Doctor Who Cuttings Archive

Oodles of props

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Radio Times logo 2000s.jpg
coverage of series 3, 2007
  1. Labour of love (7 April)
  2. Cat and Doc (14 April)
  3. The Thinking Man's Dalek (21 April)
  4. Enemy of the States (28 April)
  5. Who's scariest monster yet? (5 May)
  6. Burn, baby, burn (19 May)
  7. We're coming to get you! (26 May)
  8. Loving the Alien (2 June)
  9. Hell's Angels (9 June)
  10. And then there were three (16 June)
  11. Master mind (23 June)
  12. On set with... Freema Agyeman (30 June)
  13. Who's on board? (22 December)
coverage of other series
S1 | S2 | S3 | S4 | Specials | S5 | S6 | S7 | S8 | S9 | S10

[edit]

UGLY CRITTERS

"These are two Weevil heads from Torchwood, made of foam latex," explains Rob Mayor of Millennium FX. "We need to keep them in a clean, dry environment to prevent them from becoming mouldy."

ORGAN BANK

"A brain, lungs and heart from the Countrycide episode of Torchwood. They're all silicone, which is quite nerdy."

DOCTOR OOHH!

"The animatronic Doctor's hand, originally severed in The Christmas Invaslon, and later stored in a jar in the Torchwood Hub [above]"

PADDED CHEST

"The stunt department wore foam versions of the Cyberman suit to do falls in. We churned out quite a few because they got bashed around a bit."

CLAUS-TROPHOBIA

"The Killer Santa masks from the two Christmas specials are made of fibreglass, so they're quite sturdy. The mask second from the left has one eye removed so that the stunt driver in the taxi [in The Runaway Bride] could see better. It was the other eye you saw in the rear-view mirror."

SPARE PARTS

"That sticker says 'Test chest' - this was the very first Cyberman chest we turned out, and it was used for the initial fittings on [chief monster actor] Paul Kasey. Underneath that is a spare chest section for the Cyber Controller [seen in The Age of Steel last year]. And the head is actually made of soft foam, again for a stunt actor to wear."

CYBER-GEAR

"This is from Torchwood. On the box [left] it says 'Cyber Girl suit', and that's her helmet [below]. The suit was quite skimpy [right]; there was much to it

GOLD RESERVE

These are the gold droid heads from The Runaway Bride, which were to be underneath the Santa Claus masks. They're fibreglass as sprayed with a lot of layers of lacquer to make them hardier. Obviously, if you dropped them on the floor, they might chip, but they're all quite sturdy."

OOD-LOOKING BUNCH

"These are the foam-latex, silicone-tentacled heads of the Ood [seen in The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit last year]. They sit on top of head moulds taken from actor Paul Kasey. These ones are non-animatronic; anything animatronic is stored at Millennium FX's workshop [see overleaf]."

BOX OF TRICKS

"We made a full droid head, which David Tennant picks up in The Runaway Bride. That's what's in this box - under the Cyber guns."

BLOOD PUMP

"We fill this with fake blood, pump the handle up and there's a trigger on the front. Tubing slots into that blue nozzle on the end, then we have a high-powered blood pump."

PROTECTIVE GEAR

"Latex gloves - when spraying fake blood everywhere we don't want our hands looking too 9y: '

FAKE BLOOD

"Lots of it"

"All this stuff is kept under lock and key. Many items are one-offs, worth thousands of pounds," says Rob Mayor, prosthetics supervisor at Millennium FX, giving RT a guided tour of the storeroom at the Doctor Who and Torchwood studios in Wales

LAST LEGS

"They're from one of the corpses seen hanging upside down in the Torchwood episode Countrycide, and were set to be stripped of their flesh by cannibals. They're from a stock mould."


Doctor Who Confidential is, of course, back on Saturday nights on BBC3 - and it's now 45 minutes Ion{ The first episode focuses on Freema and the challenges facing her - including footage of Radio Times shooting her for our covers (see the grabs from the programme below).

In the coming weeks, Confidential zips from the Moon via the Globe Theatre of Elizabethan times to 1930s New York; and, like RT, the show celebrates the creativity and craft involved to realise the scripts - plus the odd masterclass in how to make a monster!

A STAR IS HORN

"We can try out adjustments on screen, which is faster than resculpting each time," adds Rob Mayor, "but they went for this first version."

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER COLLAR

"That's a mould of Paul Kasey's head, with the torso being sculpted by Martin Rezard - who also sculpted the Cyberman suit."

RT art editor Paul Smith's sketch shows the layouts for our two covers

HALF MAN, HALF BEAST

"We did the top half of the suit and Louise Page in the costume department did the bottom half. It's sculpted in normal wet clay, then we make a mould and cast a hard-foam version of the suit." The Judoon is pictured at the Millennium FX workshop in Chesham, Buckinghamshire.

ARMOUR-GEDDON

"The top halves of the Judoon suits, which we supplied, are all made of foam and the rings around the neck are made from the same material as the Cyberman heads, because we needed them to be stiff so we could clamp a helmet to them. That's a pair of Cyberman legs sticking out of the box. And on the middle shelf, that's a harness worn by Paul Kasey, to help support the very heavy animatronic Judoon head."

Freema poses against a green screen (which is digitally replaced later on)

A LITTLE BRAIN SURGERY

"That's our meth genius [animatronic technician] Gustav Hoegen working on mechanics for the full-size Judoon head without the skin or eyeballs."

Disclaimer: These citations are created on-the-fly using primitive parsing techniques. You should double-check all citations. Send feedback to whovian@cuttingsarchive.org

  • APA 6th ed.: (2007-03-31). Oodles of props. Radio Times p. 24.
  • MLA 7th ed.: "Oodles of props." Radio Times [add city] 2007-03-31, 24. Print.
  • Chicago 15th ed.: "Oodles of props." Radio Times, edition, sec., 2007-03-31
  • Turabian: "Oodles of props." Radio Times, 2007-03-31, section, 24 edition.
  • Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=Oodles of props | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Oodles_of_props | work=Radio Times | pages=24 | date=2007-03-31 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=21 December 2024 }}</ref>
  • Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=Oodles of props | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Oodles_of_props | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=21 December 2024}}</ref>


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