Doctor Who - Documentary s04e05 Episode Script

Michael Craze and I came on board in May 1 966 and the story was ''The War Machines''.
There you are, my child.
It's nice to see so well again.
And you, my boy My old hubby, Michael Gough, had already played the Celestial Toymaker, so I was warned about Bill Hartnell's unpredictability.
I'm not sure that anything, anybody could possibly warn you how he was.
He was very difficult and very demanding.
Oh, now, now, now.
Shh, shh, shh.
Stop being so flippant.
We don't know what we're in for outside there.
Now, come along, come along, come along.
William Hartnell, as you know, who played Doctor Who, was indeed highly loved by the audience.
But actually, apparently, in the last year or so, before Mike and I came on board, the ratings had been dropping off.
So they wanted to do something about this.
And it had to be, it had to be Bill's departure.
There was no way of getting round it.
But he wasn't having any of it, so Innes Lloyd tactfully suggested that it was time that he should leave.
And Shaun Sutton, who was the Head of Series, he wanted to continue with the show and Gerry Davis came up with the idea that the Doctor, being an old alien, could actually Just, you know, kind of change his body.
CAMERON: When I discovered that they were going to change him, he was going to come out of it, I thought that would be the end of Doctor who.
I couldn't imagine another actor taking over, there was no way they could do that.
One really had to think the BBC had gone mad.
Never did I dream that they'd be able to do it and get away with it.
Would the public accept that they would have an entirely different persona, you know? And that was, that was the dangerous moment.
This was the moment when the whole thing hung in balance, actually.
Looking terribly worried, Doctor.
Am I, my dear? Yes, I'm afraid I am rather worried.
I think William Hartnell realised himself that he couldn't carry that part any longer.
You know what I think that actually decided it in the end was his health.
It was his health and that was the point when he really had to let go because he couldn't, he couldn't hack it any more.
And so that was when he finally threw up his hands and said okay.
Mike and I were dead chuffed because we were going to have a script written by a scientist.
Kit Pedler had been scientific adviser on the show since the beginning of the year.
And in fact, he'd a bit of an input into ''The war Machines'' but this was going to be his story.
And his wife, who was also a doctor, came up with the title ''The Tenth Planet''.
Jodrell Bank, England, says the planet is approaching Earth but there is absolutely no cause for alarm.
It won't come near enough to collide.
So I repeat, there is no danger.
I thought the script was rather fun because actually, it had the ability to obviously be fairly scary if it was done well and the monsters themselves could have been very interesting.
Gerry Davis had said to Kit, ''Write a story that concerns you scientifically.
'' And what concerned Kit at the time was this thing of the dehumanising of medicine, the idea that you could replace bits and pieces of your body with machines.
And if you took that to the ultimate extreme, then this would make a cybernetic man.
And then the deeper question would be, ''Would that being have a soul?'' So at that point the Cyberman is born.
BARCLAY: Cybermen? KRAIL: Yes, Cybermen.
we were exactly like you once, but our cybernetic scientists realised that our race was getting weak.
I think that the idea of the Cyberman worked.
I still think it works and it was novel at the time, to say the least.
You're robots! KRAIL: Our brains are just like yours, except that certain weaknesses have been removed.
KINDRED: The thought of somebody completely unemotional, made completely from spare parts so that really they were robots, to a certain extent, with a small amount of still-human sensibility left in there to be able to communicate.
Emotions.
Love, pride, hate, fear! Have you no emotions, sir? But actually it made them more frightening, it was a very clever idea.
WHITEHEAD: We mustn't forget this was 1 966, at the time of the space race, at the time of space Just in its infancy, as far as we were concerned.
It was a time when humanity was thinking, ''Will it happen? ''Is it going to happen?'' Here, I wonder if they got to the moon yet? Sure, don't you listen to the news? You mean you have sent people to the moon? Yeah, an expedition Just returned.
So brilliant of Kit and Gerry Davis to tap into that.
So to have a story that centred on space mission control centre, you know, was completely topical.
We were really proud of that.
Take visual checks on Mars to establish position.
Report back.
WILLIAMS: will do, out.
Derek Martinus was our director and he was Just the man for the Job.
KINDRED: His idea, and mine as well, is that we're not in science fiction, the Cybermen are scientific, but the rest of it was actually what's going on at this moment in time and all of a sudden the Cybermen come and are thrown into this hotpot and then it becomes an interesting episode.
He was an insightful director but he also had a real quality of patience.
He was a gentleman, he was very calm.
Um, he was a good influence on everybody.
He held us all together, because it was quite a dramatic four weeks.
There was a lot going on in those four weeks.
Hey, Sarge, what's going on? I'm very proud to say that I was the first man ever to be a Cyberman in Doctor who and many people will tell you that they were, but it's not true.
It was me and I was built for the costume (LAUGHS) and the costume was built for me.
WILLS: Sandra Reid was our new and very talented costume designer.
And she and Kit had had lots of meetings and they talked about cybernetics before she started her designs for the Cybermen.
When we first went for the costume fittings, it was disaster, we felt, because it was so cumbersome.
To make them look taller we put a sort of helmet on them, which was the light fitted to the top of their head which would give it another six or seven inches.
WHITEHEAD: The head itself was a stocking.
They tied it up on top of you here, so you are now completely blank, you can't see anything through this mesh and then on top of the stocking you had something which ran right round the forehead, which was fitted down over, once your stocking was on and tied in and it was to hide the top of the stocking as much as anything.
And then they found out where your eyes were by trial and error, believe me, and they cut little holes for us to look out of and they cut a little hole for us to speak out of.
You will be wondering what has happened.
Sandra had forgotten, in the excitement of it all, to make the gloves.
She was mortified by that, the silver gloves.
So Gillian James, who was our makeup lady, she painted the hands silver and actually, I thought that was very good because we wanted to remember that these beings had actually been human not so long ago.
KINDRED: By the time we'd got all the bits and pieces fitted to them, it looked like a rather heavy man lumbering with a lot of equipment on him, so it didn't He should have been more lightweight, as if he would cope with it in a more energetic fashion.
WHITEHEAD: It was a mess and it was trial and error.
The whole thing about it was trial and error.
WILLS: we started the whole thing of ''The Tenth Planet'' with the filming at Ealing, the Arctic landscape.
We couldn't have done it at Riverside because we needed the vast, you know, to make it look authentically big, but we also needed the depth because the actors had to climb out of the trap door.
KINDRED: To try and create distance, we created far-distance rocks and a bit of artist painting to try and give a larger, so that we could see little mountains right in the background to make it look as though it was much further away.
There were many problems.
We didn't have Bill, for a start, we had Gordon Craig, his double.
Hey, look over there, there's something moving.
WILLS: And the snow was all over the place and in your eyes and in your face.
KINDRED: To create the blizzards of the Antarctic, obviously we had wind machines and we had people throwing buckets of Jablite chips, tiny little chips, into the wind machines, so they were gusted across the set in a sort of exciting way, looking as though they were in this permanent snow scene, unfortunately seemed to affect one of the actors rather badly.
I think we'd better go with them.
WILLS: Poor Michael, before he came onto Doctor who, Michael Craze had broken his nose on stage.
So during the summer break, he was having a bone chip removed and a blood vessel broke and actually, it was very dangerous.
We nearly lost him.
So on the day of filming for him, that was a nightmare because the Jablite which was used for the snow got up his nose and gave him terrible trouble.
But what was ironic was that the person who was chucking the snow into the wind machine at Michael was Edwina Vanner, who was our floor assistant and production assistant, she was at that time.
And later on in the series, of course, romance blossomed and they got married.
(LAUGHS) What the heck? Tito? Is that you, Tito? WHITEHEAD: Everything filled up.
It was impossible to talk to anybody, you couldn't breathe in, you couldn't breathe out because this damn stuff went down your throat and goodness knows what.
So it was not a very pleasant experience, to say the least.
It was so hot under the studio lights that genuinely, people were passing out and it wasn't nice.
You see your mate falling down to the ground in front of you, um, through the heat.
So the next thing that happens is that we start rehearsing in St Helen's Church Hall and Bill is very concerned, you know, to get his, his performance right for his final appearances.
Very well, then, take me to the General.
I think perhaps I can help him.
Oh, I I don't know.
Now, look here, Sergeant, this is urgent.
I insist.
WILLS: What I remember was that we were not allowed to use the ping pong table that was in the hall during the breaks because that broke his concentration.
-They must bring them down! -But why, Doctor? Because they can't last another orbit.
KINDRED: He would have been nicer if he'd have been softer now and again.
He was virtually a very hard little creature, which Just sort of virtually gave out orders all the time.
It's imperative that I talk to you, General.
Get away, old man.
Can't you see You, will you pay attention? Will you? Get this man back into the observations room.
-Hey, Tito, would you come over here? -Oh, what is it? Come over here, quick! I can see people! Sure, sure, lots of people! -And there's a woman! -A woman A woman? Derek had gathered together an international cast, you see, because it was going to reflect space command.
Get onto Mount Palomar.
Ask them to provide us with a picture as soon as possible.
Contact Jodrell Bank and ask them to get an exact fix on this.
We must have data and quickly.
I think Derek Martinus realised that we're in a modern age, so to speak.
An age when human beings are coming together and the idea of having an international cast made a lot of sense.
Are you ready to receive data? BARCLAY: Go ahead.
Okay, Bluey, let him have it.
One the exciting aspects of this international cast was the fact that we had the lovely Bermudan actor Earl Cameron, who was going to play an astronaut.
I was quite surprised when my agent told me that I was to play an astronaut in a Doctor who.
I almost thought, ''Well, have they made a mistake? ''There's gonna be a black astronaut?'' Hello, Snowcap.
Hello, Snowcap.
We're now into orbit over San Francisco.
He had a great dignity to him, which brought an awful lot of gravitas to the part.
He made it real.
Casting a black actor for the part of an astronaut at that time was very futuristic, I would say, very advanced thinking, and um, especially to have a trip to the moon, which was at least three years before it actually happened.
What the heck's going on, Glyn? I don't know.
Let's get down there and find out.
Bill, unfortunately, had this real block about coloured people.
He was really stuck in these kind of antique preJudices.
And unfortunately this came out, of course, working with Earl Cameron.
Now, perhaps we'll get to the bottom of this.
I have to say that Michael Craze and I were ashamed for Bill, actually.
We were.
I have to be very honest, if he was unkind, I wasn't aware of it.
It didn't bother me.
You know, one thing doesn't bother me, has never bothered me, is racial preJudice.
Of course I've come into contact with an awful lot in my life, but it never got to me.
And so that was his problem, not mine.
MAN: (ON RADIO) Handing Zeus IV to Polar Base.
will you take control now, please? We have Zeus IV, thank you, Geneva.
DYSON: Snowcap to Zeus IV.
Over to local control, channel J for Jimmy.
KINDRED: When we got into the studio, the main part of the story was set in the Snowcap base, which obviously most of the action is going in there with them looking at the computers, all the technical side, which obviously meant that we had to make it as large as possible for the amount of movement.
Cybermen have to appear, people had to come and go.
The other thing to do was to try and get as many levels in it as possible.
So people came in from above, so it made the set more interesting.
If it was all on one level, it would have looked very static and ratherrather dull.
I mean, there were one or two little things I was quite proud of.
One of the young men lying in his bunk, I don't remember what nationality he was, but I had the idea of pinning up little nudie pictures of girls on the back, rather like you'd find in a garage.
And I thought that was quite a nice little touch.
He was the only young man there reading a sort of comic and there were various things which one did to create a different atmosphere for all the different actors.
WILLS: when we stepped onto the set of mission control, I have to tell you, we were blown away.
I mean, the ingenuity of the BBC props department on their totally tight budget, and then with, you know, cardboard and glue they had managed to make this totally authentic-looking set.
Splashdown at 1 4:45 your time.
-Thank you, keep checking.
-CUTLER: Yes? KINDRED: Some of the equipment in the base was hired from Pinewood.
I think they'd had a big science fiction film at sometime or other, so we hired bits and pieces, the consoles and various things like that.
Others we actually made holes in the sets with monitors put against it which we had to feed the information into and we had to make quite a lot.
So quite a lot of it was buttons and, you know, knobs and things attached to give the impression there was a lot of things going on.
(POLLY SCREAMS) Back to your places.
Well, there was this wonderful big set, um, and it was fine if we could only see, but it was level, I think it had a couple of levels on it, which meant we had to negotiate that, in these rather large overgrown boots.
And we managed to do it but it was very much a kind of You had to look out of the side of your eyes, I remember, these little slots, to see where you were in relation to where somebody else was, so it was hit and miss.
I don't know who you are or what you are but we've got two men in space, if we don't act now, we won't get them back alive.
They will not return.
Roy Skelton, he did the voices.
In the studio, he did it.
And so he alternated them, sort of going up and down, so that it sounded, you know, computer-generated.
It is unimportant now.
The sound of the Cyberman was a sort of a sing-songy, rather childish voice, really.
There is really no point.
They could never reach Earth now.
(MIMICKING) Hello there, I'm a Cyberman.
I've come to frighten you.
-Don't you care? -Care? No, why should I care? It really did work and a lot of people, friends and various people who you speak to even today, um, loved that voice.
KRAIL: You are not going to die.
And how are you going to stop this drain of energy to Mondas? KRAIL: we cannot.
It is beyond our powers.
-How are we going to survive? -KRAIL: Speak, please.
After episode two (SIGHS) Bill collapsed and he got bronchitis and he had to go to his little cottage in the country for a week.
It obviously threw the whole production into It distracted everything.
Basically, from then on it was all sort of rather haphazard.
What's the matter, Doctor? WILLS: Gordon Craig, who'd been his double in ''The Smugglers'', came on board, put on his wiggy, and as the Doctor, collapsed and was put into the antechamber for the rest of the episode.
Ben, do something quickly.
Yeah, he needs medical help and quick.
-General! -Yes, what is it? It's the Doctor, he's passed out, he's ill! Mike and I took over his lines.
Look, the Doctor said that it's not only Earth that's in danger but Mondas itself is in far greater danger.
Otherwise, why have they bothered coming here? The scientific words were given to the scientist Barclay.
A nuclear explosion on Mondas would deliver a terrific blast of radiation, enough to destroy all the life on the side of the Earth that's facing it.
It might even turn into a sun, a sort of supernova.
The whole programme after Episode 2 began to start falling apart.
Oh, a fine time he picks for a kip.
Come on, Polly, we must get back to the control room.
We can't leave him.
Well, he seems all right, his pulse and breathing are normal.
I don't understand it.
He Just seems to be worn out.
Derek actually was very confident.
I mean, he worked around it.
But obviously there were parts where the Doctor would have to appear, especially in the last episode.
And that obviously, we had to do our best to get him back as soon as possible.
So I actually think Derek was very keen that he recovered and came back, even if he Just walked in and said a few lines.
Doctor! Doctor! Oh, what's the use? WILLS.
: Derek Martinus actually wrote a letter to Bill and said, ''I hope you get better soon.
'' I think he was actually saying ''I hope you get better soon!'' You know? God knows what was going on in the upper, in the upper storeys of the whole thing.
The producers, you know, freaking out because then we had the last episode and this was going to be the final episode with Bill leaving the show so, ''Get better soon, Bill!'' Doctor, are you all right? Yes, yes, yes.
Your plan is foiled, sir.
You cannot fire the rocket! KINDRED: Thankfully, william Hartnell returned for Episode 4.
I mean, he was not, he wasn't completely fit but he was a lot better and therefore we could continue and try and make some sense out of the story.
It's far from being all over.
He had this strange kind of aura of His performance was strong but in himself, I felt that he Part of him was already leaving.
I guess this old body of mine is wearing a bit thin.
What do you mean ''wearing a bit thin''? Oh, don't worry, child, don't worry, don't worry.
The first thing on the day of the recording of Episode 4 was filming the changeover.
The meeting between Bill and Pat was quite extraordinary, really.
When I think about it and I see the two of them meeting each other, it was like two gentlemen very politely meeting each other.
Pat was suitably humble and it was a very poignant moment, actually.
I think Bill was actually quite tickled.
I think his ego was quite tickled by the fact that he was being replaced by someone of the calibre of Pat Troughton.
SHIRLEY COWARD: Well, I was the vision mixer on ''The Tenth Planet'' and therefore it was my Job to do the mixes between all the cameras so that we had a fluid transition from William Hartnell's face into Patrick Troughton's.
POLLY: Doctor! Quick, help him! BEN: No, leave him! COWARD: The first I knew about the regeneration was when I arrived in the studio that day and they said to me, ''Oh, we're going to change William Hartnell ''into Patrick Troughton.
'' But nobody was exactly sure how they were going to do it.
And so, it was a matter of the studio engineers and the cameramen all trying out things.
They knew roughly what they wanted.
They wanted one face to come through the other.
But how they were going to do it, it Just was a matter of a lot of adJustment, tweaking and generally Just trying things.
It was tricky because they had the two of them lying on the floor in identical positions.
We discovered, which helped us enormously, that their cheekbones matched.
And so it was therefore much more effective bringing Patrick's cheekbones and his face through William's.
We were on the edge in the studio watching on the screens how this worked.
We had to have William Hartnell on one camera, Patrick Troughton on the other.
And through the B-bank of the vision mixing desk, which was breaking up with the source that was being fed to them, we could actually make Patrick's face break up and William's face break up.
COWARD.
: I had started with william Hartnell's face, absolutely straight on the A-bank of the mixer.
Then slowly mixed it to the B-bank, where I got his face exactly the same shot, breaking up.
From there I would then mix, still on the B-bank, to Patrick Troughton's face breaking up.
And then mix slowly back to the A-bank where I had Patrick's face absolutely straight.
We thought it was blooming magic.
(MECHANICAL WHIRRING) I thought the finished effect was very good.
And I think everybody in the studio was very pleased with it.
I know Derek was.
And therefore, I think, it's a lovely thing that it's all going down in history.
On the day of the recording of the regeneration, that had taken so long, Patrick Troughton had done his bit and gone off home.
Bill, I think, was exhausted and gone home.
We were still left working late into the night.
Uh, that was the end.
There was no huge party or anything.
It was a very kind of quiet finish.
I Just had this feeling that there was a part of him which was relieved to let go of the fight, physically, you know, and emotionally.
You know, he'd been holding on and holding on.
And that must have taken a tremendous amount of energy and finally he was saying, ''Okay, okay, I'm finished now.
'' (SIGHS) WHITEHEAD: I must tell you a little story about him because it was a thing which amused me.
He had been particularly rough on me during rehearsal because I didn't want to be where he wanted me to be.
And Derek Martinus wanted me to be somewhere else.
So we had a little bit of a set-to in the studio about this.
And anyways, he eventually said, ''Oh, well, let's forget about it, Reg.
'' So I said, ''well, I've forgotten about it already.
'' So he said, ''I tell you what, you call yourself an actor, don't you?'' So I said, ''Yes, well, trying to be.
'' So he said, ''Let me show you something.
'' And he stood on the spot and diagonally, right across the studio he set off in a tap dance.
He tap-danced his way, I've no idea how old he was at that stage but he was an old man and certainly looked it, over to the other side of the studio, got there, ended up like that and he said, ''When you can do that, you can call yourself an actor.
'' So I swore to him that I'd learn to tap dance and never did, of course.
(DOCTOR WHO THEME) WILLS: This was the exciting thing, was okay, now we've seen it in the can, now it's going to go out.
Now, what is the audience going to think? Well, they Just lapped it up.
They loved it.
I think they were as keen for Patrick Troughton to take up the mantle of Doctor Who as we were to Join him.
The actual changing of the face obviously led on to wherever it's going in the future now.
If they'd chosen any other way to do it, we'd have be all over and done with and wrapped up a long time ago.
The audience got used to the change and of course, it carried on like that.
And now, I think at this stage they've had how many Doctor Whos? Doctor who is something that can go on forever and ever, I'd say.
As long as they make films, as long as there is television, it's something that has no ending.