(WHOOSHING)
SARAH SUTTON: I think you'll find, Janet,
that I was always called before you.
No, you weren't.
I was called first.
No, I was called early because I had all those curls.
- I had curls. - Not as long as mine.
- Do you like my hat? - No.
Morning, crew.
No. Wrong story, Mark. Wrong story.
- Wrong story. - SARAH: What are you doing here?
I'm here to stop you guys arguing.
And ask some very tricky questions.
But first thing we are going to do... Yes, I am the boss today, Peter.
(CHUCKLES)
I've always wanted to be the boss.
The very tricky question is, do we remember anything?
- Do we remember anything? - First of all, go for a walk.
And see what comes back to you, all right?
- This is the theory. - Okay.
- It all should come flooding back. - Right. Okay.
- Fingers crossed. - Off you go. Lead on.
- This way. - (ALL LAUGHING)
- No, that way. - (ALL LAUGHING)
That gag? Not that gag!
(SIGHS)
I'm sorry. I realise how disappointed you must be.
I'm sorry, too.
- But you did make a promise. - And I'll keep it.
So it's flooding back, Peter?
Trouble is, Mark, I have trouble remembering what I did yesterday.
- So, uh, 30 years is a bit of a problem. - I don't think this is the right place.
JANET: This is not it. No. This is not it.
Because these trees don't have branches.
- Don't match? - No, they're wrong trees.
We could be wandering around here for hours. Is that okay?
- Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. - I think it was over here.
PETER: All right. Let's try over there. Come on.
- Okay. - Follow me.
Ow!
- Are you all right? - I don't know.
Matthew.
- (CHUCKLING) - PETER: Matthew?
Just on the off chance, you know?
- (JANET CHUCKLING) - PETER: Okay.
Let's try over here.
I do miss Matthew.
(ALL SCREAMING)
Ooh. That was very convincing.
- (CHUCKLING) - Let's go.
SARAH: Why did we film here?
What?
Yeah, well, we were filming in...
(STAMMERING) Black Park, of course, was the standard BBC location
- for filming. - Because...
- Because, yeah? - You didn't have to pay an overnight.
Because it was within 25 miles of Television Centre.
So, despite the fact that it was such an impossible place to film,
because of these planes that would go over about every four minutes.
Theoretically, it was good. Because what it meant was,
you could set up while the plane was going over.
And as the plane disappeared into the distance,
you could turn over and go, "Action!"
Then you would have three minutes to record the scene,
which is usually enough, but of course that's not how filming works.
Because what happens is, everything is ready and then suddenly
the sound department wants to adjust a microphone
or the costume department wants to just adjust your costume a bit
and make-up maybe wants you to have one more dab.
Make-up.
By which time, the three minutes have gone and you turn over
and another plane is there. So we lost enormous amounts of time.
Well, every production did who filmed in Black Park...
We were very behind, weren't we, after a couple of days.
And then, miraculously, on the third day...
And we wouldn't have finished otherwise, because we had quite a lot to do here.
Um, there was an air traffic controllers strike.
- And the whole of Black Park... - Who arranged that?
Went quiet. Yeah.
Now that's what I call Nathan-Turner.
Did he phone in a bomb threat or something? I don't know.
But, anyway, the whole of Black Park went quiet.
And we managed to do an enormous amount of work on that third day and catch up.
One of the things that has confused me, Peter, is that
"Visitation" was 19th season. You shoot it all out of order.
- Yes. - It was shot fourth, shown second.
- No, shot second, shown fourth. - Shot second, shown fourth. Yeah.
But that's because I'm totally incompetent
and didn't really know what I was doing.
So John Nathan-Turner thought it would be a good idea
to give me a bit of a stab at it.
Uh, in a sort of practice, so "Four to Doomsday" and "The Visitation"
were kind of my getting into, uh, the character.
And then we went back to do the first one.
I don't know if it was quite that order.
"Castrovalva."
Hopefully, by then, I would have found some sort of character.
(CHUCKLES) I'm not sure I ever did.
I'm not sure I...
"Caves of Androzani," I think I actually got it right by.
And Nyssa wasn't even in this story, was she?
- Yes. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But she had to be written in. Originally, she wasn't there.
- Oh, really? - Yeah. It was during the Tom Baker time.
PETER: They didn't tell me that, by the way.
(CHUCKLES) Um, but, yeah, I guess it...
They hurt your feelings.
(CHUCKLES)
Fine. But I mean, I loved "The Visitation" as a story.
- So do you like the historical ones? - Yeah.
JANET: I do. Personally. Yeah.
The ones I remember from my childhood, because I was the first Doctor,
really, who had grown up watching Doctor Who. I was 12 when it started.
Um, my favourite ones were where the Doctor had something to do
with some historical event.
You know, so the Mary Celeste
was found abandoned. It was the Doctor.
Uh, and this fitted in perfectly with that.
And what I didn't know and what I didn't quite realise...
'Cause I've been saying for years,
you know, the Terileptil started the fire, the Great Fire of London.
But when I watched it back, it was actually me.
- JANET: Yes, yes. - Because I'm the idiot who's standing
- inside the house with a flaming torch. - SARAH: You are the idiot. Yes.
PETER: Who then for no good reason just drops it
and sets fire to the whole of London.
Um, but I used to love it where you know it sort of
baffling events in history were explained by the Doctor's presence.
MARK: Did you meet Eric?
- Eric Saward, who wrote it? - PETER: Yeah. I don't quite remember.
I did obviously meet Eric, I did like the story.
- I thought Eric was an excellent writer. - SARAH: Yeah.
I was sitting with somebody who was doing
a mature course on history, and we started talking about
different periods and eventually the, uh,
Great Fire, Plague,
as they happened within a year of each other.
And that it was... There was really a mystery as to who had started
or how the fire had started, rather than who had started it deliberately.
It probably started in a bakers, purely by accident.
And so I started working on that and, um,
came up with the Terileptils and, um, their attempts to settle on Earth.
Did you have any input into the script, because it was actually...
It was called, "Invasion of the Plague Men."
(CHUCKLING) Thank goodness they changed that title.
I don't know why they changed it.
That was just to put a title on it.
Um, there was no real intention for it to stay like that,
and then, um, inevitably I was asked, "Do I really want this title?"
And I said, "Well, no. Not really."
Because I had already thought of a better one.
Then it was called, "Plague Rats," which I think actually is a better title
than "Visitation", because at least it tells you what it's about.
PETER: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
What was it called when you first saw it?
- "Visitation". - "Visitation".
Back in the 17th century, people called
the coming of the plague, "the visitation".
And, um, also we have the visitation from the Terileptils coming to Earth,
and I thought, "Well, it's a natural."
Yeah, it is actually a fairly baffling title when I think about it now.
- It could be anything, couldn't it? - I've no idea what it means.
I've got some proof in my pocket that we are
actually at the right location.
- Have you? - MARK: Here we are.
There's a crashed Terileptil space pod.
PETER: You are a desperately sad person.
(ALL LAUGHING)
I may have to change...
JANET: You can't trust the Internet, Mark.
This is pulled off the Internet.
I don't see any of that around here. Shall we go somewhere else?
- Let's have a look. - Well, we could...
I'll tell you what we could go and look for.
We could go and look for where they put the chemical toilet.
- (CHUCKLING) - Ah.
PETER: One chemical toilet amongst 30 people.
If we find the location of the chemical toilet,
I think within about 300 yards, you'll find every location.
- Right. Let's go! Let's go! - (CHUCKLING)
PETER: This way. MARK: Lead on.
Come on, gang.
- Now which way? - I don't know.
Use your homing device.
Ah! I must have dropped it during the fight.
- Oh, tremendous. - Come on, come on. This way.
All right. I've got a picture of the pod sticking out of the earth here.
PETER: Oh, yes.
MARK: That seems a bit... I don't know.
- Did they actually build the pod here? - SARAH: Yeah.
Now they would digitally superimpose it.
- But then, they actually built it. - Yeah.
PETER: And they put little bits of wood, little bits of earth around it,
so it looked like it was buried into the ground.
Basically, the spaceship had to look as though it had just crash-landed.
And, uh, I wanted to bulldoze a huge track through the woods.
You know, with trees coming down and...
Um, then put the rear-end of the spaceship sticking out.
We put the spaceship in and then threw a bit of peat around it.
And that was about all we could achieve.
Of course, you couldn't actually walk into it. That was in the studio.
Janet? You were in a bad... Well,
sort of bad mood with the Doctor, weren't you, when you landed?
What was that about?
I was always in a bad mood with the Doctor.
- (ALL CHUCKLING) - PETER: You in a bad mood? Surely not.
- That was my character. - Any memory of why you were?
You were supposed to be taking me back to Heathrow in...
This was meant to be Heathrow, uh...
JANET: Three hundred years later.
- Earth, Heathrow, 1981. - Doctor?
Not one of the most stimulating places in the universe,
but, nevertheless, where requested to be.
Doctor?
DOCTOR: Oh, no.
Is that supposed to be Heathrow?
Tegan's return to Heathrow was given to me. I was told...
I think there was thought of actually writing her out, initially.
And then I was told, "No. Can you use that?"
Uh, give her that involvement. And...
I did. And she does moan a lot about it.
My fault.
Call yourself a Time Lord?
A broken clock keeps better time than you do.
At least it's accurate twice a day...
I think I was bit too bad tempered, actually.
With you. Because I think I was a bit overdoing it there.
When I was watching it back, I was a bit kind of...
I don't think we should talk about it.
Certainly, I don't want to talk about my acting at all.
- Which is the nearest city? - London.
We'll never find them there.
Have a look around. See what papers you can find.
Oh, you think they'll have left a forwarding address?
Will you...
Just look around. There might be something.
(SIGHS)
So let's talk about Matthew's acting, all right?
You know, I'd rather we didn't do that.
Because you obviously remember the trip well.
It's seared into your memory.
And also the fight sequence as well.
The fight sequences were magical.
(CHUCKLES)
Yeah. Because the idea was, because we had the fight director there,
you know, we went through all this stuff,
and I was quite keen on that, because I saw myself as an action man.
I know I was wrong. But, anyway, I saw myself as an action man.
And we had this thing, where I had to twist this guy over,
and then Matthew was meant to go down on all fours.
And I was meant to push the guy over him.
But, of course, he didn't go down in the right place. He sort of missed it.
- No. - Yes, so...
He doesn't really fall over him at all.
He just fell over the last part of his bottom and then...
So it was a bit of a cop-out.
SARAH: Well, this looks, uh, more like it.
I think.
PETER: Hmm. I think so.
- MARK: I haven't a clue. - What would you know?
- You've got the bits of paper. - I have got the bits of paper.
- Peter? Peter? Off you go. - Okay. All right.
- Give me that. - Here you are.
Have you got your divining stick, there, Janet?
SARAH: I think that looks pretty good to me.
Now, can you remember, Sarah,
what time in the morning you had to get up to get here on time?
So you had to be on the location...
So you had to leave TV Centre at 8:15.
So how long did your make-up take?
SARAH: Oh. In the early days, a couple of hours,
because I had very, very tight curls.
And I remember sitting under the hair dryer at TVCentre at, like,
sort of, 5:30, 6:00 in the morning.
- Um... - What time did you have to leave home?
- Oh! Very early. - Perhaps 4:00 in the morning.
SARAH: Very early.
So the coach journey was a chance to have a little snooze.
Um, and then we were here on location.
We are being approached.
- I think we found the actual location. - Excellent.
It's where we've destroyed the ground.
This is where the pod was, definitely.
It still hasn't recovered.
SARAH: Oh, okay. Scarred.
We've scarred the landscape of Black Park.
SARAH: Throw your stick away. PETER: Throw your stick away.
- Now, you might remember... - PETER: Mmm-hmm.
There's a first time. Yes. Right.
It wasn't the only location you filmed at for "The Visitation".
There was one other?
- Right. One other? - One other.
- One other.
- It's a magical mystery... - Oh, the manor house.
- Yeah. The magical mystery tour. - The manor house.
And what better way to go than the Tardis?
I'll lead the way.
(WHOOSHING)
Tithecote Manor, Hurley.
- I remember it well. - PETER: I remember it very well.
It was 30 years ago, Mark, but I can see it's roughly the same shape.
And it looks in prime condition now.
The manor house. It was a compromise. It was a...
Yeah. It was well out of period. But it had,
you know, leaded windows, and it had a big front door.
You know, it works.
This was all rubble. They were putting in an underground watering system.
And not to mention the nuclear air-raid shelter. Is that right?
Yeah, the nuclear bunker.
An underground watering system?
Just what you need for the summer in England.
- (CHUCKLING) - Yeah.
Well, over here is the front door. Let's have a look at this, shall we?
I'm calling on the master of the house, not his servants.
- So you banged on the door here? - Yes.
And then, Peter and I...
And then, very patiently, everyone stayed there for absolutely ages.
What do we say if the door is opened?
"Hello"?
- Well, then we went around here. - Did I stay here?
SARAH: Yes, you stayed... PETER: Yes, stay there, Janet.
- (CHUCKLING) - Stay out of shot.
- That's not very nice, Pete. - (CHUCKLING)
- And which is the window? - I think it's this one.
- No one at home. - Then who was the miller visiting?
Perhaps we should find out.
These shrubs weren't here, because we got right up...
- Yes. - We got right up close.
- We then very nimbly jumped up and... - SARAH: Pretended to go in.
PETER: Yeah. Pretended to go in. MARK: Did you meet the owners?
PETER: What?
- You did. You met them. - Yes, we met the owners. Yes, yes.
- I don't think we did. - No.
We had finished filming.
And then, afterwards, we finished filming,
they asked us to stay for a drink.
And Rolf Harris turned up.
- (CHUCKLING) - He did!
Rolf Harris turned up. He suddenly walked in. There's Rolf Harris going,
"Hi, there!" Another Australian there.
And do you think it suited the story?
- SARAH AND JANET: Rolf Harris? - Perfectly.
Unfortunately, the interior didn't. So we built the interior sets
at Television Centre.
What a very pleasant room.
PETER: You've always got that problem with film/video.
It cut together quite well, I think.
JANET: I don't remember the vines.
Were they there? Well, it's 30 years.
I do remember you recording something outside the dovecote.
MARK: I'm told that the dovecote's the oldest part of the...
oldest part of the building? What are we talking, about 1300s?
Don't ask me. You're the one who's done the research!
- I don't know. - (ALL LAUGHING)
If I'd done the research, I wouldn't need to ask you.
He's trying to make you look good, Pete.
Oh, I see. No, that's impossible. Don't try.
- Thought you might know. - No.
- Let's have a wander around the back. - Okay.
Let's have a wander around the back.
We bought the house about five years ago.
And the previous owners who had been here,
they bought the house in the 1960s.
They only left us a couple of things, which was
a couple of nice heating bills
and a copy of Doctor Who, "The Visitation."
And our girls were incredibly excited,
and I grew up being a massive Doctor Who fan and so did you.
So it was the first thing we watched and we were so excited.
Now, step, step coming up. Keep your eyes shut. Keep your eyes shut.
- Step coming. - JANET: Wait, wait. No, no, no.
PETER: Stop looking at the steps.
- Here we go. - Sarah, step. Peter, step.
- PETER: All right, step. - Follow me. Follow me.
Keep your eyes shut.
- You're doing a banana now. - I'm doing a banana.
Now, I'm going to let go and I'm going to position you.
- Keep your eyes shut. - Okay.
This is such fun. All right. Janet!
Stay there. Keep your eyes shut.
Sarah! Stay there. Keep your eyes shut.
Peter, move forwards.
- Right, now! Open your eyes! - (ALL CHUCKLING)
- Happy 30th "The Visitation," you see. - (ALL LAUGHING)
JANET: Bless. SARAH: Oh!
MARK: It is all edible.
- PETER: You're kidding me. - You're joking.
No, it's absolutely all edible.
All right. No one bite my head off.
JANET: This cost more than our entire budget.
- (ALL CHUCKLING) - No question.
- Can we divide Matthew up between us? - (CHUCKLING)
That actually looks like me, doesn't it? That's really good.
MARK: It is all edible. So you can have a piece of Tardis later on.
SARAH: Okay. PETER: Fantastic.
SARAH: There's even little buttons on my belt.
JANET: The Terileptil's nice.
PETER: And this model... This model has celery, of course,
which is missing on me,
which is missing from the mass-produced...
SARAH: Why did they miss out on... PETER: I have no idea.
There is no celery on me.
- In my little, miniature figure. - A bit of a schoolboy error there.
Do you remember we used to call that Terileptil,
- uh, "Terry's Chocolate Leptil"? - SARAH: Oh, yes.
JANET: And now it is! It is a Terry's Chocolate Leptil.
Okay. We're not allowed to say that, because it's a brand.
- There are other brands of chocolate... - SARAH: Available.
Available, as they say on Radio 4.
The deal is you have to earn your cake.
PETER: Right. What do we have to do?
I'm going to ask you some more tricky questions.
- JANET: Okay. All right. - Okay.
Well, first of all, with "Visitation"... I've watched it very recently
and it's very peculiar at the beginning.
In a sense, I mean, I can't think of another Doctor Who
where for the first five minutes, you don't see any of you guys.
Did that occur to you when you read the script?
Oh, I see. Yes.
It didn't really occur to me, but yes...
I suppose it's unusual for...
Is that the first time it's happened? I don't know.
MARK: I don't know. It certainly didn't happen in any of mine.
- Yes. No, that's true. - Really?
SAWARD: I wrote it like that. I wanted to set a style.
It was mainly for period, yeah.
And also, in a suspense element because suddenly, they're there firing,
and then they're not there.
MARK: I quite liked it.
SARAH: I quite liked the scene setting.
MARK: So did I. It gave a real sense of place.
And rather than you seeing it through the Tardis monitor,
something was happening, and then you arrived and went into it.
So, for me, that really worked.
- Yes, I liked that. - Squire played by John Savident.
- Yeah. Very, very small role. - (ALL LAUGHING)
- But he was superb. - He wasn't...
He wasn't... You know, he hadn't done his Coronation Street yet.
He hadn't become John Savident.
What's all the noise, Elizabeth?
Have you seen the sky? It's beautiful.
- What're you talking about? - The whole sky is ablaze.
Oh! They've gone.
He was a fabulous character actor, did lots of stuff.
And very funny, very dry.
Regularly seen on television,
but I don't think, generally, people would have known his name at that time.
MICHAEL MELIA: I remember going in one day and saying,
"Where's John Savident?" "He's not coming in today."
I just thought he had a day off.
I didn't know I'd killed him.
(LAUGHING)
MARK: And you don't see the Terileptil until the second episode.
JANET: You don't meet the monster until the second episode.
That is true. There is a late onset monster.
LEADER: You are being a very stupid woman.
That isn't a very original observation.
I know that he is not of this planet or time.
What rubbish!
MARK: And Michael Melia...
JANET: Michael Melia had done a lot.
MARK: Not that you would know it was him.
I was asked to do it by Peter Moffatt,
because I had done a thing called The Gentle Touch.
When I got the script,
I had no idea the Terileptil was going to look like the Terileptil.
I just said, "Yes, I'll do it." Because I wasn't working.
And I am an actor.
And it was Doctor Who, and it was the lead baddie.
I liked that it was all happening in 1666.
'Cause it was then going to be a costume drama.
And, originally, I thought, "Well, I'll be in ruffs,
"and I can do handkerchief acting and..."
But I was in the nude.
I was very happy when I found out
it was Michael Melia going to play the Terileptil.
I had worked with Michael quite a few times before,
and he's just such a good person to work with, good fun.
MELIA: And they said "It will be all scales.
"It will be all latex rubber."
And I said, "What, my head peeks through?"
He said, "No, you won't be recognisable... Recognised at all".
So that was a bit of a... A bit of a bummer.
And I still said, "Well, that's fine, that's fine".
And he said, "And what we'll do,
"we'll get your voice and we'll put it through a computer
"and we'll get it, like, electronic voice."
(MIMICKING ELECTRONIC VOICE) Like that.
I drew the line at that.
I wasn't being grand or anything, I just didn't see the point.
And I said to Peter Moffatt, "Hold it, Peter.
"If you can't see it's me, and the voice won't be my voice,
"you might as well get my mother to do it."
Concentrate on your thoughts!
We were on location and we'd broken for tea,
and I was just having a cup of tea, leaning against the wall.
And Peter Moffatt and Michael Melia
were having a discussion just round the corner.
And I heard those magic words.
I mean, this guy is covered in about
four hundredweight of foam rubber and plastic,
and he's saying "But, Peter, what's my motivation?"
And I just dropped my cup of tea and fell about laughing, you know?
ODILE DICKS-MIREAUX: The Terileptils came from tropical fish.
I don't know, it just popped into my head
and looked at lots of pictures of tropical fishes,
and I thought, "This is interesting".
There is a design issue here, isn't there?
You do somehow wonder if the designers thought,
"Hey, there's going to be an actor in this costume."
PETER: I think it's secondary, very secondary.
Because their first theory is their vision of how their monster will look.
Of course, at some point, someone ought to come in and say,
"We have to have the actor able to move."
But that, unfortunately, never quite gets through to the end product.
So the Terileptils...
I did a costume drawing of a kind of tropical fish kind of thing,
but again you had to make it in-house.
And then the Terileptil was all latex with a body.
But once we got into the costume, and that was a struggle.
I remember two or three people were heaving and it all had to...
And it was, um,
stitched up the back or something like that and then the head...
attached here. And then the head would go on.
She said there's an alternative of having a plaster of Paris cast,
which is to plaster your whole head.
And that would take up to two, two and a half hours.
That was me 31 years ago.
I haven't changed a bit.
It was kind of difficult to decide who was doing make-up,
costume and special effects. So it was sort of all three departments.
Is that a light on the top of the Tardis?
- It is. - It is a light on the top of a cake.
MARK: I read a document, right, called "Selling Points," right?
- Yeah. - There were three selling points.
You guys were one of the selling points.
- No wonder we were in trouble. - (LAUGHTER)
Another one of the selling points,
I can't remember what the second one was,
I do remember, another one of the selling points was "amazing monster".
He was amazing, because he could move his mouth.
Now we have your Tardis, we can travel the universe and acquire androids.
I had to work in very close collaboration with
the special effects department over in North Acton.
So Peter Wragg, the designer, and I met.
Um, he liked my ideas.
- Oh, yes. - Yeah, Peter Wragg.
JANET: The radical thing about it was that the face and the ears moved.
The lips and the ears moved.
And that was really the early days of animatronics.
- It actually looked very good, I think. - Yeah.
He adapted my drawing to work for the animatronics.
And I think it was extremely successful and everybody was really
bowled over by it all, really.
He would be there with this little gadget, which put up...
At one time, they were going to have steam coming out.
But it didn't quite...
We never quite got around to that.
But the gills moved.
And so when I got angry you can just see
bits of the eyebrow move and bits of... And these gills moved very, very well.
JANET: It was really quite advanced for its time.
And Peter, who designed it and made it,
I ran into him in LA several years later.
You know, about five years later and he was, like,
you know, doing amazing things in Hollywood, because of, you know...
And this was the kick-start of it, you know?
So it had a... It was the genesis of something really quite remarkable.
I remember Odile and Peter. We were all kind of there.
Me painting a black circle where his eye was and round his mouth,
doing his hands.
PETER: In Michael Melia's case, they had to cut...
They painted his eyes black.
And it was so hot, they had to let him out of the costume every so often.
It was so hot that the make-up they put on his face
trickled right down his body onto his socks.
I lost nearly half a stone in the three or four weeks we were working on it.
We had great fun in the rehearsal process,
because, you know, it was the first time I realised that,
that part of the rehearsal process was getting the laughing out of the way.
- Right. - And also you had to learn, of course,
part of the fun of acting is to play the scenes with people.
Which, of course, when we got to the studio, you couldn't do,
because he could barely see me and I couldn't see him at all.
So you had to kind of... You sort of had to...
- This is sounding horribly familiar. - (LAUGHING)
JANET: No eye contact.
So you had to kind of learn how to play the scene in the rehearsal.
And then, when you actually filmed it, just trust that it was in some way...
- You know... - And you presumably...
And you go nose to nose with a rubber monster.
The other two used to make me laugh,
the other two Terileptils.
I used to look at them and they were going around.
They were very nice chaps. Extras.
They were extras, and they were only in for one day, I think.
And they'd go around...
I used to look at them, thinking, "God, do I look like that?"
You know, I must be more butch than that.
And that helped me with my character.
He couldn't do anything more than that,
and, at some point, he had to throw various...
Fight us, actually, basically.
All he could really do, was, effectively, shoulder barge us.
(BOTH GRUNT)
(GUNSHOT)
DOCTOR: Oh, no!
And fight scenes, I couldn't really go like that to knock somebody out.
I'd have to do it like that, because this wouldn't come up that far.
Once he fell over, he couldn't get up again, he was like...
- Flapping around. - Flapping around.
Again, a common problem with Doctor Who monsters, it has to be said.
How do you defeat a Doctor Who monster? You push it over.
Presumably, you had the same problem with the wonderful, bejewelled android.
- Peter Van Dissel. - Van Dissel, yeah.
Peter Moffatt, director, okay? I knew him,
and he said he was doing this Doctor Who episode,
and he wanted sort of an athletic
(CHUCKLES) guy to...
I said, "Oh, fine, that's fine. I mean, I play sports, so that's fine."
Then he said, "He's an android." I said, "Oh, yeah? What does that mean?"
I said, "So they won't see my face or anything?"
They said, "No, no, no, you got a head on and that's it. Finished.
"Come on, you got to do it, you got to do it."
- Get on with it. - (FOOTSTEPS)
Jump!
- What about you? - Get out of here!
I hope you realise this means I've surrendered.
Okay, I had a slight problem with that when I watched it.
What did you guys think?
- Like a disco, the disco android. - ALL: Yes.
PETER: He was a bit of a... SARAH: A disco android, yeah.
Yeah, he was a bit disco.
I was in the '80s world, I was obviously an '80s girl, then.
All that colour and all that kind of flamboyance
that was going on in the music, you know, of the '80s.
- MARK: It was the 17th century. - Yes.
I mean, I know they'd come from another planet and you know...
Why would you make an android with jewels, bejewelled?
And cricket gloves.
I couldn't figure out why they made an android which didn't fit in.
"You're kind of... This is your costume. Wear it."
(CHUCKLES) I mean, that's it.
So one didn't question it. I thought, "Okay, that's it."
My story was that he created this beautiful thing.
And the ugliness of the Terileptils,
they wanted to create a beautiful thing to look at,
who was their robot, rather than, you know, a scary robot.
Neat idea, dressing the android up as Death.
- It created the confusion I wanted. - Yes.
(EXHALES) I saw him in action in the stable.
The android came, I think, from Indian paintings and Indian prints,
so I wanted him to be special.
Part of the story was that he would go out into the real world
and wear this mask and the black cloak.
So that was when he was supposed to be scary.
So I kind of went sort of glittery and put jewels on it,
like a piece out of a museum.
The way the android was done meant it was quite difficult
for the actor inside to manipulate objects,
which was a little bit of a downer.
I think the body was made of fibre glass, I seem to remember,
and we had to sculpt it out of clay.
It was quite old-fashioned, I think, the whole thing really, now.
And then the legs were, sort of like, made of tubing
which were then painted on, I think. If you look at it, it's quite crude.
The guy who did it,
he worked with the Thunderbirds, the Andersons' thing.
So he seemed to know a lot about how to shape the face,
and all the rest for this sort of helmet thing.
He was very good to me, because he was always there.
And so when we finished shooting, he'd whip it off.
And I think the actual head is fantastic.
You end up having to use those cricket gloves, isn't it?
(CHUCKLES) Always disappointing, isn't it?
But, you know, it's money.
We laughed about it, the whole thing.
How the cheat was going on.
You know, how we could do that and convert things.
Now, another difference of "Visitation"
is you really only had one other character working with you, didn't you?
You only had the Michael Robbins, Mace character.
You sound like a highwayman or a robber.
A gentleman of the road, madam.
Richard Mace at your service.
Eric had written it as a radio part,
and then thought, "Oh, well, I'll use it. It will work in this."
- Did it? - Saved a bit of time.
I'd had Geoffrey Matthews, who was a very good radio actor,
playing Richard Mace. He played it in three stories.
ROUNDTREE: What's he done? MACE: He said I was late.
I, Mace, late?
Never in all my theatrical life have I ever been late for a performance.
Have you ever known me late, Roundtree?
- ROUNDTREE: Never, guv. - Precisely.
I think I had that too much in my mind.
And I didn't... In fact, only recently when I watched it again,
did I realise, he wasn't bad at all.
Tell me what you guys thought about working with Michael.
I remember...
I remember him talking about Water Rats all the time.
The Water Rats, and fundraising for The Water Rats.
That's what I remember.
He was a very happy chap.
It was like he was at a party all the time, really.
He had his own little party going on, is all I can say.
I think he rather liked the extravagant nature of the character.
Got into that thing. I remember him having great fun in rehearsal.
SARAH: That fruity... PETER: Yes, fruity.
He could overact and no one told him... It was the most wonderful overacting.
(GRUNTS)
I don't think they will bother us again.
If the lad can walk, my camp is this way.
I used to watch him and I thought, "He cannot get away with that.
"He cannot get away with it."
(MIMICKING MACE) "Oh, yes, sir. I've been..."
When he's up a tree in one scene, "Can I be of help?" But it worked.
Can I be of any assistance?
Can you help us?
I have a convenient refuge nearby.
- Not obvious casting, though. No? - No!
- PETER: On The Buses... - On The Buses.
And you are sometimes haunted by the Michael Robbins from...
Which is unfortunate for an actor when that happens,
because, obviously, you don't want to get typecast for that.
Especially, not perhaps, for On The Buses.
As a character, though, I thought it worked.
(ALL AGREEING)
Yeah, he was kind of a coward, slight coward, flamboyant coward.
You won't reconsider helping us?
Madam, it shames me to tell you, but, uh...
I will not go back inside that house.
We're wasting time, Nyssa.
What was interesting was that, because he was dealing with, you know,
androids and monsters and things,
he actually became a bit of an assistant.
He kept having to ask what was going on.
And if there was one thing at the time that the Tardis needed,
- it was another assistant. - (ALL LAUGH)
- We were short on assistants. - We were short on assistants.
- And you're about to get another one. - (ALL LAUGH)
It spreads the questions out, doesn't it?
You're always asking questions, so the Doctor can answer.
So it was just one more person to ask another question.
Doctor! Doctor!
What is that?
So you've got bejewelled robots strutting around.
You've got an ageing thespian, who doesn't know what's going on,
and you've also got animals.
- Oh, yes. - Horses, rats.
Oh, that's true. Yes. It was the rats.
I don't really remember the rats.
- There were always in a cage. - They were there.
Doctor, look.
Well, perhaps they're just for research.
- PETER: Oh, they were they there. - Were they drugged?
- I don't know, don't ask me. - I think they were in cages.
JANET: They were, I stood there with the key.
PETER: The horse, I think, was rather funny,
because, clearly, the BBC had got the horse and cart
and the only person that could operate the cart was... What was he? Was he...
- The miller. - The miller, yeah.
You'd get on the horse and go... (CLICKS TONGUE) And that's it.
Now, for a start, I couldn't get up there.
Someone shouted out "walk on" and it set off.
You have my instructions.
Giddy-up! Walk on.
MELIA: If it bolts now, I'm done for.
So while the Terileptil was going up to London,
"I'm going up to London now to burn it down."
Then the miller would go, "Right-o, walk on."
(ALL LAUGH)
Which bring me very neatly onto directing.
PETER: Oh, right. SARAH: Oh, yeah.
You'd think this was planned, wouldn't you?
- SARAH: He would, yeah. - Peter Moffatt.
Come on, then. Peter Moffatt stories.
PETER: He was wonderful. He knew nothing about what was going on
in Doctor Who at all.
I mean, but with great charm, he would say,
"Darling, I have no idea what's going on here. Tell me."
- He was very theatrical. - Join the club.
But he suited the story brilliantly well.
He was a very astute director, but looked really as if he was,
you know, just didn't really bother about anything,
but, actually, he knew exactly what he wanted.
- I enjoyed working with him. - PETER: Yeah, he was fun.
He supported you, but didn't get in the way.
PETER: Exactly, yes. SARAH: Yeah, he was lovely.
He was just one of those wonderful directors who let you get on with it.
Peter Moffatt was a lovely bloke.
I really got on well with him.
You know, not at all demanding, very grateful for small mercies.
And he concentrated on the acting,
which was, you know, getting performances,
and trying to get some visual interest in the whole film.
He was a very nice man. He was...
He was a learned man as well.
You could always have a good time at the wine bar with him.
MARK: As far as I remember, Nyssa had to be written into it.
I think we've spoken about that before as an extra character.
Yes, because it was an old story from something else.
So did it work for you? Did you enjoy the story?
Yes, I did.
Going back to what we said before, I like the historical,
the ones that have a place in time, as it were.
And I think Nyssa often comes off quite well,
because she's always given something positive to go and do.
She had to go build the vibrating machine.
So she was off. So she had a mission of her own.
You'll need the heavy-duty cable and an adaptor.
- Will that thing really work? - Of course.
Large earphones, Sarah. You know, when you were mending the robot.
- Happy with them? - (ALL LAUGH)
Happy with my earphones? Now, let me think.
They were very large earphones, I remember, and very heavy,
and I took a very long time to,
basically, fiddle around with a couple bits of kit,
poking and prodding at a thing.
Again, feeling terribly familiar, this, to me.
Not knowing what I was doing and for some reason I move it
from the console room to our bedroom.
And why do I go to the bedroom?
And I explain to Adric it's something to do with having more space.
Is it to lure the disco robot into the main console room?
MARK: Well, you are going to blow it up.
I mean, you don't want to blow it up next to the Tardis console.
PETER: Maybe that's what it is.
SARAH: I think I was quite poor on my...
- Good point. - I should be the script editor.
(ALL LAUGH)
PETER: I think it came off very well. I mean, Janet, of course,
it was her turn to be...
Well, you had the thing on, so you became...
- That was just my acting. - Oh, right, sorry.
It's hard to tell the difference. Um...
Normally, as you well know, Mark...
Absolutely, I've been tied up, bound...
Normally, when there's a surplus of companions in the Tardis,
you have to lock a couple of them up
or, you know, turn them into zombies for a while.
So, I think, probably Sarah came off best,
because she was active during the process.
You were in TC3, Television Centre Studio 3.
PETER: Right. SARAH: Yeah.
MARK: I'm even impressing myself, really, what I can remember.
Apart from the fire, the last sequence...
- Ealing Studios. - Ealing Studios.
You could only try to burn down Ealing Studios, not Television Centre.
They wanted real fire on the set.
Um...
The sad thing was we had a day
to do the Great Fire of London.
Um...
And visual effects got a bit ambitious, and, um,
they wanted to put a fireball
coming out of the bakery into the street.
Shouldn't we try and help them?
Too late! That's the soliton machine exploding.
Wait!
Quick, everything into the flames.
STARKEY: So they demonstrated this fireball effect outside.
(CHUCKLES) I think they scorched five cars,
and I think the firemen had a nervous breakdown.
MACE: Goodbye, Doctor!
STARKEY: "No, I'm sorry, you can't do that. "
So I think we had gas burners, foreground, shooting through.
SARAH: The sets, I thought, were quite impressive.
So you didn't film at all inside here, it was all done on sets.
ALL: Yes.
I must admit, they look good, the lighting was good.
JANET: The lighting was very good.
I think Alec was mentioning as well...
Alec Wheal was mentioning the glass shot thing in the barn.
With the top half, which was a glass shot.
So when I climbed the ladder, or climbed down the ladder,
the whole left-hand of the screen was basically a glass shot setup.
So an artist comes in and paints it on a, you know, piece of glass,
and then they shoot through it.
Without, you know, moving the camera.
If you move the camera, the whole thing goes to pot,
- but it worked very well, I think. - Yeah, it did work well.
This is home?
For the last night or two, fortune has made me itinerant.
MARK: You had something, that happens very, very rarely.
- One of the actors was injured. - (ALL LAUGH)
PETER: Very, very rarely?
I'm trying to be nice here.
I'm still holding out the hope that I can sue the BBC at a later point
for all sorts of injuries sustained during Doctor Who.
I think, yes. Well, he hurt his knee.
- Yes, Michael Robbins. - PETER: When he was pushed down.
MARK: At the end of episode two, he was pushed down.
PETER: We were both pushed down, yes.
We're about to be beheaded, yet again. I think, I actually say that.
We haven't got the plague. I can help you. Wait. Listen.
Execute them!
Not again.
- So you've almost got your cake. - (ALL CHUCKLE)
- Almost got our cake. - We're nearly there.
JANET: We can see it.
And it is starting to rain, this being a gorgeous English summer.
- (ALL CHUCKLE) - So we'll crack on.
Final thoughts, Sarah. Have you enjoyed today?
What do you feel about the story as a whole and revisiting it?
I must say, I really enjoy watching the story. Putting the DVD on
and all the memories started to come back,
because I had forgotten an awful lot.
And it's been great today, to see you guys, obviously,
and to see this beautiful house and to have a wander through the woods.
- It's been very good. - Yeah, it's been nice, yeah.
The biggest compliment I can give it is I sat down to watch it on my own,
and ended up sitting with my two sons watching it,
so they're still fairly gripped by it.
The thing that I remember is,
because we were doing it out of sequence,
I call the Mara, "the Marra".
But while you were enjoying 48 hours of peaceful sleep
in the delta wave augmenter, my mind was... occupied.
- Taken over. - By whom?
More a what.
Something called a Marra.
- Right, the Mara. - I know.
- What I was saying, the "Marra." - You say, Marra, that's right.
Well, that's the confusing thing.
- To-Marra! To-Marra! - (ALL LAUGH)
That was confusing thing about doing it out of sequence,
which I suppose you can blame me for, like most other things.
- Yeah! Why not? - Yeah! Why not?
We've learned today, if in doubt, blame Peter.
- It is Peter's fault, okay. - Lf in doubt, blame Peter.
We didn't know what it was going to be called.
So we called it the Marra.
Well, I think you've definitely earned your cake, so...
- Thank you very much, indeed. - Thank you very much, Mark.
It's been nice dealing with you all.
And I hope you come and join the series some time.
- Yeah. - MARK: Thank you very much.
It would be nice to have you onboard.
- We think you'd make a good companion. - Oh, I'm so glad.
I passed the audition.
Here we go.
Right. Who's going to volunteer to cut the cake?
Peter.
- Well volunteered, Peter. - I'm volunteering to cut the cake.
I've never done anything quite so terrifying in my life.
- Here we go. - SARAH: Oh, it seems such a shame.
ALL: Oh!
Oh, no!
I'm waiting till you hit the electric wire.
(ALL LAUGH)
How am I gonna... If I screw this up...
MARK: It'd be another explosive Doctor Who moment.
PETER: We're going to end up with blue mouths here.
- Rather like Janet's. - Sarah.
- SARAH: Oh, thank you very much. - And a fork.
JANET: Did you really say that? You are so cruel to me.
- He's so cruel to me! - PETER: The audience won't know,
because you've been edited, let's face it.
Peter, you are so cruel to me. It's just not true, people.
I'm sweet.
As ever, if you complain, you know, I'll give you mine.
I didn't want icing.
- Cheers, everybody. - ALL: Cheers.
- Thank you very much, guys. - I don't think we should eat the icing.
(HUMMING)
Doctor, shouldn't we have helped put out the fire?
We are partially responsible.
I have a sneaking suspicion
this fire should be allowed to run its course.
- How do you mean? - I'll explain someday.
So have you enjoyed revisiting "The Visitation"?
Who on Earth gave you that line to say, Mark?
- I couldn't possibly comment. - Ridiculous line.
But, nevertheless, I've had a very good time.
- Oh, good. - Let's go back.
And the food, the lunch was very good.
MARK: Ah, well, as long as the lunch was good.
We pleased Janet.
(WHOOSHING)