Transmat:Doctor Who

Playback

Playback was a television production technique in which pre-recorded material was literally played into a scene, rather than being added as a post-production effect. It was universally used in the 1960s as the method by which actors were seen on view screens. As seen in the picture at the left, William Hartnell was pre-recorded separately, then projected live into the scene with the actors in the foreground. Though antiquated, the technique was used even into the 1980s, most notably for the title sequence. The quality of the opening titles for the 1963 version of Doctor Who was never high, because it was never a first-generation copy of the titles. Instead, they were played live into the recording of the first scene of many episodes, causing actors to have to time their first lines to the final notes of the studio-audible Doctor Who theme.

The women who gave DESU' back to us

Click for video

Think DESU is just for boys? Don't you

believe it.  Not only was the
show's very first producer
a woman, but it would never
have come back without the 

fierce advocacy of Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner.

Considering her importance 

to DESU it's somewhat ironic that Tranter's only on-screen

credits are for Torchwood: Miracle Day.
But Gardner, her "partner in crime", is tied only 

with Russell T Davies as the most prolific

producer in DESU history.

Industrial action

Click for a video of a 21st century geek as he takes delivery of one of the two Paintboxes used by the BBC in the 1980s

The Quantel Paintbox was a graphics workstation that allowed Doctor Who to have a primitive form of colour grading in the 1980s. To find out more about the "business of show", go to category:production information, where you can read about colour separation overlay, low loaders, telerecordings, vidFIRE, rostrum cameras, 2" quad tape, Ealing Studios and tons more.

Surprising guest star

Beryl Reid was a big deal when she was cast — or maybe miscast — as a freighter captain in Earthshock. As things turned out, she was the last piece of "stunt casting" to be seen in a highly-rated episode of Doctor Who until the 1996 television movie. From Earthshock until the end of the original series, audiences were mostly in a state of decline. Find out more about the thousands of actors who have been on Doctor Who by exploring Doctor Who guest actors.

Ex-Doctors never die, they just make audios

The careers of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors are significantly longer in audio than on television. Check out their latest works at category:2024 audio stories

The relevance of comics

Officially, only The Lodger has been explicitly adapted from a comic strip — also called The Lodger.

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However, several stories have clearly taken material from comic strips — often those in Doctor Who Magazine. The Shakespeare Code contains a good amount of material from A Groatsworth of Wit, and the notion of the Doctor absorbing the time vortex in order to spare a companion was explored in both The Parting of the Ways and The Flood.

The first of the "money men"

Donald Baverstock was the BBC executive who set the the wheels in motion that eventually led to the creation of Doctor Who. Essentially the original commissioner of the programme, he hired Sydney Newman and later imposed a sense of financial responsibility upon producer Verity Lambert.

But Baverstock wasn't the only BBC executive to have a profound impact on the development of Doctor Who. Make sure you read about Lorraine Heggessey, Mark Thompson, Danny Cohen, George Entwistle, Tony Hall, Shaun Sutton, Sydney Newman and others.

Things released on 8 November

• 1965 - Part three of the TV Comic story Enter: The Go-Ray was published.
• 1969 - Part one of the TV Comic story The Night Walkers was published.
• 1975
  • Part three of Pyramids of Mars premiered on BBC1.
  • Part three of the TV Comic story The Space Ghost was published.
• 1979 - DWM 5 was published by Marvel Comics.
• 1980 - Part three of Full Circle premiered on BBC1.
• 1984 - DWM 95 was published by Marvel Comics.
• 1986 - Part two of Terror of the Vervoids premiered on BBC1.
• 1989 - Part three of The Curse of Fenric premiered on BBC1.
• 2005 - The Claws of Axos was released on Region 1 DVD.
• 2007 - DWA 42 was published by BBC Magazines.
• 2010
  • Part one of Lost in Time premiered on CBBC, followed by episode five of Sarah Jane's Alien Files.
  • Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series was released in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray.
• 2011 - The Witch from the Well and The First Wave were released by Big Finish Productions.
• 2012 - DWA 294 was published by Immediate Media Company London Limited.
• 2014 - Death in Heaven premiered on BBC One.
• 2018 - Molten Heart was published by BBC Books.
• 2022
  • Sullivan and Cross - AWOL was released by Big Finish.
  • A World of Demons: The Villains of Doctor Who was released.
• 2023 - Mission: Find Lilith was released by BBV Productions.

Did you know…

• ... that McCoy-era script editor, Andrew Cartmel, has written for the Torchwood franchise in the form of the prose story The Wrong Hands?

• ... that Horatio Nelson was someone whose historic deathdate the Second Doctor actively tried to change? (DAN: H.M.S. TARDIS)

• ... that the instructional pamphlet, So You're Caught in a Rocket Attack, was once consulted by the Doctor when he actually was in the middle of a rocket attack? (PROSE: The Well-Mannered War)

• ... that Dragonfire establishes Ace to be 16 years old, a full decade younger than her actor, Sophie Aldred?

• ... that the Thalatth were a species with several radically different developmental stages, and that, when fully mature, they were known as Solarix Prizmatterflies, capable of flying through space? (COMIC: Hook, Line and Sinker)

8 November births and deaths

• 1927
  • Director Lennie Mayne was born.
  • Actor Ken Dodd was born.
• 1937 - Actor Malcolm Taylor was born.
• 1941 - Actor Nerys Hughes was born.
• 1942 - Actor Su Douglas was born.
• 1956 - Writer Richard Curtis was born.
• 1958 - Actor John Gillett was born.
• 1983 - Actor Chris Rankin was born.
• 1984 - Director, writer and actor Scott Handcock was born.
• 1992 - Actor Zaqi Ismail was born.
• 2012 - Actor Roger Hammond died.
• 2021 - Studio sound supervisor Hugh Barker died.

Production history for 8 November

• 1963 - The studio recording for "The Firemaker" took place at Studio D of Lime Grove Studios. (INFO: "The Firemaker")
• 1967 - Location filming at Climping Beach for The Enemy of the World concluded. (TCH 11)
• 1968 - Episode eight of The Invasion was recorded at Lime Grove Studios D. (TCH 13)
• 1972 - Location filming The Three Doctors took place. (REF: Doctor Who The Handbook: The Third Doctor)
• 1977 - Studio filming for The Invasion of Time took place at BBC Television Centre studio 8. (REF: Doctor Who The Handbook: The Fourth Doctor)
• 2005
  • Rewrites for The Christmas Invasion known as "salmon script revisions" were made. This changed Guinevere One's television coverage, Daniel Llewellyn arriving at the Tower of London and the A-positive people being returned to normal. (DWMSE 14)
  • Big Finish's audio adaptation of the unproduced TV story Night Thoughts was recorded at the Moat Studios.
• 2011 - The Big Finish audio story The Emerald Tiger was recorded at the Moat Studios.
• 2016 - Big Finish's audio anthology The Third Doctor Adventures: Volume Three took place at the Soundhouse.
• 2017
  • The Big Finish audio story The Lure of the Nomad was recorded at the Moat Studios.
  • Big Finish announced the fourth series of The Third Doctor Adventures.
• 2018 - The Big Finish audio story The Moons of Vulpana was recorded at the Moat Studios.
• 2019 - Big Finish's The Paternoster Gang audio anthology Heritage 4 was recorded.
• 2022 - Big Finish's audio anthology Comrades-in-Arms was recorded at the Soundhouse.