Doctor Who - Documentary s10e13 Episode Script

Report.
DALEK 1: Aliens still at liberty.
All Dalek units are to be assigned to their capture immediately.
I was working, at that time, as a waitress in Notting Hill in a rather trendy restaurant, at lunchtimes.
And I remember hearing that morning and going in and giving in my notice and being very excited because I'd only recently left drama school.
So, I was taking odd jobs between proper jobs.
And so I was very, very excited.
TIM PREECE: I knew David Maloney.
I'd played Prince John for him in a serial called Ivanhoe.
It was the way it worked then.
I mean, we didn't have to go for interviews in the same kind of way.
You got to know a director or some directors and Yes.
It was much more the rep system.
Whether it came out of the theatre of that time I don't know but it was easier.
-They're near, a patrol! -VABER: How many? Three or four, headed this way.
Who's this? I do remember the rehearsals of it and I remember the rehearsals being very careful.
Very careful, indeed.
And that we worked the full day.
And with the Spiridon's power to become invisible, nothing can stop them.
He had lots of games we used to play in rehearsals.
And we used to play like People wouldn't know, but in the rehearsal rooms they had great big loft-like spaces and divided up into rooms by just poles, really.
And so, we used to find all sorts of things and say, play hoopla and things like that and generally muck about, which is great 'cause all actors are children at heart.
We just had great fun.
And there was some bandleader who he was mad about and we always had to sing his songs.
In those days, you went off and did the pre-filming and Which I'm glad that's stopped now because you would arrive on day one before any read-through of anything before knowing the cast I arrived in a gravel pit in Kent and you're put into your costume and nobody has discussed your character or anything else.
And again I was rather Having just left drama school, I was taking myself quite seriously as an actress.
I found this all a bit strange.
So I came out of make-up and it was, "All right, we're going to do the scene "where we're pushing the Dalek into the pool "and then there will be "the sight of the insides of a Dalek coming out "and you and Katy are obviously going to be upset "and sort of appalled by this.
" So, I took this on board.
But again there was nobody to talk it through with us, to exactly What were my feelings about Daleks? -Are they dead? -Yes, that The shock of the sudden cold must have killed them straightaway.
It was my shot first up and again I knew about this television acting.
I knew you have to be quite subtle really and so I wasn't going to And so I did a rather subtle reaction of the hideous insides of a Dalek coming out and how absolutely appalling and shattering it was.
So that was me up and then it was Katy's turn next.
And she went into paroxysms of (GASPING) And I thought, "Oh, I see.
"That's how we act on Doctor Who, is it?" 'Cause I'd got it all wrong and I felt very foolish.
My little, subtle reaction was not very clever, really.
(EXCLAIMING) DOCTOR: Well done.
Well done, everybody! I spent about three years of my life learning to love cold, bleak quarries.
But the amazing thing is working with someone like Jon Pertwee, we both had a childlike side to us.
We never ran out of wonderful things to do, create and talk about.
And I'm also a bit artsy-fartsy.
I'll pick up little objects, even if it's just a piece of clay, and I'll create something with it.
And Jon, being the great raconteur, we would sit and we would write stories together, if you like.
He'd do one line, I'd do a line, when we were travelling it would be the names of villages would turn into our characters.
We made up operas about Brussels sprouts.
We were constantly busy.
The rest of the time, of course, we were concerning ourselves with the script and what would work.
And for the rest of the time, I was freezing my butt off.
You know, I think one day I might start a business called "Quarry Tours".
We went off to Ealing Studios for the ice tunnels.
And we were in these wonderful costumes.
I felt I looked like Miss Michelin.
(LAUGHING) I thought they made me look terribly fat.
'Cause it was rolls and rolls of this material.
But the ice tunnels, of course, were incredibly hot.
And we were dressed in padded nylon.
And we practically were passing out and we had to keep being told, "You're freezing in there! "You're freezing in there!" as we were dying of asphyxiation.
It was really quite difficult.
Oh, it's so cold! My heating unit's turned to maximum but I'm still freezing.
I quite enjoyed the wig bit.
Because I was considerably darker underneath it and I'd never been as blonde as that.
What I'd liked was that Bernard and I, in particular, I thought looked like brothers.
I don't think we were meant to be.
But there was a familial similarity.
I thought it looked okay, looked pretty good.
I was quite pleased because looking as I do now, seeing myself looking, dare I say it, slightly pretty, certainly heroic.
I like that.
Quite enjoy it.
I'll try and lead them off.
I think some of those jungles were excellent.
They weren't the usual strange potted plastic plant jungle.
I think they did a very good job.
It was mainly real.
A lot of it was real.
Yes.
There was a company called Greenery which grew all this stuff in greenhouses just for hiring for television or films.
And you go down there and you choose whatever it is.
Wasn't cheap, Greenery.
DALEK: Pursue! Pursue! You go down there, you choose some exotic plants and all that sort of stuff and you get it into the studio and you start organising it.
Start You'd know where the shots are.
Greenery's okay.
But, of course, you had to make it look a bit odd.
So, you get some odd bits you'd put in and it looks as if it belongs on that planet.
MANNING: It's all down to lighting.
One of the most important things when you're Perhaps not got the greatest props or Even if you have, lighting is so important.
And the lighting was so beautifully done on that.
Really fabulous lighting.
HURST: And those odd things that Special Effects made which squirted out.
Only they'd put them in amongst it and Yes, that was a surprise.
This was very, very early days of CSO, Colour Separation Overlay I love saying it.
Who wants to say bluescreen? I liked the challenge of the invisibility.
'Cause we just got this new Colour Separation Overlay technique, where we could make things appear in front of things and disappear and So, if you have a group called the Spiridons who are or can become invisible In fact, when they become visible they're wearing a big, fur coat which the costume designer managed to acquire very cheaply.
And yards and yards and yards and yards of it, so that we cloaked these Spiridons in these.
This technique of making them invisible and visible and using Jo in the way that we did in the opening episode which is practically a single-hander for her, was interesting for me.
Tell me some more about your planet.
Before the Daleks invaded (LAUGHING) I did the entire show with nothing Wonderful thing for an actor to be able to do, and it goes right back to my early audition, was the fact that imagination, very, very important, because everything is going on, you're not really seeing it.
I couldn't look at the camera so it was kind of Quite hard thing to do, to react, to believe that somebody's pouring strawberry jam on your arm and this is actually going to cure you.
Really got to get into it because something like that, if you don't believe that so totally, you're lost.
My hand and My hand and my arm are infected by By something I can't describe.
Barry decided that I had reached a stage in life where I was going to be allowed to improvise my own dialogue.
So when I'm doing all the scenes where I'm having to talk to my Pretend there's somebody there, talk to myself, walking around talking through the walkie-talkie.
That was improvised by yours truly.
Great episodes.
DALEK: Transmit a general call to all units.
My daughter, Rebecca, she came to a recording, David let her in and was terrific with her.
At the end of the recording, she came onto the set and was hypnotised by all these blooming Daleks and had a long conversation with one.
And it was John Scott Martin.
She bumped into his Dalek and he was wonderful with her.
And I wish to goodness we'd recorded the conversation.
I wasn't even aware of the whole thing.
But apparently I mean, I just saw it happening and let her get on with it.
But it was John who was absolutely sweet with her, and there was this girl who was boggle-eyed having a serious conversation with a Dalek.
HOW: The Daleks were quite separate.
Didn't know if it was just me or whether everybody felt like that, but (WHISPERING) There are actually people inside the Daleks.
But you didn't mix with them because they were Daleks.
We all stuck with our With the Thals and the Doctor, and The Daleks, sort of, ate at other tables and things.
That's Skaro.
HORSFALL: Pertwee was a joker.
Yes, he was indeed.
He was full of Had a great sense of fun.
I used to smoke in those days.
And one evening my wife and I were at the Old Vic, watching a show.
And I can't remember whether it was before, after or during the interval, but we were in the Olive Branch, the pub next door to the stage door of the Old Vic.
So I got out a cigarette and lit it Bang! The blooming thing exploded in my face.
(LAUGHING) That was Jon Pertwee.
I don't know if you remember.
There were little things you could stick in people's cigarettes, which, at the suitable moment, exploded with an enormous force.
We had a big Dormobile in those days and somewhere or another I've got a visitors' book which they all signed.
They all put some funny comments in it.
But I know what Katy signed.
"A good Easter egg hiding place", which referred to the fact that during rehearsals one Easter, she had put an Easter egg on my chair and I'd sat on it! He was walking around rehearsals with this egg hanging off the back of his trousers.
We got the giggles and nobody was going to tell him.
Jon said, "Just leave it, just leave it.
Let's see how long he goes.
" There's Doctor Who for you.
Doctor! Codal? So they captured you too, did they? Jon Pertwee, who was just very impressive to work with.
I think there were other series at that time which were fairly trite and not so good.
But Jon took Doctor Who very seriously.
You were asked to act properly.
He required it of us.
He was very good, Jon.
I think he made that batch of Doctor Who work tremendously well.
If you hadn't acted the way you did, we'd have all been captured.
They give medals for that sort of bravery.
Bravery? I've been terrified ever since I landed on this planet.
I still like the bit that I have with him, when Codal's scared and we're stuck in that cell thing together.
And it's just Well, I shouldn't say it for me, but I'll say it for him, you know It's a nice bit of acting and there's a lot going on between two people.
And it's not a star actor going And the other actor filling in the lines at all.
It's a scene, properly played, and he wanted to do that.
It's a good interchange, we cover a lot of ground.
We're in danger, you learn my back history, Jon develops a relationship with me, an attitude to me.
We have a, sort of, future starts to evolve.
It's a good piece of writing.
HURST: I came home and I said, "There's a spaceship in this, a model spaceship, they need.
" And my son, he built it for me out of, I think he was 10 or 11, on his Airfix kits.
So he used to always build something different to what Airfix made.
You know, stick it all together, and things like that.
And I spoke to him the other night, and he said, he remembered everything about that thing.
He said, "Yes, I remember that.
" And he said, "And the last I saw of it, "it was going up in the air with fireworks coming out of the base.
" HORSFALL: That's the interesting thing, everybody on the team must have had about doing Doctor Who is, "Where do we go with this story?" When you get back to Skaro, you'll all be national heroes.
Everybody will want to hear about your adventures.
Of course.
So be careful how you tell that story, will you? Don't glamorise it.
And they don't want to lay on anything too thickly.
But you send telegrams, don't you? You send very brief telegrams which is the essence of, I think, good writing.
Good acting too, actually.
Although, we were sending We weren't As actors, I think we were sending a bit more than telegrams.
I think we were sending pretty heavy parcels now and again.
But, no, I think he was That was lovely to send a telegram saying, "Don't glorify war.
" I understand.
Tell them about the members of your mission that will not be returning, like Miro and Vaber and Marat.
Tell them about the fear.
How many people took that idea on board, who knows? Would kids? They might.
Of course, they might.
Kids are a lot brighter than a lot of us think.
I think they could I think they could well have taken it on board.
Whether they remember it or not, in the future, goodness knows.
But you never know what telegrams convey to different minds.