Doctor Who Confidential (2005–2011): Season 3, Episode 8 - Alter Ego - full transcript
DOCTOR: Get down!
NARRATOR: The Doctor's
not been himself of late.
-Did they see you?
-I don't know.
But did they see you?
The Doctor has become human...
This is not you. This is 1913.
Good, this is 1913.
...and is now living as a school teacher
in England just before World War I.
Only Martha Jones has the secret.
Martha, this watch is me.
Pardon me, Mr Smith.
The Doctor, as she knows him,
has vanished.
She's frustrated.
I wish you'd come back.
There are aliens on his trail
who are after a Time Lord's life span.
He's hiding from them,
but they find him.
GIRL: The teacher, he's the Doctor.
NARRATOR: Come along with Confidential
as we go undercover
with the Doctor and Martha,
alias Smith and Jones.
MAN: Set!
DOCTOR: Get down!
The Doctor is hiding because
the Family of Blood is after him.
Ah! They're following us.
They can follow us wherever we go.
Right across the universe.
They're never gonna stop.
-Martha, you trust me, don't you?
-Of course I do.
'Cause it all depends on you.
WOMAN: Thank you.
Shoot it next time, please.
And turnover, please.
WOMAN 2: Ready!
MAN: Ready!
667, take one.
MARTHA: And the good news is?
They can smell me,
but they haven't seen me, so we hide.
Wait for them to die.
It is the first time
we've actually told a story
in which the Doctor is hidden away.
We've never seen
the Chameleon Arch before.
Never thought I'd use this.
All the times I've wondered.
-What does it do?
-Chameleon Arch.
Rewrites my biology.
It literally changes every single cell
in my body.
-Cut. Good.
-Cut.
The Chameleon Arch literally rewrites
the Doctor's biology.
It changes him into a human being.
667, take three.
Now, the Tardis will take care
of everything.
Invent a life story for me,
find me a setting and integrate me.
It can't do the same for you.
You'll just have to improvise.
Thank you, chaps. Very good.
we'll come down.
There is no memory of the fact
that this being was once the Doctor.
-Morning, sir.
-Yes, hi.
The Doctor has gone, really,
to all intents and purposes.
John Smith has subsumed
the Doctor's personality.
Permission to give Latimer
a beating, sir.
Permission granted.
He's not the same man.
He's a creation of the Tardis.
MAN: Cut.
WOMAN: Thank you.
-MAN: Excellent. Steven?
-Yeah, yeah, good.
I approached him as a new character,
as somebody who wasn't the Doctor.
I mean, it was very important
for that story to make sense
that John Smith was not the Doctor,
was somebody else, was his own man.
Admittedly, now and again,
there are little things
that occur to John Smith
which by rights shouldn't really
be occurring to him.
I dream, quite often, that...
That I have two hearts.
REDFERN: Well, then,
I can be the judge of that.
Basically, he's no longer the Doctor,
'cause he's completely unaware of
Time Lords and spaceships and Daleks.
He does have these dreams.
I dream I'm this...
adventurer.
This daredevil, a madman. The Doctor.
When he becomes John Smith,
he has no memory of being the Doctor,
apart from vague dreams
that kind of come back to him.
Then he writes them all down.
"REDFERN:
A journal of Impossible Things."
Wonderful.
Such imagination.
But somewhere in his subconscious
he has an awareness
that there is a doctor.
Think how magical life would be
if stories like this were true.
As far as John Smith is concerned,
it's just something
from his imagination.
SMITH: Yeah,
it's funny how dreams slip away.
But he doesn't, for a second,
imagine that they are anything other
than fantastic dreams that he has.
It all took place in the future.
In the year of our Lord, 2007.
That's very important.
The story wouldn't play
if he suspected from the beginning
that he was anything other
than a man living in 1913,
being a school teacher.
(DOOR OPENING)
Martha, what have I told you
about entering unannounced?
In the middle of playing
the same character, month on month,
to get to do something
so completely different,
in some ways it was a great liberation.
What other long-running show,
what other long-running character,
halfway through the series gets
to be completely and utterly different
from the way he was last week?
Inspector Morse doesn't suddenly
become a transvestite shoplifter,
it wouldn't make sense.
NARRATOR: It's not just aliens
who are chasing John Smith.
School matron Joan Redfern
has her eye on him, too.
I think Joan is very worldly wise.
-I appear to be holding your books.
-Yes, so you are, sorry. Sorry.
She's quite forward
for a woman of her age.
When it's just you and me,
I'd much rather
you called me Nurse Redfern.
That's actually why we made her a widow.
Though we've known each other all of
two months, you could even say Joan.
She knows what it's like to be married,
and so I think she quite consciously
sets her eye on John Smith as a husband,
and is going after him from the moment
we first see them together.
She is quite forward
for a woman of the age
in sort of talking about her husband,
and she's very open about her emotions,
and they just dance around each other.
Then, eventually,
all leading up to the dance,
where they have the last possible
nice time they can have
before Doctor Who world descends,
and monsters arrive
and the scarecrows and laser guns,
and rips them apart.
So, it's a very, very precious time,
Episode 8.
It's the only chance
they'll get to be happy.
NARRATOR: With scores
of performers on set,
the production crew must choreograph
every inch of what's seen on screen.
Her and the matron
are gonna have a little chat.
You guys, again, all are just gonna
be scattered about
having a really good time.
A few people drinking, eating,
chatting, dancing, all the rest of it.
The dance hall scene
was quite complicated to do.
Working with that many extras
is always quite difficult,
'cause it takes a long time
to get anything done.
And also, they're all in period costume
and period make-up,
and so that takes a long time.
Nice and quiet, please.
All eyes on the MC.
397, take one. A camera.
B camera.
MAN: Thank you. Here we go, folks.
Ladies and gentlemen,
please take your partners
for a waltz.
DAVIES: Don't have everyone
waltzing round like The King and I,
sort of spinning round each other,
'cause these are ordinary village folk.
They're not great dancers.
They're just ordinary people
in a really nice, comfy little setting.
-You can dance.
-I surprised myself.
I'll tell you one thing about
Doctor Who, is never have a party.
Don't go to a dance,
don't have people round your house,
'cause some monster's gonna crash
though the windows.
It's becoming a rule now,
they're dancing, there's music,
send in the monsters.
NARRATOR: Right on cue the aliens land
to gatecrash the gathering.
Parking their ship out of sight,
they 're more than ready for
a hapless schoolboy to bump into them.
Right. Well, never mind
that little toad. Who's for beer?
You've got beer?
No, but Baxter's hidden a secret supply
in Blackdown Woods.
Well, what are you waiting for?
Hurry back, Baines. I'm parched.
REDFERN: Look, in the sky.
The invisible spaceship was no trouble
at all, because it was invisible
and it was to be done later by The Mill.
We do see it very briefly
when he touches it.
Harry is a super actor.
I did talk to him about having some...
Doing some mime work
with our movement artist,
but we didn't do it in the end,
and I think he does it terribly well.
Baines bumping into that thing,
and it's...
It becomes a mime act with his hands.
It's the sort of thing you can do
in the schoolyard.
You can imagine
meeting an invisible spaceship.
It's sort of great fun, and then
leads him into something terrifying,
leads him to his death.
Lovely. Here we go, folks.
Rehearsing. Nice and quiet, please.
Is that an aeroplane?
Are you chaps all right?
That was a tricky day, first of all
'cause it was freezing and very wet.
Charlie, the director, came up to me
that morning and said,
"How are you at mime?"
And I said, "Well, I'm okay."
I still haven't seen it,
so I don't know, but I...
It felt a bit stupid.
But I like to think
we might have got away with it.
With all the special effects
and all the sounds,
they'll cover up all my mistakes.
These aliens need some interesting,
spooky servants.
How about scarecrows?
Activate the soldiers.
The scarecrows are great. It's taking
the mundane and making it creepy,
which is one of the surefire things
that this show does very well.
They're peculiarly creepy.
The eyes that aren't quite there.
Fantastic creatures.
It's nice to have something very scary
that can legitimately stand there
in a field being completely ordinary.
I wish they had scarecrows like that
in fields these days.
Freak kids out.
(SCREAMING) Help me!
You kind of think, "How could we not
have done living scarecrows before?"
It seems such an obvious idea
when you see it.
The only thing that was lacking
was something to grab you if you're
eight years old, to be honest,
and so I said, "Scarecrows," to Paul,
and he said, "No."
And, as with Paul, you just wait a day,
and then he turns round and says, "Yes."
He always does that.
Then he turns round, "Oh, a great idea."
This is great,
because I love spooky scarecrows.
They're so gothic and wonderful
and really, really English.
And the guys inside
did such a great job,
that kind of lolloping, rolling gait
that they all had,
which somehow made them
all the more creepy.
Notice the thermals, essential.
(WOMAN LAUGHING)
Okay.
MAN: Action.
It was decided
that scarecrows should shamble.
MAN: God! No! No!
A little bit like... With a vestige
of the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz,
who lollops all over the place.
No! Help! No!
That's what you expect
a scarecrow should do.
These monsters should do
what you expect them to do.
-Stay there, fellas.
-MAN: And action.
-Help me! No!
-Cut.
They're silent as well.
It just gives them...
It's just that shambling
that makes them a bit animal
and a bit mindless.
MAN: Turn over A and B, please.
I think that makes them terrifying.
Help me!
MAN: Cut there.
WOMAN: Cut there.
MAN 2: Give us a kiss.
Thank you. Let's cut there.
NARRATOR: The Doctor's
not been himself of late.
-Did they see you?
-I don't know.
But did they see you?
The Doctor has become human...
This is not you. This is 1913.
Good, this is 1913.
...and is now living as a school teacher
in England just before World War I.
Only Martha Jones has the secret.
Martha, this watch is me.
Pardon me, Mr Smith.
The Doctor, as she knows him,
has vanished.
She's frustrated.
I wish you'd come back.
There are aliens on his trail
who are after a Time Lord's life span.
He's hiding from them,
but they find him.
GIRL: The teacher, he's the Doctor.
NARRATOR: Come along with Confidential
as we go undercover
with the Doctor and Martha,
alias Smith and Jones.
MAN: Set!
DOCTOR: Get down!
The Doctor is hiding because
the Family of Blood is after him.
Ah! They're following us.
They can follow us wherever we go.
Right across the universe.
They're never gonna stop.
-Martha, you trust me, don't you?
-Of course I do.
'Cause it all depends on you.
WOMAN: Thank you.
Shoot it next time, please.
And turnover, please.
WOMAN 2: Ready!
MAN: Ready!
667, take one.
MARTHA: And the good news is?
They can smell me,
but they haven't seen me, so we hide.
Wait for them to die.
It is the first time
we've actually told a story
in which the Doctor is hidden away.
We've never seen
the Chameleon Arch before.
Never thought I'd use this.
All the times I've wondered.
-What does it do?
-Chameleon Arch.
Rewrites my biology.
It literally changes every single cell
in my body.
-Cut. Good.
-Cut.
The Chameleon Arch literally rewrites
the Doctor's biology.
It changes him into a human being.
667, take three.
Now, the Tardis will take care
of everything.
Invent a life story for me,
find me a setting and integrate me.
It can't do the same for you.
You'll just have to improvise.
Thank you, chaps. Very good.
we'll come down.
There is no memory of the fact
that this being was once the Doctor.
-Morning, sir.
-Yes, hi.
The Doctor has gone, really,
to all intents and purposes.
John Smith has subsumed
the Doctor's personality.
Permission to give Latimer
a beating, sir.
Permission granted.
He's not the same man.
He's a creation of the Tardis.
MAN: Cut.
WOMAN: Thank you.
-MAN: Excellent. Steven?
-Yeah, yeah, good.
I approached him as a new character,
as somebody who wasn't the Doctor.
I mean, it was very important
for that story to make sense
that John Smith was not the Doctor,
was somebody else, was his own man.
Admittedly, now and again,
there are little things
that occur to John Smith
which by rights shouldn't really
be occurring to him.
I dream, quite often, that...
That I have two hearts.
REDFERN: Well, then,
I can be the judge of that.
Basically, he's no longer the Doctor,
'cause he's completely unaware of
Time Lords and spaceships and Daleks.
He does have these dreams.
I dream I'm this...
adventurer.
This daredevil, a madman. The Doctor.
When he becomes John Smith,
he has no memory of being the Doctor,
apart from vague dreams
that kind of come back to him.
Then he writes them all down.
"REDFERN:
A journal of Impossible Things."
Wonderful.
Such imagination.
But somewhere in his subconscious
he has an awareness
that there is a doctor.
Think how magical life would be
if stories like this were true.
As far as John Smith is concerned,
it's just something
from his imagination.
SMITH: Yeah,
it's funny how dreams slip away.
But he doesn't, for a second,
imagine that they are anything other
than fantastic dreams that he has.
It all took place in the future.
In the year of our Lord, 2007.
That's very important.
The story wouldn't play
if he suspected from the beginning
that he was anything other
than a man living in 1913,
being a school teacher.
(DOOR OPENING)
Martha, what have I told you
about entering unannounced?
In the middle of playing
the same character, month on month,
to get to do something
so completely different,
in some ways it was a great liberation.
What other long-running show,
what other long-running character,
halfway through the series gets
to be completely and utterly different
from the way he was last week?
Inspector Morse doesn't suddenly
become a transvestite shoplifter,
it wouldn't make sense.
NARRATOR: It's not just aliens
who are chasing John Smith.
School matron Joan Redfern
has her eye on him, too.
I think Joan is very worldly wise.
-I appear to be holding your books.
-Yes, so you are, sorry. Sorry.
She's quite forward
for a woman of her age.
When it's just you and me,
I'd much rather
you called me Nurse Redfern.
That's actually why we made her a widow.
Though we've known each other all of
two months, you could even say Joan.
She knows what it's like to be married,
and so I think she quite consciously
sets her eye on John Smith as a husband,
and is going after him from the moment
we first see them together.
She is quite forward
for a woman of the age
in sort of talking about her husband,
and she's very open about her emotions,
and they just dance around each other.
Then, eventually,
all leading up to the dance,
where they have the last possible
nice time they can have
before Doctor Who world descends,
and monsters arrive
and the scarecrows and laser guns,
and rips them apart.
So, it's a very, very precious time,
Episode 8.
It's the only chance
they'll get to be happy.
NARRATOR: With scores
of performers on set,
the production crew must choreograph
every inch of what's seen on screen.
Her and the matron
are gonna have a little chat.
You guys, again, all are just gonna
be scattered about
having a really good time.
A few people drinking, eating,
chatting, dancing, all the rest of it.
The dance hall scene
was quite complicated to do.
Working with that many extras
is always quite difficult,
'cause it takes a long time
to get anything done.
And also, they're all in period costume
and period make-up,
and so that takes a long time.
Nice and quiet, please.
All eyes on the MC.
397, take one. A camera.
B camera.
MAN: Thank you. Here we go, folks.
Ladies and gentlemen,
please take your partners
for a waltz.
DAVIES: Don't have everyone
waltzing round like The King and I,
sort of spinning round each other,
'cause these are ordinary village folk.
They're not great dancers.
They're just ordinary people
in a really nice, comfy little setting.
-You can dance.
-I surprised myself.
I'll tell you one thing about
Doctor Who, is never have a party.
Don't go to a dance,
don't have people round your house,
'cause some monster's gonna crash
though the windows.
It's becoming a rule now,
they're dancing, there's music,
send in the monsters.
NARRATOR: Right on cue the aliens land
to gatecrash the gathering.
Parking their ship out of sight,
they 're more than ready for
a hapless schoolboy to bump into them.
Right. Well, never mind
that little toad. Who's for beer?
You've got beer?
No, but Baxter's hidden a secret supply
in Blackdown Woods.
Well, what are you waiting for?
Hurry back, Baines. I'm parched.
REDFERN: Look, in the sky.
The invisible spaceship was no trouble
at all, because it was invisible
and it was to be done later by The Mill.
We do see it very briefly
when he touches it.
Harry is a super actor.
I did talk to him about having some...
Doing some mime work
with our movement artist,
but we didn't do it in the end,
and I think he does it terribly well.
Baines bumping into that thing,
and it's...
It becomes a mime act with his hands.
It's the sort of thing you can do
in the schoolyard.
You can imagine
meeting an invisible spaceship.
It's sort of great fun, and then
leads him into something terrifying,
leads him to his death.
Lovely. Here we go, folks.
Rehearsing. Nice and quiet, please.
Is that an aeroplane?
Are you chaps all right?
That was a tricky day, first of all
'cause it was freezing and very wet.
Charlie, the director, came up to me
that morning and said,
"How are you at mime?"
And I said, "Well, I'm okay."
I still haven't seen it,
so I don't know, but I...
It felt a bit stupid.
But I like to think
we might have got away with it.
With all the special effects
and all the sounds,
they'll cover up all my mistakes.
These aliens need some interesting,
spooky servants.
How about scarecrows?
Activate the soldiers.
The scarecrows are great. It's taking
the mundane and making it creepy,
which is one of the surefire things
that this show does very well.
They're peculiarly creepy.
The eyes that aren't quite there.
Fantastic creatures.
It's nice to have something very scary
that can legitimately stand there
in a field being completely ordinary.
I wish they had scarecrows like that
in fields these days.
Freak kids out.
(SCREAMING) Help me!
You kind of think, "How could we not
have done living scarecrows before?"
It seems such an obvious idea
when you see it.
The only thing that was lacking
was something to grab you if you're
eight years old, to be honest,
and so I said, "Scarecrows," to Paul,
and he said, "No."
And, as with Paul, you just wait a day,
and then he turns round and says, "Yes."
He always does that.
Then he turns round, "Oh, a great idea."
This is great,
because I love spooky scarecrows.
They're so gothic and wonderful
and really, really English.
And the guys inside
did such a great job,
that kind of lolloping, rolling gait
that they all had,
which somehow made them
all the more creepy.
Notice the thermals, essential.
(WOMAN LAUGHING)
Okay.
MAN: Action.
It was decided
that scarecrows should shamble.
MAN: God! No! No!
A little bit like... With a vestige
of the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz,
who lollops all over the place.
No! Help! No!
That's what you expect
a scarecrow should do.
These monsters should do
what you expect them to do.
-Stay there, fellas.
-MAN: And action.
-Help me! No!
-Cut.
They're silent as well.
It just gives them...
It's just that shambling
that makes them a bit animal
and a bit mindless.
MAN: Turn over A and B, please.
I think that makes them terrifying.
Help me!
MAN: Cut there.
WOMAN: Cut there.
MAN 2: Give us a kiss.
Thank you. Let's cut there.