Doctor Who 18x1

Directed by

Nigel Lambert as Hardin • Adrienne Corri as Mena • David Haig as Pangol • Laurence Payne as Morix

The planet Argolis, around the year 2290. The Argolins live in a huge shielded city, protected from the irradiated wasteland outside. The planet's survival depends on the tourists their Leisure Hive attracts. But a series of horrific deaths seems to jeopardise that future - can the Doctor and Romana find a solution?

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1. Filming for this opening scene took place on Brighton beach on Thursday 20th and Friday 21st March 1980.

2. This long panning shot along the Kings Road promenade between the West and Palace Piers was the first shot to be completed.

3. The row of beach hut tents had to be specially hired in for the shoot.

4. The wind and seagull sound effects were added to this scene to enhance the effect of an out-of-season bleak seaside location.

5. Returning to the series as the voice of K9 was John Leeson.

6. He had provided K9's voice in the robot dog's first story "The Invisible Enemy" (1977)

7. And had continued with Doctor Who up until "The Armageddon Factor" (1979).

8. Leeson had been replaced by David Brierley for the show's 17th season

9. but had been persuaded to return as K9's voice by new producer John Nathan-Turner

10. on the understanding that K9 would be written out of the show during the upcoming year.

11. Tom Baker was ill for the first day's shooting, and so was absent from most of the filming.

12. The Doctor's costume was filled out with cushions and propped in the deckchair for a few long shots.

13. Peter Howell's music in this story had a number of influences from other pieces of music.

14. "I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside" is referenced in this scene,

15. while later bits of music are influenced by "Mars, Bringer Of War" by Holst and "Bolero" by Ravel.

16. In the gap between seasons, K9's drive mechanism had been completely rebuilt by Mat Irvine.

17. This included swapping the dog's wheels for a caterpillar tread

18. which - it was hoped - would enable the dog to travel better over rough surfaces.

19. It was thought that the shingle on Brighton beach would not be a problem for this new improved K9.

20. However, the dog's tracks would not work, and the crew had to resort to pulling K9 along on an out-of-shot wire for all his scenes.

21. Fortunately, there were two K9 props - one containing all the electronic innards that made the dog work

22. and one lightweight version for when it had to be lifted or carried.

23. It was the lightweight version of K9 which was towed along Brighton beach and then carried by Lalla Ward for these shots.

24. Is Tom Baker actually sitting in that deckchair?

25. Ah! There he is!

26. The first time the Doctor tried to visit Brighton was at the beginning of the story "The Horror Of Fang Rock" (1977).

27. The Black Guardian vowed to get his revenge on the Doctor at the end of "The Armageddon Factor".

28. At the time this story was made, producer John Nathan-Turner lived in Brighton, not far from the location used for these opening scenes.

29. This story saw the first use of the new Quantel 5000 image processing equipment that had recently been procured by the BBC.

30. It allowed the images captured on videotape to be digitally manipulated for the first time

31. and is used in a number of significant places in this opening episode.

32. The equipment was used on the final shot to make the beach recede further into the distance than the camera could achieve

33. and mixing into the starfield background - which was the new Doctor Who title sequence running backwards.

34. Many of the extras in this scene are wearing stock costumes from the BBC's extensive wardrobe department,

35. a proportion of which have cropped up in other Doctor Who stories over the years.

36. This shot demonstrates Lovett Bickford's use of a hand-held camera,

37. which meant sets like this corridor had to have ceiling sections to allow shots from low angles to be recorded.

38. Martin Fisk (Vargos) has appeared in such TV programmes as "Poldark" (1975), "The Sweeney" (1976),

39. "Shoestring" (1980), "Minder" (1982) and "Bergerac" (1985).

40. Laurence Payne (Morix) had previously appeared in Doctor Who as Johnny Ringo opposite William Hartnell's Doctor in "The Gunfighters" (1966).

41. He would return to the series to play Dastari in "The Two Doctors" (1985), opposite Patrick Troughton and Colin Baker.

42. His TV appearances include "The Saint" (1966), "The Sandbaggers" (1978), "Tales Of The Unexpected" (1980) and "Airline" (1982).

43. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Sexton Blake in the 1968 TV series of the same name.

44. David Fisher's script describes the Argolin and Morix as "... a tall, elegant, good-looking race with a kind of Afro hairstyle.

45. "The hair is crystalline, cumulating in ten or a dozen jewels, or pods, at the end.

46. "As they age, the jewels fall and their hair loses its sheen and hangs down.

47. "Morix has lost several jewels and he looks older than the others..."

48. The model of the Hive exterior was made by Andrew Lazell's visual effects team

49. and was augmented by 20 seconds of silent stock film of a sandstorm, which was superimposed over the picture.

50. The model was made on a table top, which was then taken along to the first studio recording block.

51. All shots of the Hive were recorded during stoppages in the main studio action.

52. Model shots for Doctor Who were usually completed on film,

53. but there was not enough money in the budget for this to be an option for this story.

54. Interviewed for "Doctor Who Magazine" in 1992, director Lovett Bickford recalled working with K9:

55. "I think explaining K9's absence was quite fun. He went into the sea and exploded!

56. "It was scripted and nothing to do with me. I don't know why that was written in but I'm quite pleased it was.

57. "I quite liked the idea of starting off with a shock as K9 was very popular.

58. "Shooting a robot excitingly is quite tricky really. Humans are much more interesting.

59. "Those things are very difficult and they're very boring, frankly.

60. "They have no real character; it's down to the voice and all the rest of it.

61. "However, it was very popular and, dramatically, I liked the idea of a loved character going up in smoke. It's great!"

62. For the zero-gravity squash scenes, the actors playing the game were shot against a CSO background.

63. Quantel 5000 was then used to position each player and then add the final image to the view screen.

64. This shot starts with a Quantel zoom, and is then pulled back until the originally recorded picture is full-frame,

65. making the TARDIS materialise in a moving shot for the first time ever.

66. A mixture of CSO and Quantel is used again for the shot of Pangol's head lifting away from his body.

67. "The Leisure Hive" was the opening story of the 18th season of Doctor Who, and was the first made by new producer John Nathan-Turner.

68. Nathan-Turner had replaced Graham Williams as the show's producer

69. after Williams decided to move on to other projects following three years at the helm.

70. Nathan-Turner had been working on Doctor Who as Production Unit Manager since "The Talons Of Weng Chiang" (1977).

71. Williams had lobbied for Nathan-Turner to be appointed "associate producer" of Doctor Who during his final year on the programme,

72. but at the time, this wasn't a recognised BBC position.

73. But when Williams elected to stand down from the series,

74. he had no hesitation in recommending Nathan-Turner as his replacement to the BBC's Head of Series & Serials, Graeme McDonald.

75. Although McDonald did consider other candidates for the position, he quickly took the decision to appoint Nathan-Turner.

76. However, as this was Nathan-Turner's first appointment as a producer,

77. McDonald felt that it would be wise to have an experienced mentor available.

78. He appointed an executive producer to Doctor Who in the shape of Barry Letts, who had produced Doctor Who from 1969-74.

79. In practice, the BBC head of department was also nominally the executive producer on a programme,

80. and whilst McDonald was happy to fulfil this role with Williams in charge,

81. he wanted someone with Doctor Who experience to watch over Nathan-Turner's work.

82. Nathan-Turner took over as producer of Doctor Who in December 1979 at the age of 32.

83. A mixture of CSO and Quantel is again called into play, this time manipulating Pangol's body parts

84. which are played by David Haig plus another three extras for each part.

85. This shot is a freeze-frame image of the wall of the set

86. with an electronic green circle effect added to illustrate the Foamasi cutting into the Hive wall.

87. An inversion of just Laurence Payne's face is keyed over the picture to show Morix's death.

88. Interviewed for "Doctor Who Magazine" in 1992, director Lovett Bickford recalled how he approached visual elements in this story:

89. "I think that, inevitably, the first time you do something, you undergo a learning process because you've never done it before.

90. "Therefore, I might have had a freer hand than subsequent directors.

91. "The whole visual style, the shooting style and design of 'The Leisure Hive' was mine from beginning to end.

92. "For instance, at the beginning of the first episode, I decided to zoom out from the deckchair on Brighton beach into outer space.

93. "We couldn't do a continuous zoom so we had to 'trick' it through Quantel to go up and find our way to Argolis.

94. "The audience then knew we were a long way from Earth and knew the Doctor would arrive there shortly, which he did of course."

95. As part of the same "Doctor Who Magazine" interview, director Lovett Bickford also recalled the visual effects used in this story:

96. "We had so many effects, you see. I think we had 23 very complicated effects to do

97. "and it would probably have been better if we had done three or four really well rather than 23 not well enough.

98. "In fact, some didn't work particularly well at all, and the audience would have been making comparisons with "Star Wars".

99. "I hadn't used Quantel very much as I'd been working mostly on classic serials.

100. "In such a situation you simply tell the electronic effects designers what you want to achieve and you ask them to do it.

101. "Then they go ahead and show you what they can do, and together you decide whether it can be bettered

102. "or if it's the best you can get taking into account the time factor and the technical limitations.

103. "The director still has absolute control over everything.

104. "These designers are creative guys and Robin Lobb, who worked on 'The Leisure Hive', was good.

105. "He was quite new, I think, so he was therefore also trying to make his mark.

106. "He was very helpful, and it wasn't his fault when something didn't work.

107. "For example, when we split Tom up, the scale went all out the window. It wasn't good enough, really."

108. The sound effect of the boardroom door opening can be heard after the fake Earth experiment clip has finished playing.

109. As the Doctor and Romana enter after the clip finishes,

110. they can't possibly have seen the fake experiment, let alone the lack of continuity over the necklace.

111. The dialogue of them discussing the fake experiment was a late rewrite to the script

112. made by director Lovett Bickford, which possibly explains the lapse of internal logic at this point.

113. Quantel is used to show all the scenes played on the pyramid-shaped monitors in this story.

114. These scenes were either pre-recorded or fed from another part of the studio.

115. Tom, Lalla and the squash players were all suspended by Kirby wires against a CSO backcloth for this scene.

116. Quantel (yet again!) was used to move the characters on screen

117. and then to overlay Tom and Lalla over the squash players and other elements.

118. Interviewed for "Doctor Who Magazine" in 1992, director Lovett Bickford recalled the look of the story:

119. "I wanted a very bright look because the planet was very near a sun.

120. "I also wanted a feeling of claustrophobia in the sense that we had a city that effectively had no 'outside'.

121. "The atmosphere outside the Leisure Hive was poisonous, after all. Only the Foamasi could live in it. I think that aspect worked well.

122. "The difficulty with that sort of lighting, though, is that there is very little darkness, and darkness is dramatically very valuable.

123. "The darkness came when you saw the shuttle docking. We went into black before rising out with the entrance of Mena."

124. A new police box TARDIS prop was introduced in this story - the previous version had been in use since "The Masque Of Mandragora" (1976).

125. This new prop had a more authentic "stacked" roof than the previous version

126. and was more in keeping with the original TARDIS prop from the '60s.

127. Instead of being built from wood, this version of the TARDIS was made out of fibreglass,

128. with all the panels making up the four sides being detachable.

129. This made the prop much easier to transport when it was required to go out on location.

130. Quantel is used not only to show the Doctor having his limbs pulled off

131. but also to give the illusion of the camera zooming down Tom Baker's throat.

132. This episode was screened on BBC1 on Saturday 30th August 1980 from 6.15 - 6.40pm.

133. It achieved ratings of 5.9 million. nating.

134. Doctor?

135. Doctor!

136. Doctor!