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On Thursday November 3, a small group of journalists were invited to watch the first two episodes of the new animation of the first Patrick Troughton Doctor Who serial The Power of the Daleks. Afterwards Toby Hadoke moderated a panel with series star Anneke Wills, producer and director Charles Norton, and executive producer Paul Hembury…

Anneke Wills: How is so possible that they’re so blooming frightening, the Daleks? Weren’t you excited by that?

Toby Hadoke: How was it seeing it after all this time in a slightly different format?

AW      The slightly different format was quite nice, just slightly removed, which is good. I was hopping up and down because Patrick is such an amazing actor, just his voice – the moment when he was remembering something, his voice is utterly haunted. We could learn from this man as an actor to this day. It must have been fun to animate him.

Charles Norton: Yes it was. Patrick Troughton had a wonderful face, he’s wonderful to animate and it was very easy to get a handle on. Certain characters you struggle to find, but Patrick Troughton wears it all on his face. You can see it all on his face and you can get a handle on how he emotes.

TH      What is it about Doctor Who and this particular story that grabbed your attention?

Paul Hembury:        I suppose it started about a year ago when I was asked to exec produce a very modest little animation of a lost Dad’s Army tale. Charles was about to start work on it and we met. When I say modest, it was modest – it was put together on a very small budget – but I was struck by how dedicated a passion was brought to the project by Charles and this handpicked team of his. One thing led to another and we talked; the project got delivered and eventually it performed very well for BBC Store,

Then in conversation, Charles started talking about the 97 lost Doctor Who episodes, and I said if we were going to go out there and do one, could it be done? Yes, it could be done, he said, and made it all sound easy which it absolutely wasn’t!

Power of the Daleks pretty much self selected: it’s a very strong story, it’s a very dark piece. As Anneke said, it is very frightening and a very well written piece. We were sat in Television Centre at a meeting, and I asked Charles when it was broadcast, and he said 1966. I knew it was 1966, but when? November. When in November? The 5th. What time? 5.50… So I said “That means if you deliver this at the end of October as you’re going to, we could make this available, say, on BBC Store for example at 5.50 on 5th November 2016.” Both were Saturdays and that also happened to be BBC Store’s first birthday. It would be 50 years to the second since it was first seen – and last seen, it was only transmitted once. I looked at Charles and said, “I think that’s what you call a hook, and we’ve really got to do this.” That’s how it started.

TH       I last saw you for the commentary recording last week; you hadn’t slept at that point! Have you slept since then?

CN      Yes, briefly.

TH      So you’ve been very close to the wire?

CN      Yes, we finished episodes 4 and 5 yesterday [November 2], which is quite tight.

AW      Have we got 6?

CN      We’d done 6.

TH      There was a marvellous moment in the commentary. We did one episode with various people who’ve been involved with Daleks. Rob Shearman who wrote the episode Dalek was there and he said, “Isn’t it amazing that we can see this in front of us now?” – and the screen went blank because they hadn’t done that bit yet!

We’ve got the script, we’ve got the audio, we’ve got off screen snaps, but with animation you can do anything. Where did you draw the line in terms of how you could make it more cinematic, or be faithful and try to recreate what would have been on the screen?

CN      We had the original camera script, which in one level is almost like a storyboard in written form. It tells you this shot is a 3-shot, this shot is a 2-shot etc. You think you’ll go into it and it’ll be very easy – you’ll just do this – but actually you can’t really because there’s an awful lot that would work in live action that would not work in limited animation, particularly with the resources we had available.

So we had to restructure the thing and try and remain as faithful as you can to the intent. But you do end up having to alter quite a bit. I think the first two episodes are probably the most faithful. As we went along into the later episodes, where there was a lot more film, a lot was shot in advance at Ealing Film Studios and we’ve got no camera script for that at all. There’s a few still frames but we’ve just got a soundtrack with some bangs and thumps and scuffles on it. We don’t know what’s going on so you have to make that up really.

There’s a lot of filling in blanks and trying to adapt something so it’ll work better with what you’re trying to do.

TH      Did you have any things in mind you wanted to happen or not to happen?

PH      What Charles has done is put together a team of people all of whom are passionate about Doctor Who. We could have gone off to a studio and had this done, and I’m sure we would have ended up with a very fine piece of animation but what Charles and the team has brought to it is a passion. It’s sort of in their DNA. If there were going to be gaps, and there were going to be gaps, then who better to be able to fill them in and do it in a faithful way than that team?

Undoubtedly, we expected there to be challenges, and there were, and there were some that we didn’t expect and some that we did, but in the end it’s an honest endeavour. Ultimately the fans will decide whether it works or not. We hope it does. It is a cracking story and it deserves to be retold and there it is. We think it’s worked, but we’re not self-satisfied about it. Ultimately it’s about watching it and seeing what you think and whether it hangs together or not.

AW      There’s something wonderfully Who about it. Particularly the drawing – Peter Bathurst [who played Governor Hensell] is wonderfully drawn, and it’s characterised and stylish,. You could have pressed a button and had an absolutely brilliant clear animation model but this, Who-wise, is brilliant. I love it – it’s the first time I’ve seen it. I love it!

CN      Thanks very much indeed.

TH      Paul mentioned some pitfalls that you might not have expected – what were the stumbling blocks along the way?

CN      I think that first TARDIS scene is very difficult because there are an awful lot of things happening in it that you would never put in an animation script. You’re looking at the camera script and you read, “The Doctor dances a jig” and he’s got checked trousers on as well. You never give an animated character checked trousers because you can’t move the pattern. That particular scene was challenging.

I think on the whole the things that we thought were going to be the most difficult we knew were going to be the most difficult, so you prep yourself for it, and they end up being actually not quite so bad. There is a section towards the end of episode 4 – the big bit that everyone remembers about the story, with the Daleks coming off the production line – that I thought was going to be a very complicated thing for us to do, but actually because we put so much work into it, I think it’s probably one of the best bits in the story, and I think it actually animates very well.

We knew obviously that one thing very important we had to get right was the Daleks so we did spend a lot of time getting them right. We didn’t want to just do computer generated Daleks – we wanted to make sure they would fit with the rest of everything else. We spent quite a lot of time on them.

The things that were most difficult were the things you don’t predict are going to be difficult – like Polly!

AW      There’s one moment where I’m walking – I’m walking? The character is walking really weird.

CN      Walking is difficult. It was very easy to put a lot of character into Patrick Troughton; it was harder with Polly, I have to say. It was harder to get a handle on it.

There was one bit that I did like, which was something we put in quite late in the day, at the end of episode 2 where Polly and Ben are coming into the lab. We thought we’d have Ben a bit more reluctant and have him stop, then Polly take his hand and pull him in. You could put little things like that. There were certain faces that were easier than others – faces like Bragan, Bernard Archard who has this marvellous nose that you can get a handle on.

I thought it was important where possible (and as I say, some characters were more successful than others) that the characters needed to act as well as be good likenesses so our lead artist, Martin Geraghty, would sit down and watch hours upon hours of footage. Not necessarily from Doctor Who, we were watching old episodes of The Avengers and Shoestring and Z Cars, just looking for appearances of certain actors like Edward Kelsey just to see how they formed each syllable, how they formed their a’s and their e’s – with Patrick Troughton he often spoke out of the side of his mouth slightly – so when Martin would draw out all of the mouth shapes they would feel right, they wouldn’t be generic mouth shapes. We’d try and get the character the way they would enunciate, the way they would move their faces.

[At this point, questions came from the audience]

How did you approach sections where the footage exists? Were you rotoscoping or drawing over the moving footage?

CN      There was a certain amount of latitude but generally we thought if we’ve got some footage that actually exists, we really have to make sure that we model as closely as we can on that. That was quite difficult because quite often these bits of silent footage would contain rather more complex things than you would probably attempt ordinarily.

Generally speaking, most of the animation in this was done using reusable sets of drawings, but when you come to a surviving clip, really you just have to do it frame by frame. Most of the time that means about 12 drawings a second. There’s a shot in episode 1 – all I can remember is it’s shot 121A – was the last one we were doing and we were working right up to the wire.

We did have to bring in another animator at the last minute, Greg Mannering, who was the only member of our team who wasn’t based in the UK. He’s based in LA, and he’s a former Disney animator who worked on The Lion King and things like that. He did a lot of those sequences.

We weren’t so much rotoscoping because that implies tracing over the footage – we didn’t do that all that much, if at all – but you will have the footage next to you and try to have the key frames as right as you can and hopefully not run out of time to make the animation smoother. That is the danger of doing things like that: you have to look at limiting the drawings so you can get to the end of it.

TH:      Ironically, the end of episode 5, the infamous cardboard cut out Daleks look more three dimensional now than they did at the time!

Previous Doctor Who animations have been 4:3 to match the broadcast in the 1960s; was there ever any idea of doing that rather than widescreen to emulate the original format?

CN      I was very adamant that we should be doing it in black and white – not, to be honest with you, because the original was in black and white, I’m not terribly precious about that. There are certain Doctor Who stories I think that would probably work better in colour but I felt Power of the Daleks wasn’t one of them. I felt it was very important that the noir-ish atmosphere of the story and what they were clearly going for with the cinematography meant it should be black and white.

But when it came to doing it in widescreen or 4:3, the way I thought about it was that pretty much everyone who will be watching it will be watching it on a widescreen TV so unless they’ve properly calibrated it, if they watch a 4:3 image on it they’ll be watching it stretched across the screen. It will mean that most of your audience will be watching it wrong, distorted, and I thought, if everyone will be watching on a widescreen screen so why not do it in widescreen? How hard can it be? Answer, incredibly hard because everything was originally framed for 4:3.

It just seemed to make sense: nobody’s going to be watching it in 4:3, so we should probably do it in widescreen.

What’s next if there is a next?

AW      (sings nonchalantly) I don’t know nothing!

CN      I don’t either! We’re not working on anything yet

PT       We’re not. This wasn’t an experiment, but clearly it was something of a punt to take such a large and important story and animate it, and I think part of it is Charles needs to get some rest and rehab. We need to see what the fans think, how well received it is. We know there are lots and lots of missing stories, the soundtracks are in existence for all of them, so there is clearly more that can be done, and lots and lots has been learned from this one. But I think we have to see.

I also have to go on bended knee to BBC Worldwide: we didn’t do this with our own money. Worldwide invested in this significantly, so it is a commercial venture, so it needs to be sold and make a return. So far the signs are looking very promising as far as that side of it is concerned, so we’ve said that once Charles is rehabilitated, that we’ll sit down and have a talk about it and see.

AW      Can I give my little list?

TH      Which one would you go for if you were in charge?

AW      For me, personally, The Smugglers because that was Mike and my favourite story. But all of us would love to see The Crusade, because we’ve already got some, and Fury from the Deep. Got to see that one.

CN      It should perhaps be said that there are certain stories that are more doable. The Crusade is an interesting one. It’s one we’re missing two episodes from and you look at it and think “There’s only two episodes. That’s 45 minutes. We’ve just done two and a half hours, that’ll be easy” – then you look at The Crusade as I did a few days ago and you realise there are 24 speaking characters in it. And they all have multiple changes of clothes and different costumes and sets. I’m not saying it’s impossible – nothing’s impossible.

Would you consider doing stories with more recent Doctors, or a feature film?

PH      I honestly don’t know. It’s something we haven’t thought about. The genesis of this came out of working together on Dad’s Army and it was certainly all consuming for Charles. As he says, nothing’s impossible, but I’m of an age where I’m sort of drawn to the older material.

It’s a bit of an aside – I was taken to Television Centre as a 10 year old and it was during an early Hartnell series being filmed of Doctor Who. While we didn’t see the filming, all the props and the TARDIS were there – it was a school visit thing. It was quite extraordinary. It perhaps left more of a mark than even I realised and when I got the opportunity to work with Charles on this I jumped on it.

CN      Give us the dates and we can probably work out which it was.

PH      I probably can: we came out of Television Centre and walked up to the old White City sports arena, and there was this American boxer who was doing open training sessions. We went and watched them – at the time his name was Cassius Clay. [He was preparing for his second fight with Henry Cooper which took place in May 1966.]

CN      They have done animations with David Tennant’s Doctor. We’d need a much bigger budget and much more time, but I don’t know.

Would you consider if the opportunity came up making them in colour to open them up to a wider audience. I wonder if the younger audience today might be put off by them being in black and white?

CN      I think it depends on the story. Some lend themselves to being in colour, some don’t. It’s perhaps worth saying, you’re right there’s an audience that might not watch something because it’s in black and white but I wonder if that audience won’t watch live action in black and white. If you’re watching something that’s animated, it’s something that’s totally unreal anyway. The reason there’s a resistance to live action is because it’s seen as old fashioned, but animation has pretty much always been in colour, at least in feature terms, so it’s something new doing animation in black and white, rather than old fashioned.

AW      It’s interesting going around America as I do, talking to young Doctor Who fans – young like 10 year old – I’m amazed that they know all about our stories, but they say they love it because they love the black and white and the half hour and the tension.

Power of the Daleks is being shown on BBC America – how did that happen, and the fact it was going to be broadcast had any effect on what you were doing creatively?

CN      We started it before BBC America came on board.

PH      As happens in big organisations, we had made all of Worldwide aware we were doing this. The idea appealed to BBC America, I think not least because there was going to be a gap in new Doctor Who coming through.

I think they started to get more interested once there was something to see. Once you could hear that original soundtrack and see some of the animation and see just how faithful it was, they thought this is something they could go with.

The New York office of BBC Worldwide have now set up that it’s going out in cinemas in America for One Night Only. That was ever so slightly terrifying – Charles had to go lie down in a darkened room for an hour or two after I told him – but we hope that will go well. It’s gathered momentum a bit as it’s gone along.

AW      I’m going to be talking to the American press in a week’s time – you can imagine what they’re going to make of me!

Can you tell us about the sound design – it’s amazing?

CN      The original soundtrack was mono, and when you buy the DVD there’s an option to listen to it in mono. It’s been remixed into stereo and also 5.1. We – I say we, Mark Ayres who looked after all our sound, took the original off-air audio recording which sounds terrible and made it sound not terrible somehow, I don’t really know how. He then created a 5.1 and a stereo mix.

It’s a really odd one: we’ve not got the original programme, but we have got a lot of production material – all the original music tapes, the original music sessions, most of the original sound effects – so Mark was able to remix the sound by dropping in the original sound effects and the original music to create a stereo mix, which is the main one, and a 5.1 mix for things like this.

PH      It is probably worth adding that this wouldn’t have been possible had Graham Strong not put his microphone in front of or hardwired his tape recorder to his telly at great personal risk – it’s a very dangerous thing to do. Had he not done that and got that tape, which was recorded incredibly slowly, and kept it safely, we wouldn’t be able to do any of this.

CN      Not at all. We’re very fortunate really: there are a lot of missing Doctor Who episodes, but there are lots of missing all sorts of programmes – missing episodes of The Avengers, Not Only But Also – and most of those programmes are pretty much just missing. You can’t listen to them, can’t do anything with them. But Doctor Who we’re very fortunate – the 97 episodes, you can listen to them all and most of them there are fragments of film as well. We’re very fortunate with Doctor Who.

And now you’ve created with this and have the assets with the characters, would the best thing financially be to do another Troughton, Polly and Ben…

CN      It doesn’t make a huge amount of difference to be honest with you, for various reasons. If we were going to be doing another story with Ben and Polly for instance, they wouldn’t be wearing the same clothes.

AW      Definitely not, those Bermuda shorts

CN      If you go through the first Patrick Troughton season, Polly’s hair changes alarmingly from story to story without any kind of reference to continuity. You’d be redrawing all those characters, so you’d only be reusing Patrick Troughton and maybe the Police Box. And if you were doing another Dalek story, you could use the Daleks I suppose.

What was the first sequence you saw completed?

CN      It’s an odd one, because you don’t do one scene and then the next one; you do little bits of them over a long period of time. I suppose the first piece of footage was we were asked to do a test reel, about two minutes of test footage – which I know some of you have probably seen! That was probably the first time we had sound and pictures together. That was mid-April.

PH      Neither of us has seen the whole thing through without stopping. That’s a treat in store.

Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks is released on BBC Store http://www.bbcstore.com on Saturday 5 November and on DVD on Monday 21st November.