Star Trek VS Doctor Who

Making Star Trek Vs Doctor Who

Originally the film was an off the cuff extension to events on a Doctor Who forum, but it soon took on a life of its own as more people wanted to join in. The first 2 rounds were filmed without much of a script at the side of the Jumbles reservoir near Bolton in Greater Manchester. They really were made up pretty much as we went along. The lack of rehearsal is perhaps evident, but we weren't worried! Most of the hard work would be in the edit, linking it all together with a wall to wall commentary influenced by the old TV series "It’s a knock out." We ran out of time on this first day's filming and when we left there was only a slither of twilight left in the sky, so a second day would be needed.

The challenge making Star Trek Vs Doctor Who was to have it available online as fast as possible, adding the first 2 rounds in one week, and then waiting for an online poll vote to decide the winner. Because we didn't have time to wait and find out who the winner was going to be, on our second day's filming we needed to film both alternative endings, and have two versions waiting and ready. This time we moved filming over to West Yorkshire, and in the morning filmed around the streets of the small tourist town Hebden Bridge in our WWO propaganda film. The weather was awful and much of the action was filmed as quickly as possible before darting back under umbrellas and a re-polish of the precious camera lens. We also needed to take a little train ride for some guerrilla film making of Andrew defacing the train's table. Don't worry, we used a white board marker so it wiped back off afterwards!

In the afternoon, the weather was much better so we set up camp on a windswept playing field in another town called Sowerby Bridge. There we smoothly filmed the concluding round for both endings, having a lot of fun running about the field and only occasionally getting the camera accidentally punched in the fighting! Once again a full voice over was hastily recorded and almost entirely adlibbed by Gareth in the style of an old radio cricket commentary. The editing deadline was furious but in the end only a couple of days late! Star Trek Vs Doctor Who's original vote came out as a marginally close victory in favour of Doctor Who. It would not be until a lot later that Star Trek's victory would be seen.

But it didn't end there!

Soon, Adam Manning and his Cheeky Monkey Productions had begun work on their very own WWO propaganda film. Star Trek Vs Doctor Who had become a franchise! To say our groups have never worked together, their environmental broadcast came out fabulously, and you can download it from the links above!

Still fired up with ideas, Westlake flung together a short costume extravaganza meant as both a prequel and an epilogue to the WWO, charting their centuries old "conflict" with Star Trek fandom. Creating little historical scenarios using music and filming techniques from BBC series "Simon Schama's History of Britain" the Historical film's principle message is not to take any of this production too seriously! We'd received a complaint by this point that our portrayal of fascism wasn't funny. I think that this film makes our response clear!

And yet, that still wasn't the end!

The WWO refused to give up their struggle, even when the news came through that the series "Star Trek Enterprise" was to be axed due to low ratings (amongst other criticisms). Star Trek fans globally had launched an appeal to save their series, even offering to send Paramount money to continue making it. All of this came to nothing of course, but one thing we in the Westlake group found curious was that a group of Star Trek fans had decided to stage a protest outside the BBC in London. Somehow they thought the BBC had some leverage over the production of a series from another country - who knows!? But we saw the perfect opportunity for a parody demonstration! And so, on the same day and at the same time as the Star Trek demo marched and chanted slogans at the BBC, Westlake films arrived outside BBC Leeds and began our own, much smaller, much less peaceful WWO campaign to keep Star Trek off the air!

There it came to an end. The contest and the WWO were laid to rest, but hopefully still enjoyed by everyone watching these films! We've lost count of how many hundreds of downloads they must have had by now!

Oh... but perhaps that wasn't quite the end. Just one last time the WWO managed to get back on the screen. If you take a look at Auton Diaries II, those BBC executives look kind of familiar don't they?