Patrick Heigham
A publicity shot for Dr. Who, in the sound gallery of LG D.I’m the handsome one between Verity and Adrian Bishop-Laggett.
This photo appeared nearly 60 years after it was taken, sent to me by the chaps who are restoring the very first episodes of “Dr. Who”, believed to be from film telerecordings.
It was in the property of the late Verity Lambert, who was the executive producer of the early “Dr. Who” series and depicts Adrian Bishop-Laggett and myself, with Verity, in the Sound Control room of Studio D, Lime Grove (sadly non-existent anymore, flats now stand on the site).
Bish and I think it must have been around 1963-4, as he was the Grams Operator at the time and I was double-banking him, prior to taking over that job on his promotion to Sound Supervisor. I stayed with the show for about three years, had a break and came back to it again in 1968.
My name is on the script that Verity is holding, so I was the Gram Op on that episode.
As a rule, the usual routine for working on the series, was attendance at ‘outside rehearsals’ in a drill-hall somewhere, to witness a run-through, a chat with the director if anything special was required in the way of sound FX, then back to Television Centre for a pie and pint in the club, before hitting the Gram Library to audition FX recordings needed. After that, a short walk down to Studio R in Lime Grove, a dedicated sound facility, to assemble the reels of tape to be used at the studio recording, which was done in one day for a half-hour episode. There was a steel cupboard there which held a library of all sound effects needed. The programme was videotaped to 2” Ampex (405 line B/W in those days!) and any recording breaks meant that the videotape had to be physically cut and spliced. Spot FX were played in at the time, and any bridging music links or changes in b/g atmos were added over the edits in a re-recording session later.
Many of the sound effects were created by the Radiophonic Workshop at Maida Vale Studios and I often drove over to liaise with Brian Hodgson and collect any specialised material. I do remember belting my mother’s twin-tub AEG washing machine which produced the most wonderful array of motor whines, switch clonks and whooshes, when I could take home a Uher or Nagra tape recorder.
The tape machines in the picture are EMI TR90’s – a beautiful piece of kit, running at 15 or 7.5 ips with an amazingly fast start, which made ‘spot’ cueing a reality. They were two-track, which was useful for long atmospheres, as the switch between them was done with a quick flick of the faders.
BBC rotary faders had a 180° travel only, so from zero to flat out was extremely fast.
Later programmes, using the sound desks in Television Centre had the facility of a sound source auto-following the vision mixer cuts. It is possible to see, disappearing off the nearest machine, a long tape loop, which extended across the gallery and round a cine spool mounted on a pencil taped to a mike stand! It was a challenge to edit the loop so that the audio join was not discernable on either of the two tracks. No computers in those days!
The end music was continued to a repeating vamp, and terminated by playing in, from another deck, a final chord, to match the length of the roller captions, which could be very variable with a long cast list.
The Dalek voices were largely down to the actor Peter Hawkins, who produced most of the characteristic metallic rendition, helped a bit with a ring-modulator which put in the ‘broken-up’ pattern. If there were multiple Dalek speeches, then some were pre-recorded and played in off-tape.
I remember one occasion when I looked down at my script, realised that I had not cued the last dialogue line of the scene, and left Deborah Watling (Victoria) with egg on her face, waiting to react!
As most sound FX were relayed to the studio floor (foldback) for actors to react, I did have a bit of fun with Carole Ann Ford, who was due to leave the show, as ‘she had fallen for a chap on another planet’ and was not going to travel with grandfather anymore. Her dialogue line: “Oh, David, I love you, I really do!” was absolutely asking for the addition of the soupiest, schmaltziest Hollywood strings that I could find – and she got them! It stopped the rehearsal, with her saying: “Well, I’ve never been sent up like that before!”
[Ed: updated with new material August 2022]
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John Nottage
Regarding studio floors, I remember slipping over on freshly painted ones, but mostly I remember trying (ands mostly failing) to push Squire Hill on a Creeper through masses of Jabalite(?) snow in Lime Grove (studio D) for “Dr Who and The Ice Warriors” – Bernard Bresslaw as their leader – 1967 or 68 apparently.
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Patrick Heigham
John’s mention of “Ice Warriors” reminds me that with all the hype surrounding the 50th Anniversary of Dr. Who, it would have been nice for traceable members of the studio crews to have been invited to the party at O2.
I had been traced, although having long left BBC, LG and TVC, since I had been in contact with Simon Vaughan of the Alexandra Palace Television Society and he pointed the guys restoring the early Dr. Who episodes to DVD, to me, as I had been Grams on the show for 3 years from the outset. Subsequently I was asked, this year to record an alternative commentary for the bonus extras on the DVD release of “Ice Warriors” It was lovely to meet up again with Debbie Watling and Frazer Hines, and the producer sent a chauffeured Mercedes to transport me to and from the recording studio. Nice to be a luvvie for the day!
Incidentally, if anyone has (formally illegal) copies of any historic material of any productions or in-studio photos, both Simon (above) or Charles Norton (a young but enthusiastic keeper of BBC Archives), would much appreciate anything available.
It was such a shame that ‘the-powers-that-be” did not have the balls to keep material, but then who had the crystal ones to foresee the cult followings and marketing of historic programmes for DVD collections?
“Ice Warriors” was transmitted in 1967. Richard Bignell gave me the Dr. Who production guide, which some devoted people had collated – an incredibly detailed resume of the series, with Studios, filming, casts and studio personnel listed. How all that was researched beats me!
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Nick Lake
… I’ve been reading the Doctor Who Production Guide for over four hours.
I don’t know if I’m the only one, but it’s been a real trip down memory lane for me and a bit of an ego trip too, because as vision mixers didn’t get credits in the ‘70s it’s amusing to see one’s name in print and surprising to see just how many I worked on – and also who else worked on them and the one’s I did when I was still in Tech Ops.
Now this may provoke an ‘ah’ an ‘ugh’ or simply an ‘huh?’ but if anyone can be arsed to look at page 138 left-hand column, cast and crew of ‘ZZZ Valley of the Spiders’ (at the end of which Jon Pertwee morphed into Tom Baker) check the names of the Director’s Assistant and the Vision Mixer. TC1 Tuesday 2nd April 1974 (see page 132) was the first time we set eyes on each other and we’ve been friends ever since – in fact, after marriages, raising families and going through divorces, we’ve been together for the last 14 years and, thanks to the Doctor Who Production Guide, we now know the date on which to mark a kind of 40th anniversary next year!
Funnily enough, my abiding memory of that first day in TC1 is of Barry Letts who, in a state of considerable anxiety had rushed down to the floor (affording the vision mixer the traditional opportunity to chat up the PA), storming back into the gallery saying, “It used to worry me if I thought people didn’t like me, but now I don’t give a f**k!” Maybe a clue to his stress is in the note on studio days in the guide that says, “Recording over-runs by 30 minutes due to the large number of CSO effects…” Not me, guv!
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Clive Doig and David Brunt
“Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” We were in the gallery in Studio D, recording first episode of the first Dalek story (ep # 5). Number 1 of the Doctor Who series was due to be shown that night when the news came through! I remember someone remarking at the time, “Better him, than Kruschev being shot!”
The episode that had to be remounted a couple of weeks later because the recording picked up the talkback sound.
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Patrick Heigham
Here is a shot taken last year, at a recording session for the alternative commentary put on the DVD release of “Dr. Who and the Ice Warriors”.I was tracked down by the guys putting together the DVD versions.I even get a name mention on the DVD sleeve! Nice to get recognition this late, when the Corp did not screen credit the lowly operatives in those days.
(L-R Tony Hadoke – moderator, Frazer Hines, Debbie Watling, Me,Sonny Caldinez)
I related a story involving Deborah. Technicians were discouraged from fraternising with artistes – BBC protocol rules! On one occasion, I was having a snack in the Club after a Dr. Who rehearsal and Deborah came in with her father, Jack. They asked to share my table, whereupon, she proceeded to play ‘footsie’ with me under the table! Very sadly Debbie passed away in July 2017, from lung cancer.
The commentary recording was at Paddy Kingsland’s studio in Hammersmith. He was ex-Radiophonics at Maida Vale. The production send a Mercedes car for me – it was fun being a luvvie for a while! However, a later on-camera interview for a BFI DVD release of “Out of the Unknown” didn’t have that luxury as they pleaded no money! (They did refund my travelling expenses!) It was nostalgic travelling to Shepherds Bush as I had done many years ago.
[Ed: updated with new material August 2022]
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John Howell
Here’s a publicity photo of myself in Sypher 1 dubbing “State of Decay”.
The shot is nowhere near as old as Pat’s, being taken a mere 34 years ago on 27th June 1980. You can see Lalla Ward and Tom Baker on screen and the timecode indicates I was only 6 minutes in. The Director is Peter Moffatt and his Assistant, Jane Wellesley (thanks to David Brunt).
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Peter Cook
Interesting to see the Dr Who info. Typically in the Reference Journal (crew list section) for “The Curse of Fenric”, the OB shot at Lulworth Cove, which I worked on, was incomplete (p 287). The reason for the location was because there was an underwater sequence, for which I was dive supervisor. Alan Jessop got mentioned whilst Chris Bretnall and I did not. Not that it mattered as cameramen were seldom on credits anyway.
The shoot threw us an extra challenge, as on the rig day we discovered that the stunt arranger who was supposed to have got sufficient air cylinders for us hadn’t done s. We discovered this at about 5:30 pm after a rig and recce when we were anticipating a pint and checking into our hotel. Instead we phoned Poole Dive just as they were closing and bribed someone to stay open until we could get our empty tanks to them for a recharge. We had to hurtle over in the OB Espace and were quite late back for dinner. I also had to cover the stunt arranger’s backside when there was no provision made to protect Sophie Aldred when at the end of the sequence she had to dive off rocks into the sea. It was rough and windy, so being in a dry suit I got in the water and positioned myself out of shot between her and the rocks. Just as well because she was almost immediately blown into me. I would have enjoyed a retake but Paul Harding was a one take wonder!
Is there more than one Tardis?
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Jeff Booth
Shouldn’t the plural of Tardis be Tardii?
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Roger Bunce
Tardis doesn’t come from the Latin. It’s an acronym. Therefore, Tardises!
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Clive Doig
How many Tardises are there? Actually only one, although the number built or created will be more than one, therefore those which have been built are ‘Tardises’. Please refer to the definitive “Octupi is Wrong – Rules of the Plural Form in English” by Clive B Doig.
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Although there are 275 different ways of forming the plural from the singular word in the English language, there is a definitive rule which states that, ‘any imported or foreign word or neologism will, in the plural, be formed by an additional terminal ‘s’ or an ‘es’ if the new word ends in ‘s’.
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Barry Bonner
There’s only one Grail and a plural of that is not allowed (it was actually turned down on Countdown!) so I think that would also apply to the Tardis!
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John Howell
There maybe only one, but like Roger’s toy shop example, suppose you wanted to hypothesise that there could be several Grail…….s or Tardis…….s?
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Roger Bunce
There is only one REAL Tardis, now, although the Time Lords had plenty in the past.
In “The Time Meddler” there were two Tardises, the Doctor’s and the Monk’s. But this was 1066, before the Battle of Hastings. The ‘s’ plural only came into English from Norman French, after the Battle of Hastings.
One might, however, wish to use the plural when speaking of, say, a shop full of toy Tardises.
‘Time and Relative Dimensions in Spaces’ just makes a plural of the word ‘Space’, not the whole Tardis, although I might accept ‘T.A.R.D.I.S.s’. (No need for an ‘e’ since it ends in a full-stop, not an ‘s’. But no apostrophe, please!).
Bearing in mind the antiquity of the Tardis, and that a couple of them were present in 1066, they might then have been ‘Tardisen’, after the style of ‘Children’ or ‘Brethren’.
Oddly, ‘Octopusses’ was the example I was thinking of when pointing out that ‘Tardis’ doesn’t come from the Latin. So, now we’re into Greek, and as one pedant to another, can anyone explain why ‘Telephone’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘Persephone’, when both come from the same Greek root?
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Michael Cotton
Could it be that Telephone doesn’t rhyme with Persephone because it would then have the same pronunciation as ‘Telephony’?
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Jeff Booth
Of course, there may not be a plural for Tardis at all.
Sheep, being the first example I can think of (although I never actually saw a sheep enter or exit the Tardis).
The Monk Tardis could have existed in a parallel universe sharing the same matter so in theory there is still only one.
Deer Deer …
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David Denness
By the same logic the plural of Tardis is …. Tardis
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Alasdair Lawrance
T.A.R.D.I.S. isn’t a word in English, (because of the full stops), so can’t be pronounced. Tardis is a word, and can have the plural Tardises. What it means is irrelevant, (see Noam Chomsky, et al).
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