The Making of Galaxy 4
By Derek Handley

Dean and I had been discussing for some time how we could tackle this story. Many of the scenes revolved around Chumblies on the planet surface and by the Police Box. We realised that it would be relatively easy to mock up some of these scenes. All we would need is a Police Box model, a Chumbley and a section of backdrop.

We decided that small models would look too much like models to be effective. Dean set to work in October '98 to build a 1/3 scale Police Box model. Once this was completed we both set to work to build a Chumbley in scale with the Police Box. Fortunately there are a few photos showing the size of a Chumbley against various actors and other photos of those actors by the Police Box, so we were able to work out the scale for the Chumbley model. We enlarged photographs of a Chumbley to the required size and made up templates for each of the three domed sections. I sculpted a clay model from which I was able to make a mould and get a fibre glass cast. We made up black cardboard rings to separate the sections (which could be easily removed to create a 'collapsed' Chumbley) and added castors to the base, covered from sight by mirrored card.

Dean's wife Maggie painted up the backdrop of sand dunes on a large roll of paper and we made up an 8'x 4' board to match the planet floor.

We went through the Galaxy 4 camera script with a fine toothed comb and prepared a shooting schedule of all the scenes we thought we could recreate. A few extra props and bits of set dressing were prepared and we were ready to start the first batch of filming.

First off were a few panning shots over the planet landscape and the Police Box materialising. Dean had fitted a flasher unit into the Police Box light so we were able to have the light flashing as it materialised. The fade from the empty planet landscape to the Police Box was done in the editing stage in Media Studio.
We tried several ways of making the Chumbley move, most effective was by simply pulling or pushing by hand, so most shots of it moving will have a bottom corner slightly out of shot. Paul Ebbs helped out as our Chumbley operator in the first batch of filming.

The Chumbley 'firing' effects were done by filling the 'gun' tube with flour and blowing it out through a flexible tube connected to the back. The 'burning bush' scene was literally an old bush from Dean's garden dowsed with petrol and set alight in his driveway! Careful mixing of the shots of the Chumbley approaching the bush, firing and the bush igniting made the scene flow smoothly.

The shots of the Chumbley caught by the Dravhin net were fairly easy to achieve. A net was flung over the Chumbley model and the black sections removed one at a time to collapse the Chumbley under the net. The net being removed by another Chumbley needed a little more thought, especially as we only had one Chumbley model! The shot was achieved by mixing two photos in Photoshop, the first had the Chumbley under the net and Dean's hand holding up one corner of the net. We marked off on the video camera monitor the position of the corner of the net, then moved the Chumbley model with its arms outstretched to match that position for the second picture.

Once we had all the shots of the Chumblies and Police Box done we looked at the script again to see what else we could do. Dean built a full size replica of a Dravhin gun and we found a blonde wig to make Maggie into a Dravhin! Dean made up a section of 'wall' with a porthole to act as the side of the Rill ship. We made a 'cut out' Rill from an enlarged photo which would fit behind the porthole.

The next shots to be filmed a few weeks later involved those with the Dravhin and gun against the planet backdrop and the Rill through the porthole. The scenes where the Rill is recounting to Vicki what happened when they first landed were filmed through a polythene sheet to give a 'surreal' effect.

The end of episode 2 is a zoom in on the Rill eyes as it looks at the Doctor and Vicki through the porthole. This was achieved by zooming in on the Rill cut out as it was moved into place behind the porthole, a smoke canister was sprayed around the porthole to give the ammonia gas effect. Later shots of the Rill through the porthole were mostly composites of photos of the empty porthole with a Rill photo superimposed behind and an overlay of video gas effects.

We filmed some other clips too which were required to help the flow of the story: the ammonia bomb coming through the Dravhin ship window and spewing gas on the floor; the Dravhin food; Steven overpowering the Dravhin guard; Steven pointing at the three suns and the 'roses' in the bush.

Once we had filmed the majority of the material, I downloaded the video clips onto my PC and sent the avi files (about 3GB worth) and some still frame grabs to Rick to edit into the recon. Rick sent us back copies of each episode as they were completed for review. The first edits were still a bit lacking in places and we decided to mock up a few more stills and video clips to fill in some of these areas, such as the scene where Steven tries to grab Maaga's gun (Dean built a replica gun for these shots), the Dravhin airlock control panel and the Doctor tapping the inert Chumbley with his walking stick (a miniature walking stick was made by Dean for this!). I've lost count of how many iterations of each episode were sent over by Rick for review by Dean and myself.

We were on constant lookout for any clips from other shows which could be used too, such as for the Airlock atmosphere gauge and the planet exploding (anyone spot which Who story that footage came from?).

The end of the story is the introduction to 'Mission to the Unknown' and new material needed to be made up from scratch for that. There are no known photos of any of the human characters from this story. The pictures at the end of Garvey on Kembel are composites of about three different photos.

One area that we were desperate for material from was the Rill centre. No photos have ever been printed of this set. However, I did know someone who had photos of the set, and he had agreed in principle to let us have copies. I had first approached him about getting copies of photos in May '98 and had been shown what he had in Jan'99, but it took until September before we actually got copies of the set photos (along with some additional ones for Toymaker). These photos showed the exterior of the Rill centre (including the air converter) and two shots of the interior (showing the drill rig in the background). Other photos we were given showed the real Police Box on the planet (used briefly in ep. 4), the Dravhin ship interior and exterior, several shots of the Chumblies on the landscape and some of the empty landscape sets. We used these photos as backgrounds for the composite shots used extensively throughout the recon.

Dean also hastily mocked up a section of the Air Converter prop using the new photo as a reference to create photos of the Doctor dismantling the unit. These images were made into composites in Photoshop to paste in the correct backgrounds.

Almost all other pictures were scanned from original photos rather than printed versions to get the best possible quality.

Just as we had completed work on the recon and were ready to release it in early November, Dean got a reply from a letter he had written to Peter Purves some months before. Peter had just moved house, but said he was willing to help out with introductions for the recons. We sent him review copies of the newly completed stories and visited his house the following week to film the introductions for Toymaker and Galaxy 4. Peter was marvellous, he was still in considerable pain from an accident he had had earlier in the year when he fell off a ladder and shattered the bones in both heels, but he was very professional did a splendid job for us.

I did the final edits to the recon to include the Peter Purves footage and sent these off to Rick to prepare the US version. I prepared the PAL version directly onto S-VHS master tapes to copy from for the dub sites.