Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Toby Hadoke about his choice of The Web of Fear (3/6)

Transcript

Talks to Toby Hadoke about his choice of The Web of Fear (3/6) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:33
  Hamster with a blunt pen knife for doing quicker Welcome back
• 0:37
  to a hamster with a blunt pen knife, the Doctor Who commentary
• 0:41
  podcast. You know Toby, I can't think of
• 0:44
  a more enjoyable way to spend an evening than sitting here
• 0:48
  watching the web affair with you.
• 0:50
  Except for the one episode where I can't sit here and watch the
• 0:53
  web affair with you because this episode went to miss somewhere
• 1:00
  in between get Where did? Where was this found again?
• 1:04
  Was it Nigeria? Was it Nigeria?
• 1:06
  And yes, and from what I understand, I have spoken to, to
• 1:11
  Phil Morris on on occasion, you know, never, never sort of
• 1:15
  privately, but either at events or in commentaries or, or
• 1:18
  interviews or whatever. And, and he, he could, well,
• 1:22
  correct me if I'm wrong, but I, but, but I get the impression
• 1:24
  that it wasn't that he didn't find it.
• 1:27
  It was that he found it. And somewhere between him
• 1:30
  finding it and him getting it back to his base of operations
• 1:33
  in the UK, Episode 3 went to walkies.
• 1:37
  So whether the the people that he'd got it off, you know, had
• 1:42
  an inkling that maybe he'd got something more valuable than
• 1:45
  than they'd initially thought or whatever.
• 1:47
  And somebody just thought, well, I'll, I'll hang on to that.
• 1:50
  Who knows? I don't know enough about about
• 1:53
  the situation, but I certainly get the impression that it's not
• 1:56
  that it wasn't there. It was that it was there and
• 2:00
  then it wasn't there, which leads you to go, why didn't they
• 2:04
  Nick episode one? That would have been great.
• 2:07
  That would have been the sort of luck we don't usually have.
• 2:09
  You know this is. The one they're going to want.
• 2:11
  Or if they were going to nick nick an episode Nick episode 3
• 2:13
  of Enemy of the world. You know, if you want an episode
• 2:17
  3, have episode 3 of Enemy in the World.
• 2:20
  I think we are very, very lucky and I don't think we often
• 2:26
  recognize how lucky we are of the efforts that people put in
• 2:31
  to make sure that we can experience these missing
• 2:34
  episodes of Doctor Who. And it's extraordinary that we
• 2:38
  have as many animations as we do, you know, and and all the
• 2:41
  fan that you get on those as well.
• 2:43
  So, I mean, I've just recently saw your Savages document, you
• 2:47
  know, and just the, the amount, the wealth of detail I got from
• 2:50
  that that I didn't have before. We are lucky, aren't we?
• 2:54
  Like yeah, no other. Fandom has this.
• 2:57
  I'm never making a documentary like The Savages whatever again.
• 3:00
  Oh, please do. It was wonderful.
• 3:03
  You spun magic out of nothing. I was.
• 3:07
  Like, yeah, well, I think I think that they spun magic out.
• 3:10
  So will you be in this? And then we'll be filming on
• 3:13
  this day here and that day here and that day and then we go hang
• 3:16
  on. Too late now.
• 3:19
  But yeah, it's and of course we forget that there was a when
• 3:24
  this was first released. It was a it was a photo
• 3:28
  reconstruction, wasn't it? Didn't John Kelly, I think put
• 3:31
  together, which is where didn't isn't the bar of chocolate Cam
• 3:35
  fields chocolate or something? Which was which was something
• 3:38
  that they did for the Recon that I think some people thought was
• 3:42
  in the actual episode, which I don't think it was.
• 3:45
  So I think there are a few, you know, but but but yeah, so it
• 3:48
  was originally, it was originally a photo
• 3:53
  reconstruction that and that this version that we're about to
• 3:56
  see was was only for the special edition of the because when it
• 4:01
  was rushed, when it was brought out on DVD, it was kind of
• 4:04
  rushed out. It didn't have commentaries or
• 4:05
  anything because I would have loved to have done some things
• 4:09
  that we did get to do them later.
• 4:14
  They did do a commentary on Hang on.
• 4:16
  They did a commentary on Oh no, they did then did a special
• 4:18
  edition of Enemy of the World, didn't they?
• 4:20
  And we did a commentary and a documentary on that.
• 4:22
  But when it was first released, I think Enemy of the World had
• 4:26
  nothing on it. They did get it on the shelves,
• 4:28
  but they didn't do, they didn't do a special edition of The Web
• 4:30
  of Fear. But I did a commentary for
• 4:32
  Phantom Films and then I did a commentary on episodes of The
• 4:35
  Web of Fear at the Gallifrey Convention, a live commentary.
• 4:41
  Then I did the commentary for the, the, the, the BBC Blu-ray
• 4:47
  with the animation. So the, the, the Weber fear
• 4:50
  having been missing is now the story.
• 4:53
  I've probably done commentaries on more than any other story.
• 4:57
  And now I'm doing it now. I'm already doing it again.
• 5:00
  To oral documentation of Doctor Who, I salute you Sir.
• 5:05
  But to do 1 commentary for the web of fear sounds obsessive,
• 5:09
  but to do 4/4? I think so.
• 5:13
  This is yeah 1212. So this is my 4th commentary for
• 5:18
  the. You know what, right?
• 5:19
  Yeah. If you think you're sad, all
• 5:20
  right? I've got your Phantom one, I've
• 5:22
  got your DVD one, and now I'm here with you tonight.
• 5:25
  Oh my good Lord, have I said anything I've not said before?
• 5:29
  Well, yeah, because usually you're facilitating those
• 5:31
  conversations. That's very true.
• 5:33
  Roaring out. I mean, you're the master eight
• 5:35
  of those commentaries. And I know you don't like a
• 5:37
  compliment, but you are so good at it.
• 5:40
  I mean some of these people don't have a crumb of a memory.
• 5:43
  Oh well, it knows how are difficult.
• 5:45
  And when we did Web of fear, I mean, by the time it was out, I
• 5:50
  mean, I think, I think Ralph Watson and Roger Bunce both died
• 5:53
  within a very short time of it, of it being out.
• 5:57
  It was the, it was the last time I saw both of those fellows.
• 6:00
  And I, I, I, I knew Roger very well and I'd, and I'd got to and
• 6:04
  I, and I knew Ralph a little bit.
• 6:06
  So that was very, very sad and and those were all obviously
• 6:10
  down the line and we got Tina Packer from the States, which I
• 6:13
  was very excited about. The only one you know?
• 6:17
  You tell me. The only one where I've
• 6:20
  genuinely heard you struggle. What episode was it?
• 6:25
  Which commentary? Of of this.
• 6:27
  Story or no? Of this story?
• 6:29
  No, No, no, no. No, I I struggle in a
• 6:34
  commentary. Let me think.
• 6:36
  It's only because you were getting monosyllabic one word
• 6:39
  answers back. Paddy Russell, Yes, Paddy
• 6:43
  Russell. Well.
• 6:45
  Toby I can get blood out of a stone from people, but I
• 6:48
  wouldn't have been able to get a drop.
• 6:50
  Well, so do you notice we had to think on the hop there.
• 6:55
  Do you notice that we then the final episode with Paddy, we do
• 7:00
  a career overview with her rather than talk about And that
• 7:03
  is because in the break, John Kelly said this is really hard.
• 7:08
  Why don't you talk to her about her career in television?
• 7:13
  And it's a good job. I knew all that stuff, isn't it?
• 7:16
  Because that's not what we'd plan to do.
• 7:18
  So I'm able to talk to her about return and answer, which is the
• 7:21
  first thing that she directed when she'd she'd be working with
• 7:24
  Rudolf Cartier. And yeah, and and but that was
• 7:27
  not the plan. That was done on the hoof
• 7:30
  because we didn't want another episode of yes, no.
• 7:34
  And I did see on a forum somebody say, Oh yeah, well, he
• 7:37
  doesn't do a very good job on that because I think it's not
• 7:39
  Paddy Russell's fault. It's because he only asks her
• 7:41
  questions that can have a yes or no answer.
• 7:43
  And it's no. What I do is I throw out a
• 7:46
  general thing and she doesn't say anything.
• 7:48
  So then I try to narrow it down to something more specific and
• 7:51
  it's what you do and you're waiting first.
• 7:52
  She wasn't saying. She wasn't.
• 7:55
  Saying yes and no because I was giving her no other opportunity.
• 7:58
  I do sometimes think fans can be very ungenerous.
• 8:01
  I didn't. I say that at the start of this.
• 8:03
  I mean about the animations as well.
• 8:05
  Yeah, how lucky we are. But yeah, that was at Paddy's
• 8:08
  house. But we had a, it was because she
• 8:10
  was great and she was really sweet to us and she'd been out
• 8:12
  and bought crisps and sandwiches.
• 8:15
  And in fact, I have just been going through, you know, as well
• 8:21
  as sorting out those theatre programs that I was referring to
• 8:25
  in the last episode. I have lots of Paddy Russell's
• 8:28
  paperwork and had to be, we had to be quite ruthless with that
• 8:34
  because a lot of it was scripts of local news programs and
• 8:36
  things like that. But, but she hadn't kept much
• 8:38
  from her BBC days. But there's a Zed car script.
• 8:41
  There's some photos of her stuff in the 1950s she had colour
• 8:45
  slides of a production from 1957, colour photographs of a
• 8:52
  production she did in between Crater Mass 2 and Crater Mass
• 8:56
  and the pit. And they're of fucking Salomi,
• 8:59
  which I'm sure opera buffs will be delighted about, but I.
• 9:03
  Thought you were going to say she had colour slides of the
• 9:06
  massacre. But there are there are also
• 9:09
  some colour slides that look like they're in a forest and it
• 9:14
  and when I first looked at them, I thought, oh God, is this, is
• 9:18
  she taking colour slides of pyramids of Mars?
• 9:20
  And it's not, it's from it's from Little Women or something
• 9:24
  like this. And of course, all the stuff
• 9:28
  that's and the she's got a whole file on her Doctor Who, but it's
• 9:31
  stuff that she's done after the event as an aid memoir.
• 9:34
  So she's typed it up and and it's like because she hadn't
• 9:37
  kept any of it because she didn't think that that was
• 9:38
  important. So she's had to create it after
• 9:41
  the fact. And the stuff that she has hung
• 9:43
  onto is of stuff that is of the Zed car script is quite
• 9:46
  interesting. I think that's her last.
• 9:47
  I was talking to David Brunt about it, who's the Zed cars
• 9:49
  expert, and he was saying he thought it was probably one of
• 9:52
  the last things she did for the BB.
• 9:54
  And maybe that's why she'd she'd kept that.
• 9:56
  And I've got and I've have rescued that.
• 9:58
  There is one photo of Dudley Foster from from her zed cars
• 10:01
  that that I think is, is, is of interest.
• 10:04
  And I mean the the other stuff is of is of interest.
• 10:06
  And there's some, some lovely black and whites of, of some of
• 10:09
  the stuff that she was APA on for, for Rudolf Cartier.
• 10:13
  But but there's nothing. One picture from crater mass in
• 10:16
  the pit, and nothing from any other crater mass, and nothing
• 10:21
  at all from her Doctor Who's. I mean, she faster.
• 10:24
  I know we're way off Web of fear now.
• 10:25
  We'll get back on track in a second.
• 10:27
  This is great stuff, though. Who cares?
• 10:29
  She fascinates me because, you know, I've read a lot of
• 10:32
  autobiographies and things like that and where people were
• 10:35
  complaining a lot about her and she makes them do takes a take
• 10:38
  after take and, you know, made, you know, imperious decisions on
• 10:42
  the set and things like this. Yeah.
• 10:44
  And then you go and watch her work and it's stylish as fuck.
• 10:47
  It's incredible to. Oh, she's.
• 10:49
  A great director. It's like Grim Wade.
• 10:51
  He pissed a lot of people off. But look at this.
• 10:54
  Look at the four we did, you know.
• 10:56
  Yeah, I know Paddy. Paddy was a very good director.
• 10:58
  We could have had a few less directors that were good with
• 11:00
  the actors you. Know and I think Paddy was good
• 11:03
  with some actors I mean you know and she she you know because of
• 11:07
  her relationship with Rudolf Cartier her her first directing
• 11:10
  job she managed to get Andre Morrell, Donald Wolf at Maxine
• 11:13
  Audley really high caliber casts who liked her.
• 11:17
  I think actors that she didn't get on with were actors that
• 11:21
  like to push their luck a little bit and, and, and play and play
• 11:25
  the star. And I think she probably didn't
• 11:28
  really have too much time for that.
• 11:31
  So I think she was a probably a a clash of personality with Tom
• 11:34
  Baker for sure, you know, but it's it's very strange, you
• 11:39
  know, having having these boxes of things that are and some of
• 11:43
  them are things from when she's a young woman, you go and God,
• 11:45
  we you know, we only know. No, it was this old sort of
• 11:48
  senior television figure and and you know, here it was a drama
• 11:52
  school certificates and all of that.
• 11:54
  And you guys and they're in a box and I.
• 11:57
  I get a pang of envy, you know, about you people that sort of
• 12:00
  research this stuff about books and things like that, you know,
• 12:03
  professionally. I, I sent a message to Simon
• 12:06
  Gurid over there just saying I love to talk at Target Book day.
• 12:09
  Wonderful. I cannot wait to read the
• 12:11
  terrorist textbook. And he, he sent an e-mail back
• 12:15
  just going. I'm currently in reading,
• 12:16
  spending some time at Cavington to go for old paperwork.
• 12:20
  I now know the date Terence commissioned Elaine Morgan to
• 12:23
  dramatize the diary of Anne Frank and Lock Capital.
• 12:28
  I could just see him there flourishing through papers just
• 12:32
  with all of these wonderful tip. It's, I mean the things here on
• 12:35
  earth for that book, it will be extraordinary.
• 12:38
  Yeah, and he's already got hold of a load of stuff that was in
• 12:41
  that was Terrence office that nobody had actually gone through
• 12:44
  properly. And yeah, he's and he's great.
• 12:46
  Simon, I've got Paddy Russells cat litter tray around the
• 12:49
  corner because that's what a brother gave me all this and he
• 12:52
  said we have, you know, there were boxes.
• 12:54
  So we took boxes and he put a load of it in this, in this
• 12:57
  clean. That's the quote.
• 12:57
  Of the night. All right, I've got Paddy
• 12:59
  Russell's. Yeah.
• 13:01
  I haven't I've got, I've got nothing from actual Doctor Who,
• 13:04
  but I've I've got Paddy Russell's cat litter tray.
• 13:08
  Well, on that note. I've got an I've got an umbrella
• 13:13
  from one of the Vikings from the time Meddler.
• 13:16
  I imagine your house is an Aladdin's cave.
• 13:18
  You know of this sort of thing. But you'd have to do an
• 13:22
  inventory that pointed out to you it'll.
• 13:26
  Mean nothing to anybody except a Doctor Who fan.
• 13:29
  Yeah, Oh boy, oh boy. That's almost a shame.
• 13:32
  I'm just enjoying talking about stuff.
• 13:34
  But I suppose we should watch the animated third episode of
• 13:38
  The Weather Fear and watch these fabulous balloon people bopping
• 13:43
  back and forward. Well, shall I count it soon?
• 13:46
  Yeah, why not, OK. Then let's go in in the wake of
• 13:50
  Patty Russell's litter tray in three two what?
• 13:55
  Off we go now. I mean, I suppose we could take
• 13:59
  the opportunity with episode 3 because there's still a lot of
• 14:02
  episodes of live action to talk about the animations themselves.
• 14:05
  And and like there's so many different styles.
• 14:09
  There's one sort of like slavishly to the original
• 14:11
  material, others that have taken huge liberties when they wanted
• 14:15
  to. Well, yes, and, and let's be
• 14:17
  honest as well, I'm not going to I'm not going to tow the party.
• 14:20
  I think you could sometimes tell when you have guests on
• 14:23
  podcasts. So, you know, have to say a
• 14:25
  certain thing. When I first saw this animation
• 14:30
  and I did the DVD commentary with it, I thought it was great.
• 14:34
  I really liked the naturalistic movement and the fact that it
• 14:36
  was a slightly different approach.
• 14:38
  And I have to say, and this goes to show how little I know about
• 14:41
  anything, I thought it would go down really well because to me
• 14:45
  it was a slightly more photo real approach.
• 14:48
  I know there's less detail on the faces and things like that,
• 14:51
  but it just felt to me slightly more realistic if you like and
• 14:55
  and fitted in with the episode a bit more than perhaps AA2D
• 14:59
  animation night. And it came out and everybody
• 15:02
  hated it. Just the movement like it, it,
• 15:05
  it's, it is very drunkard the movement, you know.
• 15:09
  I, I think, and obviously I, I come to it slightly tainted in
• 15:16
  the sense that, you know, when I watched it and then when I
• 15:20
  digested it and had to present it, I was, I was doing it in the
• 15:25
  presence of the people that had done it.
• 15:27
  And they talked about the effort that they'd gone to and the
• 15:30
  different processes that they'd gone through.
• 15:32
  So I had a real sort of appreciation for the work.
• 15:35
  And I love all this sort of shadowy stuff that you've got
• 15:38
  there. It's the first scene with the
• 15:40
  Brigadier. Yay, So that's it.
• 15:44
  Maybe they were. Maybe they were Brigadier.
• 15:46
  Let's bridge Stewart fans, the people who nicked Episode 3.
• 15:50
  I mean, you'd need to do a bit of research for it and then, my
• 15:53
  God, this is the one everybody's going to want is did I just see
• 15:56
  Gary Russell's face on a poster a minute?
• 15:59
  Ago. Oh yeah, Well, quite possibly,
• 16:01
  yes, I had. Put it in these little Easter
• 16:03
  eggs, don't they? Roger Delgado on a poster in
• 16:07
  Fury from the Deep. That's right.
• 16:11
  And some people hate those things.
• 16:15
  And I have some sympathy with people who go the master hadn't
• 16:21
  been invented yet. That's anachronistic.
• 16:23
  That would never have happened in the actual show.
• 16:25
  So what for some people is a lovely cheeky Easter egg, for
• 16:28
  other people is an abhorrence that should be destroyed.
• 16:31
  And I I have sympathy for both points of view.
• 16:35
  Did you see that? They said that's where the
• 16:36
  animation really works. It started on the on the box
• 16:39
  with the map on it and the the camera sort of came around it.
• 16:42
  So it was all in 3D. Now you would never have that in
• 16:45
  the 2D animation. It's just now where we're you
• 16:49
  ask. I'll tell you what it is.
• 16:50
  And please don't think I'm being too unkind.
• 16:52
  You know when you go to like a car garage and you've got the
• 16:55
  blow up man outside? Oh yeah, they're.
• 16:58
  A bit. Like I walked past a couple.
• 17:01
  Where did I walk past a couple of those The other day?
• 17:03
  We were, we were somewhere. And I walked past two of those
• 17:06
  things and I was like, Oh, yeah. But I, I wonder if if maybe this
• 17:09
  technology is fairly new at this point and you've got a test
• 17:13
  drive it right you what, what you get eventually is a
• 17:15
  celestial toy maker, which is a far more polished version of the
• 17:19
  same thing. Which yes, and I'm going to
• 17:21
  tends, to paraphrase Alan Partridge, I'm going to shock
• 17:25
  you now, I and again, I understand people for whom it's
• 17:33
  an imaginative leap too far. And I have to say I was
• 17:38
  delighted when when I. I, I, I think that sort of Big
• 17:49
  Brothers, Tobias Toad and they were told no, you've got to,
• 17:52
  you've got to make it absolutely as as close to the, the, the
• 17:57
  broadcast episodes as possible. I was very much the target
• 18:01
  audience of that policy and I it should look as I want
• 18:06
  recreations of the missing episodes.
• 18:08
  I don't care what some fan now, obviously as I've got older, I
• 18:11
  go now it's a creative person who wants to make a really good
• 18:14
  product. But some fan because there's a
• 18:16
  little bit of resentment there as well because somebody's doing
• 18:18
  a thing and I'm not, you know, whatever thinks this episode
• 18:23
  should look like you respect what has gone before.
• 18:27
  But as I've obviously interviewed people involved,
• 18:30
  become involved, seen the processes, you can't with 2D
• 18:36
  animation make something that looks like if you followed the
• 18:40
  camera script of an episode of Doctor Who and did it as
• 18:43
  animation, it would die. Because when you have a close up
• 18:46
  of an actor's face, there are so many different, so many more
• 18:50
  different things going on in the, in the increased number of
• 18:53
  pixels that the rather pick out facial expressions and nuance
• 18:56
  and all those sorts of things that we read as human beings
• 19:00
  that you do not get an even the best animated face.
• 19:02
  So you have to do something different and the size of the
• 19:05
  sets and all of that, that you, you cannot recreate a missing
• 19:08
  episode in animation. Now you can trick us into
• 19:11
  thinking we're watching something as close, as near as
• 19:14
  damn it, but you can't. And obviously you have a
• 19:16
  different brief if you're bridging the gap between
• 19:18
  episodes two and four of the Web of Fear, having something that
• 19:24
  suddenly looks like a movie version of it isn't going to
• 19:26
  work. So, you know, I think they they
• 19:28
  obviously very much tried to keep it so that it was.
• 19:31
  The sort of scene was authentic, yeah.
• 19:34
  But when you're when you're doing the The Celestial Toy
• 19:37
  Maker and you're going to have a very good because they've got
• 19:40
  brilliant at those photo reconstructions.
• 19:43
  And when I'm doing my commentaries, I actually watch
• 19:44
  the reconstructions rather than the animations because I'm
• 19:47
  trying to talk about the episodes themselves, not the
• 19:49
  animations which bring other things into play.
• 19:52
  I was hugely impressed with this.
• 19:56
  I don't think The Celestial Toy Maker is the best story in the
• 19:58
  world anyway. So maybe that's that's me
• 20:02
  bringing something to it, but I think if there's a story that
• 20:05
  can stand a giant puppet master, celestial toy maker whilst the
• 20:10
  character was on the sort of set of the adventure game, what
• 20:13
  what? And your clowns are actual, you
• 20:16
  know, tall and bean baggy or what it's the celestial toy
• 20:20
  maker. And I think it is true to the
• 20:22
  spirit of what the story would have loved to have been had it
• 20:25
  been able to be it. But it no, it's not an accurate
• 20:28
  recreation of of how it was done in the studio.
• 20:31
  And I actually prefer the the the visuals that we get given by
• 20:36
  the animation than I think what we what we would get in the
• 20:39
  episodes My. Favorite.
• 20:41
  Yeah. Or one of my absolute favorite,
• 20:43
  it is the first, which is the Invasion.
• 20:46
  And that's very stylistic, that one.
• 20:49
  It's sort of very noirish, isn't it?
• 20:50
  They're using lots of silhouettes and and and harsh
• 20:54
  lighting on things and it just looks beautiful.
• 20:57
  It looks like a beautiful comic strip, but in no way is that how
• 21:01
  the episodes looked. No, no, that that that invasion
• 21:05
  what I actually watched the moon base one not that long ago and
• 21:08
  that's that's that's very good as well.
• 21:12
  I think the game changer for me was macro terror because they
• 21:15
  make huge creative choices in that to to just make it look
• 21:23
  filmic. You know, the macro look
• 21:24
  terrifying and they help. They're picking up Polly at the
• 21:27
  end of Episode 2 and it just looks beautiful.
• 21:31
  That and and then from then on to the underwater menace.
• 21:34
  And now I'm just. I've adjusted now.
• 21:37
  Good. Yeah.
• 21:38
  Well, and I think I think that's the style that that they've kind
• 21:43
  of settled on, wasn't it? And the and the underwater
• 21:45
  menace where he you he does. I mean, he does get an octopus.
• 21:49
  And in fact, the octopus gets its own subplot, which I think
• 21:51
  is absolutely delightful. And obviously I work quite
• 21:55
  closely with the, with the team now on the more recent ones.
• 22:00
  I mean, I still, I still don't get to see the whole thing until
• 22:04
  it's locked off. But you know, I, I, I'm lucky
• 22:07
  enough that I get to see sort of early drawings and things like
• 22:10
  that. And then I, I, I get to, you
• 22:13
  know, I, I make sure the credits are in the correct order and
• 22:16
  things like that. So I, I get a little bit of
• 22:17
  involvement before, before most of us get to see it.
• 22:21
  So I know that I know the amount of hard work that goes that goes
• 22:25
  into stuff. I also do things like here's a
• 22:28
  steep behind the scenes I send them because I have lots of old
• 22:32
  episodes of Spotlight. I I look up to see how tall each
• 22:37
  of the actors are, so that they know what proportion they'd have
• 22:41
  been to each other when they're standing in a scene together.
• 22:44
  I need to know, is that something they asked for or is
• 22:46
  that something you feel like you need to do?
• 22:49
  That's something that certainly the last one it was asked for, I
• 22:56
  think there'd been an issue with and I said, oh, he, I think he's
• 23:14
  massive. And then I actually looked him
• 23:15
  up on Spotlight and he's actually not particularly, I
• 23:18
  mean, he's still tall, he's still over 6 foot, but he's not
• 23:20
  like 6 foot 7 or anything like that.
• 23:22
  I think he was but but so we'd certainly started looking into
• 23:26
  heights definitely then for the savages.
• 23:29
  And there's another story where where I went through everybody,
• 23:32
  but I was, yeah, I was asked to do that.
• 23:35
  But it's, yeah, it's little things like that as, as we work
• 23:38
  out, you know, who does what and who's got what resources
• 23:41
  available. And sometimes coordinating that
• 23:44
  is like, oh, you only needed to ask.
• 23:46
  And you sometimes with the, the animations, you know, we haven't
• 23:49
  learnt to do a thing until it hasn't been done.
• 23:52
  And, and somebody's been like, oh, I, I could have done that or
• 23:55
  oh, we should. And so because, because it's
• 23:58
  not, you know, one, one production office with a load of
• 24:01
  people in who were talking to each other all day as things
• 24:04
  used to be done. It's a load of people on the end
• 24:06
  of emails probably sometimes have so, so two people can be
• 24:10
  having a conversation with each other, which if the third person
• 24:13
  was in the room with them overhearing it would be able to
• 24:15
  help them out with. But doesn't know until either
• 24:18
  it's too late or until it's at last six months down the line or
• 24:21
  it comes up later or so, you know, there's a lot of, there's
• 24:23
  a lot of learning to do because of the way that these things
• 24:26
  are, are done these days, you know?
• 24:27
  I'm assuming as well these aren't done on massive budgets.
• 24:31
  You know, I, I, I, I'm willing to let these are done fairly
• 24:34
  cheaply. So I think the results are
• 24:37
  pretty spectacular for, for the resource that I've got.
• 24:41
  You know, occasionally I will, I will have a, a very loud
• 24:45
  complaint. I do remember complaining about
• 24:47
  the very long arms in fury from the deep.
• 24:51
  And I oh, yes, Gary, what happened there?
• 24:52
  Mr. Tickle, what's going on? I like the.
• 24:57
  I like the lights. I remember when I first saw
• 24:58
  this, the lights from the. From the feed the dust particles
• 25:02
  in the air, can't you? Yeah.
• 25:04
  And the and the lens, the lens flare and all of that.
• 25:07
  I think this is really effective and that and yeah, the the
• 25:09
  little light of the of the projector, things like that also
• 25:13
  get from this method. They are sitting down now, so
• 25:15
  there is a lot less movement in the people.
• 25:18
  I think it's just the movement of the people.
• 25:20
  And it does actually, because you know what I haven't seen
• 25:22
  this this episode for for a while.
• 25:24
  There is there is an element, isn't there?
• 25:26
  Sometimes I noticed that first time we saw Victoria of a of a
• 25:29
  bit like being a painted peg Dolly, isn't it?
• 25:33
  It's it's like it's like you've dressed a cloth bag and drawn an
• 25:36
  Eisen mouth on it and wobbled it along.
• 25:38
  I I do get. I do get that.
• 25:41
  Well, you just had a scene there where at night and the Brigadier
• 25:43
  were talking and, and because they were sort of had their
• 25:46
  hands on their hips and were leaning backwards and it was all
• 25:49
  very, you know, panto Dame. Whereas I'm fairly certain the
• 25:54
  filmed version they didn't look like that.
• 25:56
  But look at this, they've got a coffee in the foreground in a
• 25:58
  tin mug with steam rising from the coffee, which gives it a
• 26:01
  kind of texture that you don't get with the, with the normal
• 26:05
  animation style of of Doctor Who.
• 26:07
  And I. And I love the way that the
• 26:08
  light is reflecting on the faces of the of, of the Brigadier of
• 26:12
  Colonel Lethbridge Stewart and and Captain Knight here.
• 26:15
  So you get so when this was when this was new, you know, it was,
• 26:20
  it was sufficiently different from from the style that we were
• 26:24
  used to that as I say, I remember being the use of light
• 26:27
  in this system. I think is is really effective
• 26:31
  and the. Shock just saying from behind
• 26:33
  them there was 4 layers of people and they were all moving,
• 26:37
  so each layer had its own movement happening in there.
• 26:40
  Whereas in the normal animation it feels very like a picture,
• 26:44
  doesn't it? Very too.
• 26:44
  Yes, indeed. So, so I genuine, I, as I said,
• 26:49
  I, I genuinely thought people would be really delighted with
• 26:54
  this. So when I went on the forums.
• 26:56
  Why do you do that? Well, because I wasn't, because
• 27:00
  I, I, I, I don't go on the forums looking for what people
• 27:02
  say about the bits that I've done.
• 27:05
  But you know, I knew that people would be talking about the, the
• 27:09
  episodes or whatever I was looking at and I thought
• 27:12
  everybody would be going, I think I was looking a thread
• 27:15
  about the animations or whatever.
• 27:16
  And I think I thought people would be going, wow, they've
• 27:18
  really licked how to do body movement now with a web of fear.
• 27:22
  But because they do it very cleverly that, you know, they,
• 27:24
  they map it onto, remember when I first watched the cartoon of
• 27:26
  the Lord of the Rings by Ralph Backshie and thinking, oh, isn't
• 27:30
  this, these, these, this movement is not like animated
• 27:33
  movement. And it's because they, they do
• 27:35
  this thing where they sort of, they, they motion capture, don't
• 27:38
  they? They film, they film people
• 27:40
  moving and then they sort of trace over it.
• 27:42
  And there's some of that has been done and, and look, the the
• 27:47
  the way that this is filmed and this goes out of focus in the
• 27:49
  foreground, which is quite slightly sympathetic to the sort
• 27:52
  of shooting that that Karen Field might have done.
• 27:54
  I. Think though that that like
• 27:55
  people are watching this and like you said, they want it to
• 27:58
  match what you as close to what you would have seen on this.
• 28:01
  If you see unnaturalistic movement, they're just their
• 28:03
  heckles are up. Yeah.
• 28:05
  And I'm not look and I'm not, I'm not saying I think people
• 28:09
  are being deliberately down on it or are being pessimistic.
• 28:12
  I can see, you know, however many years it is down the line,
• 28:19
  why this, this is a bit of a culture shock to people.
• 28:22
  And, and obviously some of the, the, the flaws in this fledgling
• 28:26
  system that as, as we say, has, has developed somewhat.
• 28:29
  And, and it's this, you know, the, the, they, I think they
• 28:32
  obviously learnt from this when they, they, they took on
• 28:35
  Celestial toy Maker, but Celestial Toy Maker had loads of
• 28:39
  issues. I mean, it was, it was very
• 28:41
  close to the wire. I know that it was, it was, it
• 28:43
  was a big old project that caused them all sorts of
• 28:47
  difficulties. So that you know there are
• 28:48
  problems with this. Style.
• 28:50
  He's Pioneer technology. Well, it's the use of this by
• 28:53
  now. Well, it's great.
• 28:54
  Throughout the history of Doctor Who, we've seen them start off
• 28:57
  with a new bit of kit and it's usually a bit wobbly at the
• 29:00
  start and then we get better at it.
• 29:03
  Well, it means in 20 years time, when there's nobody left from
• 29:05
  the original celestial toy maker, we can make a documentary
• 29:08
  about the animation. You know, it's the gift that
• 29:13
  keeps on giving. I'm, you know I'm.
• 29:15
  Sure one. Day when I'm when I'm in this
• 29:17
  room, forgotten, sitting there in Russell's cat litter tray,
• 29:23
  you know, surrounded by cobwebs and and somebody goes should we
• 29:27
  see what happened to that guy that was all over the place in
• 29:30
  the DVDs for a bit? Should.
• 29:31
  We it'll be like this first episode of this.
• 29:33
  Excuse me, they're waiting. You'll fall down with the
• 29:36
  cobwebs all over. You but you know that might it
• 29:40
  might be my retirement. You know, it might be, it might
• 29:42
  bite me a little Kit Kat when I'm, when I'm on my deathbed.
• 29:49
  I don't know, I just like, I can't believe I can look at my
• 29:53
  shelves now and see the faceless ones, the Macrotera, you know,
• 29:59
  all of these stories. If I do run now through and I'm
• 30:02
  planning on doing 1 next year from beginning to end, right
• 30:05
  through to the new series. The fact that I don't have to
• 30:08
  just listen to soundtracks now for huge swathes of three and
• 30:13
  four, it makes me so happy. It's amazing, isn't it?
• 30:17
  And I mean, I remember when I was younger, I did, I did
• 30:21
  mention to an older fan once you know, there are, there are
• 30:24
  various clips. So I'm sure one day.
• 30:26
  This is the scene. Sorry to interrupt you.
• 30:28
  This is the scene from the book. Somebody opened the door.
• 30:31
  Yes, sorry. Yeah, no, well, it is the one of
• 30:34
  the most intriguing elements of the story for all the Yeti in
• 30:37
  the underground and all that sort of thing.
• 30:38
  The there's a traitor in our mid stuff.
• 30:41
  And that and that brilliant conceit of when somebody's dead
• 30:44
  and they they find the Yeti in the pocket and it's like, oh,
• 30:47
  it's not just that they've been killed.
• 30:48
  It's like they've been set up to be murdered because they've, you
• 30:51
  know, they've had this Yeti magnet stuck in their pockets.
• 30:54
  Is is is a really creepy and insidious, very simple idea, but
• 30:59
  it's absolutely brilliant, especially if you're a kid.
• 31:01
  I think it's a great it's, you know, it's a great shorthand for
• 31:04
  the for the drama. And of course, loads of people
• 31:07
  have had these. I've I've John Levine had one of
• 31:09
  things like these. I think he sold it now and I
• 31:11
  think he sold it for quite a lot, but he'd he'd got an
• 31:13
  original Yeti prop. I think Fraser had one as well,
• 31:17
  didn't he? A few of the guys guys went home
• 31:20
  with them. That was.
• 31:22
  Great. Did you see that going from the
• 31:23
  toy to the live size? Now that to me feels like a
• 31:27
  directional flourish that Canford would have done a bit
• 31:30
  like, you know, the sun into the light on the Darling.
• 31:33
  That is such a sexy Segway in in master plan.
• 31:37
  That is such a he was such a master my.
• 31:41
  Favorite is still, you know, it's still the the hammer coming
• 31:45
  down on Slocum. So the hammer going.
• 31:47
  Into going into the wall. Yeah, God.
• 31:49
  He was cute, wasn't? He he was really, really good.
• 31:52
  And and and Harry does it in in in Zygons, doesn't he, where
• 31:56
  Harry goes? No, no.
• 31:57
  And then it cuts to the doctor on the phone going No, no, it's
• 32:01
  just great. Yeah, beautiful stuff.
• 32:05
  I think hair is difficult to animate.
• 32:07
  So I think that they've got a they've got a rough deal here.
• 32:11
  I know hair is quite difficult to CGI as well, isn't it?
• 32:14
  So the Yeti we're always going to be because I, I think even
• 32:18
  with the even with the loose cannon reconstruction of
• 32:22
  Abominable Snowman, they, they had slightly computerized Yeti I
• 32:26
  think on, on that for some of the sequences.
• 32:29
  You know the bizarrest question I ever heard asked, and I won't
• 32:33
  name names because I think you might know them, but the bizarre
• 32:36
  question I ever had asked at the BFI was somebody who stood up
• 32:40
  after watching the Abominable Snowman animation and said,
• 32:43
  well, why on earth did you change the race of the Buddhist
• 32:47
  monks? Make them Asian.
• 32:51
  I was staring like I just. I'm Gary Russell, bless him,
• 32:55
  navigated that question well. I Diplomacy and politeness.
• 32:59
  Well, I have to say no, I'm I'm going to slightly disagree with
• 33:02
  you there because although I think it's a crass question and
• 33:05
  it's obvious why, it has been done to counter it with I think.
• 33:09
  Publicly to ask that question publicly.
• 33:11
  But I think that I think the suggestion was made and greeted
• 33:14
  with a round of applause that there is absolutely no excuse
• 33:17
  for them not to be using Asian actors in 1967 is a complete
• 33:22
  rewriting and illiteracy of history and how television was
• 33:27
  made. What was resources were
• 33:29
  available and what attitudes were to the available resources
• 33:33
  and resources include, and I'm speaking in completely
• 33:36
  televisual practicality terms here.
• 33:38
  Resources available include actors of a particular type and
• 33:43
  the idea that you would have spent extra time doing casting
• 33:47
  to find people that reflected the nationality of the
• 33:51
  characters. When you didn't do that with any
• 33:54
  other thing, whether it be a grassy Knoll or a horse or, you
• 33:59
  know, you found practical ways of doing it.
• 34:02
  And one of the things the actors did was dress up, put on accents
• 34:05
  and disguise themselves. And there was no.
• 34:08
  Now, obviously we look back now and go, well, that's very, you
• 34:13
  know, Western normative and all those, but that you, if you talk
• 34:16
  like that in that way, in 1967, everyone would have looked at
• 34:20
  you as if you were completely insane.
• 34:23
  There was no driver there to go well, productions have to be
• 34:26
  diverse in order to accurately reflect the nations that we're
• 34:31
  representing because they didn't have to be because they weren't
• 34:34
  tuned into that sort of thing, because that's not how society
• 34:37
  operated. And you would be speaking in a
• 34:41
  completely foreign language. And I, I think it, I'll it, it,
• 34:45
  it, it. It behoves us to to be mindful
• 34:50
  of throwing out accusations of implied racism to people who
• 34:55
  were working hard to make a television program in 1967 to
• 34:58
  whom that would not have remotely been on the agenda when
• 35:02
  the liberal arts establishment actually welcomed in foreign
• 35:05
  nationals, probably more than any other workspace in the
• 35:09
  United Kingdom at the time. And to casually waft accusations
• 35:13
  from our lofty position of the 20 twenties of, of ignorance and
• 35:17
  racism towards people who were anything but it, it, it all
• 35:21
  behooves us to do that and makes me very cross that we rewrite
• 35:24
  history from our liberal 21st century perspective and cast
• 35:28
  aspersions on people who aren't here to defend themselves.
• 35:31
  And to explain to people historical context that a lot of
• 35:35
  people don't want to understand because it it means that they
• 35:37
  can display their liberal credentials, I think on an
• 35:42
  uneven and inaccurate playing field.
• 35:47
  Really, you can't have any play field.
• 35:50
  My my metaphor ran away with me at the end.
• 35:52
  I. Agree with every word you are
• 35:54
  saying there. No no no and I I can hear how
• 35:56
  passionate you are about that and I do agree with you.
• 35:59
  I still understand why they make the decision they did.
• 36:02
  Oh no, I think it was the completely the correct decision
• 36:04
  for the animation at this time to do that.
• 36:07
  So I'm equally a sort of. Man of contradictions.
• 36:13
  No, I mean, I'm equally vexed by the idea that people can't see
• 36:17
  that times have times have rightly changed, and that the
• 36:22
  idea that we should, we should do an animation where we make
• 36:26
  the characters look like Caucasian actors.
• 36:28
  With some I think. That was being implied.
• 36:30
  Bananas. And Gary, like I say, navigated
• 36:34
  it beautifully. And, and I absolutely love the,
• 36:37
  the character designs that they give and, and actually they help
• 36:40
  to make those characters a bit less interchangeable than they
• 36:43
  might have been in the original. And, and I think Gary does an
• 36:46
  absolutely brilliant job. But I'm I'm responding more to
• 36:50
  the to the to the way that whenever anybody uses the word
• 36:53
  problematic. You know we are in one mind when
• 36:58
  it. Comes to this stuff yes, yes,
• 37:01
  but I'm. Starting to wonder, you know,
• 37:03
  Jesus, this might make me popular, that the far left are
• 37:07
  more terrifying and problematic than the far right.
• 37:10
  And I never thought I'd say that.
• 37:12
  Yes, well, that well in in indeed.
• 37:14
  And I was this, I was listening to a historian only earlier
• 37:20
  today saying, you know, bad things in history have always
• 37:22
  been done by people that think they're doing the right thing.
• 37:24
  And I think there's a lot of people who think they're doing
• 37:28
  the right thing who, you know, so, so say so therefore I can do
• 37:35
  this terrible thing to this person because I'm doing the
• 37:37
  right thing. And you go, well, that's what
• 37:38
  bad people have done throughout history.
• 37:41
  It's Carmen Silvera and invasion of the dinosaurs, isn't it?
• 37:46
  Yes, indeed, yes. And the beauty of what?
• 37:49
  And that was written by Malcolm Hulk, who was an extreme lefty.
• 37:53
  But what he's doing there is going.
• 37:54
  He's clearly been exposed though.
• 37:57
  Well, and also he's going I, I think I'm right, but I'm also
• 38:01
  aware that my ideas can get perverted by people who are well
• 38:04
  meaning. And I don't think you'd get
• 38:06
  writing as intelligent as that on television now because so
• 38:09
  much there's so much wanting to show that your views are right.
• 38:14
  Good writers write in the grey areas.
• 38:16
  We're encouraged now. And I see it with comedy as
• 38:18
  well. I'm a stand up comic and and and
• 38:20
  comedy always wrestles with, you know, very interesting ideas.
• 38:24
  But now it's so much to go. I'm getting a round of applause
• 38:26
  because I'm saying the thing that that's right, rather than
• 38:29
  I'm getting a laugh because I'm exposing the hypocrisies that
• 38:33
  exist in our own preconceptions, in our own grey areas.
• 38:35
  So rather than going, this is funny because this is my
• 38:39
  outlook, but actually it's flawed and contradictory.
• 38:41
  It's more going, these people are wrong because they're bad,
• 38:44
  and that's very different. And I think good writing, you're
• 38:47
  unable to examine the flaws in your own argument.
• 38:51
  That is much more interesting than just going I'm going to
• 38:54
  write an obvious baddie who represents the things I disagree
• 38:56
  with. I stand.
• 38:58
  In that landscape now, though, are we?
• 38:59
  Where you can be in that grey area, you kind of have to be
• 39:03
  black and white. And it's a shame, well, because
• 39:05
  then there's no dialogue with any of it.
• 39:07
  Well, just because you see people on Twitter going, oh, I,
• 39:10
  I found that I found it problematic that this character
• 39:13
  did that. It's, well, maybe the writer
• 39:16
  saying he's not saying that the character was right to do that,
• 39:19
  but you have to depict her. And sometimes drama is having a
• 39:22
  good character do a bad thing. Drama is having the character
• 39:26
  you identify with doing something that you're
• 39:28
  uncomfortable with. If you just want a character to
• 39:30
  stand there and say everything you think is right and everyone
• 39:34
  else is wrong, you don't want drama, you want confirmation
• 39:37
  bias. And you're a cunt.
• 39:39
  And a lot of people do. Why?
• 39:41
  It's why I love dot bubble, you know, so much because one on the
• 39:44
  one level. Therefore, it's like when does
• 39:46
  the penny drop for each person watching?
• 39:48
  And for some people it's not until the end.
• 39:51
  And for some podcasters, it's not until after everyone on
• 39:55
  Twitter has told them what the ending was all about.
• 39:58
  You know I'm talking about. But the other thing as well is
• 40:01
  that you're invited to get close to and sympathize with the
• 40:06
  victim of the piece, Lindy Pepper Bean.
• 40:09
  And somewhere in the middle of the episode, you're laughing
• 40:11
  away as she's walking into lamp posts and you're seeing.
• 40:15
  Yourself through her eyes while she's throwing out all these
• 40:18
  microaggressions that you may or may not be seeing.
• 40:22
  And even at the end where you would think that there would be
• 40:26
  some sort of turn in her character or she'd go, OK, yes,
• 40:29
  you help me out. Well, maybe, you know, you're
• 40:32
  right off. Nope.
• 40:33
  Not a bit of it. She goes off to tame the world
• 40:37
  and to go, yeah, no, sorry, but you're just wrong.
• 40:40
  All right. And I just thought that was such
• 40:42
  a brave script. Yeah, because.
• 40:45
  Because good, good writing makes you examine your own points of
• 40:49
  view. That holds up a mirror right in
• 40:52
  your face. And and it makes us sometimes
• 40:54
  have to confront the our certainties have to live
• 40:59
  alongside a certain pragmatism is that you know, you know, to
• 41:03
  live with my worldview, I probably have to accept a few
• 41:06
  things that I sub. I subconsciously know our moral
• 41:10
  compromises, but I have to kid myself probably aren't.
• 41:14
  And if you don't acknowledge that you do that, you're a
• 41:16
  psychopath. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I have
• 41:20
  dialogues on podcast and I talk to my other half about it.
• 41:23
  And he goes, oh, why did you say that?
• 41:25
  Why would you ever say that the wrong person heard that?
• 41:28
  And I said, I don't care. I'd rather have the dialogue.
• 41:30
  I'd rather have the challenge of talking to people about this
• 41:33
  stuff. I'll start to offer you're a
• 41:36
  whim for not saying those things, even though I know you
• 41:38
  think them. You know so.
• 41:40
  Yeah, well, I mean I. Have to be careful.
• 41:42
  I I came on here to sort of talk along to a a a a a a Doctor Who
• 41:46
  animation and instead I've vented about some vague tweet I
• 41:50
  read once that's obviously latched in my subconscious and
• 41:53
  maybe, I'm not sure, serious. About you haven't done one of
• 41:55
  these commentaries, you and me where you haven't we haven't
• 41:58
  gone down this rabbit hole so well, we covered animations as
• 42:04
  well. Well, look, so that's the joy of
• 42:06
  these things. All right, like with Paddy
• 42:07
  Russell, you don't always have to talk about what's on the
• 42:10
  screen, as long as you have a good conversation.
• 42:13
  Yeah, I suppose so. Yes.
• 42:15
  Well, there we go. Well, should we go and have a
• 42:17
  good conversation about now? I have a list a small list of
• 42:22
  single episodes of Doctor Who which I consider to be the
• 42:25
  finest single episodes of Doctor Who.
• 42:28
  I'll put Case of Andrew Zani 4 in that list.
• 42:32
  I put The Invasion episode 6 in that list.
• 42:35
  They're just certain episodes that I just think are perfect.
• 42:38
  Yeah, I think The Weber Fear episode 4 belongs on that list
• 42:42
  as well. And I think we will be singing
• 42:45
  from the same hymn sheets. Yes indeed.
• 42:47
  Wow. Let's do it.