Set Reports

17 June 2022 - Episode One

When we arrived at the Lambert Centre, it looked and felt hugely different from last month, when I attended its grand opening. The shining new building was proudly on display to the media and the world, when I was last here, but arriving with 200 other Doctor Who fans, a month later, we were greeted to, what essentially ended up being, a tour of the complex’s car parks, corridors and ever-present construction sites. It was vastly different to the gleaming front entrance and lavish bar that I found myself in before.

After being herded toward the Mervyn Pinfield Stage, we were all instructed to turn off our phones before several security guards led us inside, whereby a huge rack of plastic seating had been erected. In front of us were several sets layed out next to each other, all of which were fairly impressive. One particular set will certainly get fans very excited when it goes out on air. There were two TV screens at the side of the stage, where the camera feed was to be shown, as well as any pre-records. Additionally, it was clear there were extra behind-the-scenes cameras present filming the audience.

After about 5 minutes of waiting, Rufus Hound walked in on to the soundstage. While it hadn’t been announced publicly, Hound was to be the Time Meddlers’ warm up man. He wasn’t in the actual show, but he was there to entertain the audience before the recording began, and during any breaks in the recording, whether it be because of technical reasons or otherwise.

His routine started with a joke about degenerating back into a man before complaining that he wasn’t offered a part in the show.

About 15 minutes later, Hound left the soundstage and was replaced by the cast, led by Jo Brand, who came in to introduce themselves before leaving again. Then the lights dimmed and the first pre-record played on the television screens. The pre-record had been shot sometime in the past few weeks on AR Wall at the Barry Letts stage, and instantly generated a lot of laughs. Once it was done, Jo Brand appeared on one of the sets standing in front of us and the recording began.

The recording took about 70 minutes from beginning to end. There was a lot of stop-starting, to which Rufus Hound delightfully entertained us. While the script was very entertaining and the characters certainly got into some funny situations, it wasn’t quite the howler that was expected. We laughed a lot in the audience but there weren’t really any “big laughs”. The script was funny; it just lacked many actual ‘gags’. Considering that, from the next episode, the series is to be penned by Steven Moffat, this is likely to change. The episode had a lot of set up to do which is to be expected from a first episode, so it doesn’t look like too much of an issue.

Following the recording, the cast all came out to do their bows and then we were ushered out of our seats and back around the Lambert Centre into the car park.

24 June 2022 - Episode Two

The second episode of Doctor Who: The Time Meddlers seemed almost like a different show to the first episode; Steven Moffat’s influence is very obvious. Without giving too much away the episode was instantly classic sit-com and was a lot more restricted than the first episode, allowing for the vast majority of it being recorded live, in front of the audience, instead of the large amount of pre-records, seen last week. This episode could seem boring, at first glance, but it allows Moffat to utilise his skillset writing very sharp dialogue between different characters, in a very restricted setting, and making it not only engaging, but a constant stream of laughter. It does suffer slightly from Moffat’s obsession with sex-related comedy, which feels slightly dated for a show that’s going to be coming out in the opening month of 2023.

Like last week, Rufus Hound was on warm-up duties, and we saw a lot of him, as the cast frequently began to mess up their lines, toward the end of the night, especially as everyone got a fit of giggles, on more than one occasion, which wasn’t necessarily helped by Hound’s interjections… but was very funny to watch.

Overall, two-scenes were shot on the AR Wall, in pre-records, with one location scene also featuring. The rest of the episode took place entirely on the live sets in studio.

1 July 2022 - Episode Three

Once again, Doctor Who: The Time Meddlers, is entirely different from the previous week. This episode, while still largely set on the same sets as last week, used them in such a way that it felt very different. Probably over half of Episode 3 was shown in pre-records, but while some of these were on the AR Wall, the vast majority were on the sets that were standing right in front of us. The reason why was that the sequences in which we were seeing on the monitors contained a lot of very complex camera setups and VFX and therefore necessitated the need for a pre-record to be used. They were still funny and worked well, but the acting that the actors give with a live audience, compared to the pre-records, is often different, and it has to be pointed out that it might become more and more noticeable the more the show relies on extensive pre-records.

As far as it comes to the plot, it was very Steven Moffat and I’m still not entirely sure what was happening, but it was very entertaining to watch. Perhaps I’ll be kinder or harsher to it when it airs in January.

8 July 2022 - Episode Four

Episode 4 feels like the episode we’ve been waiting for every week and we’ve finally got. We finally got a fairly large number of guest actors, after mainly being confined to the main cast for the last few episodes, and suddenly it’s given the show an entirely new life. One particular guest actor is someone who fans have wanted to see in Doctor Who for quite some time!

Most of the pre-records, this time, were on the AR Wall, but these were few and far between, with most of the episode being recorded live, on the sets. Most of the sets that featured were guest sets, with the majority of the usual sets moved elsewhere, this week.

Once again, some of the more garish aspects of Moffat’s sense of humour came to the forefront but overall the story works well enough that it can be easily ignored.

Due to the high number of actors on set, the recording took a lot longer than usual, with a lot of outtakes and a lot of breaks. Rufus Hound continued to entertain us throughout, which kept us all in good and positive spirits.

15 July 2022 - Episode Five

The fifth episode is most similar to the second episode, out of all the episodes so far, mainly being bound to the same sets and playing off character comedy. It works and it works very well, with an extremely tight script, and the comic chops of the cast… but it does feel like it’s doing just another variation on what we already saw a few weeks ago.

The sex comedy is reduced in this episode, thankfully, allowing for the humour to feel a little less dated. The humour mainly comes from quite ‘clever’ comedy, which could seem needesely very overcomplicated, but the episode recognises this and then continues to make jokes about just how complicated the plot is at times.

The studio recording was a lot tighter than last week, with just the regular cast present, and they all seemed a lot more at ease with each other than the recording of Episode 2, allowing for a smoother recording. This was probably the quickest of the whole lot, so far.

22 July 2022 - Episode Six

And so we’re here, the final episode of the first series of Doctor Who: The Time Meddlers. Instantly, when I entered the Lambert Centre, I was struck by just how much it had come on since we all first arrived there, six weeks earlier. A lot of building work had taken place, since then, on the other soundstages, but not just that, things such as railings and signs and carpets had all appeared around the site, slowly over the last six weeks. We’ve also occasionally caught site of the odd actor, here and there, heading to the Doctor Who production offices for meetings, but it’d be far too spoilery to name them in this publication.

The final episodes’ recording was probably the most fun so far. It was probably one of the longer recordings overall, but it had that “final day of school” feel and so everyone was just in really good spirits, and it was just really fun to be a part of. Steven Moffat came and introduced the episode personally, before being booted off by Rufus Hound, which was fun to watch, and he also came out at the very end during the cast bows.

The episode itself was probably the most all-over-the-place since the pilot, but it felt a lot tighter and seemed to work better than in Episode 1. A lot of pre-records were used, especially on the AR Wall this time, but everything seemed to work fine technically and the story itself was a really fun watch.

Jo Brand as the Monk was the standout performer of the episode, really going full out Peter Butterworth this week, after giving a slightly subtler performance in previous weeks. She’s really a credit to the show and she’s 100% what makes it work as much as it does. I look forward to Series 2 with much anticipation and I can’t wait to see what shenanigans Moffat puts these characters into next…

Oh and that cliffhanger.