Doctor Who in Reeltime
- Publication: Starburst
- Date: issue 483 (autumn 2023)
- Author:
- Page: 33
- Language: English
Founded in 1984 by long-time fan KEITH BARNFATHER, REELTIME PICTURES is a British production company responsible for many video documentary series and original spin-off dramas based on DOCTOR WHO. As Reeltime's THE DOCTORS: BEHIND THE SCENES series reaches its conclusion, we chatted to Keith - also one of the founders of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society in 1976 - about the creation of his company and its place in the story of chronicling the lives and times of TV's most extraordinary hero...
STARBURST: What was the journey that led to a Doctor Who fan setting up and running his own film and video production company?
Keith Barnfather: I went to the BBC in 1979 and worked there in VT Engineering for three years. We were downstairs where all the edit suites were inside 'the Doughnut' [the nickname for BBC Television Centre], so whenever we were on duty we'd be sitting doing evening shifts and we'd see the cast of Blake's 7 walking past, an act from Top of the Pops - we'd see everything, every possible person from all kinds of shows, because all the dressing rooms were downstairs in the basement. I saw some of the most amazing television programmes being made, including I, Claudius. I got the chance to sit in on editing and I saw a lot of Doctor Who being edited, which was really useful for me in the long term. I'd be up in the gallery watching stuff being shot, which again was a privilege, but it helped form my definitive desire to work in production.
How did Reeltime's move into creating Doctor Who material come about?
One of my reasons for setting Reeltime up - not as a peripheral at all but as a sideline to the main business - was to start doing Doctor Who spin-offs. My education in marketing at C4 made it apparent to me at that time that nobody was doing anything connected with Doctor Who as either spin-offs or value-added material. At that point the BBC was still just releasing episodes on VHS, so I shot the first Myth Makers with Michael Wisher [the original Davros actor] in 1984 and released it in 1985. We did this when nobody else was doing it, we started this area not just in Doctor Who, but we were one of the first companies to start making this kind of value-added material, which was a production in its own right. By the end of this year, we'll have made 180 Myth Makers films!
The Doctors: Behind the Scenes series has really developed into an incredible and unique archive chronicling the history of the show in that so many of the interviewees are no longer with us, so this is really Doctor Who 'as it happened' from the horse's mouth. Did you realise that you were inadvertently creating this huge archive of Who history?
Not when I started. Obviously, I was relatively young and it was a whole new project I was working on and my mind was purely set on how I sourced the tapes, how I was going to edit them, how much would they cost to make, and whether people would actually want to buy them. Those were my main fears, worries, and concerns at first. What changed that was when we got to do the Myth Maker with Ian Marter [the Fourth Doctor's reluctant companion Harry Sullivan in Season 12 and early in 13] in 1986. We went and did the shoot down at the location of Terror of the Zygons; we had a wonderful day with David Howe directing and lan was such a sweet, kind man. I later got photographs from him to illustrate the film and he passed away literally a month after we shot [Marter died suddenly on his 42nd birthday in October 1986 from a diabetic heart attack]. After the shock had worn off, I thought to myself "Thank God we did that interview', and now we can look back at it and think that this is the only in-depth interview with lan that was ever shot. That's what made me think that this isn't just an exercise in fun for me, it's building a unique archive and I've approached it that way ever since.
So how did that idea become The Doctors: Behind the Scenes series?
The commissioning editor at Koch Media, our then-distributor, said to me after they'd released a couple of our dramas, "Why don't you do compilation tapes from the Myth Makers series?" I actually said to him, "No, I don't honestly think you'll sell many", and he thought they'd do very well - this was when DVD was still selling. I then thought that this was the way I would be able to put it into that context of the history of Doctor Who. I wouldn't re-edit them all, I'd release them in blocks. And then it was a question of where we had holes in the number of interviews we needed to make up each era of Doctor Who - we would then deliberately shoot a Myth Makers to fill it. Later on, Koch was pulling out of the market as DVD sales had been falling rapidly and I had a long chat with a few friends and fans, and they all wanted the 'behind the scenes' people to be compiled as well, so we carried on at Reeltime releasing all the behind-the-scenes DVDs that we've been doing. And although sales have been dropping away, we've just been able to get the last one out that was Sylvester's behind the scenes. The ones available now are the very last ones, we will not be duplicating any of the DVDs... once they've gone, they are gone, so if you want any of them, stocks are getting low. It's now or never [laughs]!
Where do you see Reeltime going next? You've done several Who-related dramas over the years and The Devil Seeds of Arodor was very well-received...
We do dramas as often as we can, but the problem is that it's time-consuming and financially expensive. The first one we did was Wartime in 1987 - the first time anyone had done an independent Doctor Who - and that was a huge learning curve. Downtime [1994, starring Who alumni Nicholas Courtney, Deborah Watling, and Elisabeth Sladen] was the most ambitious, but I felt that Devil Seeds is a better production because it's more cohesive and it has a message and it says it the right way. It's because we realised what we intended to, it's exactly what I wanted to make, whereas some of the others had a life of their own, which is usually the way when you're dealing with so many elements that are running away with you. With Devil Seeds, I worked very closely with writer Philip Martin on the scripts; we both knew what we wanted and where we were going, we cast the right people and, I think, for what it is, it's perfect. As far as the future is concerned, there will be more Myth Makers - our Sylvester McCoy release will be our contribution to the celebrations this year. We have loads of stuff coming, such as Day of the Daughters with Daisy Ashford and Sadie Miller talking about taking over their parents' legacies as Liz Shaw and Sarah Jane Smith for Big Finish. We've got one with all the writers from the Virgin New Adventures and BBC Books discussing their work. It just never ends!
Putting your Doctor Who fan hat on again then, what are your own hopes for the future of Who in its sixtieth year and going forward?
I have faith in Russell T Davies, I love everything he's ever done - he's one of the most gifted showrunners in TV. I'm convinced that Ncuti Gatwa will make a great Doctor, too. I think we're going to have another resurgence!
Reeltime DOCTOR WHO productions are available from WWW.TIMETRAVELTV.COM
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- APA 6th ed.: (issue 483 (autumn 2023)). Doctor Who in Reeltime. Starburst p. 33.
- MLA 7th ed.: "Doctor Who in Reeltime." Starburst [add city] issue 483 (autumn 2023), 33. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: "Doctor Who in Reeltime." Starburst, edition, sec., issue 483 (autumn 2023)
- Turabian: "Doctor Who in Reeltime." Starburst, issue 483 (autumn 2023), section, 33 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=Doctor Who in Reeltime | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Doctor_Who_in_Reeltime | work=Starburst | pages=33 | date=issue 483 (autumn 2023) | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=5 December 2025 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=Doctor Who in Reeltime | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Doctor_Who_in_Reeltime | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=5 December 2025}}</ref>
