by DAVID ROLINSON

Four parts. Writer: Stephen Gallagher; Producer: John Nathan-Turner; Director: Paul Joyce

WWA_scene_5
Warriors’ Gate was a visually inventive, conceptually ambitious and idiosyncratic Doctor Who serial, but also a fraught one for Paul Joyce, its director.1 The disagreements behind the scenes have been well documented, and are often discussed as a marker or consequence of the serial’s ambition.2 I’ve researched this serial in the BBC Written Archives Centre production file on Warriors’ Gate and the archive of writer Stephen Gallagher that is held by Hull History Centre,3 studying everything from multiple script drafts and notes on script meetings through to the specs for the set’s timber framed gimbal mirror and a list of supplementary payments for overtime and wig fittings (at productive moments in these archives it was of course difficult not to declare that “I’m finally getting something done!”4 ). However, this essay is not a blow-by-blow production history but a discussion of Joyce’s direction: partly showing how Joyce’s approach helps to convey the serial’s ideas, but mainly showing how debates about the future of Doctor Who’s production methods and the spaces of television circulated around Warriors’ Gate.

  1. Doctor Who: Warriors’ Gate, tx. BBC1, 3-24 January 1981. ↩

  2. See The Dreaming, a documentary on the Warriors’ Gate DVD (2009). The emphasis on creative ambition and vision differs from the ways in which other notably fraught Doctor Who productions have been discussed, such as Nightmare of Eden (1979). ↩

  3. The BBC has made some basic documentation available online, including the Programme-as-Completed file on Warriors’ Gate. ↩

  4. This is a line spoken with some intensity by the character Rorvik at a crucial moment. ↩

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by DAVID ROLINSON<\/h4>\n

Four parts. Writer<\/strong>: Stephen Gallagher; Producer<\/strong>: John Nathan-Turner; Director<\/strong>: Paul Joyce<\/p>\n

\"WWA_scene_5\"
\nWarriors\u2019 Gate<\/em> was a visually inventive, conceptually ambitious and idiosyncratic Doctor Who<\/em> serial, but also a fraught one for Paul Joyce, its director.1<\/a><\/sup> The disagreements behind the scenes have been well documented, and are often discussed as a marker or consequence of the serial\u2019s ambition.2<\/a><\/sup> I\u2019ve researched this serial in the BBC Written Archives Centre production file on Warriors\u2019 Gate<\/em> and the archive of writer Stephen Gallagher that is held by Hull History Centre<\/a>,3<\/a><\/sup> studying everything from multiple script drafts and notes on script meetings through to the specs for the set\u2019s timber framed gimbal mirror and a list of supplementary payments for overtime and wig fittings (at productive moments in these archives it was of course difficult not to declare that \u201cI\u2019m finally getting something done!\u201d4<\/a><\/sup> ). However, this essay is not a blow-by-blow production history but a discussion of Joyce\u2019s direction: partly showing how Joyce\u2019s approach helps to convey the serial’s ideas, but mainly showing how debates about the future of Doctor Who<\/em>\u2019s production methods and the spaces of television circulated around Warriors’ Gate<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m saying \u201cspaces of television\u201d to invoke the recent academic research project Spaces of Television<\/em>. Its conferences, publications and website remind us that the range of methods we use to discuss programmes must keep in sight the contexts in which those programmes were made. Spaces of Television<\/em> is particularly concerned with the production spaces of television, how \u201cthe material spaces of production (in TV studios and on location) conditioned the aesthetic forms of programmes, and how fictional spaces represented on screen negotiated the opportunities and constraints of studio and exterior space, film and video technologies, and liveness and recording\u201d.5<\/a><\/sup> Spaces of Television<\/em> has provided an excellent focus for discussion of the spaces in which drama is made, incorporating and foregrounding the testimony of people who make programmes. It adds valuably to the long-term work of several academics, and of Doctor Who<\/em> fans and independent archive television scholars. These include the peerless, inspirational Andrew Pixley – who has played a leading role in the understanding of Doctor Who<\/em>\u2019s production history and wider television contexts – and Ian Potter, who provided an exemplary study of the impact of production methods, technologies and institutional practices on the (times and) spaces constructed by Doctor Who<\/em> in his article on \u201cworld-building in Studio D and its legacy\u201d.6<\/a><\/sup> As these and other pieces show, to the production spaces of television we can add the industrial or institutional spaces of television: how programmes take place within an industry whose practices, policies, regulation, schedules and so on help to shape their form, content and of course their very existence. Doctor Who<\/em> provides many potential insights into spaces of television – from Saturday night-ness to its current place in the strategy of BBC Worldwide\/BBC America – but Warriors’ Gate<\/em> is particularly useful in foregrounding the production spaces in which Doctor Who<\/em> operated.<\/p>\n

Description<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sign of the richness of the serial that this essay will hardly move beyond the first four minutes of episode one…<\/p>\n