’ve come up through the ranks of the art department. I started off as an art department runner, then became a standby props person, then a standby art director, then a supervising art director, and now I’m designing. I’ve been very fortunate to work on qu
GALLIFREY IN RUINS Episode 12.10, “The Timeless Children”
In some of his texts, Chris [Chibnall] mentioned the Panopticon, the great hall in the old series*, so I started looking into that. It’s very green – I kept calling it “Quality Street green”! We talked about the scale of that set, then decided that we’d have a room off it, the Matrix Chamber. That gave us the opportunity to show elements of the destroyed hall through an opening – some of the same sort of Quality Street green and perspex from the original set. When I think of Gallifrey I think of the Time Lord costume and the shapes in it first, so I wanted to incorporate that into the designs. So if you look at the corridor, and the detail in the ceiling, and the arches, it’s replicating a lot of the curves in the headpiece, because that’s something that sticks in my head. It’s just trying to tie it all in, really.
* First seen in 1976’s “The Deadly Assassin”.
HUMAN SURVIVORS’ COLONY Episode 12.09, “Ascension Of The Cybermen”
That is the Old Boys Village*, right next door to Aberthaw power station [where filming for the Cyber Carrier sequences took place]. It was built as a holiday village, and I think it was for miners’ children. It’s a run-down village with all this overgrowth all around it. When you go into those sort of locations, you think, “This is a wreck, let’s do what we want here”, but we couldn’t. Everything had to be cleared up. We had to use water-based paints that could easily be washed away, and all the paperwork on the walls had to be put back. We can’t take any credit for the graffiti inside the church – that was already there. We spent a lot of time painting out rude images everywhere! I think our head painter spent an afternoon just going round painting them out...
* Opened in 1926 by the Boys’ Clubs of Wales. It closed in 1990.
JACK’S SPACESHIP CONSOLE Episode 12.05, “Fugitive Of The Judoon”
We filmed that in Clifton Cathedral in Bristol. It’s a great space, and the ceiling is brilliant, and basically that’s where the reference came from. Going into a space like that, I started thinking of old American hall organs. I started looking into them, and some of them are really crazy shapes! It’s very retro, with colours and buttons and graphics on the actual keyboard area, and the shape of it was just replicating shapes that are within the space: the angles of these sort of pyramids that are hanging from the ceiling, and the angles in the walls. We were replicating a lot of that in the console so that it feels part of the same space.
WEAPONRY CONCEPTS Episode 12.05, “Fugitive Of The Judoon”
The Judoon have always had the same guns, but from my experience as a standby art director, working on The Sarah Jane Adventures and episodes with the Judoon, I knew they were a bit bulky and awkward. Chris gave me the freedom to update them all, so we did, but kept some of the sweeping shapes the same. We had a great concept artist, Louis Knight, this year – all these are his concepts. With the rifle Ruth uses, originally I was designing a new Gallifreyan rifle. Then Chris decided he didn’t want me to do that, in case it gave the story away, so now that’s a military laser that’s been picked up on the way somewhere. What’s good about the way we work now is that we 3D model and 3D print everything, so the detailing on all our props is spot on. From the concepts to the finished thing they look identical.
VILLA DIODATI Episode 12.08, “The Haunting Of Villa Diodati”
The main house was three locations. The drawing room was the Merthyr Mawr house, outside Bridgend; the stairwell Coedarhydyglyn, Culverhouse Cross; the upstairs a set build. We built that so there’s windows in the right places. The decor’s not 100% historically accurate, but it’s not far off – it’s what wallpaper we can actually get hold of and afford. The Villa was a holiday home, but we wanted it to feel very grand, so we had artistic license. The stairwell’s been in previous series*, but [director] Emma Sullivan shot it differently. Sometimes we can’t travel too far in our day, so occasionally we have to go back to a place you’ve seen before. But we try our hardest to make it look different!
* As the Tylers’ residence in “Rise Of The Cybermen” and Grayle’s Mansion in “The Angels Take Manhattan”.
THE GRAVRAFT Episode 12.09, “Ascension Of The Cybermen”
This was one of my favorite designs out of the whole series. It was a big number! Very early on, Chris referenced a life raft, so I went from there, really. The idea is they’ve had this raft for years, and just had to hold it together with any pieces that they can find, so it’s cobbled together from bits that they’ve managed to scavenge on their travels. We built it on a double-pivot turntable, and that was some achievement, because it meant nothing could be fixed together. So certain elements were hung from the ceiling, certain elements were only fitted to the outer ring, and other stuff was just in the middle. And because the whole thing was spinning around, nothing could be powered from cables – so everything was run off batteries, which were connected to it. People had to take motion sickness tablets before they went in there!
TRANQUILITY SPA Episode 12.03, “Orphan 55”
The exterior location was an auditorium in Spain*, which is stunning. Again, the idea was using a lot of the exterior shapes; everything we created on the inside reflected the outside, so that hopefully people believe it’s part of the same structure. So the curves were all taken from the exterior. The same with the finishes: this auditorium’s covered in small, white ceramic mosaic tiles, so we tried to replicate that pattern in a lot of things on the inside. We made friezes that were similar in the sauna area, and we put a cracked effect wallpaper on the walls in the corridors. The bar was great fun to do. The light up in the ceiling worked more as a gobo [a lighting stencil which casts shadows] – we put light through that and then there was a cracked pattern on the floor as well.
* The Auditorio de Tenerife “Adán Martín” in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the Canary Islands.
Doctor Who series 12 is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. Extras include commentaries for episodes one, two and four.