Doctor Who - The Savage Planet

 

Obviously, the 9th Doctor. At the time this was made, the only version of the 9th Doctor available was the 'disco dancing' version from the Dalek Battle Pack.

Rose Tyler was a carded figure, released with K-9

The monsters of the piece were Terapusmordaxes from King Kong.

When the Character figures were first released, there were very few other 5" action figures for a guest cast.

At the time in mid 2006, the AFT was in something of a transition. For many years, I'd produced stories using custom-made 3.75" action figures. Some were better than others but none of them could match the quality of the new figures from Character.

I thought long and hard about whether or not to use these figures, my preferred scale had always been 'Star Wars' scale but obviously they were way better than anything I could produce, I had to get them and use them.

With the shift in scale, that meant there wasn't the wealth of supporting characters to draw on as there had been with the smaller scale. The issue was circumvented by using photoshop to scale-up the smaller toys but that was labour-intensive and didn't look as good.

The Savage Planet gets round the whole problem entirely but only featuring the Doctor and Rose.

The Savage Planet was shot on location in Torquay in March 2006. Why? I was in a touring production of Horrible Histories at the time. While on tour, I was lucky enough to pick up all the new figures from various locations and get some shots I might not have been able to get at home or in my studio.

The rock face scenes were shot in Torwood Gardens while the opening images o the Doctor and Rose being chased were filmed at Rock Walk.

The blue screen elements like the monsters were shot sometime after, back at home.

The scene with Rose in the nest was done on location without the monsters but I reshot it back home using background images I took on location. 

The eggs in the nest were made in photoshop. The spiders and their web were also added in photoshop. The spiders are from a real photo but coloured blood red.

The script originally called the planet New Caldonia but I changed it to New Cymru in honour of BBC Wales where the new series is made.

There were two alternate angles for the scene at the cave mouth.

Obviously, this takes place during Series 1 but as it doesn't refer to any other adventures, it could happen any time between Rose and Dalek or between The Long Game and The Empty Child since Rose and the Doctor are travelling without Adam or Captain Jack.

The story is admittedly lightweight with no actual villains and only one episode but I liken it to the sort of comic that might have appeared in Doctor Who Adventures magazine, which began in 2006.

The story was posted in November 2006. It never had a cover image!

It was reposted on 26 March 2025 to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of 21st Century Doctor Who.