Doctor Who - Documentary s06e19 Episode Script
Sylvia James - In Conversation
On The Abominable Snowman, I have already quite strong memories about the location in Snowdonia, because we had very mixed weather.
And I do recall we'd see the rain clouds come over the mountains behind us and we just had to run for it.
And especially with the Yeti costumes, which were big and heavy and long-haired, so it was an absolute nightmare, to keep everything covered up.
Very often on a lot of these productions, especially if they were set in other countries, we'd have to do I'd have to do research, and just to get the right shape and the right look.
I think we used hair lace lifts at the side of the eyes just to pull out a little bit, so that they would look as if they were from Nepal or Tibet.
And also the shape of the moustache, which gave the whole look, plus costume.
I remember making up Wolfe Morris as Padmasambhava as a 300-year-old Tibetan monk.
We had a fine latex mask made that was done from a face cast, that had been taken of him.
I had to attach that to him but also to allow movement, and for it to look as though it was actually his skin.
He had a bald cap and also a fine hair lace wig, that was sort of dressed into a sort of top-knot style so he looked like a Tibetan monk.
He found it very difficult to sit still and the whole makeup, in fact, in all, took about two hours.
So it was a bit grim for him to sit still for that length of time.
With The Ice Warrior makeup, a lot of it was costume.
I remember working closely with Martin Baugh, the costume designer, and us deciding the look for the face.
The actual masks themselves were quite thick.
The shape was sculpted in clay and then a mould taken from that.
But we had to make sure that we could attach them in such a way that they seem to be part, you know, part and parcel of the face, so we had as much movement as possible as well.
With the mask, you got this lovely sort of folds in the neck, or appearance of folds in the neck.
So that it had a very almost lizard-like look.
We would have used black tooth enamel to have got little sharp, pointed teeth, which show up really quite well.
The one thing I remember is, of course, the actors underneath, poor things, you know, got incredibly hot.
And there were times when they just came into the makeup room, I can remember this very clearly, pleading with us, to be able to take it off just for a short period of time.
In The Enemy Of The World, I can remember changing Patrick Troughton, when he played the two parts, from this rather sort of gnomish, pixie-like character Doctor Who into this rather sort of evil, sort of Mexican-looking salamander.
We made him darker skinned, which, of course, suited him anyway.
There was no way that I really had time to change over his makeup very quickly.
So we recorded, in fact, out of sequence.
And the other thing that happened during that time was going over to 625 lines.
And so, therefore, as far as our makeup was concerned, everything had to be just a little bit finer.
Which meant that we had to pay more attention to detail.
I remember Jack Watling very clearly and also, of course, being the father of Debbie Watling.
So it was father and daughter, double act really.
Again, very professional actor and a challenge, you know, to make him look 40 years older.
But I always very much enjoyed doing any really, what I've termed as a really good character makeup.
I don't know how he felt about it at that time.
Generally speaking, most actors enjoy having character makeup put on them.
Sometimes when I talk about doing Doctor Who, people immediately think, "Well, you must be doing "all these wild makeups all the time.
" Very often with the monsters, a lot of it was costume, then we would be adding to it and so on.
When we had to sort of blacken Jack Woolgar, and we would have used very sort of black pancake possibly, and plus charcoal powder, that sort of thing, so it looked rather like a sort of almost gun-powdery effect.
But the thing about that is, whenever you've got a very black face and with the lighting, is it practically disappears completely.
So you have to be quite careful about how much you actually apply, so that it looks realistic.
Martin Baugh and I had just finished in the studio the night before, on one story.
We then flew from Denham Airport with the helicopter that was going to be used on Fury from the Deep.
We were given bits and pieces of the seaweed from the costumes.
So that we would attach it to the hands, as they became sort of invaded by these seaweed characters.
When we filmed The Dominators, for the characters that we had gold makeup on, I think it was really so that they had this sort of sheen-like quality, really.
Not that you would have, obviously, been aware that it was actually gold.
But it would have created a sort of alien look.
The Mind Robber was great fun from the point of view of character makeups.
We had the characters of Cyrano de Bergerac and also d'Artagnan, and I think there was a sword fight.
It was just lovely to use all the period wigs, and also, obviously, the nose.
Probably, I would be right in saying that most makeup artists, you know, really enjoy doing that, you know, that type of work probably best of all.
I love creating real characters.
For Alan Bennion, being the Chief Ice Warrior, we added a sort of pebble effect.
So, it gave it a much more powerful, strong, heavy, almost stone-like quality, really.
It was very much a product of the '60s look.
So the eye makeup on Louise was very much a '60s eye makeup even though it was futuristic.
The actual makeup itself still had a '60s look, which is very often something you find, if you look back at old Hollywood movies, it might be period, a period piece, but, in fact, it was still very indicative of whatever time they were made, whether it was in the 1930s or '40s.
We were filming in Brighton.
Filming on the Brighton rubbish tip.
We really enjoyed doing this series, because we were having I was having to research into the various different wars, the First World War and the American Civil War, in order to be able to do the makeup as authentically as possible and, of course, and also the hair because we're not only makeup artists, we're also We do makeup and hair in television.
And I remember one very funny time when we had the Roman soldiers.
David Maloney was very concerned that they would look like tough Roman soldiers.
And I'm afraid they didn't really, most of the time.
They were sort of almost mincing, some of them, and I think partly 'cause also they were so cold.
And I can remember we laughed such a lot at that time.
Generally-speaking, I would always be usually making up Patrick, and whoever, maybe, was the leading female.
I'd very much like to say really what a pleasure it was always to work with Patrick I always warmed to him and I also admired him as an actor enormously as well.
He had a great sense of humour.
Made it fun, but, at the same time, very professional.
So it was always a pleasure to work with him.
I have very fond memories.
And I do recall we'd see the rain clouds come over the mountains behind us and we just had to run for it.
And especially with the Yeti costumes, which were big and heavy and long-haired, so it was an absolute nightmare, to keep everything covered up.
Very often on a lot of these productions, especially if they were set in other countries, we'd have to do I'd have to do research, and just to get the right shape and the right look.
I think we used hair lace lifts at the side of the eyes just to pull out a little bit, so that they would look as if they were from Nepal or Tibet.
And also the shape of the moustache, which gave the whole look, plus costume.
I remember making up Wolfe Morris as Padmasambhava as a 300-year-old Tibetan monk.
We had a fine latex mask made that was done from a face cast, that had been taken of him.
I had to attach that to him but also to allow movement, and for it to look as though it was actually his skin.
He had a bald cap and also a fine hair lace wig, that was sort of dressed into a sort of top-knot style so he looked like a Tibetan monk.
He found it very difficult to sit still and the whole makeup, in fact, in all, took about two hours.
So it was a bit grim for him to sit still for that length of time.
With The Ice Warrior makeup, a lot of it was costume.
I remember working closely with Martin Baugh, the costume designer, and us deciding the look for the face.
The actual masks themselves were quite thick.
The shape was sculpted in clay and then a mould taken from that.
But we had to make sure that we could attach them in such a way that they seem to be part, you know, part and parcel of the face, so we had as much movement as possible as well.
With the mask, you got this lovely sort of folds in the neck, or appearance of folds in the neck.
So that it had a very almost lizard-like look.
We would have used black tooth enamel to have got little sharp, pointed teeth, which show up really quite well.
The one thing I remember is, of course, the actors underneath, poor things, you know, got incredibly hot.
And there were times when they just came into the makeup room, I can remember this very clearly, pleading with us, to be able to take it off just for a short period of time.
In The Enemy Of The World, I can remember changing Patrick Troughton, when he played the two parts, from this rather sort of gnomish, pixie-like character Doctor Who into this rather sort of evil, sort of Mexican-looking salamander.
We made him darker skinned, which, of course, suited him anyway.
There was no way that I really had time to change over his makeup very quickly.
So we recorded, in fact, out of sequence.
And the other thing that happened during that time was going over to 625 lines.
And so, therefore, as far as our makeup was concerned, everything had to be just a little bit finer.
Which meant that we had to pay more attention to detail.
I remember Jack Watling very clearly and also, of course, being the father of Debbie Watling.
So it was father and daughter, double act really.
Again, very professional actor and a challenge, you know, to make him look 40 years older.
But I always very much enjoyed doing any really, what I've termed as a really good character makeup.
I don't know how he felt about it at that time.
Generally speaking, most actors enjoy having character makeup put on them.
Sometimes when I talk about doing Doctor Who, people immediately think, "Well, you must be doing "all these wild makeups all the time.
" Very often with the monsters, a lot of it was costume, then we would be adding to it and so on.
When we had to sort of blacken Jack Woolgar, and we would have used very sort of black pancake possibly, and plus charcoal powder, that sort of thing, so it looked rather like a sort of almost gun-powdery effect.
But the thing about that is, whenever you've got a very black face and with the lighting, is it practically disappears completely.
So you have to be quite careful about how much you actually apply, so that it looks realistic.
Martin Baugh and I had just finished in the studio the night before, on one story.
We then flew from Denham Airport with the helicopter that was going to be used on Fury from the Deep.
We were given bits and pieces of the seaweed from the costumes.
So that we would attach it to the hands, as they became sort of invaded by these seaweed characters.
When we filmed The Dominators, for the characters that we had gold makeup on, I think it was really so that they had this sort of sheen-like quality, really.
Not that you would have, obviously, been aware that it was actually gold.
But it would have created a sort of alien look.
The Mind Robber was great fun from the point of view of character makeups.
We had the characters of Cyrano de Bergerac and also d'Artagnan, and I think there was a sword fight.
It was just lovely to use all the period wigs, and also, obviously, the nose.
Probably, I would be right in saying that most makeup artists, you know, really enjoy doing that, you know, that type of work probably best of all.
I love creating real characters.
For Alan Bennion, being the Chief Ice Warrior, we added a sort of pebble effect.
So, it gave it a much more powerful, strong, heavy, almost stone-like quality, really.
It was very much a product of the '60s look.
So the eye makeup on Louise was very much a '60s eye makeup even though it was futuristic.
The actual makeup itself still had a '60s look, which is very often something you find, if you look back at old Hollywood movies, it might be period, a period piece, but, in fact, it was still very indicative of whatever time they were made, whether it was in the 1930s or '40s.
We were filming in Brighton.
Filming on the Brighton rubbish tip.
We really enjoyed doing this series, because we were having I was having to research into the various different wars, the First World War and the American Civil War, in order to be able to do the makeup as authentically as possible and, of course, and also the hair because we're not only makeup artists, we're also We do makeup and hair in television.
And I remember one very funny time when we had the Roman soldiers.
David Maloney was very concerned that they would look like tough Roman soldiers.
And I'm afraid they didn't really, most of the time.
They were sort of almost mincing, some of them, and I think partly 'cause also they were so cold.
And I can remember we laughed such a lot at that time.
Generally-speaking, I would always be usually making up Patrick, and whoever, maybe, was the leading female.
I'd very much like to say really what a pleasure it was always to work with Patrick I always warmed to him and I also admired him as an actor enormously as well.
He had a great sense of humour.
Made it fun, but, at the same time, very professional.
So it was always a pleasure to work with him.
I have very fond memories.