Exit stage right

[JoeZhang]

I was watching some First Doctor material on netflix (sorry I forget the episode) and I notice that the Doctor and Crew exit stage right (doors on the right) in some episodes.

Now you could argue that we are simply viewing the Tardis from the other side but sticking to an real world production point of view - when did the shift over to exit stage left occur? or was there a mixture of the two for a while?

[DWF]

JoeZhang wrote:

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I was watching some First Doctor material on netflix (sorry I forget the episode) and I notice that the Doctor and Crew exit stage right (doors on the right) in some episodes.

Now you could argue that we are simply viewing the Tardis from the other side but sticking to an real world production point of view - when did the shift over to exit stage left occur? or was there a mixture of the two for a while?

During the Harnell era all the TARDIS doors in the interior shots are all on the left, there wasn't enough stage for them change it for one thing. I don't any exits from the TARDIS being on the right even on the new series. They've never had a 360 Degree TARDIS set so the door is either on the left or in the center.

[Candlelight]

In The Daleks 1 they had a 'console pov' shot and exited straight back.

[JoeZhang]

DWF wrote:

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During the Harnell era all the TARDIS doors in the interior shots are all on the left, there wasn't enough stage for them change it for one thing. I don't any exits from the TARDIS being on the right even on the new series. They've never had a 360 Degree TARDIS set so the door is either on the left or in the center.

They exit to the right at the start of the Sensorites.

[DWF]

I hadn't seen The Sensoritres for a while but now I know why it was changed, they changed the location of the set.

Meanwhile, Baverstock had not yet approved a full second season for Doctor Who. One of the issues affecting the programme's long-term future was its studio assignment. Producer Verity Lambert had for some time been negotiating to move Doctor Who out of the cramped and technologically unsophisticated confines of Lime Grove Studio D. On April 30th, she finally secured permission from John Mair of the BBC's Planning Department to make use, whenever possible, of Studios 3 and 4 in BBC Television Centre as well as Lime Grove Studio G, although the latter's elongated dimensions made it generally unsuitable for Doctor Who. In particular, it was noted that the spacious sets needed for The Sensorites -- originally scheduled for Lime Grove D -- would be incompatible with Lime Grove G, and it was too late to rewrite the serial to fit into those facilities.

[Mark_Nguyen]

I'm not as expert on the first couple seasons of TARDIS use. Was the console room a permanently standing set in those days? They used it pretty much every story, so I guess they could've let it stay between episodes they weren't using it for. OTOH, I do know that for many years the console room was only pulled from storage and set up piecemeal for the episodes it was needed for, then shoved back into a warehouse until they needed it again - resulting in different apparent sizes through Troughton's years. Somewhere in Tom Baker's tenure the set was standardized enough that it would actually LOOK the same between appearances, which is where it stayed with minor cosmetic alterations until it was damaged beyond repair prior to McCoy's final series...

That said, even though the current TARDIS set is permanently standing, we haven't seen all that much of it so far this season. We know it's been changed since they moved it to the new studios...

Mark

[diankra]

Also, The Sensorites is one of the occasional early stories when they do a 'flow through' - the camera follows them out of the doors, and then (after a really clever cut) the policebox is there where the TARDIS interior seemed to be. That might have an effect on the camera blocking.
IIRC, Web Planet is another with an exit to the right... which is also a story where we see the lab alcove that's on the side of the console room that the cameras usually look through.

[JoeZhang]

When do we first see the Power Room? at the start of The Mind Robber, the second Doctor enters it via a door on the right of the stage - it's not really clear if it is meant to be next door to the control room or down a corridor.

[OmahaStar]

Mark_Nguyen wrote:

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I'm not as expert on the first couple seasons of TARDIS use. Was the console room a permanently standing set in those days?

Not at all. DW, until the modern series, did not have its own standing set. It always used a shared studio space, booked in advance. With the first two Doctors, especially, they had limited time to shoot an episode - one block of a few hours per week - and that included any rehearsing that needed to be done. As soon as they were done with their 4 hours or so, the set would be torn down and the materials placed in storage, as the net set was about to go up.

A few years ago, DWM had an interview with a designer on the original series, whose name I can't remember. In it, he was touring the standing sets, and lamenting that during the original series, they could never leave things up. Plus, they have more money to spend on sets today.

[The Borgified Corpse]

I was just watching "The Time Monster" a little while ago and I recall that one of the TARDISes had its entrance on the right. Although, I think that might have been the Master's TARDIS.

And during Season 14 when Tom Baker was using that brown, wood panneled control room, the entrance sort of seemed more upstage than anything, although it did perhaps trend more towards the left than the right.

diankra wrote:

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Also, The Sensorites is one of the occasional early stories when they do a 'flow through' - the camera follows them out of the doors, and then (after a really clever cut) the policebox is there where the TARDIS interior seemed to be.

Speaking of flow throughs, there's this partial fanfilm called "Devious" included on the bonus feature of "The War Games" (included because it features a mid-regeneration Doctor who is actually in between his 2nd & 3rd incarnations and Jon Pertwee makes a cameo at the end of it). In it, there's a scene where the Doctor walks entirely around the TARDIS 360 degrees, touches its surface at a few points, and then walks inside and the camera follows him through the doors and it all appears as a single seamless shot. I've never seen anything like it, not even on the new series, and I have absolutely no clue how they did it. Does anyone know how they pulled off that shot?

Here's the video. The scene I'm talking about starts at about 4:41.

[diankra]

The Valeyard wrote:

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A few years ago, DWM had an interview with a designer on the original series, whose name I can't remember. In it, he was touring the standing sets, and lamenting that during the original series, they could never leave things up. Plus, they have more money to spend on sets today.

That would have been Barry Newberry, whose first work on the series was on the remount of the first episode (ie, he had to rejig Peter Brachaki's sets from the original version, including the TARDIS, to avoid the production problems that had partly led to a remount being necessary), and his last was on the 5th Doctor/season 21 story The Awakening, 20 years later.

[Alidar Jarok]

The Borgified Corpse wrote:

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Speaking of flow throughs, there's this partial fanfilm called "Devious" included on the bonus feature of "The War Games" (included because it features a mid-regeneration Doctor who is actually in between his 2nd & 3rd incarnations and Jon Pertwee makes a cameo at the end of it). In it, there's a scene where the Doctor walks entirely around the TARDIS 360 degrees, touches its surface at a few points, and then walks inside and the camera follows him through the doors and it all appears as a single seamless shot. I've never seen anything like it, not even on the new series, and I have absolutely no clue how they did it. Does anyone know how they pulled off that shot?

While I can't specifically say, it does appear to be a composite of two separate images. You can sort of see the different lighting around the Doctor's shoulders compared to the rest of the scene. I suspect he isn't even walking, but walking in place while an image of the TARDIS (filmed by a cameraman walking around it) is placed next to him. He is probably able to touch it because it's a solid wall where he is and he eventually opens the doors on that wall and goes through.

Really cool shot, though. I haven't seen them attempt to do anything like that in the new series.

[The Borgified Corpse]

Alidar Jarok wrote:

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While I can't specifically say, it does appear to be a composite of two separate images. You can sort of see the different lighting around the Doctor's shoulders compared to the rest of the scene. I suspect he isn't even walking, but walking in place while an image of the TARDIS (filmed by a cameraman walking around it) is placed next to him. He is probably able to touch it because it's a solid wall where he is and he eventually opens the doors on that wall and goes through.

Really cool shot, though. I haven't seen them attempt to do anything like that in the new series.

That's what I first thought. But it seems unlikely that they'd be able to rotoscope him in front of a fake TARDIS so easily. The CSO in that shot is generally pretty poor. The top of the actor's hair is generally missing. And yet there's no edge problems between his arm & the TARDIS, which tells me that the TARDIS is literally there on set with him. Is it possible that there's just a blend between the shots of the TARDIS interior & exterior that I'm just missing?

[ToddKent]

The Sensorites:



The Web Planet:



I always assumed we were just getting the reverse angle of the control room when this happened.

[Steve Mollmann]

The Borgified Corpse wrote:

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That's what I first thought. But it seems unlikely that they'd be able to rotoscope him in front of a fake TARDIS so easily. The CSO in that shot is generally pretty poor. The top of the actor's hair is generally missing. And yet there's no edge problems between his arm & the TARDIS, which tells me that the TARDIS is literally there on set with him. Is it possible that there's just a blend between the shots of the TARDIS interior & exterior that I'm just missing?

Also, the Doctor both casts a shadow on the TARDIS and has a reflection in it-- that seems far too accomplished.