THE WORST EFFECTS OF DOCTOR WHO

Series 1

- The plastic bin that eats Mickey in Rose has some pretty dire CGI, even if it is brief. What's worse is that he didn't stay eaten.

- The transition from rubber suit to computerised Slitheen in World War Three was fairly awful. The Downing Street set made it stand out more, but whilst the rubber suit lumbered along the CG version was running along at quite some speed. Given this was the first story to be produced in Series 1, I'll let them off though

- The missile shots at the end of World War Three were quite shaky. The added CG made the aerial shots of the English country, and of London very blurry.

Series 2

- The Krillitanes in School Reunion never really blended in to their backgrounds well. This was all the more noticeable in the night shots.

- When Alexandra Palace begins transmitting the Wire across London in The Idiot's Lantern, it was definitely less impressive than other large-scale attacks we'd seen on the city. Perhaps it was the lack of aerial shots to depict it (I guess they couldn't afford to show 50's London from above) but the closer shots near the end of the episode are far less convincing.


Series 3

- The aerial shots of Tudor London and The Globe Theatre in The Shakespeare Code were an impressive attempt at rending a historic city by CGI. But chucking in the attacking Carrionites was overkill, and it looked quite fake. The aerial shots improved come Series 4, which rendered a burning Pompeii much more convincingly.

- Some of the motorway shots in Gridlock were quite poor, and felt like they had been designed on a very primitive effects renderer. Not all of them were bad, and the Macra attack was quite impressive, but this episode's ambition was probably bigger than its budget.

- The Lazarus Experiment gave us probably the least convincing monster ever in Doctor Who. Not only was the Lazarus monster a bit dodgy looking in the effects department, it was also fairly inconsistent in design - I think it would have worked better without the humanoid face to be honest. The poorly rendered face of Gatiss simply distracted from the rest of the beast, which already had far too much going on.


Series 4

- For the most part the Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead story had very strong CGI, but I'd say the exception was the Nodes. I don't even know if it counts, as they are simply faces imposed upon white slabs, but they were difficult to take seriously at any point.

- A random and trivial shot was Sarah Jane's Figaro at the very start of Journey's End... a random shot of it is in CGI, and the lack of detail on the design makes it stand out from the real one.


The Specials

- The Cyberking over London in The Next Doctor, partly because it looked unconvincing, partly because it would have still looked stupidly awful even on the budget of a Hollywood film.

- The Swarm wasn't very well rendered in Planet of the Dead - surprising since it was almost the same colour as the sands of Dubai.

- Also in Planet of the Dead, the flying bus shown over London at the end was so lacking in detail that it distracted between the CG shots and the real ones.


Series 5

- The random whips on the star whale in The Beast Below were rarely followed by the eyes of the actors that were also in shot.

- Some of the shots of the Silurian city in Cold Blood were less than convincing. This went beyond just the CG, with some of the corridors clearly being a dressed-up version of the corridors on the Byzantium seen just a few episodes earlier.

Series 6

- The Siren in The Curse of the Black Spot was generally a very elegant and haunting design, but whenever she appeared spontaneously or went into the water, it lost all of that elegance straight away.

- The top of the Pyramid in The Wedding of River Song should have been a very well rendered scene, as it was the climatic shot of the sixth series. But it wasn't, and is less memorable than it should be as a result. Another example of ambition exceeding budget.


Series 7

- The anti-grav zoomer in The Rings of Akhaten suffered a lot of motion blur, and never felt real. We never saw it take off or land, reducing it to feeling like a prop even in the episode. It never looked convincing.

- Journey to the Centre of the Tardis was crammed with CG shots, but I think that it burned out come its end. The scenes involving the Eye of Harmony weren't as good as they could have been, and the CG shots were very constricting.

Personally, I don't think this scene was helped by the un-moving backdrop, it just felt too still for everything that was happening in my mind. I think the fact it was a painted backdrop too instead of a green screen one didn't help it. I think on Confidential they said they did it that way simply for cost reasons, which may explain it's underwhelming effect on me.

The directing didn't help that scene either in my mind as again it all felt too still.

It's my only real quibble on this front though for that episode, everything else about it effects-wise is great in my mind.

Isn't a comparison between Best and Worst Effects unbalanced.... whereas, currently, someone simply uses whatever widget can be integrated within CGI, with CGI increasing in capability, the technical staff had to be more competent and creative through the earlier series.

Of course, some plebs became too obsessed with competing against Star Wars, such as Jonathon Nathan Turner, and damn well destroyed the franchise.

Far better that the effects support a given story, rather than dominate the story.

Actually, come to think of it, the non-CGI Slitheen were rubbish. The CGI ones weren't the best CGI I've ever seen, but the rubber suit ones were so pathetically bad for today's standards, they wouldn't look much out of place in Classic Who.
Their claws were floppy for goodness sake!

I'll admit I was quite hard pushed to find issues with the CG in Series 6, and was stretching with this example. It was indeed a very still and lifeless backdrop, but nowhere near the biggest culprit of dodgy effects




I think that the Slitheen probably looked better on paper than in the final result. I quite like their design as a whole - their face is a good design, and had the claws been a bit more lethal it would have worked better as a whole. My only real issue with the design was the massive pot bellies, which seemed to be a natural feature (unless the whole family Slitheen, and the Blathereen were clinically obese)...because at the same time the episode wanted to portray them as swift, hunting predators. This was very conflicting. They would have been better without being fat, and without having such chunky feet as well.

And! Yet! The spinning bubble things in Time and the Rani are definitely amongst the best.


Don't be mean. He tried repeatedly to leave, consistently stating that he'd been in the job too long and that the programme would benefit from someone fresh. Had his era primarily been Davison then nobody would have a bad thing to say against him now.

One of the best effects for the classic series in my opinion, has got to be Robot. It turned what could have been a piece of foil and toilet roll walking around to something with genuine character. Added to that, the effects of it growing etc. Simply brilliant for the time.
I agree with others in regards to the model shot in Trial. Mind you it should have been good. It used most of the entire series budget. That's why they kept repeating the same shot.

As for the worst. The Dalek spaceships in general in the classic series. Milk bottle tops with lighters stuck underneath.

That stupid monster the ganger turned into at the end of that ganger episode.

What one has to remember about the old Who SFX is that the shows were made to be shown, essentially once, there was no video/DVD market at that point.

Dr Who was just another programme that was 'churned out' hence spending lots of time and money on a monster that might be seen for less than 5minutes total scren time would not be good value for money for licence fee payers hence some dogy monsers will exist.

Yes that's exactly right, nowadays anyone can make special effects just by pressing a few buttons, they have no creative skills or imagination and any idiot could do the job.

You've got to wonder why then people with such skills are in such high demand and paid so handsomely for their work...

Once, just for once, why don't you try posting something that isn't full of such venom and hatred of all mankind?

As someone who has known unbelievably talented artists working for some of the London FX shops, I had steam coming out of my ears at the point.

And then I read the punchline and calmed down.

You'll actually find that with a few exceptions, most are earning very average and sometimes quite low salaries. Animation whether drawn, clay or CGI is just very labour intensive.

Sorry, yes I was trying to defend artists in FX companies. I probably should have made it clearer that my post was a sarcastic reply to the criticism to which I was replying to. It just winds me up when people say "how easy" it is to create effects these days when they clearly don't know what they're talking about or can't see the hard work that goes into it.

I'm going to discount the classic series because IMO there are no effects in the classic series that stand up to serious scrutiny - and yes, I'm including the opening shot of Trial there - and almost every episode contains a really bad effect of some sort.

In terms of the new series...

BEST:
Gridlock - the New Earth shots at sunset at the end, as mentioned in the OP. Really amazing.
The Rings of Akhaten - the CGI was so good in this episode that the production values of the rest of the episode suffered to compensate for it, IMO.
The Fires of Pompeii - the eruption.

WORST:
The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords - The Toclafane. They just don't look real at all.
The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood - the SIlurian city. So unconvincing that it was offputting.
The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People - Jennifer the Snake. Absolutely mad, and terribly executed.

Hey, no worries, I got it completely. Your first line was just so convincing that it sent me straight to rage mode before I'd read the rest!

If you know 2000AD, I had a mean machine angel moment.

Izzat so?

I have one thing I'd like to know about JNT. I have nothing against him. The Peter Davison era is one of my favourites and I enjoy a lot of the stuff after that, but what was the logic behind the question marks? What did he hope having question marks on the Doctor's collar would achieve?
Just why?!


Another thing I should mention is that some of the effects for the new title sequence are really quite shabby indeed.
Compare this with this.

The TARDIS in the vortex effect from Hide is clearly superior to the TARDIS in the vortex effect in the titles.
And this isn't all, the text for the cast's names just looks like it was typed on- it doesn't seem to fit in well with the background and the 3D names of the previous title sequence were far better, the TARDIS at the start doesn't seem to blend into the background very well and the colour scheme of the logo itself (white and grey) makes no sense whatsoever considering the logo used on merchandise is either silver or blue.
Oh and for some inexplicable reason, there appears to be a wolf drinking a cup of tea on the right hand side of the screen 7 seconds in....

I really hope they tidy up the title sequence for the 50th anniversary special especially considering it's supposed to be shown in 3D.

best effect is the dr raising from beingg golium
worrst that green slug on the floor in a tom baker's episode ax

Ah, the old wolf drinking a cup of tea hidden image. That's been an in joke for years, Tennant had the walrus doing pottery whilst Eccelscake just had a hippo playing darts.

It's believed to date back to Tom Baker who personally insisted on having a Penguin mixing cocktails at the same second second mark in his title sequence, which later inspired the Frobisher character.

Fortunately for any FX artist, there is one thing that will spice up any bland CG texture and add the ultimate coolness factor:
LENS FLARES!!!!!

Really not, in the professional worlds CG lens flares have all the coolness of the comic sans font. It's just JJ who thinks they're cool.

The giant rat in 'Talons of Wng-Chiang' didn't quite come off.

(It actually looks rather cute, which couldn't have been the intention. )

What are you talking about? Lens flare made all those c.1996 PlayStation games super cool.

Yeah, and I think Babylon 5 was basically the first drama series about lens flares, with some side story about a space station.

It was one of those things that got so overused in the 90's, that in the years after they become as uncool as flared jeans. And like the jeans only used properly to give a particular period look or as a bit of a joke.

Someone once explained to me that one case where they are often used is to create the right look for Westerns. If you think of a classic opening shot of a parched desert with cactus plants and the sun beating down, we always expect a particular type of lens flare because of the equipment John Ford etc would have been using.

Modern lens and digital cameras don't create the right look, so they sometimes put it in in post production. Basically, normal footage where the only CG effect is the lens flare to make it look authentic.

I'm also hoping they clear up the titles for the 50th, it has the potential to look really awesome in 3D. I actually just wish they'd just kept the 2005 vortex, I think it's been the best one so far.

Worst: Mcoy Era Title sequence.....

Lets push for a Computer-generated intro about 20 years before the medium could handle such a thing.....

Oooof.

(and this theme too, but I guess that should be the SFX meaning sound thread, not the SFX meaning special effects :P )

Best: I loved the Cyber King
The Destruction of the Sontaraan ship in The Poison Sky was pretty spectacular too, as was the actual igniting of the atmosphere itself...

My favourite though has to be the Tardis Chase down the M1 in The Runaway Bride. A punch the air sequence and no mistake