An Unearthly Child takes place on a Tuesday

I've just rewatched An Unearthly Child, the very first episode of Doctor Who, and noticed something I don't think I've noticed before. On the blackboard in Ian Chesterton's room, it says "HOMEWORK TUESDAY".

Below this, in the bottom-right corner of the blackboard, it says "FOR THURSDAY":

So the homework has just been set, and the episode takes place on a Tuesday.

We can narrow things down a bit further. In the second episode of Doctor Who, Ian says that he and the others were just, "in a junkyard in London in England in the year 1963."

When in the year might this be? The episode was broadcast on Saturday 23 November 1963, and recorded in studio on Friday 18 October, but that doesn't necessarily tell us when the events depicted are set. But the daylight depicted - or not - in the episode can give us a clue.

In the first episode, it's dark by the time Susan reaches the junkyard after the end of her school day. It is dark enough inside the yard - which is open to the sky - that both Ian and the Doctor use torches. What time did it get dark?

Before leaving school, Susan tells her teachers, "I like walking through the dark," which implies it is already dark. The episode also begins with a policeman walking through the already dark lane outside the junkyard, picking out details with a torch; we then dissolve to the school just as the final bell rings. The implication is that the dissolve transports us in space but not in time - that it is already dark enough to need torchlight before the end of the school day.

But schools usually finish mid-afternoon and, as I know from collecting my own children, it's not dark at the end of the school day, even in the midst of winter. I checked at timeanddate.com, and the earliest sunset in London predicted for December 2020 is 15:51 - the sunset between 8 and 16 December.

The ringing of the school bell suggests that Susan hasn't stayed later than the end of the school day, for example at an after-school club. So if An Unearthly Child is set on a Tuesday in London 1963 where it's (almost) dark by 3.30, it must be 10 or 17 December.

In other words, the first episode of Doctor Who is set a little in the future.

PS: the broadcast version of An Unearthly Child was not the first version made. The earlier, "pilot" episode, included on the DVD, was recorded on 27 September - and there the blackboard is blank:

PPS: 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks returns to the school and junkyard in 1963, and a calendar on the wall in the school says November - but its broad daylight at tea-time, which doesn't seem quite right. 2013's The Day of the Doctor suggests that Totters Lane and the junkyard are in the immediate vicinity of the school.

ETA: Wise Jonathan Morris points out that the story could just as easily be set in January or February 1963. Wise Paul MC Smith, author of the exhaustive new book The TARDIS Chronicles 

suggests March, and points out this detail of the day of the week had already been discussed in Cornell, Day & Topping's The Discontinuity Guide (1995). Bother.

Matt Smith Doctor Who trailer for Turkish television

In 2012, I wrote this trailer for Matt Smith, advertising Doctor Who on Turkish televisions CNBC-e:



At the time, I was freelancing at BBC Worldwide, having a lovely, daft time on kids' magazine Doctor Who Adventures. My deputy editor Paul Lang was asked by his colleague Kate Bush (no, not that one) to recommend someone to help out another team at Worldwide and, since he couldn't think of anyone good, he suggested me.

The brief was to keep the trailer short and fun and exciting, and work in specific props and references provided for me that would make it relevant to Turkey. I delivered a first version on 19 March 2012 and sent in a final, revised version on 2 April. Then nothing happened, and just over a month later I left BBC Worldwide and was off being a new dad. When I returned to Doctor Who Adventures later in the year it was now part of Immediate Media, at new premises and without the same links to BBC Worldwide. I asked if anything had happened with what I'd written but no one seemed to know.

I assumed that if the trailer had been recorded it would sooner or later turn up as a DVD extra or get a mention in Doctor Who Magazine's exhaustive coverage. And since it didn't, I assumed it had never been made.

Then, this morning, I was talking to DWM archivist Andrew Pixley about something else entirely and happened to mention this trailer as a what-might-have-been. And he said, "Oh, but I've seen a call sheet for the those trailers..."

So lo and behold. I'm delighted.

ETA I'm reminded by Paul Lang that one reason he put me up for the job was that at the time Doctor Who was dictating his editorials for the magazine to me, such as this example from Doctor Who Adventures #261 in March 2012:

"Can’t stop! Being chased!
By things that look a bit like lobsters, only each one’s the size of a house.
They’re not really lobsters, they’re Snee. ‘Hello” I said to them, all nicely.
But of course in Snee, ‘Hello’ means something quite rude.
So, you keep reading, I’ll keep running.
Deal? Waaah!"

(That signature kindly provided to the magazine care of Doctor Who's friend Matt Smith.) 

ST:TNG 1.13 Datalore

I enjoyed the recent first series of Star Trek: Picard but was very aware of missing the references as I've not seen all of Star Trek: The Next Generation - and most of that when it was first on. Helpfully, @GDgeek and @ScottKAndrews came up with a list of 12 essential episodes:

1.13 Datalore
2.9 The Measure of a Man
3.16 The Offspring
3.26 The Best of Both Worlds
4.1 The Best of Both Worlds part 2
4.2 Family
4.3 Brothers
5.23 I, Borg
6.26 Descent part 1
7.1 Descent part 2
7.25-26 All Good Things…

So, to begin with…

1.13 Datalore

"But... but... but..."

How achingly young everyone is - and how new the whole enterprise. It’s all so new that the Captain’s log at the beginning has to explain to us that Data is an android.

Wesley Crusher, doing work experience on the bridge of the Enterprise while everyone else is in uniform, seems to be dressed as the Thirteenth Doctor Who.

Colds have been eradicated from this utopian future but there’s some silliness about sneezing. The tone is odd; the silliness stilted - less laugh-out-loud as somewhat amusing. I know from other episodes that these actors are good with comedy, so it’s just the material here not being very funny.

I’m horrified to hear the Enterprise whoosh past the screen in the opening titles, despite the silent vacuum of space. This is Star Trek as fantasy, as lacking in scientific credentials as Star Wars. But Star Wars makes no claim to get the science right.

Another shock as our heroes beam down to an alien planet realised entirely in studio, the forced perspective background looking especially cheap. I remember this "new" iteration of Star Trek when it first arrived as sumptuously rich and extravagant. Here it looks like Time-Flight.

On this alien world we learn about Data’s origins: he was discovered here 26 years ago, he says. Geordi is able to see clues no one else has - which is really odd. Given how strange and precious Data is, did no one think to conduct a proper survey?

Having found a secret base, they recognise the name of a famous Earth scientist - Dr Noonien Soong. But they don’t immediately connect him to Data, or the fact they look so alike. Has no one really never noticed?

Soong, they all know, was Earth’s foremost robotic scientist, “Until he tried to make Asimov’s dream of a positronic brain come true.” Isaac Asimov was still alive when this episode was broadcast, but also admitted that the positronic brain he devised in stories written 50 years earlier weren’t exactly a practical idea. So it’s Star Trek linking itself to a lineage of science-fiction rather than of science. (Daleks have positronic brains in The Power of the Daleks (1966) and The Evil of the Daleks (1967), suggesting they and Data are related.)

Then our heroes find the dismembered parts of an android body just like Data, including his bare bum. It’s an incongruous detail, depersonalising him and his dismantled brother. But perhaps that’s the point.

It’s also odd to have Data then observe but not help in the assembly of his brother. Does he not want to be involved? Is he not allowed? It seems to be a question of etiquette. Despite the 26 years since Data was discovered, people are still awkward around him. There’s some fun in the discomfort

But I like the awkwardness of the crew in asking Data questions about all of this - the social niceties, the strangeness, of a friend and colleague you can make. But the scene in which Data confides in Beverely that he has a secret off-switch is really odd. Would the medical officer on the Enterprise not have full access to his schematics? If not, the suggestion is that’s he’s seen as a piece of engineering rather than a person with medical needs.

Data’s brother Lore says that he was made to supersede - to replace - the imperfect Data, and given the etiquette and awkwardness we’ve just witnessed, this seems cruel. We’re immediately put on our guard about Lore because he’s been mean to Data, though no one else has noticed.

There’s more awkwardness from the human crew, but Picard apologises to Data for his misuse of pronouns in referring to androids as “it”. My suspicion is that when they made this episode they weren’t thinking of trans rights, but that’s surely the association we make watching it now.

Now Data is suspicious of Lore, and Lore uses the word “brother” to make a connection. He is, unlike Data, programmed to please humans, he says - but it’s all very manipulative. My thought was of the algorithms of social media that seek to keep us hooked by playing to our (worst) emotions.

But I really like the walk-and-talk scene in the corridor of Data and Lore together. Just like Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers, Brent Spiner makes the two characters distinct individuals, so it doesn’t immediately register that this is a trick shot. Again, Lore is manipulative - suggesting that the emotionless Data is envious or jealous. It’s nicely played, and this early into the series we don’t know Data well enough to be sure about him.

Data tells Lore how he got his Star Fleet uniform: “four years at the Academy, another three as ensign, ten or twelve on varied space duty in the lieutenant grades”, taking up at least 17 of the 26 years since he was discovered. What happened in the years before he joined the Academy? And also - as we will see - it is appalling that after 17 years of service in Star Fleet, the organisation still isn’t sure about Data’s status, rights or personhood.

I’m also unconvinced by the sci-fi cliche that Data can’t use contractions or crack jokes. Word processing software and predictive text can deploy contractions - the rules are simple enough. A child can grasp jokes. It plays, I think, into an insidious myth about autistic people that they don’t understand jokes and are taciturn, unfeeling, somehow lesser than neurotypical people. I don’t know if the production team meant to link Data to these supposed traits of autism, but now I’ve made that connection it makes me very uneasy to see how they’re deployed.

After their conversation, Data leaves and Lore is left alone, reading a computer screen. It’s innocuous enough, but sinister music tells us he is up to something - though we’ve not seen him be naughty yet. We are being manipulated.

On the bridge of the Enterprise, security chief Tasha Yar asks Picard how much he really trusts Data. The crew are shocked, and Picard’s response is really interesting:

“I trust him completely. But everyone should also realise that that was a necessary and legitimate security question.”

As when he apologised to Data about a misuse of pronouns, this is Picard’s compassionate management style, in sharp contrast to the ruthless, selfish Gordon Gekko kind of businessman in Wall Street, from the year before this was broadcast. It’s there, too, in the corporate culture of the Enterprise - with a ship’s counsellor so respected she has a seat on the bridge (if not a uniform), and (as well see in later episodes) organised entertainments that mix up different ranks socially.

Lore opens a bottle of Champagne, which begs the question whether androids can get drunk. In fact, it’s been poisoned and Lore finally shows his true colours. Suddenly the episode kicks into gear, and what follows is tense and involving.

Even so, there’s a very odd scene on the bridge, where Lore pretends to be Data and no one notices except Wesley. The telling detail is that Lore doesn’t understand Picard’s order to “Make it so” - a catchphrase already, just a handful of episodes into the series. When Lore has gone, Welsey tries to share his concern but first Picard and then Wesley’s own mother tell him to shut up. Well ha ha, Wesley is a bit precocious and annoying - but this is the captain of the flagship of Star Fleet snapping at a child in front of everyone on the bridge. A child, I might add, whose dad is dead and whose mum seems to have history with the captain. Where is the sensitive management style now? It’s particularly galling because Welsey is right!

Lore then uses Wesley, who still doesn’t fall for the trick. He helps the real Data, and there’s a fight. When Picard and Dr Crusher arrive, Lore threatens to kill Wesley - again, manipulating them through his understanding ofd emotions. But luckily our heroes are able to teleport him away. We’re not told where he goes: the implication is, I think, that he’s been beamed out into space where he won’t survive. Wouldn’t they check?

Picard doesn’t apologise to Wesley - who was completely right about Lore - but expects to see him back on the bridge. Again, ha ha, how funny that Picard won’t back down and its at Wesley’s expense. It’s a really odd, unsatisfying ending to an episode that’s otherwise about respect for other people’s feelings. If I were Wesley, I’d be going straight to the ship’s counsellor to discuss workplace harassment.

But blimey, on the subject of abuse of staff by Star Fleet, next up is 2.9 The Measure of a Man…

• See also: my review of Picard: Last Best Hope by Una McCormack

The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman

Will Parry runs away from home and then into another world, where he meets Lyra Silvertongue and seeks to help her. But soon they're despatched on a whole new quest, to find a special knife sharp enough to cut through reality...

A long and stressful drive through Storm Dennis on Saturday was much alleviated by the Audible audiobook of The Subtle Knife. As with Northern Lights, which I enthused about last year, this extraordinary version is read by the author, Philip Pullman, but with actors doing the dialogue. The cast includes Julian Glover and Stephen Thorne, but it's not (as my poor, tired brain kept thinking) Camille Coduri as Lyra.

The Lord of Chaos like the fact he already knew some of the plot as it has been in the TV version of His Dark Materials. The only jarring thing is that the audiobook has much less diversity in its casting, so that it took a moment to realise some of the people we hear are characters we already know from TV.

Another change is that in the TV adaptation Will is from Oxford - a condensed version of what happens in the book, where he's says (on page 62) that he's from Winchester and has run away to Oxford. On page 85, he says he goes to St Peter's School. St Peter's in Winchester is a primary school - I know because it's the primary school I went to; I left when Will must have been about two. Will is 12 in The Subtle Knife so he must be lying to the librarian who asks him. But I find myself wondering if that's where Will did go, even if he's since moved to a secondary school, and thus whether the eventful trip to the supermarket with his mum was at the Sainsburys at Badger Farm, the villains of the Consistorial Court of Discipline stalking the lanes of my own childhood.

It's a thrilling story full of arresting images and moral dilemma, and it ends with the shocking death of two principal characters that still packs a punch. The Lord of Chaos was hunched forward in his seat listening keenly for those bits, but admitted to zoning out for the talkier stuff - all witches and philosophy. We've already ploughed on into The Amber Spyglass and just need another long car journey to finish it.

The Time Warrior, by Terrance Dicks

The death of maestro Terrance Dicks earlier this year prompted me to revisit this novelisation which I so loved as a kid.

The TV story The Time Warrior (1973-74) was the first adventure in Jon Pertwee's final year as the Third Doctor. It introduced new companion Sarah Jane Smith and the monstrous Sontarans - though the Doctor recognises the species so has met them before off-screen. (I wrote an audio story about the Doctor's first encounter with Sontarans.)

Dicks's novelisation was first published in June 1978, by which time the Sontarans had faced the Doctor three times on screen. Dicks had been script editor on the TV version of the story: he commissioned it from Robert Holmes, oversaw the development of the storyline and rewrites on the scripts, and presumably did at least a polish. According to him, it was originally to be novelised by Holmes who only produced the 10-page prologue of the book. This presents a space battle that would have been tricky to realise on screen, and surely owe something to the opening scenes of Star Wars (1977).

The protagonist in this space battle is Jingo Linx, Commander in the Sontaran Space Corps. That first name was in the TV script but never used on screen. We learn a little of the Sontarans: their home planet is Sontara (not Sontar, as in 2008 TV episodes) and they have a "Sontaran Anthem" (which does match 2008). But Holmes tells us little about their perennial enemies the Rutans - though by the time he wrote this prologue they'd been seen on screen, in TV story Horror of Fang Rock (1977) which he had commissioned as script editor from Dicks as writer. It's surprising there's no mention here of jellyfish or shape-changing, or the eerie green glow, that neither Dicks nor Holmes sought to join up those dots.

During the space battle, Linx manages a "fly-pass through the constellation of Sagittarius." As I now know from my GCSE astronomy, a constellation only looks like a group of stars as seen from Earth, and are usually not close to one another at all. Holmes is similarly rough on history: both TV and book versions have peasants peeling potatoes - famously from the New World - in England of the Middle Ages ("the thirteenth century" according to Sarah in 1975's The Sontaran Experiment).

After the prologue, Dicks follows the TV story pretty closely. Linx crashes on Earth and makes an uneasy alliance with local warlord Irongron. When Irongron can't supply suitable nerds to help Linx fix his spaceship, the Sontaran kidnaps them from the 20th century - which gets the attention of the Doctor. Holmes' dialogue is rich and witty, perfectly establishing the characters and their worldview. Dicks' prose is straight-forward, pithily getting on with the story.

Chapter four introduces Sir Edward, Lady Eleanor and their archer Hal earlier than the TV version. Hal and Sir Edward are back from the Crusades, the implication being that Irongron and his men have not and so are sort of draft-dodgers. Lady Eleanor is a stronger character here than on screen, taking a more active role in combatting the wicked Irongron - there's a little of Lady Macbeth when she orders Hal to kill him. That neatly links to the thread of Sarah as the independent, liberated woman out of her time in a man's world.

Sir Edward's page is given a name - Eric - and we see the moment he's captured by Irongron's men, rather than just being told about it. This is Dicks the novelist adding in big action moments he would have cut as script editor. It makes me wonder how much of the screen version was his anyway - he would give writers two or three drafts before taking over their scripts.

The TV version does not give us what now seems like a glaring omission - Sarah's first impression of the TARDIS interior. It's fleeting here, but present all the same on page 53. Dicks says Sarah doesn't have time to "fully take in the wonder of her surroundings", and is more concerned about correcting another issue: how she stows away in the TARDIS without the Doctor seeing her. The simple solution is to have her hide in "a kind of cupboard" - the "kind of" suggesting something a bit more sci-fi than MFI.

Another simple intervention is the explanation of context.

"This was an age in which explosives in any form were still unknown. Bangs and flashes and clouds of stinking smoke could have only one explanation. 'Devil's work,' screamed one of the soldiers." (p. 103)

But really, there's little embellishment of events as seen on TV - though at one point there's this incongruous image:

"High on the battlements Sarah was doing a celebratory dance." (p. 104)

I liked the joke that when the Doctor and Sarah disguise themselves in cassocks, his is too short and hers too long. Dicks also feels the need to provide a four-and-a-half line section explaining where those robes came from, with Sir Edward having given a "handsome donation" to two monks.

Reading the book again made me aware of something I was less aware of in the TV version: how much back and forth there is between the two castles. The Doctor bests Linx or Irongron, then returns to Sir Edward's castle, only to say he must go back to face Linx and Irongron - several times. In the book, the Doctor also pops back to the TARDIS for supplies before making his stink bombs, and in popping back again to the TARDIS for the silver "umbrella" that he uses in his final battle against Linx, we're told in the book that he changes his shirt and jacket. This all makes the pacing more leisurely, less urgent. On TV, getting the "umbrella" from the TARDIS is just about excusable but making several trips into the ship feels like cheating.

And something else: Linx mocks humanity's "primary and secondary reproductive cycle" and says the Sontaran method is more efficient. But there's no mention of clones, no suggestion that there are millions more of his kind out there, just like him. This is a chance encounter, Linx visiting Earth by mistake because he's so far from his own people.

So many Doctor Who monsters are conceived as potential rivals to the Daleks, ideal for merchandising and sequels. The irony of Linx, the first we see of a multitude of clones, is that he's the perfect one-off. 

Chernobyl

I've finally caught up with the amazing HBO/Sky mini-series Chernobyl, a gruelling experience because the horror is so perfectly executed. No wonder it's up for all of the awards.

Everything about it - the writing, the realisation - is absolutely right. But I especially like The Chernobyl Podcast that accompanies each episode, in which writer Craig Mazin explains to host Peter Segal how much of what we're watching comes from primary sources or dramatic licence. It's full of insight into the real history, including more about the real people involved. But it's also fascinating to hear how judgments were made in the story-telling: what events and relationships to omit (such as Legasov's family) and how much of the stomach-churning detail to actually show.

I'd dearly love more of this: episode-by-episode interviews with the director Johan Renck, produce Sanne Wohlenberg or costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux on how you make this history, this whole world, so convincing. And I'd love it done for other drama based in real history: Russell T Davies on A Very English Scandal; Sally Wainwright on Gentleman Jack.

Welt am Draht in the Lancet Psychiatry

The 1 August issue of medical journal the Lancet Psychiatry includes "Cryin', talkin', sleepin', walkin living dolls" - my review of Welt am Draht (World on a Wire), the 1973 sci-fi TV series directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and recently reissued on Blu-ray.

“I've been observing Stiller for some time very closely”, says pipe-smoking psychologist Dr Franz Hahn (Wolfgang Schenck) in the second episode of Welt am Draht (World on a Wire), first broadcast on West German television in 1973. “He's suffering from a case of acute paranoia. He's an extreme example of psychological degeneration. He is in so many words…not responsible for his actions.” Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch) sits across from him, and doubts anything in the room is even real. The cigarette his boss is smoking or the chair in which he sits is, says Stiller, an idea of an idea of an idea...

Black Archive: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, by Jonathan Morris

My friend Jonny's book on 1964 Doctor Who story The Dalek Invasion of Earth is excellent - and not only because its reference to my own book in the same Black Archive series says nice things. 

Jonny's focus is the development of the story - from initial idea, through first and final draft of the script, the changes made when it went before the TV cameras and then its adaptations on the big screen and in print. Thrillingly, he's managed to get hold of Terry Nation's first draft scripts - or copies held in private hands, since the originals are no longer held in the BBC's own archives - and a first draft of the script for the movie. The former is especially interesting, as comparison with the camera scripts (used when the story went in front of the cameras) reveals the extent of work contributed by story editor David Whitaker. The most astonishing insight - to me - is that writers were likely to only produce a single draft which Whitaker would then rewrite himself. No rewrites! It's another world!

It would be a shame to spoil any more of the gems here. It's a compelling, engaging original piece of research. Especially pleasingly, I'd hoped it might provide some context for a thing I'm writing about one of the characters in the story; it has loads.

Arrival of Moon

The Moon - A Celebration of Our Celestial Neighbour is a new book published by Royal Observatory Greenwich to accompany the Moon exhibition that opens on 19 July. It's a lovely book full of extraordinary archive material and learned scholarship.

Oh, and there's also my essay, "So What If It's Just Green Cheese? The Moon on Screen." I've got in references to Doctor Who, The Clangers and James Bond, among others.

• Buy The Moon - A Celebration of Our Celestial Neighbour from the RMG website

Life Drawing, by Jessica Martin

In the midst of yesterday's deluge, a brave postman swam our street to deliver Life Drawing: A Life Under Lights, the autobiography of Jessica Martin told in comic-strip form.

I've know Jessica for years through comics and Doctor Who things (she played an alien werewolf in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (1988-9)), and have read her previous comics work. It Girl (2013) and Vivacity (2014) are biographies of real Hollywood stars, and Elsie Harris Picture Palace (2015) is a fictional story about a Hollywood writer. Her own story continues the theme - a love of cinema's golden age weaving through her life.

I thought I knew Jessica's story, from her first appearances in TV sketch shows doing impressions, then on Doctor Who, to being in the huge stage hit Me and My Girl with Gary Wilmott - which my grandpa took me to see. Her account of her time in Doctor Who, and of producer John Nathan-Turner, didn't tell me anything new. But her book is full of illuminating detail, such as when she was in the pantomime Cinderella alongside a future Doctor Who co-star...

Peggy Mount, as seen in
Life Drawing by Jessica Martin

She's honest too about her own vanity and ambition, and how what she calls "erratic eating" affected her work. But this is much more than a series of showbiz anecdotes. It's not just that old Hollywood and muscials excite her, they inspire her to press on.

For all the breezy, straight-forward style, I loved how Jessica conveys the tangle of relationships and her love for people without condoning their actions. Early on, her dad pulls an "ornamental bull whip off the wall" during an argument with Jessica's mum, and we later learn that her parents were never married as he already had wife. He's a difficult figure, and yet we feel for him when Jessica's mum leaves him and in his estranged relationship with Jessica's half-brother, and in his final days.

The book ends with her sharing her drawing and comics with people who encourage her. Comics is a new chapter in her life, but she faces it with typical determination, passion and energy. That's what radiates from this book. It's inspiring.

TV Years: Classic Children's Television

The new issue of TV Years magazine, from the makers of TV Choice, is devoted to classic children's television. I've written a feature on Play School (1964-88) and interviewed creator and first producer Joy Whitby and presenters Carol Chell and Carol Leader.

The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla

This book of 21 essays is, in the words of the editor's note, "a document of what it means to be a person of colour now."

While "the universal experence is white", we're presented with "21 universal experiences: feelings of anger, displacement, defensiveness, curiousity, absurdity - we look at death, class, microaggression, popular culture, free movement, stake in society, lingual fracas, masculinity and more." It's insightful, funny, surprising and harrowing, and has got me thinking about my own assumptions and behaviour, that of the industry in which I work and society around me.

It's an excellent, wide-ranging book and I recommend it to anyone.

Tediously, I read it on the recommendation that it included something about the 1977 Doctor Who story The Talons of Weng-Chiang. What follows is some thoughts about that, though I'm still mulling it all over. (And you might like to watch my 2011 documentary related to this subject: "Race Against Time", included on the DVD of the 1972 story, The Mutants.)

Daniel York Loh's essay, "Kendo Nagasaki and Me", is about his response as a child to a particular wrestler on ITV's World of Sport, and the rare sight on mainstream TV in the 1970s of a "fellow 'oriental'" - as he puts it on p. 46. It's a heartfelt account, and he admits at the end that he may have muddled some of the historical details, but the point is not about the accuracy of his memory so much as what the relationship meant and still means to him.

Doctor Who - "my favourite TV programme in the world" (p. 52) - gets four and a bit paragraphs, an extended aside. Compared to today's version, the Doctor Who he grew up with "was populated almost entirely by white people ... For a remit with the whole of time and space as a pallette this is a bit crap frankly." He describes The Talons of Weng-Chiang as a,

"handsomely mounted Victorian Sax Rohmer homage", but with "one of the very worst examples of yellowface as a gang of silent, sinister and inscrutable (it's amazing how easily and often those words flow together) goons (the only appropriate description) appeared, led by an English actor called John Bennett sporting ridiculous false eyelids that looked like you could sit on them, skin made up yellower than a lump of cheese and speaking in a hopelessly mishmashed Chinese/Japanese hybrid accent that would had had Henry Higgins completely stumped. Not nearly so much as the fact that the BBC still carries a website page somewhere that heaps lavish praise on Mr Bennett's staggeringly silly turn, opining that, unless they knew, the viewer might be hard-pressed to tell that the English thesp wasn't in fact Chinese. Not unless they were under the impression that Chinese people had eyelids made from recycled skateboards and talked like Yoda in Star Wars when he's been on the ketamine, I think." (p. 53)

My immediate response to this is to want to defend the story - which I enjoy and admire in many respects - and Doctor Who more generally, and even the BBC. For one thing, that praise for Bennett, on an old part of the BBC website, is clearly labelled as a quotation from a book. And yet, on checking, it still says:

"John Bennett is faultless as the inscrutable Li H'sen Chang, and his performance and make-up are so convincing that it is difficult to believe that he is not actually Chinese."
Doctor Who - The Talons of Weng-Chiang: in detail

That it is quoted from a book is no excuse. The quotation is from Doctor Who - The Television Companion, first published in 1998 by BBC Books, the cover proclaiming in large letters that it was, "the official BBC guide to every TV story." That is pretty authoritative, and the website repeats the book's assessment of the story in full, without comment. The book was republished as recently as 2013, and though that wasn't by BBC Books and without the authority of being an "official" publication, it still shows that this isn't merely something from the distant past.

I don't mean to criticise the authors of the book or the editors of the website; I might well have written or quoted something similar without thought. That's the point: The Good Immigrant challenges bias and prejudice we might not even be aware of in ourselves, whatever our intentions and however much we want to believe that racism is something other, bad people do. It chimes with my recent reading of The Blunders of Our Governments. How do we address a white blindness we're not even aware of?

Criticism of The Talons of Weng-Chiang is not new, nor the defensive response. It's been argued that Doctor Who was better than other programmes made at the same time - but surely not all of them. And that doesn't negate the issues there anyway.

Or it is said the story itself critiques racist attitudes. Yes, this isn't simply Doctor Who trotting out the stereotypes of Sax Rohmer. For all Bennett's performance owes something to the version of Fu Manchu played by (the also white) Christopher Lee in the five films made in the 1960s, Chang is, ultimately, a rather sympathetic character, his motivation clear - the opposite of the "inscrutable". At the same time, the Doctor counters some of the prejudice shown by the Victorian Londoners in the story. But it's still bound up in racial and class-based assumptions, and the Doctor is visiting London anyway to educate his "savage" companion - an adjective with racist associations.

Or there's the argument that the BBC were required to only use actors who were members of Equity, which limited the number of Chinese or Chinese-descended actors who might have taken this particular role. That didn't mean there weren't any; I find myself imagining the story with Burt Kwuok playing Chang. But the casting of Bennett is also surely part of a - no doubt unconcious - tendency to have Chinese and East Asian characters played by actors of Jewish origin. Think also of Martin Miller as Kublai Khan in the 1964 Doctor Who story Marco Polo, or, more notably, Joseph Wiseman as Dr. No. Then recall the criticism above of villains who are,

"silent, sinister and inscrutable (it's amazing how easily and often those words flow together)".

There's also the cumulative effect when actors of particular ethnic backgrounds do not get the same opportunties as their white counterparts. They don't develop their skills, so they're seen as less able than their white counterparts, so they miss out on further work, so they don't develop their skills...

It remains an issue, as described by actor Paul Courtney Hyu, interviewed by Wei Ming Kam for "Beyond 'Good' Immigrants", another of the essays in the book. Hyu says that with so few opportunities for "East Asians" in film and TV in the UK, another actor, Elain Tan, has gone to America where she is "working her arse off."

But then Hyu addes "in a satisfied tone" an example of a UK show doing better than the rest:

"And she is the main person in our episode of Doctor Who [2015's Sleep No More]. So there are two Chinese in it, and she's got a Geordie accent, and pretty good too, I have to say. And I do my Yorkshire accent." (p.93)

As a Doctor Who fan, I take some pride in that - but also know it's a rare example.

Himesh Patel mentions, on p. 64, watching Doctor Who while a teenager - one of the things he followed closely with his (white) peers so as to fit in, while they showed no interest in Bollywood music or films.

Anyway, all this has got me thinking - informing my perspective on old episodes as I watch them on Twitch and research them for the various magazines I write for, and challenging some assumptions in the script I'm late on at the moment. An aspect of a character has just been revised because this book made me realise an aspect of my own blindess, and pointed the way to do better.

The Engineer in Wonderland, by ER Laithwaite

This was research for something I'm working on at the moment. It's the book version of the Royal Institution Christmas lectures delivered in December 1966 and January 1967 by Eric Laithwaite, professor of heavy electrical engineering at Imperial College. 

These were the 137th Christmas lectures in the series for a "juvenile auditory", or children aged between 10 and 17, begun by Michael Faraday in 1825. Until recently, it was thought Laithwaite's were the first to be televised, in a tradition that continues today, but Rupert Cole reveals that Royal Institution Christmas lectures were broadcast, in some form, in 1936 and 1949. 

Laithwaite gave each lecture between 3 and 4 pm, and the broadcasts were between 5 and 6 pm the same day. I like to imagine some poor runner racing with the fresh, unique 2-inch videotapes from the Royal Institution in Albermarle Street to TV Centre in under an hour, but suspect it wasn't quite like that...

My version of the book, sourced from Abebooks where I spend too much money, does not look as splendid as the stock image of the dust jacket above. It's a battered, jacketless copy once owned by the University of Bradford library, loaned out 35 times between October 1969 and March 1998.

There's the foxy smell of school textbook, as the compounds in the paper have broken down over the last 50 years. Passages are underlined or marked by the various students who've been here before me. I especially like the old-school but trying-to-be-chic-and-futuristic university logo in the inside front cover, and the pouch still containing the punched paper card for old-skool computers:

The book itself is broadly a transcript of the lectures - complete with brackets telling us what was happening in the room as Laithwaite spoke. His lectures were repeated in the summer of 1967 - "on BBC Channel-1", as the Royal Institution informed its members - and then the tapes were wiped, so this, with its photographs of the lectures being given and close-ups of the various models and machines, is the nearest we can get to reliving them.

Laithwaite is quite the showman, his lectures full of demonstrations of things apparently breaking physical laws - objects levitating, darts shooting through tubes, that sort of thing. The sixth and final lecture starts with one hell of a promise: demonstrations of experiments never previously performed, with Laithwaite not knowing the results in advance. If I struggled with some of the technical explanations (yes, aimed at kids aged 10 to 17, shut up), I wholly got the excitement of this live theatre.

(The above image was also used on the cover of the programme of the lectures. Note the threepenny bit in the lower right, to give scale.)

Laithwaite was best known for his work on linear motors and levitation systems - think the fast-moving tray that cuts the head off a dummy in Q's workshop in The Spy Who Loved Me (using a system Laithwaite helped to develop). His lectures basically explore the science of these things, but are more about imbuing the audience with less a sense of wonder, more a sense that they can play with this weird, cool stuff, too.

The book goes further - most chapters are followed by notes explaining how schools might build the models demonstrated. I'm only slightly completely bloody horrified by the instructions in the first lecture for a wire that gets so hot it can be used to cut plastic - "but be careful not to burn your fingers" - and models that plug directly into the mains.

In fact, there's something thrillingly reckless here. Lecture two begins with Laithwaite trying out ideas suggested by children in the audience of lecture one, two days earlier. Besides the hasty rewriting, restructuring and basic accomodation of this, there's then the result:

"The experiment was tried ... but ... the volunteer suddenly let go the thick ring as it was burning his fingers."
ER Laithwaite, The Engineer in Wonderland, p. 31.

That's burning a child, almost live on air. On page 125, he describes timing the moment to switch off a linear track at just the right moment so that a rotor riding along it didn't fly off into the audience. There's a fascinating preface to chapter six in which Laithwaite details the preparations and testing for the never-before-tried experiment, with safety as a paramount issue.

"Alan Sleath [BBC producer] offered to put the whole experiment in a cage, with lecturer and assistants inside. This would certainly have added to the spectacle if not to the comfort of those performing the experiment."
Ibid., p. 143.

As a sometime producer for the BBC on a freelance basis making documentaries for radio, I find all of this extraordinary and thrilling, a risk assessment form expanding in my head as I read eagerly on. No wonder these lectures made such an impact and established the series on TV. Laithwaite was invited to give Christmas lectures again in 1974 - but that's another story.

More than anything, these lectures are about practical experimentation, using your own evidence to challenge the things we take for granted. It's an intoxicating challenge, and I'd like to know how influential it was on getting children into STEM subjects and engineering in particular.

But there are moments where Laithwaite is more philosophical. He claims that a hundred years ago (that is, 50 years before his lectures) the all-important factors in machine design were efficiency in power. At the time of his lectures, he argued the key factors were cost and the amount of power gained from a given weight. But what of the future? Laithwaite's prediction is fascinating, forged in the shadow of the "white heat" of technological revolution, famously spoken of by Harold Wilson  in 1963. Here's what Laithwaite predicted:

"Your homes are becoming more and more littered with gadgets, both electrical and mechanical. A family possessing a car, bicycles, a washing machine, a refridgerator, a vacuum cleaner, an electric razor, a hair dryer, a television set and transistor radios is not regarded as anything out of the ordinary. Washing-up machines, waste disposal units, automatic food mixers, electric carving knives and the like are regarded as somewhat more luxurious, but the average number of gadgets per home is increasing each year. When they all work, they are fine things to have, but we soon learn to rely on them to such an extent that when they fail we are terribly upset, and as the number of gadgets increases, so does our annoyance with them and the liklihood of a repair man of one sort or another coming in almost ever day! - unless the reliability is increased - and we will be prepared to pay a bigger and bigger price for reliability. If your car or the train in which you are travelling breaks down only once a year, it is once too often, and if you were asked, as a regular traveller, to pay £50 a year more for your fares or petrol with a guarantee that your transport would never break down, I think most people would be prepared to pay it even now."
Ibid., p. 74.

Yes, a 21st century built by engineers on the basis of reliability. I finished the book on a train to London Bridge, late after the one I'd meant to catch had been cancelled. That £50 fee - as much as a week's Oystercard - is a tantalising utopia.

Grim's Dyke house in Doctor Who and other film and TV

Earlier this year, the Dr took me to stay at Grim's Dyke house – now a hotel – in Harrow Weald, which was used as a location in episodes 3, 4 and 5 of the 1967 Doctor Who story The Evil of the Daleks. What follows is an expanded version of material from my Black Archive book examining that story, plus photos from our visit...

It was production assistant Tim Combe who found the house. "I was living in Richmond when I got married in 1965," he told me. "But we were thinking of moving to north London, and I did quite a lot of looking round houses, going to estate agents and generally just driving around. I think I first saw it then."

The BBC's Written Archive Centre holds six production files for The Evil of the Daleks, and the first of these - file T5/2,531/1 - shows that Combe visited Grim's Dyke again on 6 April 1967 to check its potential for Doctor Who. That was also when he spotted the adjacent field used for the scenes of Kennedy snooping on the Doctor in episode 1; he learned who owned that field by asking in the local pub. On 7 April, Rae Pickthrone, an assistant in the BBC's television finance department, agreed a fee of £120 for the use of Grim's Dyke with Mr Sewell, the engineer and surveyor for the Borough of Harrow, covering the location filming that would take place at Grim's Dyke on 20, 24 and 25 April.

Grim's Dyke was built between 1870 and 1872, designed by architect Norman Shaw for the painter Frederick Goodall. Shaw had already made his name pioneering a particular style of old English house with a Gothic influence – evident in Grim's Dyke, especially in distinctive Gothic arches that can be seen in the photographs above.

After the Goodall family sold the house in 1880, it passed to the banker Robert Herriot and then to the librettist WS Gilbert – of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. He had a boating lake constructed there, in which he swam every day – and in which he died in 1911. His widow lived on at Grim's Dyke until her death in 1936, after which the house was put up for auction.

"Officially, whatever role the house played in the 2nd World War is classified, and not due for release until the 2040s," says the Grim's Dyke hotel website. So, fittingly for Doctor Who, it's a house of secrets. After the war, the house was used as a rehabilitation centre for men suffering from tuberculosis; that centre closed in 1963, and when Tim Combe arrived in 1967 the house was out of use.

That made it perfect for filming; the sources in what follows are IMDB unless otherwise listed. A year after the rehabilitation centre closed, young film-makers Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo used Grim's Dyke as a location in their war film It Happened Here (1965), as detailed on Reel Streets.

In November 1965 it was used for the colour pilot episode of the adventure series The Saint, The Russian Prisoner, broadcast by ATV London and ATV Midlands in October 1966. The same series returned to the house for The Fiction Makers, filmed from the week of 20 May to the week of 17 June 1966 but not broadcast on TV until December 1968 (having failed to secure a release as a movie). [Source: p. 6 of Andrew Pixley's notes for The Saint: Original Soundtrack.]

A month after Doctor Who filmed at Grim's Dyke, The Champions used the house as a location in The Mission, filmed during the weeks of 24 and 31 May 1967 – the first of four episodes filmed there. A month later, during the week of 21 June, the same series filmed The Experiment with Grim's Dyke as one of the locations. In October, Grim's Dyke was used for The Body Snatchers and in January/February 1968, it was used in The Final Countdown. [Source: Michael Richardson's production notes for The Champions DVD, Network, 2006.]

Grim's Dyke was a location used in the horror film The Blood Beast Terror, which began filming on 7 August 1967, and The Devil Rides Out, which began filming on 28 August the same year.

ETA: According to Irene Shubik's book Play for Today: The Evolution of Television Drama (1975), production began in October 1967 on House of Character, an episode of the Wednesday Play broadcast on 10 January 1968. "The filming was done at Grims Dyke Manor (sic) and Ham House in thick fog,” remembered Shubik (p. 91).

Filming began on The Curse of the Crimson Altar on 22 January 1968 [Source: Jonathan Rigby, English Gothic, p. 178.] It's thought that this was the last film that Boris Karloff worked on (though not the last to be released). "During some rain-soaked sequences [while filming at Grim's Dyke]. Karloff contracted pneumonia, which can hardly have helped alleviate the emphysema which, on 2 February 1969, would kill him. " [Rigby, p. 179.]

As well as horror films, Grim's Dyke appears in the Academy award winning drama The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which began filming on 29 April 1968.

On 13 June 1968, a 2nd unit crew from The Avengers shot material for the episode Game at Grim's Dyke. [Source: Michael Richardson's Bowler Hats and Kinky Boots, p. 660.] Also in June 1968, filming took place on But What a Sweet Little Room, an episode of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and that series returned on 12 August to film material for You Can Always Find a Fall Guy.

From 21 October to 7 November 1968, filming took place on The Killing Bottle, an episode of Journey to the Unknown. The series Department S filmed a Grim's Dyke in April 1969 for the episode The Bones of Byrom Blain. [Source: Michael Richardson's production notes on the Department S DVD set.]

Another horror film, Cry of the Banshee filmed from 20 October 1969. The comedy Futtocks End seems to have been at Grim's Dyke later in the year. The murder mystery Endless Night began filming on 7 June 1971, the TV series The Adventurer began filming on The Case of the Poisoned Pawn in autumn 1972, and in November filming was conducted on K is for Killing, an episode of Thriller.

It's worth listing these productions because they almost all use the house in a very different way to Doctor Who. Most are set in the present, though Cry of the Banshee is set in Elizabethan England, The Blood Beast Terror in the 19th century, The Devil Rides Out in the 1920s and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in the 1930s. The house adds grandeur and elegance. Usually, it has been dressed and lit to appear at its best, but looking carefully we can see damage and wear: it's a faded grandeur, suggesting decay and decadence in the horror films, and in both The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Futtocks End that the past – its bricks and its values – struggles to survive in the modern world.

In Doctor Who, the state of the house suggests something ironic. Just as the first episode and half of The Evil of the Daleks has genuine antiques that are nevertheless brand new, something similar is going on with the house. As it appears in the story, it is old and decayed, but – given events are set in 1866 – it ought to be brand new...

FLAME - a TV pilot

Last week, the production company Visionality announced a TV pilot I've been working on which is quite exciting.

"Children's animated sci-fi news! We are delighted to confirm that the voice track to FLAME's pilot was recorded on 19th October at Fitzrovia Post in London. The audio will be complimented with a full 22 minute animatic during the autumn and we will be sharing FLAME with the broadcasting markets in 2018.

Julian, Harry, Rosemary, Jai,
Sophie, Celia and Simon at Fitzrovia Post

Our cast includes Celia Imrie (Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Nanny McPhee, Calendar Girls, Phantom Menace, Bridget Jones Diary) and Sophie Thompson (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Gosford Park, Harry Potter), joining Harry Myers and new, young talent, Rosie and Jai.

The show represents an amazing opportunity for broadcasters to take their 8 to 12 year old audiences on exciting journeys through all the galaxy - anywhere and anywhen."

More on Flame on the Visionality website.

Adventures in Space

Out now in shops - and digitally from PocketMags - is The Essential Doctor Who - Adventures in Space.

Among the delights, there are four things by me:

• Mission to Moscow
  David Whitaker's special assignment on behalf of Solzhenitsyn, at the same time he (Whitaker!) was meant to be writing The Ambassadors of Death (1970).
• Star Man
  Sid Sutton talks me through the Doctor Who titles he designed, used between 1980 and 1986. Plus, I speak to the person who used Sid's titles as the basis of the special Doctor Who 30th anniversary teaser.
• The Impossible Suit
  Costume designer Louise Page and big cheese Russell T Davies discuss making space travel seem convincing in The Impossible Planet (2006) and after.
• Fighting the Suits
  Costume designer Hayley Nebauer unpicks the spacesuits seen in this year's episodes, focusing on Oxygen.

You might also like to read my hour-long chat with current Doctor Who big cheese Steven Moffat, conducted at the Fairford Festival of Fiction earlier in the month and now up on Koquillion - my site of interviews with Doctor Who cast and crew.

Audience of Evil

When episode 1 of The Evil of the Daleks was first broadcast at 6 pm on BBC One on Saturday, 20 May 1967, it was watched by 8.1 million people.

Except that the viewing figures usually given for Doctor Who in the 1960s are the BBC's own internal estimates from the time. These figures often differ significantly from estimates by the agency Total Audience Measurement (TAM), which were until 1968 used by ITV networks and advertisers, and based on numbers of households watching not individual viewers.

Episode	Tx date	Audience (BBC)	Audience (TAM)
1	20 May 1967	8.1 million	4.3 million
2	27 May 1967	7.5 million
3	3 June 1967	6.1 million
4	10 June 1967	5.3 million	under 4.45 million
5	17 June 1967	5.1 million
6	24 June 1967	6.8 million	3.4 million
7	1 July 1967	6.1 millions	2.9 million

The TAM figures here are taken from The Stage and Television Today issues #4498 (29 June 1967), #4501 (20 July 1967), and #4506 (24 August  1967), where Doctor Who episodes were among the top five most-viewed children's programmes of the preceding month. For episode 4, TAM figures published in issue #4497 (22 June 1967) give the top 20 most-viewed programmes for the week ending 11 June. Doctor Who is not listed but the figure for the 20th most-viewed programme is 4,450,000.

Since 1981, a single, independent measurement of viewing figures has been produced by the Broadcasters Audience Research Board (BARB), but methods of estimating numbers of viewers have evolved over the years so we should be wary of the conclusions we draw from comparing data from different periods. However, it may help contextualise the figures cited above to know that BARB estimates that in January 1967 there were 18 million homes in the UK, 15.9 million of them with TVs; by January 1968 that figure had risen to 18.2 million homes, 16.4 million with TVs. See www.barb.co.uk/resources/tv-ownership/

(This was a footnote cut from my book on The Evil of the Daleks.)

Gordon Tipple interview

It's 20 years today since the Doctor Who TV movie starring Paul McGann was broadcast in the UK. Below is my interview with actor Gordon Tipple, who played the "Old Master" in the movie - for all of 37 seconds. It's as published in pages 42-43 of Doctor Who Magazine #497 (cover dated April 2016). Thanks to editor Tom Spilsbury for permission to post it here.

THE DWM INTERVIEW

SNAKE EYES!

He might have had a 'blink and you'll miss it appearance in the TV Movie, but Gordon Tipple really was a bona-fide incarnation oof the Master...

Interview by Simon Guerrier

“I'm probably going to get in trouble for this,” admits Canadian actor Gordon Tipple, “but I’m not a huge Doctor Who fan.”

So when in early 1996 he was first offered the part of 'The Old Master', exterminated in the opening scene of the Doctor Who TV Movie, did he know what he was letting himself in for?

“Oh, I was certainly familiar with the series and how it had been around for a long time. Going way back to my childhood in the 1960s and collecting monster magazines and stuff like that, I remember articles about Doctor Who and pictures of the Daleks. We couldn’t watch it in Canada then, but we knew about it.”

Born in 1953, Gordon grew up in London, Ontario. A childhood friend was David Boswell, the cartoonist who later created the cult comic strip Reid Fleming, The World's Toughest Milkman. So was Gordon into comics as a child?

“Oh, absolutely. Marvel and DC Comics, and of course Mad magazine. When we were kids, we thought that was just the funniest thing going. We thought it was real, cutting-edge humour.”

“David and I also had a fondness for horror and cheesy monster movies. As kids, we would try and put horror make-up on ourselves using latex rubber. At the time they called it ‘mortician's wax’, and I recall going with David down to a drugs store to try and buy some. The chemist there really gave us the third degree. He thought we wanted to disguise ourselves to pull off a bank robbery!” He laughs. “We eventually convinced him, and he relented and sold it to us. So yeah, we were playing with make-up and effects.”

Does this childhood interest in horror explain the path of his later acting career? His CV is full of roles in horror and science-fiction: as well as Doctor Who, Gordon appeared in four episodes of The X-Files, and two episodes of The Outer Limits.

“Yes, I like that stuff,” he says. “But it wasn’t really my choice to do those specific kinds of things. I’m at the mercy of my agent who puts me out for audition, the cast directors who are willing to see me, and then whether producers and directors like me enough to hire me. So I do all kinds of work. But then, when you get to do something like The X-Files, it’s a lot of fun and brings out the kid in you: ‘I’m going to get horribly killed? Oh, I’m going to love doing this!’”

In fact, Gordon has been killed in a lot of film and TV. He laughs. “Yeah, I was joking about it with a friend the other day. It seems to be, ‘This character really dies a horrible death, who can we get to do it? Oh yeah, there’s that guy…”

Was it his skills at dying that led to Doctor Who – where he’s killed off within the first minute? Again he laughs. “For the audition, as I read my line of dialogue they were just focused on my eyes and eyebrows. I have rather pronounced eyebrows, and they wanted me to be as expressive as I possibly could. So that’s what got me in there.”

We’ll discuss that line of dialogue in a moment, but once Gordon’s eyebrows had secured him the role, “they sent me to an optometrist’s shop downtown to fit me with those reptilian-looking contact lenses. I don’t wear contacts – just glasses for reading – and these things were really thick and uncomfortable. So they just put in one. There was a photography studio upstairs, and they sent me up to be photographed so the production office could see what I looked like. I then go back downstairs to the shop to have the contact lens taken out – and walk straight into a woman who’s come into buy new glasses. I scared the living hell out of her!” He laughs delightedly. “So we knew it looked good.”

When it came to recording, the contact lenses caused Gordon a lot of discomfort.

“My vision was obscured, but I was able to see just enough to get around. The problem was how quickly they dried out. The optometrist had to be there and was constantly putting on eye-drops so I’d be able to actually remove the lenses later.”

Gordon recorded his scenes at the sound stage in Burnaby, Vancouver, being used for the production. For the close-up of the eyes, he was also peering through a mask.

“Originally, in the wardrobe fitting, they had me in a kind of leather bondage mask,” he laughs. “You just saw my eyes, and there was a little vent for my nose so that I could breathe. Everything else was covered. They ended up modifying that so it covered just part of my face, because I also had that goatee thing going on.”

A goatee beard had been sported by the Master in two previous incarnations.

“I think the make-up department was given images of the guys that had gone before and tried to match me up.” Then it wasn’t a real beard? He sighs, trying to remember. “I’ve had a goatee off and on several times in my life, so I’m not sure. But looking at the image of me on set, that does look bigger than what I would have had.”

Gordon Tipple's own photos,
as featured in DWM #497

What Gordon does remember, though, is “the suit that they made for me. You don’t get a chance to see it in the little bit I’m in, but it was this black fabric that looked like little snake scales, and it had red piping. I regret not asking if I could buy the suit at the time. It was very, very cool!” In fact, the suit can be seen in the TV Movie – at the end, when it’s worn by Eric Roberts’ Master, along with his magnificent robes.

As well as the suit, Gordon wore an oddly shaped hat that looked – when seen looking down from above – like the pupil of his reptilian eyes. He was then encased in a sort of cylindrical prison. Director Geoffrey Sax explained in a book on the making of the TV Movie that these sets and effects, though looking computer-generated, were physically created.

“Yeah, that prison was a real thing that they built. Those glowing tubes were this material where you put a light on it and it glows back at you. And they wanted a physical reaction from me when I die. Watch the hat, and you see me moving.”

As broadcast, Gordon’s brief appearance and death are accompanied by narration given by the Doctor – as played by Paul McGann. But the original script has narration by Gordon – and it was recorded. DWM emailed him a link to an audio track. “This is wild lines for Scene 1 apple”, says the voice of one of the crew – possibly director Geoffrey Sax. Then, in a gruff, menacing voice we hear Gordon:

“I hereby make my last will and testament. If I’m to be executed and thus cruelly deprived of all existence, I ask only that my remains be transported back to our home planet by my rival Time Lord and nemesis – he who calls himself the Doctor.” (Readers can find this clip at tinyurl.com/TippleTalks)

There’s a brief pause, and then the crewmember asks for another take, “a little bit quicker, for variety.” Gordon obliges.

“I’m amazed you were able to find that!” he enthuses now. “That was really something. And when I heard it, I remembered the circumstances. After we’d done the filming, we just sat off at the side of the set and they recorded me. And it was wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am – we were done.”

It’s a very different voice to the gently spoken man DWM is chatting with today.

“I don’t recall getting direction per se,” he says. “I guess I was thinking of making it determined, you know: ‘You’ve got me now, but not for long; I’ll be back to get you!’ That was my basic motivation.”

Recording on the TV Movie had originally been scheduled to run Monday to Friday, but Gordon recorded his material on Saturday, 10 February 1996 – the weekends being added because of the complex demands of the shoot. The extra filming day meant that Gordon was “very isolated – I was the only actor on set.”

Did that mean he didn’t meet the other cast members? “No, I didn't, unfortunately. I was hoping to get a chance to meet Eric Roberts, but no such luck. But that also meant I got a chance to look round. They put a lot of effort into making the sets, which were really terrific.”

And what kind of atmosphere was there on set?

“A definite sense of urgency,” he remembers. “You can hear it in that clip – they did the two takes and it’s ‘okay, we keep moving. Thank you very much.’”


His work on Doctor Who was done.

At what point did he learn that his dialogue wasn’t going to be used?

“I didn’t find out until after the fact. I think I saw it when it was televised and of course, my first thought was, ‘That’s not my voice!’” And how did he feel about it? “It’s no big deal. I’d been acting for a while and it’s not a rare occurrence. Pretty much every actor I know has had a situation like that. Your first thought is, ‘Oh my God – I must have been awful.’ But that’s not necessarily the case.” He laughs. “It’s a strange business, acting. You get used to it.”

DWM explains that late in the day the production team thought it better to have the Doctor introduce the story, to give him more of a role from the start.

“I’m inclined to agree,” says Gordon.

He said that acting is a strange business. Gordon spent one day on Doctor Who 20 years ago, but in October 2014 he was a perfect “zero” answer on the BBC One primetime quiz show, Pointless – where contestants had to name actors who’d played the Master, but not give answers other people had thought of. He’s delighted by that. Does he get recognised a lot?

“A bit. The first time was maybe ten years ago or so. I was at an audition and another actor came up to me and said, ‘Scuse me, are you Gordon Tipple? Everybody’s talking about you on the internet.’ I thought, ‘Oh God, what did I do?’ It was because of Doctor Who. I said, ‘Well that was a lot of fun, doing that little bit,’ and told him what I’ve told you. He said, ‘Oh, man, they would love to hear what you have to say.’” So did he go online? He laughs. “I like to keep a low profile. But I’ve had a bit of mail through my agent. Doctor Who fans are really organised – they include self-addressed and stamped envelopes! So I’m happy to send back an autograph.”

In fact, Gordon’s daughter Erin is “a huge fan. When she meets people at parties and they know her dad was in Doctor Who, she’ll say, ‘Yeah, I’m the Master’s daughter.’” He laughs. “Knowing I was going to speak to you, she gave me a lecture on what’s been happening in the series. After half an hour, my head was spinning. I thought it was terrific.” So does Gordon know that the Master is now a woman? “Oh yeah.” He doesn’t mind? He laughs again. “I could come up with some real smart-ass answer, but let’s refrain.”

How does Doctor Who compare to the attention Gordon gets from having been in The X-Files and other popular shows?

“The X-Files is still very popular. It’s not uncommon for me to be in a store or restaurant and somebody’ll go, ‘Hey, you’re that guy...’ He cites the 1995 episode Humbug as one that seems to stick in people’s minds. “I played a guy called Hepcat Helm in this story about a freakshow. But I think Doctor Who takes the prize for people’s interest. It’s great that it has fans who are that passionate about it.” DWM

[I previously wrote about the experience of watching the TV Movie at the time, and how things have changed, with guest contribution from Joseph Lidster.]