The history of the Tom Baker titles

 

Last time, I talked about how Pertwee's original titles did not reflect the vision of their designer, Bernard Lodge. This time I'm going to talk about how Tom's titles did not reflect what producer Philip Hinchcliffe wanted. Seems like nobody's ever happy with the final product!

Context

In 1973, Lodge had worked over a four-month period to create a new title sequence for Pertwee's Third Doctor at the request of producer Barry Letts. Unfortunately, this sequence would only be broadcast for 7 months before Pertwee regenerated into Tom. Hinchcliffe, it is said, liked the sequence as is and only wanted a unique animation which would reveal Tom's face, and, much like the last article, draft sequences were made which were again further altered to become the version shown on-screen.

Preparation for the sequence

This image (beautifully restored by the legend that is Clayton Hickman in a tweet you can find here) was taken at some point in 1974. By this stage, Tom's costume, having been designed by James Acheson, had been finalised. Lodge has retroactively complained that he hated Tom's curly hair, as his original idea was to use a matte based on the photograph and tracing around all the hairs would be a nightmare. The scarf also caused problems for Lodge, as up until this point, the title sequences he designed were symmetrical in nature. The scarf's length, as well as its colours, did not allow for a symmetrical photo to be taken.

The new effects

The 1973 shoot had improved upon a technique invented for 2001: A Space Odyssey called "slit-scan" which relied on filmed artwork being manipulated using the movement of the camera and a motorised animation bench. Lodge realised that by placing a black sheet of cardboard with a slot cut out on top of a texture, a "tunnel" could be created on the film, and it produced different effects depending on the shape of the slot and the object placed underneath.

Pertwee's sequence had used strips of polythene bags with a polarising filter behind it being filmed through a diamond-shaped slot to create the infamous tunnel seen at the end, and this footage was deemed worthy of being reused in Tom's sequence, but it was felt another tunnel should be used too. 

Lodge used tinfoil and fed it through a circular slot to create a circular tunnel (also reused in the end credits) which would loop for a short amount of time before dissolving into Baker's face. But it's not that simple.

As noted earlier, a matte drawn around Baker's head would have been difficult to do accurately, so Lodge decided to ditch the idea completely and use the photograph as is, having it blend into the sequence naturally, instead of fading to the photo on a background, like Pertwee's. However, simply inserting the photo into the sequence with the long time exposure would have meant the photo itself would have overexposed and turned white under the lens, so Lodge had to find another way of doing this.

Everybody knows what a dotscreen is. Lodge had bought a physical dotscreen at some point beforehand, and placed it over the photograph of Baker's face, thus solving the issue. 

What this meant was that the camera picked up the dot pattern with Tom's face underneath and revealed it more every frame until the viewer was left with a photograph of Tom fully visible, surrounded by tapering streaks of light.

To transition into the diamond tunnel at the end, a colourised negative was briefly faded up in front of the photograph. It's barely on screen for a second, so I don't blame you if you never saw it!

Draft Edit 1 (Early 1974)

The first draft edit is a curious beast. For starters, a previously undocumented third tunnel pattern, as well as an animation of a TARDIS photograph have been spliced in at the start, completely disconnected to the rest of the sequence.

It's obvious that this is an early version of the TARDIS and the corridor it travels up from the final.

The delay in the pattern, as well as the pattern itself, seems to resemble the Pertwee sequence's delayed circular tunnel more by comparison.

The similarities to Pertwee's sequence do not end here, as literally the same opening shot from Pertwee's second intro is recycled, which then crudely fades into the new Tom tunnel. Given that the opening shot is facing one direction, and Tom's tunnel is facing the other, the transition doesn't look all that nice.

The rest of the sequence plays out as is broadcast.

Draft Edit 2

A second draft edit, closer to the final, is the first part of this video. Many people will not notice the difference here at first, but it's mainly about timing. The sequence in the circular tunnel happens a bit earlier due to the TARDIS appearing earlier in this version of the sequence.

Also, and this is a nitpick, but the fact that the centre of the tunnel appears over the top of the TARDIS before the rest of the tunnel fades in really bugs me.

The existence of this edit raises a few questions. The main thing to note is that the sequence with the TARDIS has been completely re-animated, and given that the Pertwee sequence took months to make, it's not unreasonable to assume that this animation took a similar length of time. Though quite why this was reanimated is unclear - perhaps Lodge wanted something new, and perhaps another staff member thought the model TARDIS in the photo looked inaccurate to the prop and wanted it redone. Whatever the deal is, the Pertwee opening shot and the TARDIS photo which had been previously tested got scrapped and were replaced.

As we know by now, the sequence was edited again to correct for timing faults and used on screen.

But, like last time, it doesn't end there. 

The Ark In Space

Having not simply re-edited Pertwee's sequence, as had been instructed by Hinchcliffe, Lodge (or indeed someone else, whoever did this is unknown) was asked to tint the titles a different colour every story... presumably for variety, though the reasons for this is unknown. The "tinted titles" idea only lasted one episode, the first part of The Ark In Space. It's not hard to see why.

Tom turning blue was probably not what was anticipated! Unlike the case with the Delaware theme, this version was broadcast in the UK. It was corrected for the rest of the story.

VHS

VHS copies of Tom's episodes, and indeed those sold to other countries, have a weird blue tint to them for some reason which isn't present on the master tapes. As this only occurs on these releases, and not anywhere else, I can only assume this was some sort of transfer fault.

L - Broadcast, R - VHS

DVD

The DVD titles use a scan of the original film, though the colour correction is a bit off. This is particularly noticeable when it is compared to the raw scan as seen on the Shada DVD from 2017.

L - DVD, R - Raw scan

One last thing

In regards to the Blu-Ray... I have no idea what they did. It looks like they tried to mash all the different versions together and blast it with a sharpening filter and the end result looks butt-ugly in comparison to the rest of them. Why couldn't they just leave it alone?!

Alright, that's this behemoth of a sequence done, that took a lot of me XD

The history of the Pertwee title sequence

The title sequence is a key component of Doctor Who. It contains some kind of out-of-this-world visuals that immediately sum up the surreal nature of the sci-fi within the show and the original Pertwee sequence is no different. However, the version that ended up on television is not an accurate representation of what designer Bernard Lodge wanted to achieve; to understand how, we must go back half a year before the transmission of Spearhead From Space.

Context

It's 1969. Following Troughton's (somewhat forced) announcement of his departure from the series earlier in the year, outgoing producer Peter Bryant cast Pertwee as the Third Doctor. Lodge was called in to create a new title sequence, which was to be in colour. He and Ben Palmer set about doing experimental footage with the BBC's new colour cameras using the same Howlaround technique employed since 1963, and it did not yield satisfactory results, so the decision was made to shoot the raw footage using the old Image Orthicon cameras that had been used to create Hartnell and Troughton's sequences and find some way of adding colour afterwards.

A presentation of Lodge's ideas

Two photographs of Pertwee were taken in preparation for the Howlaround footage, recorded on the 3rd of August, 1969; one of Pertwee with his arms outstretched, and one with a smiling close-up. The unused footage shows the "outstretched arms" photo being tested multiple times, which implies that the photo had some relevance to the sequence, so where would it have been used? 

The answer is hidden in plain sight.

These are the effects used to morph into the photograph, as seen in the test footage.

This is an excerpt from the final opening titles.

Now we're getting somewhere.

It's also interesting to note that part of Pertwee's hand is technically visible in the end credits sequence.

So now that we know where the "Outstretched hands" photo was to be used, how did Lodge envision transitioning from this combination of graphics into Pertwee's face? 

We know the answer to this as well.

Note the position of the "O" shape at the base of the graphic and the lines that divert to the sides.

Note the lines that divert to the sides here and the space at the bottom, where Pertwee's face will appear.

Combining these together with a photo of Pertwee's face, we get this.

Adding the previous combination on top gives a rough idea as to how the transition would have been achieved, with Pertwee's outstretched hands morphing into the top of his head.

This is how it would have looked if edited competently, but as we'll see, this didn't happen.

Colourisation Test (1970)

When it came to editing the titles and adding colour, someone in the Beeb thought it a good idea to edit the titles on videotape and using a vision mixer, as opposed to the standard practice of editing the titles on film. This meant the timing wasn't right and the editing looked off, particularly the transition into Pertwee's face, which itself is tilted slightly. However, this unused test is significant, in that it proves everything I mentioned above, although given the sloppy editing it ends up looking off and doesn't accurately represent Lodge's initial idea. 

You will probably notice that the sequence does not sync up with the final edit of the title music dubbed over it; however, it does sync up with the 1967 version of the theme, which you can see here, seeming to imply that Troughton's theme as originally edited would have been used for much longer.

The film print

It's clear that the titles could not have been broadcast like this and that an alternative was needed. So Lodge went back to the drawing board and edited the sequence using film and colour gels. Why the sequence was shortened has never been made clear. 

Interestingly, a version of the original print does still exist and can be seen here. 

What's particularly interesting about the original print is that the colours match the ones seen in 1971, implying that this print was the version with the 1967 theme attached and broadcast as part of the early episodes of season 8, which was later corrected. 

The print was tampered with yet again, and synced with the Delaware theme in 1972, which was also later corrected (unless you lived in Australia, New Zealand, Brunei and the United Arab Emirates). 

Re-edit for DVD

The DVD edit of the opening titles is the most well-known version of the sequence. Instead of improving the quality of the sequence, as was standard for the rest of the titles, Pertwee's titles were (for some reason) re-edited from scratch, presumably from the original videotapes, to "correct" faults in the unrestored print.

The DVD version alters the angles of certain objects, such as the blobby diamonds, and tweaks the looping spiral animation at the end of the sequence so it looks less jarring on the eyes than the original.

The most interesting change is that of Pertwee's face. Film prints, VHS releases, and indeed the original tapes, use a photograph with the "high contrast" lighting Lodge describes in interviews (i.e. harshly lit at the sides and a very dark space at the front), at the expense of Pertwee looking a little ominous. The DVD edit has been tweaked slightly, so this creepy effect is not present.

One last thing

It's a long-standing in-joke with some friends of mine that the Blu-Ray releases do horrific jobs at presenting the title sequences as it seems like some bloke in the editing department decided to dial up the colours and mess with the hue far more than necessary (see the Fourth Doctor's one, just ugh), and this sequence is no exception. It's literally just the DVD edit but with weird colour changes.

Right, that's enough of my inane rambling on shit nobody cares about, see you later.