03x03 - Are We There Yet

[bunniefuu]

It's the year billion and
and the Doctor's in a bit of a jam.

It's all very grimy and nasty.

Oh, that is nice.

It's a fairly dystopian future.

This is some sort of Undercity.
I like that. It's very Blade Runner.

It feels a lot like
where we're heading!

Ride along with Doctor Who
Confidential as we play passenger

and go backstage to see
the making of Gridlock.

♪ Let's waste time

♪ Chasing cars

♪ Around our heads... ♪

Set billions of years
in the future, the Doctor Who
production team

have transformed this
Cardiff Bay industrial warehouse

into the grimy
Undercity of New New York.

This is Pharmacy Town. What I like
about this location, is that you get
into the foundations of buildings,

you get heavy brick or concrete sort
of foundations.

It has that weight and gravitas.

And then within these gaps,
we can build the pharmacy booths,

these three green things
where the pharmacists are trading.

The idea is that this Pharmacy Town
is long defunct and is now
in a state of disrepair.

There are only a few
pharmacists left trading.

Action!

How long have you been there?

It's all very grimy and...bleak,

and fairly nasty.

Mother, not now.
Happy, happy, lovely happy!

Anger, buy some anger,
pure and private anger.

Let yourself go!

'The Doctor feels a great
responsibility for Martha.'

He's brought her here,
kind of showing off a little bit.

Showing off a universe to her.

The first thing that happens,
she gets kidnapped by some
dodgy looking characters.

Ah! Sorry, I'm really, really sorry.

Back off. I'm warning you.
Drop that g*n. Sorry.

Obviously he feels responsible
for that. And he spends the rest of
the episode trying to get her back.

Give her some sleep. Don't you dare!

It's just sleep for today.

Don't fight it. That's it, come on.

It's the first episode that's
he's deprived of her in a way.

She's kidnapped.
I think he misses her.

He realises that actually he has
started to become attached to her.

Those people, who were they?
Where did they take her? They've
taken her to the motorway.

Gridlock features some of the
largest and most complex CGI
effects of all of the series so far.

Live action green screen elements
mix seamlessly
with computer graphics

to create this murky motorway.

It's the first time the whole story
has been set effectively
inside a CGI world.

I always wanted to break down
that invisible line

between live action and CGI -

even with our beautiful pictures,

there's a real human
saying look there's a spaceship
and there is a CGI spaceship.

It was tricky to tell one of the
biggest stories we have ever told,

this huge motorway
tunnels with thousands of cars.

You end up sh**ting the whole
thing in a x feet box,
because those cars are tiny!

It was one of the smallest sh**t.

Milo, Cheen and Martha spent four
days in that car, just filming in
a tiny car, which was a nightmare

but telling a really big story.

♪ Here in my car
I feel safest of all... ♪

He's just standing there,
breathing it in.

If you get a star name, you don't
really cover them in prosthetics
so that nobody knows who they are.

We seem to have a habit of doing
that! Now we have done it
to Ardal O'Hanlon.

I'm used to it from working on shows
where people are dressed up funny.

You have these normal conversations.
It must look quite odd if someone
saw me talking to you,

in a cat face and having
a perfectly normal conversation.

People might think that's very odd.
I don't, because I'm used to it,
I've been doing it for years.

This woman stood in the exhaust
fumes for a solid minutes.

By the time they found her,
her head had swollen to feet.

It's actually more freakish if
you see them out of the make-up.

They come here at am or some
ridiculous hour to
start getting into all of that stuff.

By the time I bowl up at . or ,
they're transformed already.

I can go a week without
seeing them in the real world.

If they come in and there they are
as a normal human being

that is more disorientating.
It's weirder talking to them then!

If you won't take me,
I'll go there on my own.

Probably the trickiest sequence of
the whole episode is the Doctor's
journey from Brannigan's car,

right down to the bottom
to save Martha.

It was tricky to
put together logistically.

Our car that will be replicated
hundreds of times. Which is
why all the cars look the same.

What will happen,
where the green is, we will

paint on in CGI the rest of the
thousands of cars in the background.

We had the underside of another car

suspended probably about
or feet up off the ground.

♪ Jump in my car... ♪

He's completely insane.

♪ ..I want to take you home... ♪

And a bit magnificent.

♪ Come and come and jump in my car

♪ It's too far
to walk on your own...♪

Who the hell are you?
Sorry, motorway foot patrol.

Thank you very much.

♪ Jump in my car

♪ I want to take you home

♪ Come on and jump in my car

♪ It's too far to walk
on your own... ♪

Excuse me, is that legal?

What are those shapes?

And lurking deep in the Undercity
is an old enemy of the Doctor's.

What the hell are they?

Macra.

♪ k*ller, k*ll us all

♪ k*ller, k*ll us all

♪ k*ller, k*ll us all
k*ller, k*ll us all... ♪

Trying to imagine these giant crabs
trying to att*ck the car

wasn't such a big deal because
our characters never see them.

We are hear the sounds,
we are pushed by them.

We get that sort of sense of them
which is much easier to do than
being presented with a green screen

and saying, "There is
a -foot crab, look scared."

We were really over-excited.

When Richard shouted,
"Cut! We're going to go again",
me and Travis went, "Yes!"

Let's go for full-on screams,
see what it's like, yeah?

SCREAMING

It was really, really scary.
It was so close.

And then the smoke came and I
thought something had malfunctioned.

I was going to shout cut,
but I thought, "Not my department!"

SCREAMS

It's so much fun. Usually TV
has to be so small and subtle,

all in the eyes,
all that malarkey.

Today, we've been like, "Argh!"

Travelling in the future
means the return of an old face.

The Doctor, where is he?

And a very old face.

We carried Boe over into this story
so that, even for a casual viewer,

you get a sense that within
five billion there is
a consistent world.

The Face of Boe!

I knew you would come.

In series two, Russell
had talked at one point about
the Face Of Boe having a revelation.

We shall meet again, Doctor,
for the third time,

for the last time.

And the truth shall be told.

Face Of Boe finally reveals
his secret. He's not quick.

You

are not...alone.

It shakes him, because Boe
is this incredible psychic presence
who spans the aeons,

who has seen more than
even the Doctor.

'He is literally billions
of years old. The fact that
he is telling the Doctor this,'

the Doctor can't dismiss it,
but at the same time
he knows there isn't anybody else.

We will come back to it.

It will sink into the series.

There are answers
on the way in this series.

Devastating answers.

Everything has its time.

Right now, the Doctor's
left with this conundrum that

he knows he's the last of his people.

And Boe's just told him
that he's not.

And that doesn't make sense.

Bo's not lying. But the
Doctor's not got it wrong either.

The truth lies somewhere in between.

Hold on!

♪ Let's waste time

♪ Chasing cars

♪ Around our heads

♪ If I lay here

♪ If I just lay here

♪ Would you lie with me
and just forget the world? ♪

She doesn't belong on this planet
and it's all my fault.

♪ Forget what we're told

♪ Before we get too old

♪ Show me a garden
that's bursting into life

♪ If I lay here

♪ If I just lay here

♪ Would you lie with me
and just forget the world? ♪

I'm not just a Time Lord.

I'm the last of the Time Lords.