Doctor Who Confidential (2005–2011): Season 2, Episode 11 - The Fright Stuff - full transcript
Action.
There we go.
GATISS: Lights, camera, action. That's
how it's been done since television began.
After 40 years of fear on Doctor Who, why are
we still afraid of what's in the wardrobe?
SINISTER VOICE: I'm coming...
Er, yeah.
(CREW CHATTERING)
He falls, and as he
falls, he'll probably go...
(EXCLAIMS)
All of a sudden, the Doctor comes
running in and he lifts the torch,
and he holds it above his head and he runs
and we all cheer.
(PEOPLE CHEERING)
That was good on the crowd reactions there.
(CROWD CHEERING)
We came across the Olympics simply because
we've got a few modern-day
Earth stories in a row
and this episode needed something to be
not quite modern-day Earth.
The setting of the
games was just irresistible.
London won the games
and everyone's talking 2012,
and it was just a buzz in the air.
And we thought it was
really something good to hook on to.
It was quite funny.
It was a bit of a futuristic joke in a way.
"Here we are. Let's go and have a look."
Episode 11, its very normality
is what makes it all the creepier.
MAEVE: No!
MAN: Tom?
MAEVE: What are you?
It's "the Doctor comes to Brookside Close",
is what it basically is.
And I think that makes it pretty scary.
Because you're hopefully at home thinking,
"This could be my street."
I like to think of kids sitting there thinking,
"I can look out the window and see the Tardis."
A story like this is smaller
and closer to home.
Which I think is something Doctor Who
traditionally has always done very well.
♪ Merry merry king of the bush is he ♪
TENNANT: We expect children
to be innocents, don't we?
We expect them to be unsullied
by the nastiness of human experience.
So I suppose it's particularly chilling if they
seem to have some access to the dark place.
...they're just dreams. You do know that?
-They can't hurt you.
-I'm busy.
Unless you want me to draw you,
Mum.
To put a scare into that,
to make them adult, in a way,
and to give them power
really subverts the natural order of things
and it's automatically scary. It just works.
Nice one.
And another step towards David.
And a step to your right.
The big pivotal scene in episode 11,
where Chloe's been put into a trance,
it's quite a straightforward scene
because it doesn't involve CG particularly.
It doesn't involve lots of actors.
It's in a contained set, in a warehouse.
Okay, good. Let's try it again.
But a scene like that is quite difficult
because the emotion and the intensity
of the performance is the key thing.
So, making sure that, you know,
that the energy and the focus is there
is really important.
And focus. And action.
We take an endless journey.
A thousand of your lifetimes.
But now I am alone. I hate it.
It's not fair, and I hate it!
We had all sorts of different ways what
we were going to do something with Chloe,
she was gonna speak with a deep voice
and then a high-pitched voice.
And I think what Euros has gone for
with Chloe in the episode is really nice
because it's at once sinister
but also, kind of, full of loneliness.
It's one of the things
that's most frightening in the world.
It's someone you know, someone you love,
changing and being different
and having a different voice inside them.
TENNANT: It is quite unsettling
because it's a little girl.
It's not a big, powerful super-villain
or some huge, slavering creature.
This is a little girl, who
looks like a little girl,
and sort of acts like a little girl,
but sort of doesn't.
Fear Her is quite old-school Doctor Who.
It's got a CG element,
but the CG is very small in it.
The main scares come from a
psychological tension of what Chloe can do.
And using, you know, the very traditional
tools of music, of composition,
of characters disappearing off-camera.
You know, that's how we've created
the scares and the tension.
Snatching children from a
thoroughly ordinary street like this.
And why is it so cold?
Someone reducing the temperature?
The music's a really fundamental part
of the atmosphere of the whole show.
Things to do with stylistic elements,
generally, through the episode
all contribute to this sort of strange
quality that we call the atmosphere.
What he does is to really underscore
the moments of menace,
the moments of shock, the moments of fear.
He kind of tells you, in a sense,
what you should be feeling.
In episode 11, you have the classic
blonde-ascending-a-staircase moment.
GOLD: This door is closed for a reason.
Something about this door tells me
I should not go through it
Therefore, I want to know what's the other
side. It's just... It's psychology. It's great.
Different instruments
hit different parts of your body.
I think low instruments
always get you in the stomach.
(LOW THROBBING MUSIC ON THE SOUNDTRACK)
High instruments just get you
in your throat a bit more, you know.
And your head, and the
piercing, jarring sounds.
(HIGH-PITCHED SOUNDTRACK MUSIC)
A lot of frightening music comes
from an unexpected, melodic progression,
you know, and discord.
It's been used to convey
that everything's gone wrong.
Or that things are doomed.
GATISS: The Doctor's faced werewolves,
Cybermen and pure evil.
Prepare yourselves for
the Doctor's greatest ever nemesis.
We're filming a sort of
slightly spooky scene
where the Doctor and Rose haven't been
in this neighbourhood a very long time.
They've just arrived.
And they're following a little cat.
And the cat goes into a box...
What do you wanna go in there for?
...something happens, and the cat vanishes.
GATISS: Sounds easy, doesn't it? Unfortunately,
that day, the cat had other ideas.
The cat really wasn't wanting
to play ball with us today
and it rolled over several times.
A very friendly cat that decided
the gateway to that house
was far more interesting than the box.
It didn't do anything that we wanted, basically.
I think we're gonna give it another go tomorrow.
No, I'm not really a cat person.
Once you've been threatened by one
in a nun's wimple,
kind of takes the joy out of it.
(MEOWS)
GATISS: The Doctor may think cats are scary
but two wooden doors
contain something much more terrifying.
I think the dad in the wardrobe
is a great achievement.
He is a red light and a shadow.
This is impossible.
It's a shadow on a wall coming to get his
wife and his daughter with a growling voice.
It's the simplest form of storytelling
and it's genuinely terrifying, I think.
Chloe!
We seeded in this notion
of a father that's dead,
but that represents all
Chloe's childhood fears.
And the father's taken on a monstrous form
in her imagination.
Where do monsters live when you're a child?
In a wardrobe.
Look at it.
My baby!
-You're not going to hurt her again!
-Chloe! I'm coming'
Chloe, it's Rose! Open up!
We got your ship!
We can send you home.
Chloe!
Right, stand back.
LYN: I think she loves playing Rose with a
pickaxe. You get to smash things, you know.
We all quite like
having a wild time every now and again.
And Billie's no different.
-Cut. Good.
-I loved it.
The pickaxe is actually
a real pickaxe handle.
But what we've done is
we've made a lightweight version.
It's still made of steel,
still pretty sharp and dangerous.
But it's just a lot more manageable.
I told her just before
to think of someone she hates
and it seems to have done the trick.
-Chloe!
-...to hurt you!
-I'm coming.
-I've gotta stop her.
I'm coming...
If you stop Chloe
Webber, I will let him out.
In the end of the episode,
Chloe goes a bit mad and starts drawing
all the continents and every...
Gets the world map and starts to draw
the whole world map.
And then the Doctor
has to try and stop her.
I cannot be alone! It's not fair!
The idea that this child is possessed
and just frantically drawing pictures
and having people disappear into
her world of drawings, that's horrible.
-Look, I've got your pod!
-The pod is dead!
-No, it just needs heat.
-It needs more than heat.
Hold it there. Continue...
Continue running?
-Okay, yeah.
-Yeah? And on we go.
Look, I've got your pod!
The love of her life is
still trapped in a drawing
and she sees no way out
and she's almost defeated.
I know how to charge up the pod.
But then there's this flicker of light
and hope, and she gets the guy again.
You know what? They keep on trying to split
us up but they never ever will.
Never say, "Never ever."
We got a big two-part story coming
and there's gonna be a lot of fireworks.
Nah, we'll always be okay, you and me.
(FIRECRACKERS BURSTING)
Don't you reckon, Doctor?
Rose thinks she knows
this man back-to-front.
Suddenly he says something
that's like a bomb going off.
A storm's approaching.
(FIRECRACKERS BURSTING)
There we go.
GATISS: Lights, camera, action. That's
how it's been done since television began.
After 40 years of fear on Doctor Who, why are
we still afraid of what's in the wardrobe?
SINISTER VOICE: I'm coming...
Er, yeah.
(CREW CHATTERING)
He falls, and as he
falls, he'll probably go...
(EXCLAIMS)
All of a sudden, the Doctor comes
running in and he lifts the torch,
and he holds it above his head and he runs
and we all cheer.
(PEOPLE CHEERING)
That was good on the crowd reactions there.
(CROWD CHEERING)
We came across the Olympics simply because
we've got a few modern-day
Earth stories in a row
and this episode needed something to be
not quite modern-day Earth.
The setting of the
games was just irresistible.
London won the games
and everyone's talking 2012,
and it was just a buzz in the air.
And we thought it was
really something good to hook on to.
It was quite funny.
It was a bit of a futuristic joke in a way.
"Here we are. Let's go and have a look."
Episode 11, its very normality
is what makes it all the creepier.
MAEVE: No!
MAN: Tom?
MAEVE: What are you?
It's "the Doctor comes to Brookside Close",
is what it basically is.
And I think that makes it pretty scary.
Because you're hopefully at home thinking,
"This could be my street."
I like to think of kids sitting there thinking,
"I can look out the window and see the Tardis."
A story like this is smaller
and closer to home.
Which I think is something Doctor Who
traditionally has always done very well.
♪ Merry merry king of the bush is he ♪
TENNANT: We expect children
to be innocents, don't we?
We expect them to be unsullied
by the nastiness of human experience.
So I suppose it's particularly chilling if they
seem to have some access to the dark place.
...they're just dreams. You do know that?
-They can't hurt you.
-I'm busy.
Unless you want me to draw you,
Mum.
To put a scare into that,
to make them adult, in a way,
and to give them power
really subverts the natural order of things
and it's automatically scary. It just works.
Nice one.
And another step towards David.
And a step to your right.
The big pivotal scene in episode 11,
where Chloe's been put into a trance,
it's quite a straightforward scene
because it doesn't involve CG particularly.
It doesn't involve lots of actors.
It's in a contained set, in a warehouse.
Okay, good. Let's try it again.
But a scene like that is quite difficult
because the emotion and the intensity
of the performance is the key thing.
So, making sure that, you know,
that the energy and the focus is there
is really important.
And focus. And action.
We take an endless journey.
A thousand of your lifetimes.
But now I am alone. I hate it.
It's not fair, and I hate it!
We had all sorts of different ways what
we were going to do something with Chloe,
she was gonna speak with a deep voice
and then a high-pitched voice.
And I think what Euros has gone for
with Chloe in the episode is really nice
because it's at once sinister
but also, kind of, full of loneliness.
It's one of the things
that's most frightening in the world.
It's someone you know, someone you love,
changing and being different
and having a different voice inside them.
TENNANT: It is quite unsettling
because it's a little girl.
It's not a big, powerful super-villain
or some huge, slavering creature.
This is a little girl, who
looks like a little girl,
and sort of acts like a little girl,
but sort of doesn't.
Fear Her is quite old-school Doctor Who.
It's got a CG element,
but the CG is very small in it.
The main scares come from a
psychological tension of what Chloe can do.
And using, you know, the very traditional
tools of music, of composition,
of characters disappearing off-camera.
You know, that's how we've created
the scares and the tension.
Snatching children from a
thoroughly ordinary street like this.
And why is it so cold?
Someone reducing the temperature?
The music's a really fundamental part
of the atmosphere of the whole show.
Things to do with stylistic elements,
generally, through the episode
all contribute to this sort of strange
quality that we call the atmosphere.
What he does is to really underscore
the moments of menace,
the moments of shock, the moments of fear.
He kind of tells you, in a sense,
what you should be feeling.
In episode 11, you have the classic
blonde-ascending-a-staircase moment.
GOLD: This door is closed for a reason.
Something about this door tells me
I should not go through it
Therefore, I want to know what's the other
side. It's just... It's psychology. It's great.
Different instruments
hit different parts of your body.
I think low instruments
always get you in the stomach.
(LOW THROBBING MUSIC ON THE SOUNDTRACK)
High instruments just get you
in your throat a bit more, you know.
And your head, and the
piercing, jarring sounds.
(HIGH-PITCHED SOUNDTRACK MUSIC)
A lot of frightening music comes
from an unexpected, melodic progression,
you know, and discord.
It's been used to convey
that everything's gone wrong.
Or that things are doomed.
GATISS: The Doctor's faced werewolves,
Cybermen and pure evil.
Prepare yourselves for
the Doctor's greatest ever nemesis.
We're filming a sort of
slightly spooky scene
where the Doctor and Rose haven't been
in this neighbourhood a very long time.
They've just arrived.
And they're following a little cat.
And the cat goes into a box...
What do you wanna go in there for?
...something happens, and the cat vanishes.
GATISS: Sounds easy, doesn't it? Unfortunately,
that day, the cat had other ideas.
The cat really wasn't wanting
to play ball with us today
and it rolled over several times.
A very friendly cat that decided
the gateway to that house
was far more interesting than the box.
It didn't do anything that we wanted, basically.
I think we're gonna give it another go tomorrow.
No, I'm not really a cat person.
Once you've been threatened by one
in a nun's wimple,
kind of takes the joy out of it.
(MEOWS)
GATISS: The Doctor may think cats are scary
but two wooden doors
contain something much more terrifying.
I think the dad in the wardrobe
is a great achievement.
He is a red light and a shadow.
This is impossible.
It's a shadow on a wall coming to get his
wife and his daughter with a growling voice.
It's the simplest form of storytelling
and it's genuinely terrifying, I think.
Chloe!
We seeded in this notion
of a father that's dead,
but that represents all
Chloe's childhood fears.
And the father's taken on a monstrous form
in her imagination.
Where do monsters live when you're a child?
In a wardrobe.
Look at it.
My baby!
-You're not going to hurt her again!
-Chloe! I'm coming'
Chloe, it's Rose! Open up!
We got your ship!
We can send you home.
Chloe!
Right, stand back.
LYN: I think she loves playing Rose with a
pickaxe. You get to smash things, you know.
We all quite like
having a wild time every now and again.
And Billie's no different.
-Cut. Good.
-I loved it.
The pickaxe is actually
a real pickaxe handle.
But what we've done is
we've made a lightweight version.
It's still made of steel,
still pretty sharp and dangerous.
But it's just a lot more manageable.
I told her just before
to think of someone she hates
and it seems to have done the trick.
-Chloe!
-...to hurt you!
-I'm coming.
-I've gotta stop her.
I'm coming...
If you stop Chloe
Webber, I will let him out.
In the end of the episode,
Chloe goes a bit mad and starts drawing
all the continents and every...
Gets the world map and starts to draw
the whole world map.
And then the Doctor
has to try and stop her.
I cannot be alone! It's not fair!
The idea that this child is possessed
and just frantically drawing pictures
and having people disappear into
her world of drawings, that's horrible.
-Look, I've got your pod!
-The pod is dead!
-No, it just needs heat.
-It needs more than heat.
Hold it there. Continue...
Continue running?
-Okay, yeah.
-Yeah? And on we go.
Look, I've got your pod!
The love of her life is
still trapped in a drawing
and she sees no way out
and she's almost defeated.
I know how to charge up the pod.
But then there's this flicker of light
and hope, and she gets the guy again.
You know what? They keep on trying to split
us up but they never ever will.
Never say, "Never ever."
We got a big two-part story coming
and there's gonna be a lot of fireworks.
Nah, we'll always be okay, you and me.
(FIRECRACKERS BURSTING)
Don't you reckon, Doctor?
Rose thinks she knows
this man back-to-front.
Suddenly he says something
that's like a bomb going off.
A storm's approaching.
(FIRECRACKERS BURSTING)