In those early days in 1960 when I first joined the corporation I went in as a group of 24
designers which were brought in by Dick Levin. The idea would be to increase the corporation's
design department for the opening of BBC Two. And after about six months of that we were
given to various senior designers to look after and six of us were given away and the
others carried on still training. And I went to a lovely lady called Fanny Taylor and she
in fact at that time had Barry Newbury and Ray Macusick as part of her design team and
I joined that and was sort of handed over to Ray to be a sort of an assistant to him.
About the time when he was just completing the Daleks, although I was only assistant
on the drawing board stage and not actually working in the studio with him, I was drafted
in to work with him because the amount of drawing he was having to do was getting quite
excessive added to the fact that he was being given another show which was a light entertainment
show and I think he was a little bit like we all were, none of us really wanted to be
completely plugged into one particular thing. We were often type cast as designers and many
of us tried to fight shy of this. Ray was very, very happy that he was probably moving
on to another show, leaving in a way the Daleks with me. And much to my surprise because I
was a very young designer at that time, the only shows I'd done were sort of Zed cards
and things like that under supervision. All of a sudden I was handed this strange thing
which I knew nothing about called Daleks Invasion of the Earth.
When you're producing something which is supposedly happening in the 21st or 22nd century, you
obviously are away from what your normal scope is and your imagination has to be used much
more in terms of fulfilling what you think might happen in the future, certainly with
materials and other things that were going on. I think really we kept up to date as much
as we possibly could with the movement that was going on with computers and other things
that were around us at that time, although at that time as you know computers were incredibly
there, you could see large rolls of tape. But I think one had to sort of concentrate
more on the design side of it in terms of the mechanical side of it, which is something
that I didn't normally have to do with other shows that I'd done.
The move which happened at the beginning of this episode from the normal studios which
the children's shows were done at Lime Grove, which was quite a small studio, upper floor
studio actually, we moved to Riverside Studios and Riverside was for us at that time just
been refurbished and was quite a large studio, especially for a children's programme. As
I say, most of the programmes had been shot in the studios, the old studios at Lime Grove
and to work to that larger studio was great. It gave me a much better opportunity and it
gave us, it produced a scale which I think we hadn't seen with some of the other Doctor
Who's before. One of the things I wanted to do was to get
different levels, that we could look up at Daleks above us or even look down at Daleks
going around and underneath us, just to give us a much more of a spatial quality to it
than normal. And it was being in Riverside Studios that gave me that extra height which
I was able to do that. It did mean quite a lot of extra work reinforcing things but I
think it was worth it in the long run because it gave a different dimension to the ship
which could have been very flat. Also, the very fact is I was able to get two floors
in instead of one so we didn't have to spread over the studio quite so much.
Richard had certain very strong ideas about particular little bits. He certainly had,
I believe the one thing which he was very keen on was a cage which we put everybody
into, the Dalek cage with rods and things. In fact, he made a model of that and we worked
from that on that. He gave me full scope in the, I mean I just designed the ship and he
took that over but there were certain pieces in the ship which he wanted to work. He was
very keen on the shape of the doors. They were very much Richard's ideas.
The other sets, I mean the sort of, if you like, the sets around London and other things
were entirely me and we just chatted and he said, well give me a sort of dirty old room
and I gave him a dirty old room. I don't think we went into any further than that.
Of course, in those days we were very, as a designer, we were much more conscious of
the cameras and getting cameras to move from one set to another. Many of these sets were
dictated to, in terms of the size of the studio and the relative ease of moving one camera
across the floor of the studio to another and what was available with an incredibly
limited budget. I remember most of the props that I got for all the London stuff was really,
quite honestly, was a load of old rubbish which we picked up at a wonderful place called
Trading Post where we got all these sort of odd things from. I believe they circled nearly
every set, had the same sort of old jug in it and other thing. We just moved them around.
Tried to make them look different but moved them around.
Well being in Riverside Studios gave us, as I've said before, a much larger area to work
on and when it came to designing the spaceship I was able to, in fact, encroach onto nearly
three quarters of the studio space. It was decided that we'd try and go the continuity
of the whole thing and build all of the ship as a unit so that all the sections of the
ship were part of the one unit so we could constantly film right the way through. Basically
the sink cut down the side so we could look at it through the side with a ramp going down
to the floor for the Daleks to ramp up and down.
I ran out of money, as one always does on these things, and the extra Daleks were in
fact, I reproduced around about 20 Daleks which were all photo blow-ups on plywood but
in varying size, hopefully to give a feeling of perspective so that the ones at the back
were further away. But I had to end up using an old cloth from Pinewood actually which
was of a street scene. I don't know, it was nothing to do with Sloane Square where it
was but we used that in the background and sort of softened it a bit with a few trees
and things. I think it worked quite successfully there. It had a feeling of scale which was
important and we used the widest possible lenses that we possibly could on the cameras
which at that time were the 48 degrees lens. We had 50 degrees but they were not used in
that studio because we'd just seen all the lamps as well so we tried to get the widest
shot from that point of view as we possibly could.
Yes it was in this sequence where in fact unfortunately Bill Hartnell had an accident.
He was meant to be carried down this slope by one of the robber men and before this sequence
happened there was an army of robber men had to march out of the ship and I and the floor
manager at the time had explained to them not to sort of step in unison because this
is the old army thing about when you're going over a bridge you break step because you only
need around about 20 people. We only had about 15 I know but you only need that number of
people on a rigid construction like that to cause a rhythm that will actually break the
thing and sadly, not taking our advice, we had a rather large crack appeared in it and
it's produced a slightly different shape to the ramp. We blocked it up with blocks underneath
to make it so we could carry on the shooting and just after this happened the robber man
had to carry out of the ship in his arms Bill Hartnell and although he was asked not to
run down the thing and I think being a chap who wanted to show how expert and hackery
was and how strong he was I'm afraid he carried Bill Hartnell quite quickly down the ramp
in fact to the extent that he misjudged it, misjudged the ramp and kept running and unfortunately
he couldn't stop himself with the weight of Bill in front of him rather than behind and
he careered straight into the studio wall and dropped Bill Hartnell on his back which
caused him obviously considerable pain and we had to go an episode without Bill in it
while he was helping himself. It was a sad occurrence but there was no blame to anybody
in that particular thing, it was one of those accidents that can happen in a studio when
you're working on these things. Bill was a nice fellow, I mean Bill was a nice fellow
but not the easiest of gentlemen to get on to, a very professional man who if you like
didn't take falls badly, I think that's probably the best way to explain Bill.
Yes we did a part of the filming of the London Sewers, we did in the tank at Ealing, in fact
this was the first time I'd ever used a tank, I mean obviously coming from the theatre you
don't have tanks but there was I confronted with this tank and building this filling it
with water and we had actually little baby crocodiles which were brought in by I believe
Holmes, it was his first time and he looked after them and they were, one was about I
suppose 500, 600 millimetres long and the other one was about 200 I suppose, no more
than that, maybe 150 and I ended up being the only person that would go down on the
bottom and sort of shove them around a bit to get them in shot and one of the little
baby ones did nip me at one stage but I suppose that was quite fun, something to talk about
when you went home, I've just been shooting with alligators you know.
One of the first locations that occurred was in fact, which happens at the opening of the
story which is in fact a rover man falling into the river and a dalek appearing in the
river which was all shot, was actually shot at Hammersmith near the bridge there and it
came to a point where I had to redesign or at least redesign the look of location of
the original bridge and although Hammersmith Bridge was a little bit too complicated for
that so we moved the sequence on my suggestion up to the railway bridge at Kew which was
Kew Underground Line which was a much easier bridge to work for as far as I was concerned
to reproduce in the studio, it was a simpler bridge than Hammersmith but the reason we
were at Hammersmith which is interesting was because in those days the Thames was a very
very filthy river and it was essential that if anybody went in it, the stunt men going
in for these two roles had to be rushed as quickly as possible to the hospital and Hammersmith
Hospital obviously was next door so that was a reason, not the full reason why we were
at Hammersmith but that was one.
I think the only difficulty of having a lot of locations and in fact matching them in
the studio was probably one of cost more than anything else.
I think we probably had more sets in those six episodes than they'd done previously.
It was a joy for me because it was fun to have different sets all over the place because
it gave me a chance to design them but as I say the only problem for me on that one
was probably the fact that I didn't have enough money to do what I wanted to do.
I'm afraid I've always been an over killer, I was often accused on many occasions of over
designing these sets but I'm afraid if you give me a studio I'll fill it, I've done that
all my life.
I did the various signs that appeared, I do remember It's Forbidden to Dump Bodies in
the River was certainly one of mine.
I designed the bomb and I designed the bomb carrier and because of that designed most
of the whole of that sequence in fact even the slope going down to the thing although
it was built for me by the special effects department and that was one of the few special
effects of that style that I actually worked on.
The other things like spaceships and saucers flying through the air was solely the province
of the special effects design department.
The other locations, some of them were a happy stand so in fact the location of the underground
was immediately opposite the new buildings at White City which was the old White City
underground station, we were able to use that.
I think in London certainly at Trafalgar Square it was very intriguing, we only had a certain
amount of time to finish what we were shooting and after getting the hippies that were around
at that time out of the pools because the early 60s were very much the time when one
went off for a rave somewhere, a different sort of rave that you have nowadays but time
was taken up considerably by that sequence there.
One of the exciting things which is interesting too I think was most interesting was that
Shawcraft who produced all the Daleks had brought them all in a large lorry and it took
quite a long time to assemble them together and get the actors into them and get them
going and I had reproduced just for this particular part of the filming I'd reproduced a small
cycling unit inside so that we could actually move them faster down the road and when it
came to us moving between locations because of the immense time that it would take to
move them back into the lorry and take them down again added the fact that time was actually
going from a point of view of the police had given us a certain time to shoot we decided
that they would all pedal down Whitehall and it was a wonderful sight to see them in rows
pedalling down Whitehall and stopping at the traffic lights.
That was quite fun that was and well as well as the tricycle which we used entirely for
the filming there was in fact other little modifications I made.
We were very conscious of the fact of the little cartoon there was knocking about with
a set of steps with a Dalek at the bottom saying cut it we can't invade the earth there's
too many steps sort of thing.
So I produced a larger skirt on them which at that time the hovercraft was the big thing
you know everybody was doing hovercrafts so in fact we assumed that they had a sort of
hovercraft facility which got them upstairs and I altered the sides of them the sort of
shanks the shank pieces around the top got rid of the gores and put panels of aluminium
in and the main the other thing was I put a dish on their backs because as far as I
was concerned this was the best way of communicating with their mothership when they were in earth's
atmosphere.
We repainted them and in fact produced the different although we were black and white
we produced the different sort of colours of Daleks we had although you never saw them
we had sort of silver ones and grey ones and then of course there was the black one who
was the King Dalek that was a move away from the original ones.
Well we decided that the Daleks would sort of put their mark on various parts of the
kingdom and it seemed very obvious that if we could go on to something which everybody
knew about like for instance one of the lions in Trafalgar Square or even Big Ben or something
like that if we could put the Dalek mark on it that would sort of add a little bit to
the production.
I produced a standard bog ordinary stencil with a stencil paper and we used some Meltonian
sort of Blanco polish which you use for plimsolls in those days you know the four runners and
I went around and put a few of that few bits of pieces of that on some of the monuments
and it was when I was putting it on one of the lions, one of the Lancia lions or at least
the plinth of one of the Lancia lions that I was approached by this policeman who decided
that I was defacing the public buildings and I was to go away and I got really chastised
about that so you can't do that sort of thing here son you know sort of thing.
It was supposed to rub off and in fact I did have to spend quite a few hours after I did
it before I went home cleaning it off but it came off reasonably successfully.