Mel in 60th / Chronicles 1973 / RTD plans for s14 and s15: News Update

 

You may have read today in the news that Bonnie Langford has spoken about an appearance in one of the 60th Anniversary Specials, specifically mentioning featuring in something written by RTD. We have no idea which old companions - if any - beyond Donna Noble are going to appear in these Specials. 

The journalist responsible for today's story has simply taken old interview information about Langford's appearance in an RTD written audio adventure (Mind of the Hodiac) which came out months ago.

Maybe she will get a cameo, maybe she won't - but ignore today's tabloid tale.

Don't go looking for the new Doctor Who Chronicles: 1973 just yet. It has been postponed for two weeks. Now due in the shops on Thursday 20th October.

One further snippet of teaser for The Power of the Doctor: "Who is defacing history's most iconic paintings?".

RTD promises that his new series will address environmental issues. Just make a better job of it than CC, that's all I'll say. The two stories of Series 12 which featured such issues most prominently were Orphan 55 and Praxeus - the stories which sat last and second to last in every single poll.

RTD seemed to suggest 50 minute length episodes, and said he was concentrating more on Series 15 than he was on 14 for some things - so he certainly doesn't intend his second coming to cover just one more season. This all came from a Zoom interview he did at a climate conference (Climate Creatives 2022).

UPDATE: Rumours of a press screening for The Power of the Doctor in London on Tuesday. Watch as we go from no information to tabloid spoilers...

Negative Promotion...

It seems many people are perplexed and annoyed at the lack of promotion for The Power of the Doctor, especially if it is going to be screened on Sunday 23rd October. That is only two and half weeks away as I write, and yet we have had no new trailer, and the images which have been released to publications such as SFX and the previous issue of DWM have been minimal, and mostly of the same scant subjects (Tegan, Ace, Master for the most part, with the odd Dalek and Cyberman picture).

I read today that Graham Norton's chat show on Friday 21st October has no Doctor Who related content, which is unusual for one broadcast next to a significant Doctor Who event.

And now the BBC have forced the withdrawal of the cover for next week's DWM No.583 - not wishing it to be released until just before publication date. So not only are they not promoting the episode, they are apparently actively withdrawing promotion for it. 

Promotion for the show since Chibnall took over has been abysmal at the best of times, but this must surely take the biscuit.

Thing is, I've seen the cover. Not only was it briefly out there, but if you Google Image "Doctor Who Magazine" it is still out there in the public domain.

What great spoiler does it depict, to make the BBC act this way? I hear you cry.

It is a shot of the Doctor, Yaz and Dan standing in their red spacesuits, against a blue background.

Nothing else. No image of the 14th Doctor. No hitherto unknown return of a Doctor or companion of the past. Just the three main characters in costumes which we have already seen two of them wear in the trailer and in photos already published months ago by the BBC, like the one above.

Even if the BBC have decided to push the broadcast date back, it shouldn't affect when and how people see such a bland image from the episode.

We are not asking for spoilers, but it would be nice to see something coming from the BBC that might inspire people, who aren't necessarily fans, to actually sit down and watch the thing.

Rare Tom Baker movie screening

 

Tom Baker's career is very much split between theatre and television, with only a small number of cinema films. Had two movies he was booked for not collapsed at the same time, he would never have been working on that building site in Pimlico, and written a begging letter to a BBC producer looking for work.

Once he became the Fourth Doctor, he never returned to cinema in any significant way. 

Of the films he did make, Nicholas and Alexandra gets shown occasionally, as does The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and one of his three horror efforts - Vault of Horror - used to be screened regularly. It's a long time since Frankenstein: The True Story has been on the box - but I personally can't remember any UK TV screening of 1974's The Mutations (aka The Freakmaker in the US). It will be getting a rare showing on the Talking Pictures channel this week - on Friday 7th October at 9.05pm.

Baker plays henchman to mad scientist Donald Pleasance, who's turning people into plant monsters in his experiments. Baker is facially deformed, and tries to conceal this with, of all things, a wide-brimmed floppy hat and scarf...

Story 261: Face The Raven

 

In which the Doctor and Clara are summoned to the home of Rigsy - the young graffiti artist who had helped them battle the Boneless in Bristol. He now lives in London with his fiancée and child. He has lost his memories of the last 24 hours, and has discovered a strange tattoo on the back of his neck. It is a set of numbers which change - some sort of countdown...

His phone is broken, and when the Doctor scans him he discovers that he has been in contact with some alien technology. Alarmingly, when the tattoo reaches zero, he will die.

Studying some maps to try to jog his memory of where he might have been, Clara recalls the concept of "trap streets". Map-makers would add small non-existent streets to their work, which would flag up copyists. The Doctor tells them both that such streets exist in reality - hidden pockets of alien life here on Earth.

They finally track down the street to an alleyway in the City, protected by a misdirection circuit. On entering it they are confronted by two men - Rump and Kabel, who are really disguised aliens. They recognise Rigsy and are antagonistic towards him. The Doctor is surprised to discover that the street's overseer is Me - the woman formerly known as Ashildr. She acts as mayor of the street, pledged to protect the various aliens who live here as refugees. She explains that Rigsy visited the street the previous day and murdered one of its inhabitants - a woman named Anah. She was a member of the Janus race, who have two faces. Their females can see the past with one face, and the future with the other, and many races enslave and exploit them. She is survived by her son, Anahson.

Rigsy's tattoo is a Chronolock - the form of punishment employed in the street. When the countdown reaches zero, a Quantum Shade - which resembles a raven - attacks and kills those marked.

They witness the execution of a man accused of stealing supplies. As his tattoo reaches zero he tries to run but the Raven flies into his body and he dies. It is Me who controls the Shade, via a tattoo on her own body.

Me allows the Doctor and Clara some time to investigate the death of Anah and so clear Rigsy. They start by talking to Anahson - and discover that he is really a girl. She was posing as a boy to avoid exploitation.

So convinced of the Doctor's ability to resolve the mystery, and believing that it will circumvent the Quantum Shade if the Chronolock is held by an innocent party, Clara agrees to transfer it to herself. The Doctor is unaware of this decision.

The Doctor discovers that Anah's body is being held in a stasis field, and realises that she is not actually dead.

Me appears and tells the Doctor that the field can only be turned off using the TARDIS key. He must deposit it in a machine, but the device grips his arm and places a clamp around his wrist. This is a teleport device. He realises that the "trap street" was well named. It has all been a trap to ensnare him. 

Me has been forced to co-operate with the High Council of Time Lords, who are determined to obtain the Doctor's Confession Dial - prepared when he thought he was going to die facing Davros. A legend on Gallifrey tells of a creature known as "The Hybrid" which will destroy Time Lord civilisation. The High Council believe the Doctor has information about it, and have therefore colluded with Me to capture him.

Me agrees to remove the Chronolock from Rigsy, only to be told about the swap he made with Clara. She is horrified by this. She does not have the power to cancel the Shade now that it is connected to another person.

The Doctor is forced to witness Clara's death as the Raven is unleashed and flies into her body. 

He warns Me that she should never cross his path ever again as he hands over the Dial, then submits to be teleported away.

Rigsy is free to leave.

Later, he turns the abandoned TARDIS into a form of shrine to Clara...

Face The Raven was written by Sarah Dollard, and was first broadcast on Saturday 21st November, 2015. Dollard had previously contributed scripts to gene TV shows Primeval and Merlin, as well as the soap Neighbours in her native Australia.

It sees the return of the character Rigsy, from the previous season's Flatline, and Me (from this year's The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived), as well as the apparent demise of companion Clara Oswald.

However, many fans were aware that Jenna Coleman was featuring in the series finale, so it looked as though this was yet another of Steven Moffat's false deaths of companions. This proved to be the case, and it is certainly the very worst instance of it. A beautiful ending to this story is utterly trashed by Moffat within the space of a fortnight in the abomination that is Hell Bent.

What made this doubly annoying was the fact that fans had grown really sick and tired of Clara as a character by this time, and this was the third perfectly good opportunity to have her depart which was then wasted. (She really ought to have gone at the end of Death in Heaven, and there was another good exit point in Last Christmas).

The idea of the trap street was topical at the time - issues of refugees and asylum seekers being as big a news item in 2015 as it is in now.

We see a number of Doctor Who monsters represented. This includes Ood and Cybermen, as above, as well as Silurians, Sontarans and Ice Warriors. A pair of police officers who escort Me are really disguised Judoon.

Some of these are very crudely realised, with badly superimposed heads on bodies (see below).

New creatures include the two-faced Janus and a humanoid species known as Habrians. The character Rump looks a bit like Wolverine, whilst his friend Kabel is a reptilian Lugal-Irra-Kush.

The lighting in the street comes from creatures called Lurkworms. As well as providing lighting, they are responsible for the humanoid appearance of the various alien refugees.

Me states that the trap street is a better way of housing refugees than the UNIT-Zygon resettlement agreement, referencing this series' two part Zygon story. The Doctor later threatens to bring Zygons down on the street, along with Daleks and Cybermen, when furious with Me at Clara's fate.

The guest cast is headed by the two returnees - Maisie Williams as Me, who is actually credited as Ashildr, and Joivan Wade as Rigsy.

Rump is Simon Paisley Day. As plain Simon Day he had appeared in The End of the World as Platform One's blue-faced Steward. He added the 'Paisley' to prevent confusion with the Simon Day of The Fast Show fame. Kabel is Simon Manyonda.

Credited as "Chronolock guy" is Robin Soans. He had previously appeared in The Keeper of Traken as Consul Luvik. He's the man who gets killed by the Raven just after the Doctor, Clara and Rigsy arrive in the street.

Letitia Wright plays Anahson. She has gone on to join the MCU, playing Shuri in Black Panther and its forthcoming sequel, as well as in the final two Avengers movies. In December 2020 she promoted a video which was anti-vaxxer, expressed doubts about climate change, and was transphobic. This had been made by her church leader. It has been claimed that she still holds anti-vaxxer views, which she is denying.

Overall, a perfectly good story in its own right, with a mystery to solve in the cleverly set-up trap street, leading to a heart-breaking conclusion. Only an imbecile would undermine it...

Things you might like to know:

• Trap streets have been known about for a while. In 2005 the general public were made aware of them in a BBC programme about the history of the iconic London A-Z - a series called The Map Man. It told of how cartographers added small made-up streets (usually tiny cul-de-sacs) to catch out copyright violators. The example seen in the programme was of a real street but one that had been renamed (after a member of the A-Z publishing team). Outside of urban areas, some maps include false information such as the elevation of hills to flag up copyists. In the US, trap streets can't actually be protected by copyright - as you can't copyright something which technically does not exist.
• Of those badly realised residents of the trap street, the Ice Warrior is taken from Cold War - an image of Skaldak without his helmet, whilst the Sontaran is clearly Christopher Ryan's General Staal from The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky.
• Rigsy's memory loss is said to be the result of Retcon - the amnesia-inducing drug first introduced in Torchwood.
• In the end credits the plural of Ood is given as "Oods", whereas it is generally accepted that "Ood" is both singlar and plural.
• Capaldi's costume (burgundy jacket) in this episode was actually first seen in a DWM comic strip - the 1970's set The Highgate Horror. (In this, Clara wears Jo Grant's ensemble from The Three Doctors).
• Technically Clara does actually die in this story. When brought back she hails from a moment in time between her final heartbeats. The last companion to be killed in the series - and stay dead - was Adric. This is referenced when the Doctor cryptically says "Remember 82" to a boy playing hopscotch - 1982 being the year Earthshock was screened.
• The final scene of Rigsy and the graffiti'd TARDIS was shown after the end credits - the first time that a post credits scene had ever been used on the programme.
• The painted TARDIS prop was not the regular one used in the series, as it could be seen separately at the BBC studios in Cardiff, as I saw on a set tour in March 2016 (below top). It was later on display in the Doctor Who Experience in September 2017 (below bottom).

Dudley Simpson - 100 Not Out

 

Remembering composer Dudley Simpson on the centenary of his birth. 

One of the worst decisions in the entire history of Doctor Who was JNT's to dismiss Simpson as the series' "court composer". Instead, he opted for a decade of incidental music with built-in obsolescence. Some of the music from series 18 - 26 is memorable, but the dross outweighs the diamonds.

Simpson hailed from Australia, and came to the UK to compose and conduct for ballet. 

His first Doctor Who work was on Planet of Giants in 1964. He was employed intermittently through the Hartnell / Troughton years, becoming more of a regular during Jon Pertwee's time. Producer Barry Letts tried to encourage directors to use him as often as possible. He composed scores using both conventional instruments and radiophonics during this period - in stories such as Terror of the Autons, which gave us the Master theme. Philip Hinchcliffe was happy to use him all the time (though director Douglas Camfield declined due to a long-running feud, which he later confessed was based on his mistake). 

If the series has a 'Golden Age', then it involves Hinchcliffe as producer, Robert Holmes as writer / script editor, Tom Baker as Doctor - and Dudley Simpson as composer. The Talons of Weng-Chiang actually has him appear on screen - as the conductor of the Palace Theatre orchestra.

After his work on The Horns of Nimon, JNT took him out for a meal and informed him his services were no longer required - part of his overhaul of the series as new producer.

As well as his work on Doctor Who he also composed for Blake's 7, and The Tomorrow People. 

He retired back home to Australia, and died in November 2017. He was present in the Royal Albert Hall to hear some of his work performed as part of the 50th Anniversary Prom concert.

What's Wrong With... The Green Death

 

Jo Grant knows all about Nobel Prize-winning Professor Jones, yet hasn't a clue what he looks like. Has no newspaper or Sunday supplement magazine ever published a photo of him?

You've seen your friends turn bright green and die, and are then confronted with a bright green slime that smells horribly. Why, then, do you insist on touching it with your bare hands?

One of the biggest problems with The Green Death is its representation of the Welsh. Had they filmed it in Surrey it would have been bad enough, but the fact that they actually went to Wales to film the location scenes makes this even worse. All the Welsh characters are presented as stereotypes. They come across as anti-English, say "Boyo" and "Blodwen" rather a lot, and have 'Name-the-Job' structure titles - like Jones the Milk.

Director Michael E Briant had a considerable location filming allocation - Monday 12th March to Tuesday 20th March incl. - but still ran out of time. 

This is why we get actors standing in front of really obvious CSO screens. Another CSO cock-up is when the Doctor and Jo are using a coal truck to traverse the area of the mine full of maggots. The bottom of the truck disappears - leaving the upper part floating in mid-air.

As far as model work goes, we go from the sublime to the ridiculous. The explosion of the mine workings and of Global Chemicals are very good, but the shots of 'Bessie' driving across the spoil heaps, surrounded by inflated condoms leave a lot to be desired.

As well as condoms being used for maggots on model shots, lavatory ballcocks were used as bombs on location. 

The hire company for the helicopter is rather blatantly seen (Twyford Moors of Southampton), when it's supposed to be a UNIT aircraft.

To save studio time, Briant ran the closing sequence under the end credits backwards on three of the episodes, rather than rewind them each time.

When miner Dai Evans uses the phone to call for help, you see the hand of a floor assistant waving bottom right corner of the screen to give him his cue.

The ground bounces a great deal when John Levene runs over it to rescue Cliff and Jo from the cave - as he's running over a raised studio rostrum, enabling the maggot props to be manipulated from beneath. You can see the grooves for the maggot rod puppets in some scenes.

The Doctor and Jo escape from the mine up a pipeline which is about to fill with chemical sludge - yet it has a CCTV camera in it.

One very obvious issue with the latter part of this story is the sudden disappearance of the character Elgin, and the equally sudden appearance of a man named James whom we've never seen before.

Prior to the final recording block actor Tony Adams was struck down by peritonitis. Unable to take any further part in the production, his character was simply replaced by another, hitherto unseen, Global Chemicals employee - Mr James - rather than recast the part. James is played by Roy Skelton, who had already featured as the invisible Spiridonian Wester in the previous story. An old friend of the programme, he was available and happy to step in at the last minute.

The calendar in the guards' hut at main gate is for February 1972. The one in Yates' office is for April. You might expect the rarely used office to have an out of date calendar on its wall - not the other way round.

Terry Walsh, who played the security guard, was Pertwee's stunt double, and he also doubled for Richard Franklin in this story - rather obviously in both cases. Note especially when Yates is supposed to be the man jumping from the balcony above the factory's main doors.

In filming his pretend landing, Franklin split his trousers.

The cast credits for Episode Four list a character known as "Yate's Guard".

In the scenes where the Doctor is apparently climbing a steep cliff on Metebelis III, Pertwee was naturally only a few feet off the ground. Some schoolchildren watching the filming laughed at this, which really annoyed him.

A very big deal is made about needing an oxy-acetyline torch. Half an episode is wasted with the Doctor breaking into the factory in a fruitless search for this equipment. The Brigadier finds what they are after at a local garage. No self-respecting garage would be without this stuff, so why did they not think to look there first?

Barry Letts was concerned that he might get into trouble for featuring such strong ecological messages in family viewing, but the only letter received was from someone commenting on how Pertwee had mispronounced "chitinous". It came in the form of a poem:

"The reason I'm writin',

 Is how to say 'chitin'".

The story presents Jones and his community as free spirits, who don't want to conform - yet Jones insists that everyone do as he says. He knows best how they should run their lives and their community. In many ways he as bad as Stevens and BOSS. He is as likely to turn into a cult leader as he is a saviour of the Valleys.

As an aside, the DVD production subtitles assure us that Wagner wrote Beethoven's Violin Concerto.

Fans would have been doubly heartbroken when watching Episode Six. Not only was the popular Jo Grant leaving the series after three seasons, but Master actor Roger Delgado had been killed in a car crash in Turkey at the beginning of that week.

Episode 39: A Change of Identity

Synopsis:

From his prison cell, Ian watches in horror as Barbara and Susan are taken away to the guillotine...

In a nearby street, en route to the place of execution, two men are waiting to ambush the tumbril. They are Jules Renan and his friend Jean. When they see that one of the horses is being replaced, taking one of the guards away, they seize the opportunity and attack. Barbara and Susan are rescued, and the men smuggle them away to Renan's home.

The Doctor arrives in the city and makes his way to the vicinity of the Conciergerie. He sees a tailor shop within sight of the prison and enters.

He pretends to be an Official from the southern provinces and arranges to swap his clothes for a suitable uniform, plus pen and parchment.

In the prison, the Jailer is distributing food. When he puts his keys into the door of Ian's cell Lemaitre summons him away. Ian reaches down and removes his cell key from the bunch then replaces the rest in the lock. When the flustered Jailer returns, he moves on to the next cell.

Later, when Ian lets himself out of the cell he finds the Jailer fast asleep at his desk, and makes his way outside - observed by Lemaitre.

At the home of Jules Renan, Barbara and Susan meet Jean's sister Danielle. Susan is still ill. Jules is intrigued to learn of their capture, and is unhappy to hear that they were caught at what should have been one of his safe houses. He oversees an escape route which is run by his friend Leon Colbert, who is due to visit later.

The Doctor presents himself at the prison with forged documents, claiming to have come to collect some prisoners from his region - Ian, Barbara and Susan. He is surprised to hear that Ian has escaped, and the woman were sent to the guillotine but rescued on the way. Lemaitre arrives, suspicious of the Doctor due to his claim to know Ian.

He insists that the Doctor remain at the prison that night, for tomorrow they will go and meet Robespierre to discuss the arrest figures for his region amongst other things.

The Doctor attempts to extricate himself from this agreement with the Jailer after Lemaitre departs, but finds he has no choice but to stay.

Leon Colbert arrives at Renan's home. He informs Jules that a stranger has been asking about him. Jules and Jean leave to discover who this is, whilst Leon stays behind to talk with Barbara, who is flattered by his attentions.

The tailor comes to the prison and informs the Jailer that he has brought information about a traitor - offering him the Doctor's ring as evidence...

Next episode: The Tyrant of France

Data:

Written by: Dennis Spooner

Recorded: Friday 24th July 1964 - Lime Grove Studio G 

First broadcast: 5:30pm, Saturday 22nd August 1964

Ratings: 6.9 million / AI 55

Designer: Roderick Laing

Additional Cast: Donald Morley (Jules Renan), Roy Herrick (Jean), Edward Brayshaw (Leon Colbert), John Barrard (Tailor), Danielle (Caroline Hunt).

Critique:

This episode has no director credit. Henric Hirsch had been struggling with the production due to lack of experience and language problems. We've already noted how he was poor at giving actors direction, and Carole Ann Ford has expressed her dissatisfaction with him, whilst William Hartnell openly bullied him. 

He was used to having more resources - especially time - and could not cope with the pressures of Doctor Who's production schedule, and the technical complexity of staging its episodes in Lime Grove-scale studios. Production assistant Tim Combe had been helping out as much as he could - contributing to casting, locations and camera scripting.

On the day that this episode was to be recorded, Combe returned from the afternoon tea break to be informed that Hirsch had collapsed outside the production gallery. The stress of this particular episode - involving the use of live horses in the tiny studio amongst other things - had been too much for him. Verity Lambert was hurriedly contacted. 

Combe took over the studio rehearsals, the cast oblivious to the real drama going on nearby. 

For years fandom thought that Combe himself had taken over the directing of the episode, or Lambert. Associate producer Mervyn Pinfield - an experienced director himself - was another candidate. It is now believed that Lambert called upon John Gorrie, director of The Keys of Marinus, to step in at the last minute. The issue is further confused by the fact that he could not recall doing this and even publicly claimed he didn't do it. Carole Ann Ford can't recall who took over, and William Russell was still away on holiday this week. Pinfield died in the Spring of 1966, long before there was a fandom to interview him about his time on the series.

Later, once the cast had been made aware of what had happened - and why - Combe had a meal with Hartnell, and the star agreed to give the director an easier time.

The main site of the guillotine in Paris at this time was the Place de la Revolution (formerly the Place Louis XV and now the Place de la Concorde). It was here that King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Robespierre met their fate, but in between times it was moved to other locations - including the Place de la Nation and the Place de la Bastille.

The contraption as used during the Reign of Terror was invented by a physician - M. Joseph Ignace Guillotin - who was actually opposed to the death penalty. As it couldn't be abolished, he proposed a more humane form of despatch, and got the blessing of Louis XVI - who would ultimately get to experience it first hand. The prototype was built by a man named Antoine Louis, and it was initially named after him rather than Guillotin.

The guillotine as a form of execution was embraced by the Revolution as it was seen as a symbol of equality. Previously, different sections of society had been executed in different ways - the poorer having the most brutal methods applied whilst the nobility experienced quicker and cleaner forms. The guillotine executed everyone alike - from King to Commoner. A leveller in more ways than one.

It was nicknamed the "National Razor".

The concept of the guillotine was not a new one. You can see a 16th Century version at the National Museum of Scotland. This earlier Scottish version was known as the Maiden. There was also a contraption known as the Halifax Gibbet, which dropped a weighted axe head onto the neck of its victims.

A noticeable gaffe originating in this episode is Jules Renan's assertion that his escape network only ever use first names in order to protect their true identities in case of capture. The two men in Episode 37: A Land of Fear - Rouvray and D'Argenson - were only ever known by their surnames, and Renan himself gives his name to Barbara and Susan. He also gives everyone Leon's surname.

In fact, we know the surname of every conspirator in this story, other than Jean and Danielle. The production team did spot this at the time and Spooner attempted to correct it, but didn't make a very thorough job of it.

In the opening street scene, look out for the man who is clearly waiting for his cue to start walking forward - the camera cuts to him just a fraction too soon. The man in question looks very much like Brian Proudfoot - Hartnell's location double, who we know featured as soldiers and a Parisian citizen in other episodes of this story.

This episode is the first to feature the linked sets comprising the streets of Paris, the tailor shop and surrounding buildings. It was a complex set, needing to have a street wide enough to accommodate the horse and tumbril, raised areas for the citizens to watch from their windows, and the Doctor had to be able to see into the tailor shop from the street.

As mentioned last week, I suspect that it was a model of this set which Carole Ann Ford was talking about, when she spoke about having been given a model of Paris after filming. It was kept on the top of her wardrobe for several years, until destroyed by an over-zealous cleaning lady.

Trivia:

• From this episode onwards the series was moved to the slightly later start time of 5:30pm.
• The audience remains stable, and even has a small increase in the appreciation index over the previous instalment.
• Edward Brayshaw would return to the series as a member of the Doctor's own race. He was the War Chief in The War Games.
• In draft scripts Leon's surname was given as Corneille.
• Roy Herrick also returned to the series, playing the medic Parsons in The Invisible Enemy. He was also one of the voices of computer Xoanon in The Face of Evil.
• Caroline Hunt played the rather glamorous Mind Analysis Machine operator in Frontier in Space.
• Another factor which may have led to Hirsch's stress was the loss of his principal cast from the final day of rehearsals for this episode. They were at Ealing with Mervyn Pinfield doing the pre-filming for Planet of Giants.