Doctor Who - Documentary s02e02 Episode Script
Rediscovering the Urge to Live
(DOCTOR WHO THEME) I've always been particularly fascinated by "Planet of Giants" because it was supposed to be the first ever Doctor Who story instead of "An Unearthly Child".
We have been reduced roughly to the size of an inch.
The original idea was the Tardis was to take off and re-land back in the school where they were only one-inch high.
Anyway, Sydney Newman always loved the idea, and he took it a year later and got Verity to still make the story.
So instead the story was the Tardis scanner blows up and the Tardis lands and is one-inch high, and they get involved in a murder mystery at the bottom of the garden where a guy gets shot because he was about to expose an insecticide that was lethal to all life.
I remember it was in one of those big studios.
-The new studios, wasn't it? -Yeah, TV Centre.
But my memory is entirely -with a box of matches.
-Oh, yes.
RUSSELL: The matches, of course, were like telegraph poles.
FORD: Yes, brilliant, brilliant.
RUSSELL: It was a marvellous idea.
And I was trying to see if I could stand on them and walk on them and do that.
FORD: To light the gas.
Now, just take it easy.
Very easy.
That I remember, so It needed a lot of cooperation between the four of us to get things done.
RUSSELL: Get done, yes, it did.
Yes, it certainly did.
It was a very talky one, anyway, wasn't it? -Very talky, yeah.
-Lots and lots and lots of dialogue.
-And not much action.
-And not much happening.
Except we were climbing up a drainpipe.
That's right.
I mean, you can't do much more when you're going up and down a sink.
You know, down the plughole, and all that business.
ED STRADLING: All four episodes were recorded and edited, ready for transmission.
Episode 4 was called "The Urge To Live".
Unfortunately, Donald Wilson, who was Head of Serials at the BBC in the early 1960s, actually lost the urge to live when he was watching it and decided that it should be cut down to three episodes rather than four.
What do we do? I mean, that's it, what can we do? Ordinarily, I'd just do a sort of standard "making-of" feature when commissioned to do the extras for a DVD.
And, you know, I've done many of them in the past and they usually involve sitting down anywhere between five and 10 of the original cast and crew who were involved in the making of the serial.
That was a bit difficult for "Planet Of Giants" because there aren't many still around.
Uh, the writer's dead, the director's dead and it's the only Doctor Who story where the entire guest cast are dead as well as two of the regulars.
So, um, not what you'd call a lucky story.
There would have been Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, maybe Ray Cusick who did the sets, and that's really it.
William and Carole I think don't remember an awful lot about it.
It was four weeks out of their life, you know, 40-odd years ago.
I decided that it was worth doing something a bit different for this release.
HADOKE: I think the reason for doing the reconstruction was to, you know, get all the factual stuff out of the commentary and the production notes, and get something that's accessible so you can actually experience the story how it would have been had they decided not to cut it down.
So what we're doing today is we're trying to reconstruct as faithfully as possible those scenes that were missing.
What do we do? I mean, that's it, what can we do? Go on living.
Fight the world we're in.
Make something of it.
It's quite a tricky thing to do, because we're not doing the whole script.
We are just doing bits that go in and fit into the script.
And to make it different And that isn't very easy to act, in a sense.
Doctor, for heaven's sake, make her see how wrong she is.
Ian was very keen to do it and had proved in one or two things he's done, projects of his recently, that he was able to create, to recreate the audio to the quality and to the standard of recording that we wanted.
I would repeat the two.
One, two Between counting One, two, two yards sideways, like that.
I think that's what you would have naturally done.
As I grew up with the first episode of Doctor Who, to actually get to direct a couple of actors together, Carole Ann Ford and William Russell, reading the parts that were written back by Louis Marks in 1964 Do what? You mean there's a telephone over there? GUILOR: I do.
(SCREAMING) Run! Run, it's one of the men! What a labour of love.
What better could you ever want to do than to actually work with your heroes and get the thing back together again? (LAUGHING) Wonderful! The audio side of that is relatively straightforward in that we just record all the sequences which were cut, using the original actors, Carole Ann Ford and William Russell and a whole troupe of impersonators, actor impersonators, to play the other I think it was six parts.
And today, of course, we had two absolutely wonderful, superb impersonators, do you not think? Yes, indeed.
Well, I've been very lucky.
I've been playing the part of Doctor Who! Imagine that.
But with a twist, I've been playing William Hartnell playing Doctor Who.
Would you like me to do it in that voice or in another voice? Hmm? -In the Doctor's voice.
-In the Doctor's voice? Yes, well I'll try my very best, dear boy.
I've never heard anybody else come so close to that First Doctor as he can.
Particularly as he's been studying "Planet of Giants" and has got the very inflections that Hartnell uses in the rest of the story.
I knew they'd be all right, Grandfather.
Yes, planning their future without us, I dare say.
Hmm.
The way he sort of falls off the sentences with a "hmm, hmm" in the way that Hartnell used to do.
You see, there's something over there that might be the solution to all this business.
-Well, what's that? -A telephone, my dear.
Hmm? They were very humble about it, too, saying, "Please, please, "help us, let us know if there's anything going wrong.
" -(CHUCKLES) -They were wonderful.
-They were really, really wonderful.
-Yeah.
(ALL TALKING AT ONCE) We're lifting, we're lifting.
We're lifting.
Lighter.
-FORD: Yeah.
-Okay.
RUSSELL: More triumphant.
He was always When the thing went well, he was always more FORD: "I'm doing it, I'm brilliant, I'm wonderful, aren't I? -"I'm doing it" -So a bit more We're lifting! Oh, I've got it.
(LAUGHS) They seemed quite impressed.
Um, I was more impressed with them, really, because it's like meeting the Beatles, for me.
It's like the insecticide in Barbara.
Its molecules are stable.
-So Barbara's going to get better! -Yes.
Now I've had a chance to read the reconstructed episodes three and four I can see it's a much more involved story.
I can't afford that sort of thing.
It's the firm's, you idiot.
All goes against taxes.
You've got everything neatly tied up, haven't you? You don't miss anything.
I want DN6 pushed as hard as it will go.
What about the containers? Some of the lines, in my opinion, are better than Should never have been taken out.
They were so magical.
The whole Hilda and Bert thing is pure black comedy.
It's brilliant.
And that's mostly cut out of the version that was broadcast.
Now, how do you know, hmm? You weren't even there.
Still, it might be the same.
They still haven't replaced their receiver.
All we had to work with was the scripts, nothing else existed.
So it was up to Ian to recreate firstly the audio, which is what we've been doing today, and then the visual material, which is going to be quite a task for him.
LEVINE: We've restored 25 minutes of material back to the two episodes.
So now, those who want to can see in some form Of course, it'll never be the same as if it had beenthe film had existed.
But with a bit of suspension of belief or disbelief, you can watch the lines that were uttered by William Hartnell's sound-alike, mixed in with the William Hartnell lines, using footage cleverly amalgamating the two, and see if you can tell the difference.
How's Barbara? Don't worry, we'll make it, Grandfather! It's unbelievable that we should still be working on Doctor Who at this age, you know.
We have been reduced roughly to the size of an inch.
The original idea was the Tardis was to take off and re-land back in the school where they were only one-inch high.
Anyway, Sydney Newman always loved the idea, and he took it a year later and got Verity to still make the story.
So instead the story was the Tardis scanner blows up and the Tardis lands and is one-inch high, and they get involved in a murder mystery at the bottom of the garden where a guy gets shot because he was about to expose an insecticide that was lethal to all life.
I remember it was in one of those big studios.
-The new studios, wasn't it? -Yeah, TV Centre.
But my memory is entirely -with a box of matches.
-Oh, yes.
RUSSELL: The matches, of course, were like telegraph poles.
FORD: Yes, brilliant, brilliant.
RUSSELL: It was a marvellous idea.
And I was trying to see if I could stand on them and walk on them and do that.
FORD: To light the gas.
Now, just take it easy.
Very easy.
That I remember, so It needed a lot of cooperation between the four of us to get things done.
RUSSELL: Get done, yes, it did.
Yes, it certainly did.
It was a very talky one, anyway, wasn't it? -Very talky, yeah.
-Lots and lots and lots of dialogue.
-And not much action.
-And not much happening.
Except we were climbing up a drainpipe.
That's right.
I mean, you can't do much more when you're going up and down a sink.
You know, down the plughole, and all that business.
ED STRADLING: All four episodes were recorded and edited, ready for transmission.
Episode 4 was called "The Urge To Live".
Unfortunately, Donald Wilson, who was Head of Serials at the BBC in the early 1960s, actually lost the urge to live when he was watching it and decided that it should be cut down to three episodes rather than four.
What do we do? I mean, that's it, what can we do? Ordinarily, I'd just do a sort of standard "making-of" feature when commissioned to do the extras for a DVD.
And, you know, I've done many of them in the past and they usually involve sitting down anywhere between five and 10 of the original cast and crew who were involved in the making of the serial.
That was a bit difficult for "Planet Of Giants" because there aren't many still around.
Uh, the writer's dead, the director's dead and it's the only Doctor Who story where the entire guest cast are dead as well as two of the regulars.
So, um, not what you'd call a lucky story.
There would have been Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, maybe Ray Cusick who did the sets, and that's really it.
William and Carole I think don't remember an awful lot about it.
It was four weeks out of their life, you know, 40-odd years ago.
I decided that it was worth doing something a bit different for this release.
HADOKE: I think the reason for doing the reconstruction was to, you know, get all the factual stuff out of the commentary and the production notes, and get something that's accessible so you can actually experience the story how it would have been had they decided not to cut it down.
So what we're doing today is we're trying to reconstruct as faithfully as possible those scenes that were missing.
What do we do? I mean, that's it, what can we do? Go on living.
Fight the world we're in.
Make something of it.
It's quite a tricky thing to do, because we're not doing the whole script.
We are just doing bits that go in and fit into the script.
And to make it different And that isn't very easy to act, in a sense.
Doctor, for heaven's sake, make her see how wrong she is.
Ian was very keen to do it and had proved in one or two things he's done, projects of his recently, that he was able to create, to recreate the audio to the quality and to the standard of recording that we wanted.
I would repeat the two.
One, two Between counting One, two, two yards sideways, like that.
I think that's what you would have naturally done.
As I grew up with the first episode of Doctor Who, to actually get to direct a couple of actors together, Carole Ann Ford and William Russell, reading the parts that were written back by Louis Marks in 1964 Do what? You mean there's a telephone over there? GUILOR: I do.
(SCREAMING) Run! Run, it's one of the men! What a labour of love.
What better could you ever want to do than to actually work with your heroes and get the thing back together again? (LAUGHING) Wonderful! The audio side of that is relatively straightforward in that we just record all the sequences which were cut, using the original actors, Carole Ann Ford and William Russell and a whole troupe of impersonators, actor impersonators, to play the other I think it was six parts.
And today, of course, we had two absolutely wonderful, superb impersonators, do you not think? Yes, indeed.
Well, I've been very lucky.
I've been playing the part of Doctor Who! Imagine that.
But with a twist, I've been playing William Hartnell playing Doctor Who.
Would you like me to do it in that voice or in another voice? Hmm? -In the Doctor's voice.
-In the Doctor's voice? Yes, well I'll try my very best, dear boy.
I've never heard anybody else come so close to that First Doctor as he can.
Particularly as he's been studying "Planet of Giants" and has got the very inflections that Hartnell uses in the rest of the story.
I knew they'd be all right, Grandfather.
Yes, planning their future without us, I dare say.
Hmm.
The way he sort of falls off the sentences with a "hmm, hmm" in the way that Hartnell used to do.
You see, there's something over there that might be the solution to all this business.
-Well, what's that? -A telephone, my dear.
Hmm? They were very humble about it, too, saying, "Please, please, "help us, let us know if there's anything going wrong.
" -(CHUCKLES) -They were wonderful.
-They were really, really wonderful.
-Yeah.
(ALL TALKING AT ONCE) We're lifting, we're lifting.
We're lifting.
Lighter.
-FORD: Yeah.
-Okay.
RUSSELL: More triumphant.
He was always When the thing went well, he was always more FORD: "I'm doing it, I'm brilliant, I'm wonderful, aren't I? -"I'm doing it" -So a bit more We're lifting! Oh, I've got it.
(LAUGHS) They seemed quite impressed.
Um, I was more impressed with them, really, because it's like meeting the Beatles, for me.
It's like the insecticide in Barbara.
Its molecules are stable.
-So Barbara's going to get better! -Yes.
Now I've had a chance to read the reconstructed episodes three and four I can see it's a much more involved story.
I can't afford that sort of thing.
It's the firm's, you idiot.
All goes against taxes.
You've got everything neatly tied up, haven't you? You don't miss anything.
I want DN6 pushed as hard as it will go.
What about the containers? Some of the lines, in my opinion, are better than Should never have been taken out.
They were so magical.
The whole Hilda and Bert thing is pure black comedy.
It's brilliant.
And that's mostly cut out of the version that was broadcast.
Now, how do you know, hmm? You weren't even there.
Still, it might be the same.
They still haven't replaced their receiver.
All we had to work with was the scripts, nothing else existed.
So it was up to Ian to recreate firstly the audio, which is what we've been doing today, and then the visual material, which is going to be quite a task for him.
LEVINE: We've restored 25 minutes of material back to the two episodes.
So now, those who want to can see in some form Of course, it'll never be the same as if it had beenthe film had existed.
But with a bit of suspension of belief or disbelief, you can watch the lines that were uttered by William Hartnell's sound-alike, mixed in with the William Hartnell lines, using footage cleverly amalgamating the two, and see if you can tell the difference.
How's Barbara? Don't worry, we'll make it, Grandfather! It's unbelievable that we should still be working on Doctor Who at this age, you know.