Regenerating the Doctor

FROM THE REMY DEAN ARCHIVE : 1998

Interviews with the 7th Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, 

Director Graeme Harper,

and Producer John Nathan Turner

Nearly 30 years ago, the Doctor was going through a very dark time... It seemed that it was not the Daleks, the Cybermen nor the Master who proved to be the Doctor's nemesis, but Jonathan Powell, aka 'The Controller' (of BBC1). The Doctor attempted to escape his fate through the big screen with the movie, starring Paul McGann, in 1996. Then all went quiet...  

It was twenty years ago, in 1998, that I conducted the following interviews with three key players who had witnessed the show's demise, and also provided a glimmer of hope that it may one day return. Little did I know back then, that it would not happen until Julie Gardner, Head of Drama at BBC Wales, joined forces with Russell T Davies to reboot Doctor Who... in 2005. That was a hiatus of 16 years, meaning that a whole generation of British children had been denied the experience of growing up with 'their Doctor' to provide hope and inspiration. 

Now, with the impending new series featuring a completely new regeneration of the Doctor, to be given form by Jodie Whittaker, and with Chris Chibnall as the new show-runner, with a new format, and a new Sunday time-slot, it seemed an ideal opportunity to re-publish these historic interviews, which have only previously been published on paper in The 5 Times issue 16. 

...these interviews are now archived on my Medium Profile

Getting To The Point - an interview with Trent Reznor

FROM THE REMY DEAN ARCHIVE : 1991

With Trent Reznor making a guest appearance in the new Twin Peaks series, and a new Nine Inch Nails album recently announced, I am reminded about meeting him for an interview, early in both our careers… So here it is, dug out from my clippings archive - a snapshot of music history from 26 years ago! The music scene back then seemed very vital and there were always interesting and surprising stories behind the bands… this interview is no exception. [NOT edited for language.]

NOT THE HAPPIEST GUY IN THE WORLD... 

Nine Inch Nails are surprising, deceptive and dangerous. The image evoked by the name comes pretty close to summing up their sound: hard, metallic and with a point. They have already caused quite a stir with the alternative charts, heavy metal audiences, MTv, the FBI, and whilst on their debut tour over here, the British police. Why?

Musically, main man Trent Reznor has used his Nine Inch Nails to knock together industrial dancecore, traditional pop and metal in such a vital manner that the barrier between the usual cult status afforded such bands and the mainstream has been punctured. The debut LP, Pretty Hate Machine, broke the ground and achieved major crossover success, but rather than planting easy-grow pop seeds and waiting for commercial chart success to blossom, the follow-up album, Fixed, is a much harder, uglier and intense crop of songs, exploring the darker corners of sound and self. When asked of his major influences, he has an off-pat reply: "Ministry for aggression, XTC for song writing, Severed Heads for production... and I like Prince a lot."

Pretty Hate Machine sold something like 500,000 copies and spawned three top-five alternative-chart singles in the USA. Their live debut in the UK was before an audience of 85,000 at Wembley, and the first single, Head Like A Hole, got quite a grip on the mainstream charts here.

The Nine Inch Nails live phenomena is intimate, aggressive and often truly dangerous. More than once, the shows have ended with injury to the band, the audience, and most certainly the hardware. As I am shown up to Mr Reznor's hotel suite, I hear that another journalist has cancelled as he is considering pressing assault charges against Trent for injuries sustained at the gig the night before ... What have I got myself into?

Today, however, Trent Reznor is in apathy mode, stretched out on the sofa, yawning...

So, what's all this about assaulting my fellow journalists?

"He was very upset, and considering pressing charges, because he got hit in the head with a bottle of water and got a black eye… which is bullshit because we don't throw bottles of water on stage.

"Our live show has gotten a lot more aggressive than the records. My whole idea of a performance is to take it beyond just being a band on stage... We try to be more interactive. I've noticed in our shows, when they get more chaotic, people like it. And the more element of danger to the audience - not that we're gonna attack them or kill them - then there's real interest being inspired and their attention is focussed. The music excites them and the energy released is not as safe as being in your seat 500 yards away. It’s interaction. That's why we like playing clubs."

So, what was it like opening for Guns'n'Roses to a stadium audience?

"It was what I'd expected, and worse. Axl's a friend of mine, we met in LA when he came to the show and asked if we wanted to open for them on some dates in America... we couldn't do it, but as we were planning on coming over here, we thought what better and stranger way to do it than supporting the biggest rock band in the world?"

Was there any worry about the somewhat dubious, even juvenile, image of Guns'n'Roses rubbing off - onto NIN?

"They are that and more. They're a big fucking dangerous live rock band! That's what they do and they do it well, with all the trappings right down to the drum solo. For what it is, they do it better than anyone else.

"I don't care if people want to think we’re cock rock... and another reason for doing it was the strangeness of a synth act being on that bill."

We know NIN aren't cock rock. What does Trent think they are about?

"When I wrote the record, Pretty Hate Machine, I thought, 'What would be my reason for having a band? What can I say musically or lyrically?' I was looking inward and made some very personal songs that were about how I felt about certain things. The motivation was more dissatisfaction rather than, 'I'm the happiest guy in the world, let's write an album!'

"The theme of the record revealed itself to be things that were really bothering me: not having my religious outlook together, not being able to fit neatly into a little hole in society, trouble dealing with people on a one-to-one basis. Nothing staggeringly new, teenage angst, but trying to do it with some sincerity - a kind of questioning examination.

"I'd like to break down all these stereotypes and ideas that if you're in a band, you put out a record, hopefully once a year, and then you go on tour, and then do an album, make a video and repeat the process until you have nothing else to say and die out."

Videos for Nine Inch Nails have already stirred strong reactions. How far do they represent the NIN vibe?

"I don't like videos, really... what could have been a cool art form turned out to be nothing but corporate commercials for a record, and it's to the point now where a lot of bands, us included, have to justify spending quite a sizable amount of money to make a video. To make it the way you want to make it, you get such strict censorship problems...

"We couldn't show Down In It to begin with because of me laying dead on the ground - that may imply suicide... Head Like A Hole couldn't be shown because it was 'too disturbing' - what the fuck does that mean? So, I spent X amount of money - it cost almost as much to make as my album did - for a video that no-one gets to see because this fucking station won’t play it."

"What I'd like to do is work in a totally different format. So, for the next album, there are no videos - I'll make a film that's 45 minutes or an hour long, and sell that to stores, and that's the visual accompaniment - that's the way you get to see Nine Inch Nails, and it's a little more elite and a little more special."

Like any band that criticises the capitalist commercialism of the record industry, how can Reznor justify his position as a product that has to sell to remain in existence? Surely there must have been many compromises.

"The record business had always been a closed door to me. Now it's open, all the fucking scum has come out and surrounded me, embraced me. I thought, naively, that people put out records because they liked music... but it's not about art, it's not about music, it’s about fucking product, and ripping people off and marketing schemes and formulas. So what I'm trying to do is create an environment where I'm toying with accessibility. I like to hear, ‘Well MTv wants to play it, but you have to edit that second out of the video' - make them squirm a bit. Not that they'd go out of business if they didn't play Nine Inch Nails, but the only way I can change a system I really hate - like MTv's formatting… such as top 40 radio - is not to comply with it.

"They want millions of record sales and I want to put out music that has some integrity to it. Because I tried to do that, I think that's why we got to where we are now, but they don't see it like that. They see it like, 'you sold 480,000 you could sell four million - we’ve gotta smooth things off, and do a video with some girls in, let's get some fucking cars in that video... might as well change the lyrics cos they're a little ugly, let’s take those guitars out of the chorus…' - what’s left? That side has been the most disheartening, seeing the control being taken away."

A knock on the door interrupts us at this point.

Apparently, the police are on their way up and we are advised to hide-out in another suite to complete the interview. I follow the swearing Reznor along the corridor and into his manager's room where he falls back onto another couch...

This is not his first brush with the law. He was once involved in an FBI murder inquiry. Where he was the... victim! …what? So, rumours of his death were greatly exaggerated?

"We were doing a bunch of stuff lowering Super-8 cameras off buildings," he explains, "The theme of the video, very obliquely, was suicide. The track was Down In It - which wasn't about suicide at all, but if you juxtapose that idea onto the song, it makes sense, almost in a crucifixion kinda death scene. That was the idea, but it became so oblique you would never know that, unless I told you.

"There was this scene, where I'm lying on the ground with corn starch on me so I look like I'm dead... and we tied a camera to a weather balloon filled with helium, and attached some strings so you could start the camera, let it go, and then pull it back down. So when the film was reversed, it looked like the camera was dropping down onto my head. But the strings broke and the thing just took off! We were doing some stuff at the top of this building, so we ran up... but by the time we got to the roof, you could just barely see it on the horizon... it was gone! I remember saying, 'Hey, I hope that doesn't fall and hit someone on the head... it could absolutely kill someone…' and never thought any more about it.

"About a year later, John [manager] came and said, 'You will not believe this, but I just got a call from the FBI...' This thing went 200 miles, landed in some farmer's field. He found it and, thinking it was some kind of marijuana surveillance camera - a ridiculous thing to think - took it to the police. The police developed the film and... they saw me laying 'dead'. Also on that reel, there was some stop-frame animation that didn't work very well - it was at night and it turned out really awful-looking, and they thought it was some kind of snuff film with a clue a murder - I was dead and you could see these other people walking away...

"They tracked it down to Chicago. Chicago police went round art schools, then realised it was a video for a rock band... I thought that was funny... It looks like we set up a dumb publicity stunt, but it wasn’t at all. It was just a fuck-up. When I heard what had happened to that camera it was, like Jesus Christ! Couldn't believe it!"

Trent is losing the apathy and getting restless...

There are sounds outside the door. I decide to round off the meeting before a police raid does it for us. So, to what does he attribute the 'surprise' success of that first album?

"I think it's a good album, but didn't realise it had the accessibility it seems to have. That may be attributed to the fact that I am conscious of writing songs in the traditional sense. I am concerned about melody, choruses and hooks, things like that. I think that gives us an edge that the other bands we tend to get lumped-in with don't give as much attention to. Which is not good or bad, just different and maybe gives us more pop appeal. Again, I hope to retain some amount of accessibility, but I wouldn't look for a top 40 single, that's not where we’re heading.

''I'm just concerned with doing the music as well as it can be done. I don't know if we're ever going to go up in mainstream popularity from where we are now, because I know - what my new music sounds like!"

And so, I wish him luck with the law and quickly make my exit.

As it turned out, the charges were dropped and he was able to fly back to his new home in New Orleans, delayed only when the plane he was on made a forced landing because part of the cockpit window blew-in during flight...

Trent Reznor is the kind of guy things happen to ...and Nine Inch Nails are definitely happening.

This interview with Trent Reznor was conducted during the first UK tour for Nine Inch Nails, back in 1991. A snippet first appeared in Outlook Magazine, and Crumblin’ Rock later published the full version you have just read here.

The meeting provided solid grounding for research towards my 1995 book on the origins and influences of Nine Inch Nails (ISBN: 978-1886894259).

Bill Hicks - A Life of Danger

FROM THE REMY DEAN ARCHIVE : 1992

I recently realised that Bill Hicks and my father had some things in common. They shared much wit and wisdom. Both had keen intellects and deep feelings. They could see, more clearly than most, the wrongs in this world and wanted to do their parts in putting them to rights. From the archive, here is my 1992 interview with Bill Hicks and today seems like an ideal opportunity to share it again... Happy birthday Bill and Barrie.

THE DANGEROUS ZONE

Bill Hicks is, in the words of the New York Times, ''the most brilliant comic of his generation," and his recent tour of major UK theatre venues was a sell-out. Jeremy Dean risks a trip backstage to meet the Man with the Horns.

Integrity is not a word that immediately springs to mind when speaking of stand-up comedy. Bill Hicks is scathingly honest in his viewpoint, and directs his wit like a smoking magnum at many serious subjects and social problems: free will, drug abuse, the homeless, care for the infirm and elderly, world famine, war, bigotry, - hey, wake up! Read on! This may sound like a rather tedious right-on hit list - but these things are funny. Ha-ha and peculiar.

But, 'smoking magnum'? Well, witnessing Hicks' act is rather like playing Russian roulette with your prejudices and complacencies. Bill Hicks surfs the crest of a wave between laughter and discomforting personal revelation, which always (almost always) breaks onto the Bondai Beach of laughter. Just leave those taboos at home.

... and we'll dream, won't we? Of Bill Hicks ...in blue. All in blue.

Since I caught his act during his previous British tour, there has been one question burning in my mind... So, I took this opportunity to confront Bill an hour or so before he went on stage to face a Glasgow audience. There was no tactful way to approach the subject, so with no frills I just blurted, "Bill, what's all this 'Goat Boy' stuff about?"

He laughs, then chuckles like the Horned One himself, "The Goat Boy thing sort of emerged there and then - and it's gonna stay - it's a nod toward our darker desires. You can get people to nod, but they don't like to look too long."

And that's it? When pursued about his darker desires, he evades the subject, probably for the best, I imagine. After all, Bill thinks Playboy is a magazine for gay men! He is taking this meteoric rise to success and critical recognition, with modesty and he admits that he is, "flattered by all the attention."

As for the pressures of touring, he shrugs them off, "It can get a bit out of hand with driving half the day between shows, but no - I'm coping."

So, it's not up to the private jet yet...

"They got me a toy one to play with in the back of the car, to keep me quiet, 'Are we there yet? Shut up, Bill, play with your little plane! Aww gee... '"

But even with critical acclaim and a vast audience, I can't see how he gets the bulk of his material past the Americans, after the trouble that music stirs up among the fanatical right-wing minority, the moral majority and the Washington Wives brigade.

"Well, they haven't put me on prime time yet..." he admits with a demonic laugh. "Religious jokes go down stellar here [in the UK], whereas in America you can feel them draw back a little. The Great American Brow furrows: 'He can't say that, can he?' and political jokes - over here they seem to understand where I'm coming from. Across the board the British audiences give me a better reception."

Political jokes - is there a danger that by laughing at serious matters they become trivialised and that action gets diffused?

“That's a very good question. I don't know if I'm preaching to the already converted, just highlighting the problems. Making a joke about it is my way of grabbing them by the throat and shaking them - the people who legitimise all that kind of thing - the politicians, capitalists. The humour comes from initial anger."

Is Bill just a frustrated politician?

"No. I do a lot of political material. I also do a lot of drug material, and I'm not a frustrated drug user - I found drugs very satisfying… " He muses for a moment, perhaps a pang of nostalgia, “The War on Drugs - the President said, 'We're losing the War on Drugs'. Do you realise what this implies? There are people fighting a war, and they're on drugs, and they're winning! There's no war on drugs, it’s a war on free will.

"I don't do drugs ...any more ...not so far today! I'm talking to you now completely sober and chemical-free. And from this point of view, looking back, I can fully recommend experimenting with drugs!" He laughs insanely and thinks forward to the end of tonight's show: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Bill Hicks has now left his body."

One drug that is indelibly linked with Hicks is the cigarette in his hand for nearly every publicity shot. During his act the man-in-black was swathed with a cloud of tobacco smoke, when asked how many he got through in a day, his reply would be, "Just two." Cigarettes or packs? "No, lighters." But not any more. Hicks has dropped his partner from the act, on stage and off. The smokers in his audiences, who had seen him as some kind of champion messiah, have taken this badly. In Leeds, lighted cigarettes were thrown onto the stage during his act to tempt him.

"My Manager said, 'Bill - you're giving up smoking? What about the act?' Well, I guess I get to do it for seven years longer... And on stage there's the adrenaline. When something comes to you spontaneously on stage, in front of an audience and they share in that - then there's a real rush."

The clock is ticking. Is Bill nervous and psyched up?

"Well, before you disturbed me, I was just taking a nap, so that's how nervous and psyched up I am right now."

So, what does Bill dream of in his pre-show naps?

"I had a vision... Even though this is a world where good men are murdered in their prime and media hacks thrive and proliferate, I've gotta share this with you, because I love you, and you feel that... You know all the money we spend on nuclear weapons and defence every year - trillions of dollars, TRILL-I-ONS – instead… if we spent that money feeding and clothing the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded - not ONE - we could, as one race, explore outer space in peace. Forever."

Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Hicks has now left his body…

This interview was first published in the
Winter Term edition of Student Outlook, 1992.

More info at the official Bill Hicks website

For a reminder of how scathingly funny he was, check-out the Bill Hicks YouTube channel 

Nick Cave – The Funniest Man in Europe

FROM THE REMY DEAN ARCHIVE : 1990

With the feature film and album, Skeleton Tree, debuting in a couple of days' time, I was reminded of this blast from the past. So, 25 years on... and Nick Cave is still at the height of his creative powers!

“I’m very paranoid. I just don't like this situation. I don't like what it's doing to me, what it's doing to my life outside the interview situation. Whatever I say in an interview ultimately becomes public property, and becomes a kind of Nick Cave cliché…”

This is probably the only time you'll hear the name Nick Cave and the word cliché in the same sentence. Since the demise of The Birthday Party and the forming of The Bad Seeds in 1983, Cave has established himself as one of the most influential and original song-writers, as well as an accomplished novelist and actor of promise.

Nick Cave does not sing in lounges!

I met Nick Cave in a quiet West London pub, between The Good Son and Henry's Dream, before he jetted off back to Berlin, where he lived for some time after leaving Australia. Had Berlin changed for better or worse since the Wall came down?

"The last time I was in Berlin was when the Wall actually came down, so I've yet to see the repercussions of that. In a way I grieve for Berlin - simply because it was, for me the most, unique city in Europe. I wonder what will happen now that it's sucked into the rest of Germany.”

Wim Wenders, director of the film Wings Of Desire, in which Cave appears and contributes two songs to the soundtrack, commented that he could never imagine him living in any other city.

"Well I don't know how well Wim knows me, really. I must say, the moment I got to Berlin, I felt like I was home in some way. When I first left Australia and came to Britain, I felt quite crippled by London, in many ways. Berlin just seemed such a natural place to be for me."

The angel, Cassiel (Otto Sander), stands at Nick's shoulder
in Wim Wender's 1987 film, Der Himmel über Berlin
 (The Sky Over Berlin) aka Wings of Desire

Nick Cave seems unable to settle in one place, flitting from London to Berlin, to Brazil, where the The Good Son album was recorded. Where do his roots lie?

"I am an Australian. When I see other Australians overseas, no matter how gross they may be acting, I feel a definite kinship with them. I find them funny, I understand their sense of humour. Australia has a very strange sense. of humour, something that I've been trying to put across for many years.

"I was always trying to be the funniest man in Europe - but it never really worked - I don't think the rest of the World is really ready for the Australian sense of humour;"

He then tells a couple of quick-fire jokes, one vintage English sexist and one tasteless Australian jibe at the Tasmanians. I quickly interrupt to divert a possible stand-up routine by asking about his critically acclaimed novel, And The Ass Saw The Angel, which drew inspirations from sources like Faulkner and The Bible.

He tells me, "It's essentially a comic novel."

There are rumours about a film being made of the book…

"Yes there's talk about it, but all that's out of my hands. If someone wants to put my book to film then I'd be really happy about that. But I’m not really prepared to get involved with it. That book took up five years of my life and it's out of me, now. I'm really happy with the way it turned out, but I can't get involved with it any more."

Nick was involved with the screenplay for the harshly brutal film, Ghosts Of The Civil Dead a kind of documentary fiction set in a top-security prison, in which he made his noteworthy acting debut as a psychotic maniac, and for which The Bad Seeds provided the soundtrack.

"I was heavily involved in the writing of the first and third draft - it went through eight drafts and by the time the, script was completed, it was a very different story. I was responsible for inventing certain characters.”

It's hard to imagine Nick Cave fitting easily into someone else's creative process, how did he feel about it?

"I liked it a lot. I wouldn’t want to do it all the time, but I enjoy the different forms of creativity. I very much like working in a solitary way writing a novel, even though it's very much the hardest thing to do. I also like working with a small unit of people where everyone's very much bound to each other in the form of making a record. And it's also interesting to work with a massive film team where there's all these different people with different jobs and the director entrusting his ideas to make-up people, art directors, cameramen, lighting people, script writers, and so on - and I'd like to do more film music in that way."

Are there any projects that he has in mind?

"Well I wouldn’t mind writing the music for some Jim Thomson adaptations, for example. I've read all the books and the woman (Maggie Greenwald) who made The Kill Off is now making Savage Night… and we’ll contribute a song to Wim Wenders' next film..."

Cave's lyrics are always filmic, theatrical and brimming with rich imagery, a kind of poeticism that seems to go with Australian singer songwriters, such as The Triffids, Go-Betweens, Dave Graney...

"It could be the heavy influence of country music on the kind of wise young sector of Australia. Maybe, being Australian, we have a little more to say than people in other countries, a little more need to say something. "

Then would he prefer to be acknowledged as a novelist or a songwriter?

"I don't distinguish between the two, I see the difference between the two but I don't place any more importance on one or the other. My work is the sum of my worth as a human being - so it's very important."

Revenge and extremes of emotion are omnipresent themes in the lyrics of Cave’s songs and prominently feature in his prose…

"In my songs I create characters and allow then to live out fantasies or certain emotions that taken to their logical conclusions I’m not prepared to act out in real life. So if I have a character who’s stabbing a woman to death - then it may be something that I'd like to do but am not prepared to do.

"A great deal of my songs are about revenge and there are certain people who know what those songs are about, and possibly those people are glad I'm writing songs and not actually ... (thumps table) Y'know." He grins dangerously.

"I think I'm able to express my emotions far better on vinyl than in real life, and maybe because I have the outlet of doing that creatively, it constipates me in other ways, in more real terms."

The Good Son is a very romantic, beautiful, vulnerable and honest record, filled with atmosphere that begs comparison with such greats as Scott Walker and Leonard Cohen. A very different Nick Cave to the screaming demon of The Birthday Party. How does he reconcile this image, as a suited lounge singer bordering on sex symbol?

"I don't think I’m a lounge singer, at all - a lounge singer suggests that there isn't a lot of emotion going on there and... I don't like it, I'm not a lounge singer! I don't sing in lounges - you know, fuck man! I’m no fucking lounge singer… You think that Leonard Cohen is a lounge singer!? You think Leonard Cohen could actually go into a lounge and sing and not be thrown out on his ear half way through the first song? I don't think so!"

…well, maybe Australians aren't ready for the British sense of humour?

"My image is what you're dealing with, not what I’m dealing with. I try my best to be honest with what I’m doing. I try my best to be honest on stage... in the recording process. I don't try my best to be honest in interviews, I admit! But the whole building up of my image is your business. So, do me a favour, don't quote the jokes."

OK, Nick...

This interview was conducted in 1990, when Nick’s relationship with the UK press was openly strained and, I think, it was one of only four interviews he made time for that year... I am very grateful that he was kind enough to spend his time on this one, during which he was most charming and attentive. Parts of it appeared in a feature for the June 1990 issue of Outlook, and later in the Crumblin’ Rock 1992-1993 Yearbook. It was also grounding for research that led to my critique-cum-biography, Hellfire: Life According to Nick Cave, published in 1995 with an introduction by Mark Radcliffe (The Dunce Directive ISBN 09522068 5 4).

For current info, check out the Official Nick Cave website

Behold, The Beast - remembering 'Shadow Raiders'

FROM THE REMY DEAN ARCHIVE : 1999

A revised version of this article has since been published on Medium to mark 25 years of Shadow Raiders - please click here to enjoy a smoother reader experience across most platforms and devices (free to read and with better pictures, too).

 I recently re-watched the entire run of Mainframe's Shadow Raiders. It was as exciting and inventive as I remembered and, 18 years after its debut, is re-confirmed as one of my all-time favourite SF TV series. Mainframe was a Canadian computer graphics and animation production company, responsible for the ground-breaking video for the 1985 Dire Straits single, Money For Nothing, and for the first fully CGI television series, ReBoot. They were also responsible for bringing the series of far-better-than-they-have-to-be Barbie movies to the screen - Island Princess being a favourite of mine - and later developed into what is now Rainmaker Entertainment Inc.

Shadow Raiders the fantastic, yet underrated, SF TV classic (1998 - 1999)

War Planets: Shadow Raiders - a show for kids right? If being a kid means enjoying imaginative and inventive stories, serious plot developments, convincing characterisation, gorgeous CGI art, dynamic action sequences and an on-going and involving arc - well, yeah, it's kid stuff...

Shadow Raiders is just one of an array of spectacular series created entirely from computer animation by Mainframe, its multi-award winning makers. What marks it aside from the other Mainframe shows, such as ReBoot, and the new Transformers, is its particularly well structured plots and some intense moments capable of bringing a tear to the eye, or instigating a jump from the sofa with a fist in the air as our heroes triumph over insurmountable odds... Such is its power to immerse the viewer in its fantastical reality populated by sympathetic and convincing characters. Even though the regular cast consists of a giant blue insect, a boy whose head is on fire, a shiny robot babe, a short fat lizard and a couple of hefty stone people, it is surprisingly easy to forget that what you are watching is CGI!

Of course, the awe inspiring talents of the CGI animators have much to do with this suspension of disbelief, as do the excellent voice actors, but it is within the writing that the real strength resides. The stable of writers includes Christy Marx, who has also written for Babylon 5. Some elements may seem reminiscent of Babylon 5, such as the shadowy beast drones, the world-killing beast planet, the great machines of the world engines concealed deep within planets, remnants of some ancient alien technology... But there, any similarities end. Shadow Raiders is 'proper grown up SF' and takes its story-telling just as seriously, but is not averse to going for all-out laser battles and exciting starfighter sequences. Plus, it seems highly unlikely that the Beast's minions would ever 'get the hell out of our universe' just because we told 'em to. No, they enjoy consuming planets and extinguishing all life far too much! The only way they will go out is with a humongous bang and plenty of drama, never a whimper or an anti-climax...

The Vice President in charge of Operations at Mainframe is British-born Phil Mitchell, whose job involves running all aspects of production and development for TV. Phil is also one of the original developers of the seminal series, ReBoot. Remy Dean caught up with Phil to ask him a little bit about Shadow Raiders - how the show came to be and what may yet become of it...

Press shots of some of the 'synthespian' cast of Shadow Raiders

RD: The 'acting' in Shadow Raiders is often very effective, and sometimes poignant, and the characters can convey real emotional depth. As these 'synthespians' only live inside the circuits of the computers, how is this achieved? Are the scenes first acted by a human cast?

PM: No - that would be using a method called 'motion-capture' in which real actors don a suit covered in sensors and their movements are fed into the computer to provide a basic set of motions which the animators then refine. What we do is called 'keyframe animation' and there are no real actors involved - except the voices. We do encourage the use of 'real-world' reference - animation is all about observation. So, by self-observation, watching movies, et cetera, on tape, the animators see how real actors behave, and put this knowledge into their own work.

Are the characters actually based on real people? Julia reminded me of Louise Brooks.

Not deliberately, but we draw our inspiration from many sources. It's possible that Louise Brooks was in there somewhere!

Could a member of the 'synthespian' cast interact in real time?

Given enough money and computing power anything is possible - but we are not equipped to do that sort of thing at the moment.

What comes first, the ability to render a visual idea or an artist’s concept? In other words, do the concept designers and directors set real challenges, or does everyone work within the parameters of what is known to be possible?

Both. We like to push the bounds of what is accepted as 'possible', but at the same time must bear in mind the constraints of production. Often concepts that work on paper are just too involved from a logistics, time, resources, and manpower point of view. But we like the problems that these situations pose - they demand creative solutions, and push everyone's creativity.

It also depends on where the idea came from. A children's book? A comic? A story treatment? Is there original art or not? Do we have to follow it thematically, or are we free to take it in another direction? The production designers are the creators of the visual look of any project. They do illustrations, then from that we create models inside the computer. We sometimes try lots of different looks before the final character or set designs are arrived at.

How closely do the animators and the writers work together?

Not very: The writers work closely with the Producer and Creative Director of each series.

Shadow Raiders was initially based on a line of toys and games. How detailed were the guidelines from Trendmasters, the toy manufacturers, as to the show's content?

It was a collaborative process really because the original toy line didn't have many characters and we had to develop some new ones to give the series an interesting cast.

The scope of Shadow Raiders is certainly on an epic scale and has been likened to Star Wars. It reminded me a little of other golden age science fiction, like Flash Gordon, too. What do you perceive as being the show's major influences, on both its look and content? 

Good question. I guess everything from those 50s Hollywood epics to the science fiction cornerstones of 70s TV. Basically, we took a whole bunch of stuff and distilled it down to what seemed appropriate to the subject matter.

How rigid is the main story arc and how long is it planned to last?

Shadow Raiders was two seasons long – twenty-six episodes. It is now finished.

But, can we expect more from the War Planets universe in the future? Any more seasons on the way?

The series finished production earlier this year (1999). We are certainly looking for a new broadcaster-home for the series as we'd like to do more. There are plenty of storylines yet to be explored. We understand the series was very popular in the UK and Europe so we're talking to those broadcasters to see if we can find a way to fund further seasons for those audiences.

Thank you Phil Mitchell, and may you have every success in finding further outlets for more Shadow Raiders - it would certainly be welcome on UK screens, particularly mine!

Phil Mitchell was talking to Remy Dean.

For cast details, episode list and more, see the 

War Planets: Shadow Raiders entry at IMDb.

This interview from 1999 with Mainframe's Phil Mitchell first appeared 
in the UK science and science fiction 'fanzine', The 5 Times, issue 20.