"(GARY RUSSELL) Here's episode two of "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", and I'm joined by the series producer, Verity Lambert, its director, Richard Martin, and its heroic male lead, William Russell." "Here's the Dalek coming out of the water." "Verity, you said this is one of your favourite moments in Doctor Who." "It is." "I don't know why." "It's one of those moments that's stayed with me." "I think it's because there is this extremely bizarre thing coming out of a familiar landscape." "There is something quite scary about it." "(GARY) The Daleks had a fantastic voice." "(RICHARD) I was always being attacked by parents saying," ""You make my children wet their bed or hide behind the sofa."" "(VERITY) We used to get many, many letters of complaints from parents, and many, many letters from children saying how much they loved it." "Children are being frightened, it's traditional." "There's Hans..." "There's Edgar Allan Poe that I read when I was a kid." "Children love to be frightened." "It's the parents' responsibility to be there to support them." "(GARY) There's something marvellously iconic about those voices." "They say everything you need to know about the Daleks." "(RICHARD) We tried endlessly with those throat mikes and things, but it's Peter's acting ability that makes this voice so frightening." "This staccato thing and the panic behind it." "We talked about it together, this panic of somebody trapped in an iron suit, trying to enforce their will, and he's got that into his voice." "That's what's so clever." "(VERITY) They certainly took off, those voices." "Kids would be running around going, "Exterminate!" "Exterminate!"" "They just loved it." "I don't know what it was." "Something about the way they looked, moved and sounded that caught the public's imagination." "(WILLIAM) They appeared in cartoons, if you remember." "I remember a wonderful cartoon - Billy coming into rehearsal one day and opening the "Evening Standard", and there was a cartoon by Low of General de Gaulle saying, "Non!"" "It was marvellous." "(VERITY) They used to call John Birt a Dalek, didn't they?" "(WILLIAM) Here we are, back with the resistance." "(GARY) Had you worked with Bernard Kay before, Richard?" "Yes, I had." "Bernard Kay and I were at Stratford together in 1952, and I've worked with him on and off ever since." "He's part of my life, Bernie." "And there's Ann Davies, Jenny." "Annie also..." "I used her a lot at..." "Guildford, and before that at Coventry, where I worked with her and her husband, Richard Briers." "(VERITY) She's a good actress." "She was very good in this." "It's just this whole thing about the reality." "What I like is the truth of the acting, because it makes it hugely watchable, and it makes you believe what's going on." "People aren't standing outside themselves, thinking, "Oh, God, this is a bit silly!"" "(RICHARD) No, and you see this later." "The bomb is quite frankly, just stupid, but Alan Judd makes it real by the strength of his acting." "Well, I think he does!" "He gets a nave prop and empowers it, which I think is lovely." "(VERITY) There's a very moving moment with him later on which he does extremely well." "(GARY) William, can I just ask you, from an acting point of view..." "Science fiction nowadays is just another genre of television and film, but back in the sixties, it was a fairly new thing." "It hadn't been done much on TV apart from "Quatermass", which was more horror." "How did you feel coming into a science fiction series, knowing you would have to suspend your disbelief?" "It wasn't any different from any other kind of acting." "If you create the character, and you follow your instinct as an actor, it doesn't really matter whether it's science fiction or Shakespeare or a modern play." "I didn't feel any problem there at all." "(VERITY) I think everybody just took it and said," ""This is real and we're going to play it that way."" "I would have come down like a ton of bricks if I'd seen anyone trying to camp it up." "It had to be taken seriously by everybody, because you won't make people watch and enjoy it and suspend disbelief if you're not doing it as well." "(RICHARD) This was stretching Riverside to its ultimate." "This saucer took up the whole of the centre of the studio and left us very little place to do any filming, to put any other sets to shoot what we had." "It was very ambitious." "Then I asked for a few broken helicopters to be strewn around the perimeter, and was told no way!" "(VERITY) I wonder who said that to you (?" ")" "I was accused in the BBC of stretching the elastic whatever I did, filling studios with scenery so that the walls bulged." "There was something known as "the Verity Lambert syndrome" apparently!" "(RICHARD) It shows we were ambitious and were not going to be limited to the under-budget-on-time concept of production." "We were all quite excited, weren't we?" "(VERITY) I think it's one of the most exciting things I've had to do, because you weren't in a format." "Each story had its own difficulties but there was no limit to what you could do." "Nobody said, "Put the police set here."" "You just had the Tardis, which was wonderful but basically anonymous, and then you could do what you wanted and put them anywhere." "(GARY) Who came up with that idea of using that negative effect for the Daleks?" "Was it you or Christopher Barry?" "(VERITY) It might have been Mervyn." "Mervyn Pinfield was a real technical boffin, and to be absolutely fair and to give credit where credit is due, he had been working with a very experimental director and they had found, in trying to get an effect," "that a camera shooting down its own monitor would make those shapes that we get in the titles." "So when we were looking for the titles for Doctor Who, he said, "Have a look at what we shot."" "And that's how that started." "He was terribly good technically." "(RICHARD) He was part of the "Langham Group"." "(VERITY) Which was a group which was there to try to see what could be done in television technically." "So he might well have come up with that idea." "(RICHARD) A bit late on the button that time!" "(VERITY) This is the problem when you're doing multi camera." "Nowadays, you'd shoot it all on single camera." "Well, I suppose they did shoot it on single camera when..." "We literally had two hours to record the whole lot, and then we were only allowed to stop tape five times, I think." "We always stopped it more than five times." "(RICHARD) That was the director from SID." "(VERITY) The director from above." "I don't think anybody was allowed to stop in those days." "It was extremely difficult for us, because we were trying to, at the same time, make it look as modern and as up-to-the-minute as possible." "So I ignored it really, and we used to stop seven or eight times." "(RICHARD) We never put it in the script!" "(VERITY) You'd have to write "Stop tape", then we'd get in the studio and say, "We'll have to stop there!"" "(WILLIAM) You're getting a lot of close-ups." "(RICHARD) And you all look good." "(GARY) This is a very nice contrast with the previous episode where we're in dirty London." "Suddenly, we're in a sparkling spaceship." "(VERITY) It DOES look good." "If you don't go in too close to the dials, it has a very good feel about it." "(RICHARD) I like the way the doors open." "I'm pleased with that." "That's Spencer's invention." "Excellent." "(VERITY) I also think that when they get inside the cell, that whole executive toy thing of how they get out is clever, too!" "(RICHARD) His executive toy, yes." "There was no money to build that, and I asked my brother to make it." "(VERITY) Did you?" "It's very, very good." "What does your brother do?" "At that time, he was working in a path lab and he had all the toys and tools for making that sort of thing." "For years I had that big magnifying glass in a crude thing that..." "I only got rid of it a while ago." "(VERITY) It's rather artistic." "You should take it to the Tate!" "(RICHARD) "Do you want an executive toy?"" "(GARY) Richard, this is what you said about using the camera down low and shooting up." "It gives a lovely feeling of claustrophobia." "(RICHARD) This was easy because this was up in any case." "(VERITY) Didn't you have a ceiling?" "We had a ceiling over most of it so we did get these low shots." "(WILLIAM) What I'm getting from watching this now is that the sense of this spaceship is there in the set." "I know you didn't like it, but there's a feeling that it goes on and on, isn't there?" "It's quite clever the way there are bits of it that you don't actually see but you're given the impression." "(VERITY) I think Richard's just saying, "I like it but I want more", which is the director's cry!" "(RICHARD) Michael Goldie, lovely actor." ""Va Va Goldie" he was called because he was quick with his fists." "(WILLIAM) I didn't know that." "I remember him." "(RICHARD) Roy Kinnear called him "Va Va Goldie"." "(RICHARD) Beautiful face, isn't it?" "Absolutely lovely." "(GARY) Where did you find Peter Fraser from?" "(RICHARD) I can't remember." "Can you remember Peter Fraser?" "(VERITY) We just saw him probably." "(RICHARD) We thought he was the right balance for it." "(VERITY) He's very good in this." "(RICHARD) Lightweight, romantic and agile." "(VERITY) And very believable." "I really like him actually." "He's excellent." "(GARY) Behind those two moving Daleks you can see photographic blow-ups of Daleks." "(RICHARD) A very good way of making it look like there's lots of Daleks." "(VERITY) This is very ambitious." "A montage flashback!" "(WILLIAM) Yes, I remember this." "(LAUGHTER)" "(VERITY) Wonderful!" "(RICHARD) "Blab"!" "Wobbly Daleks!" "(GARY) It's a shame this isn't in colour." "It's possibly the only multi-coloured Dalek we've ever seen." "(WILLIAM) What is that disc on the back of the Dalek?" "(VERITY) That was a sophisticated something or other." "(RICHARD) You say in one scene there's something different about the Daleks." "This enables them to exist on Earth." "(VERITY) That's right." "They could only move on metal in Skaro." "(RICHARD) It looks like a Japanese bustle, doesn't it?" "(VERITY) It does." "One of those geisha girls." "(VERITY) Very Churchillian, isn't it?" "(GARY) He's very charismatic as a leader." "Had you worked with him where he'd done this sort of role before, Richard?" "We did a play called "The Tiger and the Horse"" "where he played a very high-grade professor." "Very autocratic." "Who was "Tiger and the Horse" by?" "(WILLIAM) Joyce Carey." "(RICHARD) No, but nearly right." "Anyway, he's very good at authoritativeness." "He's got a lot of weight." "(VERITY) What's lovely about this is Jackie's just so real." "(RICHARD) Absolutely." "(RICHARD) This is the executive toy!" "That thing has hung about my home for 40 years." "I've only just thrown it away." " (VERITY) The magnifying glass?" " Yep." "Not the executive toy itself." "(VERITY) It's very clever, actually." "I don't know how it opens the thing but it is clever." "(WILLIAM) Bill will explain!" "(GARY) The lovely thing about this script is that it's terribly intelligent and doesn't talk down to the audience." "It's adventure and education and everything a good script should be." "(VERITY) If you're doing television for children or kids, the one thing you have to absolutely know is that you don't talk down to them because they're on to you like that." "They're rather more difficult to please than adults are because they don't make the excuses that adults do, so I think you do have to be quite meticulous about getting things right and treating people as if they had a brain." "That doesn't apply so much these days (!" ")" "(WILLIAM) I agree." "This is why we're watching it today." "This is one of the reasons." "It's still current." "(VERITY) And you're right." "It does try to, in its own way, stimulate and educate without actually being preaching or making it heavy." "It just throws things in that people can pick up or not." "(RICHARD) This is a use of photo optics." "It's not very bright, but you can see those things light up as he moves the magnifying glass." "This was photo optics before it was used for the communications industry." "It WAS in the forefront." "Not very dramatic but quite interesting!" "(VERITY) It's wonderful when he's that sure of himself." "He just carries it off." "(RICHARD) Of course, he learnt his craft in the quickies." " Did he ever tell you about that?" " (WILLIAM) Yes, he was a farceur." "(RICHARD) But also the films." "There was a camera inside and outside, so you never stopped." "You said, "Goodbye, darling", got outside, said "Hello" to the postman." "You just went on." "It was multi-camera work." "You couldn't..." "You just made it up." "(VERITY) Which explains why he made a lot of the scripts up!" "(RICHARD) You know he flew a Spitfire into a hangar and out the other side through the hangar wall?" "(VERITY) When?" "In the war?" "I can believe it!" "(RICHARD) He was told, "You play the pilot."" "He said, "Right!" He always said, "Right, yes, I'll do that."" "They said, "Pull that thing and it will go forward." "That's the throttle."" "So he did and went straight into the hangar, out the other side, and he (BLEEP!" ") up the prop!" "(VERITY) Here's the bombs." "Oh, dear." "(RICHARD) This was made and operated by Shawcraft, wasn't it?" "(VERITY) Yes." "The BBC internal special effects were too busy, so it was farmed out." "They did a good job, actually." "(RICHARD) They made all the Daleks." "Bill was furious because he hadn't made a fortune out of it." "(VERITY) What, the guy who made the Daleks?" "Nobody made a fortune out of it except for Terry." "The BBC made quite a lot of money." "I have a story about that." "I met the guy who the BBC sold the toy franchise to, half the toy franchise to, and he had become a multi-millionaire." "They had the other half, so they must have done quite well, although we never saw any of the money!" "(RICHARD) Why didn't we jump in?" "The toy franchise sounds quite attractive!" "(GARY) That's lovely, that Dalek sliding down that barrier and stopping." "(VERITY) It's quite compelling, this." "And quite atmospheric." "The lighting is good, too." "I do think that looks good." "The interior looks good." "It looks huge, but then, it WAS pretty large!" "(GARY) Verity, I have to ask you." "Do you remember getting told off by the high-ups at the BBC for this sequence?" "Apparently, you got a memo from somebody higher up at the BBC saying it was very naughty to leave the Doctor looking like he was dead at the end of the episode." "(VERITY) I can't remember." "They wrote me memos all the time!" "(GARY) Did you get a lot of interference from on high?" "(VERITY) No interference but a lot of memos." "I had to go on "Points of View" once to answer a lot of complaints, and Robert Robinson was a bit strict with me, a bit patronising." "We were always getting complaints from the BBC."