From comic strip, to script, to screen! Go behind the scenes as the cast and crew adapt 'The Star Beast' for TV #DoctorWho
Category
đș
TVTranscript
00:00 Right, we're here today at the read-through.
00:02 This is the first proper gathering of all of us
00:05 for the read-through of episodes one, two and three.
00:07 And it's very exciting,
00:09 because we've been working on this for months, for years.
00:11 But this is the first day we all come together.
00:13 Scene one, London, exterior night, London at night,
00:17 coming down to an alleyway.
00:18 Scene two, where a wind picks up and a wheezing, grinding noise.
00:22 And there's the TARDIS, hooray! It fades into being.
00:25 And this doctor, look, there he is.
00:27 This doctor steps out.
00:29 You come into a room, you've got David Tennant,
00:31 you've got Catherine Tate, you've got Bernard Crippens.
00:33 I think the whole room sighed when Bernard Crippens said his first line.
00:36 All the words and all the scripts are just irrelevant
00:38 until you give it to the actors.
00:39 They're just what it's all about.
00:40 We have notes now. After every read-through, you're going to have notes.
00:43 It's like, some lines are going to be tweaked,
00:44 some bits don't quite work, some bits could be better,
00:46 I had a bit of this, that could have laughed, that didn't.
00:48 So every single read-through in the world always has a note session.
00:51 There'll be a new draft then delivered in the next few days.
00:53 But really, we start filming in six days' time.
00:56 Oh, oh, hold on, hold on, let me help.
00:58 He takes down the top box, he takes down the second box,
01:00 and he sees Don and Obi.
01:02 Thank you very much.
01:04 He puts the box back.
01:05 Right, do you mind?
01:07 Quite frankly, I have a good time on these days
01:08 because no-one likes my scripts more than me.
01:10 Everyone else can have them, I'm going to pick away at it, I love them.
01:13 So I'm very, very happy.
01:14 Properly, though, I'm genuinely happy
01:16 because we've all put a lot of work into them.
01:18 The words are just the beginning, all the visuals,
01:20 the directors are working on, the design teams and effects teams.
01:23 So this is just the beginning, but I'm properly excited.
01:27 I can't wait to see these, I'm thrilled.
01:29 Originally, I saw the casting call for a trans character called Lily.
01:39 I saw it and I was like, "Oh, my God.
01:41 "This is amazing, we know the trans role after Heartstamper.
01:44 "I'm going to go for it."
01:45 I had no clue it was Doctor Who, I had no clue it was Rose.
01:47 Yeah, it went from there.
01:49 Rose is a 15-year-old girl and she's from London.
01:53 Her mum is Catherine Tate, Donna Newell.
01:56 Acting with Catherine has been amazing.
01:58 She welcomed me with open arms and the acting with her was great
02:03 because I learned a lot from her.
02:05 It is beyond, beyond whatever I could have imagined coming back.
02:11 Obviously, I hoped and guessed if I was going to be in it,
02:13 it was going to be David and Catherine, but you never know.
02:16 And then, of course, when that's confirmed, it's just super exciting.
02:19 And then Carl, and again, being introduced to Yasmin.
02:22 Just every day bringing something joyous.
02:24 It's great to be back, actually, and to have Russell writing these
02:29 and, you know, it feels a sort of iconic moment, really.
02:33 To get another go at being in this world and working with David
02:36 and working with Russell and having all the family back together,
02:40 plus more, you know what I mean, is just DCT dream come true.
02:45 We've been prepping an area of the set,
02:49 which is the interior of Donna's house.
02:52 I've used a combination of various pyrotechnics,
02:55 some of them high explosive, to really break and give it a good punch.
02:59 We built this amazing set and then on day two,
03:04 we started by blowing up the back door.
03:06 Three, two, one!
03:08 (EXPLOSION)
03:10 It's phenomenal. It's like bonfire night.
03:15 OK, so I think they've just finished rigging
03:19 and doing the big explosion so that us, the Roth, can start surging in.
03:25 So that's going to be our first shot coming up next.
03:27 The first thing we've filmed up on the stilts.
03:31 Stephen and I, very excited.
03:33 Hello. We have just been invaded.
03:37 Our house has been invaded by the War Warriors
03:39 and they are looking for the meat and the house is exploding.
03:42 So there are actual live... I think they're called zircons,
03:46 the actual pellets, which sounds like another alien race itself.
03:50 You'll see me with my paintball gun and we're shooting projectiles.
03:53 Now, they're little zirconian hits and it's basically a material
03:57 that when it hits something, it sparks.
03:59 Danny had to build the shields. We had to hang them.
04:02 Had to hang a first shield, hang a second shield.
04:04 It's real bulletproof plexiglass, is that right? I think it is.
04:07 Yeah. But it still hits them. Incredible.
04:10 Yeah, so they make a real bang and a real crash and flash.
04:13 Yeah. It's quite easy to act, therefore. Nice day at work.
04:16 Nice day at work.
04:17 We're in a decommissioned power station just outside Cardiff
04:28 in Uskmouth.
04:29 This has been a location for Doctor Who many times,
04:32 but this time it's playing an operating steelworks
04:36 that the Meeps ship crashes into.
04:39 That ship didn't crash. It parked.
04:42 No signs of life? Not yet.
04:44 We don't know what kind of life we're looking for.
04:46 It was amazing to see the rocket. It's huge. Absolutely huge.
04:50 We've got the bottom of the Meepship and then the rest of it
04:52 will be created digitally afterwards.
04:53 But it's quite... Even there, it's quite substantial.
04:56 You can stand under the prongs of the rocket.
05:00 It's quite impressive.
05:02 So we built the leg section and the underside on location.
05:05 I think there was a three or four-week build.
05:07 A lot of steelwork going in because the legs alone
05:11 were a huge structure.
05:13 Then we had to go back in and redress around the chute
05:15 for the different stages of the spaceship
05:17 when it's first crashed.
05:19 Then it's been cleared back.
05:20 Then the dagger drive's been fixed.
05:23 So there was all the different phases
05:25 that needed to be worked into the schedule as well.
05:27 Too good for us now?
05:29 Evening. Doctor?
05:31 That's a double-bladed dagger drive damaged by laser fire,
05:35 which means we've got two sets of visitors
05:36 at war with each other.
05:38 Nice to meet you.
05:39 I just love the relationship that Shirley and the Doctor have.
05:41 You can tell they... It's like their souls have met before,
05:44 which I think is really, really lovely.
05:45 She's not one to let him get away with much, and I love that.
05:50 Not you, mate.
05:52 I've got this. Off you pop.
05:54 Bye-bye.
05:56 Waited your whole life?
05:57 You wish.
05:58 It was at this location that we had Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons
06:01 come to visit, who, of course, are the creators of the MEEP
06:06 and the Wrath Warriors and, indeed, this whole story.
06:09 I didn't know what the first episode was going to be.
06:11 The script pinged through in an email,
06:13 and it says on the front page,
06:15 "Written by Russell T Davies,
06:16 "adapted from The Starbeast by Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons."
06:20 And I remember that comic strip.
06:21 I was nine or ten. I remember it really vividly.
06:24 I couldn't quite believe that it had happened.
06:27 It seemed such an unlikely bit of source material.
06:29 And then, of course, you think, "Well, of course it's not."
06:31 It was such a great story.
06:33 The fact that I remember it so clearly from, I don't know,
06:36 40 years ago, clearly says something about how tenacious it is
06:42 as a piece of storytelling.
06:43 That meeting of the domestic and the fantastical,
06:46 which I think Doctor Who does particularly well
06:49 and Russell does brilliantly, all sort of meets in that story.
06:52 So, being initially kind of gobsmacked that we were retelling
06:57 a story that I'd first read in Doctor Who Weekly when I was tiny,
07:00 after kind of reeling for a moment,
07:02 I thought, "Damn, it does make perfect sense."
07:06 It's been amazing to see something that only existed inside my head
07:09 to be drawn on a piece of paper actually exist all around me
07:12 in real life, and you've captured the tone of it
07:15 and the design of it so amazingly well.
07:18 It's unbelievable.
07:20 We've got the puppet of the Meep, and then the actual VFX version
07:23 will be overlaid to get all the actual emotion and stuff like that.
07:26 So, this was a scale test or a pair test, and they were...
07:30 -Fantastic. -Quite funny.
07:31 Straight out of the comic book.
07:32 The whole subtext of the Star Beast, seeing that come together,
07:36 that's very much the way I write anyway, where I flip things over
07:40 so that what you think is one thing, it's actually something else.
07:44 Things that seem innocent and cute are not necessarily so.
07:49 It's absolutely spot-on.
07:51 I couldn't imagine this bit better.
07:53 This is what I was seeing in my head.
07:55 That's so malevolent. That's wonderful.
07:57 And then, equally, you can have these sinister characters
08:01 who are actually good guys.
08:03 And that's really at the heart of the way I write.
08:09 Seeing that validated in this really epic way
08:12 is actually quite important to me, I think.
08:14 I'm pleased when you saw it, you were like, "There's the Meep."
08:17 -Yes, definitely. -That's a big win for us.
08:19 Because if you'd come and seen one of the other ones,
08:21 you'd be like, "What have they done?"
08:22 -Close. -"Swell."
08:25 I mean, we spent quite a while thinking,
08:26 "Oh, we need to contemporise it. We need to add textures.
08:29 We need to sort of think about it in different alien
08:32 or insectoid ways."
08:33 And every time Russell would bring it back to,
08:36 it's still not quite Roth enough.
08:38 And what we realised is we needed the Dave Gibbons Roth.
08:42 You know, we needed the...
08:43 Everybody needs the Dave Gibbons Roth.
08:44 -We're gonna have it. -Yeah.
08:46 What is great is the enthusiasm of everybody for the project.
08:49 Your creation is looming above you.
08:52 You know, everybody is a fan of the original comic,
08:55 and you can feel that love and that going above and beyond
08:57 what you strictly need to do just to make it the best you can.
09:00 And that's really flattering.
09:03 For this job, for the first time,
09:05 they used something I'd never seen before,
09:07 which was this handheld scanner where they scan you head to toe.
09:10 It took about five minutes maximum.
09:13 And then they can 3D print that life-size.
09:16 So there now exists a mould of me
09:19 lying around the Millennium FX workshop
09:21 so that they could build these suits specifically to me,
09:24 so it should hopefully fit perfectly.
09:27 We've kind of gone for a...
09:30 -Yeah. -...kind of praying mantis-esque vibe
09:33 with kind of flamingo legs.
09:35 Yeah, my first time on stilts ever.
09:37 These are called digi legs.
09:38 It's kind of... It's like walking on extreme tiptoes.
09:42 It's not that uncomfortable. It's just kind of unusual.
09:45 And you can't actually stand still.
09:47 There's a kind of surprising range of motion with them, really,
09:50 that we're gonna hopefully try and use for the performance.
09:53 Perfect.
09:56 -Can you see me? -I can't see you.
09:58 Right, as soon as we're pulling.
10:00 Yes, that's the way I like it.
10:05 So the vision is limited.
10:07 We can just see through what I guess are his nostrils.
10:11 But we've done lots of rehearsals.
10:14 So using a mask, we have created eye holes,
10:18 and this is pretty much our limited vision,
10:21 so we're only really gonna be able to see
10:23 kind of directly in front of us and kind of no peripheral.
10:27 So not a lot.
10:29 So we actually have an earpiece in this ear, in my real ear,
10:33 which means we have a live feed from the set,
10:35 so we can hear the first AD and some of the dialogue,
10:38 and also from Paul, our creature choreographer,
10:42 so he can give us direction live on set while we're performing
10:46 about angles and eye position and, yeah,
10:50 where the camera is and eye lines and things like that.
10:53 Yes, please, start lighting up.
10:56 Let me know when you're lit and clear.
10:59 We're shooting a huge battle scene,
11:01 the Battle of the Road,
11:03 with the Roth coming down one side,
11:05 and good unit and bad unit and exploding cars,
11:08 and it's big action.
11:10 -Go, go, go! -Open fire!
11:13 To get permission to be on anybody's street
11:16 and blow things up all night long is incredible.
11:20 (GUNFIRE)
11:22 I've been involved in the show for many, many years.
11:24 It's my job to make sure that we try and do something different.
11:28 We've been doing quite a bit of action,
11:30 and this is the crescendo of chaos, shall we say.
11:34 So essentially what we've got here is somebody firing a missile
11:38 at the Land Rover that you see behind me,
11:40 and the idea is that that's going to explode and create some carnage.
11:44 I've got a piston rig that's going to fling the car up into the air
11:48 the moment it explodes, so we'll cut from the missile being fired
11:52 to the point it hits the car or the Land Rover,
11:55 and it will flip up into the air and it'll explode.
11:57 It's obviously very important to make sure
11:59 that that Land Rover doesn't land on someone.
12:01 Background action! Three, two, one!
12:04 (EXPLOSION)
12:06 -Good? -Go on!
12:18 Oh, my God, that was fab!
12:20 Ha-ha-ha!
12:28 Yeah, so at the end of episode one, I'm back on the TARDIS,
12:31 or Donna, and, yes, she spills coffee on the console,
12:35 and that leads to a catastrophic fire.
12:39 Here we are, having a coffee.
12:43 What's going to go wrong? Oh, my God!
12:45 Oh, my God, I've been hit again!
12:48 Only Russell would give us a script that unveils the brand-new TARDIS
12:52 and then blows it up within seconds.
12:55 I mean, I read that and my head was in my pants.
12:58 I was like, "Oh, I can't believe you're actually going to do this to us."
13:01 We've got a network of pipes which are going to pipe into the set itself,
13:06 and then we're going to have all these, like, copper tubes.
13:09 We call them "witch's fingers" for obvious reasons,
13:11 so when we bend them up,
13:13 we're going to have all flame sources coming out,
13:15 so it looks like the console's on fire.
13:17 So that does two things.
13:19 Visually it looks cool, but also, secondly,
13:21 it's keeping the fire away from the actual console itself.
13:24 And three, two, one, go!
13:27 What's happening?
13:34 Sorry, guys!
13:40 No!
13:43 We could end up anywhere in time and space!
13:47 No!
13:50 Don't forget to click below to subscribe to the official Doctor Who YouTube channel.
13:55 [dramatic music]
13:58 [dramatic music]
14:01 âȘ âȘ
14:04 (whooshing)