Stuart Ashen wrote:
chinnyhill10 wrote:
got the gig due to being bestest buddies with RTD
That goes for 90% of people involved with Who now, doesn't it?
Pretty much. And it's extending into the crew as well. Someone who worked on the show told me it had become a case where RTD employed his mates, they employed their mates and this then this starts to filter across the entire crew.
My contact hasn't had their contract renewed because of a change further up the chain of command.
It's terribly sad because one of Who's strengths in the past was that the BBC had an enormous amount of talent in-house but you'd get a mix of people working on the show because of the way the BBC worked.
That said, thankfully there are still some people from the past working on the series through their own merit. Sheelagh Wells who started her career on Blakes 7* has been looking after the make-up design on alot of new episodes. Mike Tucker who did the superb models on Red Dwarf and had also been on the original Who crew has done alot of the model shots on new Who (such as the spacecraft crashing through Big Ben which was done with models not CGI).
I'm not saying that alot of the "younger" crew members aren't talented, but I do think that sometimes things are being done at the whim of RTD rather than on who would be best for the job. Gold's music is a case in point. It makes Keff McCulloch's stuff sound subtle and understated in comparison. Mark Ayres has said he pitched for the gig but didn't get it which makes me rather cross as Ayres scores for Greatest Show In The Galaxy and Ghostlight were bloody amazing (although Ghostlight is mixed far too loud, something that Ayres himself comments on in the DVD documentry).
* And who was married Gareth Thomas. Chinnytrufax!