Doctor Who 18x18

Matthew Waterhouse as Adric • Jeremy Gittins as Lazlo • Clifford Rose as Rorvik • Kenneth Cope as Packard

When Rorvik learns that Romana is a time sensitive, he takes her prisoner, forcing her to find a way out of the void. The Doctor attempts to discover what lies beyond the mirror.

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1. "Can K9 be repaired?

2. "What is the villainous Rorvik's plan for Romana?

3. "What is the secret of the Gateway?" (Radio Times)

4. This episode was first shown on 10 January, 1981.

5. It was seen by 6.7 million viewers.

6. The readings don't make sense because there is more to the dimensionally transcendental TARDIS than meets Lane's eye.

7. Paul Joyce remembers writing Lane's "coffin" quip.

8. Effects cobwebs are generated with a latex spray.

9. The lion statues provide the first clue as to whose banqueting hall this once was.

10. In a previous version, the Doctor finds a small silver globe on the ground, made of the same material as the mirror.

11. This was an unexplained "fossil" from the first draft, which featured "time bombs" containing fragments of time.

12. Paul Joyce queried the globe and, since the time bombs had been otherwise removed, this final trace of them went too.

13. What the Doctor finds instead, as you're about to see, is Biroc's manacle.

14. In that original draft, you'll remember, the first episode ended with a Tharil approaching the Doctor.

15. It keeps on advancing as the second episode picks up the action - and then walks straight through him.

16. It's a ghostly image from another time, quite unaware of his presence.

17. This is unscripted business worked out in rehearsal.

18. In the script, we see the Gundan's axe pass through the surface of the mirror.

19. The idea was dropped after unsuccessful attempts to create the effect using Cocteau's technique from Orphée.

20. The tests had to be pre-filmed for safety reasons: The mirror was represented by a large vat of mercury.

21. A Gundan axe was mounted on a rotating spindle and sliced into the shiny mercury.

22. They also tried the same effect with a Tharil hand, but neither really worked.

23. In the original plans for the 1980-81 series, the fifth serial in the running order was not 'Warriors' Gate'

24. but 'Sealed Orders', a script by science fiction novelist Christopher Priest which was ultimately abandoned.

25. It too dealt with the multiple dimensions of time, generated when the TARDIS lands inside itself.

26. Several Doctors featured in the resultant intrigue and one of them was killed...

27. In the script, she calls the Tharils "leonine ectomorphs" - in other words, they are shaped like lions on the outside.

28. Lalla Ward's performance cheekily plays on Packard's deficiency in the hair department.

29. In the end, 'Sealed Orders' was considered unworkable as a television script.

30. Fortunately, script editor Christopher Bidmead had another serial in development to replace it: 'The Dream Time'.

31. The story began with the TARDIS and another spaceship falling into an alternative dream reality.

32. This developed into 'Warriors' Gate': The eponymous "dream time" became the timeless, spaceless void at Zero Point.

33. Rorvik "doesn't like being out of his depth", says the script.

34. "Where?" is purely a philosophical question when you're nowhere.

35. Lane's explanation was a late, unscripted addition.

36. In quantum physics, "implicate theory" is another term for the holistic view of space-time as a single, interconnected entity.

37. In the script, Adric peeps out of the TARDIS door, which is why Romana gives the warning signal now.

38. The idea was that the slavers would think it natural for Romana to have a stretch

39. after a long journey cooped up inside a cramped spaceship such as the TARDIS seems to be.

40. In the script, Rorvik takes a last look back at the TARDIS, and almost sees Adric emerge.

41. The ensuing dialogue was cut. "Time-sensitive!" says Adric, who hasn't known Romana long. "Is she?"

42. K9 can only repeat, "Wafers memory compatible have may they".

43. "Poor K9!" says Adric. "You've got it all backwards."

44. K9 quotes Lewis Carroll: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards, the Queen remarked" (Through the Looking-Glass, 1871).

45. "Mistress fetches memory wafers. Equation reversible."

46. "Memory wafers fetching your mistress?" Duffers Adric. "Correct," replies K9, and elaborates:

47. "Memory wafers assessed as inducement or bait. Inferred time-sensitivity of mistress prized by strangers."

48. And that's how K9 worked out she was in danger.

49. The Gundan armour was made of heavy Darvik plastic, three millimetres thick.

50. The plastic was vacuum-formed into the required shapes.

51. In the script, the Doctor slips underneath the banqueting table.

52. That would have saved Tom Baker from having a lightweight prop axe fall on his back.

53. In the script, the Doctor makes his crack as he starts to inspect the robots' workings with a pencil torch.

54. Salford writer Steve Gallagher (born 1954) was finishing five years at Granada Television when he wrote 'Warriors' Gate'.

55. He had already written a run of plays for BBC Radio 4,

56. and had just got a contract to write his first novel, Chimera (which came out in 1982).

57. He has since become a respected novelist in the literary science fiction and horror genres,

58. with notable publications including Valley of Lights (1987), Oktober (1988), and White Bizango (2002).

59. When he joined Doctor Who early in 1980, Christopher Bidmead was keen to give the series a new direction with new writers.

60. He was interested in a playscript sent to the Doctor Who office by radio producer Martin Jenkins.

61. It was Steve Gallagher's 1979 play, An Alternative to Suicide, which Jenkins himself had directed.

62. Gallagher was asked to submit some story ideas, from which Bidmead chose the one he liked best: 'The Dream Time'.

63. On 17 March, 1980, Gallagher was commissioned to develop it into a storyline, which he submitted ten days later.

64. In the script, one of the crew is building a house of cards, which is knocked over by a draught as the door opens.

65. Gallagher envisaged the characters as bored, cynical and uninterested in their jobs,

66. which producer John Nathan-Turner took as a reflection of his feelings about working at Granada.

67. In the first draft, the slavers plan to use the Doctor as their navigator, not Romana.

68. The storyline featured only a generic "assistant" of indeterminate abilities and gender,

69. because Gallagher didn't know what Doctor Who's character line-up would be by the time the serial was actually made.

70. When it became clear that he would be writing for Romana, a Time Lord like the Doctor, this strand of the plot fell into place.

71. As scripted, Adric and K9 have gone round in a circle and are back at the TARDIS.

72. "You do it with your ears," Adric was scripted to say.

73. K9's fuller scripted answer was: "Articulated sensors on this unit are removable".

74. "Good deduction, K9," says Adric. "Parts of you are still working very well."

75. "Recommend triangulation base be increased to 80 metres," says K9.

76. K9 "turns quickly round in a state of high excitement" now that once again he can see where he's going.

77. 'The Dream Time' was not custom-written for Doctor Who. ; it was an existing idea which Gallagher adapted to suit.

78. The germ of it had no Doctor, no Romana, no TARDIS nor Adric nor K9.

79. It simply featured the void and the Gateway.

80. Gallagher thought of the "dream time" void in 1978 when talking to an Australian he'd met at Granada.

81. In earlier versions, there was a larger cast of characters crewing the privateer.

82. They were progressively slimmed down as an economy measure, and their lines divided among the others.

83. Jos and Dulles were the first to go,

84. but Helmsman Nestor remained until a relatively late stage, when Packard took over his job, and some of his dialogue.

85. For similar reasons, the broadcast version of 'Warriors' Gate' has only one speaking Gundan.

86. In the script, the Doctor has the two Gundans propped back-to-back, "like a pair of bookends".

87. Steve Gallagher's scripts were commissioned on 14 April with a target delivery date of 7 June, just under eight weeks later.

88. His aim was to write a strongly horror-based serial, since he disliked the "softer" approach to Doctor Who of recent years.

89. He approached the task with the assumption that he was writing for three different audience constituencies:

90. Action and monsters for the children, mystery and imagination for the teenagers, and intellectual drama for the adults.

91. After he had started work, an additional requirement came through: He was asked to write out Romana and K9 at the end.

92. The draft scripts arrived just four days late on 11 June, and were accepted, subject to rewrites, on 30 June.

93. There certainly needed to be rewrites.

94. Gallagher had been encouraged to let his imagination run free, and what he'd written just couldn't be realised.

95. He produced a second draft in less than four weeks, after which Bidmead and Joyce began another intensive rewrite on 28 July.

96. In the first draft, the Gundan robots were called Shoguns.

97. "The design is plain and unfussy," says the script, "like a space-age simplification of Samurai armour".

98. The earliest design drawing shows a graceful, balletic Gundan with a close-fitting costume.

99. Earlier versions of the script featured the Gundan more heavily.

100. They appeared in their pristine state, back in the past, preparing to do the job they were built for.

101. Tom Baker pretends he's hurt his hand on the "metal" helmet.

102. Look carefully at K9 in the next shot. Adric took out one of his ears, remember. But now...

103. Paul Joyce came to the attention of the Doctor Who production office through eep Smiling,

104. a drama about paranoia which he'd written and directed for the BBC's Play for Today strand.

105. David Rose, a senior drama producer at BBC Birmingham, sent John Nathan-Turner a tape of the play.

106. Joyce was invited to discuss the possibility of directing a Doctor Who serial, and told what was in the pipeline.

107. He chose 'The Dream Time'.

108. He was an admirer of the French film director Alain Resnais (born 1922) Whose work dealt with the subjectivity of time.

109. So he was attracted to the similar themes explored in Gallagher's upcoming serial.

110. "The work is routine," says the script. "They do it without finesse, or - perhaps - understanding".

111. For a summer week, Joyce and Bidmead revised solidly in the latter's flat, surrounded by clacking daisywheel printers.

112. On 5 August, they had a working dinner with Gallagher, who was none too pleased with what they'd done to his script.

113. But at least there was a script - though Romana's final scenes were still being amended in late August.

114. Casting and pre-production could begin on schedule.

115. The script calls for us to see "sympathetic pain" in Romana's face - an important precursor of later developments.

116. At this point, the script lays the emphasis on the workmen, as they hide the evidence of their bungling and back discreetly out.

117. In the script, the Doctor has wired the two Gundans' heads together.

118. There were some key personnel changes during pre-production.

119. Make-up was originally to have been handled by the award-winning Suzan Broad.

120. Dave Chapman was slated to provide electronic effects, and the sound supervisor was to have been Clive Gifford.

121. The final allocations remained uncertain for so long that it delayed the graphics slides for the closing credits.

122. Steve Gallagher first envisaged a slightly different Gateway:

123. "Two decayed pillars supporting a partly collapsed lintel,

124. "a ruined statue to one side, an empty plinth with a heap of rubble around it on the other".

125. The archway was to be built in white and grey stone which would blend seamlessly into the surrounding void.

126. While he was writing the scripts, Steve Gallagher came to London for a long weekend of discussions on 16-19 May.

127. He met Tom Baker, who was rehearsing 'State Of Decay' at the time, and was wearing a viciously checked yellow suit.

128. In support of his view that acting was the central resource, Tom showed the writer how to perform with an inanimate object.

129. Pulling out a cheese sandwich, he proceeded to make it the most evil, menacing cheese sandwich in the world.

130. It wasn't what the cheese sandwich did, but how the actor responded to it.

131. To prove this wasn't a fluke, he then played a love scene with the cheese sandwich...

132. 'Warriors' Gate' has a non-linear narrative structure, owing something to Cocteau's technique in Testament d'Orphée. ;

133. events are presented out of their expected chronological sequence.

134. The Gundan tells half the plot in this scene, for instance.

135. When he saw the revised scripts in early September, Barry Letts was worried.

136. He found the overall concept unclear.

137. Beyond a few local rewrites, however, there wasn't much to be done by that stage.

138. The production was going into rehearsal and Bidmead wasn't free to do yet another rewrite.

139. The next script crisis had already hit Doctor Who,

140. and the script editor was holed up in his flat again, writing an all-new replacement for a serial which had fallen through.

141. This was Tom Baker's swansong, 'Logopolis'.

142. A scripted fight scene was cut here.

143. Rorvik does indeed try to stop the Gundan, but is hurled against the mirror,

144. establishing its solidity before the robot passes through.

145. There was one last, unexpected script change to 'Warriors' Gate', made when the production reached the studio.

146. It concerned a comic scene featuring Packard talking to one of the two handymen.

147. Aldo (or is it Waldo?) is working in an inspection hatch behind Packard's console.

148. Every time Rorvik looks over at Packard, the handyman bobs down into the hatch to check something.

149. Rorvik thinks Packard is talking to himself!

150. When they got into the studio, however, the bridge with Packard's desk was on the upper level.

151. There was no inspection hatch and no way of playing the scene!

152. In the script, the Doctor trips over K9, tries to steady himself against the mirror with his injured hand, and falls through.

153. His scarf falls empty to the floor.

154. Here the script describes K9's "eyes blinking in bafflement".

155. That last shot was originally planned to finish the episode,

156. but later it was decided that Romana in terror would make a stronger cliff-hanger.

157. The script calls for cutaway shots of Romana struggling to get free throughout the later privateer scenes,

158. leaving her helpless and exhausted now.

159. As originally envisaged, the apparatus covered most of Romana's face.

160. The final design gave Lalla Ward more opportunity for a strong facial performance in this scene.

161. After each episode of 'Warriors' Gate' was first broadcast,

162. the BBC continuity announcer publicised the "Doctor Who Experience" waxwork display at Madam Tussauds,

163. and also the recently released BBC record of the series' new theme music.

164. Uncredited production contributors

165. Cathy Burczac, Penny Ferguson, Caroline Gibbs (Make-Up Assistants)

166. Jonathan McLeish (Contracts Assistant)

167. Roger Oldhamstead (Gundan Maker)

168. Harry Randall (Show Working Supervisor)

169. Katy Marshall (Floor Assistant)