Paddy Russell’s Doctor Who is worth seeking out for the unease of its locations and the tension she builds in the studio. We recommend her atmospheric television with an allowance for the programme’s stubborn pacing.
Fi1m perspective
The deserted London of Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974) is a good place to begin with Paddy Russell. Early-morning location filming makes streets that ought to be busy feel threatening. We found their emptiness unsettling because the familiar city had lost the people who make it ordinary. It is a useful introduction to a director who understood how much a setting could contribute to a science-fiction story before anyone had to explain the danger.
Her four Doctor Who (1963) serials began with The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve (1966), the programme’s first directed by a woman and now lost. Invasion of the Dinosaurs came eight years later, followed by Pyramids of Mars (1975) and Horror of Fang Rock (1977). The latter two are the clearest reason to seek her out, particularly for the tension she could build within a studio. The lighthouse setting of Horror of Fang Rock, her final contribution to the programme, gives that skill somewhere suitably confined to work.
Her experience with studio drama included practical work with Rudolph Cartier, for whom she had been a production assistant and floor manager. The Quatermass serials and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954) were part of that experience; large casts and complicated action were familiar problems. Russell’s directing also extended through Z-Cars (1967–76), literary adaptations and, later, Emmerdale Farm at Yorkshire Television. Those credits help explain the assurance with actors and complicated action in her science fiction, without making it necessary to treat every assignment as a personal statement.
Effects were not Russell’s particular expertise, and spectacle is not the reason to choose her work. Our enthusiasm for Doctor Who rests on actors making absurd situations matter, with a real reservation about its stubborn pacing. We would not excuse that simply because the programme is old, or confuse Russell’s ability to sustain tension with a guarantee that every scene moves briskly. Her atmospheric work offers sufficient compensation, provided this kind of patient television is welcome in the household. Start with Pyramids of Mars, and give it an unhurried evening.
Biography
Patricia "Paddy" Russell (4 July 1928 – 2 November 2017) was a British television director. She trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and began her career at the BBC as a production assistant to Rudolph Cartier. She worked on the Quatermass serials and the 1954 adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four. She was the BBC's first female floor manager.
Russell became one of the first two women directors in BBC television, alongside Julia Smith. She directed from 1962 onwards and was the first woman to direct Doctor Who, with The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve (1966). She later directed Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974), Pyramids of Mars (1975) and Horror of Fang Rock (1977). Other credits include episodes of Emmerdale Farm, The Moonstone (1972) and The Omega Factor (1979).
