Doctor Who: Too Hot For TV
Doctor Who: Too Hot For TV
S7 E05 - Philip Segal Interview
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As MayGann continues Dylan is joined by Philip Segal, the driving force behind the 1996 TV Movie to talk about films genesis, production and what happened afterwards.
Artwork for MayGann provided by Artfully Liam https://www.instagram.com/artfullyliam/
Doctor Two Hop for TV.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to Doctor Who, To Hot for TV. We are the podcast that looks at all things, expanded universe from the world of Doctor Who. As most of you will be aware, this month we've been celebrating 30 years of the Eighth Doctor and the TV movie, jumping into reviews of various different Eighth Doctor spin-offs. But today we're doing something a little different. I've got an interview with Philip Siegel, the executive producer behind the movie and the man who fought long and hard during the 90s to bring this iteration of the show to the screen. I had a call with Phil a couple of weeks ago and he very generously gave us time to do this interview. Doctor Who goes off air in 1989. When were you first aware that it might be a project or a property that you were interested in to pick up and bring to US networks?
SPEAKER_03Uh 1989. I uh I've been a lifelong Doctor Who fan. I wrote about this in my book, Doctor Who Regeneration. I sat on my grandfather's lap and I watched an unearthly child starring William Hartnell, and I was hooked. You know, it was interesting because I think a lot of people had their eye on, obviously, on the project and the and the character for for a long time. There were some feature films in development, uh, there were some other things, but it was a moment in time at the BBC where the last thing they really wanted to talk about was Doctor Who. It had run its course to them, it had been run into the ground. Uh, they didn't want to spend any more of their budget on it. They feel like it had done what it needed to do. It was time to move on. And I think you could say that's true of um most television shows, but not Doctor Who. Doctor Who's different, it's special. And um it was never going away. They just didn't understand that. I just began my uh in those days, it was a letter writing campaign uh because we didn't have social media or email. You know, you either made a phone call or wrote a letter and then hoped you got a r response. And uh so that's when it actually started in earnest for me. Um and uh it took almost eight years. It was a seven, uh for sure, a seven-year journey uh to get those rights back. And uh it really all hinged on two people, really, uh Tony Greenwood uh uh Enterprises and Alan Yentop, uh, who was the uh director of the BBC. He was a passionate Doctor Who fan. Uh he didn't really share that, I think, with most of his colleagues. I think he he he just was a curious artist and you know he he loved the character. And so um I started my campaign. It didn't get to him actually uh and until quite a few years later when I was working for Steven Spielberg. I ran his television company, and I was producing a show called Sequest for uh NBC and Universal. And uh this would have been around 1991 when we were actively uh creating and producing the show, and we were on uh uh I think we were on nine sound stages uh in Hollywood. It was unheard of. It was a it was an epic situation. Well, what happened was every year the different uh they they they were called the May screenings, and you were invited, if you were a buyer from all over the world, you'd come to Hollywood and you'd be invited to the studios and you would screen their their top uh offers for the year, and you could either buy the show or not. Well, I got a call from the head of the studio saying Alan Yentob was in town and he wanted a tour of the Sequest stages, and would I conduct a tour for him? Of course, you know, typical me, um, the arrogance level uh knew no bounds in those days for me. And uh I said yes under the guise of this poor man thinking he was gonna get a tour of Sequest. Well, I meet him at the first stage and with an entourage, and as we're walking through the stages and talking about the show, I started weaving in my, you know, my life story. And then I was, you know, I was uh an import from England. I was an Essex boy, and I was a passionate Doctor Who fan. And would he help me get the rights uh for Doctor Who? And uh I wouldn't let up. I mean, I was relentless. Now, of course, at this point, you have to understand I'd been on letter writing campaigns and phone calls for many years, starting when I was at Columbia Pictures. So I'm really sort of uh abbreviating the history for you. But uh needless to say, he just said to me, Well, the next time you're in London, why don't we have lunch? And now that could have been a great way of getting out of the conversation. It could have been, it could have been an honest uh, you know. So I said, Oh, that's wonderful. Well, two weeks later, I had my assistant book me a plane ticket to London and call his office and say, hey, Phil's in London. He you know he wants to take you up on your lunch offer. Well, he he did. He uh he he did. He mount he met me in in Chelsea at one of his local uh you know haunts that he loved too. His driver brought him over, and we had a lovely lunch and we bonded. We really did bond. And um we talked about um a great many things. Uh we talked about family, we talked about the BBC, we we talked about his passion for projects and and and you know the politics of Doctor Who. And it was a very, very important conversation for me because I learned an awful lot about him. Uh he learned an awful lot about me. And from that day forward, he took my phone calls and responded to all my correspondence in in a very timely fashion. And that was really the epicenter of it all.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. It's it's funny you mentioned Tony, completely sort of unrelated. A few years after I left uni, I lived with Tony's daughter for a couple of years just in uh a house share in London. Oh, did you? And I met Tony a couple of times uh through that. Uh nice.
SPEAKER_03He was uh he was a lovely man. I lost touch with him over the years, but uh you can imagine in those days it it was very funny because uh enterprises had basically been gutted and he was doing everything he could to keep things alive. He he loved the idea of of uh a relaunch of Doctor Who, and he was behind it a thousand percent. And what people don't know is at the time he was my sort of intelligence officer, and he would share with me private conversations that were being had internally that I wasn't supposed to be privy to. So he was a he was he he became a good friend and he was very, very helpful. He he uh was always quick to warn me about a problem or an issue that would come up, and we'd talk about how to navigate it. And if I didn't have an answer, I would just call Alan Yentob and be honest with him. And and and and he he was very diplomatic. He was an incredibly intelligent man, uh, and he was very helpful in navigating a lot of those things because there were there were there were people there who didn't like the fact that I was trying to do this. It was annoying to them.
SPEAKER_02You mentioned there was a bunch of other projects around a bunch of other people vying for the rights. I know original series producer Verity Lambert made a pitch for the show at one point. There was a film called The Last of the Time Lords, which had just been dragging on forever. There was a weird 30th anniversary celebration called Lost in the Dark Dimension. Was it Tony sort of keeping you aware of those? And did you ever feel like there were a realistic threat to your pitch for the show?
SPEAKER_03Well, I didn't look at it through that lens originally. He kindly shared with me a very confidential document about all the deals that had been done and all the deals that were on the table. I saw everything. So I I knew exactly what I was dealing with, but you know, I had a secret weapon. I worked for Steven Spielberg, and no one could trump that. You know, and I knew they couldn't. Uh so I just pushed forward with it. And uh, you know, I discussed it with Steven, and he was intrigued. And, you know, he always let me do what I wanted to do. He never interfered. Um, he had his requests and his passions, but he always let me pursue things like this. And um, so it it was really it was really good. Unfortunately, you know, the there were politics involved at Universal and issues that were w made it complicated for me to continue to do it with Stephen, but we got it done in the end, obviously. But yeah, it was a challenge, you know, every every every day was a challenge. A new phone call with a uh an issue, a fire to put out, a problem, a political this, a political that. And that led, of course, because Leonard Nimoy was attached to a one of the feature films to direct it. That led to a meeting with me and Leonard. And uh he would have much rather been in the in the in the in the Amblin camp uh than the camp the he was in. He was a professional, he was a consummate actor, he was a gentleman, and uh I I guess after a few meetings with these so-called producers, he he didn't like he didn't like the the the business, the way it was being handled. And he I I think he felt very quickly that he was being used to actually continue to hold on to uh rights because they were trying to get it financed and didn't even get close.
SPEAKER_02There was a lot of that. And I think the BBC really didn't know the value of of their property at that point. So the the people who had the feature film rights really didn't have any they they'd made one very low budget horror film, but that but that was about it, and certainly not, you know, they were proposing like a $30 million film or something. It's like you don't know.
SPEAKER_03I mean, yeah, I mean, uh didn't know the value of things. You have to understand in those days you you had the BBC, which was this public broadcasting entity, and you had enterprises. Uh the BBC was not allowed to have financial interest in their shows. But but because of a loophole in their law, nothing prohibited them from owning a company that could have financial interest in things. And that's why BBC Enterprises existed. But the politics internally was such that they never valued anything. I mean, if you go back in history, they allowed the writers to control the rights to their characters. I mean, it was absurd, you know. I mean, Terry Nation, a lovely man, his daughters are uh lovely, but the mere fact that he was entitled to own something that he should have been a work for hire on was extraordinary. And that was true for all of those characters, except a couple that they were able to claw back. They had even sold off the rights to the to the main title theme. I don't get credit for this, but I bought it back, I got it back from Warner Chapel Music. Oh, wow. Uh they couldn't even use they couldn't even use the the the theme to Doctor Who. Wow. I mean, it's like every corporation, you know, they all have their internal politics and their clicks, right? Yeah. And good luck trying to figure out which camp you're supposed to be in on which week, you know. Um and I, you know, yeah, I it it was really it used to fascinate me. One of the first times I had a really big meeting with them, and I remember it was three o'clock in the afternoon, and literally the halls emptied out for tea, and the tea cart would come round with all the the the pastries and the cookies and the tea lady. It was fantastic. Brilliant.
SPEAKER_02So you commissioned John Leakley to write what became known as the Leakley Bible by fans, I think. I don't know what it was known as internally, that sort of contained your vision for the show. And then there's various drafts of uh different pilots with different writers, and these are all very much a reboot. Why did you feel that a re reboot was the the way to go at that point rather than deciding on continuing the show?
SPEAKER_03Well, it was uh a matter of course, really. Uh Alan didn't want um he he he wanted it to be uh a sort of a fresh kind of launch. He didn't mind me using any of the law that I wanted to use, but he wanted it to be a fresh launch. I also had an issue with um the studio uh and and the various networks worried about whether or not anybody cared about this character and how in God's name do you explain who he is and how he gets around and what he does for a living. And so it it was it was very, very, very difficult. I also was plagued with the fact that in those days, Universal Studios funded a hundred percent of Amblin Television for Steven, but they were 50-50 owners, and we had uh all the creative control. But having said that, without their blessing, it would have been very difficult for me to get what I wanted to get, uh, even though I could have pushed my way into things, and I I did push when I felt I needed to. But John Leakley uh w was not my choice for uh a writer. I had to choose from writers in the Universal stable who had overall deals with that studio. The head of the studio insisted on it, that he was uh financially tied to these writers on huge overall deals in those days. And so I had to pick from his library of writers, and that made it very difficult. So I had to find the writers that I felt were complementary and do the best I could with what I had to work with. I was not allowed to go outside. So, you know, my hands were tied on a lot of levels. Um, and if I wanted to continually move the chess piece forward, uh, I had to continually make uh choices and sacrifices that on some levels I knew could potentially hurt me, but on other levels I had sold my soul to the devil. This was my the these were my partners, and if I wanted to keep going, that's what I had to do. So John um was the best of the worst of the evil. And I don't say that to, you know, uh in a negative way. John is a lovely man, and he was incredibly kind and passionate about wanting to get involved in this. He loved the notion of it, but John had John suffered from one problem, and that is rider lazyitis. And so if it's not in front of you and and it's not all been developed or or researched for you, you know, and then even then they they would pick and choose the bits that they could grab onto and run with and not really follow your focus. And so John uh was a big fan of Raiders of the Lost Ark. And so started borrowing quite heavily from the Indiana Jones mythology for this character, because that was the way he was able to get his head around how to get into something that he didn't have a lot of experience with, you know. And and so that was a challenge because I constantly had to explain to him that we've got this incredible world with 750 plus episodes of the original series to dive into. We can do so much. We can borrow from those mythologies and and create our own universe from that. But that was a struggle for John.
SPEAKER_02So within those scripts, those early ones, there was a bunch of redesigned Daleks. Some of them are a bit like Terminators, some of them, there was some great design work, looked like spiders. Was there any sort of trepidation in redesigning something as iconic as that?
SPEAKER_03No, no trepidation at all. I think that every writer and producer who came on to Doctor Who from the very beginning bolted on their own mythology and their own ideas, whether it was from casting to wardrobe to everything else. What didn't change, obviously, was the basic fundamental look of those uh elements, simply because if they existed in the wardrobe department, it was one less thing that had to be created and paid for. But I loved the notion that Daleks were this sort of uh alien creature that lived inside a shell that they had to they had to to survive. But in order for them to get around, we thought it was really wonderful for them to be able to open up and have these claws that allowed them to creep around and walk around. And I do believe that that got lifted in in later years. You know, I I was I was I was happy to to sort of break it all open and look at it all because that's the fun of it. You know, you you really don't you've got a really huge challenge, right? When you're doing something like Doctor Who, as a producer, you've got two tracks you have to keep in mind. You've got your fan base, and then you've got everyone else you're trying to bring on board who don't know who Doctor Who is. And my primary job for the network when I was making the movie was to bring everyone else along, not the fans, because I knew the fans would be there. You know, kicking and screaming, they would come and watch. Because they just would. Yeah. You know, we all do that. Uh, you know, whether you're a Star Trek fan, uh a Star Wars fan, it doesn't matter. Pick your genre and pick it. We all know, you know, even if we moan about it and go, oh, that's that's not good, that's not, they shouldn't be doing that, but I'll give it a look. I'll I'll I'll take a look. And so, no, I I I didn't. I I I had no I had no trepidation at all.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Uh there was a man called Jean-Marc La Fissier who later wrote a book called The Ents Doctor, which dealt with a lot of your early drafts of the script. What was your relationship with him and how did you feel about this book?
SPEAKER_03Well, that was a very complicated situation because him and his wife would have you believe that I reached out to them and and sought their counsel, which just was not true. Right. Um, but that's that they had uh a very interesting way of trying to sort of parasitically involve themselves in what I was doing. Um and I did everything I could to sort of be helpful and be friendly because I didn't I didn't need enemies, but I was also frustrated and quite frankly irritated by them. But I feel that they had done what every other, you know, accessed Hoovian lover did, you know, and even up until today, you know, if if you've managed to get yourself in inside the world and you've gotten rights to whether it's write books or whether it was to produce toys or ancillaries, you know, you you you feel like you're part of the the world. And you feel like uh and and in those days, you know, it's interesting because I think they were the very kind of um, they were the essence of what social media became, you know, when anybody with a uh an app and a smartphone all of a sudden became a journalist. Um but they knew very early on that no one else was doing what they were doing. And so they became these so called experts in a world that they really weren't experts in at all. And I can say that, you know, I say that now because 30 years of Past. I wouldn't have said I wouldn't have had this franker conversation with you 20 years ago.
SPEAKER_02So you mentioned earlier you said you knew the fans would show up, but you did do a couple of conventions and magazine interviews and popped up on message boards and things like that before the film was even in production. How important to you was it to sort of build a relationship with the fans?
SPEAKER_03It was very important because I had to prove to my American studio and network that this was not only a valuable franchise, but it had deep roots and it had a lot of fans. Because sci-fi in those days was very difficult to get onto terrestrial TV. It even to this day, you know, it succeeds in streaming, but on terrestrial, it was just too narrow and it was too expensive. And so they lived and died those networks by one thing ad revenue. They didn't care about the content. The content was an annoying filler that had to go on the screen waiting for them to start making money again. And so I knew that I had to do everything in my power to get to get everybody talking about this and get everybody excited about this so they would.
SPEAKER_02Talking of getting lots of people to talk about it, there were loads of headlines in the years leading up to the movie. And it was always things like David Hasselhoff is going to be the doctor, a hundred million dollar film is to reboot Doctor Who and things. Did those headlines have any effect on you as a production team?
SPEAKER_03We used to have a saying, you know, no press is bad press, bad press is good press. Yeah, I mean, some of it was was distracting and unfortunate, but no, it didn't it didn't bother me to the extent. Um only only when it it it threatened my own credibility or the the the credibility of anybody working with me or for me. Then I I did push back sometimes. But no, um I I knew it was all out there. And you know, and some of it was because people were annoyed that I beat them to the punch and got the rights. Especially the the group who were trying desperately to get uh into production. There were there was two weeks left where they had to let the BBC know that they had physically started pre-production on the film in order to get another three years tacked onto their rights. And so they were desperately trying to get Leonard to Lennon Imoy to to get on a plane and go with them to Iceland on a on a scouting trip and all this nonsense. And it was all it it it was all smoke and mirrors.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I guess because if you've shot some plates or something like that, you can say, Oh yeah, we're we're in production. We're that's right. Yeah, that's exactly right. Eventually you did go ultimately for a continuation of the series, and there was some back and forth with the BBC about using the seventh Doctor or perhaps using the fourth doctor. But was there ever any talk of perhaps having the seventh doctor's companion ace in those opening few minutes and getting her gunned down? Because this is something that was talked about in the fan press at the time, but I've always wondered whether there was any truth to it at all.
SPEAKER_03No, there was no truth to it. The bottom line was this is I knew that if I wanted my my my backdoor pilot, it was a pilot with a six-episode order behind it, subject to the ratings. But I I knew if I wanted to be considered part of the actual Doctor Who timeline, I needed a regeneration from seven to eight. That was all it was. I felt very strongly about it, and it was always only my desire to have Sylvester McCoy do that because I felt he was entitled to do that. I wanted that to happen for him. And uh it was important to me because I've always felt that Sylvester McCoy was one of those actors who was completely underrated. He was a talent, he is a talented man, a lovely man, a gentleman. And he was a professional. So I really enjoyed working with him, and I was thrilled because um my request to have that happen was denied by the BBC. I uh that was one of my uh come to Jesus moments where I had to literally uh demand that they make this happen or I was gonna quit. Um, I wasn't gonna do it. And um, so I called their bluff and and they kind of acquiesced finally. But there was never a discussion about any other of the companions or any other doctor or any other linking elements joining. It was just simply having Sylvester uh do what he had the right to do, and that was regenerate.
SPEAKER_02Jeffrey Sachs does a brilliant job with the direction. Uh, it's still one of the best-looking bits of Doctor Who there's ever been, and it's a fantastic looking bit of TV. But he perhaps isn't the obvious choice he'd done current affairs and sitcoms and things like that. What was it that landed him the job in the end?
SPEAKER_03Well, I always felt that we needed a fresh set of eyes. And if it was somebody who had done Doctor Who in the past, I worried about stagnation or falling into the trap of, well, this is what we always did. This is what we do, this is how it's done. And I didn't want that. I wanted a fresh set of eyes. And so when his name came up and I looked at his film, uh, and then I met him, I I just fell in love with his passion, his curiosity, and his he was very interested in character development. He was very, very interested in the visual storytelling of it. It was that, you know, and and and it was important to him that something like this have a tremendous amount of energy and it had humor, but it didn't make fun of itself. The humor came out of the moment, not out of the line. And so it was really one of those things where I really looked at a lot of other options, but I knew that this was also someone that the BBC were huge fans of, including uh Joe Wright, who was the BBC producer. So we, you know, it was one of the few occasions where she and I didn't butt heads and and agreed to it. And it turned out to be a um a fantastic choice. I loved working with the man. I he was a consummate professional, and I I I think he really, he, he really is the is why it looks as as good as it it looks. He did a fantastic job.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he really did. It feels like, in a way, it's a bit more, say, Richard Donner's Superman than it is the brain of Morbius or something like that. And the version is so visually different to what had come before. Did you discuss any visual influences with Jeffrey, or was it just let him get on with it once he landed you with his vision?
SPEAKER_03No, we talked a lot about style, and I think one of the big things that we we both agreed on is that this was an opportunity for us to take a character who had lived in a tiny proscenium and let them loose. And how do you do that without taking some risks and and and really getting, you know, getting into the uh sort of the essence of what it was we were trying to do? And I do think that there was an awful lot of conversation about the filmic quality of this and how we wanted the camera to constantly be moving and how we wanted to be as big as we could be, given the fact that we were limited to this awful aspect ratio that we had to film in. It's I mean, it's still a fantastic looking film. Thank you. And I'm well, I think this 4K release is going to be terrific.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, I'm very excited to see it all cleaned up and looking great. Yeah. You cast two masters on the film, the first one being the very short-lived Gordon Tipple, whose dialogue ultimately doesn't make the cut. Uh, was that just something that happened in the edit that you decided to go with a different opening?
SPEAKER_03No, I mean, unfortunately, this was one of the Frankensteinian in the history of this project. We were supposed to have a whole opening scene with Daleks on Scaro and a fight in which the doctor manages to contain the master and uh put him in prison. And it was it was going to be one of these wonderfully big, epic opening scenes that budgeted out to over a million and a half dollars and was cut. And it it was cut so late that it literally made it impossible for me to figure out what to do. So, you know, most of the uh the the visuals in my for me personally today don't make a lot of sense. The the the narration does, but the visuals don't. And so that's that's my only disappointment with the film is that opening moment just never lived up to what it was supposed to be.
SPEAKER_02And then obviously the main master was Eric Roberts. I believe various names were discussed, including people like Christopher Lloyd. How did you settle on Eric?
SPEAKER_03Well, this was one of those moments in time where the network uh Fox wanted names. They wanted something to market, they wanted a film star, they wanted somebody to counter Paul McGann, who, even though Paul had a wonderful resume, it didn't resonate for them. And so Christopher Lloyd was supposed to do it, but unfortunately, his schedule made it impossible for him to actually commit to the schedule. And then Eric Roberts' name came up. There were all kinds of issues surrounding that that I don't really want to get into. I've aired my dirty laundry about him in the past, and uh, you know, it is what it is. But, you know, I think on the whole he did a he did a decent job, even though he was impossible to deal with. But I I think he he did a good job.
SPEAKER_02Before casting Paul McGann, there was a name that did with the rounds called Harry von Gorkham, who uh how realistically in the frame was Harry?
SPEAKER_03It was very, very real. Right. It was very, very real. Harry came to the first meeting, and he had this sort of scruffy look to him. And in those, in that, in that time, you could have put him in the uh he was a little bit, he was a cross between, for me, Patrick Trouton and Tom Baker. He he he had that kind of quality to him. And he really actually, I thought, did very well. I mean, he was definitely somebody who was on the short list. Uh that was very real.
SPEAKER_02Ultimately, you settle on Paul McGann. In the movie, he feels totally defined in what he's doing as the doctor. Like in there are other doctors that take a few episodes to bed in or a season to bed in, but who that character is is right there. Did you and McGann or Jeffrey and McGann or the three of you talk a lot, or did McGann need a lot of direction in that respect about where to take the character?
SPEAKER_03Well, needless to say, Paul was petrified about the whole thing. Um, he was intrigued and definitely was up for the, you know, up for the gig. He wasn't up for being locked into a television series, but uh ultimately agreed to to sign that contract. But no, I mean Paul is one of those rare breeds who is able to he's able to find in his world, in that head, choices that he was very comfortable with. Now, we had a lot of conversation about how far to push things because I was very much in the camp of the the Tom Baker regeneration episode kind of character. I love Tom's choices, the the outrageousness of it, the confusion, but the brilliance of it, the the lack of connectivity. You know, he was just all over the map, but very, very, you could see how smart he was. And I encouraged Paul to look at that performance and to make of it what he wanted to make of it and push it. Do not be afraid to push it. That moment, that regeneration moment when all the circuits are trying to re-plug, and everything that is in his psyche has to sort of be rearranged and and compartmentalized so that he could carry on with his presentation, you know, in this sort of human-esque body. And so we talked about that an awful lot. Uh, where Jeffrey really shone was making Paul feel comfortable when Paul wasn't, didn't want to push it. Jeffrey let them rehearse for days. Uh uh we we gave him at least three days of uh, which was unheard of with TV movies. He usually showed up and just started work. But Jeffrey really wanted it and it was critical. And and it was nice too that we were able to open our film shooting in Grace's apartment, uh, Grace's condominium. And so we were able to do those scenes, you know, um, and and really work on some of the the aspects of of that character that allowed him to actually continue to own those moments as we went through the movie. So I thought that was very smart of Jeffrey. And he really was uh he really was a grounding rod for for the for for the for the actors. He he made them feel very comfortable. And then he was then he could get them to just explore. And that's very difficult because some directors don't want to take that time. They want you to show up and do your job. Uh and Jeffrey was more than that. So it made a huge difference.
SPEAKER_02Was the target audience the traditional Doctor Who, one of a family audience? Or was it a little bit older? Maybe like the X-Files was a big thing at the time. Was it going more for that? Or perhaps the Star Trek audience? Where did you see uh the audience in 1996?
SPEAKER_03Well, Nilsen would have you believe that the sweet spot was 35 to 54. Right. Because, you know, they were a little more settled in their choices, they had more disposable income, um they uh were, you know, at least had a high school education. I mean, the ad revenue drivers were everything. And so we we knew this would appeal to science fiction fans, we knew it would appeal to Doctor Who fans. What we didn't know is if we could get anyone else to show up. And that was the concern of the network, and it was my concern as well, because terrestrial television did not do a great job with science fiction. Once in a while, a a show would find an audience, but it was very hard to get dollars committed to season one uh in the marketing world. These shows had to stand on their own, and then maybe in season three they'd start throwing some some money at the show. So it was just really about could we get a broad audience? And you know, was this love story and this sort of somewhere in time-esque kind of thing could it appeal to a broader audience? So that was the goal.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Can you remember your first day on set? I do. Yeah. How did it feel to suddenly be there?
SPEAKER_03Well, we were we were shooting Grace's uh apartment, uh, but it felt incredible. The the moment that I always fondly think about and talk about was uh Sylvester seeing the TARDIS interior for the first time, and he was in wardrobe, he looked wonderful, and he came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder and he said, I'm home. And it was a beautiful moment, and I never forgot it, and uh it really touched me. And I felt that in that moment, uh as I looked around that set, and I was very proud of those sets, I felt that I had really uh hit a pinnacle in my career. That, you know, there were other great things that I did and I was very proud of, but this was something that was very special to me and um very near and dear to my heart. So uh to be able to do this and and get it made, I think was a huge accomplishment. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02So sort of people outside of the industry, and at the time, Doctor Who gets a big $5 million reboot, and it sounded like loads of money, but you've already talked about having to lose the opening sequence. How tight was the budget and the constraints for the money that you had?
SPEAKER_03Well, very tight. You know, we always in the in the business talk about a budget being a state of mind. You've got two pools of money. You've got the above the line and you've got the below the line. Yeah. And whatever's left, that's what you've got to make your film with. And it it it's it's less than a few hundred grand. It's like, you know, you you you you you just you bang your head against the wall because um you're dealing with so much, and you're dealing with all of the various different deals and commitments, and it it makes it really, really, really a challenge. And so everything had to be done. Um now, there is a secret, and it's never been shared. I will share it with you. When uh a television studio, or uh in this case, Universal Studios in those days committed to a television series, they would have a little pool of money that was above and beyond anything that was approved by a network. And the way they came up with that formula was they would take all of the uh ancillary revenues that were available, whether it was pay cable, video, international sales, um, advanced payments for buying into the show, all of that. They would take that number and they would come up with whatever that number was. And that was their projection on income. And they would take 30% of that projected revenue and give it to the producer for special things.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_03Well, I took that money and I used it to build my sets.
SPEAKER_02Amazing.
SPEAKER_03That's why those sets were as big as they were, and then you know, the challenge was was it was called uh fold and hold. And you did a fold and hold when you were waiting to know whether or not you were picked up by the network. And so I used some of the money for that as well because I knew the sets had to be held. If I was going into production for my series, I needed my sets. And so um I had additional funds. And so this is where the the issue lies with why Universal and BBC fell out over the movie and why it never got a broad release.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_03Because they wanted to recoup on that advanced payment, and they felt like the BBC should reimburse them, and the BBC said no. And so that was the beginning of the end of that relationship, and it's why my film got put in that political quagmire.
SPEAKER_02Right. Such a shame. Sylvester brought Mark Gatis over with a video camera, making a little fan film for Bill Baggs of sort of a making of a guy called Bill Baggs. Were you aware of this? And how did you feel about that?
SPEAKER_03I wasn't aware of it. Right. I wasn't aware of it. I had heard of Bill Baggs, and that was all, you know, and Sylvester did not approve of that. He was kind of scapegoating. Into doing what he thought was a favor to let a friend on the set, to have a guest on the set. Had we have known what was going on, I would have shut it down. So it was one of those things. I mean, ultimately, you know, it didn't hurt anything, really. It didn't hurt anybody. And it was not a hill to die for.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But no, uh, it was one of those things. You know, we had all kinds of weird stuff happening. I mean, we we had a couple of people on the on the Canadian crew uh who were sharing locations with fans and and and reporters, and you know, who knows what they were getting paid for it. It was it was really silly. But, you know, that's what happens when you're doing something like that.
SPEAKER_02And I guess shows people that are interested in what you're doing to a certain extent. Yeah, well, you're never gonna escape that, unfortunately. Yeah. After the show goes out and it does very well in the UK, it's up against Roseanne in America, and so ultimately doesn't quite get the ratings that it deserved. The option on the show is extended for another six months. What's going on behind the scenes at that point? And when did you realize that it wasn't gonna go forward into a series?
SPEAKER_03Well, we'd entered into uh a conversation with NBC about taking it back, taking it on. I mean, uh, they were my primary choice to begin with, and I had friends over there, and they took a hard look at it, but couldn't get the numbers to where they wanted to. So the reason why there was an extension made is because we had interest from other networks who loved the film, but it was just we just couldn't make the numbers work um as hard as we tried, you know. And Universal uh in those days, they had a hard set number that they had to live and die by for every show that they made, and they weren't gonna make an exception. And so um, unfortunately, time ran out.
SPEAKER_02Such a shame. There was also an article at some point that says as late as 98, you were talking to the BBC about the 1960s Dalit movies rights being available. Was that something is that something you remember, or is it a little fan rumor?
SPEAKER_03No, it's true. It's absolutely true. There was a moment in time where those rights were available. So um it uh it was one of those very interesting things that, you know, I I thought was a a potential way to to take it to the big screen and keep the passion for what I wanted to do alive. But unfortunately, that just didn't happen.
SPEAKER_02Uh and the show ultimately ended up at BBC Wales. Was there ever any communication with you, with the new runners of the show?
SPEAKER_03Well, I was offered the job. BBC Wales came. I was uh head of production for Tribune Broadcasting. It came to me and uh had a meeting with me.
SPEAKER_02What what sort of time period was that?
SPEAKER_03It would have been um 2002.
SPEAKER_02And but were you interested in it?
SPEAKER_03Well, I I I it wouldn't have mattered whether I was interested or not, because unfortunately my personal life took a weird turn in those days. And uh it you know, and I I uh was unable to to leave. I had a young kid, and uh unfortunately I just was unable to say yes. I couldn't do it. That's a shame.
SPEAKER_02Um and would that version in 2002 been of working with somebody like Russell T. Davis, or was it um for you to bring in whoever you wanted to write the show? No, Russell was in the meeting. What do you think a series would have looked like with you in charge, be it in '96 or two thousand and two?
SPEAKER_03I think we would have had an awful lot of fun trying to give the show a lot more uh girth, uh, get a little more nuanced with some of the storytelling, get it bigger in scope, uh, create more complexity for the character, add some villains that were really villains, and not just stories that involved the earth being threatened every week, you know, but a universe uh being threatened. You know, imagine the the Star Trek universe and that five-year mission to explore strange new worlds. Well, you know, the doctor is this curious time traveler who oftentimes would have found himself in those worlds. I think we would have had an awful lot of fun. Uh, and also taking some of those wonderfully traditional uh narratives from some of the original series and exploring even more of them, you know, because there were some really good jumping off points for stories that we could have tackled. So I don't know, you know, um the idea that we had all those years of stories and shows to look at was very compelling to writers. Um, it made them feel very comfortable. It also made the, you know, the network, I think this is why NBC were curious again, was they realized that there was an awful lot of material to mine, that this wasn't something they had to worry about where the next story was coming from. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Paul McGann has gone on to have countless adventures. That doctor's been written about in so many books, he's had audio adventures. How do you feel about the legacy of this the one night stand with Paul McGann living on through all these other mediums?
SPEAKER_03Well, I was thrilled for him because he deserved it and more. He worked very hard, he gave everything for that performance, and I think earned his place. Why he wasn't offered the role to keep going was was baffling to me. It was baffling. But, you know, I also understand that if I'd have been in those shoes, I would have wanted my own doctor, and I would have wanted my own, you know, I want I wanted my chance to set the stage. So I understand. Uh, but that that still doesn't make it any easier. Um, but I I think he's really enjoyed it. And I think on a certain level, he was amazed and uh delighted that it uh continued to give him that that status. I think in late he didn't get get it at first, but I think in later years he really enjoyed it. We had a lot of conversation about that in later life, where he had a few regrets about uh about saying no to things at first and and not really jumping on the bandwagon as quickly as he should have. But I think ultimately he realized it was a good thing, not a bad thing.
SPEAKER_02Uh there was a play recently, actually, an audio that he did, and they got Matthew Jacobs to write it. So it was lovely to hear sort of Matthew Jacobs' version of Doctor Who some 30 odd years later. Yeah, yeah. So, how do you look back on your time working on the TV movie and trying to get the series off the ground? How does it fit into your career?
SPEAKER_03It came at a time when I was I was leaving Amblin, you know. Uh Jeffrey Katzenberg managed to get his hooks into Steven and convince him that it was time for him to be the next Louis B. Mayor. So for five minutes, you know, we had DreamWorks and that sort of messed everything up for me. But I was, I I had moved on to Paramount. I had a deal at Paramount, and so it was from my offices at Paramount that I actually produced the film for Universal. But I think that ultimately I'm very proud of it. I wouldn't change anything except to say this that I think had we have taken all of that effort and all of that energy and been a little further into the future with the advent of streaming, we would have uh been a lot more successful at having a greater chance at doing something stateside. Uh because I find it interesting that, you know, in recent years, as you may or may not, well, I'm sure you do know, you know, Disney invested in it and they've pulled out, and now um it looks like, well, for five minutes, Warner Brothers have committed to uh continue to invest in it. But we'll see what happens with this Paramount Warner Brothers merger of whether or not that puts that on hold. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02I think the whole industry's in a state of flux at the moment, though, isn't it? And the streamers don't have as much money as they used to have, broadcasters don't have as much money as they used to have. And we see things get announced and not happen and things go on hold.
SPEAKER_03That's very, very typical. We're gonna go through um uh a really difficult time with below the line and crows and producers and writers really having a difficult time because all of this money and effort is going into, you know, buying bricks and mortar and a library and not into new content until they wake up one day and realize that they need more content. You know, and and and so we will get out of this cycle of insanity, but it's gonna be a little bit of a rough road ahead because I still think we haven't yet, and maybe we never will, get to that moment in time where the revenue sources, the available revenue sources, create a return on investment for investors the way they did 30 years ago. That has gone by the wayside. And so we've got YouTube today, of which I'm a proud member, uh, with my channel. But we're seeing a very different landscape. And so it's all gonna have to figure itself out. I think independent filmmakers with their own independent financing sources are gonna make a real impact. And that impact is going to register with these uh conglomerates who will want to start buying all of them up and trying to tap into why they are being successful. Because the reality of it is, is these giant behemoths are unable to move very quickly. And so it's because they are risk adverse, it's because they are weighed down by bureaucracy and politics and financial risk that it just makes everything else just impossible. But, you know, everything is cyclical. And uh so I feel for I feel for everybody who is trying to make a living in this crazy uh thing called the the entertainment business.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. But you know, we've been through these things before, you know, with the advent of internet piracy was gonna ruin everything. And it didn't ruin everything, but it changed the landscape and things are gonna change again and evolve.
SPEAKER_03That's right. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I and I'm a big believer, you know, and I I whether it's today or whether it's all those years ago, I really believe that you you have to remember one thing, and that is that if you're going to try to get into this business or you are part of this business, you have to remember one thing. No means yes. And don't let anybody tell you any different. Because, you know, that's the bottom line. And all the cliches are true. One door closes, another one opens. But tenacity and passion are everything. And if you believe in yourself, you will find the like. Um, but it it it doesn't come overnight, you know. It can it can it can take 10 years. Uh, but never ever let anyone uh who says no to you allow that into your belief system.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. I think that's that's great words to finish on because presumably you've got a lot of no's that you turned into yeses for making the TV movie. Oh, more than you could know. More than you could know. Amazing. Well, look, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to chat to me. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. There we go. Well, thanks once again to Phil for lending his time for this interview and helping us celebrate 30 years of the TV movie and the Eighth Doctor. And thanks to Michael, Liam, and Stuart who helped me come up with some of the questions here. I'll be back on Sunday for the final installment of May Gan, where I'll be joined by Fraser Gregory. And together we'll be dipping into two Eighth Doctor audio plays, the Stones of Venice and The Time You Never Had. But until then, I've been Dylan, and this has been Doctor Who, Too Hot for TV.