"Hello, my name is Gary Russell, and joining me as we watch "The Dalek Invasion of Earth"" "is this programme's producer, Verity Lambert, and the director of the serial, Richard Martin." "(BOTH) Morning." "(GARY) Here we are back in 1964 with a Roboman." "This was filmed on location down by Kew Bridge." "Am I right?" "(RICHARD) Yes, it was." "This is Kenton Moore, who isn't in the credits because he only had this opening thing, and then we cut to the special effects man, the stunt man, Peter Diamond, to do the head down stuff in a very dirty river!" "If you swallow that, you get your stomach pumped - you did then anyway!" "(GARY) It was handy that you were close to Charing Cross Hospital!" "(RICHARD) It was indeed!" "It was an absolute requirement that you had to be able to get them to hospital fast if they sipped the Thames!" "(GARY) Verity, this is the first Doctor Who sequel." "It's the sequel, obviously, to the first Dalek story." "It was unusual for television back in the sixties to take something successful and say, "Let's do a rematch."" "Doctor Who was a fairly unique programme anyway, but it wasn't something that was done." "They do it all the time now and bring characters and monsters back, but what made you want to bring the Daleks back after just a year?" "(VERITY) They were absolutely the most popular serial that we had done." "In fact, they put Doctor Who on the map because it was the second serial that we did." "The first Dalek serial was the second serial, and it catapulted Doctor Who from being a children's programme that a few people had caught which was transmitted on Saturday afternoons, into something that a great many people watched." "In fact, I think it got into the top twenty." "So, it was in our interest to bring it back." "Also, Terry Nation came up with a fantastically good idea." "This is my favourite Dalek serial." "I think it's the one that really works well, because it brings in places that we know." "It has an added twist, really." "(GARY) It's this idea of something as alien and evil as the Daleks in a familiar situation for most people back in the sixties." "(VERITY) That's what makes it work really well for me, though there are moments coming up in this episode which I treasure!" "(GARY) One thing that happened between that first Dalek serial and this one, was this thing called "Dalekmania" where Britain seemed to go mad and you could buy Dalek records and toys - everything." "Had you had any inkling that was going to be a possibility until it happened, or did it take you and the BBC by surprise?" "(VERITY) It took everybody by surprise." "I felt that the first Dalek serial was a very good story and that if we got it right, people would enjoy it, but I remember we were doing..." "Although we were part of the drama department, we were making this for kids." "I think the ages were eight to fourteen." "What I tried to do as a producer and what everybody tried to do and what does come through very clearly in these programmes, is that we tried to make..." "It's as if we were making it for adults, without being allowed sex and violence in it - there was a bit of sex in this, but not much!" "It was made to a standard that if you were an adult, you would enjoy it." "I made it for me really, and everybody else made it to make it work for them." "There's a great sense of reality in the way people play these episodes." "They play it for real and, therefore, it makes you believe it." "It's quite interesting watching this." "(RICHARD) Was it in this episode where we had one of our many confrontations where I opened a Dalek to show nasty spongiferous stuff inside..." "You told me it was far too nasty." "(VERITY) I can't believe I told you it was far too nasty, but I think it probably demystified them, which I was probably more concerned about than its nastiness, because in the first Dalek one, which you also were involved in," "there was that strange hand that came out of the thing." "Maybe that was our conflict." "I don't know." "Anyway, that hand elicited a huge amount of letters from people, either parents saying, "God, this is disgusting!"" "or children saying, "What else is under there?"" "I think keeping the mystery of what's inside was quite important." "Once you show people something, it demystifies it." "(GARY) Richard, having done that first Dalek serial and then coming back to this one, with Christopher, doing alternate episodes, did you think, "I've learnt a lot about what you can and can't do" ""with a Dalek in a studio", and, therefore, did you do things differently this time?" "(RICHARD) I was pushing them all the time." "I was delighted that we were able to do the filmic stuff..." "I'm pleased with the filmic stuff in this episode." "Spencer Chapman, the designer, did wonders with the studio stuff, but it still begs what lies 180 degrees in reverse of the camera which is the stuff that the film can show." "And, of course, in these episodes, I asked for a Dalek Mark II, which was based on a kiddie's tricycle." "It had a higher skirting board so that it could accommodate the bicycle, so that we could do all this rushing over Westminster Bridge, which the Dalek operators weren't too pleased with." "Jewell told me I was a criminal to make him do it!" "But we got speed and we were able to try..." "The previous Daleks were only on little castors." "With the bigger wheels, we were able to travel the terrain." "They were never, of course, as mobile as they should be." "It wasn't until they made the film that they were able to fly up and down." "Ours always wobbled on flat surfaces!" "(VERITY) But they did look much better than in the first one, and there were more of them, of course." "We only had four in the first one." "(RICHARD) Six in the second one with some cut-outs in the background." "(VERITY) They looked quite impressive in the later episodes when I saw them in the long line." "I think that's the director's job - although there ARE confrontations with the producer - to push things as far as they can." "Although, I probably was looking at the money." "Directors never think about money!" "I think a producer has got to be an enabler." "Part of being a producer is being an enabler and trying to make it better, as good as you can for the money, and finding ways of doing it." "I agree with Richard." "What I really like about it is the reality of these situations - they ARE there with bricks and mortar and grass." "(RICHARD) When we were able to cut, as here to St Catherine's Wharf, as it was, with all these wonderful cranes that dipped at Churchill's funeral, just sitting there idle." "It is a wonderfully derelict, or was a wonderfully derelict part of London." "(VERITY) You probably couldn't film there now because of health and safety regulations." "(RICHARD) You're right." "I did many things which were totally illegal from that point of view." "(GARY) You had a sunny day for location which is unusual!" "Usually, it's pouring with rain." "(RICHARD) I can't remember the weather." "(VERITY) There was quite a lot of filming in this serial - actual exterior." "(GARY) It was the first major use of location filming in Doctor Who." "(VERITY) We were quite strapped and we did do it on a very small budget." "Even when we spent money on it, it was relative to what Drama got." "It's interesting about this sign." "When I saw it again, I thought," ""It's quite clever of them not to look at this huge, huge sign (!" ")"" "(RICHARD) They're coming in sideways!" "It's too big and the set is too small, but we had a lot of sets in the studio to fit." "(GARY) It must have been advantageous to you, using Riverside Studios, which were much bigger than Lime Grove which you'd been using previously." "It seemed to free you up and free Spencer up to design bigger and better sets." "(RICHARD) I think the site was two foot higher." "It wasn't high enough - you can't get the low shots without shooting off the site - but I was a great one for using cameras low down, low cameras on creepers, but those were very clumsy, those big old cameras." "If you tilted them more than thirty degrees, you burnt the tube!" "You had to invent all sorts of ways to get the angles right without shooting off in our limited cyclorama." "Again and again, one wanted a thirty, forty-foot sky backing to really get that exciting visual impact." "I found I was always fighting that a bit, until one cuts to film and it's comparatively easy." "(VERITY) The other difference between Riverside and Lime Grove was that Lime Grove was a very old studio, the cameras were very old, and the lighting system was very old." "We were trying to do what Sydney Newman, then head of Drama, called "state of the art television", pushing television to its limits, in this studio that had come out of Noah's Ark!" "Riverside was a delight." "It was much more modern." "(GARY) And it was on the ground floor." "Lime Grove was up a few flights of stairs." "(VERITY) And if it got too hot, the sprinkler system would come on." "I can see a nice boom shadow there, flitting across the top!" "(GARY) We just had a glimpse of the photograph of Battersea Power Station with futuristic stuff in front of it." "How did that come about?" "(RICHARD) That was a discussion between myself and Spencer." "He simply took that dome from the one in Kent somewhere." "It was a photo montage, and it was in the studio and we cut to it on a stand." "It was all very simple stuff compared with now." "Blue screen was around but it was difficult to do, and left a nasty trailing edge." "When you think how easy it is electronically to manipulate images nowadays, here it simply wasn't." "You couldn't get the Daleks to go any faster than the Daleks went." "You couldn't cheat." "Four sets, I think." "This set, the collapsing bridge set," " and then the..." " (VERITY) The Dalek control room." "(RICHARD) Is that in this episode?" "(VERITY) No." "(RICHARD) Where Dortmun is..." "(VERITY) The museum?" " Or the warehouse where they are?" " (RICHARD) The warehouse." "So, those studios were very, very crowded." "I'm ashamed of some of the shooting here." "There should be close-ups of people, not loose, wobbly two-shots, but I probably was having to release cameras to go off to other locations." "(GARY) It also gives it a quite nice cinematic look by staying out in these mid-shots." "(VERITY) I wasn't conscious in this episode of not seeing what I wanted to see." "There were others later on where people looked through field glasses and you didn't see what they saw." "(RICHARD) "Look over there!" and then you can't cut." "(VERITY) I thought you'd created a really good atmosphere and it held." "I was quite surprised, because it's nearly 40 years old, and I thought it really held very well." "(RICHARD) I'm ashamed that I couldn't help Billy to a better performance, because in the first, experimental episode, he was superb." "Would you agree?" "(VERITY) I thought he was..." "It's interesting because there are moments in this where he's very good, but there are also moments where he's searching for his words." "He died not long after that." "He died of a brain tumour." "I wonder whether that affected his memory." "(RICHARD) I think it did." "He was frightened of not knowing his lines." "If you said, "Billy, why don't you say this instead of that?", he'd get terribly fussed, because he had to get those words inside his skull." "(VERITY) Some of the time, he's very good, but there is a..." "People loved him as Doctor Who and accepted a lot of those things as quirks." "(GARY) He turned a lot of what you were talking about to his advantage, and made that part of the character, and that's what made him that lovable person." "(RICHARD) He was an exceptionally good actor, and it was pushing an aged and exceptional actor to the limit of excellence and a little beyond, which was sad for me." "I love actors." "I love to encourage them to do more than they feel they can do, and I remember those moments when I fussed him and said, "Don't worry."" "One always had to gentle him, because he got irascible and... (GARY) This is all beautifully shot, Richard." "(RICHARD) This is the stuff at White City." "It certainly looks good, doesn't it?" "(VERITY) It does." "(GARY) And this marvellous music in the background." "(RICHARD) That's Chagrin, the drum music." "(GARY) It's the only time Chagrin was used on Doctor Who." " What made you plump for that?" " (RICHARD) I met him, and I'd heard his music, and I thought he had a lot to offer." "I'm not sure that he was right for Doctor Who, in comparison with the electronic music." "It was very different." "(VERITY) It was, but on the other hand, because part of this was set in a place that we could recognise, it was a nice combination of the Daleks and the electronic music," "and then something that was human and recognisable, so it did work." "There's our little saucer!" "(GARY) This was done in the studio rather than at the visual effects workshop." "(RICHARD) Yes, it was a string." "Verity said, "Stop wasting time on the saucer!"" "It kept wobbling." "We wound it across again and again." "This one's OK..." "It still looks like a flying pie crust!" "(VERITY) I think you accept it." "If you compare the special effects with what you get nowadays, even in television, but certainly on the big screen," "then, yes, it's very ersatz, but of its time, it was acceptable." " (RICHARD) We hope!" " I think it was." "I was rewatching them the other day and I had a couple of tapes on in the office, and a couple of people there both said, "Oh, God!" "What happens next?"" "(RICHARD) It makes you want to watch." "And the titles..." "I think, until the signature tune for "EastEnders" arrived, that was the best pulling in of the family from all over." "Those noises that Ron Grainer made were brilliant, weren't they?" "(GARY) We've been joined by Carole Ann Ford and William Russell, who are Susan and Ian respectively." "You've been watching this episode as we've been talking." "What does it bring back for you both?" "(WILLIAM) I'm very impressed." "I hadn't seen this episode until just now." "This is nearly 40 years ago, and I am very impressed." "I want to know what's happening next." "(WILLIAM) I think the intelligence of it really." "It seems to me to be very deeply felt, the acting is good." "This is the sort of reality that I think we tried to get in those early Doctor Whos." "(GARY) Carole, Susan's already tripped and twisted her ankle, which is that awful cliché!" "(CAROLE) Yeah!" "I don't know why they always had me twisting my ankle!" "(VERITY) How many times did you twist your ankle?" "(CAROLE) I should think in every story!" "This particular butch man, as far as I remember, did actually drop me one time." "It must have been in rehearsal." "Poor man." "I wasn't exactly heavy, but he had to..." "I think he had to run with me at some stage!" "(RICHARD) We dropped Billy." "(CAROLE) I remember." "(RICHARD) Richard McNeff ran down the ramp and he couldn't straighten his legs at the bottom." "He was carrying Billy and they went crashing into a camera." "(CAROLE) He really hurt himself." "Wasn't he off for a bit?" "You had to rewrite it." "(VERITY) There you are being picked up!" "(CAROLE) I wonder if they'd have had me twisting my ankle if I was heavier?" "Perhaps it was a curse that I was little and light!" "(GARY) Richard, had you worked with any of these actors before?" "(RICHARD) Yes, nearly all of them," "I'm not ashamed to say, are actors who were tried, tested and loved, the one who's just gone now in particular, but all of them, Bernard Kay..." "Later..." "Is it the next episode?" "Not Frank Finlay, but another one of the people who I worked with when I was a theatre director down at Coventry." "(GARY) Verity, they've seen your big poster!" "(VERITY) Well, yes." "At last!" "(RICHARD) The poster's not too big, the set's too small!" "(VERITY) It's the proximity of the poster to the telephone box, the Tardis." "I think one of my most favourite moments is about to come up." "In a minute or so." "(CAROLE) There's my lover!" "(LAUGHS)" "(RICHARD) This is St Catherine's Wharf as it then was - derelict - now one of the most expensive parts of London." "You couldn't afford to stand there unless you were a millionaire." "(VERITY) They certainly wouldn't let you film there!" "(CAROLE) Which makes this a historic document." "(RICHARD) Yes, all these wonderful big cranes that dipped when Winston Churchill was carried up river in the barge have all gone." "(RICHARD) It makes nonsense of the geography!" "Who wrote that?" "(GARY) You were saying earlier, Richard, about Spencer Chapman." "Did you choose the designers, or were they allocated to you?" "(RICHARD) They were allocated, but they were all very good." "(VERITY) They enjoyed doing Doctor Who because there were no rules really." "They could do what they wanted to." "(RICHARD) You got them out of three-sided box sets, and they could use their imagination." "A real sorrow to me was that you'd get these wonderful drawings from them with the word "omit" stamped over all the detail because it was too expensive." "That really broke my heart, because some of their detail was brilliant." "(VERITY) We just couldn't afford it." "Here's my most favourite moment!" "(WILLIAM) It certainly has a very filmic quality, the whole episode." "(CAROLE) Richard, the line that Billy had about the smell of it all, surely, as we emerged from the box, we'd have gone "Ugh!" "What a stink!"" "(RICHARD) This was in a tank at Ealing, because we couldn't get a complete submersion in the river because of the neap tide, which we'd got wrong." "We couldn't schedule our filming." "And now we go to this which is Chelsea Reach, is it, or Chiswick?" "(RICHARD) By Kew railway bridge." "(VERITY) When the Dalek emerges from the river is just the most wonderful... (RICHARD) There's the other one where he comes out of the sand." "We went down to Camber Sands and pulled it out of the sands." "We had a Dalek that big to do it!" "The wonderful Peter Hamilton!" "I have to remember and enjoy these people who I haven't seen and worked with for so long." "Lovely, lovely." " And dear Mervyn." " (VERITY) Yes." "(RICHARD) And you can read the titles!" "They're not shoved to one side at adverts." "(VERITY) They were very large, the letters." "(RICHARD) There are our names."