33.840 --> 02:39.920 Any references in the script, for example the animos and the carcinome, would have come 02:39.920 --> 02:45.240 from Bill. They would have been part of his vision. 02:45.240 --> 02:52.240 The imagery of evil, of cancer, of this spider-like thing at the centre of this horrible web that 02:59.120 --> 03:06.120 people become cloaked in. The idea of disease, of disease going right the way through a planet. 03:06.120 --> 03:13.120 Even if a child of five, six or whoever is watching it cannot possibly get that reference, 03:13.460 --> 03:16.460 it feels right and it feels authentic. 03:16.460 --> 03:23.460 Every creature who invades our domain comes only to prey on us. 03:23.460 --> 03:30.460 There were not enough strands of drama to hold all the participants. 03:30.460 --> 03:37.460 So Dennis and I invented the grub people at the last minute. 03:37.460 --> 03:44.460 Will you kill your own kind? This stranger? You are both from that wilderness above ground. 03:49.460 --> 03:54.820 I remember Verity coming to an early outside rehearsal and I don't think we'd had time 03:54.820 --> 04:01.820 to really explain our little addition to her. She said, what are these people doing grunting? 04:01.820 --> 04:04.980 Who is this actor? Why is he making all these strange noises? 04:04.980 --> 04:11.980 It was an adventure story, character led. You've got these Doctor Who people but somehow 04:12.060 --> 04:16.580 the story wasn't really about them. It was actually about Prince Helio. 04:16.580 --> 04:21.580 Who is this creature? Our ally. 04:21.580 --> 04:25.580 I do not trust her. You have no choice. 04:25.580 --> 04:29.580 Barbara who was a school teacher should not just be a woman who just couldn't do anything 04:29.580 --> 04:33.220 and therefore she had a brain as well as anything. 04:33.220 --> 04:38.180 And so there were times when she would, yes, be the person who saved the day. 04:38.180 --> 04:44.500 I mean in the Aztecs for example she was the kind of central character of our people all 04:44.500 --> 04:48.580 the way through. 04:48.580 --> 04:53.740 They were a very talented lot in the design department and I think the design department 04:53.740 --> 05:00.740 had thought carefully to give the people who had the wildest ideas or the most visual aspects 05:01.820 --> 05:02.660 to us. 05:02.660 --> 05:09.300 But we would get allocated by the main make-up, the head of the make-up department really. 05:09.300 --> 05:13.620 But if there were particular people that the director had worked with before then they 05:13.620 --> 05:16.620 would ask, they would request if they could have that particular person. 05:16.620 --> 05:21.380 John Wood was in fact allocated by the design department. 05:21.380 --> 05:27.740 I sort of welcomed this programme because there was a lot more licence and I enjoyed 05:27.740 --> 05:31.260 it. It was smashing. The whole idea of it was very good indeed. 05:31.260 --> 05:36.060 We could certainly not ask for what programme we wanted to work on otherwise I expect a 05:36.060 --> 05:41.100 lot of us would have probably wanted to work on Doctor Who because it was quite a prestigious 05:41.100 --> 05:44.140 programme and very nice from a make-up point of view because you could use your imagination 05:44.140 --> 05:45.700 and a bit of creativity. 05:45.700 --> 05:50.620 A lot of designers, or many of them, enjoyed doing Doctor Who because they were able to 05:50.620 --> 05:53.700 be quite creative within a very imaginative format. 05:53.700 --> 05:58.180 It was obvious by the time we met, after a quarter of an hour, that we were talking the 05:58.180 --> 05:59.500 same language. 05:59.500 --> 06:05.140 His designs were wonderfully imaginative and creative and he did a lot on what may have 06:05.140 --> 06:09.580 seemed a lot of money to us and doing Doctor Who but was very little money really. 06:09.580 --> 06:14.900 He would do the most wonderful, elaborate designs which unleashed his imagination and 06:14.900 --> 06:16.540 he was a good draughtsman. 06:16.540 --> 06:22.340 And then they would be put in for costing and the same great big blueprints would come 06:22.340 --> 06:27.140 back with this rubber stamp. It was like a censor stamp and it just said, 06:27.140 --> 06:32.260 O-M-I-T. Omit. Omit. Omit. On all the detail. All the detail. 06:32.260 --> 06:38.380 We did build up a group of costume designers and make-up supervisors who would return and 06:38.380 --> 06:45.380 who again enjoyed working on Doctor Who because they could be imaginative. 06:46.700 --> 06:52.220 Daphne Dare who did the costumes with me was a very quiet person, very competent. She had 06:52.220 --> 06:56.100 a quiet sense of humour. She didn't give much away. 06:56.100 --> 07:02.540 She was a lovely, humorous, inventive person. I can only say I had admiration for nearly 07:02.540 --> 07:06.380 everything that she did. She did wonderful costumes, I thought. 07:06.380 --> 07:11.900 She was brilliant at translating the idea of a butterfly into something that a human 07:11.900 --> 07:14.500 being could actually wear. 07:14.500 --> 07:20.780 She would conceptualise it on paper and therefore one was able to see that and see how it would 07:20.780 --> 07:24.940 fit in with what we were doing. She fitted in very well with Doctor Who. 07:24.940 --> 07:30.020 And it was a very killing schedule because we did 48 weeks a year. 07:30.020 --> 07:35.460 We produced a great deal of drama at a great speed. 07:35.460 --> 07:40.780 Yeah, there was a lot of pressure on keeping episodes coming on week after week after week. 07:40.780 --> 07:46.220 You had to plan at least four of these productions before you went into the studio on the first 07:46.220 --> 07:49.100 one. Otherwise you were in trouble. 07:49.100 --> 07:56.100 In those days, we certainly didn't, those old image orthicon cameras didn't have any 07:56.460 --> 08:02.180 facility for a matte box. What I wanted was something which would give the other feel 08:02.180 --> 08:05.900 photographically, definitely a strong photographic feel. 08:05.900 --> 08:11.380 So we had, at some expense and some grumbling, matte boxes made for the cameras and we got 08:11.380 --> 08:18.380 this half plate, photographically pure glass. And then we slotted it, then we bucketed it 08:18.660 --> 08:22.780 up by covering it with Vaseline. 08:22.780 --> 08:27.860 He also was shooting through a mirror sometimes. There's a wonderful sequence which you think, 08:27.860 --> 08:32.820 how on earth did they get this high shot? And in fact, they shoot up through a mirror 08:32.820 --> 08:34.420 to get it. 08:34.420 --> 08:40.980 I was completely staggered by first arriving and seeing this encapsulation of an idea of 08:40.980 --> 08:46.820 this strange, dead, weird, hugely atmospheric planet. 08:46.820 --> 08:53.540 And that strange emptiness of the first episode when Bill and I stepped out onto the planet 08:53.540 --> 08:53.940 Vortis. 08:53.940 --> 08:59.300 As far as the planet's surface, we didn't have much choice when it came to the flat 08:59.300 --> 09:04.140 parts of it because we still had the cameras and everything else to roll over those areas 09:04.140 --> 09:08.700 and therefore we couldn't put a lot of rubble down or sand or things like this. 09:08.700 --> 09:13.060 But once you got off the floor onto a slope, then you could just do whatever you liked. 09:13.060 --> 09:18.780 I mean, most of that scenery at the back there and everything was made up of sandbags full 09:18.780 --> 09:25.780 of sawdust and then all of that was covered in old scenic cloths. 09:27.140 --> 09:33.580 It was a terrific shot, wasn't it, that pyramid? It must have been filmed in some way that 09:33.580 --> 09:35.580 kept Bill and I small. 09:35.580 --> 09:42.660 Oh, it's absolutely beautiful. 09:42.660 --> 09:49.660 The Temple of Light would be based on much more of a traditional ancient structures such 09:50.820 --> 09:54.460 as those in Mexico for the Aztecs. 09:54.460 --> 09:58.500 They're more familiar than anything else, I think. Tombs which are in Babylonia and 09:58.500 --> 10:05.500 things like that. 10:06.180 --> 10:11.660 The castle dome, because these sets had to be struck and stored, basically you were still 10:11.660 --> 10:17.460 dealing with flatage. You can't sort of dress anything which is sort of loosely, shall we 10:17.460 --> 10:23.860 say, a compound shape of nothingness because you'd never get it the same next time. 10:23.860 --> 10:30.620 That sort of living thing, the pulsing thing, where you're never quite sure which is animal 10:30.620 --> 10:35.060 and which is vegetable, that we never really achieved in the studio. 10:35.060 --> 10:38.740 I didn't like the edges of the flatage which you could see and you couldn't conceal. 10:38.740 --> 10:45.540 I seem to remember that the pulsating net, the animus effect, was something we did only 10:45.540 --> 10:52.140 at Ealing in the film studio. That it was simply impractical and impossible within the 10:52.140 --> 10:59.140 time span of doing the programs to have the same sort of elaborate effects in the studio. 11:00.900 --> 11:05.800 It was a comedown, the studio set, to the things that John and I were originally hoping 11:05.800 --> 11:07.020 to do. 11:07.020 --> 11:11.580 Because he wanted everything to be absolutely right and it was never absolutely right. 11:11.580 --> 11:16.140 At the end we were starting to crack it and starting to get the sort of imagery that we 11:16.140 --> 11:16.940 wanted. 11:16.940 --> 11:21.440 We probably went to town on the last episode because we knew that we could actually dress 11:21.440 --> 11:27.020 that exactly as we wanted with all its elaboration because it was never going to be reset again. 11:27.020 --> 11:34.020 If it broke the next day, it would have done its thing. 11:34.020 --> 11:41.020 From nowhere, this terrible sort of spout thing like a snake rose from the wall and 11:42.660 --> 11:44.420 fired at them. 11:44.420 --> 11:48.700 The next shot was a marvellous shot of them covered in sort of cobweb. 11:48.700 --> 11:54.300 It's a very fine sort of mixture of glue like Yoo-Hoo or something which they, it comes 11:54.300 --> 11:59.620 out of an air pressure gun and it spreads it and it goes, it will just attach itself 11:59.620 --> 12:00.060 to everything. 12:00.060 --> 12:04.060 Of course you have to be quite careful what that does to the skin if it's on for a long 12:04.060 --> 12:04.340 time. 12:04.340 --> 12:09.340 We didn't only have one creature, we had Minoptra, we had Zarbis. I can't even remember what 12:09.340 --> 12:16.340 they are, I think there were about four different creatures, all of whom which had to be made 12:16.460 --> 12:17.780 by the costume department. 12:17.780 --> 12:23.980 We didn't see the finished Zarbi and Minoptra until we got into the studio so it was quite 12:23.980 --> 12:26.420 a surprise for us, a big shock. 12:26.420 --> 12:32.020 The costume of Zarbi was based on more or less a suit of armour. In many ways because 12:32.020 --> 12:38.700 the operator had to lean forward to give you the effect of this ant moving as they do, 12:38.700 --> 12:43.420 we couldn't have his arms hanging out so his arms were inside but operating these smaller 12:43.420 --> 12:49.220 feelers, he was balanced by the protuberance at the back of him but it all had to be strapped 12:49.220 --> 12:52.660 on, leather straps with buckles to go around this bit and that bit. 12:52.660 --> 12:58.220 I was kind of happy with them, I mean they're good ants, they're good ants. 12:58.220 --> 13:00.900 I thought they looked pretty damn good actually. 13:00.900 --> 13:05.900 You can spot actually screws in the back of the neck of the Zarbi which I thought was 13:05.900 --> 13:10.700 quite good. At least they could have been painted black so they didn't show up. 13:10.700 --> 13:16.700 They were huge, I mean they were the size of a man up to about the middle of their stomach 13:16.700 --> 13:18.380 and then they went on up. 13:18.380 --> 13:24.660 Zarbi were really tricky things and they often nudged you out of the way and that sort of 13:24.660 --> 13:25.660 thing. 13:25.660 --> 13:27.460 There were about five or six or seven Zarbis. 13:27.460 --> 13:31.760 I had to find very good puppeteers. 13:31.760 --> 13:36.820 These actors, they were all quite small, John Scott Martin, Gerald Taylor. You could actually 13:36.820 --> 13:41.900 see their own black legs in tights as they scuttled about being giant ants. 13:41.900 --> 13:51.660 They had to think in terms of insects and they then had to interpret that as puppeteers. 13:51.660 --> 13:59.120 The Zarbis were very frightening. Certainly when you read it, I think they are very scary. 13:59.120 --> 14:05.580 I remember there's a moment when Vicky sees the Zarbi for the first time and it was really 14:05.580 --> 14:10.380 scary. I mean that made you jump, made me jump anyway when I watched it again. 14:10.380 --> 14:17.140 And I can remember one of them sort of teasing me, pinning me against a wall and I was absolutely 14:17.140 --> 14:22.380 panic stricken. They were so realistic. 14:22.380 --> 14:25.740 I do remember that animus thing. 14:25.740 --> 14:29.740 To pluck from earth its myriad techniques. 14:29.740 --> 14:34.500 Pulsating evil at the centre of the story. 14:34.500 --> 14:42.540 The set was rather wonderful of the spider or whatever it was that was controlling all 14:42.540 --> 14:43.540 these things. 14:43.540 --> 14:50.980 The animus, her, because it was a female character, was played by somebody that I already knew, 14:50.980 --> 14:56.700 Catherine Fleming. And the reason I knew her was that she was a voice tutor at RADA where 14:56.700 --> 14:57.700 I had been a student. 14:57.700 --> 14:58.700 Come to me. 14:58.700 --> 14:59.700 You filthy creature. 14:59.700 --> 15:06.820 Come to me. You filthy great spider. 15:06.820 --> 15:13.340 And of course she stood at a microphone at the side of the set with a script and did 15:13.340 --> 15:16.340 all the lines beautifully. 15:16.340 --> 15:24.220 He had a lava gun. Basically it was like a trolley which somebody sat on and they scooped 15:24.220 --> 15:31.020 it round with their hands. The top of it was I think made of fibreglass, painted. The actual 15:31.020 --> 15:35.620 fringe part of it was supposed to look like little legs and everything. They were made 15:35.620 --> 15:41.900 out of like a foam. 15:41.900 --> 15:52.940 I don't think they were so convincing actually having looked at it again. 15:52.940 --> 15:58.260 I would discuss the effect, what he wanted to see coming out the end of this gun. The 15:58.260 --> 16:00.700 effects people would work that one out. 16:00.700 --> 16:09.300 It would tend to go, you know, and that was it. I'm sure nowadays it would be a lot bigger 16:09.300 --> 16:16.340 than that and more effective. 16:16.340 --> 16:20.700 What I did with the zombie and the other little bug was what they would term as being the 16:20.700 --> 16:27.940 solid costumes. That was the difference or the difference of responsibility between what 16:27.940 --> 16:33.100 I did and what Wardrobe did. They did the soft costumes. 16:33.100 --> 16:38.660 And the Monoptera were extremely beautiful. I mean I did wonder how on earth we were going 16:38.660 --> 16:39.660 to do it. 16:39.660 --> 16:44.540 I certainly remember looking at lots of books of butterflies and insects and making drawings. 16:44.540 --> 16:49.060 We made the Monoptera eyes by using material from a milliner's shop because I knew that 16:49.060 --> 16:54.180 it was kind of stiff material that would take a shape from a mould. That was made in a sort 16:54.180 --> 16:58.660 of approximation of a kind of fly's eyes so it was kind of rather wide mesh. 16:58.660 --> 17:03.940 All this on your face, these strange sort of black gauzy goggles that you could just 17:03.940 --> 17:09.060 about see through and your hugely masked black and white make-up. 17:09.060 --> 17:18.100 One always wanted the Monoptera to show their beautiful wings. 17:18.100 --> 17:23.660 Our very attentive viewers might have noticed that there were changes between what was filmed 17:23.660 --> 17:29.020 and what was actually done in the studio to the costumes and the headgear of the Monoptera. 17:29.020 --> 17:34.580 We were experimenting with it at Ealing and being a single shot situation we were able 17:34.580 --> 17:37.740 to put it back on again when it fell off. 17:37.740 --> 17:42.340 In the studio recording you'd have to be there all day in the costume really or most of the 17:42.340 --> 17:45.840 day and it might have just been that they were just impractical. 17:45.840 --> 17:50.620 It certainly wasn't artistic regression. I think it was probably artistic regression. 17:50.620 --> 17:57.540 The bit that really doesn't sort of quite live up to the story was the Optera. They 17:57.540 --> 18:04.420 looked a bit sort of comical and the leader, I wasn't myself quite sure that he had the 18:04.420 --> 18:06.340 right sound. 18:06.340 --> 18:11.460 We know that from the roof comes hate. 18:11.460 --> 18:17.460 I mean who's going to get say which is the right sound for a grub but something about 18:17.460 --> 18:25.780 his voice which was I think very guttural and dark I didn't quite think was appropriate. 18:25.780 --> 18:27.660 Some of the effects were jolly difficult to do. 18:27.660 --> 18:35.180 Ties that were going to be melted by dipping into acid baths. These had to be done quite 18:35.180 --> 18:38.260 controlledly. Obviously it wasn't an acid bath. There was something else I think was 18:38.260 --> 18:43.780 a molestation. The tie was finally made out of very fine polystyrene or something like 18:43.780 --> 18:44.780 that. 18:44.780 --> 18:49.820 You've ruined it. That was my Coal Hill School tie. You just saved your life. 18:49.820 --> 18:58.780 I never got the tie back or the pen. Crunch. 18:58.780 --> 19:02.020 In the shell of one of the Monoptera. 19:02.020 --> 19:07.200 It probably made of plaster. It had to obviously crush when he put his foot in there. 19:07.200 --> 19:13.540 It was good because we didn't make a great deal of it. But certainly it stayed I think 19:13.540 --> 19:19.000 in your subconscious. The sort of what's it is another strange animal. 19:19.000 --> 19:27.420 You have two for rehearsals. One standby. One for the actual televised television shot 19:27.420 --> 19:33.060 and another standby for that. So you say you've got five. You might remember this. This was 19:33.060 --> 19:41.820 used by Barbara to kill the animus. In actuality this is a microphone container which was designed 19:41.820 --> 19:42.820 in the 30s. 19:42.820 --> 19:48.580 Her friend here suggested that the creature goes along with your party. 19:48.580 --> 19:52.740 And I was thanking the doctor for his faith in our isopropyl. 19:52.740 --> 19:57.740 That's a very good idea doctor. 19:57.740 --> 20:03.220 William Hartnell. I think he was tended to be a bit grumpy because he had a difficult 20:03.220 --> 20:04.220 part. 20:04.220 --> 20:09.820 Bill Hartnell was in my opinion because I cast him absolutely the perfect Doctor Who 20:09.820 --> 20:18.460 because he combined being quite aggressive and unpredictable with being very kind and 20:18.460 --> 20:21.300 gentle and quite touching. 20:21.300 --> 20:25.100 Working with Bill Hartnell was something we were all quite nervous about initially because 20:25.100 --> 20:29.180 one of the things we had to do every week was put on his wig and it always had to be 20:29.180 --> 20:35.700 kept very carefully and he had to have it on a block and he wanted to see that it was 20:35.700 --> 20:36.700 exactly right. 20:36.700 --> 20:41.180 Bill was a bit excitable at times. He was up and down. He was you know he didn't feel 20:41.180 --> 20:45.140 this or he didn't feel that or whatever it was. I mean like lots of actors. 20:45.140 --> 20:52.820 Billy had that very rare gift in an actor of repressed fury. He was an angry man and 20:52.820 --> 20:57.620 he managed to channel his anger into creativity. 20:57.620 --> 21:04.220 He used to in a sense upset himself a bit with things that he didn't like or he couldn't 21:04.220 --> 21:06.780 quite get what he wanted to get. 21:06.780 --> 21:14.980 But it was with this anger, this sort of divine discontent I suppose you could call it, which 21:14.980 --> 21:16.620 made him very watchable. 21:16.620 --> 21:21.580 We monopter were having a joke amongst ourselves about perhaps the slight preposterousness 21:21.580 --> 21:27.420 of what we were having to do and he suddenly said to me, come on boy, come on boy, come 21:27.420 --> 21:32.860 on get on with it. Very crusty and you know and in other words, it's a good lesson for 21:32.860 --> 21:35.220 a young actor, take the work seriously. 21:35.220 --> 21:41.260 Bill could always surprise you as another actor. He did me anyway, many times. 21:41.260 --> 21:55.940 Yes, well I didn't want to... This is not merely a decorative object. 21:55.940 --> 22:01.020 He had a lot of bitterness about his life as an actor because he felt he had something 22:01.020 --> 22:07.740 really very big inside him to give and he'd spent his life playing little sergeant majors, 22:07.740 --> 22:10.660 horrible little snarling sergeant majors. 22:10.660 --> 22:18.660 He had a tiny part, first time I ever saw him in a film called Sporting Life and it 22:18.660 --> 22:20.260 was magic. 22:20.260 --> 22:25.100 And for Bill, this was the part of a lifetime. He knew he was wonderful in it. He knew he 22:25.100 --> 22:30.980 was doing something absolutely new that nobody had ever seen before. He didn't work for 18 22:30.980 --> 22:33.060 months after making that film. 22:33.060 --> 22:38.140 The first thing I ever said to Bill was, you in Sporting Life, you can almost forget the 22:38.140 --> 22:40.180 rest of the film, I will never forget you. 22:40.180 --> 22:46.220 So Doctor Who for him was a lifeline and he grasped the end of that lifeline and he climbed 22:46.220 --> 22:51.940 up it and he knew that for him this was going to be the wonderful part of his life. 22:51.940 --> 22:58.460 You could have treated him with kid gloves but underneath he had a good heart. 22:58.460 --> 23:03.220 I could laugh him out of anything and that's what I did and I spent as much energy doing 23:03.220 --> 23:04.900 that as I did acting. 23:04.900 --> 23:11.180 I remember the usual wind down in the bar afterwards and Billy was furious and he said, 23:11.180 --> 23:12.180 where's the head of programme? 23:12.180 --> 23:13.180 Where's the head of programme? 23:13.180 --> 23:17.860 I said, Billy, it's 10.15, I don't think in fact we're going to see anybody. 23:17.860 --> 23:22.060 He says, well, I want to see him. I want to see him now. 23:22.060 --> 23:24.660 He said, because this is too good to miss. I want to work again. 23:24.660 --> 23:26.700 He said, I need to work again. 23:26.700 --> 23:28.260 Sudden fury erupted. 23:28.260 --> 23:34.940 Did you know we got a gin and tonic down him and by that time we'd calmed him down but 23:34.940 --> 23:39.740 it was this wonderful thing of an old man whose, it was his last job and a very good 23:39.740 --> 23:43.100 job he did, saying that he needed to work again. 23:43.100 --> 23:45.220 It's eternally the actor, isn't it? 23:45.220 --> 23:48.220 What should we do? 23:48.220 --> 23:58.300 Well, what would have happened if the spearhead had been successful? 23:58.300 --> 24:02.260 Jackie Hill was just lovely. She was just so sweet. She was really nice to work with. 24:02.260 --> 24:08.180 I thought she was always wonderful. She's a very graceful, beautiful person to be with. 24:08.180 --> 24:13.660 She was incredibly kind to me, as Russell was. They did take on a kind of parental role. 24:13.660 --> 24:19.860 I thought she just had a kind of wonderful reality, a real quality of believability as 24:19.860 --> 24:21.540 a schoolteacher. 24:21.540 --> 24:27.740 She was always truthful and made everything believable, extraordinarily believable. 24:27.740 --> 24:33.900 She was a very beautiful woman, very statuesque. I loved just to look at her. She emanated 24:33.900 --> 24:38.780 a sort of regality. I would have loved to have worked with her on many other things. 24:38.780 --> 24:46.940 You know, I can see her in serious drama, and it's my loss that I never did. 24:46.940 --> 24:53.580 When she was left alone, and that strange scene where suddenly her arms sort of move 24:53.580 --> 25:04.420 and starts to take over and lead her out, it was wonderful, I thought, absolutely wonderful. 25:04.420 --> 25:11.300 And quite gripping to watch her do that. 25:11.300 --> 25:17.180 All the cast all got on very well together, which was essential, really. And Russ and 25:17.180 --> 25:22.700 Jackie were on an even keel most of the time. And Bill did go up and down a bit, so it was 25:22.700 --> 25:29.940 great to have that kind of real solidarity. 25:29.940 --> 25:38.340 I was introduced to Rosalinda Winter, a rather strict movement and speech coach, but also 25:38.340 --> 25:39.340 actress. 25:39.340 --> 25:44.500 And she, in fact, worked with the actors in rehearsal in terms of their movement and how 25:44.500 --> 25:46.540 they pitched their voices. 25:46.540 --> 25:52.020 Aaron, do you still intend to go to the crater of needles? 25:52.020 --> 25:53.620 Yes, I do. 25:53.620 --> 26:00.500 She had a sort of voice that you didn't know whether it was masculine or feminine. 26:00.500 --> 26:04.260 She said, well, now, first of all, we're going to have to move like insects. I think we had 26:04.260 --> 26:08.060 looked at pictures of butterflies. It was all very Royal Shakespeare, in fact. And we 26:08.060 --> 26:13.780 held our little hands like that because we were going to have black gloves. And she was 26:13.780 --> 26:18.540 very, very keen on the mouth. And we looked at this sort of gash of mouth that the butterflies 26:18.540 --> 26:19.540 had. 26:19.540 --> 26:24.260 And I remember complaining. I said, it's ridiculous. We can't be noble. We're going to have to 26:24.260 --> 26:29.140 talk with our mouth like that. You know, it's just not right. Well, I think that's the main 26:29.140 --> 26:31.780 reason she said, you're not very comfortable in this part. 26:31.780 --> 26:36.340 And she worked very well with Martin Jarvis, who was, you know, an absolutely straight 26:36.340 --> 26:39.420 actor. I'd first seen him in the West End somewhere. 26:39.420 --> 26:46.380 The person who absolutely struck me was an actor I discovered. He's called Jolion Booth. 26:46.380 --> 26:53.140 The legends of it only begin when it was already thinking itself into the crannies of Vortis 26:53.140 --> 26:57.820 and the minds of the Zarbi, spreading its web. 26:57.820 --> 27:04.580 Kind of Robert Rietty kind of actor with a wonderful voice, beautiful, mellifluous voice, 27:04.580 --> 27:12.220 a lyrical way of speaking. He does one speech as Propelius, which is like Prospero's final 27:12.220 --> 27:13.780 speech in The Tempest. 27:13.780 --> 27:20.780 Being slowly unwoven by the silence of time and their entrances long forgotten by our 27:20.780 --> 27:28.740 species. But our gods have not forgotten us, Habana. This was indeed deliverance. 27:28.740 --> 27:34.980 And it's a deeply felt and beautifully spoken piece of acting. 27:34.980 --> 27:42.980 And then the charming, handsome William Russell. He recognised the apprehension of a young 27:42.980 --> 27:48.540 actor starting in television. And he'd always, you know, hi Martin. I mean, even to call 27:48.540 --> 27:55.540 me by my name, William Russell said, call me Martin. Are you going to have a coffee? 27:55.540 --> 28:03.340 Oh, yes. Come on in. You know, fantastic. 28:03.340 --> 28:08.820 Excerpts that could not be contained in the studio were always pre-filmed and that they 28:08.820 --> 28:11.340 would have been done at Ealing Studios. 28:11.340 --> 28:17.860 And we were able, John and I, to be much more elaborate there than in the television studios. 28:17.860 --> 28:23.100 I think it was about three weeks before we went into the studio when we went down to 28:23.100 --> 28:28.340 Ealing and there was this lovely moonscape and there was a wonderful man called Inky. 28:28.340 --> 28:36.300 And he had, it seemed, a noose in one hand and some sort of shackley things, leather 28:36.300 --> 28:45.140 shackle things in the other. And I thought, he looks like Albert Pierpont, the hangman. 28:45.140 --> 28:50.620 We brought him in early because he had to have harness underneath. So we had to adapt 28:50.620 --> 28:51.620 for that. 28:51.620 --> 28:57.540 I then realised that he was from the Kirby's Flying Ballet Company. You have to rely on 28:57.540 --> 29:02.020 Inky who is really like your counterweight. He pulls you up there. 29:02.020 --> 29:06.500 He came along and whisked them off the ground, whisked them off the 20 foot pedestal and 29:06.500 --> 29:12.020 flew them. Some of the most dramatic flights were never recorded because we were running 29:12.020 --> 29:13.020 for our lives. 29:13.020 --> 29:18.700 I do remember our excellent director Richard Martin choreographing these. 29:18.700 --> 29:23.340 I was determined to swoop with them. I wasn't going to have a sort of a ground-based camera 29:23.340 --> 29:32.060 so I demanded a big bill, the biggest crane I could get at the time. And this was one 29:32.060 --> 29:36.180 end of the studio and this was swooping about and they were swooping about and we had some 29:36.180 --> 29:41.380 very interesting balletic moments, some of which, most of which were never recorded on 29:41.380 --> 29:47.980 film. And I was, you know, I was all day in this Kirby stuff. 29:47.980 --> 29:53.740 What is in the centre of the web? Do you know? 29:53.740 --> 30:00.100 The energy that we put into those evening performances was the energy which you put 30:00.100 --> 30:03.320 into a live performance on stage. 30:03.320 --> 30:07.500 This particular production was done at Riverside Studios at Hammersmith. 30:07.500 --> 30:13.380 The whole thing was a hell of a push to squeeze it into the studios. 30:13.380 --> 30:17.340 The thing about them too was the ceiling heights were very low. I think they were only about 30:17.340 --> 30:19.660 16 foot, which was nothing. 30:19.660 --> 30:23.120 We could have always done with another two miles of set. 30:23.120 --> 30:29.660 You wait for the sets to come out on the previous production at Riverside Studios about 12 o'clock. 30:29.660 --> 30:33.580 You then go in at 12 o'clock at night. You work right through the night. 30:33.580 --> 30:38.980 You were allocated two hours to record the whole half hour show in. 30:38.980 --> 30:46.900 We absolutely could not have done it if we had tried to do it perfectly within the time. 30:46.900 --> 30:49.700 We would have got 10 minutes recorded. 30:49.700 --> 30:54.420 We would have what would be called an overrun, which involved, first of all, asking the crew 30:54.420 --> 30:59.700 if they were willing to do it, which sometimes they were not particularly happy about. 30:59.700 --> 31:05.500 The web planning was a very technical episode and camera breakages were obviously one of 31:05.500 --> 31:08.000 the things that would hold us up. 31:08.000 --> 31:15.140 On this particular series, I think we had three overruns and one of 40 minutes, which 31:15.140 --> 31:18.020 would have been very, very expensive. 31:18.020 --> 31:23.180 I would be rushing down to see what was happening because the studio, although it had a glass 31:23.180 --> 31:27.300 panel, the control room, you were meant to be able to see what was happening in the studio. 31:27.300 --> 31:28.820 You could never see what was happening in the studio. 31:28.820 --> 31:33.140 When people said, we're in a bit of a mess down here, you know, a zombie has just fallen 31:33.140 --> 31:37.900 into a monopter or something, you had to go down and sort it out yourself. 31:37.900 --> 31:41.380 I think one of the worst things we would worry about is actors getting hot because if they 31:41.380 --> 31:45.060 perspire, it looks bad and it does terrible things to the makeup. 31:45.060 --> 31:50.380 At 10 o'clock to ask a crew to work till quarter to 11 meant it was quite something, you know. 31:50.380 --> 31:56.780 I should say, what I'm going to do, Richard, is I'll stay with you for your rehearsals 31:56.780 --> 32:00.060 and your dress rehearsals and things like that. 32:00.060 --> 32:03.220 And then I'm going to studio three. 32:03.220 --> 32:08.180 Now studio three, there's only two studios at Riverside, studio three was the Chancellor's 32:08.180 --> 32:11.700 public house because there were no mobiles at that time. 32:11.700 --> 32:15.900 You come over or send somebody over and we go over like a shot and see what's happened 32:15.900 --> 32:17.020 and we have to put it right. 32:17.020 --> 32:24.100 And some of the roughnesses were inevitable. 32:24.100 --> 32:26.620 Because we were trying to push the boundaries. 32:26.620 --> 32:30.460 I mean, to fight with the zombies was not easy. 32:30.460 --> 32:35.620 You didn't want to do any damage to the poor guy who was stooped over acting, didn't have 32:35.620 --> 32:37.900 a very good view of anything. 32:37.900 --> 32:44.100 You didn't want to show that you were being in any way careful of the zombie. 32:44.100 --> 32:47.860 You know, I rather sort of bow my head when I come to a fight. 32:47.860 --> 32:57.020 I always think something, you know, is going to be awful on show. 32:57.020 --> 33:01.780 Something like a fight will take a very long time to film because of the cuts. 33:01.780 --> 33:04.540 And we had a great shortage of cuts. 33:04.540 --> 33:08.620 Tape editing was quite complicated and time consuming. 33:08.620 --> 33:13.180 So that if you went into the studio, you were allowed, I think, I can't remember whether 33:13.180 --> 33:15.940 it was three or four edits in your entire program. 33:15.940 --> 33:21.860 Then when we went into the editing, of course, I had half a dozen shots that I want to cut 33:21.860 --> 33:24.260 into one sequence to make it better. 33:24.260 --> 33:27.780 That we couldn't possibly have made it on only three or four edits. 33:27.780 --> 33:32.780 So there was usually seven or eight or ten or, I mean, I was always in trouble over that. 33:32.780 --> 33:34.060 It was not electronic editing. 33:34.060 --> 33:35.860 It was physically cutting the tape. 33:35.860 --> 33:39.940 Doctor Who was such that if anything worked, it would be kept in. 33:39.940 --> 33:42.660 You certainly couldn't go and pick that bit up off the floor. 33:42.660 --> 33:45.180 Actually, I did once, but not in BBC and for Renate. 33:45.180 --> 33:47.620 I say, stick that bloody bit back again. 33:47.620 --> 33:55.460 So if I wrote a memo to Richard Martin saying I had taken the animus web out of a shot because 33:55.460 --> 34:03.140 it didn't work, you can be sure that it didn't work. 34:03.140 --> 34:08.180 I have to tell you that Verity Lambert was always stopping me from showing the nasty 34:08.180 --> 34:09.220 bits. 34:09.220 --> 34:13.620 She was absolutely adamant and I'm sure in retrospect she was absolutely right. 34:13.620 --> 34:19.340 We did have rather an unfortunate experience in One Doctor Who where Carol Ann Ford was 34:19.340 --> 34:28.100 ill and she had picked, she picked up a pair of scissors and threatened, I think it was 34:28.100 --> 34:29.700 Barbara. 34:29.700 --> 34:33.740 We got taken to task quite rightly by the children's department. 34:33.740 --> 34:39.980 So when we had to show this vicious thing of the Zarbis using their mandibles to clip 34:39.980 --> 34:43.020 off the wings, we had to only just suggest it. 34:43.020 --> 34:51.100 I suppose it was a sort of metaphoric thing for children who pull wings off butterflies. 34:51.100 --> 34:59.600 And equally the same with the incident with the, I think it was a female grub. 34:59.600 --> 35:03.980 We hoped by showing Ian's reaction that it was a brave and extraordinary thing for her 35:03.980 --> 35:04.980 to have done. 35:04.980 --> 35:07.900 I almost made that up at the spur of the moment. 35:07.900 --> 35:12.820 I mean I'm very thrilled that it got such high figures, that it got, what was it, 13 35:12.820 --> 35:13.820 million. 35:13.820 --> 35:14.820 It's fantastic. 35:14.820 --> 35:19.300 But in retrospect I'm not surprised because it, again, there was nothing else like it 35:19.300 --> 35:20.380 on television. 35:20.380 --> 35:25.740 The web planet was quite a difficult serial and in a sense it was quite surreal. 35:25.740 --> 35:31.820 And after all our efforts it remains naive, but maybe some of its enduring capacity is 35:31.820 --> 35:37.380 because of the earnestness and the desire we had for it to be a myth, to actually hold 35:37.380 --> 35:43.540 the seeds of a mythology rather than just a tatty telly programme. 35:43.540 --> 35:49.820 By the end of my time with Doctor Who I was deeply frustrated that we had not managed 35:49.820 --> 35:56.460 in my eyes to visualise it as strongly and as profoundly as it could and should be. 35:56.460 --> 36:00.380 It is strangely amateurish looking, I have to say. 36:00.380 --> 36:03.860 Thinking about it I do think that it did have something special. 36:03.860 --> 36:09.620 It was really innovative and it was trying to do something on a weekly basis that was 36:09.620 --> 36:11.060 quite ambitious really. 36:11.060 --> 36:15.980 When you think of how it was done and what facilities we had and everything else, it 36:15.980 --> 36:19.980 really was a very good achievement in many ways with everybody. 36:19.980 --> 36:25.340 I'm very struck by the costumes and the movement of the actors in those extraordinary costumes. 36:25.340 --> 36:30.740 I think we did very well on the web planet considering the constraints of money and the 36:30.740 --> 36:35.620 fact that we were being hugely ambitious in what we were attempting to do. 36:35.620 --> 36:43.100 Those lonely and amazing shots of a planet at the beginning and the terrible sound of 36:43.100 --> 36:48.540 the Zarbi in your head, that was really the bit that I thought was very good. 36:48.540 --> 36:53.700 I don't know how people will view the web planet today but I think that in its time 36:53.700 --> 36:59.660 it was quite groundbreaking in terms of what we were attempting to do. 36:59.660 --> 37:05.580 And because we took it seriously, people like Dennis Spooner and John strove their utmost 37:05.580 --> 37:14.140 best to make it a creative and different piece of visual art. 37:14.140 --> 37:19.780 From every point of view, from the design, the costumes, the whole way it was envisaged. 37:19.780 --> 37:47.620 And it was quite experimental and revolutionary and I'm very glad that we made it. 37:49.780 --> 37:50.780 Thank you. 37:50.780 --> 38:18.780 Thank you.