Doctor Who - Documentary s11e07 Episode Script
On the Set of Doctor Who and the Daleks
In 1 965, the ITV programme, Movie Magazine sent a film crew to Shepperton Studios to shoot a piece about the making of Dr.
Who & the Daleks.
Sadly, the programme they made doesn't seem to exist in the archive any more.
But, the mute film trims, ie, the bits of film that weren't used, footage that they discarded, have in fact survived.
And they give us a fascinating glimpse into what it must have been like to be on the set.
I'm the son of the late, great Gordon Flemyng, who was probably my biggest inspiration into getting into the business.
Seeing my dad there, I find it very moving, and I kind of, have spent the last 20 years collecting pieces, and anything I can get that's got footage of him, which the stuff I got sent, had.
Really, really is important to me.
Gordon and I got on very well.
Extremely well.
And in fact, I did not only the two Daleks films with him, I also did another big film in Hong Kong and Spain.
-We had great fun together.
-FLEMYNG: He was a fiery character.
Famous.
Famously good at what he did, and famously loved by the people who were good at what they did, and hated by the people who weren't good, because would Dad would often He started as a cameraman, a cable basher, and then, a cameraman.
So, if Dad was filming, and the operator missed a shot, he'd go, ''Did you get it, son?'' And the operator would go, ''No, Gordon, I don't think I did.
'' ''Do you want another go, son?'' and the operator would go, ''Yeah, I'd like that.
'' And they'd take another shot.
And then, Dad would say, ''Did you get it, son?'' And he said, ''I don't know.
'' And he said, ''Go and have a cup of coffee.
'' And Dad would take the shot, and you can only do that, and be confident to do that if you know you can get the shot.
WAYE: At Shepperton Studios, it worked fine.
Now, it's very jammed up, but the stage is still perfect.
And all you need to make a film is a black box with a big door.
I'd done very little on the film or TV, and I was fascinated to go to Shepperton and see the studio, which was the famous, big, enormous studio.
And they made some massive films.
I remember being I made a lot of films at Shepperton, I was there when they made Oliver, for instance.
Shepperton's made, we shot some of that Not that.
There's a poster of X-Men on the wall there.
But we shot some of Clash of the Titans in Shepperton, and I knew that that's where they'd done it.
It's like, in a way, going into an old theatre as well.
You feel the sense of history, thinking about all the films and the people who worked there.
And the stars that had been in those dressing rooms.
It was good fun.
It was a great atmosphere at Shepperton, and they had the British Lion Pub, which was a great social club after work.
Peter Cushing is obviously revelling the chance to appear in something other than a horror film.
Very different from what William Hartnell was doing on television at the time.
He's also very different from almost anything we'd seen Peter Cushing do before.
Quite far away from what we now call his comfort zone.
He was meticulous in his And you can see it in the films.
With his continuity He was charming to us on the set.
He was always even-tempered.
After the shot, he would disappear off to his dressing room.
He didn't really socialise, certainly not with the Dalek operators, but Roy Castle did.
In 1 964, Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg were making a horror film called, Dr Terror's House of Horrors.
One of the short stories was about a jazz musician, and they hired Acker Bilk.
Bilk had a heart attack before filming started, and so, they very hastily drafted Roy Castle into appearing in this segment of the film.
Then, when Subotsky and Rosenberg came to make Dr.
Who & the Daleks, which was their next picture, they simply retained Cushing and Castle from that film.
Yeah, he was a great character.
He was a very talented man.
Roy was a variety artist, and I think he felt a bit like a fish out of water.
I mean, he said to me himself, I was the song and dance man, and yet, my first two films were a horror movie and a science fiction picture.
I think my favourite part of behind the scenes footage is where we see the two of them, arm-in-arm, doing some of the song and dance routine on the set.
It's fantastic.
Working with the Daleks was always quite fun.
They always terrified me, the Daleks, and watching Dad's film now is really funny because there is still a fear factor to them, but they Once you look at it, for what they are and how they move, it's sort of vaguely ridiculous, you know, to be frightened of these things.
WAYE: We had these little guys inside.
Those guys worked extremely hard.
There were one or two of the guys who were more experienced, that worked on the television series.
They sort of try you out in one of the lesser Daleks first, and then, as time went on, they let me get into one of the more active Daleks.
It's amazing what you can do, actually, inside.
Even something as solid as a Dalek.
(CHUCKLES) But they had genuine fire extinguishers, and the canister was stuck to the inside of the Dalek by your legs, and you held the trigger.
I think, trigger in your left hand, and then, you could do the plunging arm with the other, or swivel the head.
They did in fact give me a sheet of script.
We had to learn the dialogue in order to synchronise the flashing of the ears.
The average Hammer Horror of this period had a budget of about $1 40,000.
This film was budgeted at $1 80,000, which was an awful lot for a film that A, didn't have the backing of a major American studio, and B, didn't have any location shooting.
The cameras we used were Mitchell BNC 35mm in the big sound-proofing box.
It isn't just shot in wide screen, Dr.
Who & the Daleks was shot in Techniscope, which is an extremely wide format.
Techniscope could make the picture look a little sparse, sometimes, but the director, Gordon Flemyng, seems to have anticipated this, and we can see, for example, how when he's shooting inside the Tardis control room, he lines all four of the actors up in a row.
The critics were very sniffy.
The film opened at a cinema called Studio One in Oxford Street, in London, and even the manager of the cinema didn't think the film was any good.
You have to cringe a little bit because they are very dated, obviously.
But then, when you view it, as a young audience would've done in those days on a cinema screen in colour, it must have been pretty impressive.
It took $1 ,200 on its first three days, which, if we're gonna put this in perspective, was the distributor's biggest opening weekend ever.
FLEMYNG: It's hard for me to divorce the fact that my dad is six feet away from every shot that was taken in that film.
And that's something which bonds me to those films.
HEARN: It gives you big Daleks on big sets, big schemes, big booming voices, and I think it's a wonderful souvenir of that era when Doctor Who really was at the height of its popularity.
I got two new-born twins upstairs that are fast asleep, and I All I can say is I cannot wait for the day when they're old enough to sit them down in front of Dr.
Who & the Daleks, and tell them about their granddad.
Who & the Daleks.
Sadly, the programme they made doesn't seem to exist in the archive any more.
But, the mute film trims, ie, the bits of film that weren't used, footage that they discarded, have in fact survived.
And they give us a fascinating glimpse into what it must have been like to be on the set.
I'm the son of the late, great Gordon Flemyng, who was probably my biggest inspiration into getting into the business.
Seeing my dad there, I find it very moving, and I kind of, have spent the last 20 years collecting pieces, and anything I can get that's got footage of him, which the stuff I got sent, had.
Really, really is important to me.
Gordon and I got on very well.
Extremely well.
And in fact, I did not only the two Daleks films with him, I also did another big film in Hong Kong and Spain.
-We had great fun together.
-FLEMYNG: He was a fiery character.
Famous.
Famously good at what he did, and famously loved by the people who were good at what they did, and hated by the people who weren't good, because would Dad would often He started as a cameraman, a cable basher, and then, a cameraman.
So, if Dad was filming, and the operator missed a shot, he'd go, ''Did you get it, son?'' And the operator would go, ''No, Gordon, I don't think I did.
'' ''Do you want another go, son?'' and the operator would go, ''Yeah, I'd like that.
'' And they'd take another shot.
And then, Dad would say, ''Did you get it, son?'' And he said, ''I don't know.
'' And he said, ''Go and have a cup of coffee.
'' And Dad would take the shot, and you can only do that, and be confident to do that if you know you can get the shot.
WAYE: At Shepperton Studios, it worked fine.
Now, it's very jammed up, but the stage is still perfect.
And all you need to make a film is a black box with a big door.
I'd done very little on the film or TV, and I was fascinated to go to Shepperton and see the studio, which was the famous, big, enormous studio.
And they made some massive films.
I remember being I made a lot of films at Shepperton, I was there when they made Oliver, for instance.
Shepperton's made, we shot some of that Not that.
There's a poster of X-Men on the wall there.
But we shot some of Clash of the Titans in Shepperton, and I knew that that's where they'd done it.
It's like, in a way, going into an old theatre as well.
You feel the sense of history, thinking about all the films and the people who worked there.
And the stars that had been in those dressing rooms.
It was good fun.
It was a great atmosphere at Shepperton, and they had the British Lion Pub, which was a great social club after work.
Peter Cushing is obviously revelling the chance to appear in something other than a horror film.
Very different from what William Hartnell was doing on television at the time.
He's also very different from almost anything we'd seen Peter Cushing do before.
Quite far away from what we now call his comfort zone.
He was meticulous in his And you can see it in the films.
With his continuity He was charming to us on the set.
He was always even-tempered.
After the shot, he would disappear off to his dressing room.
He didn't really socialise, certainly not with the Dalek operators, but Roy Castle did.
In 1 964, Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg were making a horror film called, Dr Terror's House of Horrors.
One of the short stories was about a jazz musician, and they hired Acker Bilk.
Bilk had a heart attack before filming started, and so, they very hastily drafted Roy Castle into appearing in this segment of the film.
Then, when Subotsky and Rosenberg came to make Dr.
Who & the Daleks, which was their next picture, they simply retained Cushing and Castle from that film.
Yeah, he was a great character.
He was a very talented man.
Roy was a variety artist, and I think he felt a bit like a fish out of water.
I mean, he said to me himself, I was the song and dance man, and yet, my first two films were a horror movie and a science fiction picture.
I think my favourite part of behind the scenes footage is where we see the two of them, arm-in-arm, doing some of the song and dance routine on the set.
It's fantastic.
Working with the Daleks was always quite fun.
They always terrified me, the Daleks, and watching Dad's film now is really funny because there is still a fear factor to them, but they Once you look at it, for what they are and how they move, it's sort of vaguely ridiculous, you know, to be frightened of these things.
WAYE: We had these little guys inside.
Those guys worked extremely hard.
There were one or two of the guys who were more experienced, that worked on the television series.
They sort of try you out in one of the lesser Daleks first, and then, as time went on, they let me get into one of the more active Daleks.
It's amazing what you can do, actually, inside.
Even something as solid as a Dalek.
(CHUCKLES) But they had genuine fire extinguishers, and the canister was stuck to the inside of the Dalek by your legs, and you held the trigger.
I think, trigger in your left hand, and then, you could do the plunging arm with the other, or swivel the head.
They did in fact give me a sheet of script.
We had to learn the dialogue in order to synchronise the flashing of the ears.
The average Hammer Horror of this period had a budget of about $1 40,000.
This film was budgeted at $1 80,000, which was an awful lot for a film that A, didn't have the backing of a major American studio, and B, didn't have any location shooting.
The cameras we used were Mitchell BNC 35mm in the big sound-proofing box.
It isn't just shot in wide screen, Dr.
Who & the Daleks was shot in Techniscope, which is an extremely wide format.
Techniscope could make the picture look a little sparse, sometimes, but the director, Gordon Flemyng, seems to have anticipated this, and we can see, for example, how when he's shooting inside the Tardis control room, he lines all four of the actors up in a row.
The critics were very sniffy.
The film opened at a cinema called Studio One in Oxford Street, in London, and even the manager of the cinema didn't think the film was any good.
You have to cringe a little bit because they are very dated, obviously.
But then, when you view it, as a young audience would've done in those days on a cinema screen in colour, it must have been pretty impressive.
It took $1 ,200 on its first three days, which, if we're gonna put this in perspective, was the distributor's biggest opening weekend ever.
FLEMYNG: It's hard for me to divorce the fact that my dad is six feet away from every shot that was taken in that film.
And that's something which bonds me to those films.
HEARN: It gives you big Daleks on big sets, big schemes, big booming voices, and I think it's a wonderful souvenir of that era when Doctor Who really was at the height of its popularity.
I got two new-born twins upstairs that are fast asleep, and I All I can say is I cannot wait for the day when they're old enough to sit them down in front of Dr.
Who & the Daleks, and tell them about their granddad.