| This weekend I was invited, along with a few
other people, for a tour around the Millennium FX factory near London. As
many of you know, Millennium FX is the multi-award winning producer of
Creatures, Prosthetics and Animatronics for many of the BBC's shows
including Dr Who (or course), Torchwood, Little Britain and
The Catherine
Tate Show. So Neill Gorton, Chief Exec and Founder of MFX gave us a
fantastic look around the factory, creature workshop and "R&D" department
where we concentrated on the work they're doing to Dr Who, past, present and future (oh and btw
we needed to sign an NDA in case we came across any Series 3 work).
We arrived at the factory on a dull wet Saturday morning, and looking at
the outside of what is quite an uninspiring, begrimed building you really
would have no idea what treasures are on the inside.....
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Millennium
FX |
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| Well how's this for a work shop bench. An
original Ood, a Sycorax, a trio of Cyberman helmets, Autons and in the
foreground the working Clockwork Droid. |
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| Above, this is the original animatronic Ood,
with eyes that light up and move (as do other parts of his face). The "mask"
itself is made of foam latex, with the tentacles made from silicone (and they
felt disgusting!). Neill at MFX is looking to potentially make replicas of this although not from foam
latex as it tends to degenerate over time - which is fine for a TV show but
not so good for a collectable. Below what is probably the same prop as seen
in "The Impossible Planet" |
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| ....next the maquette produced to illustrate in
3D the original design concept.... |
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| ...and the original prop from another angle. |
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| Below, a prototype version of the Sycorax
leader |
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| ...and again the original clay design macquette
for the Sycorax leader. |
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| ...Still on the Sycorax theme, one of the
warrior helmets used in the Christmas Special, this one had LED's in the
eyes. It was made up of several different layers of fiberglass which gives
it a really great translucent look. |
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| Jumping back in time a couple of pics of
original Series 1 Auton heads, the first wasn't wearable but was able to
rotate around the neck 360 degrees through some elementary animatronics.
Unfortunately this specific "Exorcist" type scene was cut from the final
show. |
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| ...and below a wearable version of the same,
made of a thick though flexible plastic. |
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| Below - The Hoix as seen at the beginning of
the Love and Monsters episode (thanks Julian!) |
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| Below, one of the Cat face appliances from the
opening story of Series 2, New Earth |
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| and below the original Santa mask from "The
Christmas Invasion"........ |
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| Below, a pile of original Cyberman parts -
these ones a new one made for the forthcoming Dr Who exhibition. Now I'd
really like to get my hands on these! |
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| ...and a couple of the original designs for the
new series Cyberman. I'm going to add a whole new section on the realisation
of the original design, and the composition of this great costumes. |
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| This next one is fantastic, it the original
Clockwork Droid prop from "The Girl in the Fireplace", which IMO
epitomised the superb quality of the writing from the new series of Dr Who. |
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This is a really wonderful prop, a hand cranked joystick
in the droids lower back provides this prop with excellent movement on the
head and neck. I played around with it fro a few minutes and you can see how
the design allowed the guys working it to really get a performance from it. |
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| Next a composite of two of the masks seen in
publicity stills from the BBC.... |
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and a photo I took of a couple of the original masks used
in the show. It looks like the designers at Millennium FX used Viennese
masquerade masks as a basis for their design. As with the Cyberman
they're now reproducing "replicas" of these, and I'll be adding a section on
these later. |
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| ...and one of my personal favourite episodes,
the gas masks from The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. If you look
closely enough you can see the flesh coloured latex around the edges which
was used on the actors faces to give the impression the mask had grown out
of the face. These eye lenses in these masks came from a Russian gas mask,
with the guys at Millennium
adding the rubber parts and filter around this creepy eye styling. This
particular one's missing the "filter" - for the show
they used dummy end caps which were removed between takes to help the actors
breathe more easily. |
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| These episodes featured the introduction of
"Captain Jack", who featured in the new BBC offshoot series Torchwood.
This gives me a great chance to segue into one of the most interesting
designs of this new series, the Cyberwoman - man this site isn't just thrown
together! |
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| Above and below the original clay sculpt of the
Cyberwoman design by Neill and his team |
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| Finally another shot of that great work
bench.... |
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| Ood heads, Diet Coke and Autosol metal
polish...these guys really know how to throw a party. Many thanks to Neill
and Lisa for the time and effort put into the day. |
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Back to the Dr Who section |
