Chris Clough - Director

Publication: Starburst
Date: issue 125 (January 1989)
Author: Stephen Payne, David Richardson, Lee B Matthews
Page: 40
Language: English

Last issue Chris Clough talked about his early Doctor Who stories and location work this year. This issue he looks more closely at the anniversary season.

MUCH of the action in Silver Nemesis revolves around the return of the Cybermen, who have had their first major re-design since Earthshock in 1982. "Because this was the silver anniversary story, and because the Cybermen are silver, we tried to make to most out of that and gave them silver chromed head-gear. There is a bit of glare when the sun hits them, but we were fortunate in that the weather was not too good. if it had been very sunny, then the high intensity light would have given a red streak on the camera, which is horrible."

"The costume designer Richard Croft, and Cyberleader David Banks rethought the mask, as in previous stories they had to be screwed on and were very claustrophobic. This was solved with a clip-on mask, which also saved time as previously it took about five minutes to get an actor into a mask. We also felt that with the last Cybermen you could see where the boots and gloves were stuck on, so we tried to merge it and make it look like one suit."

Did Clough have his own rules on how the Cybermen should be shot? "We tried to have them talking as little as possible as the speech pattern is quite slow. I looked at tapes of previous Cybermen stories, and saw how they had changed over the years. The golden rule with any of these monsters is to try and avoid shooting them in long shot. We did, however, make an exception to that rule with the Kandyman because the feet were so good."

In it's planning stages, the anniversary season was arranged so that Silver Nemesis would be broadcast on 23 November. However, the transmission of the series was delayed by the 1988 Olympics. resulting in a radical change in the order of the stories so that Silver Nemesis and the anniversary would still coincide. Had this last-minute change resulted in any continuity problems?

"The only problem we had was that Ace has Flowerchild's brooch from The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, but by the nature of the beast just because you have seen a particular episode before another doesn't mean it happened in that order."

Clough states a preference for the medium of film, with location work being his favourite way of recording Doctor Who. Did this mean he tended to shoot OB footage as if it were film, using a single camera? "I work primarily with a single camera. only popping in a second camera to pick up what it can en route. In a studio when you have so much to do in five days, you really have to use multi-camera. However, in The Happiness Patrol we have gone for a very low level of lighting, and we had to use the single camera technique to keep that low light. If we had used multi-camera, it would have to have been evenly lit for each camera which floods the subject with light and it just goes flat."

Bizarre

The Happiness Patrol must surely rank as one of the most unusual Doctor Who tales ever. How did the director approach the bizarre society of Terra Alpha? "That story was very difficult to get to grips with, because it was written in a style that suggested it should be very bright - almost like one of those early technicolour films. The Happiness Patrol Guards were supposed to be dresses in cheerleader skirts which would have been very brash. After a lot of discussion we decided that we would go rather contrary to that, as we believed that the brashness would fight against the contents of the script. We decided to go for an end of empire feel, in that Helen A has been running this dictatorship which is now running out of steam."

"Terra Alpha had been all very jolly and successful once, but now it is tatty around the edges. We had the sets with a rather theatrical front, added on to decaying buildings like patchwork. The make-up on the Happiness Patrol girls' faces was cracked, for which we applied Fullers Earth to their faces. This was quite painful for the artists, but it actually pulled their faces and made their make-up crack. I wanted it to look as if they were all too old to carry off the pretty girl image, and that they had got up in the morning and just added another layer to their caked on make-up..

"The main problem with that script was that if you had a camp idea, it is difficult to keep the feeling of menace going throughout."

The story featured a range of very unusual creatures, from the Kandyman to Fifi and the Pipe People. "The Kandyman was the creation of make-up designer Dorka Nieradzik. A monster like that would normally be handled by Visual Effects, but they were too busy and Dorka fancied the challenge. It was hard to get the voice right; 1 think we managed to get the right tone and still make it comprehensible."

"Sue Moore made three different versions of Fifi: one which was for pulling along the pipes, one with head movements and a static body and one which could move everything. It was an excellent model. Sue also made the faces for the Pipe People. Originally we were going to have the Pipe People as puppets and have an actor inside Fifi, but it seemed better to swap the idea around. There are about eight Pipe People, which were played by children. They were great, the only problem being the hours they were allowed to work. However, we were properly scheduled and so we got it all in."

Another unusual design came in the form of the vehicle which belonged to the Happiness Patrol. "This was made by the same people who made the bike for The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. They are a delightful pair of Hell's Angels, with coloured tattoos all up their arms. In a studio, you are only allowed one pint of petrol in a tank. so they built a detachable petrol tank so they could do a quick refill when it ran out."

The complex nature of the story ultimately led to problems during the studio recordings, which came dangerously close to over running. "For the first three studio days we were shooting the street, pipes and execution yard. However, because the street sets were so closed-in it took longer than anticipated, and on the first day we were half a day behind. The pipes then turned out to be easier to shoot in than we thought, and we held the execution yard scenes over to the next studio block. You can get a few minutes over run, but it's expensive. If you don't get it on time then it is the director's neck on the chopping block. What one tries to do when scheduling the studio days is to put the not-so-important scenes towards the end of the last day. so that if you hit a time problem you can lose them."

Who Defined

Having directed six Doctor Who stories, each vastly different in style, we wondered if Chris could define the series in his own terms, "Doctor Who is.... the most difficult thing I've ever done! It is on its own; a mixture of action, adventure, fantasy and nightmare, and you are trying to amalgamate all of these different areas to make the plausible out of the implausible. The concept of having a Police Box flying through Space is obviously quite ludicrous, but the fun of it is to be able to turn the accepted form of logic on its head."

Does Chris Clough envisage returning to direct for the Twenty-Sixth season? "I think the new producer will come in and want his own directors. After three seasons I think it is probably time to move on anyway. John Nathan-Turner has a phrase 'Who-ed out', and I think l probably am now."

Captions:

Silvered Cybermen discuss the next scene and puzzle over their expensive allergy - gold, meanwhile Special Effects guy Mike Tucker tries to sort out yet another production headache

The Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Ace (Sophie Aldred) study the Doctor's super ghetto-blaster

Behind you!!!

"Hey, just why are two of our fingers tied together?"

Chris Clough - Director

Navigation menu

Page actions

Page actions

Personal tools

Navigation

Search

External links

Tools