Throughout this module we will develop an essay discussing aspects of visual effects to present our ability to both research and formulate our ideas and opinions.

Week 1

We began to formulate various ideas for the subject of our essay.

fix it in post?

A research into the competitive culture of making promises that your not sure you can keep using the doctor who fan film production as a practical example.

Ai revolution vs 3d revolution

Comparing the similar way in which the industry has adopted the new technologies and the parallel similarity in which workers have reacted to the coming change.

CG/VFX resurrection of dead actors

Discussing the ethics behind bringing back actors who have passed away. the varying reactions from both the public and the people who have known the deceased along side the rampant speculation of what they themselves might have thought.

Animal handling

Exploring how CGI has revolutionized the use and priority for safety of the use of animals in films. could use the 1981 film roar and perhaps compare it to Life of Pi and the obvious safety implications and improvements for both animals and humans.

Deepfakes

Deepfaking is the process using a deep learning software to transpose a constructed face (either that of fiction or an existing individual) onto a performance given by an actor or separate individual.

This video of the queen was released along side the 2020 Queens speech at Christmas time. While in the context of a visual research into deepfakes it may seem obvious that its fake; in the context of the time of release the lack of initial warning and the high quality of the production it can be quite convincing. The video was widely criticized at the time by people who instead of seeing the joke; saw the video as threatening to the image of the queen. And more widely than that the threat to the veracity of any truth claim of any political figure going forward.

The process consists of compiling as many source images of both new and performed face in as many different condition and expressions as possible. Pouring them into a deep learning algorithm the software will attempt to perfectly reconstruct from scratch both faces. Once the software is confident in its ability to do so it will begin to construct the target faces on top of the performance offered in the new video. Attempting to match the conditions and expressions as best it can using the knowledge it has gained from the given files. this is why smaller performances offer better results as neutral faces tend to have more reference for the software to draw from.

I think that the Keanu video offers an important insight into the importance of context. The haphazard nature of the vertical video and the spontaneity of its editing and camera work goes a long way into convincing the audience of the truth claim of the video. Especially the moment at the end wherein they go to behind the scenes to thank him for taking part the film gets the meta narrative of Keanu actually being there to film it. Even though this is comparatively much older and less advanced than perhaps mark Hamill’s appearance in the Book of Boba Fett. The meta context provided may even still convince audiences further than the Disney production perhaps might.

The perhaps more sinister side of deepfaking, aside from the political, is its wide and immediate use in the porn industry. The mass distribution and production of synthetic pornography depicting targeted individuals without their consent became prolific almost as soon as the technology became available. It’s illusion from morality with the general accepting of deepfaking for comedic or entertainment purposes in terms of fair use has made this modern malign phenomena very difficult to litigate.

73 Vand. L. Rev. 1479 (2020)
“The New Weapon of Choice”: Law’s Current Inability to Properly Address Deepfake Pornography

I think that ethically deepfaking, within the context of entirely replace one actors face with another, has little defense. Beyond comedy there are few qualities to attribute to it that cant be found elsewhere. The exclusive comedy of placing a person in an unexpected situation is, in my opinion, not a strong enough retort to the general threats to personal liberty of representation alongside the fundamental undermining of the truth. the threat of doubt that deepfaking imposes is difficult to reconcile with the pursuit of entertainment.

Possible Essay Topics

Relaionship between directors and visual effects

Look at case studies comparing directors who have a lot of CGI experience against those who don’t and seeing how that can effect the quality of the final image. For instance Gareth Edwards and Tim Miller have made high quality CGI on comparably low budgets whereas some huge films made by filmmakers who haven’t done as much work in CGI as some of their peers struggle to achieve that quality on higher budgets such as Peter Jackson on the Hobbit or Peyton Reed.

• Godzilla minus 1

Relationship between the quality of VFX in comparison with the time given to achieve them (race to the bottom)

The competitive flexibility on cost of both time and money has produced the famous crunch placed on effects artist as house compete in a bidding war. Large scale CG movies which have some of the most talented houses working on them look poor quality. In comparison the film that are hailed as the best visual spectacles on offer have long periods of time and productions which work with the houses early on almost from the films conception allowing the technology to be developed at a commensurate rate with the film.

• Rhythm and hues (life of Pi – Bankruptcy)
• Across the Spider verse (Artist Crunch)

Ai Generated Images

in 2023 a photographer refused to accept the first place prize for the creative open category, which he won at the Sony world photography awards. He admitted that the photo he submitted was generated by artificial intelligence. He submitted as an experiment to see how prepared the photography space was for an artificial invasion. It turns out at he frames it, “They are not.”

Photographer admits prize-winning image was AI-generated | Sony world photography awards | The Guardian

I find this example compelling because in my view it exposes a wider naivety with the attitudes to how people expect Ai to impact the arts. There is (in my experience) an expectation that people wont accept art work created by an artifice. that human work holds an emotive quality and an earnestness which Ai cannot reproduce. The winning of this competition and the ignorance of the judges to how the picture was created seems to make the antithetic point with quite the empiric evidence.

Ai Generated video

Video generation seems comparatively rudimentary against the stills. the software seems to struggle with motion and the relationship between the moving forms on screen. things begin to merge together or be forced apart. perhaps the high end of this is as seen in the curious refuge works wherein movement is kept to a minimum.

Where Ai hits its stride however is the analysis and alteration of non synthetic videography. While it seems to struggle to produce consistent forms it can recognize them effectively and track them perhaps better then a human artist would. Wonder Dynamics is a software which can recognize anthropomorphic forms and track their movement in 3d space. it then replaces the form with a 3d model; analyses and replicates the lighting while also filling in the gaps of background that might be left exposed once the human is removed.

While imperfect, the level of quality is already high and a learning algorithm can only improve and the implications of potential seem far reaching. the tool is not only qualitatively high but also much faster than a human could hope to achieve with the below process taking under a minute to process.

I think that Ai in the generative capability is a call to action for how we view art. Most wide audience artwork is ultimately a capitalist mission for profit. Lots of good art can be formed from this structure but ultimately more art will be stifled or threatened by its lack of profitability than will be encouraged to flourish. We’ve been able to be ignorant to this in our culture as whether or not the art we consume has been altered for monetary gain; it was still made by artists with a vision in mind. Ai is an end to that blissful ignorance. A machine will always be cheaper and faster than a human and so capitalism will encourage art to be made with as few artists as possible.

Functionally generative media is an exciting insight into the new world of technological possibility and the true democratization of all artistic medium. Philosophically Ai is the smell that arises to alert someone that their neighbor has died alone in the flat right next to yours and that neighbor is the corpse of human artwork that’s probably been dead longer than we care to admit.

Week 3 – Topic Presentation

History of visual effects in doctor who

Week 4 – The Proposal

How the increasing sophistication alongside the democratization of digital visual effects has changed the identity and aesthetics of science fiction in BBC’s Doctor Who (2005-2024)? 

• CGI environments 

• CGI characters 

• VFX pipelines 

• Outsourcing 

• Virtual Production 

Over the last 20 years of Doctor Who there is a perception that the show has changed dramatically under a production team that has widely stayed the same. There have been dramatic changes to the aesthetic and styles the show takes on and observable traces of how the VFX may have inspired degrees of those shifts. The wide democratization of VFX technology has made it easier to create larger scale science fiction events, characters or environments in a cost effective manner.  

Given the continuity of the show not only in its cannon as a work of fiction but also in its maintenance of a lot of its staff; there is an incite here about how the changes coming to its identity must be pejoratively external. Specifically, within the changing bounds of what digital visual effects can produce on a television budget it seems clear that that has changed the bounds of the story and styles that the showrunners have found available to them. Simply in terms of the scales that series have taken there story’s to; there has been an acceleration to compounding degrees of how this space based drama has been able to less and less focus on earth bound or earth-like planet bound storylines. 

While within the show in isolation this appears anecdotally fascinating; the long tenure and dominant identity of doctor who within a context of science fiction as a whole points to these evolutions present and clear on this show to be present and president for, perhaps, the entire genre. 

This is a theoretical investigation into the changes and the effects drawn hens. I will be looking behind the scenes of the show to compare, not only the approaches taken, but the attitudes and understanding of those approaches from the perspective of the creatives behind the show. While my focus on research within the show will be predominantly into the practicality of the use of VFX, research will be taken into how academic thinkers have interpreted the shifts in VFX use across the board to inform, enforce or perhaps counter any conclusions I draw. 

Doctor Who has an ample collection of behind-the-scenes information in a companion show pertinent to this project. There are over 67 hours of documentary about the shows run which has been released alongside the show throughout much of its modernity. The Doctor Who Confidential show predominantly paints a positive picture of the production. One might expect this to have been the case as it is an educational exploration of practicality of the methods behind the production and is an official release by the creators themselves. As such a series of interviews will be conducted with people present at various points throughout Doctor Who’s production since the revival in 2005. On top of these interviews there is a plethora of already taken interviews with the showrunners, actors and writers which will serve a great source of information not only into my question but also how the media has interacted with these ideas over the last 19 years. 

Bibliography:

‘Bringing Back the Doctor’ (2005) Doctor Who Confidential, series 1, episode 1. BBC Wales. Available at: BBC iPlayer (04/11/2024).

‘Wild Blue Yonder’ (2024) Doctor Who Unleashed, 60th Anniversary Specials, episode 2. Bright Branch with BBC Studios Productions. Available at: BBC iPlayer (04/11/2024).

Moffat. S, Davies. RT, Collins. J. (2024) ‘Production commentary’, BOOM. Written by Steven Moffat [Doctor Who, Season 1, Episode 3]. Available at BBC iPlayer (04/11/2024).

Week 5 – Interview prep

possible questions

• Is it possible to make Doctor Who in 2024 without Digital VFX
• Would it have been possible to make Doctor Who in 2005 without Digital VFX
• In the time you worked on the show was there a change in how the Digital VFX were approached
• Can you think of an idea that you had that wasn’t possible at the time but you later got to tackle because of changing technology
• Can you think of a time when you were particularly impressed by the CGI created
• Can you think of a time when you were disappointed by the CGI created
• In the earliest time you worked on the show can you remember whether or not CGI was a point of conversation or was it an abstract entail that you knew was there but didn’t invest much thought into.
  • To the degree that that was true do you think your attitudes have changed at all.
• How have the effects in the show changed the way you view the identity of doctor who.
• the shows pace was radically changed in 2005 with the revival with a greater focus around action and set pieces. Do you think that would have been possible without CGI

Week 6 – Narrow it down

On advise from Florian I have reworded a paragraph of the proposal

How the increasing sophistication alongside the democratization of digital visual effects has changed the identity and aesthetics of science fiction in BBC’s Doctor Who (2005-2024)? 

• While within the show in isolation this appears anecdotally fascinating; the long tenure and dominant identity of doctor who within a context of science fiction as a whole points to these evolutions present and clear on this show to be present and president for, perhaps, the entire genre. 
• While within the show in isolation this appears anecdotally fascinating; its significance within the genre is indicative of the developmental observations within the show being recognizable and projectable across the science fiction as a whole.

new draft

Over the last 20 years of Doctor Who there is a perception that the show has changed dramatically under a production team that has widely stayed the same. There have been dramatic changes to the aesthetic and styles the show takes on and observable traces of how the VFX may have inspired degrees of those shifts. The wide democratization of VFX technology has made it easier to create larger scale science fiction events, characters or environments in a cost effective manner.  

Given the continuity of the show not only in its cannon as a work of fiction but also in its maintenance of a lot of its staff; there is an incite here about how the changes coming to its identity must be pejoratively external. Specifically, within the changing bounds of what digital visual effects can produce on a television budget it seems clear that that has changed the bounds of the story and styles that the showrunners have found available to them. Simply in terms of the scales that series have taken there story’s to; there has been an acceleration to compounding degrees of how this space based drama has been able to less and less focus on earth bound or earth-like planet bound storylines. 

While within the show in isolation this appears anecdotally fascinating; its significance within the genre is indicative of the developmental observations within the show being recognizable and projectable across the science fiction as a whole.

This is a theoretical investigation into the changes and the effects drawn hens. I will be looking behind the scenes of the show to compare, not only the approaches taken, but the attitudes and understanding of those approaches from the perspective of the creatives behind the show. While my focus on research within the show will be predominantly into the practicality of the use of VFX, research will be taken into how academic thinkers have interpreted the shifts in VFX use across the board to inform, enforce or perhaps counter any conclusions I draw. 

Doctor Who has an ample collection of behind-the-scenes information in a companion show pertinent to this project. There are over 67 hours of documentary about the shows run which has been released alongside the show throughout much of its modernity. The Doctor Who Confidential show predominantly paints a positive picture of the production. One might expect this to have been the case as it is an educational exploration of practicality of the methods behind the production and is an official release by the creators themselves. As such a series of interviews will be conducted with people present at various points throughout Doctor Who’s production since the revival in 2005. On top of these interviews there is a plethora of already taken interviews with the showrunners, actors and writers which will serve a great source of information not only into my question but also how the media has interacted with these ideas over the last 19 years. 

contacting interviewees

So far I have contacted Jamie Magnus Stone and Nick Hurran. They have each directed episode for landmark moments in the show. Nick Hurran directed the 50th anniversary special in 2013 and Magnus Stone Directed a special for the celebration of 100 years of the BBC. Both massive episodes within the show with larger than the usual budgets and noticeably different approaches to their visual effects.             

Essay

How the increasing sophistication alongside the democratization of digital visual effects has changed the identity and aesthetics of science fiction in BBC’s Doctor Who (2005-2024)?

 

Introduction

VFX Literacy

     Production

     Audiences

Budget

Production

Techniques

Genre

Conclusion

 

 

Introduction

After a 16-year hiatus BBC’s Doctor Who returned to television in 2005. The show was given a complete makeover for modernisation. One such change was a new utilisation within the show of computer-generated imagery. There were 12 artists attributed with the first episode of the revival working on around 65 VFX shots whereas a recent episode released for the 60th anniversary had 46 artists accredited with post processing alone, alongside further work for pre/post visualisation accomplished by others, completing over 350 shots within one episode. This meteoric rise in scale of VFX within a span of 18 years marks a clear shift that has come about within the show. As a low budget endeavour, it has been the development and democratisation of DVFX which has taken this impact to production. Whereas 20 years ago, it was the more affordable option to try to avoid the digital realm where possible; now DVFX are very much to a budgetary advantage. How has this change impacted production dynamics and even the storytelling the show utilises and how has that subsequently affected its perception and appeal.

VFX Literacy

Production

The accessibility of visual effects has leveraged an inherent education for both those behind the scenes and audiences into how an image with a computer-generated aspect has been created. This increased literacy has deeply impacted the ways in which decisions get made behind the scenes. Not only in how to create but also how much is possible. The vagary of what is possible within the realm of a given budget has over the years dissipated allowing showrunners or producers to know quickly how and when to delegate imagery to the post team. In 2005 the team at The Mill said,

‘The first that we at The Mill get to hear about a monster could be a phone conversation before a script is written… Before Russel wrote the script he called and suggested that it could be CGI and if it were to be CGI what would be the rules to bear in mind when writing it.’ (Doctor Who Confidential, 2005)

Whereas in 2005 a meeting in which delegation of shots and assets between the practical and digital teams would take up to three days of discussion; the production in its modernity can make the same decision in 3 hours. This is in short because less questions need to be asked.

According to Will Cohen, one of the lead VFX producers working on Doctor Who both in 2005 and 2023, he said, ‘Back in the early days, the visual effects component of planning meetings would dominate the meetings.’ ‘Hours and hours of discussion over how to make something.’ The impression he gave was that now the domineering presence of the CGI in those meetings is gone as showrunners now have a much greater intuition of where and how to use it.

But how this might have impacted the show and it’s writing isn’t clear until we look to how the stories have changed alongside this education of their writers. A not insignificant contributor to the density of effects in a given story is there setting as the further the show delves into the exploration of other worlds and the abstract of a science fiction location the more that environments must be enhanced digitally to fit settings needs. Using this as a metric for an indication of how comfortable Russel T Davies felt writing for visual effects, I don’t find it surprising that 7 of the 14 episodes in series 1 of the 2005 revival were set in a contemporary and earthbound location. In comparison there were only 4 episodes by the end of his first tenure in 2009 and only 2 episodes in series 1 of his new revival which aired last year. Furthermore, it wasn’t until series 3 that an environment was entirely computer generated. With the director of Gridlock the 2007 episode remarking, ‘It’s the first time a whole story has been set inside a CGI world. We’ve never done that before… so, that’s ambitious.’ This a significant marker as to a further freedom in writing that Davies and the intervening showrunners may have felt with their new understanding. With the knowledge of what can be done, without having to ask Cohen’s team at The Mill first, an observable increase in the use of more ambitious settings has materialised in the tales the show tackles.

Audiences

‘In this post STAR WARS age, I think you find the public are quite literate when it comes to visual effects. They don’t necessarily know when it’s right, but they know when it’s not right.’ (Doctor Who Confidential, 2005)

Even 20 years ago it was clear to Cohen that people were becoming educated on the possibilities of CGI simply by exposure. With a 2025 population of smartphone holders editing their every photo to varying degrees of sophistication, the idea of an audience in the know back in 2005 seems almost quaint when compared to today. Nevertheless, even in 2007 analysists such as Shilo McClean observed an intrinsic link between the science fiction genre and VFX in the minds of audiences. With the ubiquitous incline in popularity with the sci fi genre alongside incline in the use of VFX in TV and film this link has compounded over time. So, with an expounding level of education in the audiences of shows like Doctor Who it’s perception among viewers must have been affected. How does that affectation appear? Davies when talking about the show in the behind-the-scenes partner production, Doctor Who Confidential, said, ‘I always wanted to break down that invisible line between the live action and the CG.’ As audiences have learned to know what to look for this goal has become harder and harder. Especially in this production where the density of CGI has increased in congruence with that audience knowledge. In discussion with online commentator of the show he said,

‘I think in some aspects the show has actually been made worse by having a bigger budget for VFX, series 1 (2005) felt far more grounded and realistic, you’d get realistic environments like a council estate but with things like ghosts (series 2) or Slitheen transformations sprinkled in because that’s what they had the budget to do. Whereas now, they spend thousands on making babies talk which doesn’t feel relatable or grounded at all. The shows VFX limitations helped ground it and made the writers think more cleverly about what they wrote because of such tricky limitations.’ (2025)

What’s valuable in comments like these (which according to Street are commonplace among the viewership of the show) is that the complaint does not necessarily comment on the quality of the effects. Rather the focal point is the effect on the writing that the freedom of CGI has had in unrestricting the capabilities of a TV show like Doctor Who.

This illustrates something quite unique to Doctor Who within science fiction. Discourse around its contemporaries over the last 20 years, such as shows like The Mandalorian or The Flash, has a much stronger focus on criticising the quality of the effects themselves. Judgement upon them has widely been separate to the discussion of quality with regards to the show as a hole. For instance, ‘I loved that episode, but the effects looked rubbish.’ Comments like these are much rarer within the Doctor Who viewership. Perhaps this is because of the length of its tenure on air. Predating digital effects entirely with 60 years on British TV the perspective is altered as the back catalogue of stories provide a contextual lens for audiences to make the wider ranged metatextual judgements as they become more literate.

But how does this square with link that McClean makes between sci fi and the use of VFX. Perhaps this demonstrates that while the show and its production team seem to delve further into the notion of its science fiction basis and further explore the bounds of utilising VFX; the audiences expanding knowledge and understand of the effect VFX can have realises them to identify it as more of a drama and would prefer a more ‘grounded’ character focus without expansive utilisation. An attitude also noted by Thorbjörn Eklund in his masters thesis in 2006, ‘In Doctor Who it is obvious that narration is the main part of the dramaturgy in the story, the dialogue is the element that constantly drives the plot forward. The visual effects are secondary and the effects only appear when it fits the narration.’

Budget

The increase in the use of VFX does not only come down to the literacy of those outside of the industry. The underlying point obviated by the fact of capitalism is that VFX have become much cheaper and more accessible since 2005. The cost benefit analysis done by producers of all TV and film has seen a steady shift as the price pendulum has swung from the favour of practical film making towards CGI.

Interestingly Cohen in our discussions described a slightly antagonistic atmosphere between production designers and the digital team back in 2005. CGI was expensive and restrictive so as budget had to be poured into completing shots that were shorter and assets that were less flexible in their use the practical team would become frustrated. The dynamic has now shifted with the restrictive element being what is possible to create practically. The accessibility of software has created more VFX artists and more sophisticated effects available on a shrinking cost. The consistency and ability to deeply control a computer effect has made it not only more cost effective but also more convenient to either go entirely digital or in some cases film a practical element and then later replace it entirely with a digital version. In recent episodes such as Dot and Bubble and the Star Beast have seen the onset work of creature artist be entirely replaced in the final image.

Aesthetically the show has hence changed into a much more polished image. A show once famed for its sets wobbling sets and shaky daleks has become an increasingly cinematic image. The frantic quality of the rushed schedule in early seasons has been abandoned as imperfections get smoothed over in the post process. Colin Baker describes the effects from the earlier series of the show, ‘Which at the time were rickety and shaky but at the time were state of the art.’ The modern effects however were designed specifically to compete with the cinematic quality of other content on Disney+. It seems unclear as to whether or not this change has been an asset.

While on the face of it a higher quality of image is of higher quality; there seems to be an attitude of nostalgia for the quaint imperfections of the show’s older episodes. The family oriented routes of how Doctor Who initially made its mark gave the mistakes a homely feeling as opposed to the more corporate impression that Disney’s impact has had on the show. The sense of community in laughing along with the show’s creators seems to have been left behind.

An easy comparison for this in two similar sequences in the anniversary specials from 2023 and 2013. Both episodes feature sequences wherein the Doctor and the Tardis are flown by helicopter. Quite demonstratively the 2013 episode used practical stunt work in public sparking excitement and discussion with general public visible watching in the background; the 2023 sequence was entirely digital. The cosier tone with a nod and a wink to the audience has been replaced with the cinematic experience. Stephen Moffat is popular for frequently remark about writing for the show, ‘You need an idea so big that could be a movie.’ The production appears to be catching up to that notion.

When speaking about a very simple digital character who remains almost motionless in the second episode that aired in 2005, Davies said, ‘Cassandra’s costing us an absolute fortune.’ In comparison with the sophistication of the effects in achieved in just the 23 seconds given to the helicopter sequence from 2023 it becomes clear the mark up what can be done for certain amounts of money with DVFX.

Production Techniques

In the pursuit of this new cinematic style, how has production shifted it’s approach to meet the new demands? Avoiding a sense of repetitiousness it’s not only the post work of the visual effects artists which have dramatically altered the process.

A dramatic shift has been the propagation of previsualisation across the industry as a whole. While it existed to some degree in 2005 it was not a popular process especially within television due to the speed of production alongside the upfront costs. Actors and often directors wouldn’t know what the effects might look like until after shooting was already complete. This meant that stylistic decision would be made to fit the VFX into the real rather than visa versa. An indicative comment from the 2007 series production was when David Tennant stated that, ‘I saw very, very rough sort of animation sort of sketch out thing.’ It’s illustrative of the rarity and rudimentary nature of any kind of previsualisation. This couldn’t be further from the truth for production in the 2020s. The Previs on one episode of the latest series has had up to 20 artist solely working on preproduction imagery to be disseminated among cast and crew members to ensure that the onset work can be made to fit into the visual effects of a given episode.

It’s clear that the effects portion of the work is moving further and further upstream on the production pipeline. Some effects are in fact being done before an episode begins shooting which is where the new series have began to enter the realm of in camera visual effects technology. Real time rendering and motion tracking technology have allowed green screen footage to be overlayed atop a virtual background instantaneously onset. Often using powerful game engines like Unreal Engine. This allows for dynamic, interactive environments that can shift and change as needed during filming, with no need for lengthy post-production visual effects work. The virtual environment reacts to the actors’ movements, and camera angles, providing a more immersive experience for camera operators and directors to shoot for. As the camera moves, the perspective and angle of the digital background change accordingly, mimicking real-world parallax and depth. This allows for a more realistic sense of space and makes the integration between live-action and virtual elements nearly seamless. This has been used in episodes such as The Wild Blue Yonder with the director saying,

‘what’s cool about it is that when we’re watching it on the monitor live; we know what would be a good shot, we know how it’s going to edit together, and if the camera’s in the right place.’ (Doctor Who: Unleashed, 2023)

The series a few episodes later in series 1 episode Boom took the techniques even further. Volume technology, often referred to as “Stagecraft,” is a groundbreaking technique used in TV shows and films to create realistic digital environments using massive LED screens and real-time rendering. It was popularized by shows like The Mandalorian, which revolutionized how virtual sets are used in production. Instead of taking a live key, there was no green screen for the sequences in Boom. Instead, the massive LED screen would project the background live and serve as light sources, illuminating the set and actors with the appropriate colour temperatures and shadows from the virtual environment. This creates natural reflections and lighting effects on the actors, enhancing the believability of the scene. For instance, in Boom the virtual background is a rocky desert at sunset, the lighting on the actors mimic that warm, low-angle light. Boom is a strong mark for the shift in Doctor Who not only for the fact it utilises this new technology but also how very similar settings have been created in the past.

Doctor Who has a long history of storytelling that finds itself in a vague rocky environment and a long history of telling those stories by taking the cast crew to a quarry and filming on location with real stone craters. It’s a revealing position of change that in 2023 the production instead has used a facade in a studio with the LED technology and opted away from its quarry bound routes.

Genre

Can these key features of change and development within the show’s visual effects all be contextualised within the genre of science fiction.

The master’s thesis states with regards to VFX, ‘It has a place and a purpose in the narration, making the effect non-vital for the series due to the fact that it can be removed.’ (2013, p. 29)

This doesn’t seem to square with Annette Khun’s remarks quoted in McClean’s Book, ‘For fans, special effects are the raison d’etre of the genre’ she also remarks, ‘narrative content and structure per se are rarely most significant features.’  (2007, p. 153)

It appears that Doctor Who must set apart. However, in her analysis Shilo McClean has found that although there seems to be a strong link between effects and science fiction, she also finds that that may have simply been the result of outdated production and film making techniques. When special effects were expensive and difficult to achieve there was no impetus for the dramatic or period genres to utilise them and so VFX would be found only among the supernaturalist genres such as science fiction and horror. This subconscious link might now be irrelevant as film and TV across all the genres must incorporate effects to their advantage. While it may have appeared that audiences went to a science fiction production for effects why now do, they still go when FX are ubiquitous.

She says, ‘Thus where Science Fiction once gave us a new way of seeing – and new ideas and worlds to see – and did so through the use of effects, these effects now also offer us a way to express what we are experiencing and understand where we have come from.’  (2007, p. 170)

This far more thematic interpretation of science fiction allows us to easily contextualise Doctor Who within it. And perhaps an insight into the audience attitudes we discussed earlier. Cohen in our interviews expressed a disappointment in the show’s storytelling with the effects. ‘Doctor Who was a voyage of discovery and I think we’ve reached a point where there’s very little discovery and a lot of rinse and repeat.’ In the 2000’s through to when Cohen left the show initially in 2017, he described, ‘we used to get a call from the showrunners asking what can you do this year that you couldn’t do last year.’ With Shilo McClean’s emphasis on showing the audiences something being the draw of science fiction perhaps the audiences’ attitudes of tiring of the effects is a misunderstanding wherein they may actually miss the exciting sense of newness both narratively and visually.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the evolution of visual effects (VFX) in Doctor Who has played a pivotal role in the show’s modernization and expansion since its 2005 revival. The growing accessibility and affordability of digital effects have allowed the production team to push boundaries, resulting in increasingly ambitious stories, elaborate worlds, and dynamic visuals. In the early years of the revival, VFX were used sparingly and more out of necessity, with practical effects often taking precedence. However, as technology advanced, the integration of digital effects became more seamless, enabling showrunners to explore more abstract, fantastical settings, and imaginative narratives.

This shift, however, has not been without its complexities. While VFX have granted Doctor Who greater creative freedom, they have also significantly altered the way the show is experienced, especially in its storytelling approach. For some fans, the increased reliance on high-end digital effects has resulted in a departure from the more grounded, character-driven narratives that initially defined the show’s appeal. The tactile imperfections of early episodes, which lent the show a charming, homemade quality, have given way to a more polished, cinematic feel that, while impressive, can sometimes detract from the show’s once-unique atmosphere.

The relationship between VFX and Doctor Who is emblematic of a larger trend within science fiction, where the use of effects has evolved beyond a mere spectacle and now serves a greater narrative purpose. As digital effects become ubiquitous across all genres, the once distinct connection between science fiction and visual effects has become less significant. Yet, within Doctor Who, the continued evolution of these effects is tied to the show’s exploration of complex themes and ideas, reflecting a broader cultural shift. The show now uses effects not only to transport viewers to fantastical worlds but also to engage with deeper, often philosophical questions about humanity, time, and space.

As audiences become increasingly literate in the language of digital effects, Doctor Who faces the challenge of balancing visual innovation with its original storytelling strengths. The key moving forward will be to ensure that the show remains character-driven and rooted in emotional depth, even as the scope of its visuals expands. This delicate balance will be crucial in maintaining the core appeal of Doctor Who as it continues to evolve.

In this way, VFX, once considered an afterthought or a technical necessity, have now become an integral part of how the show is experienced, both as a visual spectacle and a compelling narrative. Ultimately, the role of VFX in Doctor Who reflects a broader shift in the way we consume media: as both spectators and active participants in the creation and understanding of imaginative worlds. The challenge, however, will be ensuring that these worlds remain engaging, emotionally resonant, and true to the spirit of adventure that has always been the heart of the show.

 

 

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