01x02 - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

[bunniefuu]

Right then, Rose Tyler,

you tell me, where do you want to go?
Backwards or forwards in time?

- It's your choice. What's it gonna be?
- Forwards.

DAVIES". If Doctor Who is gonna work,
then let's go for it.

Let's send them into the far future and
have spaceships and a million monsters

and, you know, we live or die by that.

This is the year ./Apple/.

Five billion years in your future.

And this is the day...

This is the day the sun expands.

Welcome to the end of the world.

DIRECTOR: Cut.

SIMON". With episode two
set entirely on a space station,

there's no better time
to meet some new alien life forms.

CO M P UTE R: Guests are reminded
that Platform One

forbids the use of weapons,
teleportation and religion.

So when it says guests,
does that mean people?

Depends what you mean by people.

- I mean, people. What do you mean?
- Aliens.

We wanted it to be a kind of hotel
for the poshest, richest

and most influential aliens
in the universe.

Please welcome The Face of Boe.

MAN". we wanted to have
a little taster

of what these creatures might look like.

SIMON". And these creatures
come in all shapes and sizes.

MAN: We've got the Maxx of Balhaan,
who's a kind of grumpy little terrier

who's got these little folds of skin
which kind of hang down.

We started off thinking about his voice.

Because to start with,
he was going to be an animated character

and then he became a glove puppet
for a while

and then we decided, no, we wanted him
to be kind of something a bit chunkier.

So we gave him this big kind of bum-type
headpiece and a grumpy little face.

And we gave him these sharp, silver
teeth to make him look like a dog.

And when he greets Rose,
his form of greeting is

he kind of gathers his spit
and then he spits in her eye.

The Moxx of Balhoon.

My felicitations upon
this historical happenstance.

I bring you the gift of bodily salivas.

Action!

SIMO N: Getting the Moxx
to glide effortlessly around

has a surprisingly low-tech solution.

But even the simplest ideas
are fraught with problems.

- DIRECTOR: Cut there.
- That's what it's all about.

Now, might I introduce the next honoured
guest, representing the Forest of Cheem,

we have Trees,
namely jabe, Lute and Coffa.

The original sketches
that we came up with for Jabe

involved her having quite a bark-like
skin and quite a pointy nose.

In the end, we went through all
the trees, we kind of talked about,

“Is she an oak? No.“
“Is she an ash? No."

And in the end, we decided
that she was going to be a silver birch.

So that's why she had this, kind of,
quite smooth and shiny skin.

I don't want to call us monsters
because we're not monstrous.

We are just different.

I feel like I've got a crown.
I'm having my crown of flowers on now.

And I've got a brilliant costume.
It's like a robe, it's beautiful.

Beautiful dress with lots of corseting.

And that immediately gives you
the posture.

She's a queen-like figure, I think.

So as soon as you step into that,

and with all of this,
you're the part instantly.

COMPUTER: Earth death in two minutes.

SIMON". But great aliens
need a stage to match.

There's a scene set in the
space station's ventilation chamber...

and the Doctor has to get from one side
of the walkway to another

to turn off a switch to save the day.

Oh, and guess where the switch is.

CO M P U T E R: Shields malfunctioning.

You can only create something like that
these days in CGI

so you have a partial set
with lots of green screen

where the Doctor
is physically on the walkway.

And this then gets shrunk down
and put into a painting, effectively.

I took the actual footage, the sh*t,
reduced it in frame...

and then, this is all painted in,
along with this here.

So, I mean, it really...

From that original, sort of, sh*t,
it suddenly becomes...

Well, it's a classic jeopardy situation,
you know.

It suddenly becomes
something completely different.

This is ideal for a matte sh*t.
This is the, sort of, perfect subject.

COMPUTER: Five.

COMPUTER: Four.

Raise shields!

COMPUTER: One-.

SIMON: Creating the end of the world

has tested the graphics team
to the limit.

The largest episode is episode two,
where there are visual effect sh*ts,

which is enormous.
We had eight weeks to create sh*ts.

We virtually created a feature film
a month.

Gladiator, for example,
there are about effects sh*ts.

And that took nine months.

It's a very expensive episode. That was
absolutely deliberate in writing it.

No episode will ever cost that much ever
again or take us that much time.

DAVIES: It's meant to be spectacular.
If you don't remember that one,

then we might as well
pack up our bags and go home.

SIMO N: Conveying the size and scale of
the space station ls a feat in itself.

It's a mile long in its own space

and needed to be textured,
sort of, in a marble-like texture.

It's a very, very good way,
in telling a story set in space, to be

able to cut outside and travel to
a different part of the space station.

Because, obviously, you're filming at a
location or a set so it's fairly static.

We were able to use the model to, sort
of, do these lovely, languorous sh*ts

of an exterior space station
and help tell the story.

In sort of post Star Wars environment,
with all the big blockbusters,

I think the public are quite literate
when it comes to visual effects.

They don't necessarily know when it's
right. They know when it's not right.

SIMON". Even with the advent of CGI,

you still need some quality performers
to bring today's aliens to life.

CASSANDRA". At least it'll be quick.

The thing with aliens in Doctor Who

is there's a danger
of relying on them visually.

You think if we just roll them in with
three heads, that's enough. It isn't.

They all have a relationship
with the Doctor and with Rose

and they're opportunities
for great actors to come in

and do great things for the series.

Ladies and gentlemen
and Trees and multiforms,

the lady Cassandra O'Brien dot Delta .

Cassandra is the last human

and is effectively a bit
of stretched skin on a frame

with a mouth and eyes,

voiced by Zoë Wanamaker.

My father was a Texan.
My mother was from the Arctic desert.

They were born on the Earth and they
were the last to be buried in its soil.

We were wondering,
when we first read the script,

how we were going to achieve her.

And as conversations with the executives
and the writer, Russell T. Davies,

sort of went on,

they wanted something very high quality,
she had to be really good.

So the only way we could do her is
to make a fully CGI animated character.

And she appears for about four minutes

in the -minute episode of screen time,
which is quite long.

Cassandra's basically
a shopping trolley...

and sh**ting her was a bit like

pushing one of those dodgy trolleys
around Tesco's with a wobbly wheel.

WOMAN: Oh, now, don't stare.

Zoë Wanamaker, who we cast in the role,
wasn't able to be with us on the set.

So we had a stand in to, kind of,
read in for her.

Look how thin I am. Thin and dainty.

LYN: Getting that emotion into an
aluminium frame was a real challenge.

Moisturise me. Moisturise me.

- Cut. Enough?
- Very good. Very good.

I hope that our artists, kind of,
were able to respond

to how they imagined
she would look like.

It's quite a difficult character
to get character into

because of the fact that she's so flat.

There's nothing there.
There's no shape to the face.

So that was the real challenge, trying
to get her to look a bit like Zoe,

to try and get a feel of that in there,

and to make her able to emote like
a human, 'cause that is what she is.

The Mill are working themselves to death

and are working
out of a lot of love for Doctor Who

and get an extraordinary
creation on screen,

which is taking many, many months to do,
but she will be brilliant.

Do you think
it's cheap looking like this?

Flatness costs a fortune.

Five billion years
and it still comes down to money.

SIMO N: The series may not always
have had the biggest budgets...

but no one does aliens
quite like Doctor Who.

(WAILING)