Michael E Briant
COLONY IN SPACE
I was still on the staff as a PA when Barry gave me the opportunity to direct this 6 part story after seeing my work on a few episodes of Z Cars, Newcomers & The Doctors - a man of great imagination and trust! To say I was scared - 'creatively challenged' - is an understatement.
I feel I failed to utilize properly the wonderful set designed by Tim Gleeson and the robot mining machine was not perhaps the most frightening of monsters. What appears on the screen is perhaps only 5% of the intended footage. It looked like an old tank, it moved like an old tank, it attacked like an old tank and was about as intimidating as an old tank - it was an old tank. By the skill of editing and leaving most of it on the cutting room floor it is just about OK.
The beautiful dome buildings were made out of quadrants and in advance of their time and I wish I had made better use of them - I quite like the microwave oven type thing I thought up - 2 colonists are chatting away preparing a meal - they put a couple of pills on a plate - put it in the oven and out comes a roast and 2 veg - well that was the intention and long before microwaves were ever invented. I liked the wrist watch with the moving image on it on the Masters (Roger Delgado) wrist - like modern mobile phones except that technology was si fi in those days...
Looking back at COLONY IN SPACE I feel it had lots of good ideas but I had failed to capitalize by integrating good visual images with the script. I had tried to impose quite ambitious ideas rather than mould them into the story.
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WHO AND ME his latest book is now available to download for £10 Do you want to find out everything you can about Dr Who in the classic days?
Barry Letts was the producer of Dr Who from 1970 to1975. He tells you things in his book, Who and Me, that you’d never expect to hear. He tells you about the grinding hard work hidden behind the glamour of television. He tells you what it takes to produce the sort of show that grabs people as Dr Who has done. He tells you what it was like to be an actor in the pioneer days of live drama on TV – and the secrets of success if you are a writer or a director
What Jon Pertwee was really like? How Katy Manning and Lis Sladen were chosen to star alongside Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker? How Patrick Troughton was one of the first British TV stars? How Roger Delgado became the Master the moment the character was born? What it was like to be asked to take over a failing programme and be part of the turnaround that made it the smash hit that is one of the top shows thirty-five years later?
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Barry
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THE DIRECTORS vol. 2 There is an excellent (cos I am in it!) DVD just out of an interview conducted by Cris Dunk of Christopher Barry and me at the Panoptican 7 in 1986. in which we discuss directing the Daleks, Cybermen, Wookey Hole, William Hartnell, Pat Troughton, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. A few bits about how we go about the conception of a production of Dr Who and stories from our days as directors of the series. Keith Barnfather and his editor Anastasia kindly sent me a copy and I found it excellent viewing, interesting and entertaining. If you are a fan of the 'old Dr Who's' it is for you. PRODUCED BY REELTIME PICTURES Ltd 2006 or keith@reeltimepictures.co.uk
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