Doctor Who at the BFI – the last days of normality

I love going to London. It’s where most of my friends live, it’s where a lot of my work comes from, and it was my home between 1994 and 1998. I have a lot of memories embedded in the grime of that city, so if there’s an opportunity to go there I usually grab it.

But so far I’d avoided the BFI screenings of my Doctor Who work. I don’t like seeing my work once it’s done, especially on a big screen. I only ever see what’s wrong with it. But I’d heard such good things about the BFI events. They were always sold out, celebratory events with lots of special guests, so I finally accepted the offer to attend for the screening of the Talons of Weng-Chiang, the Season 14 Doctor Who adventure starring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson.

That was about a month ago. Then the world turned upside down. The Covid-19 virus started to crawl from country to country, tearing up the usual conventions of society. So I had mixed feelings about attending the event at the BFI. I expected it to be cancelled, but it went ahead, so I jumped on the train and set off for London.

I met up with my good friend Chris Chatterton and we had a few beers – all very normal. London bustled and glittered, but there was a sense of unease, as if this was the end of something special.

The next day, after a very nice breakfast, I went along to the event and spoke about my work on the story. I wasn’t sure if the screening would be deserted, but it was about three quarters full.

Being interviewed by Dick Fiddy on stage at the BFI. Photo by @TheatreGoer

I think the interview and the screening of the story went down well, and it was lovely to bump into some old friends who I hadn’t seen for a while like Cameron McEwan, but the feeling of unease never went away and I was glad to be on the train and heading home again afterwards.

Photos by Cameron McEwan

Who knows what the next few days and weeks will bring, but I don’t think I’ll be going to London again for a long time.

Talking Doctor Who

Earlier this month I met up with Cameron K McEwan, broadcaster, writer, actor and owner of the popular Blogtor Who website. Cameron has written two books about Doctor Who, both of which are well worth buying. I picked up his latest work on a recent visit to London’s Forbidden Planet (£3 off no less!) and he was good enough to sign it for me.

Cameron K McKewan's book signedWe talked at length about our favourite time-travelling TV show, which was just as well because I was there for the recording of his Doctor Who Podcast. It’s been ten years since New Who returned to our screens so to celebrate we discussed the season one two-part story The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. We also touched on my work as animation producer on the DVD release of The Ice Warriors. I really enjoyed myself and, thanks to Cameron’s editing skills, I don’t sound like a complete monkey! But why not judge for yourself? The end result can be heard here. Or visit www.dwowhocast.com and look for The DWO WhoCast – Episode  #347

Beneath The Ice

If you’re interested in my work on the animated Ice Warriors episodes here’s the making-of doc from the DVD.

Ice Warriors production sketches

If you’re a Doctor Who fan you might have heard me shouting about the release of The Ice Warriors on DVD recently. Like many early Who stories some of the episodes are missing from the BBC’s archive. The Ice Warriors, first broadcast in 1967 is a six part story with episodes 2 and 3 lost to the ether. So in order to complete the story for release on DVD BBC Worldwide commissioned the production of animated versions of the missing episodes. Along with documentary maker Chris Chapman I produced the animated episodes. Director Chris Chatterton led the character design effort but this was something I was also involved with in the early stages. The hardest part was agreeing on a look for the Doctor, and our work went through many iterations. Here are a few of my sketches from that early period in production.

Doctor facial sketches

Most of these are face studies using photo reference. We were trying to capture the essence of Patrick Troughton’s performance in a stylised form – not easy! Chris took these drawings and combined them with his own studies to create the final artwork used in the animation.

Doctor body sketches

I also did some turn-around artwork for the Ice Warrior, Varga. This is an early rough. 

Rough turnaround of Varga

Rough turnaround of Varga

Finally here’s my artwork for Victoria. By this stage Chris had set the tone for the designs so my work on Victoria is a more finished, following in the the set style. Each piece of character art has to be broken up into various components in order to be used for animation. This means that the foot, calf, knee and thigh all become separate pieces of artwork, one overlaid on top of the next, so I couldn’t resist adding in a bit of extra hidden detail onto Victoria’s foot.

Work-in-progress art of Victoria.

Work-in-progress art of Victoria.

The Ice Warriors is out now! Here’s a clip from the animation:

Ice Warriors announced

I’m thrilled to reveal a project that has been keeping me busy for some time now: the animation studio I founded, Qurios, is animating two lost episodes of classic Doctor Who, and I’m co-producing them. Here’s the official announcement from DoctorWho.tv.

Lost episodes of Second Doctor adventure The Ice Warriors are being animated for DVD release, doctorwho.tv can exclusively announce. Animation studio Qurios have been commissioned to recreate the missing episodes two and three, which see Ice Warrior leader Varga revive, kidnap Victoria and defrost his glacier-bound army.

“We’ve been discussing the various ways Qurios could reconstruct these episodes for over three years” said Dan Hall, Managing Director of Pup Ltd Media Consultancy, producer of the DVD. “So it’s really, really satisfying to finally see them animated. Qurios have a great track record in excellent and innovative animations”.

It was recently announced that the Ice Warriors would be returning to Doctor Who for the first time since 1974, in a Mark Gatiss-penned adventure aboard a submarine. Find out more about the return of the Martian monsters at the BBC’s Doctor Who website.

When asked about using a different animation studio to previous releases, Hall replied, “Doctor Who has had many different visual styles thanks to changing directors, designers and production methods. We wanted to mirror this in our choice of animation partners”.

Qurios Entertainment’s previous work includes visual effects for sci-fi sitcom Hyperdrive, puppet comedy Mongrels and titles for Doctor Who DVD extra series Who Peter. Veteran producer of the classic Who range, Chris Chapman has overseen the animation, Niel Bushnell is the producer for Qurios and the animation director is Chris Chatterton.

So, exciting times! The DVD is due out in August, and I’ll talk more about the production over the coming months.

Half a Matt

Doctor Who returned on Saturday night – and a belter it was too! Here is a half-hearted sketch of Matt Smith I did before I got completely distracted.

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