This is a large hardcover that chronicles the BBC's Visual Effects Department. It begins with an overview of the history of the department from its founding in the 1950s to its closure in 2003, chronicling various expansions and moves and reorganizations the department went through over the years. (It actually extends slightly beyond the 2003 end date of the title, because once the department was closed, one employee was kept on as part of a different department, doing model work, which lasted until 2006.) There's also an introductory chapter about the basic techniques that the department used over its lifespan. After these chapters, the bulk of the book goes through a bunch of a shows the department worked on in alphabetical order, from Alice in Wonderland (1986) to the Z-Cars episode "Contact" (1976). These have anecdotes from the VFX staff and are copiously illustrated with photos from the BBC archives showing both how the work was done and how the finished effects looked.
BBC VFX: The Story of the BBC Visual Effects Department, 1954–2003 |
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Published: 2010 Acquired: December 2012 Read: December 2025 |
This isn't the kind of book I would go around recommending to random people, but if you're me, you're squarely in the target audience of this book. I'm someone who enjoys reading about the practicalities of tv and film production, who likes getting nitty-gritty insights into how things are done. If you enjoyed, say, Preston Neal Jones's oral history of the making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, you're the kind of person who would also enjoy this book.
Most obviously, the book has a lot of sf and fantasy stuff in it. Of course the whole reason I was originally drawn to it were its chapters on Doctor Who; there are ten pages on the 1963-89 original run and eight pages on the 2005 revival. To be honest the chapter on the original run feels a bit cursory; ten pages means there's a lot to squeeze in here and not a lot of room for detail. (I wanted some nice photos of that space station from The Trial of a Time Lord, for example.) I am sure you could do a whole book on the department's contributions to Doctor Who! I was surprised by how many contributions the Model Unit made to the revived show; I'd known it was responsible for the spaceship crashing into Big Ben in "Aliens of London," for example, but hadn't realized the exploding Auton lair in "Rose" or the barrage balloons in "The Empty Child" or damaged tower blocks in "The Christmas Invasion" were also models. There's some beautiful photos in this part.
There was, of course, a lot of insight into other BBC telefantasy shows, both known and unknown to me: Blake's 7, Five Children and It, Moonbase 3, Quatermass, Red Dwarf, Space Vets, Star Cops, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Tripods, and so on. There's nice photos of model work in particular, and good details on other aspects of production as well; the creators of Red Dwarf loved working with the department, and tried to push what was possible further every series. Also, I learned that between seasons the model of the Dwarf rolled off a shelf and had to be totally rebuilt! The giant legs used to make the tripods in The Tripods were quite impressive. I was particularly wowed by the puppets used on Five Children and It; I guess I don't know how they looked in the finished production, but in the photos here they look amazing, particularly the beautiful phoenix used in the sequel series, The Phoenix and the Carpet. And how the puppets were operated is fascinating; they buried a box under the ground with all the support staff in it! There were fun stories from Space Vets, too; as it had a very low budget (it was a kids show), they just reused spaceship model from others shows!
But what was also quite fascinating were the details on the shows that are not telefantasy: costume dramas, news programs, documentaries, soaps, sketch comedies, and so on. If someone were to ask you if visual effects play a big role in these kind of shows, you would probably say no, but if they were to ask you how, you might think it through a bit more and realize they do. Lots of cool stuff in these parts, like how to simulate an ocean at night with no water, or how to flood a historical house, or how to film in an Egyptian tomb when the authorities won't get rid of the tourists. Miniatures are way more common than I would have guessed, but once you see it, it makes perfect sense. I have never seen and will never see, say, The Great Palace: The Story of Parliament, but I loved reading about how the buildings were recreated to tell this story. If you find reading about tv more interesting than actually watching tv (which is often how I feel), then this is the book for you. Lots of great anecdotes you can annoy your partner with!
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