Doctor Who (2005) - Series 1

The original run of Doctor Who had ceased in 1989, and by the time it had been greenlit for a revival in 2005, the BBC's methods of production and the effects industry had changed.

The original Doctor Who's special effects - creatures, miniatures, special props, and so on - were the work of several departments of the BBC. The Visual Effects Department, Design Department, Costume Department and Make-Up Department all had input on assorted serials.

The actual fabrication of puppets and costumes was another matter; for as many times as it was done 'in-house' at the respective BBC Department, there was also many cases of outsourcing to freelance companies such as Shawcraft Models, Jack Lovell's Protocol Mouldings, Bill King's Trading Post, Richard Gregory's Imagineering and so on.

In the time since the original series' cancellation in 1989, the BBC had closed down most of these departments, with Visual Effects being one of the last to go. Nick Kool, a veteran of the Visual Effects Department, glumly recalled; 'We'd seen the Design department go. Costume, Make-up...They kept Visual Effects going for longer than the other design groups, largely because of the safety aspect. There was danger involved with things like pyrotechnics. There was an insurance concern. If they went to freelancers, they could be cowboys'.

Mike Tucker, who had witnessed the closure of the Visual Effects Department in 2003, voiced his feelings in the same interview. 'The BBC decided the future was digital effects so the practical bit of the BBC's special effects had to go. After 49 years, it felt huge (...) It was horrible. It had been the death of a thousand cuts, though. The VED started (in the 1970s) as a department of 100-plus people. Over the years since '92 or '93, the staff was hacked in half a few times, until we were down to 14 designers with a handful of support staff'.

Mike Tucker, along with other Visual Effects Department veterans who had worked with him on series such as Red Dwarf, set up the BBC's Post Production Model Unit (generally known as 'The Model Unit') which worked in tandem with the BBC's Digital Effects Department.

Mike Tucker was a fan of Doctor Who, and had worked under the Visual Effects Department on the original show's last few seasons. When Tucker heard that a revival was in the works, he phoned producer Russell T Davies, and recalled how the pitch went.

'Russell was very fair. All he said was, "Come to dinner. I'll introduce you to my producers and we'll have a chat." So me, Russell, Julie (Gardner) and Phil (Collinson) all went to a restaurent in Shepherd's Bush. They said, "Yes, it's true, Doctor Who's coming back. What's the current state of visual effects in Britain and what options do we have ahead?"

I honestly thought the world had become digital but I fought my corner, saying that I felt, genuinely, the best solution is a mixture of all. A mixture of physical, prosthetic, miniature and digital. If you bung all those into the mix, you'll get a rich end result. They would have been foolish to pick just one route ad go down that.'

Tucker pitched the Model Unit to work on the show, working alongside the BBC's Digital Effects Department, but unfortunately lost the gig to The Mill, a freelance VFX company. Tucker was not to be deterred and went to The Mill directly with a card up his sleeve.

'I knew The Mill didn't have a models unit. So I went to The Mill and said, 'If you ever need any models...' And Dave Throssell, who ran that bit of The Mill at the time, said, 'We might well need some - I'll keep it in mind'. The next thing I know, I'm at the first Doctor Who planning meeting. Someone said, 'Big Ben should be a model shot'. And we were in!'

Tucker's Model Unit team contributed several impressive miniature effects sequences, such as the underground factory blowing up in 'Rose', Big Ben's destruction in 'Aliens of London', and of course the Emperor Dalek in 'Parting of the Ways'.

Meanwhile, the revived Doctor Who's assorted makeup and creature effects fell to Neill Gorton and Rob Mayor's Millennium FX. Millennium FX handled the bulk of the series monsters and aliens all the way until the show's final season in 2025.

Neill Gorton himself was a fan of the original Doctor Who series, and so was very excited at news of the revival. However, he only got the job thanks to being recommended for the role by makeup artist Davy Jones, who balked at the show's heavy workload.

Gorton recounted in a podcast years later about how he got the job, as well as how chaotic the first series' heavy workload was for his company.

'I was lucky that it was a friend of mine who was asked to do the show. He realized that it was basically too big a deal for him so he just took the straight makeup work, and told them to call me! I wanted to do the show before I heard from them, but when I heard that Davey was doing it, I just forgot about it and then next thing I know, I'm getting a phone call from the producer!

The first series was just insane, because the BBC didn't really support it. There wasn't a lot of money, so it was a really difficult first year and we didn't make a penny out of it. It was just such hard work, but then it just took off, and it's turned into this great big monster of a show!'

'Rose'

The first episode of the revival brought back the plastic mannequin-like Autons, last seen facing off Jon Pertwee in 1971's 'Terror of the Autons'. Millennium FX's new Autons took inspiration from real-world shop mannequins.

Most of the Autons were realized as pullover masks and prosthetic gloves. A set of sculptures were done in clay, each one evoking real mannequin designs; alongside the 'male' and 'female' Auton masks were 'child' Auton masks and blank-faced Auton masks.

Fibreglass moulds were made from the sculpture, and a material called PT-Flex was poured into the moulds to make the masks. PT-Flex is not a totally elastic material, meaning the masks couldnt stretch over the wearers head and so had to be split open at the back.

The shots of the Auton arm attacking Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper were achieved via a stuntman wearing nothing but one of the prosthetic Auton gloves and a greenscreen suit.

Meanwhile the shots of the Autons firing their 'gun hands' were realized, in a similar manner to the 1970 originals, as a mechanized prop hand attached to a fake arm that the performer's real arm wore like a glove. The fake hand was fitted with a detonating charge inside.

A set of torso and arm prosthetics - one with a man's body shape, the other with a woman's - were made for the 'undressed' Autons that menace Billie Piper underneath the department store. The principal Auton performers were Paul Kasey, Elizabeth Fost and Alan Ruscoe.

A body cast had to be taken of each performer, with the foam latex suits proved to be uncomfortable when filming in a warm building according to Paul Kasey.

'We were underneath a hospital and all the heating pipes were down the corridors when where we were filming, so it was quite warm and you could't get away from it. (...) We were wearing whole bodysuits - the rubber semblance - which, once we were in, we could't get out of. They were a bit toasty.' Alan Ruscoe echoed Kasey's feelings in the same Doctor Who Magazine interview. 'Yeah, we were pretty moist by the end of the night!'.

One sequence had Noel Clarke's character replaced by an Auton doppelganger made of plastic; the plasticky sheen was achieved with heavy makeup and a stylized, fakey hairpiece. The scenes where the plastic doppelganger shapehifts weapons from his hands was achieved with paddle-shaped prosthetic gloves worn over Noel Clarke's hands.

A dummy head in Noel Clarke's likeness was made for when the plastic doppelganger has its head yoinked off; the dummy head was rigged to collapse inwards when the plastic 'melts'.

'The End of the World'

The episode's premise, of a congregation of aliens witnessing the Sun's destruction of Earth in the far future, provided Millennium FX with a very heavy workload. An elaborate prosthetic was designed for Yasmin Bannerman for her role as the humanoid tree Jabe.

Director Euros Lyn spoke about the design of the Jabe prosthetics. 'The original sketches we had for Jabe had her with a bark-like skin and quite a pointy noise. In the end, we went through all the trees. Is she an oak? No. Is she an ash? No. We decided that she was going to be a silver birch, which was why she has quite a smooth and shiny skin.'

The original design brief was followed for Jabe's assistants; Paul Kasey and Alan Ruscoe both wore gnarled, bark-like prosthetics. The 'wooden' armor was made by Robert Allsopp & Associates, a freelance prosthetic and costume-making company.

This would mark the first time that Allsopp contributed to the revived Doctor Who, and in later years contribute heavily to the series' creature effects. Similarly to Mike Tucker, Robert Allsopp was a veteran of the original Doctor Who, making creature suits for its final seasons.

The Moxx of Balhoon was originally envisaged as a digital creation, but the job of realizing it was passed to Millennium FX. At first it was discussed the Moxx as a puppet, but instead they settled on a combination of a false prop chair and prosthetics.

Charlie Bluett, one of Millennium FX's team members, explained to Doctor Who Magazine. 'A big blob of jelly with a whole load of eyes on it! That's what I got from the script. The actual design - this chubby little alien on a platform - is the work of Neill, my boss. A blob of jelly would have been harder to get across as a character'.

The costume was worn by Jimmy Vee, who would play many other Doctor Who aliens. The head alone too two hours to put on. Bluett explained how the Moxx was achieved. 'Hiding Jimmy's legs underneath the travelling platform makes the Moxx look even smaller. It turns him into a complete other life form, because not even dwarves are that small. The prosthetics alone are relatively comfy, because they're stuck straight onto Jimmy's face.

The one difficult thing is that the head - the main, swollen head part is made out of fibreglass, and within that is a fibreglass cap, which is basically meshed around a life-cast of his head, so once you're wearing that, rubbing and grinding at the skin, it does become a little irritating and uncomfy. It tends to do a tiny bit of damage and cause skin irritations.'

The episode's other elaborate Millenium FX creation was the Face of Boe, a large animatronic with mechanized eyes and mouth movements. The Face of Boe puppet was reused in the second series episode 'New Earth' and the third series episode 'Gridlock'.

After its appearance in these episodes, the Face of Boe puppet was put on display in various Doctor Who exhibitions, alongside many other Millennium FX creations for the show.

The episode's villain, Cassandra, was written as a satire on celebrity culture's obsession with cosmetics and beauty standards. Russell T Davies explained; 'I was a bit stuck for a villain for Episode 2, until I watched last year's Oscars ceremony. I think it's vile - all those beautiful wome becoming lollipop-headed and stick-thin, dying in front of us...and we're meant to clap!

Once that connected with the word 'transparent' I knew what I wanted to do. I think remmebered Katharine Helmond's character having a facelift in the movie Brazil, which was fantastically grotesque, It's an old enough image now to use again and enhance.'

Cassandra was primarily a digital creation handled by The Mill, but Millennium FX still supplied a physical prop for background shots, and as reference for the CG animators. Millennium FX constructed the main frame, the 'skin' and the brain prop at the bottom of the frame.

The frame (and the brain prop inside) were reused for the following series' episode 'New Earth', weathered by freelance prop maker Mark Cordoroy.

Several alien masks and gloves were made for the various extras playing the other alien guests; the designs included reptilian aliens, bird aliens, and assorted cyborg masks.

While Millennium FX made the masks and prosthetic gloves, the actual outfits were hired from costume houses; can you spot the 'aliens' that are just medieval beekeeper costumes?

'Aliens of London / World War Three'

One of the many comedic elements of this two-parter was the 'space pig' - an Earth pig mutilated to be able to walk upright and dressed in a spacesuit as a fake 'alien'.

Millennium FX made an animatronic pig mask and prosthetic pig feet and hands for Jimmy Vee to wear as the unlucky farm animal, with the spacesuit made by Robert Allsopp & Associates.

The grisly comedy elements were furthered with the evil aliens' disguises being the skins of humans they had murdered. The first stage of the 'reveal' consisted of 'zipper' forehead prosthetics worn by the respective actors playing disguised aliens.

A set of 'empty' skin props were made from lifecasts taken of Annette Badland, David Verrey and Rupert Vansittart. Other skin props with grossly distended faces were made for shots of the aliens taking off their disguises.

A performer in a greenscreen suit would take off the prop, as if they were wearing it; the greenscreened actor would be replaced by a CG model in post-production.

The two-parter's evil aliens, a family of grotesque aliens called the Slitheen, were a collaboration between Millennium FX and The Mill. The Millenium FX suits were used for the majority of their scenes, while The Mill's digital models were used for assorted action shots.

Neill Gorton designed the Slitheen based on Davies' descriptions in the script. 'I did the first Slitheen design drawing after reading just the script for 'Aliens of London', which didn't specify that the Slitheen had legs. So my first design had them legless. Then I got the script for 'World War Three' and saw that legs were involved! Back to the drawig board!

The script had described the Slitheen as eight-feet-tall and green, with a baby face. Russell was very specific about that baby face, so that was the aspect that went through the most design drawings, in order to get it right. Basically, you do a drawing and people say whether it's going in the right direction. On some things, Russell would tell us to go our own way, but on other things he'd be very specific.

The Slitheen's face went through a lot of changes. My original Slitheen design was minus a nose. I made a model out of clay, with eyes which were more 'slitted in'. We emailed that to Russell and he wanted to try a nose. '

Rob Mayor explained how the Slitheen suits were constructed. 'The design specified quite a babyish look...Well, they look like big, bad babies. They wanted the eyes to be quite round, which knocked out the option of us being able to do eye blinks, because you need eyelids to do that, so the CG people will add them in later. What you've got here is a skull cap - this ones made to fit Alan (Ruscoe). And then the fibreglass core - it always looks a bit bish-bash-bosh on the inside - and you've got all the servos that control the lips and stuff.

'Basically, they're the same servos that you'd use for a remote-controlled car or plane; we also use the same kind of remote-control units, so we have different crystals for different frequencies. The heads attach to the suits under, like, a fold of fat so that you can't see the join, and then we've got the voice boxes on the front.'

Only three Slitheen suits were made by Millennium FX; crowd shots of Slitheen were achieved via shooting each suit in front of a greenscreen to be edited into the on-set footage during post-production. The suits were worn by Paul Kasey, Alan Ruscoe and Elizabeth Fost.

Rob Mayor elaborated on the Slitheen suits; 'We've been using foam latex to make monster suits for years and years. It's soft, it bends, it's flexible - but the main thing is, it's light. You could make a suit out of silicon or something, which would look exactly like real skin, but the weight would be enormous - and it wouldnt pick up so well on camera.'

They're as comfortable as they can be, I think, within the confines of being wrapped in a giant mattress! A prime example is that (the Slitheen) had leg extensions to stat off with - a standard thing for werewolves and creatures like that - but because of shooting schedules and how long they actually had to stand up for, and having to manoeuvre around the set, we decided to discard the leg extensions to make it more comfortable for them.

At the end of the day, the worst thing is the head. It's amazing hot in there. It's like sitting in a sauna. The guys inside do an amazing job. I ca't stress how hard their job is. Between takes, we can them and blow in cool air, but they still have to have amazing endurance.

(....) They sweat so much that they don't actually have to go to the toilet. Literally, they sweat buckets. And we can unbolt the head so that they can have a drink. The arms we glue on but we can take off in about five minutes. If they're not being used for a bit, we'll take off an arm'.

Alan Ruscoe described how torturous the process of wearing the Slitheen suits was. 'Wherever I was going, I was leaving a nice little trail on the floor - a pool of sweat wherever I sat. At the end of the day, when we'd finished, you wring out the costume and water just gushes out.'

As usual with creature suit acting, each actor tried to give a real performance from inside the rubber. Fost said about her role as the female Slitheen, 'I've worked on creating a slightly different way of movement from the boys so that there's a, sort of, male/female distinction - in the way that I walk and move. It's inevitable anyway, because I'm smaller than they are.'

Alan Ruscoe added, 'We're working very much in tandem with the guys who control our faces. You have to develop almost a 'sixth sense'. You can hear when the face is moving and you know the lines that are being said, so it's down to you to put it physically: a basic actor's job.'

It wasn't just the Slitheen performers who suffered, as Neill Gorton remembered how harrowing the schedule was. 'As the deadline approached, we got less and less sleep. We had to make three Slitheen - all different shapes and sizes - four or five human 'skins' and all the zipper prosthetics, among the other effects (shooting) in Block One, like Autons!

By the end, we literally didn't sleep. There was literally blood, sweat and tears: a whole bunch of crew in here who did a sterling effort. It took about 24 people: everybody stuck their heads down and piled into it. One time, we worked until three in the morning.

We got a few hours sleep, then worked all the way through the next night, before loading all our creations into the van and heading off to Cardiff. The paint was still fresh on the Slitheen, by the time they were shooting the first scenes.

Of course, you also find things to adjust as you go along. So you're still getting them out of costumes in between scenes and working on improvements. On the first day of shooting I was just a shambles. I was hanging in rags! It would probably have been better for me not to be there: I wasn't being much use to anybody.'

'Dalek'

It was Mike Tucker's Model Unit that got to construct the revived series' first Dalek prop; the reason why Tucker was chosen over any number of freelancers was precisely because of his background of working on the original Doctor Who. Tucker explained;

'(Davies) was nervous about the idea of giving the Daleks to someone who'd not worked with them before. He figured somebody would screw up the design and the silhouette and try and turn them into something that they weren't. Imagine that happening...!

Russell brought along a Dapol toy Dalek and placed it on my desk. He said, "That is what will happen, if somebody who does not love Daleks builds them. If you get the proportions wrong, they are not Dalek-shaped. When you see them in silhouette, I want everyone to go: it's a Dalek."

Tucker had to work from artwork by concept artist Matt Savage and production designer Edward Thomas. Thomas had his own ideas about how the new Daleks should look like. 'We've added elements to them that I really feel make them a lot more chunky. I think we've done a sort of Mini Cooper to the Dalek! To make it look more powerful, as if it has a lot more attitude, it really needed to look like a metal piece of kit that could really do some harm. You've really got to believe that this thing can take over the Earth very easily.'

Tucker confirmed that Thomas was the one responsible for the new Daleks' more 'industrial' look. 'Ed was very clear about this. He said he wanted it to look brutal and heavy and real. That's why it does have rusty streaks and rivet-heads, so you think,'Something's built this'. He wanted to take out the flimsier aspects, such as the mesh, and wanted heavy things bolted on, so it looked like you couldn't get into this thing if you tried.'

Davies was also insistent that the new Daleks follow the outline of the 1960s originals, as Mike Tucker found out when he brought a Dalek prop based on the design of the Daleks constructed by BBC Visual Effects in the 1980s. 'It was one of two very accurate, very beautiful copies that my colleague Scott Wayland had built. (...) Ed had brought all the design drawings done by his team, showing how they'd like to update them. We went through the Remembrance Dalek, piece by piece. Things were said about the gun looking a bit weak, and the sink plungr obviously being a sink plunger. Blow by blow, we through it, relating back to Ed's designs.

That actually didn't work for us, because Dalek aficionados that the shape of them has changed considerablly over the years. For one thing, the base section with all the balls on it, has flattened out - they used to be more like the prow of a ship, but they've become more vertical. Russell, being such a stickler for his classic Daleks, said, "No, I don't want them to look like 1980s BBC Daleks - I want them to look like 1960s Shawcraft Daleks!"

So he didn't want us to use the existing (BBC Visual Effects) moulds, because they weren't 'pointy' enough. We had to go back and make sure we were working on a 1960s-style Dalek and not a 1980s style one. I know it sounds like there's not that much difference, but he's the exec, and actually, he's right. It's a more elegant design.'

Complicating matters further was that Tucker's team only had three weeks to build a fully functional Dalek prop! There was not enough time to construct the prop from scratch, so instead Mike Tucker turned to veteran Doctor Who fan convention organizer Andrew Beech.

Beech sacrificed two fan-made Dalek props for Tucker's team to construct the new Dalek props from. 'It sounds criminal, but we took these two beautifully-made Daleks - which were made by Dave Brian and Steve Allen - and we stripped them completely down, until we had a 1960s-shaped base that we could use as the basis for our knew Dalek. Having got that, it saved us' a week's work: we could take our moulds from it. Why try to reinvent the wheel?'

The lone Dalek in the episode spends half of the episode damaged, before it succeeds in powering itself back into working order. Thus, the two cannibalized fan-made props were able to serve the story's purposes well according to the Tucker.

'We did actually use both of the Daleks' 'skirts' too, so I was then in a position to start building all the new stuff. We put the panel lines into the head, as per the design drawings. We had to completely rebuild the shoulder section because it had much more intricate design in it.

We were able to go away and get the guns and eye-stalks made. Myself and my teammates Scott Wayland, Nick Kool and Melvyn Friend built two Daleks - one in its battered, tortured state, the base of which would then be swapped over to become the new Dalek.

Then we built the opened-out one you see at the end of ('Dalek') which has revealed its creature inside. There was crossover with Neill Gorton's team, to make sure that his creature - a lovely piece of work - would fit inside our Dalek.'

Mike Tucker also made sure to end a recurring problem that all the original Dalek props - whether made by Shawcraft Models, Westbury Design or BBC Visual Effects - had suffered from. 'Traditionally the operator inside is also trying to operate the gun, the sucker, the eye and the head turning all at the same time, and inevitably that's meant that in the rush and panic of a take, occasionally they have little jumps of the head or the body moves a little bit.

We've taken control of the head and eye away from the operator, so he can concentrate on the smooth movement, and getting the arm and gun doing what they want. The head movement, and the eye going up and down will be radio-controlled by one of my colleagues.'

The bronze paintjob on the new Dalek was actually Russell T Davies' idea. '(Russell) always wanted it to be copper and bronze. He wanted them to look metallic; therefore he picked metallic colours. I know that Ed and Matt (Savage) had done designs in gun-metals and silvers, but Russell liked his copper and bronze, so that's what we went with.

Russell said we should take Dalek references from everything: let's look at the Peter Cushing films, the TV21 comic strip, the Dalek anuals, the television series...We chose bits that we liked best from all these Dalek sources. Then Ed and Matt turned that into the final design. So yes, it's got ears and a face with a certain amount of heritage from the films.'

As an aside: It is a myth that the Model Unit's Dalek prop was instructed to be built to the same height as Billie Piper; according to Mike Tucker, no such instructions were ever given.

The Model Unit's Dalek prop would be reused prominently, not just in the series finale 'Parting of the Ways', but also later series episodes such as 'Doomsday' and 'Daleks in Manhattan', where the prop was given a matte black paintjob in its guise as 'Dalek Sec'.

The Model Unit prop was reverted to a bronze paintjob in the fouth series' finale 'Journey's End', and would make sporadic appearances in its bronze livery in later series episodes such as 'Asylum of the Daleks' and 'The Witch's Familiar'.

Mike Tucker praised Edward Thomas and Matt Savage's Dalek design that he had made a prop from. 'I think Matt and Ed's redesign is stunning. For somebody who doesn't know the series at all. they don't look any different. People say, 'Haven't they always looked like that?' But people who do know the series backwards think, 'Wow, they've redesigned everything!'. It's a beautiful bit of work, in that it updates them without losing the classic feel.'

Millennium FX were tasked with the the Dalek mutant revealed at the end of the episode; the mutant was realized as a cable-controlled puppet. The puppet was reused for the Emperor Dalek mutant in 'Parting of the Ways', where it was filmed underwater.

The underwater filming for the finale episode had an unfortunate side effect; it made the animatronic mechanisms rusty, meaning the puppet could never be used on-screen again! The foam latex 'skin' was used for Doctor Who exhibition displays.

'The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances'

Set during the Blitz, this two-parter was about a nanotechnology that forcibly transformed peoples faces into gas masks. The wartime setting was a problem; not only were vintage gas masks hard to find, but they also were a health risk thanks to containing asbestos.

Millennium FX supplied several sets of fake gas masks; the main part of the masks were made of foam latex and cast from a clay sculpture. The goggles were taken from surplus Soviet gas masks, but the nozzles were actually cut-up baked bean tins!

The masks were merely just worn on the performers face like a real mask, but close-up shots had the edges of the mask were blended to the wearer's skin with makeup, to make it appear as if the rubber was fused to the flesh.

While the gas masks of 'The Empty Child' were technically the 'faces' of the infected victims, Millennium FX would later make 'costume' masks for certain episodes, such as the ballroom masks in 'Girl in the Fireplace' or the Santa masks in 'The Runaway Bride'.

'Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways'

The series finale was set in a dystopian far future where people are forced to take part in deadly versions of 2000s gameshows. The Weakest Link is one of these gameshows, now presented by a murderous robot called Anne Droid.

Aside from caricaturing Anne Robinson, the Anne Droid was designed to evoke old-fashioned robot designs according to Davies. 'They're meant to look a bit 60s-ish, a bit retro. I love the face of the Anne Droid, it's silver! Silver like what you'd expect science-fiction droids to be.'

Paul Kasey played the Anne Droid, and found it to be a harsh experience; the skullcape he wore that connected to the mask's mechanisms was too tight. 'Whenever I put this horrendous black thing on, it gouges rather large rakes of my face, which is rather fun!'

Neill Gorton confirmed how unpleasant the Anne Droid costume was for anyone inside it. 'It takes them about an hour to get into the costume alone. The whole thing is like armor; it goes on, bolts in places, lots of screws and once they're in it is quite restrictive. Sometimes that sort of (robotic) movement you get, that's the only way they can move!'

Two more robot costumes were fabricated by Millennium FX for the episode's spoof of What Not To Wear; the Trine-E and Zu-Zana costumes were designed in a style closer to more contemporary robot toys. Alan Ruscoe and Paul Kasey played the two robots.

The Daleks are revealed to be secretly controlling this dystopian future for their own ends, and launch a full-scale invasion of Earth. While the script called for hundreds of Daleks storming the spacestation, only three physical props were used.

Despite the Model Unit's work on 'Dalek', they were not called upon to make the two extra Dalek props. Mike Tucker said, 'I had no involvement in the other two. Having delivered, if you like, the prototype model, the others were handled by (Edward Thomas)'s local crew, down in Cardiff. All they had to do was copy it. They're the guys operating them in the studio, so it made sense to hande that over. But we obviously got involved in the Emperor.'

The Model Unit's Dalek prop was used in the finale two-parter, flanked by two new props built by Specialist Models, a freelance propmaking company. Specialist Models had already been contracted by Edward Thomas to construct the full-size TARDIS prop.

As Specialst Models did not have access to the Model Unit's resources, their two new Daleks were not made from the same moulds, and so were instead made from photo references of the Model Unit prop. There were minute construction differences to the respective props.

The Model Unit were tasked with realizing the Emperor Dalek commanding the fleet of Dalek warships. Mike Tucker recalled how he got the job of realizing the Emperor.

'Having constructed a Dalek that was very traditional in its look, it was great to then go and do a Dalek that was completely unlike any Dalek you've ever seen before! I managed to do both ends of the scale: traditional and brand-new.

A while after Christmas 2004, Ed and his guys showed me this beautiful set of designs for the new Emperor and basically said, 'Is this something that could be don feasily?' There were a number of things they could do - including, at that point, the option of not having the Emperor at all! So I looked at the design drawings and decided that yes, it was feasible to do, and I could do it quite closeto the designs. We agreed a figure and a time-scale and started work.'

Mike Tucker recalled how construction of the Emperor went. 'Me and Nick Kool worked on the build and I was also lucky enough to have Alan Brannan, who had just come off the Alien Vs Predator and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movies as a model-maker. It was a question of getting it built as fast as possible, so it was ready to hit the edit deadline.

Nic made this circular base with three big shield-like panels on it, studded with balls, as per the normal Dalek design. We then had these great mechanical knuckles that hold the central core. I built the central core, the Alan did the eye-stalk, the creature and the mechanical bit with all the arms on it. The three of us worked on separate sections.'

'A few things on Dan's (CG) design I felt we could change, in order to link in with the Dalek prop that we'd made in episode six. Just below the dome, what would be the slats in the Dalek's shoulder section (...) were changed to look more like the original Dalek.

We also thought that the eye-stalk itself would look silly if it was just one big tube. So Alan broke that down into lots of indivisual little eye-stalks: just things to help give it scale.

'In the end, our model stood about five foot tall: approximately one-sixth scale of what it should be. By doing the Emperor that big, it allowed us to put a level of detail on it that wouldn't necessarily be there if it'd been going smaller.

It enabled us to use a lot more pipes and bits and pieces. It also gave us the ability to make up a reasonable copy of Neill's animatronic creature, which Alan sculptued up for me, using a modelling clay called Sculpt that hardens when you bake it.

Our clay version of Neill's creature obviously isn't mechanized at all - it just sits there - but it means that in the wide shots you've got something the right shap that you can cut back into.'

Mike Tucker was proud of his work on the Dalek Emperor. 'By the time we got to build the Dalek Emperor, we built the design to the letter. (...) A beautiful bit of design by Dan Walker. It worked as an actual object in a 3D space, because Dan's an industrial designer. It changed everything to do with a Dalek, but was still recognisable a Dalek.'

All effects - miniature or not - need the help of good cinematography, and director of photography Peter Tyler pulled from his background in 1980s adverts. 'Back then, I'd gradually learned, by watching other DOPs, how to make packed products look beautiful. When the Dalek Emperor turned up, it was all shiny gold panels, beautiful to look at. I was able to take my time, using great big panels to reflect light onto it.'

The Dalek Emperor sequence was a perfect usage of digital technology enhancing the effects, rather than smothering them, as Tucker explained. 'In the final shot, you have actors in the foreground, shot against green screen. Our Emperor model is the next layer in that sandwich. Behind that is a digital matte painting and then flying around it are CG Daleks) Our model had a little three-inch creature figure, but whenever we cut close to it, we're seeing Neill Gorton's animatronic creature, matted into our miniatur environment.'

Sources:

• Doctor Who Magazine #356
  
• Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #11 'The Series One Companion'
  
• Doctor Who Magazine #472 'Bang Up to Date!' Mike Tucker interview
  
• Assorted 'Doctor Who Confidential' featurettes
  
• Dalek 6388 fansite (A history of Doctor Who's Dalek props)
  

Continued in Doctor Who (2005) - Series 2