Doctor Who Classic - The Matrix Editions - Season 12 (with new VFX)

ROBOT -

While I've added a few extra sound effects before, this is the first time I've done it to such a large extent. The K1 Robot was quite an impressive construction but it's footsteps made it sound a bit plasticy and insubstantial so I wanted to see if I could make the footsteps sound much heavier. I also wanted to add mechanical noises so it sounded like it was being animated by gears and motors rather than a human (a bit like C3PO's sounds).
Adding the sounds and getting the timing right was quite a huge undertaking so I doubt I'll ever do anything to that extent again!

For the disintegration gun I played with a few different effects before settling on something similar to Bok's victims in The Daemons, except with glowing particles rather than ash-like remains.

For the first-person view for the K1's vision I wanted to conceal the obvious textured mirrored surface camera effect they used for these shots so created a grid that served as both a HUD and a way to conceal the texture of the mirrored surface. I threw in a few HUD elements that didn't look too anachronistic and a little pixelation.

And by the way, the effect I used for Third's regeneration into Four is based on the description from the novelisation, which mentions a "golden glow" from the Doctor's body. It's not a half-hearted attempt to recreate the effect from the 2005 series :-)

THE ARK IN SPACE -

Every single time I've watched either Ark or Revenge in recent years I've been itching to have a go at replacing the stars in the corridor scenes so they don't look like a few lights attached to a black curtain. Adding the stars (which of course have to slowly move as Nerva rotates) was probably the most time-consuming aspect of doing this season due to the sheer amount of masking and tracking involved (I can understand why those who did the special editions didn't do it!). It's far from perfect, but is the best I can manage with the tools available and I think it works quite well.

The fun part of this story was adding the effects for the Fission, and other, guns :-)

THE SONTARAN EXPERIMENT -

This was a nice easy edit and the effects didn't take too long either. I toyed with the idea of creating a 3D model of Styre's ship and exploding it for the climax, but I don't think my Blender skills are quite there yet. Maybe one day.

GENESIS OF THE DALEKS -

It only occurred to me recently that I could un-invert the full screen negative effect used in the early Dalek exterminations (I think it was when I did Frontier). This allows me to keep the background un-inverted while just inverting the victims themselves (as in later stories).
I worked hard trying to get the timing right on Davros's extermination so that his hand isn't hovering above the destruct button for an incongruous amount of time, so the blast hits him sooner but his reaction still looks right.

REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN -

The actual location of Nerva Beacon in this story has never been very explicit. Characters refer to the beacon as being in "orbit", and while it's obviously supposed to be in the vicinity of Jupiter, it is never stated, on-screen or in the novel, that it's actually orbiting Jupiter (which would make sense considering the role of the beacon as a resupply station for the long journey between Pluto and Earth). Voga is explicitly said to be in orbit around Jupiter, but Nerva is nowhere near Voga until the end of the story, so it's not orbiting Voga either.

So, after overthinking this way too much, I decided it would be nice to see the beacon orbiting Jupiter (or at least, floating around quite nearby, since Jupiter is so vast). This offers a nice contrast to Ark, where the beacon is seen orbiting Earth, and helps bring home the idea that this is a completely different space/time location yet the same space station.

For the Cybermen head-guns it had recently occurred to me (only after 40+ years!) that the sound effect is actually similar to the pulsing sound heard for the cyberguns from Earthshock onward (who knows, perhaps this was intentional). So I naturally turned to the most recent reimagining of the Cyber-gun effect, which is in The Five Doctors anniversary edition, and used this as the basis for the new effect.
Originally, like the Sea-Devil's guns, I wasn't going to add effects to the cyberguns, since there's already a practical effect. But one thing that really lacks in those scenes is the impact of the weapon on the recipients of the blast. People just kind of fall over. So if I was going to add an effect for the impact I figured I may as well add a gun effect too.

And now, on to Season 14!...