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Doctor Who in history - 8 April 2008 |
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Patrick Mulkern takes us on a thrilling trip through the Tardis's travels into the past.
Last month I was waiting with director Waris Hussein at a bus stop on Ealing Broadway (yes, fact fans, the exact spot where Auton mannequins were filmed coming to life in 1969 - but that's another story), when Waris pointed out an illuminated poster for the new blockbuster 10,000 BC. A sabre-toothed tiger was savaging a Stone Age hunk.
"Ah, that's what we tried to do in the very first Doctor Who," said Waris. "But on a considerably smaller budget." Directing that 1963 serial, he had to construct fetid caves and a frozen Palaeolithic landscape in a tiny Lime Grove studio with little more than £4,000 in his wallet.
It's a far cry from Doctor Who's latest trip into history, which has proven to be one of the most expensive episodes yet and saw the cast and crew filming at Cinecittà studios in Italy.
But The Fires of Pompeii isn't the Tardis's first visit to Ancient Rome. In the 1965 story The Romans, original Doctor William Hartnell toga-ed up alongside Nero - a memorable encounter, largely played for laughs, which culminated in the Great Fire of Rome (AD 64).
In the early years of Who, producer Verity Lambert and her successors strove to alternate the outer-space voyages with adventures in Earth's history. Despite being mildly educational, these "historicals" were very popular with viewers. Certainly, the actors preferred camping around in period costume to battling Daleks and giant ants.
Waris Hussein's second directorial assignment saw the time travellers landing in 1289 and joining Marco Polo on his epic journey towards Cathay (China) across the Himalayas and the Gobi - again achieved at Lime Grove. This lost seven-part classic - sadly wiped by the BBC - was the first Who story to garner an RT cover (February 1964).
The good Doctor went on to encounter Aztecs, Vikings and pirates; he befriended Richard the Lionheart in Palestine; was mistaken for Doc Holliday in Tombstone and even designed the Trojan Horse.
Some companions were lifted from the past, too, which often caused headaches for writers. How much should the character know? The late Adrienne Hill, who played Trojan handmaiden Katarina, told me in 1986: "She knew absolutely nothing about anything. Everybody had much more exciting things to say than me. All I had to say was 'Oh no, Doctor! What is that, Doctor?'" Poor Katarina was killed off after just five weeks.
More successful was Jamie, a Highlander rescued from Culloden, who did sometimes show wisdom beyond his years. And, amusingly, prim Victoria (orphaned in 1866) swapped her floor-swishing crinolines for short skirts as soon as she stepped aboard the Tardis.
The trend for pure historicals was phased out during Patrick Troughton's tenure. Indeed, so out of favour were they that later Doctors rarely ventured back in time, and whenever they did, the plots had a predominantly sci-fi angle. Jon Pertwee fought a Sontaran in the Middle Ages. Tom Baker faced robotic mummies in Edwardian England and alien balls of fire in Renaissance Italy, while Peter Davison's brush with alien reptiles ignited the Great Fire of London.
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For his 2005 relaunch of the series, Russell T Davies was quick to show the Tardis dipping into history. In episode three (The Unquiet Dead) the Doctor (Chris Eccleston) zipped Rose back to 1860s Cardiff for a spooky night in the company of Charles Dickens. Since then we've encountered Captain Jack and the Empty Child during the Blitz, Queen Victoria, Madame de Pompadour, Shakespeare and - fleetingly - Elizabeth I.
Series four offers the spectacle of Vesuvius erupting in AD 79 and a meeting with Agatha Christie in 1926. Writer Gareth Roberts promises a country house whodunnit with more than a tinge of comedy: "The idea was always that it would be a slightly broader, funny story. The murder-mystery genre is so well known to the audience that you can play around with its conventions. But it's not tongue-in-cheek; Russell hates that phrase. It's playful but we always remain true to the characters and the spirit of Doctor Who." This all harks back to the humorous nature of many 1960s historicals.
Waris Hussein vividly recalls those days and the economies facing his close friend, the late Verity Lambert, in getting that original Stone Age serial made.
"It was quite a gamble doing a quest for fire story as a first set of episodes. The budget was so small that I had to audition actors by asking them not for their acting skills but whether they had hairy chests. So there were lots of requests to take their shirts off. This was legit," he hastens to add. "There was no casting couch with Verity attending!"
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Now take a look at our full Doctor Who guide.
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