AnneMarie Walsh and Paul Hembury reveal why Doctor Who animations are a unique brand extension

Thanks for joining me! We’re here to talk about a Doctor Who animation: The Savages. Let’s start with introductions. AnneMarie – all one word?!
AnneMarie: Hi, my name is AnneMarie Walsh. I was the director and producer on The Savages, one of the classic Doctor Who stories… We delivered it in January of this year – and it came out on Monday!

Perfect. And Paul?
Paul: I’m slightly more complicated because – until June of last year – I was an executive producer for BBC Studios. I’ve now formed a production company that’s producing forthcoming animated Doctor Who stories. But yes, I’m the executive producer.

Fantastic! I might come back to what that actually means, Paul! Now, I’m particularly interested in these animations because they aren’t simply the adventures of Doctor Who in cartoon form… So tell me: why do Doctor Who animations exist?
Paul: In short, there are 97 episodes of Doctor Who – principally from the 1960s – which are missing, believed lost. The reasons for that are various, but I think mainly that these episodes were made in the very early days of television. Back then, it wasn’t considered the kind of show that would form part of the archive. And in any event, the tape it was shot on was expensive and was therefore wiped and reused. As a result, some Doctor Who serials are missing completely, some are missing in part.

And this tape wiping wasn’t unheard of outside Doctor Who! But Doctor Who had one thing going for it that some other shows didn’t…
Paul: Right! As it happens – and probably because it was a sci-fi show – there were, right from the first episode, some fans that were very, very keen on it… People that we might, in the best possible way, now call geeks. Well, a number of them had reel-to-reel tape recorders and they used to record TV shows as they were broadcast…

Well, as a card-carrying geek myself, I hear that word the way you mean it. It’s a compliment; the geeks shall inherit the earth! But they were recording it just for the sake of it?
Paul: Just to build their audio collections, yes – in much the same way as we used to record the chart shows or whatever. So even though 97 of these episodes are still missing, fans of the show made audio recordings of them. And what’s even more miraculous is that some of these fans kept these recordings and looked after them for 50 or 60 years.

Meaning that there are people out there with private recordings of BBC IP… That the BBC doesn’t have?!
Paul: And here’s the thing… We’re mostly talking about a handful of people that are great fans of the show – and very, very willing and keen to work with us. The upshot of which is that we actually have – in one form or another – versions of the original audio for all 97 missing episodes… The original cast, the original music, the original sound effects.

Amazing! I didn’t realise that you had all the recordings.
Paul: Well, it has to be said: some of those recordings are of pretty poor quality. They need a lot of work and restoration – and we’re lucky… We have someone who does that brilliantly. But if we’ve got a recording of the original audio and no pictures, then AnneMarie and her team can create an animation to that soundtrack. So what we’re really doing is reimagining the lost material.

Reimagining – interesting word. And herein lies my interest because reimagining a story that’s feared lost is much more subtle than just a straight animation. So let’s let’s talk about The Savages, specifically. What’s the plot?
AnneMarie: It’s quite an interesting story because it’s one of the William Hartnell stories; a four-episode adventure. And as you may know, the First Doctor stories are usually more cerebral than some of the later stories. Patrick Troughton, for example, tended to be a bit more slapstick and humorous. But The Savages is about colonisation, oppression, and exploitation… Themes relevant to the 60s and – a bit scarily – now!

Ha! I was just thinking that! Don’t!
AnneMarie: Ha! Well, it’s quite interesting to work on it and listen to the news and think how relevant a lot of the script still is. We haven’t moved that far away from all this. There are two societies in this adventure and you can interpret the idea of savages differently… So we created two societies within this world and tried to highlight the differences between them. I don’t want to give away too much, but as the story unfolds, it becomes obvious that everything is not what it seems.

Nicely trailed! Thank you. What made you want to tackle this particular adventure, AnneMarie? It’s not the first one you’ve done, is it?
AnneMarie: No, this is my team’s fourth one since I took over directing: we’ve had The Evil of the Daleks, The Faceless Ones and The Underwater Menace. As regards choosing the stories, a number of different factors come into play. Obviously, what the audience wants to see is relevant because they’re the reason we’re making these – and we’re deeply grateful to them. We might also look at completing a certain series or collection, or at which stories have the best audio when it comes to restoring the sound – which is done by an absolute genius called Mark Ayres.

Ah! Mark did an interview for us recently. People can read that here.
AnneMarie: Oh, wonderful! He really is a genius. And, actually, as Paul was explaining, much of the sound has been recorded by people like Graham Strong. He’s one of the greatest sources for the sound recordings because he actually opened up the back of his TV set and wired his recorder directly into it.

Jesus!
Paul: Yes… That was actually was a very dangerous thing to do with Cathode Ray TV sets. Those old TV sets with all the gubbins behind them were always live. So it was very dangerous to take the back off the set and hardwire in a tape recorder. What that did do, though, was deliver a much improved quality of recording. Even so, it was in the earlier days of tape recording so we don’t have split tracks.

In other words, all the sounds are lumped in together?
Paul: Exactly right. Exactly. It’s a mixed track. All the dialogue, all the music, all the sound effects are in one recording. So what Mark has to do is far more than clean it up. There’s a huge amount of work to be done – all while remaining faithful to the original because fidelity to that is paramount. AnneMarie can speak to this because we might remove a few pauses here and there since we’re producing an animation rather than live-action telly.

So you might remove the odd pause for the sake of pacing… Might you also – visually – animate something in a more ambitious way than the original? Simply because animation lets you?
AnneMarie: Oh, yes. A good example of this would be from The Underwater Menace. For those episodes, we’re able to get a good idea of what the original live-action show looked like look through a lot of reference material like telesnaps…

Telesnaps? What are telesnaps?
AnneMarie: Back in the day, somebody was hired to basically stand in front of the TV and take photos of the show as it aired. And not necessarily key moments – just regular photos. So for some episodes more than others, we have lots of regular photos of what the transmission actually looked like. They’re an amazing resource. Sometimes people put those together in time with the soundtrack which means we can include it as an extra on the release.

Anyway, The Underwater Menace features a temple… In the camera script, this is described as being of a scale the like of which has never been seen by man. So it’s absolutely enormous; huge pillars, a large idol of a goddess… At the end of it, there’s a shark tank; there are beheading stones, a massive altar. It’s conceived as absolutely enormous and a huge amount of activity takes place within this temple in the original.

But the BBC budget in 1966…
AnneMarie: Yes… They were filming it in Pinewood Studios, I believe, in a tiny room. They have a tinfoil mask for the goddess because they’re on such a shoestring budget. But yes, we follow the camera script and the audio as our story resources – and we’re very true to those. We do look at telesnaps and any other surviving material to get a sense of the main characters. And Martin Garrity, our character designer, animates characters to look like the original actors, but we don’t try to do a frame-by-frame remake of the live action.

And for The Underwater Menace animation?
AnneMarie: For The Underwater Menace, we drew a huge temple, fantastic shark tanks, beheading stones… We had the priests walking around this massive space and all the offshoot rooms for the council chambers and everything else! Purely because we weren’t confined to a tiny little room.

I suppose that throws up a difficult question… Is what was originally broadcast canon? Or was what people imagined when they wrote it canon?
Paul: Well! There are two things here… What’s become very clear to us is that Doctor Who fans – like any dedicated fans of a show – take their place on a continuum. At one end, there are those who want us to recreate, frame by frame, precisely what was shot in the 60s. At the other end are those who would be very happy to see the whole thing done in CGI with millions and millions of dollars spent on it as it was imagined! We have to work out where our positioning is along that continuum.

The second point is that discovering what was done originally becomes really quite forensic. In the case of The Savages, for example, there was next to no original footage available. What did we have, AnneMarie?

AnneMarie: There’s about 30-odd seconds as I recall.

Paul: Right! And we found telesnaps alongside the script of the programs. The Radio Times is another useful resource for us because they may well have had stills from the production. So it becomes quite a forensic process to pull together all the little clues. After that, AnneMarie and her team decide what editorial stance we’re going to take on it and which pauses – if any – need removing. But it’s something that’s done extremely carefully.

Amazing. I think forensic is a great word for this as you’re digging around, seeing what’s available and what problems you can solve. And on that, what was the biggest challenge you faced with The Savages, specifically?
AnneMarie: I think deciding on the look and feel of the world was an interesting choice. How different to make it, how to highlight the differences and how to subtly create messages through it.

Paul: Because there’s a huge contrast, isn’t there, AnneMarie, between these two societies? One living effectively as cave dwellers, the other living in an incredibly advanced, bubble-like environment where everything is controlled, highly sophisticated and developed. And that’s the essence of the story.

AnneMarie: Right. And I wanted to add pointers to each story in the background and character design and the colours. With the concept design for The Savages, I came up with the idea – because they’re colonisers and oppressors of the Cave Dwellers – of the main building of the city, which everything else is built around, being a parasite. And you have all the life force that they drain from the Cave Dwellers running through and feeding the city with energy. So the whole city is actually designed like a massive parasite.

Wow.
AnneMarie: Now, that’s a subtle kind of undertone that you see from the beginning, but it only becomes apparent later. In the same way, the city occupants all have very cool, cold, clinical, empty, soulless rooms and tones. By contrast, we show the Cave Dwellers with really warm, vibrant, natural tones.

That’s interesting because – for most people – a director is a person that tells actors, “Annnnnd cut. That’s perfect. One more time.” You know? But that’s not the case in animation, obviously! Now Paul, you say you’re the executive producer? A lot of people wonder: what the hell does an executive producer do?
Paul: Yes, and I’m one of them! Ha!

Ha! It’s something to do with golf, isn’t it? Ha!
Paul: Ha! Definitely not! Simply put, it takes a certain amount of investment for AnneMarie and this brilliant team to do what they do. My job is to secure that investment, make sure we’re able to do the project – and do it when we said it’s going to be done by… And make sure it’s acceptable to the people people investing in it! In the case of The Savages, that’s BBC Studios. So whether I work for them, as I did, or whether I’m effectively being commissioned by them, it’s the same process.

That sums that up very nicely, thank you. I think this has been fascinating what an extraordinary insight into this process. Tell me: What’s next from you?
Paul: Hmmm.

Hmmm. Paul’s wry smile suggests he’s not allowed to say…
Paul: Well, I am – but if I did, then I’d have to shoot you and that wouldn’t be nice at all!

Oh, no; I want to know… Shoot me! The recordings will live on!
Paul: Ha! Or not… Ha! But in years from now, people will be reimagining them!

Ha!
Paul: But no, we can’t say too much. Our intention is to do more and BBC Studios are keen that we do. BBC Studios is the commercial arm of the BBC; a production and distribution company. But they don’t produce animation, so we do these for them and they sell them to iPlayer and on DVD and Blu-ray here, in the US, Australia, and certain northern European territories. So, yes, we’re looking to carry on but we tend to keep our powder quite dry about what we’re doing and when.

When we finish one though, Deej, we have a screening of it at the British Film Institute; the BFI. We sell 500 tickets and 500 fans duly turn up. After the screening, AnneMarie and I and a couple of others do a Q&A. As you might imagine, the question, “What are you going to do next?” often comes up. And whatever the answer, the fans then promptly tell us what we SHOULD do next!

Ha! And for what are they clamouring? Is it one particular serial?
AnneMarie: There are a few stories that usually come up. The Smugglers is a popular choice. The Massacre of St.Bartholomew’s Eve – but I don’t think that’s an imminent one. Although you never know! And anything with the Daleks…

Paul: Anything with the Daleks…

Oh, of course! And do the Dalek’s complicate the license in any way? With Terry Nation’s estate owning some of the rights?
Paul: No, not at all; that’s all fine. We’ve animated Dalek stories previously and AnneMarie likes animating Daleks… They require a lot less animation than some of the other characters – they don’t change their clothes very often! So, yes – we’ve animated Daleks before and we may do so again, Deej.

Alright… Gosh, this has flown by! I’m sad to say time is running out. Is there anything, though, that you feel I should’ve asked you about that I didn’t?
AnneMarie: No, I think my only thing to add is that I feel very lucky and privileged to work on such unique projects and be invited to do so repeatedly… And to work with such an incredibly skilled and talented team.

Paul: I would echo that too – especially since this all came about by happenstance, really… There are a lot of things that have already happened that mean these animations can happen now. You know, the very fact that someone wiped those tapes, that someone else recorded some audio, that someone else perhaps kept the tapes for 60 years despite house moves and all that stuff…

And now, being that we’re able to put together a team of people who can undertake this sort of forensic research to look at camera scripts, to speak to people who actually worked on the original productions, to find those telly snaps and Radio Times extracts… It’s amazing. So I feel the same as AnneMarie. I feel it’s a privilege to do it and I think we’re very lucky.

Well, I think we’ll end it there because I love that passion; you share a delightful sentiment. How kind; thank you both so much for your time.