DOCTOR WHO
NEW DOCTOR WHO PRODUCER CHRIS MAY ON CHRISTMAS!
ONE OF THE NEW PRODUCERS on Doctor Who, Chris May is a very happy fellow. “I’m currently working on season two, and it’s busy,” he tells us from the studios in Cardiff. “Oh crikey, it’s busy. But it’s exciting. It’s going to be a very exciting series, I’m not gonna lie. I feel like I’ve got the best job in the world. Oh! It’s wild!” Like we weren’t worked up enough already! But before any of that – Christmas Day marks a new beginning…
Did this feel like the start of something new for you?
Absolutely. I’ve never worked on Doctor Who before. I joined the Whoniverse after they completed filming the first three specials, so I joined to do the Christmas Special, which is Ncuti’s first full ep. Everyone said it felt bigger. As always, you’re trying to outdo what’s happened before. It felt incredibly exciting from the off. Ncuti is just going to be the most… well, he is just the most brilliant Doctor, we’ve all fallen in love with him. We’re so excited that a whole new audience is gonna fall in love with him.
How is filming a Christmas special different to a normal episode?
They’re always a little bit bigger, they’re always a little bit more ambitious. This certainly has been, but honestly, because it was the first episode that I produced, I didn’t really know any other way. But certainly, in terms of the way we shoot the show, the Christmas Special, we always shoot them separately. Everything else is done in blocks – we do two episodes at a time, but the Christmas special we always tend to do on its own. Because it’s always just a little bit more complicated, we only get the director to focus on that one episode. Normally we get directors to do two at a time. You always know you’re in for some challenges that go beyond the normal times of the show. That certainly was the case for this one!
What’s the biggest task you had to undertake in the special?
I’ve had some ambitious stunt sequences, people on wires, all that kind of thing. There are creatures in this episode which have been a whole new challenge in how we’ve approached it in our prep, and how we’ve approached it in our shoot, and how we’ve taken that theory into post-production. That was probably the thing that took up the most of our brain space, working out how they worked, which started off at very early planning stages, a lot of concept work, creature design – which has been massive. Then taking that through into the practicalities of the shoot. Which was just insane, but brilliant. Then how we’ve worked with them, and what we’ve shot, in post production and VFX to try and improve them as much as we possibly can to make them seem as lifelike as possible.
What’s it like working with Millie and Ncuti?
They’re lovely. They’re
