Doctor Who Cuttings Archive

The face of evil?

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Radio Times logo 2000s.jpg
coverage of series 1, 2005
  1. Bring on those nightmares! | That's the wonder of Who... | listings (26 March)
  2. Origin of species (2 April)
  3. Their mutual friend | letters (9 April)
  4. Killing time (16 April)
  5. The face of evil? (23 April)
  6. Tinpot dictator (30 April)
  7. The naked Dalek | letters (7 May)
  8. Unholy terror (14 May)
  9. Dreams and nightmares (21 May)
  10. To be continued... (28 May)
  11. What's next, Doc? (4 June)
  12. Reality can be a killer (11 June)
  13. They're back ... and this time it's war! (18 June)
coverage of other series
S1 | S2 | S3 | S4 | Specials | S5 | S6 | S7 | S8 | S9 | S10

2005-04-23 Radio Times.jpg

[edit]

THE EYES HAVE IT "They're just big black plastic spheres, but there's a little trick in the show," says prosthetics wizard Neill Gorton (below). "They've got this wonderful reptile-like eye-blink. That was done digitally. Because there was a lot of animatronics on top of the performer's head already, to get all that stuff going on with the eyes would have involved a lot more weight, so the computer guys made these really fast shutter-like eye blinks - it was great."

FEET The feet are like boots, then there's a trouser section, the whole upper body section and then the enormously long arms. It's all made of foam latex, which is very soft and spongy

JAWS The mouths are animatronic, manipulated using radio control by an operator watching the action on a monitor

LEGS Here the legs are being moulded. Body moulds were made of the two performers, then clay was sculpted over the casts to ensure everything fitted

ARMS This smaller model shows the proportions of the arms —18in longer than those of the actor in the costume, who operates the fingers using a lever

The face of evil?

Last week's Doctor Who gave us a first sight of the Slitheen, alien creatures who hide inside human bodies. This week you'll see a lot more — but first, see how they did it ...

Originally in the script there was a line that the Slitheen are very tall creatures, with baby faces," explains Doctor Who's "Mr Prosthetics", Neill Gorton. "Part of the gag is the fact that they look so enormous compared to the human they've just fitted into. So when they emerge it's like — how did the Slitheen fit in there?

"The starting point was 'large' and 'green'. I did a bunch of doodles, which I showed to [main writer] Russell T Davies. He didn't want you to know whether the creature was benign or vicious when you first saw it. The feeling was that it should have this slightly cute face, and it turns out it's trying to destroy the world.

"There were two six-foot-tall performers. They wore harnesses inside, and the big mechanical head strapped to their own head — it was hot and uncomfortable. Because the performers could only see through tiny holes and it's all very cumbersome, we used the large creatures for close-ups, when they had to grab people, stuff like that. When the Slitheen are running round there's a digitally created version — because if you tried to run in the costumes, you'd bump into things and trip over. So we used a mixture of computer-generated characters and performers."

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.: Griffiths, Nick (2005-04-23). The face of evil?. Radio Times p. 12.
  • MLA 7th ed.: Griffiths, Nick. "The face of evil?." Radio Times [add city] 2005-04-23, 12. Print.
  • Chicago 15th ed.: Griffiths, Nick. "The face of evil?." Radio Times, edition, sec., 2005-04-23
  • Turabian: Griffiths, Nick. "The face of evil?." Radio Times, 2005-04-23, section, 12 edition.
  • Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=The face of evil? | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/The_face_of_evil%3F | work=Radio Times | pages=12 | date=2005-04-23 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=18 December 2024 }}</ref>
  • Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=The face of evil? | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/The_face_of_evil%3F | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=18 December 2024}}</ref>


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