The Chronicle

This was the second of the Chapter Art Center FAN-tasia events. Last year they showed Fire in the Blood a fan made Star Trek episode, based on a David Gerrold script, commissioned for the fourth season of the Original Series, just before NBC iced it. Sunday’s screen was of Doctor Who fan films running the gamut from good, through bad to the downright bizarre. The event started with a series of computer animated scenes based on John Curra’s telesnaps of Evil of the Daleks. Then a brief CGI clip that shows what happens if you cross old stye Rover Dalek with the new BMW Daleks.
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Next came Deconstruction, a dark psychological drama in which humans have discovered some sort of Cyberman artifact on an asteroid and Tomb/Moonbase style Cybermen come to take it back, killing every human in site. This film has very little dialogue and is filmed mostly in black and white at night, this adds considerably to the tension of the story. The few shots in colour and in daylight are the dreams and nightmares of the only human survivor, when he remembers a happy time on his last trip to his homeworld with his wife. The lack of dialogue actually improves this film adding to the tension. The incidental music is also excellent. Although the thing that really makes this worth watching is the twist at the end, which I did not see coming.

The mood was lightened by A Clockwork Dalek which was basically Kubric’s A Clockwork Orange done with Doctor Who characters and monsters. For some bizarre reason, the TomDoc Droog was a shop window dummy with Tom Baker’s head and scarf. The only reason I can think for this was a mikey-take of the infamous Five Doctors publicity photo which featured four of the actors playing The Doctor and a mannequin of Doctor#4 because Tom Baker refused to have anything to do with that particular project. This film was as mad as a box of frogs and was great fun to watch.

There then followed Fire and Ice, an hour long story made by Doctor Who 2009, the first of a full 13 part series they plan to produce over the next few years. This is final and clinching proof that whilst the Americans dearly love Doctor Who they should on no account ever be allowed to make it. The story starts with the proto-companion Alice Hemmingway having a nightmare that featured a fairy with neon wings that was in no way the Controller from Bad Wolf/End of Time at all, honest guvnor. Then we are introduced to Alice, a woman who wants to be Katie Sackhof so badly, it is painful. On her way to college that morning, she gets diverted by an UNIT soldier, and whilst taking a detour through the woods nearly runs over some sort or lizard and a strange man in a long black coat. This turns out to be The Doctor, who with the help of the United States division of UNIT is trying to thwart an Ice Warrior invasion plot. So where do I start with this one. Well, for starters it was so slow. It had an interesting premise and good story, but it moved with the pace of a slug on a glacier. The whole thing should have been half an hour from start to finish and had so much unnecessary padding it was painful. Then there was The Doctor, who seemed to combine all the worse elements of Tennant’s Doctor with all the worse elements of Smith’s (which is amazing as this was filmed at the same time as Smith’s first series, so the writer would have no idea what Doctor#11 was like). Finally, there was Alice’s best friend Marrissa, whose acting was so bad it was funny. This is a girl who was supposedly born and brought up in Maryland, but every syllable she uttered proved that she had “like totally never left Southern California in her life” and just did not ring true. Also her performance in the scene in which she was trying to calm down and sympathise with her obviously very freaked out best friend was so over the top that it looked more like she was trying to seduce Alice and finally fulfill her life-long crush on her best friend. Other minor nitpick included the UNIT soldier’s very non-regulation haircut and the appalling choice of David Bowie’s Star Man when The Doctor arrives at Alice’s front door towards the end to invite her on the trip of a lifetime.

The event ended with something that made A Clockwork Dalek look sane and perfectly reasonably. Doctor Like featured an incomprehensible Geordie Doctor battling with a Cyberbaby, ie an eight year old boy dressed as a cybusman. It was a ten minute short filmed entirely on an iPhone in one of Cardiff’s many parks. The makers of this epic are also the organizers of the monthly Quiz of Rassilon and was the local contribution to the days events. This was definitely one that was once seen, never forgotten, “haway the lads”.

I thoroughly enjoyed this event. All the films showed a deep love of Doctor Who and what fans can do if they put their minds to it. Even though some of the results are a bit on the dodgy side, I salute the maker’s of these films for giving me a very entertaining afternoon.

Next month there will be another FAN-tasia event at Cinema 1 of the Chapter Art Center, where they plan on showing a 1978 Brasilian fan version of Star Wars no doubt entirely in Português Brasileiro with English sub-titles. It sound irresistible.

If you were walking down City Road in Cardiff towards the city centre at around 6.15pm on Friday, 14th January 2005, you would have found it difficult to ignore a large bright light shining out from behind some foliage near the church on Newport Road. The light is a powerful BBC scenic light mounted on a scaffolding tower. It shines through a diffusing grille into the forecourt of Cardiff Royal Infirmary opposite. Except that the Cardiff Royal Infirmary has had a makeover. An arched sign over the gates, apparently of cast iron, proclaims it as Albion Hospital. Behind the walls to either side of the gates are gunmetal coloured sheets of corrugated iron. Behind the gates, the low walls along the ramp to the curved double front doors have been surmounted with goldfish bowl gas lamps and reinforced with sandbags. All the windows have diagonal crosses of white tape and a large cloth banner hangs far above the doors covering much of the frontage. It bears the symbol of the red cross, used during the second world war to prevent aeroplanes from confusing hospitals with military targets. The powerful light casts the shadow of the large tree in the forecourt across this banner to eerie effect. Passers by gaze in confusion at this suddenly anachronistic transformation while twenty-first century cars drive past in ignorance.

Meanwhile, in front of the gates a complicated camera rig is being assembled. When it is ready, the camera hangs in a protected cradle from the end of a long black arm extended from a vertical black mount to one side of the gates. Connected to this are the camera monitor and controls. The point of this rig is to give the camera a view of the area in front of the gates without the light across the road casting the camera’s shadow into the gate area. A truck stops by the traffic island at the end of the road and two of the reflective waistcoated men who are keeping a watchful eye on events jump down from it. They begin to unload and set out traffic cones to narrow the road lanes. This will slow the movement of traffic, making the location safer and limiting the risk of vehicular shadows being cast across it. The traffic noise will not be a problem as no dialogue scenes are to be recorded this night. The background noise will be dubbed over with a more appropriate soundtrack during editing.

There is a call for action and the camera rig moves smoothly towards and focuses in on the gates, where precisely nothing is happening. This is a camera rehearsal and when the crew are satisfied, there is a pause while a member of the cast is summoned from inside the hospital.

Soon the camera is repeating its earlier manoeuvre three times in succession and each time, on the monitor, Christopher Eccleston walks along the wall, turns to stride up to the locked gates and pauses to examine the padlocked chain securing them. There is a pause in filming while the next shot is prepared. Eccleston chats to some children and the adults standing with them by the gate, probably relatives of someone connected with the production. A beautiful young camera assistant holding a digital clapperboard asks some onlookers if they are Doctor Who fans. They are pleased to learn that the scenes being recorded tonight are for the two part Doctor Who story The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, due to be broadcast on BBC One later in the year. She tells them what is going to be shot that evening and points out some of the scenic crew, who are affixing wooden signs painted with the words KEEP OUT – AREA RESTRICTED to the corrugated sheeting with a drill.

The camera assistant rejoins the crew as the next shot is ready. Now the focus is entirely on the gates. On the monitor, Eccleston walks into shot, pauses again before the padlock and reaches into a pocket to retrieve what looks like a futuristic pen torch. This he shines into the padlock, which comes apart in his hands and he unloops the chain from the gates. He then pushes open the gates and strides through them. A few more takes follow before the final part of this sequence is shot. These takes begin with Eccleston pushing open the gates then the camera tracks him through them, up the ramp to the doors and after trying the doors, Eccleston shines the pen light on their lock, opens them, steps through.

The watching fans are pleased with this as they recognise the pen light to be a new version of the Sonic Screwdriver, a device used by previous Doctors which generates focused sound vibrations and can be used to loosen bolts or even ignite marsh gas. The crew also seem pleased. Hot drinks are being shared out and the camera rig reset. The fans see this as an opportunity to snatch a quick word with the latest actor cast as their hero but as they cross the road, one of the men in reflective waistcoats sends them back. Soon after, Eccleston has left the location but the camera crew is ready for another shot. The gates stand open. There is almost no traffic now and a concealed smoke machine creates a fog through the forecourt, lending the location an even more sinister aspect than before. The doors of the hospital swing open and a column of figures shamble out, moving at an unnaturally slow, even pace towards the open gates. They all wear primitive gas masks, shaped like badger snouts made of dull green canvas with glass covered eye holes and a round filter at the tip, leather straps buckled around the back of the head holding them in place. One of the two at the front is a thin figure wearing a white lab coat, the other is much thicker set, in black trousers, a white shirt and a maroon tank top. A few are dressed in period nurses’ uniforms. Others are wearing 1940’s overcoats or dressing gowns. These are the patients and staff of Albion Hospital and are of all ages, the youngest being two twin girls in pigtails wearing red woollen overcoats who could be as young as nine and certainly not older than twelve.

This is a scene described earlier by the camera assistant as the sufferers of Empty Child Syndrome emerge. This walking nightmare takes on an even more surreal, dream-like quality when on reaching the gates, these extras suddenly break step, becoming more animated and removing the gas masks. The second take is even more impressive. The third ends with a laugh as an older woman in a magenta dressing gown turns in the act of removing the gas mask after the take and almost causes a passing member of the crew to fall to the ground. The extras re-enter the hospital and the camera rig is disassembled. The camera is repositioned across the road without the elaborate camera rig for the final shot of the evening. A few fans still remain on the site and are initially told that it will be acceptable for them stand to the left of the hospital but they are asked to move to the other side of the road, behind the camera. Possibly their shadows were unexpectedly in shot.

On the takes, the camera simply pans or tracks across the front of the hospital. This will be an establishing shot, showing the warning signs on the corrugated metal, some period fly posters flapping between them, the hospital name, the red cross banner and the taped across windows. On screen this will be a very brief shot conveying the austerity of wartime and the mystery of night. It will be digitally placed on a hill overlooking a deserted railyard filmed somewhere else entirely. “That’s a wrap!”, calls a tall man in a red jacket.

A man in a yellow reflective jacket quietly expresses his relief at this. He explains to the fans that he has been there since 8.00am and by the end of a fourteen hour day, his enthusiasm is considerably diminished. A blonde production assistant hurries across and asks if any of the crew want a call sheet for the next recording. The camera assistant folds one up and tucks it into her back pocket before dismantling the camera and stacking it on a trolley. A fan offers to help but she politely refuses, as the camera crew tease her about it and call to her to “Leave those boys alone!”.

Soon the camera crew have gone, but the fans linger a little longer. Crossing to the hospital again, they ask the BBC person left watching the site if they can take the period fly posters. After a momentary pause, he says yes. These are 12.5×9.5 inch (190×252mm) sheets, the text printed with a manilla coloured background simulating the look of paper that has been browned in the sun. The centred text in red on a typical example reads:

YOUR
“EMPTIES”
WANTED
Please bring back your
empty cod liver oil
and orange tonic
bottles when you come
for a new supply
ISSUED BY THE MINISTRY OF FOOD

In a production as complex as Doctor Who, these fly posters are a detail so tiny that when the completed episode is broadcast, it will not even be possible to read their text. By ten o’clock even the fans have left. It has been a good night. The production team is happy, the fans are happy and the latest Doctor Who adventure is in the can.

(Extracts from this location report can be found on page 119 of Back To The Vortex: The Unofficial And Unauthorised Guide To Doctor Who 2005 by J Shaun Lyon, Telos Publishing, 2005.)

People occasionally contact me to ask how they can meet the cast or see filming to the extent that I now have a standard answer and here it is:

The Doctor Who studios are on an industrial estate at Upper Boat near Pontypridd. I believe there is a lot of security and you would be extremely lucky to see much more than vehicles arriving or leaving through the gates. When the series first came back in 2005, it was quite easy to catch them location filming and even get quite close but now locations are a carefully guarded secret until the crew start setting up and are in increasingly obscure or closed off locations as the series popularity is such that filming attracts bystanders and journalists in sufficient numbers to potentially get in the way of filming. Even when you do find a location in use, the main cast may not be present for the sequence being shot or it may be a night or an interior shoot.

The best way to find out about a location shoot is to find an online forum in which location shooting is posted about by fans as it is happening. One of the most popular is currently at www.gallifreybase.com/forum and you would need to become a member of this forum (which is free) to access it. Within their television series section there is a thread called “photo-posting and set reports” where all the latest location filming sightings are posted.

If you do find and a visit a location shoot in progress there may be very little to see as a two minute scene can take several hours to get right and commit to tape with much waiting around while very little happens very slowly between takes. This does not mean the cast and crew have much time to interact with bystanders. Although this luxury sometimes occurs, they are there to work and have lines and positions to get right, camera moves and lighting to prepare and continuity with previously shot material to match.

If you’re determined to try, please remember to not talk or use flash photography during takes and it’s good policy to co-operate with any reasonable request from the programme makers as spoiling a take is not the way to show your appreciation for the series.

However, if you’re interest is more casual and hours of standing around doesn’t appeal, there is instead plenty to do in Cardiff, Europe’s fastest growing capital city and further places of interest can be found throughout South Wales.