In the 1980s, director GRAEME HARPER broke the rules of production with spectacular results on serials such as The Caves of Androzani. He brought the same dynamic approach when he returned to direct David Tennant’s Doctor. “Now we’re all artists,” he tells NICK SETCHFIELD. “We can paint our pictures.”

GRAEME HARPER

A BBC cameraman at work at Lime Grove Studios in the 1960s.

The viewing gallery at Lime Grove.

Pace and energy: two qualities director made his fateful arrival on the planet Androzani Minor. These are the same qualities that Graeme brings to a conversation, along with a ready laugh and a lifetime’s worth of insights into the realities of TV production.

“I know that Peter Davison thought I was completely bonkers,” says Graeme, recalling the making of The Caves of Androzani (1984), his first foray as a Doctor Who director and a story that saw him push the possibilities of how studio drama was made. “He might have been correct!”

One of the most acclaimed directors in the show’s history, Graeme’s career spans both the original run of Doctor Who and its 21st-century episodes. He followed Androzani with Revelation of the Daleks in 1985, then returned in 2006 with Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel, going on to helm Tennant-era touchstones from Army of Ghosts (2006) to The Waters of Mars (2009).

Graeme’s CV also straddles two distinct ways in which Doctor Who was made: multi-camera and single-camera. Joining the BBC as a runner in 1966, he found himself part of an entrenched tradition of drama production, reliant on an electronic studio equipped with up to five cameras that would record a scene simultaneously.