The Miniature Effects of Doctor Who (2005) - Part 1

(This article is a spin-off from the main article covering the makeup and creature effects of the 2005 Doctor Who's first series, which also covered how Mike Tucker's Model Unit team made the first new Dalek prop. Some text has been copied from that page!)

In the time since the original series' cancellation in 1989, the BBC had closed down most of its internal 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'.

The BBC's Post Production Model Unit (generally known as 'The Model Unit'), was set up by Mike Tucker alongside other Visual Effects Department veterans. The Model Unit worked in tandem with the BBC's Digital Effects Department, which specialized in CGI.

Tucker had been a longtime 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 and go down that.'

Tucker pitched the Model Unit to work on the show, aiming to work alongside the BBC's Digital Effects Department, so that the BBC itself could provide both miniature and digital effects. Unfortunately the gig instead went to The Mill, a freelance digital VFX company.

In the early 2000s, computer-generated VFX was still relatively new to the industry, with even Industrial Light & Magic relying on practical miniatures for most of their 'digital' VFX work. Mike Tucker was aware of this, and so decided to use this fact to his advantage.

'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!'

'Rose'

The revived Doctor Who's first episode included a miniature effects sequence of an underground factory blowing up. Mike Tucker compared how it was making effects as a freelancer versus his past as a BBC employee.

'Now, that job was a really good example of being in charge of my own budget. I could choose what scale I wanted to build the model. Had I been at the BBC during the 80s, I wouldn't have been allowed to do it that big. So the new ethic came in: we could do stuff at movie scales and hopefully make it seamless with the rest of the production.'

Peter Tyler, the Model Unit's director of photography, spoke about the challenges both of filming pyrotechnics and imitating the 'look' of the location footage. 'When possible, I liaise with the main unit's DOP (director of photography) and talk about how they're lighting the set, the exposure, the colour balance etc. I then go away and work that into the model shoot, so that we end up with something that looks very similar. All shots are graded anyway, post-production, but we want to be as close to the main unit's look as we can. I shot the Nestene lair with two hand-held cameras and we got good light reference from the main unit, receiving tapes of what Ernie (Vincze, the episode's DOP) had shot.

One thing that's often overlooked when you're filming with pyrotechnics is that when a petrol bang goes off - or a titanium bang with white sparks - they're very, very bright. If you don't compensate for that with your lighting of the set then they'll just 'white out'. You'll get no detail in them at all. So you have to put even more lights on the set - bigger and bigger lamps, hotter and brighter - so we can still see the detail of the flames and the explosion.'

The miniature shot was so well done that viewers assumed it was just pyrotechnics being set off in the real location! Tucker said, 'Unfortunately for us, nobody spotted it was a model shot. Everyone thought it was done on set! So nobody knew we'd done it.'

'Aliens of London'

One of the Model Unit's standout gags was the shot of London's Big Ben smashed by the wings of an alien spaceship. Nick Kool explained how the Big Ben model was constructed.

'We now had the use of computer-controlled machines for cutting and milling which could give our models greater detail. So we managed to get a lot of detail done in styrene, which 10 years before would probably have to have been done by hand. And it was important to get as much detail as possible in Big Ben's stone-work.

One side of the clock face didn't need to break so that was solid and stuck directly onto the timber. The other side was pure plaster, which (the spaceship's) wings could go through. But until you do it, you don't know exactly what's going to happen, so we had two clock faces.

We did one test, without the clock face, just to get an idea of what was gonna happen. Mike had made a large wing out of tumber, which we put on a piece of scaffolding which basically swung throug an arc, pushed by hand.'

Peter Tyler explained how he filmed the sequence. 'My priority again was to make it look real. We had a painted sky backing which matched what had been shot on the day. I used a low camera angle, as if we could have been shooting from down in the street somewhere.

You've always got to think about how you'd do it if it was real. If you're underwater, you want a slightly 'drifting' feel, because you can't lock a camera off underwater. And if you're up in the air, you want to feel as if you might be filming from another aircraft. You might give it a jiggle, to get that effect.'

Mike Tucker was very satisfied with the sequence, especially after he saw Russell T Davies' reaction. "Russell came in to see Big Ben and he was like, 'My god, it's huge! I thought it was going to be about two-foot high! But if it was two-foot high, it would look like a crap model. I was very pleased it was the same scale as the one they blew up in the V for Vendetta movie. This was the first chance we had to really put movie scale effects into Doctor Who."

'The Empty Child'

The episode's opening sequence of an air raid during the Second World War required many shots of a barrage balloon, and it was the Model Unit who were tasked to realize it. Tucker recalled, 'It kind of dropped in our lap almost by default: nobody else wanted to do it! For the physical guys, it was too big. For the digital effects guys, it was too floppy. So Nick Built it as a model with all the strings and bits hanging off it.'

Kool said 'Designing this thing from the 1940s was almost like working on a period drama! Because this thing obviously had to be floppy, we hand to cast it in a soft form. When you pulled on the lines below, it would wobble about, exactly like a barrage balloon.'

Tucker explained in detail how the miniature balloon was fabricated. 'The model was a two-week build, making the model barrage balloon approximately 5-foot long. (...) How we did the fins, we started with a basic polystyrene shape which has been sculpted, giving us the overall contours. (...) We wanted to have this feeling of stretched fabric and everything under pressure. The entire polystyrene sculpture's been covered by a layer of foam (rubber).

That foam has in turn been covered in a layer of polythene, and that polythene has then been wired to give us these fantastic crease marks, and a general feeling of something under tension. We did that with both the fins and the main body of the balloon. Having got that, we took a two-part plaster mold of it to manufacture a rubber hollow balloon, that has all the details that you see in the original, with the added advantage that has a bit of a bounce to it.'

'The Parting of the Ways'

The Model Unit also constructed the Emperor Dalek for the finale episode of the first series. 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 example of digital technology enhancing practical effects, rather than replacing 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.'

'The Christmas Invasion'

The show's first Christmas special would also be the last time the Model Unit contributed a miniature effect during Russell T Davies' time as producer. The episode required several shots of building's windows shattering as a spaceship descends on London.

These shots included both a tower block's windows shattering, and the entirety of London's Gherkin tower, but the latter instead was a digital shot contributed by The Mill. Tucker explained why he lost his chance to destroy yet another British landmark.

'Originally, when I left the planning meeting, we were going to be doing the Gherkin. We started to work out how big that model would need to be, with all the curved glass and everything. nd finally we said, 'Forget it. We're not going to be do that, in your budget'. So The Mill took that bit on and we did the tower block. It's pretty much an accurate replica of the estate in London, sixth scale. Some stuff we've done in recent episodes was bigger, but that wss sizable at the time. I didn't want to build somethig that looked like a doll's house! We wanted to go quarter scale, but couldn't afford it!'

Peter Tyler said about the tower block sequence, 'That was a huge model! We shot that very high speed - I seem to remember 500 frames per second - to capture the action. They used very thin real glass. Mark Holt did the pyrotechnics for us, using a programme on his laptop to trigger them, so they were very precise.'

Colin Mapson, a member of the Model Unit who was also a veteran of the BBC's Visual Effects Department, was pleased with how many of these shots were hard to spot as miniatures. 'It was really difficult - in fact almost impossible - to tell what were model shots and what was real action. And once you've achieved that, you've achieved what you set out to do.'

Sadly, the Model Unit was forced off the series, only contributing nondescript effects shots, such as an explosion in 'School Reunion' or dust blowing in 'The Impossible Planet', that were shot to be superimposed on digital effects shots by the Mill.

It was producer Phil Collinson who was most responsible for pushing the Model Unit out of the show in favor of The Mill. Rocky Marshall, another Model Unit member, recalled Collinson's viewpoint. "Phil was saying, 'This is how contemporary effects are done and this is what Doctor Who should be pursuing. In itself, this is no bad ambition at all."

Contrary to Collinson's feeling, the Mill's CGI and digital mattes were consistently poor quality when compared to the Model Unit's work, which Mike Tucker resented. "Ultimately, I feel that Phil was wrong. I mean, I can't say that any other way. If I didn't feel that, I wouldn't be doing what I do. Phil had problems, artistically and budget-wise, with what we did. I'm not going to sit here and slag him off. It did, however, rankle me, because I want to work on Doctor Who! And I would then watch episodes go out and think, 'We would've done that better."

Besides the bad taste so common to film and television producers, Collinson had more cynical reasons for driving away the Model Unit. 'The truth is, it was financial, pure and simple. We could tell the story digitally so much more cheaply. One model shot in 'Aliens of London' - the spaceship hitting Big Ben - was the most expensive shot in the entire series. And I couldn't allow that to happen across the board. In those days, when the show was new, it was important to show that we were responsible and could bring the in on budget. If I'd overspent there was a very real risk that the BBC would say, 'We can't afford it' and cancel us again!'

Ironically, the show was eventually cancelled in 2026, during which Phil Collinson was producer of it again, when it had more of a budget than ever before, much of which was wasted on generic, bland CGI effects. So how you like them apples, Phil Collinson?

Sources:

• Doctor Who Magazine #472 'Bang Up to Date!' Mike Tucker interview
  
• 'Mike Tucker's Mocks of Balloon' featurette