When production of Doctor Who resumed in 2004, costume designer Lucinda Wright devised a new look for the series’ stars.

Interview by PAUL KIRKLEY

Visitors to Lucinda Wright’s Devon home can’t miss the BAFTA she won for her work as costume designer on the 2005 series of Doctor Who. She’s made sure of it.

“I’ve got it on a shelf where, if the light hits it right, it blinds you as you come in the door,” says Lucinda, laughing. “I can’t bear it when people say, ‘Oh, I keep mine in the loo.’ I have it on display, with a picture of the whole team. BAFTAs don’t come along very often, and I’m very proud of it.”

As well she might be. Before the show’s millennial comeback, the popular image of Doctor Who was still – not entirely fairly – of people dressed in tin foil and milk-bottle tops. So to go from that to a BAFTA in 13 short weeks was quite an achievement.

“Everyone was a bit like, ‘Doctor Who – are you sure?’ But I thought it was such a fantastic opportunity,” says Lucinda. “The scripts were brilliant, the ideas were great. As a designer, you could really design everything you’d always wanted to do.”

Of course, this same freedom – the chance to create costumes spanning the whole of time and space, from Victorian Cardiff to the year 5.5/Apple/26, with no house style to limit the imagination – also posed a huge challenge.

Key to the Ninth Doctor’s look was his battered leather jacket, which had to look like it had – literally – been through the wars.

“I approached each episode like a separate film drama,” explains Lucinda, who estimates she dressed around 150 principals and 1,500 supporting artists across Series 1’s 13 episodes. “There were so many different elements to it. I remember at one point I was working with four directors at the same time. You had to run to stay ahead. I knew it was going to gather up speed, and the time for prep would get less and less.”