Production GuideStoryboards
Death's Other Dominion
Production GuideThese are the effects storyboards for the episode Death's Other Dominion. These are early sketches, rather than the standard SFX storyboard, with extensive written notes. There are just 5 pages, and the last pages mostly text, plus a sheet with random notes. The discussions of angles and different options are an unusual insight.
1A Yellow Moon
Script: The frozen surface of a planet. Icy peaks are half shrouded in mist. Far out in the darkness of space, a moon sheds its pale light.
Seen on the screen (burn-in) in the Ice Palace Communications Section.
1B Drifting mist across
Script: ANGLE ON SCREEN. SFX. SPACE. The great orb of the Moon fills the Screen.
Scripted to be on the screen, during discussion between Tanner and Rowland. Used full-frame, twice (with dialogue over).
2 Thule a nebulous misty whitish-green glow (or white?) Preferably Alpha in foreground.
Script: The Moon with Alpha in the F.G. Behind it is the distant huge, ice-planet.
Shown with lunar hills, but no moonbase.
4. Same effect as 2. QUERY DISTORT and DISAPPEAR?
Script: ON BIG SCREEN. SFX. A closer shot of the Ice Planet, shrouded in mist. (As the voices disappear in static:) The image on the screen distorts and disappears.
Burn-in on Big Screen. It doesn't distort or disappear (the static is caused by the atmosphere, so should only affect the transmission; the question mark appears to recognise this).
5A. Presumably STOCK.
Script (start of Act 1): A reconnaissance Eagle flies away from Alpha.
Not seen, and not drawn.
5B. Eagle approaches THULE.
ESSENTIAL that Thule should always be nebulous.The mists of Thule must be effective - otherwise story falls to pieces.
Script (start of Act 1): A reconnaissance Eagle flies away from Alpha.
Title shot of the episode. The first drawing shows a planet hemisphere, as used, while the alternative has a horizontal horizon.
8. Eagle enters smog.
I prefer 3/4 angles to side angles on the whole.
Slight erratic movement on Eagle as it goes into fog.
Script: The Eagle enters the outer fringes of the Ice Planet's atmosphere
11 Continuation of 8 - in dense smog. Erratic movement on Eagle.
Script: The Eagle descends into thicker and thicker smog. An urgent alarm signal is heard over.
14 Eagle lands.
Essential to see lighting of THULE surface STUDIO.
if Icy shapes are used, only those in foreground should have any definition.
Script: Fog and snow are blasted clear as the Eagle descends under full power to the frozen surface. It lands heavily and the engines die.
As the notes state, the SFX set had to match the studio set. According to the clapperboard on the SFX footage, it was filmed on 23rd October 1974.