I love the exterior of Scorpio, the interior not as much
The interior was definitely done on a tight budget, possibly made with bits of at THHGTTG's ship set cut up for part of it (just not the turntable), but I still love it. Must be the textures.
According to Producer Vere Lorimer, the Scorpio's bridge was intended to resemble the look and feel of the Nostromo; being run down, with steam and oil leaking from pipes. But the BBC instead wanted a well lit, clean bridge for the cameras.
A similar thing happened a couple of years later with Dr. Who "Warriors of the Deep", JNT and the director wanted the interior of the underwater base to look more like an oil refinery, dark and claustrophobic; instead the BBC insisted on a well lit, spacious set, which exposed the flaws in the Sea Devils and Silurian costumes.
Cool info, thanks! The run-down look definitely would have helped...
Yeah, the videotape camera in use often had problems with darker sets and rendered too much noise. Instead of fiddlefaffing with lighting to get a balance, they just set the lumens to 15-million and flick the switch as it apparently saved on the time otherwise needed to do proper lighting, not needing film, and other factors. It was a generally common practice from what I recall...
The Myrka in particular suffered from the brightly-lit base. In dark corridors, it would have worked. But in brightly lit flashy modern 80s sets, nothing would stand a chance no matter how well made. That said, season 21's frequent use of bright sets did have a certain futuristic look.
Of note, also speaking of Doctor Who where they were using the 1" PAL videotape by then as well*, 1989's "Ghost Light" is a particularly great example of excessive noise due to dark sets. There were problems galore due to the low lighting and, indeed, having watched the blu-ray with the deleted scenes added that make the story almost coherent as a result**.... and do note that the deleted scenes came from a VHS copy of a timecode but cleaned up... the VHS footage melds together disturbingly well with the original VT source, thanks to all the noise cleanup algorithms used rendering everything softer as a result. (the differences are still there, just not as pronounced.)
* the 2" stuff generally looks better but from what I recall reading the benefit of 1" was postproduction editing, and for another tangent I'm to this day floored by how terrific the noise removal processes are, since Colin Baker's coat should otherwise have loads of fuzzy noise as the reds degrade the worst. Yet more often than not look near-pristine.
** why this is the only story whose original masters ended up deleted but at least the VHS copy still existed