THE DWM INTERVIEW
UNDER the Loch
More than one kind of monster lurks beneath the surface of Loch Ness. Some of them live in a strange spaceship designed by Nigel Curzon. This previously unpublished interview was conducted in 1995.
Interview by PHIL NEWMAN
Nigel Curzon.
Photo © Phil Newman.
William Russell (Ian Chesterton), Mark Eden (Marco Polo), Carole Ann Ford (Susan) and William Hartnell (the Doctor) rehearse a scene for the epic historical saga Marco Polo (1964).
The Trojan Horse model featured in The Myth Makers (1965).
Nigel Curzon’s first Doctor Who assignment came long before he designed the bizarre, part-organic spaceship in the 1975 adventure Terror of the Zygons. In fact, his involvement went right back to the programme’s very first series. Nigel came to the BBC after starting out in the Pinewood Studios art department in the late 1950s. “Later, I went freelance,” he remembered, “working at Shepperton and then ABC TV around 1962, assisting on Armchair Theatre and the original Avengers. Then I applied to the BBC just before BBC2 was opening up, but didn’t get the job. I reapplied in 1964 and got a job as a design assistant at TV Centre.”
As a junior in the BBC’s Design Department, Nigel found himself working under such senior designers as Raymond Cusick and Barry Newbery, who alternated responsibilities on most of Doctor Who’s first series. In particular, he remembered working on the Newbery-designed Marco Polo (1964), recalling “all these tents, with the whole studio filled with sand. Except, of course, it wasn’t sand, it was stuff called Bettorex, a sawdust substitute, because studio management wouldn’t allow us to use sand in the studio. It was most peculiar, when you think about it, because sawdust is more flammable. At least sand won’t burn!”