Original subtitles

- And action.

- This is our first scene in the TARDIS.

- SCREAMING

- Very nervous.

- Hello and welcome to a brand-new series of Doctor Who Unleashed.

SHOUTING

I'm Steffan Powell, and I'm here to bring you

exclusive behind-the-scenes access to all things Who.

Coming up in this episode...

- Mummy, Daddy...

- ..we reveal how they got the talking space babies to talk,

despite the fact that...

BABY CRIES

- They cry a lot.

- We've got an interview with the snot-tastic Bogeyman.

Oh, here he comes.

And - spoiler alert - we've got world exclusive footage

from next week's episode.

So come on, what are we waiting for?

So...

Babies.

- Space babies! Which is the very mad idea

of a baby farm run by babies.

- I guess the first thing everyone wants to know

about this frankly bonkers episode

is how do you turn a spaceship full of babies from this...

BABY CRIES

..to this?

- Hello, Daddy. - Hi, Daddy.

- MORE BABIES: - Hi, Daddy!

- Well, to be quite frank, it's pretty complicated.

But stick with me and all will be revealed.

It's a multi-part answer

involving real babies,

unreal babies,

remote control buggies

and little green men.

But the first thing you need

is 12 babies with the cuteness of a basket full of kittens

who can keep up with the acting power of the Doctor.

- Hello, space babies!

- The person tasked with finding them -

co-producer Ellen Marsh.

- It's not just having lots of babies,

it's babies that talk, that act,

that cry on cue, laugh on cue.

They're fully fledged characters in the show.

We audition them, which...whenever I say that, people are like,

"How do you audition a baby? Like, what do you...?"

- How DO you audition a baby?

- You're basically checking

that they have the right sort of temperament.

It's essentially putting a camera quite close to their face,

moving it around, people walking around behind them,

just trying to test how they react. - Yeah.

Basically, as long as you didn't throw your toys out of the pram,

you got the gig.

- This is Ahyaan.

He's not nine months yet.

He'll be nine months in two days.

So he's the baby of the babies, basically.

Do you know what? He's been actually quite good

considering he's teething.

- This is Sienna, and she's playing baby Poppy.

- I'm Captain Poppy,

and I kept the station running for Mummy and Daddy.

- She's not shy.

- LAUGHS

- She's not shy.

- Captain Poppy, when was the last time that you had a hug?

- Never.

- Sienna is the most gorgeous little thing,

the most stunning little thing,

and she's so good,

and she's so unbothered by everything.

The only time she ever cried was when someone took her pear away,

which I fully appreciate.

- I'm Lauren, this is Evelyn.

- I'm Melissa, and this is Rome.

- I pull this string and that string.

I'm not sure what they do but I pull them very hard.

- When we first came in, I was thinking,

"Wow, this is just insane."

But it's been amazing.

- We came for the audition, and we heard it was Doctor Who

and we're like, "Don't pay us - we'll do it for free!"

Our family, we love Doctor Who, we sit down and watch it together,

so when he got this opportunity, we were really excited.

- The trials of having real babies on set is that they're so cute.

They're the cutest things ever

and it's so difficult

not to interact with them and just start playing with them.

- Besides bursting into tears or falling asleep mid-shot,

there's another major drawback to working with space babies -

they're only allowed to spend two hours a day on camera.

So to allow the rest of the cast and crew to continue filming,

the production team came up with a neat workaround.

Let me introduce you to a jelly baby.

WHISPERS: It's my friend. Just chilling out.

Being really good, fair play. Say hello to the camera.

Most of the space babies have a jelly baby double.

- They look like our real-life babies,

so we are working with those a little bit to just

work out our shots and get what we can with them,

and then we're using that as reference when we bring

our real space babies in to get the shots with them.

- They're a bit spooky...

..and their heads fall off so we need to be really careful.

Yeah, so they've all got their original names.

You've got your names in the back,

and then you have to match them with the prams

and the babies inside.

I'm loving it so much.

I'm having the best day ever. I love babies.

- In the episode, the space babies zoom around like F1 drivers.

No, they haven't done an advanced pushchair driving course -

it was all down to the little green men.

- Those green men came out of nowhere.

One day I was like, I was just looking around,

I was like, "Who's this guy?" It was bizarre.

That whole set was just absolutely bizarre.

- And action.

- The green men, they were like ninjas.

You would hardly see them until you saw them.

Why did I never clock that as, like, something weird?

I guess...

I guess cos, you know, there's weird things everywhere.

Come on, then. Find a space quickly. Come on.

- Why are you dressed in green Lycra?

- Because, as usual, we do all the weirder bits,

which is when you put a real baby in there...

- Yeah. - ..you can't have it radio controlled,

you can't have it attached to... - Oh, of course.

- So we need to puppeteer the buggy.

- The buggy! - Yeah, yeah.

- So when it's fake baby, remote control. - Yeah.

- Real baby, in you come. - Yeah.

- I didn't even think about that.

The little green men are cut out in the edit.

But, of course, what we all want to know is

just how did those babies speak?

Well, it started in this London recording studio

where the young actors voicing Captain Poppy,

Eric and the other babies

recorded the script.

THEY SPEAK AT ONCE

These recordings were filmed and the footage was handed over

to Jim Parsons and his team at Goodbye Kansas Studios.

And Jim has promised to explain what CGI alchemy turned this...

- Captain Poppy, when was the last time that someone gave you a hug?

Never?

- ..into this.

- Captain Poppy, when was the last time that you had a hug?

- Never.

- So, Jim, what are we seeing here on the screen?

That is one of the actors. - So...

..this is one of the baby actors,

who played Captain Poppy,

and she was a marvel.

So we have her, and that's the real baby.

Then we have...

..the child performer.

And then we made a little model of the actor's face...

- Right. - ..which then we track on,

and it follows what she was saying in the shot. - Mm-hm.

- So we've taken that footage.

- Yeah. - We've got her saying it there.

Then we've also got the footage of the baby.

We've got little model of her face

and then done exactly the same on her.

But she's not really talking, obviously,

cos she's the baby. - Of course.

- And then we keep her model,

but then we take the movement from that one, from the child,

and put it onto the baby.

So that's still the baby's face

but now the baby's talking.

- So you've got the model of the baby that is now talking

like the actor... - Yeah.

- ..and then you can put that model into the...face.

- Yeah.

So you've still got the baby's face

in exactly the same position that it is in the original shot plate.

- Yeah.

- But now it's being stretched and manipulated to move in the way

that the child performer is doing. - I see. Right, that makes sense.

- So that avoids all these problems of kind of like having to

relight a CG model to make it match the original plate...

- Cos I was wondering whether you would just do the mouth.

- Well, no.

Because if you just do the mouth then you end up with this little

mouth moving and, like, you've got to have the cheeks moving. - Yeah.

- And we did also, like, include some eyebrows and stuff like that.

So we're matching to what the mouth movement is.

We don't really worry about what the actual sound was.

We just match to the mouth movement,

cos the mouth movement is going to be exactly the same.

I've got a whole scene if you want to watch.

- I'd love to watch a full scene, yeah.

- So, are we wrong?

- What do you mean?

- We're not meant to be like this.

Did we grow up wrong?

- Oh, Poppy!

Oh, Popsicle.

Look at me. Look at me.

Nobody grows up wrong.

You are what you are and that is magnificent.

- But Mummy and Daddy left us.

- That's OK. - It's...

- Mine did too.

- It's so good, Jim.

It's so good, isn't it?

- Little baby me... - You're right - if they'd have been...

..more, it would have been too much. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it does help the fact, like...

"Mummy and Daddy left us," and she looks up. - She looks...

- But that was her doing that and she's just like, oh, wow,

she's just... - Look at that.

- But, you know, her and Ncuti had a real good connection as well.

- Oh, Jim. Fascinating. I'm so excited to see what it looks like.

Thank you very much for your time. - That's all right.

- Enough of the cute and cuddly.

SHRIEKING SNARL

It's time we got creepy.

- Oh, my gosh, the Bogeyman is terrifying.

He's actually terrifying.

I think his hands were the most horrible bit, but...

..but it was bloody scary.

- Three, two, one, action.

- I first read the script and I was like, "The Bogeyman.

"Cool, lol.

"That's going to be so cute."

And then our director showed me a picture of the Bogeyman

we were going to be working with, and it was terrifying.

Just so creepy and slimy and gross.

- The Bogeyman is possibly the maddest idea I've ever had.

I always spent my whole life thinking it's called Bogeyman,

and we have bogies, and all my life I've kind of put

those two things together in my head.

- This stuff is slippy, Rubes. Be careful... - Oh!

- But I thought, well, that's a great gag.

Let's literally get a Bogeyman.

- Oh, my God. Ugh...

Oh, this is disgusting!

- That's terrible, isn't it? That's terrible. I get paid to do this.

- Russell's not the only one

paid to bring his snot-tastic creation to life.

A whole team of designers, sculptors, prop makers, artists,

choreographers and performers put the boogers into the Bogeyman.

- The Bogeyman was probably the hardest thing to design, because

in the script, it's describing more a texture than...

..a look of something.

So it's all about the gooeyness and the drippiness

and all of that kind of thing.

It's very hard to come up with, what does that look like?

Basically, what's a bogey, and how should that look?

- In charge of the look is this team of dedicated snot-ologists.

- Welcome to Bogey Central.

Today we're learning how to cook with snot.

I think by the time we're finished,

we will have done at least two gallons of snot.

That's just with the silicone.

And then you've burnt through how much latex?

- I've already used 50 litres of brushable latex.

Maybe heading for the 100 litres by the time I'm finished.

- This is the snot that's been made by the special effects.

So this is the liquid.

There's going to be, like, 50kg or litres of this,

and that's just going to be poured on everything.

And I think the actors as well.

- It's one of our bogey tests. You see this one, which has come

out of the mould which I sculpted, has more of a matte finish.

So that's the dried, crustier surface bogey.

And then if you tip some of the silicone on top of it,

stays wet looking even though it's gone off.

So we can get a nice goopy undertow going on as well.

- That's the bogeys sourced.

But what about the Bogeyman?

Inside all that latex and goo is a real human.

- Just reminding myself of the movement.

Yeah, yeah. I'm excited.

This is day one of... snot monster AKA the Bogeyman.

- It's also the first day for the cast to meet him.

- Hello. - Hello.

I don't know if I want to shake that.

Ncuti!

Look at this. - Oh, my God!

- I... - Yeah.

- LAUGHTER

- No way. - Oh, my gosh.

- Shall we go on set?

And action.

- SCREAMING

SHOUTING

But who is the man behind the monster?

Oh, there he is. Put the mask back on!

Hey, sorry.

And...da-dum-tsh. - This is my scary face.

- How comfortable is this, Rob?

- Do you know what? As creature suits go,

I've worn quite a few,

it's pretty comfortable.

- Yeah. - It's made from...

You might not want to touch it, but it's made from, like, foam rubber.

- Oh, yeah. It's like... Yeah, like the...

- It's pretty squishy. - Yeah, it is pretty good.

- The head is heavy. - Yeah.

- And to do the shape of the creature,

it's a lot of kind of movement like this. - Yeah, yeah.

- OK, let's roll, please.

- I feel like we know each other really well now.

Actually, we met when you were a Wrarth Warrior.

So this is the second time we've met. - Yes.

- But I feel like we've built up a rapport.

Can I be honest with you? - Yes.

- It does stink, doesn't it?

It's really quite pungent.

- It's... Yeah, that's hopefully the foam latex and not me.

Foam latex has a very distinct smell,

apparently because of the ammonia in it.

- Oh, right. - So it's got a real...

I find it weirdly quite comforting by now.

I spend half my time wrapped in it.

- What's been the challenge of this fella, then, the Bogeyman?

Like you say, you are sort of hunched over.

Is that quite tricky when you're doing that?

- It's... You just have to kind of keep your focus in the fact

that his eyes and his mouth are in a different place to mine.

- I hadn't thought about that. That's weird, isn't it?

- The eyes are, like, here. - Yeah.

- So you've got to think, you know, if you're looking through a door

or looking at someone, you've got to look here

and not with your actual eyes. - Yeah.

- I've got the wonderful Paul Kasey, who's our movement director...

- Yeah. - ..in my ear in an earpiece.

- And don't forget that just forward motion.

Like, every step is forward.

- And he can kind of guide me and help with my angles and help with

knowing where the camera is. - Yeah.

- That was a good one.

- The kind of magic comes when it's just the little details

of, like, breathing and little twitches.

- Top quality flailing. - Little movements. Flailing.

- The flailing was... There was some ace flailing there.

- As I said, I did go to drama school, so... - Yeah, quite. Yeah.

That was better airlock flailing

than even at the end of the original Alien.

- Wow. Your words, not mine. - You know?

BOGEYMAN ROARS

One last question from me.

Who would win in a battle?

Bogeyman versus Wrarth Warrior - who's coming out on top?

- I think... I think it would be reasonably neck and neck,

but I think Bogeyman might just... - Do you think? - Yeah, might just...

- It's the slime. - Yeah, it's the slime.

- They'd be slipping everywhere. - I was going to say -

they'd be down in seconds and then he'd be on them.

- Yeah. - You've seen their teeth. - Yeah, the teeth are pretty grim.

OK, good. Well, listen, Rob, thank you very much.

I'm going to wash my hands now, but that's fantastic. - Yes, I would.

- ROAR

Still to come on Doctor Who Unleashed...

- Stand by. - Stand by.

..I have my first "work experience" experience for this series...

- And we're going to go for a take. - Going for a take. - That's good.

- ..and - spoiler alert - we've got an exclusive clip

from next week's episode.

But first...

- And three, two, one, action.

- The most exciting thing about making Unleashed

is the free rein to show everything that happens behind the scenes.

What you're about to see, though,

is something that was supposed to happen, but never did.

It involves the mysterious disappearance

of a multi-award-winning actor from this episode.

Puzzled? Intrigued?

Well, on the 1st of March 2023,

St David's Day here in Wales,

all the cast and crew from Space Babies gathered

for a read through.

At the top table are Ncuti and Millie reading the Doctor and Ruby.

- Who are you?

- I'm the Doctor.

- And, tucked in the right-hand corner of the screen,

the Bafta and RTS award winner Lenny Rush.

- Mummy? Daddy?

- Oh! No, darling, we're not.

- Boy, oh, boy! I've got to tell everybody.

Mummy and Daddy are here!

- Lenny was cast to be the voice of sword wielding hero Baby Eric.

- Eric will leave immediately.

- No, Mummy! I'm being brave!

- At the read through, Lenny was brilliant.

- I'm doing what Ruby said.

- What?

- I love Ruby, and she said there's no such thing as the Bogeyman.

So I'm going to find the naughty doggo and tell him off.

- Later, Lenny and I had a tour of the Space Babies set.

What's your reaction, Len, to

being on the set of Doctor Who?

- It's so cool. It's great.

I mean, seeing all the baby drawings as well on the spaceship.

- Yeah. - It's funny.

- And then suddenly he disappeared.

Gone. Cast out from the cast.

What were you thinking, Russell?

- Lenny Rush was one of the voices of the space babies,

and he'd been so good as a space baby voice

that at that read through, we kind of sat there, went,

"It's a shame. It's a shame he's just a voice

"and we're not going to actually see Lenny."

So this chance came along to cast a new scientific adviser

and I was like, "Oh, my God, let's get Lenny."

- So there we have it -

Lenny was so good he got a bigger part

and we'll see him later in the series

playing Unit's new scientific adviser, Morris Gibbons.

But before Lenny left the space babies,

we did get to show test footage of the Bogeyman.

MENACING GURGLE PLAYS

- Oh, my God!

That WILL give me nightmares, yeah!

Oh, my...

That's... That's actually so scary.

Wow. Oh, my...

Oh, wow.

To think that that's living under a bunch of space babies is scary.

Urgh!

Oh, that is actually freaky.

- Is it? - Yeah, that is weird.

In a good way. A good weird.

Urgh.

- In every episode of Doctor Who Unleashed,

I'm going to be trying out different jobs on and off set

to really find out what it's like working behind the scenes.

And this week, I'm going to be a runner.

So you're a runner?

- Indeed. Yeah, yeah.

- How much actual running do you do?

- Um... Ooh, usually about

10 to 15km at a time,

up and down the studios.

It's a bit like a track at this point.

You kind of make your way around.

Yeah, rubber's travelling now.

- The runners seem like the sort of glue that kind of

holds the whole thing together,

cos you're sort of talking between everybody,

cos it's such a big team.

- Yeah, yeah. - Is that...? Am I wrong or...?

- No, no, I think you're right.

I think what we do is that we will generally just help the day

run smoother between just shooting and non-shooting,

making sure where the cast are, making sure cast are happy,

making sure everyone's happy, really.

- Including the jelly babies.

- And general just... just bring good vibes.

We bring good vibes. That's what runners do.

- Good vibes. Yeah. I can do good vibes.

I feel like this is a bit of a moment, Devante.

You know when you're sort of being handed the radio like...

- Yeah. This is it. This is your initiation.

- Yeah. - And the moment you put the radio on, this is it -

you become an AD. - It's like the Doctor gets a sonic screwdriver,

we get a radio. - We get a radio, yeah.

Radio check. - I can hear you there. - There you go. - Lovely.

I don't know what the lingo is,

I need to get down with the lingo.

- The most important one is turning.

- Turning. - Turning.

- We have standing by.

- Standing by. - Standing by.

- Basically stand by is, "Shut up."

- Yeah, "Get ready, it's all about to kick off."

- And action.

- Action.

- Action.

- Ask for checks as well and they are the people who come in,

do make-up checks, costume checks, etc.

- OK. Checks, standing by, turning.

Time to put this knowledge into action.

- Quiet, please. Stand by.

- Stand by. - Stand by.

- OK. Checks to shoot.

- Checks to shoot.

- And we're going to go for a take. - Going for a take.

- That's good. You can get louder with it if you want.

- Do you think? - Yeah, yeah. - I'm building my confidence.

- I believe in you. I believe in you. - Building my confidence up.

- Standing by. - Standing by. - Standing by. - Take. - Take.

- OK, red light, please.

And rolling, please.

- Turning. - And we're turning. - Turning.

- And action.

- First I knew, six years ago...

..there was like a rattling in the pipes.

Then the howling began.

By the time I got the cameras working, there it was -

the Bogeyman.

I don't know how it even exists.

- All right, cut!

- OK, cut there. - Cut there.

- And you can switch the red light off.

- Thank you.

- You're obviously showing me the ropes today.

How did you learn the ropes? How did you end up in this position?

- I had a bit more of an unconventional way in.

So I was a double

for Amir in His Dark Materials, who plays Will. - Really? - Yeah.

And cos he was in so much, they were like,

"You might as well be a runner."

And from there I would be in, like, doubling some days

and then also running some days.

And then from there did a few other jobs here and there,

and then ended up finding my way to Doctor Who.

- Did you need any qualifications to end up in this job? - No, no.

What is lovely about this job,

it's kind of, in a way, an entry level job.

- OK. Cameras up. - Copy that.

So you can come in with no qualifications at all -

as long as you've got good people skills and good...

..half decent memory, I think you can make it here.

- Yeah, so it's all about...mainly about your personality, then.

- Yeah, it's your personality that really drives you forward

in this job in particular.

- And what would you like to be, then? What's the plan?

Where would you like to go? Where do runners end up?

- Well, we can go in different directions here, and I think,

as a runner, cos it's an entry into the industry,

you end up meeting these different departments

and seeing these different departments,

and if you decide, "Hey, I would love to go into VFX,"

it's great as a runner because you meet these people

and you spend so much time with them.

- Wherever you end up,

being a runner is the ideal first step into a TV drama career.

This series of Doctor Who has been filmed

entirely across Wales and Bristol,

and the nerve centre is here at Wolf Studios in Cardiff,

where the majority of the episodes are shot on the studio's six stages.

Stage six itself is the permanent home

of the magnificent new TARDIS interior,

where the opening and closing scenes of Space Babies were shot.

There's also a backlot here at Wolf,

where the iconic bi-generation was filmed in the summer of 2022.

The other five stages are a constant hive of activity,

with sets being built for future episodes,

sets from previous episodes being taken down and repurposed,

and, of course, sets where the crew are currently filming.

And for this episode, the majority of the scenes are being filmed

behind this door, on the Space Babies space station.

Construction began in December 2022

and, after three months of hard graft,

the set is ready for filming

and production designer Phil Sims has agreed to take me on a tour.

Well, here we are, Phil.

Another spaceship. - It's another spaceship.

- We should stop meeting like this.

- Yeah, I know, we do have to stop meeting like this.

- These are really cool.

- The graffiti - it's meant to be a hospital ship

and the idea is this is like a paediatric ward,

so we find some babies on the ship... - Yeah.

- ..and it turns out, to keep themselves occupied,

they've decorated the ship.

- Now, spoilers - the space babies didn't really do these pics.

They were all painted by the art department,

although they were inspired by young artistes.

- I have a lot of little cousins

who I shove pens in their hands and say, "Draw me a picture." So...

It took three years of university,

spending 9 grand a year and 27 grand to pay back in total,

for me to get the qualifications to be here doing this.

- This is obviously the baby room, then, isn't it?

- This is where the babies are made.

The babies are suspended in a fluid,

they're kept at a low temperature,

so the tubes that they're in will look like they're frozen,

or very, very cold. - Yeah.

- We've got like a special pad underneath them

that aerates the water so it looks nice to shoot through. - Yeah.

Now, I've clocked, you know, you've got these mirrors...

- Yeah. - ..on the wall.

Is that to make this room seem way bigger than what it actually is?

- Sh! - Oh... - No, this room is massive.

- It's massive. - What mirrors? There's no mirrors.

The mirrors are to create the illusion of depth, yeah.

So when we photograph it, it feels like maybe there's corridors,

or maybe there's ante rooms or other spaces annexed to it.

- Well, there's loads more spaceship to see, Phil.

Shall we have a look at this room? This is cool, isn't it?

These doors are actually quite hard to open.

You need muscles. - They are.

No, what you need is, you need a prop man on the other side

pulling the door open. That's what you need.

- That's what we've got here, is a prop man, actually, the other side.

- Hey, Atty, do you mind opening the door for us, Atty?

Go on, mate. Go on, quick.

That was probably the worst time you've ever done that, Atty.

Thanks. That's the magic of spaceships.

That's how spaceship doors open.

- Would you like me to do it again? - Thanks, mate. No.

So, the most fun about this,

Russell really liked the idea that there's a jury-rigged system

where the kids have created their own way of controlling

the adult controls in the spaceship.

- SHIP COMPUTER: - One, two, three, and...

..blow!

- They have access to their toys, largely,

so we use this kind of wooden Meccano set to create

a system of levers and pulleys,

where they could pull a pulley or pull a handle

and then it presses a button.

It looks simple cos they're all kids toys,

but it's actually quite complicated.

And then we've got to double rig it,

because we need to rig it off-camera

so that we can also operate it behind the scenes,

so it all just kind of moves and behaves itself.

- You make a lot of spaceships.

- We do make a fair number of spaceships.

- We've talked before about sort of recycling sets.

- Yeah. - So are there any bits of this one that we will have

seen before but looking slightly different?

- These fellas, they were great big water fuel pistons

in the huge spaceship in Special Two

and in Special Two they were canted at an angle and they went...

..they ran continuously through the ceiling and floor.

And in here we've stood them up properly,

kept all the light detail behind,

but added some panels over the front just to break it up and

make it look a little bit different.

- Is that something you think about when you come up with a new set?

"We've got that bit from there. We can use that for that."

How important is that?

- Yeah, it's really important,

obviously because we don't want to be wasteful.

It's really useful financially because some of this stuff,

particularly spaceship stuff, is really quite expensive

and time consuming to make. - Yeah.

- And the one thing about this show is that how quickly we just move

through things, and we spend a lot of time putting them together

and creating the detail, but we shoot it really quickly

and then it's gone.

But if we can recycle it, we can still sort of walk in and stroke it

for a bit longer and stay excited about it.

- Still there.

Next time on Doctor Who...

- Go-go boots! - Oh, my God!

- THEY SHOUT EXCITEDLY

- I want a beehive!

- I've got wigs galore!

- in your ear

sunset now.