The Tamaras Crisis – In Production!

I remember so much about the making of this story that I’d like to devote quite a few posts to recalling the fun we had and the problems we encountered during production.

By this point we had moved on in leaps and bounds with both ideas and resources, including a complete cast of seven plus a cameraman. Andrew’s dad, Peter, owned a semi-professional video camera which he was only too happy to have the opportunity to use to it’s full potential, and he showed as much enthusiasm and enjoyment throughout the production as we did. I also invited my sister and her boyfriend at the time to join us as part of the cast, and I was astonished that they both agreed to be in it, but then I don’t think for a moment that they thought we were actually serious about making it anyway.

The title sequence we created for this story was also an enormous improvement on the first two. Again it featured the use of the video feedback technique, but the results this time were a lot more successful. By this point I was no longer playing the Doctor and so it was a photograph of David, Andrew’s brother, which was used for the sequence as he was our new Doctor. This time we managed to fade the photograph in and out of the feedback footage to great effect, and this resulted in some interesting ‘melting’ effects to the face as it faded out, similar the original Pertwee sequence from 1970. We also ‘borrowed’ a short sequence from one of the Star Trek films for the very beginning of the titles, and although it was a bit of a cop out as far as original creativity was concerned, it did make it look much better! The end result is actually rather good, and fitted in very well with the Peter Howell arrangement of the theme which we used this time instead of the original version.

I thoroughly enjoyed putting the title sequence together – it was one of the many high points of this production. We spent hours experimenting with the feedback technique, trying out different lighting effects and backgrounds in order to achieve the best results, and although the finished sequence isn’t brilliant it was the best we could come up with. Of course that now means that we have several minutes of ‘test footage’ on the master tapes which would no doubt be the perfect Easter Egg were we to put the story onto DVD……..

On the subject of master tapes, it’s ironic in that it was only whilst I was arranging to obtain the screen grabs for these posts that we discovered the master tapes have deteriorated somewhat since 1991 through lack of use and refused to play soon after they were put back into the camera. Consequently the images used here are from the master edited copy rather than from the original tapes, hence the quality is not brilliant.

Next Episode: The Tamaras Crisis - Building the TARDIS!