The demands of the most ambitious serials prompted the BBC Visual Effects Department to enlist freelance contributors.

By JONATHAN HELM

Ian Scoones and Bernard Wilkie at Bray Studios for Frontier in Space. Model filming for the story took place between 14-25 August 1972. Photos © Mat Irvine.

 Models seen in Gerry Anderson productions, parts of which were reused in Frontier in Space: the shuttle capsule from the Joe 90 episode Most Special Astronaut (which forms the rear of the Draconian ship), the mini sub from Joe 90’s Arctic Adventure (1969), and the moon shuttle from UFO. Parts of the moon shuttle were added to the mini sub to create the Earth cargo vessel.

The Doctor Who production team had big plans for the programme’s tenth anniversary season, including a reunion of all three Doctors, an epic space opera featuring the return of the Daleks, and the introduction of several terrifying new aliens and monsters. The BBC’s Visual Effects Department needed outside help to bring these ambitious stories to life.

On 13 April 1972, producer Barry Letts wrote a memo to department head Jack Kine, outlining what he called “story intentions of the future”. With the production team still working on the final two stories of the ninth production block, it would be another four months before work was due to begin on the serials outlined in the memo. However, the storylines that Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks had in mind for the anniversary season were all very effects-focused, and they wanted to give Kine and his team prior warning of what was to come. As a result, the memo included a brief summary of each storyline and the special effects that would be required.

Doctor Who QQQ – Frontier in Space

The Doctor and Jo are involved in the beginnings of a 25th Century Space War between the Empires of Earth and Andromeda. The Andromedans are humanoid but alien in feature. In addition to the obvious things such as ray guns, we have the Ogrons returning, and the odd Dalek. There will be one strange non-humanoid monster whose form has not yet been decided. The story is deliberately being planned to use as many of the space-ships and space-exploration models in the Thunderbirds store as possible. So, there will be quite a lot of model filming.