Picking up from last week's 'cliffhanger' Aubrey, Van and I had set off from L.A. to San Jose on an early Monday August morning. I was feeling pretty good at having hastily arranged and shot the three pre-filmed sequences here in L.A. in the 8 days we had between San Diego Comic Con and the KTEH Studio shoot. So spirits were high until 2 things happened…
First, Simon (the ninth Doctor in our "45 Years" Video) who was supposed to join us fell ill and stayed behind. Second, we got a call from Robert Kovacs, who had built the Dalek we intended to use in one of the segments. He told us that, due to a transport issue, we might not be able to bring the Dalek in studio after all.
We had a panic. Then, we decided to do our best to roll with this.
Upon arriving in San Jose, we met with our producer Stacy Bond and our infinitely patient studio director (and editor!), Rich Bartlebaugh. We got a walk through the KTEH facilities, dropped off our TARDIS walls on the sound stage, and…
proceeded to stay up until 3AM writing new material to replace the segments that had originally featured our now unavailable Dalek and our sadly under-the-weather cast member.
Luckily, it turns out we didn't up needing this fresh material — which mainly consisted of three new skits. (One of these sketches involved the use of the KTEH Phones/Pledge Drive set! Since these segments weren't used after all, they may find their way into a fan film down the line. We'll see…)
Tuesday morning we got a call from Simon. Good news! He was on the road and feeling better!
Then Robert called about a half an hour afterwards and said he'd solved the transport dilemma. The Dalek would be at the studio when we needed it!
Lack of sleep aside, all seemed well. Well…almost.
Because we didn't think we'd have the Dalek, Stacy had called in some favors including calling up former KTEH producer, Steam Punk artifact designer and longtime Doctor Who fan Merv Staton. He and his wife Judith gamely rose to the occasion, bringing in a lot of fantastic Classic Dr. Who monster busts and masks to be featured on the air.
Stanton also helped Stacy contact Mette Hedin and Bryan Little, who showed up with their fabulous Vashta Nerada costumes!
So now, with the Dalek back on the slate after all, and so much talent to choose from, what could we do?
We decided we'd try and do two additional segments with the new props/costumes to feature if we could squeeze it in. Even if they didn't make it to air, we could put them online.
As always, time in the studio has a way of dematerializing out from under us. As the evening wore on, it became clear — we would not have time to shoot everything we wanted to.
Reluctantly, we had to leave the monster masks/busts off camera. We also scrapped our original closing segment in which we had planned to talk about the history of Dr. Who on PBS. Instead, we decided to feature the Vashta Nerada costumes in an interview with Mette and Brian.
If that last segment feels little more 'loose' it's because it was! That was the 2nd to last segment we shot that evening — and the only segment we did completely on the fly, without a script. It was harrowing, but fun. (Who doesn't love a challenge?)
On another note, I'm sure that after watching my friends I host for the past few weeks, everyone has noticed that Simon, our fourth host and our potential Fifth/Ninth Doctor did not make an appearance. What happened?
Well Simon had arrived in the mid afternoon and rehearsed the first 4 segments with us. (To prove this, we have some photos! Here's one:)
Unfortunately his flu bug wasn't entirely kicked and he had a re-lapse shortly after dinner. it became clear very quickly, that he simply wasn't well enough to appear on camera. He went into a back room to sleep it off while the rest of got on with the show. (He would fully recover 2 days later). Lucky for us we had our scripts from the late night before ready to accomodate the situation.
It was very stressful of course, but we managed to pull if off between our changes and the power of the teleprompter!
I wish we would have had time to finesse a few things (i.e. having the "6th Doctor" wax lyrical about the New Series Sonic instead of the "9th Doctor" never felt right to me.) But at least we managed to get everything "in the can" with minimal overtime for the volunteer crew at KTEH.
We shot the Cyberman segment last due to the severe costume change, and I'm glad we fought to get that in before the time got totally away from us.
After wrapping, we all said our good nights, and Aubrey, Van and I went back to our hotel to pass out
on arrival. It had been a LONG day.
The following morning we stopped back at the station to grab our costumes and pack up the props and TARDIS walls. It was a relief to be finished, but a little sad in a way. I know while we were mentally reviewing what we did in our heads (and hoping that we could have gotten a second take on several of the final few segments on a certain bit or line) overall we were very happy and pleased we had dealt with the hurdles and accomplished something very few fans get the chance to do.
With these thoughts in mind, we made a few touristy stops in the area and then finally the long drive back home to our life, family and jobs. I'll have one more post here, after our final segments are on the air early next month. Tune in for those and more of the Doctor's travel's on KTEH, October 4th!
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