We’ve had a few weeks’ rest and recuperation but we’re now back with a rare pleasure: former Doctor Who producer Philip Hinchcliffe (1974-1977)!
There is a bit of a story behind this one. Back in 2018, Gareth Kavanagh invited James McLean and Christian Cawley to do some live podcasting and panel interviews at the VworpCon event, held at the PrintWorks in Manchester.
Philip Hinchcliffe was supposed to be one of several guests on a panel discussing the TARDIS and its evolution throughout Doctor Who’s history, but on the day the dice didn’t roll quite as planned.
As a result, James ended up with just Philip Hinchcliffe, along with a few technical challenges. However, thanks to AI audio fixes and judicious editing by Christian, we’ve ended up with quite an interesting – and rare – chat with Philip, who gives some quite unique answers and stories on a topic that he doesn’t usually get drawn on.
Enjoy!
Shownotes
- VworpCon preview podcast
- James’ blog about set design on The Golden Girls
- Tardisbuilders.com
- The DNA of Doctor Who: The Philip Hinchcliffe Years
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Episode transcription
Below is a transcript from this episode of Kasterborous.
This special edition features our lost interview with Philip Hinchcliffe
Christian Cawley: Welcome to Kasterborous! I am Christian Cawley and James McLean will be here a little bit later on. But not the James that, you know, a, James from, six years ago. this special edition of Casterbrus has finally been completed. This is the episode that we’ve, mentioned a couple of times in the past. This features our lost interview with Philip Hinchcliffe. We chatted, well, I should say James chatted with Philip Hinchcliffe at, the Vworpcon convention in 2018. And it’s fair to say that the intended discussion did not transpire in the way it had been planned. There were supposed to be various people there discussing the TaRdIs and its purpose in dot two and various other elements to the magic police box of the show. The problem was that when the day actually arrived and guests had been moved around and re attributed to different discussions and rooms and what have you, it was now just James and Philip Hinchcliffe rather than James, Philip Hinchcliffe and various others. Not ideal, clearly. The resulting discussion is a brave attempt to salvage, something from the fact that you’ve got a room full of people, you’ve got Philip Hinchcliffe and you’ve got someone interviewing him. So that’s enough for me, really. I think. I’ve set the scene for you. There were technical challenges. I’ve, edited this as best as I can to improve the audio quality and to remove anything irrelevant that doesn’t really, stand up to, any sort of scrutiny. there are some interesting elements to this discussion, which is why I decided, and, with James agreement, to bring this to you now. So get ready, head to your own TARDIS because we’re going back to 2018, to the print works in Manchester, to the Warpcon event. And here is James McLean and Philip Hinchcliffe.
Set becomes so important to the audience that it changes over time
James McLean: Okay, so just. I’ll just give you a bit of an idea of why we’re talking about this. I sort of talked to Gareth about this. I did a blog a while ago for a website called, critical studies in television. And something that really starts to interest me was sets and, floor plans and production. yeah, yeah, sets. So, like the Tardis console room. I was actually looking at the golden girls, that famous science fiction, and how that set becomes so important to the audience. Their home becomes somewhere where the audience are really interested in. And over the years, that set changes. And since then, fans have actually tried to work out whether that house could exist. And they’ve mapped it out and it’s become an impossible house because they kept changing the set. But what was interesting was that for audiences, that set meant a lot more than it did for the people on the production. And I don’t mean that in a rude way, it’s just for production, you’re on a time scale. You’ve got to get something out, programme out. You’ve got limited money. You’re not so worried about whether corridor a really links to corridor b, but audiences are. And I think that’s because it becomes a place which becomes our home as much as the characters home. So I thought, with Doctor who, we have this with the console. And while Philip probably doesn’t realise it, and something I’m hoping that I might try and explain if we later forget the PowerPoint, his era was actually quintessential for Tardis console and for Tardis in general, his people and his own input created changes and put narrative in there, which would stay with the show till today. Which is why I thought Philip, unsurprisingly, I don’t think he realises this. I think is really important to this topic.
Plus, as I say, I don’t think we talk about sets in terms of production
Plus, as I say, I don’t think we talk about these places, you know, sets and tardises in terms of production here. And I think that’s kind of interesting, too. I mean, Tardis is for Tardises. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but there are fans who make Tardises. I don’t know. Has anyone been to tardisbuilders.com? no. Yes. Yes. A fantastic website where you’ll see people actually recreating, like, the Tardis sets of your era, and they’ll be there looking for every piece of the items of the. What they originally constructed from and replicating that.
Philip Hinchcliffe: You’re not going to ask me that, are you?
James McLean: No. No. God forbid. No, no.
Philip Hinchcliffe: I don’t know the answers.
James McLean: No. Well, no, we’re not going down that route. But I think it’s interesting that audiences have that sort of love of something which, from a production point of view, is part of a programme, is part of moving narrative.
Philip Hinchcliffe: So I thought it’s like the rover’s return, isn’t it?
James McLean: Yeah, absolutely. And for audiences, I mean, you can go and visit that set. Can’t you go to Rovers return? And obviously, at Cardiff recently, you can go and see some of these recreated or half recreated TARDis sets in the flesh.
When I took over the show, I dismissed it as what kids show
So I just thought, to start off with, I would make this really easy on the turn. I just thought I would ask, Tardis is, what are your men? What are you? What are your memories of them. And very honestly, what do they mean to you? If they mean very much at all? okay, do I try the mic?
Philip Hinchcliffe: Can you hear me?
James McLean: Oh, great.
Philip Hinchcliffe: Okay. Yeah. The first time I saw the time, Washington around about the time of, Was it Kennedy’s assassination or was it the cuban missile? And I saw William Hartnell and I don’t know which episode it might have been. The very first episode, I can’t remember. but, I dismissed it as what kids show. I just got my university purveyor, you know, it’s terribly superior. And, tosh. so I never really watched it at all. In those days when we went to university, nobody watched television. So, you know, I didn’t see the programme at all. And then I suppose now again, I must have seen now and again, trout story, not because I was watching it, I probably, I don’t know, hopping through the channels. So, it didn’t really mean a lot to me at all. When I took the show over. obviously I became acquainted with the history of the show, and realised, I had to honour, you know, all the history and, you know, the basic sort of elements of what made up the show. But one of my first decisions, really, was to try and take the show in a different direction, away from Earth, into more fantastic sort of space areas and, alien worlds, or maybe alien worlds in the past with aliens coming up. So it didn’t seem to me that there was so much need to actually utilise the Harvard’s set. and I kind of felt, probably that the scenes that took place in the TARDIS that I’d seen, were rather static and not a lot was going on. And I wanted to get into my stories a little bit more sort of narrative thrust or narrative impetus, if you know what I mean. And so for all those reasons, I thought, well, we don’t need to really have a lot of scenes in the Tardis. And it’s okay when they take off and they arrive somewhere, you know, it’s useful. So, in a way, I’m not the Tardis man.
James McLean: Oh, that’s brilliant.
Philip Hinchcliffe: I took it out of the show for a long time, but I know that the fans are, very attached to it and, obviously it is an iconic part of the shadow. but that was my approach.
Doctor Who was made in a television studio in the sixties
James McLean: Did you, did you, do you feel that your, What would you say when you watched the show in the sixties and you, the way that you saw the Tardis on the television, do you think that had a sort of mitigating factor into what you felt it would mean to the show. Whether it was relevant from how you’d seen it or do you think it’s more the fact that you were looking at it there and then how you wanted the show. And it was just something like you say that you didn’t feel had much consequence to the story.
Philip Hinchcliffe: Well, I think m my view of the show when I took it on. I mean, it was made in television studio. Television, studios are flat floors with cameras that in those days were the size of darling and trunk. All that like darling. And so they had to have flat floors. So the difficulty was, Every set or wherever the story went, if you didn’t have. If you weren’t careful, people would just think they knew that they were in a studio. You couldn’t create, a world that, you know, they could believe it was somewhere else. We were not making it, we weren’t making it on, film.
James McLean: We were still.
Philip Hinchcliffe: Yeah. So basically, What I wanted to do was show in simple terms to, Get. Get a bit more of an adventure story. But you can’t. It’s very difficult to tell an adventure story in these sets in a relatively small television studio as it was in those days. I mean, now the programme is made, although it has a running set, it.
James McLean: Is made much more like a movie.
Philip Hinchcliffe: And they get out and about much more. So, I didn’t really want Too many, what I thought were static scenes, chatting about things in the targets. you could move the story on. You could impart information to the audience, where the story was heading, you know, in another set, basically. And so the audience had a sense of adventure. You know, you’re moving on somewhere.
James McLean: So you never felt this is a good one. You never felt that the There was a need slow the story down. I remember someone saying with Blake seven that they quite liked having standard sets because they could then just situate characters in one space which was already built and already paid for and let the dialogue take up the time because they didn’t have the money to do all the other things. You never had that with Doctor?
Philip Hinchcliffe: Well, yeah, we did. I mean, that’s. We did have. We did. We did use the, TARDIS for those sorts of scenes. Absolutely. Yeah, we did. But, I just wanted to cut down the use of it. Really good.
Philip Hinchcliffe: So, yeah, that. Although I had a special affection, for the guitar set. And of course it was quite difficult because you had a match the outside and the inside and often you were cutting the film which, you know, different to the, electronic energy of the television camera. And also you have a problem. How do you see through the opening door of the TArDiS? And that used to take a lot of time up in my days. Frisian sort of placed something in and lay it over. So usually, it walks out of the TARDIS and then you see him coming out. You never see the drawing with it. So it’s quite a problematic set, although it had its uses.
James McLean: Did you. Did you have any responses from fans at the time? Because we’d had in the sixties.
Philip Hinchcliffe: I can’t remember.
James McLean: I can’t remember. I don’t mean specifically, but you did ever get any feedback? Because, I mean, John Nathan Turner would often say that.
Philip Hinchcliffe: I can’t remember any feedback about the clutter snow.
James McLean: We had something.
Philip Hinchcliffe: I don’t know, it’s a terrible picture.
James McLean: I’m sorry. It was the best. Terrifying.
Philip Hinchcliffe: No, no. Yeah, but it is lifted off a video so it’s like free spread of me sort of like, mind, I think.
I just thought I’d highlight all your stories. So can we move forward one more again
James McLean: I just thought I’d highlight all your stories. And ones in yellow are the ones which you had the Titus console set.
Philip Hinchcliffe: Oh, that’s interesting.
James McLean: And we had two console sets in your time. We had this more traditional whitish one which I think was, I think, kind of sharp.
Philip Hinchcliffe: Sharp.
James McLean: He created the pomegranate era, I think referred to. And then you and Barry.
Philip Hinchcliffe: New breeds. Yeah, we did that one. This one.
James McLean: So can we move forward one more again? I feel like such a king very quickly. I’m just sort of the flow of it for people who might not be aware of this and maybe fulfil it as well, somehow it changed. And it’s interesting enough, as I pointed out later, how different the one in new commission was compared to the others and it didn’t count that same sort of aesthetic change. It’s just sort of visible in the other ones.
Michael Pigwood obviously cast away last month from Doctor Who
Can we move on one more also? So these were the more laser ones and obviously we’ve got a new one coming out soon. Michael Pigwood obviously cast away last month, which is a great shame. We did this amazing sort of set. Would you have been frustrated with that sort of set? Because it would be a standing set. I mean, if you could imagine doing doctor who’s for your sort of idea of what you thought doctor who was. Would something like that?
James McLean: Just be something that would be in the way or would you feel that you could use that or you’d be interested in a sort of. Well, yeah, I mean, you use that.
Philip Hinchcliffe: You need to do it. Yeah, because you’re doing Tony’s. Well, we were doing 26 episodes a year. but, it’s just they haven’t changed much.
James McLean: I mean, if you watch Doctor who now, this is still using the same way that, you know what? They talk a bit and they roll around a bit through some battle or something, hitting them, and then they exit. And yet here we have this massive. Would that be. I’m not wanting to be critical about it. I just wondered whether from a producer’s point of view.
Philip Hinchcliffe: Well, no, it’s just a better sense. It’s more film, more filming, it’s more interesting. and so, you probably use it more because it’s a bit of space. You could probably have action scenes in that, which, if we had any action scenes in our TARDIS I thought, it really doesn’t sound, but it would just be a sort of fake grapple.
James McLean: Ah, it just wasn’t believed. We will have a video of one of those rare action scenes in a minute. Interestingly. What was it? I can see a foot. It’s like.
Philip Hinchcliffe: This is turning into. I met Eric and Ernie when they came in shooting with furniture. That’s actually. That’s what this is the comedy show. We tricked you into thinking it was about autonomous.
James McLean: It’s a pitch. This is a pilot. We’re going to see if we can get to BBC to pick it up more. Cool. Then.
Philip Hinchcliffe: We had to rebuild the, bees box. It used to live in the outer unseen ring around the dagger. And it just, you know, got bashed about, really. You know, forklift trucks used to bash into it. When I walked in on studio days or. No, I walked up to White City from my office on shepherds Tush green. And, all the studio during, you know, like the White City building. I used to go back to go through the outer seam ring and, I double flash a bit more. So, yeah, we had to make a new one, a copenhagen.
James McLean: I think it was muscular main dragon as well.
There’s people who are fascinated in this as Clayton Hickman on Twitter
When you introduced this set as well, which the prop you had originally, I think was the very original prop for the exterior. They’ve been going for many years. And again, there’s people who are so fascinated in this as Peyton Hickman on Twitter. I mean, he sort of shows exactly where these damages happen. Massive target. At the same time, it is interesting because it’s history. And do you find it interesting that, because history is often not made to people thinking this is going to be historical is about things where you were just doing a job. Well, now you’re finding 40 years later, people have got you in front, in front of a mishmash of interested parties, talking about something which was exactly. It’s crazy how.
Philip Hinchcliffe: And also a lot of what’s written is, it’s not quite true, it’s not quite accurate, but it gets repeated and repeated and repeated. So in the. Then that becomes a new reality where actually it’s not. And, you could correctly say.
James McLean: History is written by the winners or the.
Philip Hinchcliffe: Person allowed is voiceopedia. I don’t know, I don’t do that. But some people who couldn’t manage a Wikipedia editorial board, they get a word oneself on.
James McLean: I mean, it’s true. I mean, I saw when I was researching this that there was someone who was. That first white room was totally rebuilt in your era. And then others who said it was a rollover, from Barry, lets his day and rebutch. And it’s like, well, you can see where.
Philip Hinchcliffe: But this is, this is. Except for me, I can’t answer.
James McLean: But like I said, I mean, we’ve got everyone in here. I mean, who’s interested in Tardis is here. Maybe not to that level, but who finds the Tardis a fascinating thing? I mean, it has a cultural significance in a weird way.
Philip Hinchcliffe: Yeah.
James McLean: It affects people so deeply on such a level. And I just wonder if that has changed over these.
Barry: I think there are enormous story possibilities with the TARDIS
I’m just curious, does anyone remember the wooden Tardis? The children, the one you did. Does anyone remember that one that we’ll have a picture of in a second? I’m not going to ask that.
Philip Hinchcliffe: I remember Bob Holmes. I don’t know why. Then when they undo Camden bomb, it might have been barely in Newbury, suddenly sort of, can’t we do a new TARDIS say, goes with a story? And Bob Holmes said, well, yes, it could always be a reserve, you know, reserved TARDIS sort of control room. And so we just invented that. and then that made me think that really we couldn’t tell, could hint stories inside the towers if we really wanted to, because I’d never really taken a store. I don’t know whether since my era they’ve done that and I haven’t found it, but because it’s, you know, even how large a tonne of it is. I remember kicking ideas around where this employment is. Kind of interesting for me was just. We did pick ideas myself about, you know, people or aliens or whatever, actually sort of being, hidden, you know, gaining entry. So gaining entry into the palace is quite an important motif, I think, because we have the mandagora. he got in somehow and I’m sure they pick a lot of other stories after my era, which you’ve done is. So I did point that and having a whole adventure inside, but it would have meant big in sets anyway, to prevent sensing, or maybe to play part of it outside, as if it was a section, a landscape or something within the parliament. So we did actually toiled the third scientist, but it never really, came to everything. So I think there are enormous story possibilities with the Parvis, which probably haven’t really been fully explored. You know. so, you know, it’s about the alien, really. You know, they’re stuck in jet and infects Aparna and you don’t know where it is. And the Doctor can’t remember where I. Yeah, it’s so vast, you know, probably there might well be parts of the carnivores that no human being or Doctor or anyone who has ever set the foot in. Actually, if you think about the logic of scientific logic behind it, it could be enormous. It could be how extensive the world could be for the TardIS. Nobody’s really gone down that way.
James McLean: No, I think there was, in the nineties when it finished, was one of the books. I think it might have been Paul Cornell’s book, which did that and did a reveal at the end that they were actually still inside and the whole story had gone through a book form until they made that turn. Now, that was very clever. But, yeah, I think you’re right. Thinking the new series, I’m sure people can correct me if I’m wrong, is about like, really two episodes which have really looked inside the TARDIS would you say? Yeah. Am I the only Doctor who’s always surprised me? Because now we’re in. How do you find out about. I watch television sometimes and I see Doctor who. I mean, it was like, there’s two. There’s a story, a journey to the central, the TARDIS which dealt with. There was another one which springs, the Doctor’s wife, which sort of dealt with the TARDIS and what it is and what it means. But given that we’re now in an age where Doctor who’s been made by people who watched Doctor who and were fans as a kid, I am surprised that Tardis has not become a more explored thing in the way of saying, which, again, I think is interesting. But anyway, this was the one.
Philip Hinchcliffe: This is the Barry even one, isn’t it? Somewhere there should be the shaping mirror.
James McLean: Yeah, it was a nice. A nice. And almost that people were aware that it being a control river, that you assume that was actually an apparatus of the Tardis and it’s actually just a shading mirror. I think it’s almost like postponement. can we move on to the next slide and see what the PowerPoint is? Destroyed everything. That’s great. yeah. Our fans have even built sort of suggested how. I know this is actually official BBC stuff or what Tardis could actually look like if you actually mapped it out. Who’s the next slide? This is going to be hideous for me now because I’m not going to remember. Okay, so, yeah, I was going to do. I’m trying to remember how I was going to do this because this PowerPoint’s not going to help me anymore. I was going to have six.
Your era was the first one where we actually saw the TARDIS
I think it was things which I thought that you did in your era or your production team and yourself did for TArdis and what was important about it and what people might not realise. This is one of them. And this is as far as I’m aware. And if anyone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think your era was the first one where we actually saw the TARDIS was more than a control room and maybe a couple of side rooms. Yours was the first where we actually had corridors and boot cupboards. And as you said, Barry Newberry’s.
Philip Hinchcliffe: But I mean, the thing, I mean, the fact on that is maybe this was not done by what we plan to do. What happens is a story comes in, a story has certain requirements and so you get a story and it needs a little bit, bit more space because this action has got happened that year. And so, you add these little appreciations on and so it’s totally haphazard and according to the story.
James McLean: Yeah.
Philip Hinchcliffe: so we thought, oh, I know this, you know, let’s do a new build at the Todd is, you know, it’s just sort of what we saw in demand, that’s all.
James McLean: Which in the end that becomes. It’s a bit like a deadly assassin and Bob Holmes having a 13 regenerations, the Doctor being how long the Doctor can live for that, being part of a story which then becomes part of the myth, which becomes part of the legacy, which is now where our.
Philip Hinchcliffe: Well, I think that’s one of the problems of doing very young ones, different producers, different writers and directors coming along and, you know, if you were bound by everything, that could get better, anything. So you just have to sort of patch up, but inconsistency or ignore them.
James McLean: But that’s. And that becomes amazing when you get fans who become producers of the show like Russell Davis and, Stephen Moffat, who then take those errors or those small things and make them into something serious and, you know, they’re.
Philip Hinchcliffe: Find the meaning.
James McLean: They find the meaning in the mistakes. Absolutely. Ah, or the, selective story things for one story.
The show is made in Limegrove Studios
Next slide, please. So, I mean, so far I’ve had the fact that you had a wooden TaRdIS which was like no other TaRdIS before, no Tardis after it, which, oh, I’ve done on this side. that this was a very different TARDIS design that Barry did, which that you commissioned and you were happy, comfortable with, compared to traditional thing. This had never been done before and this idea of a secondary control room was never done before. And again, that becomes law, that becomes part of the myth, which I think is pretty special. Tom, looking quite wonderful there.
Philip Hinchcliffe: The thing is, I didn’t. This one man, not much worked. It all looked phoney for me when I doctor this. Sort of doing this and doing that and doing this. It all looked a little bit fondly, and not very leavable. So that’s one of the reasons I didn’t like too much going on in the tarnas. However, I think the new tarnaces sort of evolve, but they actually look a bit more plausible. You know, the stuff that they have, the push and problem.
James McLean: There’s so many barriers in a way because you’ve got these sort of, sort of like support systems sit around it.
Philip Hinchcliffe: Yeah.
James McLean: You’ve got a table in the corner and a chair, I think there is tweezer.
Philip Hinchcliffe: And you’re sort of looking because.
James McLean: Interesting. Janet Fielding Tegan said, last month, actually, on Twitter, when asked about her TARDIS which was essentially this sort of type one used to say, and she said, hertard does not compare to the glory of the modern one. All those bells and whistles, multiple layers. Ours was a traditional barren wasteland with the console in the middle. So she sort of echoes. What you’re saying is that in the end, there’s not really much to do. There’s not much to block. There’s so much.
Philip Hinchcliffe: I mean, the origin of the. I’m guessing the origin of the hardest set is that, the show compare to the first started. The show is made in Livegrove Studios. Live studios get highly, other than the smaller woman, similar shoot. And so, I don’t know how many sets they had. Very few, I think. Then it didn’t move to white city. So that’s why they had this one large set for them and they just sat energetic. Wasn’t much else they could do in our tiny studio. That said, there’s not that kind of thing for it.
James McLean: I think it’s interesting, as you say, the difference within the production eras in your era, you wouldn’t. That would become my family do the same. It’s quite.
We had a slide about the TaRDIS being two boxes
Can we move to the next slide? I don’t know whether this is going to work. Oh, yes, we had. And again, this would have been on one of the videos. This very iconic scene between, Louise James and Leela and Tom Baker. about the TaRDIS being two boxes, one very far away being the large box, the one very close to you being a small box. If you could keep them at those distances and fit them together, you could have this idea of how the TarDIs is bigger on the inside and smaller. And this again became part of the legacy. And before this, it, it wasn’t really talked about. So I think it’s interesting that come. Maybe it’s a time of the show’s life when you get about twelve years in, where maybe you do end up having to talk about these things because they become things that, children who have grown up start to ask about. I don’t know, but this was in your area as well.
James McLean: Beautifully laid out on this barren wasteland of a slide.
What’s the next slide to disappoint? There’s my scheningbird
What’s the next slide to disappoint?
Philip Hinchcliffe: There’s my scheningbird.
James McLean: There it is. There’s the Chevy right there. Honestly, now, because I’ve got no writing, it’s hard to say what this one was going to be, but I think we’ve done the ties. Is there anything else he wants to.
Philip Hinchcliffe: Know any more about starters?
James McLean: oh, there we go. We’ve got pets. yeah, the things that Bob Holmes put in of sleep. Time 40 capsule optional energy is a residual of time travel. These all became law within your production pivot.
The original version of this slide had a lot of audience noise in it
Okay, so can we just go on to the next slide? I think we’re pretty much at the end of the slides. Yeah, that’s, that’s the end of the slides. That’s, that’s good.
Christian Cawley: I hope you enjoyed that, everyone. I certainly did. I’ve listened to a few times and I think it’s, it’s a shame that it’s taken so long to be able to bring it up to decent audio quality. The, original version recording, had a lot of audience noise in it, which was, disappointing to say the least. And is the main reason why we didn’t use it for so long.
There is a new book series being launched by cutaway Comics called DNA
Please give this a share. As you probably know, there is a new book series being launched by cutaway Comics called the DNA of Doctor who. This first edition is the Philip Hinchcliffe years, which ties in nicely with our interview earlier, on. So if you head over to Cutawaycomics Dot co dot UK and cheque it out, it’s available to pre order with shipping in September 2024. There are two editions, a paperback edition and a hardback edition. The paperback is 29.99. The hardback is $49.99. These, are a four sized books of 204 pages in length. That’s it for Casterbrus this week. We’ll be back soon. Until then, goodbye.