MICHAEL PICKWOAD
“Ithought, ‘What on Earth do they want to see me for? I’ve never designed a spaceship in my life…’” In 2010, Doctor Who needed a new production designer. Despite a long and varied career in film and TV, including the cult movie Withnail and I (1987) and an ambitious reimagining of the classic series The Prisoner (2009), Michael Pickwoad was surprised to be approached. Resplendent in brightly coloured bow tie, looking every inch an unknown regeneration of the Doctor himself, he remembered watching a few episodes and coming to the conclusion that he needn’t have worried. “I realised that, actually, less than 25 per cent of THE DWM INTERVIEW Doctor Who is spaceships. It’s diff erent times and all sorts of things. In fact, I’ve probably used just about everything I’ve ever learnt on this show.”
Michael replaced Edward Thomas - who’d overseen the design of almost every episode produced between the series’ revival with Rose (2005) and The Big Bang (2010), the last episode of Matt Smith’s first series as the Doctor. “When they saw me, they explained that they wanted to put a bit more eff ort into the more normal bits of it, which would then make the science-fiction bits even better.”