Planet of the Dead

The Doctor Who team flew to Dubai in February, to record Planet of the Dead‘s desert scenes. DWM was with them every step of the way…

This article originally appeared in DWM 408, published in April 2009.

TUESDAY, 10 FEBRUARY 2009

Welcome to Dubai – so good they named it twice! Dubai City is a Middle East metropolis in the emirate of Dubai, on the southern coast of the Persian Gulf. “Glitzy, glam, over-the-top and a little overexposed,” our Lonely Planet guidebook promises us, “Dubai lives for attention.” It’s 2335 hours when we fly into Dubai International Airport. DWM’s first impression of the city-state, as we glimpse it out of the plane window, is outlines of gleaming skyscrapers and the glow of a thousand neon lights. This is the last we’ll see of them until Sunday, when we fly home.

One of the seven United Arab Emirates (UAE), Dubai is a fusion of Western high-living and strict Islamic culture. Its myriad shopping malls, flamboyant hotels and dizzying array of clubs, bars and restaurants attract several million tourists each year. But that’s not what we’re here for. (Good. It sounds dreadful.) We’re staying in a resort 70 miles from the airport, just over the border from Dubai in the Masfout region of Ajmān, the smallest of the emirates. From there, it’s a half-hour drive to where the Doctor Who team will be filming Planet of the Dead in the Margham Desert – where a double-decker bus, slightly damaged, is waiting for us.

Outside the airport, the 40-strong cast and crew pile into three minibuses. (Routemasters would have been more appropriate, surely?) As we head north out of the city, the mirrored glass skyline recedes to make way for an enormous expanse of desert. This will be our home for the next four days.

DWM’s minibus is the first to arrive at the Holiday Arabian Resort (no seven-star city hotel for us)… and that’s when we get news that the minibus carrying David Tennant and Michelle Ryan, amongst others, has been pulled over by armed police! No, really! Something to do with a broken taillight. Apparently, everyone’s had to get off and stand on a verge, in the dark, while the driver slips the officers a fistful of dirhams. (Some of this story turns out to be true.) Meanwhile, minibus number three is missing in action. It took a wrong turning and is heading for Oman.

Naturally, we’re worried sick. Almost worried enough not to tuck into the buffet that the Holiday Arabian Resort has laid on for us. Well, it’s 2am and we’re ravenous. (Look, chips!) The others will turn up. Eventually.

 

WEDNESDAY, 11 FEBRUARY

Today is Prep’ Day, a recce in the desert, the first chance for the cast and crew to check out the location at which they’ll be filming for the rest of the week. We travel the final five minutes on an open-backed army truck, because the terrain is too demanding for our coach. “We’d make the worst army ever,” chuckles special-effects supervisor Danny Hargreaves, as one by one we struggle up the stepladder onto the truck. David and Michelle aren’t even allowed on board, for health and safety reasons. That annoys them. They travel by four-by-fours instead.

The peaks and troughs of the dunes stretch out like some sort of sandy rollercoaster ride. It’s bumpy and a lot of fun. Finally, as we reach a crest of a particularly steep hill – there it is, in all its red, metal glory, seven tons of slightly damaged bus! The mighty 200! Everyone’s in awe.

This is a long way and a far cry from Cardiff’s Upper Boat studios, where much of this episode, including the interior bus scenes, has been shot already – or Newport’s Mir Steelworks, which doubled for the inside of the Tritovore ship and saw snow fall through the roof during filming! The Margham Desert is another world. We’re told to wear sunblock and keep drinking water to stay hydrated. No mirages yet, though. DWM wouldn’t mind a mirage. Maybe a mirage of Upper Boat? That’d be nice.

Hazard-tape barriers surround the set. “Let’s not walk anywhere that we don’t have to,” requests John Bennett, the first assistant director, “otherwise it’s going to give the Art Department a hell of a job getting rid of the footprints.” Any prints caught on camera will have to be painted out in post-production by visual effects house The Mill. “It’s not going to be easy,” says John. “It’s going to be fun, though. It’s about working together, getting it done.”

 

THURSDAY, 12 FEBRUARY

So, this is the first of three day’s filming in the UAE. There’s a lot to squeeze in. Our coach leaves the resort at 0530. Breakfast in the desert is at 0615. Sunrise at 0656. Sunset at 1810. That gives us just over 11 hours of daylight to shoot in, bar an hour for lunch at midday. Everything is scheduled to the minute. What could possibly go wrong?

Danny Hargreaves is the only person allowed onto the top deck of the bus. (Health and safety again.) He has a smoke machine up there. This is for the wide shot of the bus passengers stepping out onto the planet San Helios for the first time. “Less smoke, Danny,” shouts out John. “Smoke’s too heavy!”

In between takes, Daniel Kaluuya (who plays Barclay) and Michelle (who’s sexy and very sleek in her Lady Christina catsuit) challenge each other to a race across the dunes. Daniel wins. David captures it on his camcorder. “Daniel was like, ‘I’ve beaten the rubbery woman!’” says Michelle. “I was like, ‘Yeah, okay,’ and then resolved to start training as soon as I get back home. I’ll let it go. I’ll let the boy have this one. I think it made him feel masculine.”

But the larking about is short-lived. Something is coming. Yeah, riding on the wind. (“We’ll get ripped to shreds!”) It’s a sandstorm, and it’s heading our way.

“What I’d thought was the moon until about nine-thirty,” James Strong, the director, tells DWM, “wasn’t the moon at all. It was the sun, completely fogged by this impending storm. As the morning wore on, the sky grew gloomier and gloomier, as did the spirits of most of the crew, and then the wind started, picking up the sand…”

By 9.40am, the crew is an hour behind schedule. The sand and wind is rendering the footage unusable. “I think I’d prefer to be back in those f***ing Newport steelworks,” says Danny.

“This is ridiculous,” agrees James. “These shots are useless.”

The locals tell us that this is the worst sandstorm to hit this region since last September. “IT’S MENTAL!” laughs David Tennant. (The worse it gets, the more he loves it?!)

“I know,” replies Sarah Davies, the third assistant director. “Only we could come to a desert and be freezing cold.”

“Not only was what we were shooting looking horrible,” James tells DWM, “because we had no light… and this massive desert landscape, you couldn’t see it… I mean, we could have been in a car park in Upper Boat… but also sand was being blown in our faces constantly. The actors couldn’t open their eyes.”

“Problem is,” says make-up designer Barbara Southcott, “it’s on high-def, so you’ll see every bit of sand on their skin.”

“You’ll have to paint it out,” make-up artist Steve Smith teases The Mill’s Dave Houghton.

“Frame by frame,” nods Dave, “grain by grain…”

“I know it’s not easy, guys,” calls out John. “Let’s just do what we can.” But David’s hair has turned blonde. (Daniel dubs him “Barry Manilo”.) The sand is sticking to everything. Worst hit is Tracie Simpson, whose lips are actually yellow. This is her first episode as Doctor Who’s producer. It’s a baptism of fire – no, of wind! Of wind and sand and lipstick.

“The amount of make-up that I wear,” she says, “obviously it stuck much more to my face than anyone else’s! But as producer, the cast and crew should see that you’re going through exactly the same as they are, standing there covered in sand. It keeps up morale.”

Forgetting that Dubai is four hours ahead of the UK, DWM decides to text a message of support to Russell T Davies in Cardiff – you know, something encouraging and inspiring. But somehow we manage to send one that says: “SANDSTORM! CODE RED! ABORT! ABORT!” Surprisingly, Russell messages back: “I’ve got you texting with ‘SANDSTORM!’ and Julie [Gardner, executive producer] phoning with ‘SANDSTORM!’ I’m hooting. Save yourself, Ben.” Perhaps we should hide in a Portaloo until it’s all over? (We don’t last long. It stinks in there. Besides, a queue was forming.)

Back outside, the majestic crane shots intended for this morning are abandoned. The crane is dismantled and taken away. “I thought, let’s shoot everything that we can against the bus,” James explains later. “It was scraping the barrel, really, but there were a few shots of the driver [played by Keith Parry] and Angela [Victoria Alcock] at the wheel, and some close-ups of David… but the actors all looked like they’d been tarred in sand and dragged through a hedge!”

Whenever a camera pulls focus, we hear the crunch of sand embedded in its delicate mechanisms. “Well, that’ll teach them to pull focus,” texts Russell. “There’s not time for art! I’m sitting here in Cardiff cutting scenes. I love an emergency. I once filmed on Lindisfarne with a helicopter in a storm. I’ve done it all, me! Are you still buried in that Portaloo? Is it buried in the sand?” Hmm, the worse it gets…

Over lunch, Debbie Slater, the production manager, sends one of the fixers to buy Muslim headdresses for the entire crew. (A red and white one is called a shemagh, a pure white one is a ghutra, fact fans!) Problem is, we all resemble Channel Four’s Fonejacker now.

“No one could tell who anyone was,” laughs Tracie. “I turned around and realised that I couldn’t recognise any of you under your headgear, but we didn’t give up, even then. What was tough was later in the day, when we asked the locals, ‘What do you think the weather will be like tomorrow?’ They said, ‘Much the same.’ Of course, if the sandstorm had reached a level where I thought it was dangerous to keep people out there, we would have moved off quickly, schedule or no schedule.”

How far is David’s patience tested on a day like this? “Although it’s been miserable today,” he replies, “and obviously everyone’s tense, people haven’t collapsed into depression about it – maybe because we’re away and it’s novel. It’s pretty grim, the sand being blasted in our faces all day, in your eyes and mouth, but everyone has to look to exactly what they need to do to make this machine that’s malfunctioning run as efficiently as it can under the circumstances. That’s all I’ve hoped to do, to try to keep it together.”

“It was a day of days,” says James, “but we staggered to the end. The worst thing about it, knowing how beautiful that desert is, was the thought that perhaps we’d go home to Cardiff with this really quite average footage. What an absolute shame.”

The mood on the coach back to our resort is decidedly dour. “Well,” sighs Mark Hutchings, the gaffer, “that was awful, wasn’t it?” No one answers him. No one has the energy. But in the days and weeks to come, those of us who survived Sandstorm Day will tell tales of its awfulness, to our families and friends. We’ll stare into the middle distance, fill with emotion, and say things like “You weren’t there, man!!! YOU WEREN’T THERE!!!”

Oh God, the humanity. What we need tomorrow is some really good luck.

 

FRIDAY, 13 FEBRUARY

It’s Friday 13th. “Last night, we reviewed the day’s footage,” James tells DWM, “and discussed what to do. Does Russell rewrite the script? Or do we, as I argued, cross our fingers and hope for the best? I said, ‘Look, we’ve shot everything inside the bus, back in Cardiff, against backdrops and translites, assuming that it’d be hot and calm outside, so we have no choice but to continue and hope that the weather improves.’ Everyone agreed.”

“I woke up at three in the morning,” says Tracie. “I remember looking out of my hotel room, to see how violently the trees were moving in the wind. Of course, you can’t tell. But when we got to the desert at half-six, it felt different, even though it was pitch black and cold. The sky looked calmer. As the day progressed, it got better and brighter…”

“BLUE SKY!” shouts a delighted David Tennant, as the sun rises in – yes! – a crystal clear sky. “Let’s get going.”

The plan is to re-shoot yesterday’s wide shots first, including the abandoned stuff with the crane. Bizarrely, nothing much goes wrong. Michelle grazes her finger, but only slightly, so she puts on a plaster. “I’ll sell it on eBay,” she says. DWM gets its shemagh caught in its zip and not even the Costume Department can free us, so Julian Howarth, sound recordist extraordinaire, steps in and uses brute force. Um, that’s about it. This can’t be right. Where’s the catastrophe?!

After lunch, James talks Keith Parry through his death scene (it’ll be shot again tomorrow, from different angles, against green screen): “You march forward and your arms hit the wormhole, turn to skeleton, catch fire…”

“We can probably smell it,” points out Daniel. “Keith’s toast.”

“That’s a point,” says Keith. “You’d be able to smell me, if the wind’s in the right direction.”

By the end of the day, the team has caught up. They’ve shot two days’ footage in one – well, practically. Is the director happy? “Happier,” he says.

“We knew that whatever happened – locusts, plagues, anything – we had just three days in the desert,” explains Tracie, “and no way could we have stayed on. I’m not saying that the crew ever works slowly, because they don’t, but we pushed them that little bit harder that Friday – that was the only way – and I was so proud of them.”

 

SATURDAY, 14 FEBRUARY

On Valentine’s Day in the desert, what could possibly be more romantic than an oversized fly waving a gun at a lady in a catsuit? It’s hard to think of anything, isn’t it?

“Guys, you can start the dialogue earlier,” James instructs David and Michelle, “and then Paul comes in with a ‘chirrup’…”

It’s our final day filming in the UAE, and veteran Doctor Who monster performer Paul Kasey has arrived to play Sorvin the Tritovore. “The head is controlled by remote control,” he explains, “which Neill [Gorton, prosthetics designer] is operating off camera.” Isn’t that disconcerting for Paul? “You get a sense of what’s happening. Over the years, I’ve begun to recognise the different motor sounds.”

So, Sorvin marches the Doctor and Christina, at gunpoint, towards his crashed Tritovore spaceship – presently a green screen pinned against the double-decker bus. “Can you still see where you’re going, Paul?” asks James.

But he can’t. “There’s your mark, Paul,” says David, guiding his captor. “HEY, PAUL?!!!”

“I was expecting the worst, because I wasn’t sure how hot I was going to get,” Paul admits afterwards. “It’s a different kind of heat in the desert. But I didn’t get that hot, to be honest. I’ve been hotter filming in the UK. The Tritovore head was well ventilated. In fact, it protected me from the midday sun.”

Meanwhile, just out of shot, Daniel Kaluuya is relieving himself on a tuft of shrubbery. “I know I shouldn’t look,” giggles Victoria Alcock, “but I can’t help it!”

“I’m letting it grow, man,” insists Daniel. “Giving it a chance. They’ll call it the Kaluuya tree.”

David is more focussed on his shades. “I’ve had my sunglasses on again,” he tells make-up man Steve Smith. The specs leave a slight mark on the bridge of his nose, requiring a retouch.

“Not again!” sighs Steve.

“Well, it’s bright,” David grins, “and I look cool in them.”

However, the sun soon starts setting. James wants to squeeze in one final shot: David and Michelle running down the hill, carrying the clamps from the Tritovore spaceship. On the take, Michelle trips, tumbling arse over tip. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she flinches, getting up and dusting herself down.

“She managed to make even that look dramatic and well-handled,” David points out.

“Phwoar, I wouldn’t mind being the sand beneath Michelle,” mutters someone who’ll remain nameless.

“I can’t believe how fast David runs,” Michelle admits, “but then I’m Lady Christina; the Doctor should be a bit faster than me. I guess she’s a fantasy figure, with her catsuit and backpack, but also she’s real in that she’s not flawless. She’s not Wonder Woman.”

One more take… and that’s a wrap! “Thank you so much, everyone,” announces Tracie, “for working so hard this week. This is going to be a brilliant episode.” Two cool boxes full of beer arrive on the set – cue cheering – and there’s just time for a company photo in front of the bus before the sun sets.

“We should have got a bottle of champagne,” says Mark the gaffer, “and smashed it against the bus.”

“Yeah, and then Danny could have set fire to it,” laughs James, “and we could all bash it with sticks.” But before he leaves the desert, he says, “Let me take one last look…”

David clocks this. “You getting sentimental, James? Over a bus?!”

“No! Well, maybe. Um…”

Does David reckon he’ll be sentimental on his last day as the Doctor? It’s not that far away now. “I don’t know how I’ll feel when I get there,” he says. “It’ll probably be very scrutinised. I don’t know if the last day will be anything like the last in story terms. Usually you’re so out of sequence that your final scene is something very unimportant – walking down the street or opening a door – so time will tell. But it’s – what? – 12 weeks away, so I’ll cope. I’ll find ways of coping. I’ll be knackered by then, so I won’t care.”

Later that evening, in the bar of the Holiday Arabian Resort, we watch Wales beat England at the rugby on a giant TV, in a “thrilling Six Nations encounter” (© all commentators). DWM doesn’t understand rugby, really. Neither do David or Michelle, so we play cards instead, along with Paul Kasey (“It’s like an extended family holiday,” he enthuses) and other rugby dissenters.

“It became a sort of huge card-playing thing on that shoot,” relates Michelle. “Is it a Doctor Who tradition? David won quite a few games, didn’t he?” Like Daniel, David isn’t particularly gracious in victory. “I know, he had a victory dance! I was like, ‘I’ve got to get my sharpness back. I’ve become too comfortable.

“Although, a few of us did jump in the pool,” she reveals. “That was kind of a last-night-jumping-in-with-all-your-clothes-on thing.” Or was she depressed because Wales won the rugby? “No, I just had the urge to jump in, I think, with David. We weren’t drunk! It was freezing. I climbed out and got changed, and then I was like, ‘I’m ready to play cards again now.’ But the others were like, ‘WE’RE GOING IN AGAIN!’ So I did as well. It was one of those spontaneous things. Yeah, they’re good to do. It was a great way to finish the shoot.”

Benjamin Cook