THE ART OF THE DIRECTOR PART 2

In the second part of our in-depth feature on the directors of Doctor Who, we continue our extensive chat with four of the class of 2015...

FEATURE BY BENJAMIN COOK

No-one ever said that directing Doctor Who is easy. In 1995, Peter Capaldi won an Oscar – for Best Live-Action Short Film – for Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life, which he wrote and directed. But when I asked him last year if he’d ever want to direct an episode of Doctor Who: “I don’t have the skills,” Peter admitted. Chatting on the TARDIS set – at the BBC’s Roath Lock studios in Cardiff, the show’s headquarters since 2012 – the Oscar-winner told me, “I enjoy directing, and I probably will do more, but these guys [Doctor Who’s current crop of directors]… they’re so professional, they’re all up-to-theminute, they know how everything on Doctor Who works. Anyway, I want to be in it! I’d have to find… well, it takes two months to prep an episode, then a month-and-a-half to cut it. I don’t have that time. No, I’m having too much fun being Doctor Who. I’d have to not be in it, and I couldn’t bear that.”

Another Oscar-winning director and self-confessed “huge Doctor Who fan”, Peter Jackson (The Lord of theRings, King Kong, The Hobbit, et al), admitted last year that, as much as he’d love to direct a Doctor Who, the show’s tight turnaround – just two weeks’ shooting per episode – is a daunting prospect. “Well, I mean, look, six months, sure, we can talk about that,” said Jackson. “Four months, five months… I mean, all that’s just something you talk about, isn’t it?” But a fortnight? In Cardiff? No chance.

Last issue, four of the 2015 series’ directors – who did brave TV’s toughest gig, and triumphed – talked us through what it takes: from the all-important pre-production process, to working with actors, monsters, VFX, “the heightened and fantastical”, tight budgets, crashing spaceships, and more. “The pressure to deliver something special on this show was greater than I’d ever felt on any show in the past,” said one of the four, Daniel Nettheim. “I didn’t want to be the director who stuffed it up.” In the concluding part of this in-depth DWM feature, the ‘class of 2015’ considers flying saucers, flashy camera moves, Zygon duplicates, the Fisher King, Brian Blessed, last-minute crises, sheer exhaustion, and inspiring the next generation of directors…

◾ DANIEL O’HARA

Director of: 2015’s Under the Lake/Before the Flood (written by Toby Whithouse)

◾ ED BAZALGETTE

Director of: 2015’s The Doctor’s Meditation mini-episode (written by Steven Moffat), The Girl Who Died (by Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat), and The Woman Who Lived (by Catherine Tregenna); also, in 2016, the first three episodes of BBC Three spin-off Class, scripted by Patrick Ness, and the upcoming, Moffat-penned Doctor Who Christmas Special, The Return of Doctor Mysterio

◾ DANIEL NETTHEIM

Director of: 2015’s The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion (written by Peter Harness and Steven Moffat)

◾ DOUGLAS MACKINNON

◾Director of: 2015’s The Husbands of River Song (written by Steven Moffat); previously 2008’s The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky (by Helen Raynor), 2012’s The Power of Three by Chris Chibnall), 2013’s Cold War (by Mark Gatiss), 2014’s Listen (by Steven Moffat), Time Heist (by Steve Thompson and Steven Moffat), and Flatline (by Jamie Mathieson)

Let’s talk tone. The literal gloom of The Woman Who Lived – shooting the first 19, 20 minutes in semi-darkness – is unusual for Doctor Who …

ED BAZALGETTE: “Well, thematically, there was a feeling in Catherine Tregenna’s script that Me was trapped in this eternal midnight. The story – and our interpretation of it – was inspired by the Margaret Lockwood film, the Gainsborough film, where she plays a highwaywoman [The Wicked Lady, 1945], but I wanted it to feel very, very real. The power in the idea that ‘here is a woman who lives forever’ was really important to me. That has a real darkness to it.”

Much of The Woman Who Lived is essentially a two-hander between Peter Capaldi and Maisie Williams [who played Me, née Ashildr]. The darkness gives that a real intimacy, I think; the equivalent, almost, of black-box theatre [a simple, unadorned performance space].

EB: “Yeah, I really, really loved that. Reading the reactions and responses, I’m not sure how much the Doctor Who audience did, but I think the darkness worked; to explore Me’s emotions, that feeling of betrayal. ‘You’ve played fast and loose with me. I was an experiment; now look what you’ve done. You’ve left me in this sodding eternity. Who wouldn’t want to live forever, until they actually have to do it?’ – that anger, that frustration, that fear that there’s no way she can get out of this. It was like humanising geology, really.

“But I would love to have… well, we probably could have, but… when I get in the TARDIS and go back and remake The Woman Who Lived, I would really, really, really go much further with the inside of Me’s house. I would make it a very extreme place that’s much more ‘Miss Havisham in Great Expectations’ – that sense of every single microorganism decaying, everything crumbling, this sort of putrid smell of decay in the air while everything rots around this person who’s permanently fixed at 18 – to amplify that sense of forced endurance in and around everything else that’s ephemeral.”

“I enjoy directing, and I probably will do more – but our directors are all up-to-the-minute, and they know how everything on Doctor Who works.” PETER CAPALDI THE TWELFTH DOCTOR

So what a Doctor Who director really needs is a time machine?

EB: “Yes. [Laughs] We all do it: we all re-edit and rework everything we do, in our heads, after we’ve done it. If anyone anywhere is ever going to be flexible with space and time, it should be the Doctor Who production team. That’s how I’d love to go back to The Woman Who Lived.”

DOUGLAS MACKINNON: “You mustn’t. Even if you think you’ve nailed it, you just have to look to Steven Moffat [Doctor Who showrunner] to realise that being creative is about moving forwards all the time, not looking back.

“One of the pleasures of directing is, even if you think you might have done a scene before, you haven’t, because it’s in the context of a different story. When I turn up on the TARDIS – and I’ve done that for eight episodes now – I don’t think, ‘Oh, it’s the TARDIS again. How boring.’ I think, ‘Great! A new, different story!’ Until The Husbands of River Song, I’d never had a chance – neither had anyone else – to direct a scene where the Doctor enters the TARDIS and sees it as though – or treats it as though – it’s his first time. ‘My God! It’s bigger on the inside!’ That day was such a treat, to do that scene with Peter. That’s why directing is so much fun. Every day is a fresh challenge, and every day you’re part of a new story. That’s why I love doing it.”

Tonally, do you approach a Christmas Special differently to a regular episode?

DM: “Particularly last year, after what had happened in the 2015 series – with Clara’s departure and how dark that had got – what all of us, starting with Steven, wanted to do was a handbrake turn and just make something that was great fun, on Christmas Day. Truth is, Steven was a little bit late with the script, but the clues he was giving me, as he was writing it, were that it was a screwball comedy, so I went off and watched every screwball comedy I could get my hands on, again, and again, and again. And I read a lot about the genre, about how screwball comedies work; the tone of them. I employed that into the episode, then Doctor Who itself takes over, so you’ve sort of got a sense of the genre, but you don’t have to hold on to it.

“With a Christmas Special, there’s definitely a peculiar feeling that a lot of people are turning up to watch the show who aren’t regular viewers, and who need to be entertained, and kept awake, and made to sober up. With that in mind, tonally, everything pointed us to making something that really screamed from the corner of people’s living rooms: ‘YOU CAN HAVE FUN HERE!’ In terms of directing choices… the flying saucer, for instance. I looked at about 40 or 50 designs for King Hydroflax’s flying saucer. All the different Dark Star [Bryanston, 1974] looks, all the dark greys and silvers, just didn’t feel right to me, so we went into a much more 50s-style, Forbidden Planet [MGM, 1956] area – and we ended up with a big, bright red one.”