Doctor Who - Documentary s09e15 Episode Script

You know, I still think that science fiction is a kinda difficult genre to design.
(LAUGHING) As I was to find out.
NARRATOR: Welcome to Wellington, the hometown of James Acheson, today, a multi Oscar-winning costume designer.
But from 1972 to 1976, James was also a costume designer on Doctor Who.
When I was asked to work on Doctor Who, there's that mixture of enthusiasm and dread, you know, that you get with most good jobs.
I was surprised that more people didn't want to do Doctor Who.
WOMAN: Ten, nine, eight The department was mostly ladies of various ages, who were happy, you know, with seven yards of pink tulle.
But not particularly happy with fibreglass and latex rubber masks.
The thing is that I didn't really know anything about costume.
I wanted to be building sets and do lighting and be a man of the theatre.
And, suddenly, here I was building costumes.
And I didn't really know bust dart from a side seam.
I was winging it, literally.
And seeing it really as sculpture.
I think one of the reasons I've always liked doing Doctor Who was because of the monsters.
Because they were like building things rather than being on a cutting table with a pair of scissors.
We're approaching a planet.
I'd been watching it in black and white with William Hartnell, you know.
So I'd seen all these Doctors.
So, you know, I'd hidden behind the sofa.
And I'd rather fancied that Katy Manning.
Situation on Solos critical.
Marshal's attempts to convert atmosphere is causing severe loss of life.
The Administrator assassinated on Marshal's orders.
So, the Mutts, they had sort of latex rubber masks.
And then the actual body of the Mutt, which was like a sort of grey scampi really, was made out of foam rubber cut into various shapes.
And then covered in latex and mica.
We worked on very, very tight budgets and timelines.
I think, probably, we would have had maybe four or five weeks' preparation.
That's design it and make it.
Maybe six maximum.
And it was always, you know, it was always a terrible kind of crunch to get it ready in time.
Listen to me! I'm Ky! ACHESON: I remember I had to present a Mutt at one of the final rehearsals.
(LAUGHING) And I remember scaring another actress in the corridor, as the Mutt waddled down the corridor to the rehearsal room.
So I thought that was a good start.
And I seem to remember Jon, yes, I just remembered that, that Jon, particularly, seemed to be pleased with what I was showing him.
I think we did a new outfit for Jon Pertwee.
And I think, because poor old William Hartnell was so frail, and so old, I think we probably couldn't fit him, but we were able to hire things that were very close to what he'd worn.
And I think the same with Patrick Troughton.
I am he, and he is me.
"And we're all together, goo, goo, g-choo?" -What? -It's a song by The Beatles.
-Oh, how does it go? -Oh, please be quiet.
-Look, is he really you? -Yes, yes, I'm afraid so.
I think he is, Miss Grant.
You see when the brigadier and I first met the Doctor, he looked like him.
I remember going to see William Hartnell, and I remember meeting this very elderly gentleman, and being concerned about whether he would be able to actually do it.
There was one creature which I think you see very, very briefly, some sort of devil.
And I remember that being a complete disaster.
I remember they had a Sunday rehearsal at Ealing Film Studios.
And I got into the back of a taxi, with this devil monster that was going to be worn by a stuntman, with all my paints and glues and bits and pieces on the back seat of the taxi.
And off we went towards Elstree Studios.
(LAUGHING) And halfway up, Shepherd's Bush High Street, I felt very cold across the nether regions and looked around to find that there was a gallon of Evo-Stick that had come out of its canister and was up across the back seat of this taxi.
(LAUGHING) I had to stop the taxi while the taxi driver poured Took the back seat out of the taxi, and poured it into the gutter, and said, "What are we gonna do, mate?" And I said, "Well, I think we better go back to the BBC Television Centre.
" Well, he kept his (LAUGHING) He kept the clock on for two hours while I attempted to clean his taxi up.
And there was no way of telephoning Elstree Studios and to tell them that I'd been delayed.
And when I finally got there, and the stuntman put the devil costume on, and did one summersault, and ripped it from crotch to neck.
(LAUGHING) Yes, but who brought us here and why? I did! I am the one who brought you here.
Who are you? In the legends of your people, I am called Omega.
Omega? But that's impossible! Omega was destroyed.
No, brother Time Lord, I was not destroyed, as you can see! Omega's mask, I think, one really started by just putting pieces of cardboard or foam, you know, onto a kind of basic mask, human face shape, and playing with it.
What it was probably made out of was something called Samco, which is a fabric you can't get now, but they used to put it on the They used to line There used to be an interlining of shoes.
And you could put this It used to become a sort of grey cardboard.
And you would immerse it in acetone, and put it onto anything.
And it would dry in a stiff way, and also you could model with it, I seem to remember.
I should have been a god! ACHESON: This creature was a sort of gel-like blob with an eye in the middle that revolved, but it also had an arm which could fire things.
Holy Moses! What's that? So, I followed (CHUCKLING) I attempted to follow the writer's instructions.
And the first The model that I made, I remember making it out of cod liver oil tablets sliced in half and stuck on to a bit of Bacofoil.
(LAUGHING) And painting it red.
And it looked It looked like a kind of terrible, diseased blister of some kind.
And everybody With an eye in the middle! And everybody went, "Yeah, that's great.
We like that.
" And so I produced six of them.
And I can really say that one of the worst moments of my career was Rickmansworth clay pits six weeks later, when the truck arrived with the Gel Guards in it, and they opened the door, and the crew was standing by, you know, anticipating the arrival of these new monsters, and they just laughed.
(LAUGHING) The crew just laughed as these things came out of the truck.
Our purpose is to amuse.
Simply to amuse.
Nothing serious, nothing political.
We put on a show.
You understand? No.
When I look back, I can hardly believe how I persuaded those poor actors to climb into those silly costumes.
(LAUGHING) I mean, there's that poor old guy, Leslie Dwyer.
Is that his name? I gave him a transparent vacuum-formed bowler hat.
And you can see it steaming up before your very eyes.
(LAUGHING) No, these were choices and decisions you make as a designer which you wish had been somehow erased.
I seem to remember that she was a journalist.
And I seem to remember that we decided on a rather severe look.
I mean, it was a sort of rather tailored look, to start with.
She was very different from Katy, who was very alive and very much the, sort of, party girl.
And we had here a rather serious actress.
Doctor, let's get a few things straight, shall we? Oh, dear.
You know, I'm afraid you're going to be awfully confused if you ask me to explain about the TARDIS.
-The TARDIS? -Yes, my police box.
You were a stowaway, I imagine.
Yes, but we'll come to that later.
A warrior.
A warrior from the stars! I remember that he was supposed to be a kind of warrior from another world.
And he was going to be landing in a medieval world.
So there was certain kind of associations that we You know, there are certain things about the elbows and the knees that have a kind of homage to medieval armour.
But the rest of the thing is made out of a kind of quilted Lurex.
It was actually a very easy costume to come up with.
I felt more confident about You know, sometimes you grovel around looking for, you know, scraping around looking for an idea.
With that particular story, I seem to remember it being very easy.
And Kevin Lindsay, the actor, was just a delight and had a very You know, that was a difficult mask to wear.
But he laughed all the time and we laughed with him.
Tom, you know, was this extraordinary man, who had played the back end of the horse at the National Theatre.
I think I'd seen him play the Prince of Aragon in Jonathan Miller's production of Merchant of Venice.
That's right.
A huge character in himself.
But a wonderful and very intelligent man, who came to the I remember him coming to the costume house.
And because we had that scene where he comes out as different characters, we had this whole sort of fancy-dress parade, where we would try various things on him.
And the idea was to really get three good images.
I think we ended up with the Viking, the jack of hearts, and the auguste clown.
And then we had to go to what the new Doctor was going to So we had a lot of time, literally, dressing him in many things.
So after all this dressing-up box, really, I think we then got around to talking about him, and I'd spent quite a lot of time with him.
I felt that he could wear a hat 'cause he was such a tall man.
For some reason, I had this image of a Toulouse-Lautrec poster of a cabaret artist called Aristide Bruant.
And it's quite a famous poster of him in a big, floppy hat and a red scarf.
And I mentioned this to Tom and he kind of went along with it.
So I thought I'd better get a scarf knitted.
I went and chose a lot of wool, a lot of colours.
And I took it to a little lady in Wimbledon, who had been recommended as a fast knitter, and I said, "Look, here's the wool.
Just make it, you know, sort of "Use all the colours in different proportions and get knitting.
" And I went back a week later and it was 22 feet long.
(CHUCKLING) So I took it to Tom, who must be at least 6' 3", and he wrapped it around his neck a few times and said, "Yes, great! I think we'll use it.
" And I think we did chop some of it off, but for a long time, it was very long.
You felt you could put him in anything and he could carry it.
But also, one wanted to, hopefully, give him clothes rather than a costume.
And I know that I was very keen for it all to be corduroy and rather baggy, and rather, you know, you felt there were a lot of things in his pockets.
And so there was tweedy trousers and brogue shoes.
But there was this slightly studenty thing with the scarf and the hat was just a sort of eccentricity.
I think, looking at it again, you know, you'd change pretty much all of it.
And, luckily, over the following episodes, people did change it.
And I think it got better.
All the things I've mentioned.
The coat got longer, the waistcoat became a much more structured thing.
I think they retained the essence of it but they improved on it.
I loved hishis over-the-topness, his kind of eccentricity, his huge facial expressions, what he can do with his eyes.
He was a wonderful friend to me.
I can remember very happy train journeys to locations and wonderful evenings talking with him.
He was such a great character and a great thinker.
And a lovely man.
I must serve humanity and never harm it.
Then you mustn't harm me.
I'm a friend of humanity.
No, you are an enemy.
You must be destroyed! Well, the thing that I remember about the robot was the material governing the design.
We thought we'd make it out of aluminium because it was light, and it would be really metallic.
And it would have that metallic It wouldn't have any rubberised bits.
And we wanted it to be huge.
So we decided to use aluminium.
And I was back working with Alistair Botel.
who all those years before had been making the Mutts.
And he said, "Look, we can't afford to have a double curve on anything.
"We can only bend it one way.
I don't have the machinery "and we don't have the time or the money to do a double curve on anything.
" So the whole thing is made out of strips.
And I remember making the model out of strips of cardboard and knowing that that was the limitation.
It had to be made out of a flat piece of aluminium, bent, but never curved more than one way.
I had this very strong idea, which I don't know where it came from, for the Zygons, which was going to be based on a cross between embryos with large heads and octopoidal suckers.
So we went for it.
And again, with John Friedlander's help There was a lot of problems about whether we could make the skull of the Zygon that big with such a frontal lobal forehead, because of the problems of getting latex to adhere to fibreglass.
And I had this whole thing of wanting to put a throbbing light inside the cranium.
Mr Huckle, this is a signal device.
For this thing you reckon that's chewing up the oil rigs? Correct.
One of the things about heat is that the mask pulls away the glue of the mask, pulls away from the top lip.
So if you look at Terror of the Zygons there's lots of people with the top lip of their mask about there.
And they all look as though they're sort of like ventriloquist dummies, which kind of slightly ruins the impact.
Skarasen is our life source.
We Zygons depend upon its lactic fluid for survival.
I can remember that I wanted it to be really quite simple, not too elaborate.
I remember thinking, you know, these purple robes, and this gold, this dark gold mask.
The plan of Mandragora.
I am but the vessel for those who hold dominion over the cosmos.
The mighty sky gods.
What would they have us do, master? This time and place were well chosen.
But where was I going to get all these 15th century outfits from? And I remembered the work of Danilo Donati, a quite famous Italian designer, costume and sets, who had designed Romeo and Juliet.
The Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet.
And I thought, "Wouldn't it be great if they existed?" And I persuaded my producers to let me fly to Rome.
A cheap flight.
I remember we landed in a sort of airfield outside (LAUGHING) Outside Rome.
So it really was I knew there was something up when I had to put my luggage on a pair of bathroom scales.
And there were no seats in the aeroplane.
No, not true.
(CHUCKLING) But it was very much a cheap flight.
And I had already rung Italy and I'd tracked down this particular costume house.
And they said, yes, they had all these costumes from Romeo and Juliet, and they'd be most happy to rent them to me.
And if I could get on a plane, and go over and select them, that would be great.
All this I did.
I found myself in a little cheap pensione in Rome.
(LAUGHING) Never been to Rome before.
And I found the costume house.
And it was amazing, it was like a Piranesi drawing.
It was like five or six Well, not storeys.
But the rails of costumes were like five or six high, and there were little men on tops of very tall ladders, literally, with light bulbs in cages, looking at the costumes 'cause there was no light in the place, except these torches that these guys held.
And I said, "Can I go and look?" They went, "No, no, no, no, you have to come into this room "and sit down, and we will present you with these costumes.
" I said, "Well, I'd rather go and look along the rails," you know, "can I just take a tour?" "No, no, no, you have to come and sit down.
" So I sat down in this room and they started bringing these costumes in, and I realised that they were not the costumes from Franco Zeffirelli's production of Romeo and Juliet.
They were from the Laurence Harvey, 1948 movie, and they were all tired and old and cheesy and thick.
They had none of the gorgeous work that I'd seen.
So I was desperately disappointed, but I had nowhere to go, you know, I was getting on an aeroplane.
So I hired a few of them and got back to England, and then we made quite a lot, and we also, as I say, managed to scrape a few here and there from various theatre companies and sort of put it all together.
The Deadly Assassin was the last Doctor Who show that I did.
And I had this idea that Roger Murray-Leach, the set designer, and myself would finally pool our ideas and sit in the same room together, and design this show.
And it was a huge show, it was a very big design-heavy show.
And I don't know what happened to me, whether it was overwork or Probably a combination of overwork, too little money, and, strangely enough, the fact that I was working in the same room as somebody who was exploding with ideas and creativity.
And I was getting more and more depressed about the quality of work, the quality of what I was doing, and the lack of money.
And I went to my bosses and said, "Look, I feel I cannot do this.
"I need help, I need your support.
" And instead of getting it, they said, you know, "Shut up and get on with it.
" And, basically, I had to hand the work over, the unfinished work over, to one of the senior people within the department and let them finish it.
And, in fact, I left the BBC under a kind of cloud.
Did I enjoy my time on the show? I had a wonderful time.
I mean, it was a huge learning curve.
And, strangely enough, at the end of my career, if you like, I'm back in this world of science fiction with huge amounts of money to spend.
But often, a lot of the tricks and a lot of the processes that I now use with confidence and am able to instruct other people about using, I learnt, back, working on Doctor Who.
There was a wonderful thing recently in Los Angeles where I was given an award.
(CHUCKLING) I was presented with this award by John Landis, who's a well-known director and a very funny man.
And he said, in his little chat about me, various things, and then he said to the assembled crowd, "But the most extraordinary thing about Jim is that he designed "36 episodes of Doctor Who.
" And there was a huge silence in the room.
(LAUGHING) Nobody knew what he was talking about.
But I didn't realise that Landis was a sort of aficionado of Doctor Who.