IF THE daleks do not send you scurrying behind the sofa, the flying wheelie bins will. Doctor Who finally materialises tonight, representing a £10 million special-effects revolution for British television.
The Oscar-winning team behind Gladiator has created 800 digital special effects, which is a record for a British programme. Their work on Gladiator required only 100.
The first Dalek was made with an egg whisk and the indicator lights from a Morris Minor, but today's Doctor Who has to match the high-tech action delivered by the American Star Trek: Enterprise and Buf67 The Vampire Slayer series in order to secure overseas sales.
The work was done at The Mill, the London computer-generated effects company which has also worked on the Harry Potter and James Bond films. A team of 21 worked six-day weeks of 12-hour days for ten months.
Robin Shenfield, The Mill's chief executive, said: "Everything we do that's cutting edge is in this production. It has to be because today's audience is very visual effect-literate."
Will Cohen, the visual effects producer for the series, was asked to create "gaseous entities" for one episode. "They started off just as ectoplasm but then became faces that had to speak," he said.
"In another story one computer-generated character needed four minutes of lip-synching, which is a huge undertaking in a television project."
Next week's episode involves the Doctor battling a race of deadly spiders and required the most effects, and episode three promises a flying saucer that hovers across London and bounces off Big Ben before crashing into the River Thames.
Comic: There was no congestion charge when we were here last time
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