The Three Doctors: 50th Anniversary Edition (Classic Doctor Who)

0:00 - Intro

0:09 - Ollis transported

For the disappearance effects I wanted to draw a connection to the appearance of the anti-matter blob itself, so I used a similar posterized effect. I also added a "bulge" effect to give the impression that objects we're being pulled out of this reality - as if the fabric of space/time was being briefly warped.

0:16 - Tyler transported

0:20 - Out pops blob

The blob works well on it's own, but I did want to give it a glow to make it feel more within the scene rather than being superimposed.

0:28 - Bessie transported

In some of the shots of things being zapped out of reality it's not always clear what has been zapped so I added a brief silhouette afterimage of the object that's been zapped,.

0:42 - Attack of the Gel guards

Again, the practical effect of the Gel guard's claw weapon is quite good, so I didn't want to spoil it by covering it with an effect. Instead I just enhanced the glow that you see through the claw.

1:11 - Furniture transported

1:17 - Planet of the Time Lords

The Time Lords planet hadn't been named by this point but that doesn't stop it making an appearance! Kepler-20e takes the role of, what would become, Gallifrey. I couldn't find a hi-resolution image of the planet used in the 2005 series, but Kepler-20e does a pretty good cosplay.

Thanks to @DWSSG01 on Twitter for suggesting I include this shot!

1:27 - The Time Lords watch telly

I really wanted to give the Time Lords a colour TV, but knew that it would cause complications, especially with most of the footage of the Doctors being in black & white!

1:32 - The Black Hole

I used a modern image of what we think black holes look like, rather than the swirling maelstrom that was used in most sci-fi of the 70s and 80s. This particular animation comes straight from NASA!

1:38 - 2nd on screen

I put a request out of Twitter for any colourisations of these specially shot scenes, and thankfully ‪@whocolour‬ was able to provide a couple of shots from their wonderful channel (go check it out!). I merged the colourisations with the original image and made a few tweaks to the colours.

1:44 - Doctors arguing

This was my first attempt at doing colourisation, of either a still or moving image. I'm fairly pleased with how it's come out, but when you stare at these things for so long you start to lose any perspective!

1:55 - 1st in his garden

Thanks again to ‪@whocolour‬ for the use of their First Doctor colourisation in this shot.

1:59 - More furniture transported

2:07 - Doctor & Jo transported

The residual pale blue silhouette of the Doctor and Jo when the screen goes completely white wasn't intended, but I left it in because it looked quite cool. Almost like a retinal afterimage.

2:17 - Anti-matter blob gets feisty

2:22 - Black hole on screen

For the 'energy beam' that's draining the Time Lord's power I tried to keep it quite simple but also give the impression it was pulling energy into the black hole.

2:33 - Benton zaps blob

I did a few versions of this, ranging from a full beam to just an extra little glow. I settled on something in-between that compliments the sound and the original effect (which, unless I'm much mistaken, is entirely practical - something I only noticed when working on this shot!).

3:03 - Surrounded by Gel guards

3:11 - UNIT HQ transported

I more or less had to re-build this as a new composite shot, since the original before-and-after frames just didn't match up. Thanks to Quinton Reviews (@Q_Review) on Twitter for the suggestion to discolour the grass where the building had been.

3:21 - Brig looks outside

In the novelisation the sky on Omega's planet is described as purple. Once I made the decision to change the colour I then had to change it in all of the scenes shot in Springwell. Hopefully they look a bit more otherworldly than a quarry in Ricky!

The external composite shot of UNIT HQ uses an image of Denham Manor Care Home from their website and an AI generated image of a quarry (there were no suitable images of real quarries online!).

3:30 - 2nd & Benton taken to Omega

I had no intention of doing a "palace", like the one described in the novel. Partly because the interior doesn't rlook very palace-like, but mainly because I didn't have a clue where to find a suitable image. So I used Bing's AI image generator! And after literally hundreds of attempts I got what I was after.

3:41 - Singularity

3:49 - Escape from the palace

3:58 - Pursued

4:17 - 1st on screen

Luckily William Hartnell doesn't move around too much so this colourisation wasn't as complex as the one of 2 and 3.

4:33 - Doctors conspire

4:58 - Gel guards chase Bessie

5:08 - Omega takes off helmet

5:20 - 2 & 3 make their escape

5:38 - 1st on screen again

5:45 - Return to HQ

5:48 - Through the Singularity

6:41 - Anti-matter meets matter

6:52 - Supernova

I replaced the original image with one of a real residual supernova

6:57 - There's no place like home

7:03 - Ollis returns