Doctor Who Confidential (2005–2011): Season 5, Episode 2 - All About the Girl - full transcript
Come on,
I've found us a spaceship.
It's into deep space
and deep trouble
as the Doctor makes a splash
in his latest adventure.
Doctor Who always provides
its cast and crew with a universe
of challenges,
and for new companion Amy Pond, it's
an episode packed full of firsts.
Now do you believe me?
OK, you're box is a spaceship.
It's really, really a spaceship.
We are in space. Woo!
SHE LAUGHS
Walking onto the TARDIS
for the first time was just...
it was just crazy.
I mean, it's massive and beautiful
and there's so many fiddly things
and gadgets and so much going on.
That's interesting. So we're
like a wildlife documentary?
If they see a wounded little cub,
they can't just save it,
they've got to keep filming
and let it die...
It's got to be hard.
When I first walked on,
I actually saw Matt who was just
finding his way round everything,
and I just thought, "Wow,
he looks like this mad professor
in his haven." It was really cool.
I think Amy's going to have
a great time in the TARDIS.
She's going to have fun, you'll see.
Doctor?
Oh! 'Welcome to London Market.
You are being monitored.'
Episode two is our first journey
into outer space
and it's Amy's first time away
from her own world.
351, take seven. B Cam only.
And action!
Oh!
Well, close the door.
I'm in the future. Like,
hundreds of years in the future.
When I first walked on the set,
I was in a bit of wonder and awe.
I was like, "Wow, this is amazing!
"It's huge and really cool", so
I just channelled a bit of that into
how I played Amy's first reaction
when she walks onto the set
of just, like, wonder.
And this is her first experience
on a spaceship and her
first adventure with the Doctor,
so it's all brand new to her
and really exciting and fresh,
so I just kind of
beared that in mind.
Look, isn't it wrong? What's wrong?
Use your eyes. Notice everything.
What's wrong with this picture?
Is it...the bicycle?
Bit unusual on a spaceship.
There's a girl in a nightie.
Oh, my God. I'm in my nightie.
Everything is slightly surreal,
because it's set on a spaceship or
in a strange world or something.
Now, come on, look around you.
Actually look.
'London Market is
a crime-free zone.'
Life on a giant starship,
back to basics,
bicycles, washing lines, wind-up
street lamps, but look closer.
Secrets in shadows, lives lead
in fear, society bent out of shape
on the brink of collapse,
a police state. Excuse me.
We wanted a brand-new adventure
with a different adversary,
where you didn't really get it and
something you hadn't seen before.
Something utterly strange.
But at the same time,
connected to Amy.
And the way it's connected to Amy is
it's her country out in space.
It's the whole of Britain,
but it's been bolted together
and it's floating in the sky.
HE LAUGHS
A police state, do you see it yet?
Where? There.
The Doctor sort of discovers
more and more about this very
strange place that he's in.
One little girl crying, so?
Crying silently.
I mean, children cry,
cos they want attention,
cos they're hurt or afraid.
When they cry silently, it's cos
they just can't stop. Any parent
knows that. Are you a parent?
Hundreds of parents walking past and
not one is asking her what's wrong,
which means they already know and
it's something they don't talk about.
Secrets, they're not helping her,
so it's something they're afraid of.
Shadows, whatever they're afraid of,
it's nowhere to be seen.
Which means it's everywhere.
It's Amy that is at the
centre of it, in a sense,
because it's Amy finding her feet,
understanding who the Doctor is
and this amazing roller-coaster ride
that she's about to go on.
She's like Wendy in Peter Pan,
wearing a big, silly nightie
and a dressing gown and slippers,
so it really underlines the idea
that she's gone back
to her childhood,
on the night before her wedding,
before she's supposed to grow up,
she's flown off with Peter Pan
to have an amazing, mad adventure
on a fairytale spaceship.
So is this how it works, Doctor?
You never interfere in the affairs
of other peoples or planets
unless there's children crying?
Yes.
And roll, please.
'The first priority'
was to find a location that
obviously worked as a Starship UK.
That's a challenge in itself,
but, fortunately, Steven's
description of that particular set
was so specific that we were
able to find that quite early.
The canvas we had for that in terms
of the space was already very good,
but it needed to come alive
with design
and art direction and lighting.
That's always a challenge.
And more than ready for the
challenge are the Doctor Who
art department team.
But it's no easy task
converting a disused factory
into the Starship UK.
Today, we're in Mamhilad,
which is a location we use
quite a lot in Doctor Who,
it's our fail-safe industrial space.
# You found a sweater
on the ocean floor
# They're going to find it
if you didn't close the door.
# You and this model
sit outside at the side
# In a house on a street
they wouldn't park on the night. #
We've got our scenic artists here
who are doing all the painting
you can see on the walls.
We've got our set decorators here,
who are putting in the decorations,
hanging the bunting,
dressing the market stalls.
We've got our practical electricians
who're wiring up
all the practical lighting,
the street lights.
The spaceship is it's London -
Oxford Street, basically.
But it's imagining that if you had
left Britain or the world in hurry,
what would you take with you?
So we've got an exterior pub,
which is the Queen Vic
straight off Albert Square.
We've got all the traffic lights
and a hairdressers,
we've got a barber's shop,
a zebra crossing.
A lift shaft that looks like
a London Underground tube station,
we've got taxi ranks.
It really is trying to create London
everyday life, but on a spaceship.
We've been here two weeks
and now the dressers have come in
and they've got two days
to fill in the detail
which is quite a tight schedule,
but those are the sorts
of schedules we work to.
After all the hard work of the
art department, the crew finally
have a fully convincing
starship street to shoot in.
I did want to shoot that scene
in a big space.
I wanted the Doctor and Amy
to make a real journey
physically walking through
and for the audience to go with them
and that needs a lot of space,
it needs a lot of dressing
and a lot of people to populate it
and create the society they're in.
And the task of ensuring that the
Starship UK looks fully populated
falls to the
Third Assistant Director.
Copy that.
We've got 60 crowd in
and a few kids.
It's quite a big space to fill.
In terms of the people, this is
definitely the biggest set-up so far.
We give you your cue to go through.
And you'd just be going
in a nice banana around the benches
and down into that bottom corner.
Poor Heddi, who's the Third,
she's got quite a tricky job.
She's got to get them
all moving across each other
at different points
so me and Amy can fleet round.
You're just helping them,
showing them your lovely
tomatoes and carrots.
Because there's plenty of stalls,
we've been getting vegetable stalls,
so we've got
a vegetable stall holder
and people just
generally shopping from him.
We've got lots of rickshaws, so
there's been a bit of taxi action
up and down, trying to make it
look like a busy London street.
We've had people cycling around,
a lovely bric-a-brac stall,
so a real Del Boy market trader.
We've got a lovely chicken stall,
so we had an allocated chicken lady.
We had a load of the eggs
and some real chickens
so it's generally
trying to replicate
a busy London street
and market scene.
It's thrilling,
it looks like they've walked
into a vintage clothes shop and come
out and everyone looks very cool.
You realise what's very iconically
British, they've really got that.
It felt like
you really were in it,
because there's so much going on
around you, it was great.
CREAKING
But Amy wasn't expecting
the Starship UK to be
quite as mad as this.
Say what?!
Say whee!
AMY SCREAMS
# Splish-splash, I was taking a bath
# Long about a Saturday night
# A rub dub
just relaxing in the tub
# Thinking everything was all right
# Well, I stepped out the tub
put my feet on the floor
# I wrapped the towel around me
and I opened the door
# And then splish, splash!
# I jumped back in the bath
# Well, how was I to know
there was a party going on?
# They was a-splishing
and a-splashing
# Reelin' with the feelin'
# Moving and a-grooving
Rocking and a-rolling. #
Swallow reflex!
We were on the tongue
of a giant whale.
It was really fun, we were just
messing around the whole time
throwing cabbage
at each other and things.
What I'm doing is providing
2,000 litres of slime,
which is just really horrible goo
mixed up with a food additive
which is completely safe and it's
coloured a sort of white colour
and what I'm going to do
is dress that over the set
so both Karen and Matt
will fall into the slime
and get covered in it unfortunately.
In addition,
I'm going to doing lots of steam.
Just to hide the fact that it's a set
and it's only 12 metres wide.
Just to create a sort of
atmos effect in there.
Where are we? About 600ft down,
20 miles laterally,
puts us at the heart of the ship,
I'd say...Lancashire.
Keep doing that, particularly
this joint here, Chris.
This one over here. Danny,
keep thickening it up. I will.
That set was... It was quite, um,
demanding for the artists.
They had to slide down a tube,
and land six ft below
on a very slippery surface,
but we made sure we had
our stunt co-ordinator there.
So it's feet... Slanting.
So you've landed in that position,
as soon as you land, roll out.
Did you just give
yourself a bruise?
For you, if you're going first...
I'm clear for the right,
I'll try my right.
It was like a fairground ride, they'd
built a thing where you walked up,
like an old helter-skelter,
so you'd walk up the back.
Yeah, it's like a fairground ride,
I love it.
You normally pay to do this. I know.
This is when Doctor Who's brilliant.
And at the top of the stairs,
there was just this hole,
and it was basically a slide leading
down on to loads of crash mats.
I'm scared.
So really, it's a six ft drop.
Honestly, by the time you're
thinking, "Oh, my God..."
So the drop's all right?
Yes. Yes.
Can't wait.
We both looked at each other
as we do on a lot of occasions
with this job and go, "This is our
job, this is what we do, right?"
If you naturally go the other
way, then go the other way.
Head-first? No, if you land...
Head first? What?
I was thinking about it. Tell you
what, let's go head-first backwards.
I want to see this.
So basically, we had to
get our whole body in and then
hold on to this pole thing.
Wish me luck!
And then it was pitch black, so you
were just plunging into nothingness,
it was so scary.
219, take one. A Camera, mark.
Close on that set.
OK, here we go, everybody.
You get on the ride and then
you'd hang on the back and go...Woom!
'Into all the goo.'
Aaaargh!
Let me know when Karen's set.
OK, that's Karen set.
And, three, two, one. Karen. Action.
Then basically they said, "Action"
and I was like, "I can't let go,
oh God," and I just did it.
Karen.
Arrrgh!
Oh, God, it was like being on a ride
at a funfair or something.
And then, on the crash mats,
there was loads of gloopy stuff,
it was basically a pool of horrible
gloop, full of cabbage and tomatoes
and everything and we spent
the whole day in this pool of gloop.
The normal entrance is...
You were so preoccupied
with trying to stand up
that actually I found that the
acting was coming out
quite naturally and realistically
without having to think about it,
because my mind was preoccupied, cos
we were sliding all over the place.
The normal entrance is...
..closed for business.
We could try though. Don't move.
Too late.
It's started, swallow reflex.
What are you doing?
Vibrating the chemoreceptors,
please have chemoreceptors.
Chemo what? The eject button.
Why would a tongue
have an eject button?
Think about it.
And that was great for the
first hour and then after about,
well, the first three hours,
and then come hour four or five,
when we were literally
covered in slime,
cabbage and sand and everything,
it was getting quite cold.
Could it be quicker or is it quite
nice to just enjoy it?
No, no, it's great.
Let's take it from...
So get in position, let's take it
from high-speed air channel.
All the way through.
They had a lot of fun,
but I think, by the end of it,
they were a bit tired
and really wanted to get a shower.
Great fun, I want to do one
of the stage dives at the end.
I think probably going up and down
a slide for most of the day
and jumping up and down what in
effect was like a bouncy castle,
they probably did enjoy it,
I think I'd enjoy it.
Right then. This isn't going
to be big on dignity.
Geronimo!
Amy Pond is, I don't know, I've sort
of fallen in love with Amy Pond.
# Fell in love with a girl
I fell in love once... #
You're the little girl?
# She's in love with the world
# But sometimes these feelings
can be so misleading. #
She's kind of got this inner
confidence and she can really just
handle herself in situations.
Amy, no, no. What are you doing?
Who are you?
She's sassy and she's sexy
and she's funny.
She likes to go out there,
have a good time and grab an
adventure by the scruff of the neck.
# Can't think of
anything to do, yeah
# My left brain knows that
all love is fleeting
# She's just looking
for something new
# Well, I said it once before
but it bears repeating now. #
It's minging.
She's pretty, she's sassy.
Watch and learn.
She's got boundless energy and she's
not frightened to speak her mind.
Why did you say six months?
Why did you say five minutes?
She's as bonkers as
the Doctor in many ways.
What are you going to do?
What I always do.
Stay out of trouble.
She's a redhead, feisty seductress...
ball of wit!
What's so brilliant about it is
he met her as a little girl,
so he's so endeared by her
and has such affection for her.
Are you're a policeman? Why?
Did you call a policeman? Did you
come about the crack in my wall?
'When the Doctor regenerates,'
he normally does it
in front of somebody -
his regular companion,
his best friend. The job is
for him to convince that person, and
therefore us, that he's the Doctor.
This time, we had a new companion
and new Doctor,
that couldn't happen.
So I came up with the idea
of this girl who meets him
briefly when she's seven
and again 12 years later,
so that for her,
he's been the Doctor for ever.
She's always known him
as the Doctor, she knows him
as the Doctor better than he does.
The Raggedy Doctor,
all those cartoons you did
when you were little.
The Raggedy Doctor, it's him!
She's the girl who was left on her
own by the Doctor aged nine
and who has built up
a lot of inner strength.
We meet her when she's a little girl
and there's something
mysterious about her,
something slightly "other-worldly".
You all right, mister?
No, I'm fine, it's OK.
Who are you?
I don't know yet. I'm still cooking.
Does it scare you? No, it just looks
a bit weird. 'She's a real challenge
for the Doctor, I think,'
Amy Pond. One of the biggest
he's had so far in a companion.
Clap, clap, scoop and dive,
back flick, double click.
Portraying Amy Pond falls
to actress Karen Gillan,
who works hard to bring
new qualities to
the role of the companion.
Karen, I believe, has really
brought a lot to this role.
I think she's brilliant. She's
fantastic. It doesn't seem to matter
what we throw at her.
She lights up the screen
whether we ask her to
be covered in Star Whale vomit, or
try and save the world wearing only
her nightie. She's equally fantastic.
I'm about to do
a bit of a scary fall
and I've got a board up my back.
So should be fun!
God, I think Karen brings so much
of herself to the role as Amy.
All that sort of mad, cooky energy
that she has in her life.
Just "Karen-ness", Karen madness,
and that feisty, Scottish,
Inverness, "don't mess with me".
There's all that in there as well.
We become closer every day.
I'm very fond of her.
Karen can kind of do everything.
I think the thing that we
probably enjoy most about her
is how funny she can be. She's a
natural, natural comic, while looking
completely stunning all the time.
There was almost as much speculation
about who we were going
to cast as the companion
as there had been about the Doctor.
As ever, we were led by our nose
and when Andy Pryor, Doctor Who's
brilliant casting director,
showed us tapes,
we were just led by the person who
kind of nailed the part, basically.
Steven had some fairly clear ideas
about who Amy was
and where she was from, but
in terms of the development
of her character, a lot of that
is influenced by
the actress playing the part.
So I was interested in
bringing in people who
could grab the part and run with it
and do something interesting with it.
The first thing you do is
go to Andy Pryor and say,
"Who do you think it should be?"
And he did turn up with a list of
just brilliant actresses.
We did not see one single
bad audition for Amy Pond.
They were all superb.
Really, really brilliant.
All actresses I would want to work
with at some point. Just perfect.
It's difficult because
there's no one thing that
qualifies anybody for the part.
It's more about somebody
doing something surprising with it,
and the people that we saw
were all able to do that, but
Karen clearly was way ahead of the
pack in terms of her inventiveness.
My agent called me up and said,
"They want to audition you for the
companion role, the new companion."
I was like, "Ooh".
It was very exciting.
I didn't think I would get it,
so I just thought, "I'll go for
it and see what happens."
We watched person after person after
person and, halfway through the day,
Piers took me aside and he said,
"I'm really worried cos we've seen
all these brilliant people,
"but I just don't think
we've found her."
Piers always laughs at me about this
because I said, "It's fine,
"it's absolutely fine. She's coming
up last, she's called Karen Gillan,
"I just know she's the one."
He said, "How do you know? You've
only seen her for two minutes on
tape." I said, "She's the one."
The very last person
we physically saw for the part
and the very first person
I saw on tape for the part
was Karen Gillan. On tape,
she first of all did it
in an English accent, then in
a Scottish accent, her own accent,
and I thought, "She's really good,
"it's just a shame that
she's so wee and dumpy."
Then I got a recall to come in
and read it with Matt.
That was quite funny, because
I wasn't allowed to tell anyone
what I was auditioning for,
not even the people in the reception
of the place that I was going to,
so I had to give them
a code name of "Panic Moon".
It's actually an anagram for
"companion", which is quite clever.
Then when she was about to
come into the audition,
I nipped out for a minute,
and I saw Karen walking along
the corridor towards me -
she's 5'11", slim and gorgeous. I
thought, "That will probably work."
And then she gave an absolutely
stunning, hilarious audition.
Steven Moffat was there and the
execs and Matt and casting director,
so it was quite daunting walking in.
We'd seen seven or eight people
and then Karen walked in
and we went, "Yes, got her!"
And we all just flustered around
the room after, thinking, "That's
easy, that's it, that's her."
I actually found out that day,
which was very nice.
That evening, I got the call saying,
"You've got it."
I started screaming like an idiot,
but it was really nice because
it wasn't an agonising wait.
It was so lovely having this process
to share with her and doing it
together, both being new.
It's such a mad thing, Doctor Who.
It's such a tricky and brilliant
show to make. It's lovely to share
that journey with someone.
We went through all these milestones
together. The first read-through,
and then we did our first day
on set then we got
our first block finished.
You know, we have all these really
huge things in life that we share.
It makes you quite close.
Yeah, she's a funny soul.
Hey-hey! Result! Coming? No!
Suit yourself.
Stop! You mustn't do that!
I was looking for something
a bit more Roald Dahl in a way,
something madder and more fairy-tale.
Fairy tale is a very important tone
for Doctor Who.
When we talk about dark
fairy tales, it is probably
the darkest and most fairy-tale-like
episode that we've done.
It is a vision of Britain
far in the future where
children mysteriously disappear down
through the floors of lifts.
Fairy tales are the way we tell our
children that there are people out
there who might want to eat them.
They are warnings in fantasy form
of the reality
and the dangers of the world.
I don't mean Doctor Who is like
a fairy tale. I mean it literally is.
Far more than it's a science fiction
show, it's a fairy tale.
The smiling fellows in the booths,
they're everywhere.
But they're just things.
They're clean.
Everything else here is
all battered and filthy.
But no-one's laid a finger
on those booths, look.
Ask Mandy, "Why are people scared
of the things in the booths?"
The first time Steven delivered the
script and Piers and I read it,
his first description of
the Smilers, we just thought,
"These are going to be good,
these are going to be scary."
# Pack up your troubles
in your old kit bag
# And smile, smile, smile
# While you've a Lucifer
to light your fag
# Smile, boys, that's the style
# What's the use of worrying?
# It never was worthwhile
# So pack up your troubles
in your old kit bag
# And smile, smile, smile. #
The Smilers are terrifying.
They are these horrible things.
If you do something that's wrong or
forbidden, their head twists round
and then they turn into this
horrible, frowning, dummy thing.
And when they're demonic,
you're in trouble.
You're about to get arrested and
something's awful's going to happen.
So they're bad.
I imagined it like
a fortune teller's booth.
I didn't want a sort of
mechanical, obvious robot.
I wanted something that was like
something you find in a fairground.
One of those things that you think
was meant to look friendly and pretty
but ends up looking horribly sinister
cos it's a bit old, a bit decayed
and a little bit too bright.
I've always found that
terribly scary.
A painted-on smile is pretty much
as bad as a painted-on snarl.
It's a horrible, sinister thing. You
wanted the idea that this spaceship
is attempting to be reasonable,
attempting to treat you kindly.
Here's a smile, here's a frown.
But actually,
it's all pretty frightening.
And it fell to the monster-makers
to ensure the scripted Smilers
turned out just as scary on screen.
So the first stage is
the design process.
This comes from descriptions
that are given in scripts.
Then, out of clay,
we'll sculpt a Smiler face.
Then comes the moulding stage,
and it's from this mould that all of
the master masks are then produced.
So we took the Smiler head as a basis
and then adapted each one,
so we would then get our frowner
and then our demonic face.
This is the face of
the happy version
of the Smiler, which has
been made of fibreglass.
This is the mould. So we'll just
take it out of here.
I'm just going to basically
trim that off and tidy it all up.
After they've been cast out,
they get cleaned up and primed,
then we move on to the next stage,
the art working stage.
They then go through a process called
crackula, which is basically
a glaze which is painted on
and you get this fine, kind of aged,
paint-crack texture
which would take absolutely ages
to paint in by hand.
From there, then we go on to
the shoot, and that's when all
the hard work gets shown on camera.
DEEP VOICE:
Well done, Mandy.
Bad boy, Timmy.
Zero.
And...action!
And working alongside the sinister
Smilers are the mysterious Winders.
What happens is one of the
coolest bits of CGI in history,
and it starts off with me.
I don't want to give it away,
but my head kind of turns round
to reveal another Smiler.
How can there be Smilers?
Half-Smiler, half-human.
And they've got the demonic smiles
on the back of their face.
It was like he had
two heads, basically.
It was a seamless
kind of prosthetic.
He had to act with his back
to us with the Smiler face
on the back of his head.
He did really well, I think.
Very spooky seeing a man
walking round set with two faces.
He basically had to spend large
portions of the take doing this,
because the Smiler head
is facing this way,
so his head is on the back of it.
The reason we did that is that we
shot the live-action element with him
with his normal face,
and then we took him to one side
and put him on a turntable,
clamped him into a little wooden
pedestal to keep his head still,
and we literally swivelled him
around against a green screen.
The finished result will be that
his head will just spin in the hood
to the demonic Peter.
Why do the Winders become Smilers?
Because I think,
if I'm watching Doctor Who,
I'm aching for that to happen.
I want that head-revolve to
happen at an unexpected moment
and for you to realise that
someone who just looked human is
actually sinister and terrible.
That must happen in Doctor Who.
It's an absolute rule.
Whatever you creatures are,
I am still your queen.
Liz Ten is quite
a mysterious character
at the beginning of the episode.
# I was five and he was six
We rode on horses made of sticks
# He wore black and I wore white
# He would always win the fight
Bang bang, he shot me down
# Bang bang, I hit the ground
Bang bang, that awful sound
# Bang bang, my baby shot me down
Down, down, down... #
The character of Liz Ten
is a sort of gun-toting,
Lara Croft-style queen.
Gold guns, great big cape.
Can't mess around with her.
COCKNEY ACCENT: 'A bit of London
in there'. I'm the queen, mate.
Basically, I rule. 'She's actually
the queen of Starship UK,'
hence Liz Tenth.
I am the highest authority.
She's a fiery, lively, sci-fi
heroine-type character.
I said now!
# I shot you down
Bang bang, that awful sound
# Bang bang
I used to shoot you down. #
Playing a mysterious stranger
is always pretty tricky
cos it's just different
shades of enigma, isn't it?
But Sophie made it so cheeky
and so funny and almost saucy.
A lovely performance.
Sophie Okonedo's been on my list
for being in the show
for a long time now, but
she's always incredibly busy,
understandably, and I thought
we'd never get her.
Then this part came along
and we thought,
you need someone with real kind of
status, someone with real impact,
someone with a very strong will,
so that narrowed the list down
fairly hugely,
and also we were quite keen in
episode two to have somebody
who would bring a little bit
of kudos to that episode, who had
the status to play the queen.
That was a treat working with her.
She's very cool, brilliant actress.
I learnt a lot off Sophie.
Placing her in this modern world
but then great authority,
regalness, you know.
This ship is travelling
through space.
The impossible truth, Doctor.
We're travelling among the stars
in a spaceship that can never fly.
How? I don't know.
At first, she just thinks she's
on this mission to discover
what her government are up to.
There's the darkness
at the heart of this nation.
It threatens every one of us.
Help us, Doctor.
You're our only hope.
Liz Ten wears a mask because,
as she says, she's the queen -
everyone knows her.
So if she's going to go out
and investigate crimes and stuff,
she has to wear a disguise.
I'm sure Elizabeth II does that all
the time.
Although I always found it kind
of curious that she's the only one
that seems to be wearing a mask,
and you really kind of stand out
if you wear a mask!
But anyway, she does it
to be kind of undercover.
That's her way of being discreet,
which says a lot about Liz Ten.
In the course of this episode, Liz
goes on a rather terrifying journey,
cos it ends with her realising
she's been on this journey
many, many times before,
and it will always end at
this choice between abdicating
and forgetting, and in the past,
she's always chosen to forget.
She's made the choice to forget
how the ship is flying and
what's keeping the ship afloat.
Towards the end, it gets revealed
what the truth of the situation is.
She's been living
a kind of Groundhog Day, where
she's been living the same...
she's been doing the same thing
over and over again for 300 years.
She think she's 50,
but she's actually over 300,
so that was a bit of a shock.
No, it's ten years.
I've been on this throne ten years.
Ten years.
The same ten years over and over
again, always leading you...here.
'She sort of falls apart a bit.'
She has a sort of crisis, I think,
in the middle of it all,
especially when she sees the
video image of herself talking
to her now, 300 years ago.
And, in that clip, she's much posher
and much more queen-like,
and, obviously, she's got more
common as the years have gone past.
'If you wish
our voyage to continue,
'then you must
press the forget button.
'Be again the heart of this nation,
untainted.
'If not...
press the other button.
'Your reign will end,
the star whale will be released
and our ship will disintegrate.
'I hope I keep the strength
to make the right decision.'
She discovers that she is
the architect of the mystery
she's trying to uncover.
So does that character develop?
In a strange way, she does,
but develops in circles,
always resetting, always faced
with this appalling conundrum
she can't see a way out of,
which even the Doctor really
can't see a way out of.
The Doctor may not be able to find
an easy way out of this conundrum,
but, thankfully,
Amy sees things differently.
Today, we are in
a lovely old abbey
and we are filming the kind of
climax scene of episode two,
where we discover that the
star whale is actually trapped
in the torture dungeon
of Starship UK.
What's that?
It's the gas pedal, the accelerator.
Starship UK's go-faster button.
Because they think that it will help
the starship go faster and things
if they trap it and torture it.
So it's a really sad scene, but also
it's quite a heroic scene for Amy.
Three options. One, I let the star
whale continue in unendurable agony
for hundreds more years.
Two, I kill everyone on this ship.
Three, I murder a beautiful,
innocent creature
as painlessly as I can
and then I find a new name because
I won't be the Doctor any more.
There must be something we can do
some other way. Nobody tortures...
Nobody HUMAN has anything
to say to me today!
The Doctor nearly makes
a dreadful mistake.
He nearly kills the star whale cos
he can't see any other way out of it.
It's the only thing
he can think of doing.
For him to be saved from doing that
is immense for him, because
he would remember that for ever.
He'd never forget
that scale of failure.
And for Amy to save him from that,
by understanding him
and the star whale better,
it's the biggest gift
she could give him.
She spots a similarity between
the Doctor and the star whale,
and she knows that,
in the same way that the Doctor
can't let children cry and
walk away, nor can that whale.
That whale isn't there
as a trapped creature.
That whale is there,
because it wants to be and
to save those children.
'It won't eat the children.
And then it came,
'like a miracle,
the last of the star whales.'
Doctor, stop.
Whatever you're doing, stop it now.
Sorry, Your Majesty. Going to
need a hand. Amy, no! No!
WHALE CRIES
CRASH!
PEOPLE SHOUT
She stops the Doctor making
one of the most terrible
choices of his life to date.
But he's missed a trick,
he's missed a beat,
which she's kind of spotted,
that actually the whale is
very old and very kind
and has come and is actually
flying the ship of its own accord.
The star whale didn't come
like a miracle all those years ago.
It volunteered. You didn't
have to trap it or torture it.
That was all just you.
It came because it couldn't stand
to watch your children cry.
If you were that old and that kind
and the very last of your kind...
you couldn't just stand there
and watch children cry.
And cut there. Cut!
She's privy to one piece of
information the Doctor isn't.
She knows what he's like
and recognises him in
the star whale's behaviour.
So it still makes him a big hero,
but she recognises the same qualities
of heroism in the star whale as she's
always recognised in the Doctor.
He realises
she made the right decision.
It's probably the first time
in these first two episodes where
he begins to look up to her
as much as she looks up to him.
I think it's quite
a tough one for the Doctor,
because he's almost just done what
he would never, ever normally do,
which is to effectively
kill something.
I think that's a very scary place
for him to have been taken to.
What it proves is that Amy is
a very worthy companion for him.
She actually, bizarrely,
knows him really well,
certainly this version of the Doctor
better than he knows himself.
I could've killed everyone here.
You could've killed a star whale.
And you saved it.
I know, I know.
This episode was always the one
about Amy kind of earning her spurs,
and I think the Doctor realises
that she's going to be
more than just a girl Friday.
Amazing, though, don't you think?
The star whale.
All that pain and misery.
And loneliness.
I think that's when she really seals
her place in the TARDIS for good.
And it just made it kind.
But you couldn't have known how
it would react. You couldn't.
But I've seen it before.
Very old and very kind
and the very, very last.
Sound a bit familiar?
I think it inspires him with
humility and, you know...
makes him feel, you know,
very humble and very...
he respects her
and he's grateful,
actually deeply very grateful
to her for saving him, in a way.
# Cos the season's change
was a conduit
# And we'd left our love in
our summer skin... #
Hey. What?
Gotcha.
HE LAUGHS
I've found us a spaceship.
It's into deep space
and deep trouble
as the Doctor makes a splash
in his latest adventure.
Doctor Who always provides
its cast and crew with a universe
of challenges,
and for new companion Amy Pond, it's
an episode packed full of firsts.
Now do you believe me?
OK, you're box is a spaceship.
It's really, really a spaceship.
We are in space. Woo!
SHE LAUGHS
Walking onto the TARDIS
for the first time was just...
it was just crazy.
I mean, it's massive and beautiful
and there's so many fiddly things
and gadgets and so much going on.
That's interesting. So we're
like a wildlife documentary?
If they see a wounded little cub,
they can't just save it,
they've got to keep filming
and let it die...
It's got to be hard.
When I first walked on,
I actually saw Matt who was just
finding his way round everything,
and I just thought, "Wow,
he looks like this mad professor
in his haven." It was really cool.
I think Amy's going to have
a great time in the TARDIS.
She's going to have fun, you'll see.
Doctor?
Oh! 'Welcome to London Market.
You are being monitored.'
Episode two is our first journey
into outer space
and it's Amy's first time away
from her own world.
351, take seven. B Cam only.
And action!
Oh!
Well, close the door.
I'm in the future. Like,
hundreds of years in the future.
When I first walked on the set,
I was in a bit of wonder and awe.
I was like, "Wow, this is amazing!
"It's huge and really cool", so
I just channelled a bit of that into
how I played Amy's first reaction
when she walks onto the set
of just, like, wonder.
And this is her first experience
on a spaceship and her
first adventure with the Doctor,
so it's all brand new to her
and really exciting and fresh,
so I just kind of
beared that in mind.
Look, isn't it wrong? What's wrong?
Use your eyes. Notice everything.
What's wrong with this picture?
Is it...the bicycle?
Bit unusual on a spaceship.
There's a girl in a nightie.
Oh, my God. I'm in my nightie.
Everything is slightly surreal,
because it's set on a spaceship or
in a strange world or something.
Now, come on, look around you.
Actually look.
'London Market is
a crime-free zone.'
Life on a giant starship,
back to basics,
bicycles, washing lines, wind-up
street lamps, but look closer.
Secrets in shadows, lives lead
in fear, society bent out of shape
on the brink of collapse,
a police state. Excuse me.
We wanted a brand-new adventure
with a different adversary,
where you didn't really get it and
something you hadn't seen before.
Something utterly strange.
But at the same time,
connected to Amy.
And the way it's connected to Amy is
it's her country out in space.
It's the whole of Britain,
but it's been bolted together
and it's floating in the sky.
HE LAUGHS
A police state, do you see it yet?
Where? There.
The Doctor sort of discovers
more and more about this very
strange place that he's in.
One little girl crying, so?
Crying silently.
I mean, children cry,
cos they want attention,
cos they're hurt or afraid.
When they cry silently, it's cos
they just can't stop. Any parent
knows that. Are you a parent?
Hundreds of parents walking past and
not one is asking her what's wrong,
which means they already know and
it's something they don't talk about.
Secrets, they're not helping her,
so it's something they're afraid of.
Shadows, whatever they're afraid of,
it's nowhere to be seen.
Which means it's everywhere.
It's Amy that is at the
centre of it, in a sense,
because it's Amy finding her feet,
understanding who the Doctor is
and this amazing roller-coaster ride
that she's about to go on.
She's like Wendy in Peter Pan,
wearing a big, silly nightie
and a dressing gown and slippers,
so it really underlines the idea
that she's gone back
to her childhood,
on the night before her wedding,
before she's supposed to grow up,
she's flown off with Peter Pan
to have an amazing, mad adventure
on a fairytale spaceship.
So is this how it works, Doctor?
You never interfere in the affairs
of other peoples or planets
unless there's children crying?
Yes.
And roll, please.
'The first priority'
was to find a location that
obviously worked as a Starship UK.
That's a challenge in itself,
but, fortunately, Steven's
description of that particular set
was so specific that we were
able to find that quite early.
The canvas we had for that in terms
of the space was already very good,
but it needed to come alive
with design
and art direction and lighting.
That's always a challenge.
And more than ready for the
challenge are the Doctor Who
art department team.
But it's no easy task
converting a disused factory
into the Starship UK.
Today, we're in Mamhilad,
which is a location we use
quite a lot in Doctor Who,
it's our fail-safe industrial space.
# You found a sweater
on the ocean floor
# They're going to find it
if you didn't close the door.
# You and this model
sit outside at the side
# In a house on a street
they wouldn't park on the night. #
We've got our scenic artists here
who are doing all the painting
you can see on the walls.
We've got our set decorators here,
who are putting in the decorations,
hanging the bunting,
dressing the market stalls.
We've got our practical electricians
who're wiring up
all the practical lighting,
the street lights.
The spaceship is it's London -
Oxford Street, basically.
But it's imagining that if you had
left Britain or the world in hurry,
what would you take with you?
So we've got an exterior pub,
which is the Queen Vic
straight off Albert Square.
We've got all the traffic lights
and a hairdressers,
we've got a barber's shop,
a zebra crossing.
A lift shaft that looks like
a London Underground tube station,
we've got taxi ranks.
It really is trying to create London
everyday life, but on a spaceship.
We've been here two weeks
and now the dressers have come in
and they've got two days
to fill in the detail
which is quite a tight schedule,
but those are the sorts
of schedules we work to.
After all the hard work of the
art department, the crew finally
have a fully convincing
starship street to shoot in.
I did want to shoot that scene
in a big space.
I wanted the Doctor and Amy
to make a real journey
physically walking through
and for the audience to go with them
and that needs a lot of space,
it needs a lot of dressing
and a lot of people to populate it
and create the society they're in.
And the task of ensuring that the
Starship UK looks fully populated
falls to the
Third Assistant Director.
Copy that.
We've got 60 crowd in
and a few kids.
It's quite a big space to fill.
In terms of the people, this is
definitely the biggest set-up so far.
We give you your cue to go through.
And you'd just be going
in a nice banana around the benches
and down into that bottom corner.
Poor Heddi, who's the Third,
she's got quite a tricky job.
She's got to get them
all moving across each other
at different points
so me and Amy can fleet round.
You're just helping them,
showing them your lovely
tomatoes and carrots.
Because there's plenty of stalls,
we've been getting vegetable stalls,
so we've got
a vegetable stall holder
and people just
generally shopping from him.
We've got lots of rickshaws, so
there's been a bit of taxi action
up and down, trying to make it
look like a busy London street.
We've had people cycling around,
a lovely bric-a-brac stall,
so a real Del Boy market trader.
We've got a lovely chicken stall,
so we had an allocated chicken lady.
We had a load of the eggs
and some real chickens
so it's generally
trying to replicate
a busy London street
and market scene.
It's thrilling,
it looks like they've walked
into a vintage clothes shop and come
out and everyone looks very cool.
You realise what's very iconically
British, they've really got that.
It felt like
you really were in it,
because there's so much going on
around you, it was great.
CREAKING
But Amy wasn't expecting
the Starship UK to be
quite as mad as this.
Say what?!
Say whee!
AMY SCREAMS
# Splish-splash, I was taking a bath
# Long about a Saturday night
# A rub dub
just relaxing in the tub
# Thinking everything was all right
# Well, I stepped out the tub
put my feet on the floor
# I wrapped the towel around me
and I opened the door
# And then splish, splash!
# I jumped back in the bath
# Well, how was I to know
there was a party going on?
# They was a-splishing
and a-splashing
# Reelin' with the feelin'
# Moving and a-grooving
Rocking and a-rolling. #
Swallow reflex!
We were on the tongue
of a giant whale.
It was really fun, we were just
messing around the whole time
throwing cabbage
at each other and things.
What I'm doing is providing
2,000 litres of slime,
which is just really horrible goo
mixed up with a food additive
which is completely safe and it's
coloured a sort of white colour
and what I'm going to do
is dress that over the set
so both Karen and Matt
will fall into the slime
and get covered in it unfortunately.
In addition,
I'm going to doing lots of steam.
Just to hide the fact that it's a set
and it's only 12 metres wide.
Just to create a sort of
atmos effect in there.
Where are we? About 600ft down,
20 miles laterally,
puts us at the heart of the ship,
I'd say...Lancashire.
Keep doing that, particularly
this joint here, Chris.
This one over here. Danny,
keep thickening it up. I will.
That set was... It was quite, um,
demanding for the artists.
They had to slide down a tube,
and land six ft below
on a very slippery surface,
but we made sure we had
our stunt co-ordinator there.
So it's feet... Slanting.
So you've landed in that position,
as soon as you land, roll out.
Did you just give
yourself a bruise?
For you, if you're going first...
I'm clear for the right,
I'll try my right.
It was like a fairground ride, they'd
built a thing where you walked up,
like an old helter-skelter,
so you'd walk up the back.
Yeah, it's like a fairground ride,
I love it.
You normally pay to do this. I know.
This is when Doctor Who's brilliant.
And at the top of the stairs,
there was just this hole,
and it was basically a slide leading
down on to loads of crash mats.
I'm scared.
So really, it's a six ft drop.
Honestly, by the time you're
thinking, "Oh, my God..."
So the drop's all right?
Yes. Yes.
Can't wait.
We both looked at each other
as we do on a lot of occasions
with this job and go, "This is our
job, this is what we do, right?"
If you naturally go the other
way, then go the other way.
Head-first? No, if you land...
Head first? What?
I was thinking about it. Tell you
what, let's go head-first backwards.
I want to see this.
So basically, we had to
get our whole body in and then
hold on to this pole thing.
Wish me luck!
And then it was pitch black, so you
were just plunging into nothingness,
it was so scary.
219, take one. A Camera, mark.
Close on that set.
OK, here we go, everybody.
You get on the ride and then
you'd hang on the back and go...Woom!
'Into all the goo.'
Aaaargh!
Let me know when Karen's set.
OK, that's Karen set.
And, three, two, one. Karen. Action.
Then basically they said, "Action"
and I was like, "I can't let go,
oh God," and I just did it.
Karen.
Arrrgh!
Oh, God, it was like being on a ride
at a funfair or something.
And then, on the crash mats,
there was loads of gloopy stuff,
it was basically a pool of horrible
gloop, full of cabbage and tomatoes
and everything and we spent
the whole day in this pool of gloop.
The normal entrance is...
You were so preoccupied
with trying to stand up
that actually I found that the
acting was coming out
quite naturally and realistically
without having to think about it,
because my mind was preoccupied, cos
we were sliding all over the place.
The normal entrance is...
..closed for business.
We could try though. Don't move.
Too late.
It's started, swallow reflex.
What are you doing?
Vibrating the chemoreceptors,
please have chemoreceptors.
Chemo what? The eject button.
Why would a tongue
have an eject button?
Think about it.
And that was great for the
first hour and then after about,
well, the first three hours,
and then come hour four or five,
when we were literally
covered in slime,
cabbage and sand and everything,
it was getting quite cold.
Could it be quicker or is it quite
nice to just enjoy it?
No, no, it's great.
Let's take it from...
So get in position, let's take it
from high-speed air channel.
All the way through.
They had a lot of fun,
but I think, by the end of it,
they were a bit tired
and really wanted to get a shower.
Great fun, I want to do one
of the stage dives at the end.
I think probably going up and down
a slide for most of the day
and jumping up and down what in
effect was like a bouncy castle,
they probably did enjoy it,
I think I'd enjoy it.
Right then. This isn't going
to be big on dignity.
Geronimo!
Amy Pond is, I don't know, I've sort
of fallen in love with Amy Pond.
# Fell in love with a girl
I fell in love once... #
You're the little girl?
# She's in love with the world
# But sometimes these feelings
can be so misleading. #
She's kind of got this inner
confidence and she can really just
handle herself in situations.
Amy, no, no. What are you doing?
Who are you?
She's sassy and she's sexy
and she's funny.
She likes to go out there,
have a good time and grab an
adventure by the scruff of the neck.
# Can't think of
anything to do, yeah
# My left brain knows that
all love is fleeting
# She's just looking
for something new
# Well, I said it once before
but it bears repeating now. #
It's minging.
She's pretty, she's sassy.
Watch and learn.
She's got boundless energy and she's
not frightened to speak her mind.
Why did you say six months?
Why did you say five minutes?
She's as bonkers as
the Doctor in many ways.
What are you going to do?
What I always do.
Stay out of trouble.
She's a redhead, feisty seductress...
ball of wit!
What's so brilliant about it is
he met her as a little girl,
so he's so endeared by her
and has such affection for her.
Are you're a policeman? Why?
Did you call a policeman? Did you
come about the crack in my wall?
'When the Doctor regenerates,'
he normally does it
in front of somebody -
his regular companion,
his best friend. The job is
for him to convince that person, and
therefore us, that he's the Doctor.
This time, we had a new companion
and new Doctor,
that couldn't happen.
So I came up with the idea
of this girl who meets him
briefly when she's seven
and again 12 years later,
so that for her,
he's been the Doctor for ever.
She's always known him
as the Doctor, she knows him
as the Doctor better than he does.
The Raggedy Doctor,
all those cartoons you did
when you were little.
The Raggedy Doctor, it's him!
She's the girl who was left on her
own by the Doctor aged nine
and who has built up
a lot of inner strength.
We meet her when she's a little girl
and there's something
mysterious about her,
something slightly "other-worldly".
You all right, mister?
No, I'm fine, it's OK.
Who are you?
I don't know yet. I'm still cooking.
Does it scare you? No, it just looks
a bit weird. 'She's a real challenge
for the Doctor, I think,'
Amy Pond. One of the biggest
he's had so far in a companion.
Clap, clap, scoop and dive,
back flick, double click.
Portraying Amy Pond falls
to actress Karen Gillan,
who works hard to bring
new qualities to
the role of the companion.
Karen, I believe, has really
brought a lot to this role.
I think she's brilliant. She's
fantastic. It doesn't seem to matter
what we throw at her.
She lights up the screen
whether we ask her to
be covered in Star Whale vomit, or
try and save the world wearing only
her nightie. She's equally fantastic.
I'm about to do
a bit of a scary fall
and I've got a board up my back.
So should be fun!
God, I think Karen brings so much
of herself to the role as Amy.
All that sort of mad, cooky energy
that she has in her life.
Just "Karen-ness", Karen madness,
and that feisty, Scottish,
Inverness, "don't mess with me".
There's all that in there as well.
We become closer every day.
I'm very fond of her.
Karen can kind of do everything.
I think the thing that we
probably enjoy most about her
is how funny she can be. She's a
natural, natural comic, while looking
completely stunning all the time.
There was almost as much speculation
about who we were going
to cast as the companion
as there had been about the Doctor.
As ever, we were led by our nose
and when Andy Pryor, Doctor Who's
brilliant casting director,
showed us tapes,
we were just led by the person who
kind of nailed the part, basically.
Steven had some fairly clear ideas
about who Amy was
and where she was from, but
in terms of the development
of her character, a lot of that
is influenced by
the actress playing the part.
So I was interested in
bringing in people who
could grab the part and run with it
and do something interesting with it.
The first thing you do is
go to Andy Pryor and say,
"Who do you think it should be?"
And he did turn up with a list of
just brilliant actresses.
We did not see one single
bad audition for Amy Pond.
They were all superb.
Really, really brilliant.
All actresses I would want to work
with at some point. Just perfect.
It's difficult because
there's no one thing that
qualifies anybody for the part.
It's more about somebody
doing something surprising with it,
and the people that we saw
were all able to do that, but
Karen clearly was way ahead of the
pack in terms of her inventiveness.
My agent called me up and said,
"They want to audition you for the
companion role, the new companion."
I was like, "Ooh".
It was very exciting.
I didn't think I would get it,
so I just thought, "I'll go for
it and see what happens."
We watched person after person after
person and, halfway through the day,
Piers took me aside and he said,
"I'm really worried cos we've seen
all these brilliant people,
"but I just don't think
we've found her."
Piers always laughs at me about this
because I said, "It's fine,
"it's absolutely fine. She's coming
up last, she's called Karen Gillan,
"I just know she's the one."
He said, "How do you know? You've
only seen her for two minutes on
tape." I said, "She's the one."
The very last person
we physically saw for the part
and the very first person
I saw on tape for the part
was Karen Gillan. On tape,
she first of all did it
in an English accent, then in
a Scottish accent, her own accent,
and I thought, "She's really good,
"it's just a shame that
she's so wee and dumpy."
Then I got a recall to come in
and read it with Matt.
That was quite funny, because
I wasn't allowed to tell anyone
what I was auditioning for,
not even the people in the reception
of the place that I was going to,
so I had to give them
a code name of "Panic Moon".
It's actually an anagram for
"companion", which is quite clever.
Then when she was about to
come into the audition,
I nipped out for a minute,
and I saw Karen walking along
the corridor towards me -
she's 5'11", slim and gorgeous. I
thought, "That will probably work."
And then she gave an absolutely
stunning, hilarious audition.
Steven Moffat was there and the
execs and Matt and casting director,
so it was quite daunting walking in.
We'd seen seven or eight people
and then Karen walked in
and we went, "Yes, got her!"
And we all just flustered around
the room after, thinking, "That's
easy, that's it, that's her."
I actually found out that day,
which was very nice.
That evening, I got the call saying,
"You've got it."
I started screaming like an idiot,
but it was really nice because
it wasn't an agonising wait.
It was so lovely having this process
to share with her and doing it
together, both being new.
It's such a mad thing, Doctor Who.
It's such a tricky and brilliant
show to make. It's lovely to share
that journey with someone.
We went through all these milestones
together. The first read-through,
and then we did our first day
on set then we got
our first block finished.
You know, we have all these really
huge things in life that we share.
It makes you quite close.
Yeah, she's a funny soul.
Hey-hey! Result! Coming? No!
Suit yourself.
Stop! You mustn't do that!
I was looking for something
a bit more Roald Dahl in a way,
something madder and more fairy-tale.
Fairy tale is a very important tone
for Doctor Who.
When we talk about dark
fairy tales, it is probably
the darkest and most fairy-tale-like
episode that we've done.
It is a vision of Britain
far in the future where
children mysteriously disappear down
through the floors of lifts.
Fairy tales are the way we tell our
children that there are people out
there who might want to eat them.
They are warnings in fantasy form
of the reality
and the dangers of the world.
I don't mean Doctor Who is like
a fairy tale. I mean it literally is.
Far more than it's a science fiction
show, it's a fairy tale.
The smiling fellows in the booths,
they're everywhere.
But they're just things.
They're clean.
Everything else here is
all battered and filthy.
But no-one's laid a finger
on those booths, look.
Ask Mandy, "Why are people scared
of the things in the booths?"
The first time Steven delivered the
script and Piers and I read it,
his first description of
the Smilers, we just thought,
"These are going to be good,
these are going to be scary."
# Pack up your troubles
in your old kit bag
# And smile, smile, smile
# While you've a Lucifer
to light your fag
# Smile, boys, that's the style
# What's the use of worrying?
# It never was worthwhile
# So pack up your troubles
in your old kit bag
# And smile, smile, smile. #
The Smilers are terrifying.
They are these horrible things.
If you do something that's wrong or
forbidden, their head twists round
and then they turn into this
horrible, frowning, dummy thing.
And when they're demonic,
you're in trouble.
You're about to get arrested and
something's awful's going to happen.
So they're bad.
I imagined it like
a fortune teller's booth.
I didn't want a sort of
mechanical, obvious robot.
I wanted something that was like
something you find in a fairground.
One of those things that you think
was meant to look friendly and pretty
but ends up looking horribly sinister
cos it's a bit old, a bit decayed
and a little bit too bright.
I've always found that
terribly scary.
A painted-on smile is pretty much
as bad as a painted-on snarl.
It's a horrible, sinister thing. You
wanted the idea that this spaceship
is attempting to be reasonable,
attempting to treat you kindly.
Here's a smile, here's a frown.
But actually,
it's all pretty frightening.
And it fell to the monster-makers
to ensure the scripted Smilers
turned out just as scary on screen.
So the first stage is
the design process.
This comes from descriptions
that are given in scripts.
Then, out of clay,
we'll sculpt a Smiler face.
Then comes the moulding stage,
and it's from this mould that all of
the master masks are then produced.
So we took the Smiler head as a basis
and then adapted each one,
so we would then get our frowner
and then our demonic face.
This is the face of
the happy version
of the Smiler, which has
been made of fibreglass.
This is the mould. So we'll just
take it out of here.
I'm just going to basically
trim that off and tidy it all up.
After they've been cast out,
they get cleaned up and primed,
then we move on to the next stage,
the art working stage.
They then go through a process called
crackula, which is basically
a glaze which is painted on
and you get this fine, kind of aged,
paint-crack texture
which would take absolutely ages
to paint in by hand.
From there, then we go on to
the shoot, and that's when all
the hard work gets shown on camera.
DEEP VOICE:
Well done, Mandy.
Bad boy, Timmy.
Zero.
And...action!
And working alongside the sinister
Smilers are the mysterious Winders.
What happens is one of the
coolest bits of CGI in history,
and it starts off with me.
I don't want to give it away,
but my head kind of turns round
to reveal another Smiler.
How can there be Smilers?
Half-Smiler, half-human.
And they've got the demonic smiles
on the back of their face.
It was like he had
two heads, basically.
It was a seamless
kind of prosthetic.
He had to act with his back
to us with the Smiler face
on the back of his head.
He did really well, I think.
Very spooky seeing a man
walking round set with two faces.
He basically had to spend large
portions of the take doing this,
because the Smiler head
is facing this way,
so his head is on the back of it.
The reason we did that is that we
shot the live-action element with him
with his normal face,
and then we took him to one side
and put him on a turntable,
clamped him into a little wooden
pedestal to keep his head still,
and we literally swivelled him
around against a green screen.
The finished result will be that
his head will just spin in the hood
to the demonic Peter.
Why do the Winders become Smilers?
Because I think,
if I'm watching Doctor Who,
I'm aching for that to happen.
I want that head-revolve to
happen at an unexpected moment
and for you to realise that
someone who just looked human is
actually sinister and terrible.
That must happen in Doctor Who.
It's an absolute rule.
Whatever you creatures are,
I am still your queen.
Liz Ten is quite
a mysterious character
at the beginning of the episode.
# I was five and he was six
We rode on horses made of sticks
# He wore black and I wore white
# He would always win the fight
Bang bang, he shot me down
# Bang bang, I hit the ground
Bang bang, that awful sound
# Bang bang, my baby shot me down
Down, down, down... #
The character of Liz Ten
is a sort of gun-toting,
Lara Croft-style queen.
Gold guns, great big cape.
Can't mess around with her.
COCKNEY ACCENT: 'A bit of London
in there'. I'm the queen, mate.
Basically, I rule. 'She's actually
the queen of Starship UK,'
hence Liz Tenth.
I am the highest authority.
She's a fiery, lively, sci-fi
heroine-type character.
I said now!
# I shot you down
Bang bang, that awful sound
# Bang bang
I used to shoot you down. #
Playing a mysterious stranger
is always pretty tricky
cos it's just different
shades of enigma, isn't it?
But Sophie made it so cheeky
and so funny and almost saucy.
A lovely performance.
Sophie Okonedo's been on my list
for being in the show
for a long time now, but
she's always incredibly busy,
understandably, and I thought
we'd never get her.
Then this part came along
and we thought,
you need someone with real kind of
status, someone with real impact,
someone with a very strong will,
so that narrowed the list down
fairly hugely,
and also we were quite keen in
episode two to have somebody
who would bring a little bit
of kudos to that episode, who had
the status to play the queen.
That was a treat working with her.
She's very cool, brilliant actress.
I learnt a lot off Sophie.
Placing her in this modern world
but then great authority,
regalness, you know.
This ship is travelling
through space.
The impossible truth, Doctor.
We're travelling among the stars
in a spaceship that can never fly.
How? I don't know.
At first, she just thinks she's
on this mission to discover
what her government are up to.
There's the darkness
at the heart of this nation.
It threatens every one of us.
Help us, Doctor.
You're our only hope.
Liz Ten wears a mask because,
as she says, she's the queen -
everyone knows her.
So if she's going to go out
and investigate crimes and stuff,
she has to wear a disguise.
I'm sure Elizabeth II does that all
the time.
Although I always found it kind
of curious that she's the only one
that seems to be wearing a mask,
and you really kind of stand out
if you wear a mask!
But anyway, she does it
to be kind of undercover.
That's her way of being discreet,
which says a lot about Liz Ten.
In the course of this episode, Liz
goes on a rather terrifying journey,
cos it ends with her realising
she's been on this journey
many, many times before,
and it will always end at
this choice between abdicating
and forgetting, and in the past,
she's always chosen to forget.
She's made the choice to forget
how the ship is flying and
what's keeping the ship afloat.
Towards the end, it gets revealed
what the truth of the situation is.
She's been living
a kind of Groundhog Day, where
she's been living the same...
she's been doing the same thing
over and over again for 300 years.
She think she's 50,
but she's actually over 300,
so that was a bit of a shock.
No, it's ten years.
I've been on this throne ten years.
Ten years.
The same ten years over and over
again, always leading you...here.
'She sort of falls apart a bit.'
She has a sort of crisis, I think,
in the middle of it all,
especially when she sees the
video image of herself talking
to her now, 300 years ago.
And, in that clip, she's much posher
and much more queen-like,
and, obviously, she's got more
common as the years have gone past.
'If you wish
our voyage to continue,
'then you must
press the forget button.
'Be again the heart of this nation,
untainted.
'If not...
press the other button.
'Your reign will end,
the star whale will be released
and our ship will disintegrate.
'I hope I keep the strength
to make the right decision.'
She discovers that she is
the architect of the mystery
she's trying to uncover.
So does that character develop?
In a strange way, she does,
but develops in circles,
always resetting, always faced
with this appalling conundrum
she can't see a way out of,
which even the Doctor really
can't see a way out of.
The Doctor may not be able to find
an easy way out of this conundrum,
but, thankfully,
Amy sees things differently.
Today, we are in
a lovely old abbey
and we are filming the kind of
climax scene of episode two,
where we discover that the
star whale is actually trapped
in the torture dungeon
of Starship UK.
What's that?
It's the gas pedal, the accelerator.
Starship UK's go-faster button.
Because they think that it will help
the starship go faster and things
if they trap it and torture it.
So it's a really sad scene, but also
it's quite a heroic scene for Amy.
Three options. One, I let the star
whale continue in unendurable agony
for hundreds more years.
Two, I kill everyone on this ship.
Three, I murder a beautiful,
innocent creature
as painlessly as I can
and then I find a new name because
I won't be the Doctor any more.
There must be something we can do
some other way. Nobody tortures...
Nobody HUMAN has anything
to say to me today!
The Doctor nearly makes
a dreadful mistake.
He nearly kills the star whale cos
he can't see any other way out of it.
It's the only thing
he can think of doing.
For him to be saved from doing that
is immense for him, because
he would remember that for ever.
He'd never forget
that scale of failure.
And for Amy to save him from that,
by understanding him
and the star whale better,
it's the biggest gift
she could give him.
She spots a similarity between
the Doctor and the star whale,
and she knows that,
in the same way that the Doctor
can't let children cry and
walk away, nor can that whale.
That whale isn't there
as a trapped creature.
That whale is there,
because it wants to be and
to save those children.
'It won't eat the children.
And then it came,
'like a miracle,
the last of the star whales.'
Doctor, stop.
Whatever you're doing, stop it now.
Sorry, Your Majesty. Going to
need a hand. Amy, no! No!
WHALE CRIES
CRASH!
PEOPLE SHOUT
She stops the Doctor making
one of the most terrible
choices of his life to date.
But he's missed a trick,
he's missed a beat,
which she's kind of spotted,
that actually the whale is
very old and very kind
and has come and is actually
flying the ship of its own accord.
The star whale didn't come
like a miracle all those years ago.
It volunteered. You didn't
have to trap it or torture it.
That was all just you.
It came because it couldn't stand
to watch your children cry.
If you were that old and that kind
and the very last of your kind...
you couldn't just stand there
and watch children cry.
And cut there. Cut!
She's privy to one piece of
information the Doctor isn't.
She knows what he's like
and recognises him in
the star whale's behaviour.
So it still makes him a big hero,
but she recognises the same qualities
of heroism in the star whale as she's
always recognised in the Doctor.
He realises
she made the right decision.
It's probably the first time
in these first two episodes where
he begins to look up to her
as much as she looks up to him.
I think it's quite
a tough one for the Doctor,
because he's almost just done what
he would never, ever normally do,
which is to effectively
kill something.
I think that's a very scary place
for him to have been taken to.
What it proves is that Amy is
a very worthy companion for him.
She actually, bizarrely,
knows him really well,
certainly this version of the Doctor
better than he knows himself.
I could've killed everyone here.
You could've killed a star whale.
And you saved it.
I know, I know.
This episode was always the one
about Amy kind of earning her spurs,
and I think the Doctor realises
that she's going to be
more than just a girl Friday.
Amazing, though, don't you think?
The star whale.
All that pain and misery.
And loneliness.
I think that's when she really seals
her place in the TARDIS for good.
And it just made it kind.
But you couldn't have known how
it would react. You couldn't.
But I've seen it before.
Very old and very kind
and the very, very last.
Sound a bit familiar?
I think it inspires him with
humility and, you know...
makes him feel, you know,
very humble and very...
he respects her
and he's grateful,
actually deeply very grateful
to her for saving him, in a way.
# Cos the season's change
was a conduit
# And we'd left our love in
our summer skin... #
Hey. What?
Gotcha.
HE LAUGHS