Guess Who's been to West Sussex

The six-part story The Enemy of the World was set Down Under but, needless to say, the budget would not stretch to filming in Oz.

Somewhere closer to home was needed and the beach at Clymping was deemed just the job. So it was that between November 5 and 8, 1967 the Doctor Who team took up residence to film various scenes of this adventure set in the near- future, with Earth under threat from a power-hungry politician and scientist called Salamander who was behind "natural" disasters such as flooding and earthquakes.

It was covered at the time by our sister publication the Littlehampton Gazette, and journalist Roy Arber observed: "Considering the fact that there was a cold wind blowing and everyone was huddled to the eyebrows in sweaters and coats, I don't think anyone present had imagination that would stretch to part of our beach being Australia."

While filming at Clymping, some impressive hardware was also utilised, namely a hovercraft and a helicopter. The hovercraft was loaned by a Mr K R Morgan, who was a retired naval architect of Worthing.

And while Clymping became Australia, there was another case of double-take, for a key plot point was the fact that Salamander was the spitting image of the Doctor '“ with Troughton playing both parts.

Back then, in the days of black-and-white TV, Doctor Who was on our screens for some 40 weeks of the year, albeit in 25-minute episodes, and the consequent rapid turnaround of production meant that stories were seen just a few weeks after being filmed '“ unthinkable nowadays for such a complex drama production. The Enemy of the World aired between December 23, 1967 and January 27, 1968. Sadly, many early episodes of Doctor Who were wiped by the BBC and only the third part of The Enemy of the World still exists in the archives '“ ironically, the only one that didn't feature Clymping!

Not convinced that Clymping's beach could pass for one in Australia? How about one north of the English border then? Because nipping forward nearly seven and a half years in your own personal Tardis, you'd find a different Who crew, this time filming in colour and pretending for all the world as if it were a beach in Scotland with the North Sea gently lapping at its shores.

This time, the Doctor '“ now in his fourth incarnation and played by Tom Baker '“ was facing the Loch Ness Monster.

But Doctor Who being Doctor Who of course, this mythical creature turned out to be an alien monster called a Skarasen, controlled by a race known as the Zygons who were intent on taking over Earth after their home planet had been destroyed.

Again, budgetary restraints meant the BBC team had to stay closer to their London base. However, it is widely acknowledged that director Douglas Camfield did an amazing job in giving West Sussex a Highlands feel '“ and with filming taking place between March 17 and 21, 1975, the early spring weather may have helped too.

In Terror of the Zygons, the Skarasen had been destroying oil rigs, and a survivor is shown being washed up on the beach and staggering through the Clymping dunes, while Ambersham Common, to the south-east of Midhurst, was the arrival point for the Doctor and his then companions, Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan, played by Elisabeth Sladen and Ian Marter.

The Common became the fictitious Tullock Moor, across which the Doctor is chased by the Skarasen, and The Fox Goes Free pub at Charlton became the temporary headquarters of Unit '“ the fictitious military organisation dedicated to fighting the unknown and which the Doctor helped as a scientific adviser. Only the exterior of the pub '“ then called The Fox '“ was used, however.

The classic era of Doctor Who was famed for using quarries as alien locations but for this story Hall Aggregates Quarry in Storrington was just that '“ a disused quarry on Earth.

It became the site where the Zygons' spaceship landed after emerging from Loch Ness, where it had been concealed, as well as the location for a hospital.

Meanwhile, Furnace Pond at Crabtree, near Lower Beeding, doubled for Loch Ness. It saw an attack on the Zygons' spaceship and was the setting for a chase scene involving a Zygon as well as an assault on a soldier.

This four-part story started off Season 13 of the classic era in great dramatic style, with some truly creepy moments, and aired between August 30 and September 20, 1975.

Now, when is a West Sussex location not a West Sussex location? Answer: when it's a Surrey location. Or rather, was a Surrey location.

Confused? Don't be. This geographical shift wasn't caused by some bizarre spatial anomaly worthy of the programme, simply a change in county boundaries over the years. For the first occasion of a visit to the area to film Doctor Who was on March 10, 13, 14 and 17, 1967, when the cameras rolled at Gatwick Airport '“ then administratively in the county of Surrey '“ for The Faceless Ones.

This adventure, in which Gatwick was specifically referred to on screen as where the action was taking place, foreshadowed today's fears about identity theft, for an alien race called Chameleons were kidnapping passengers to assume their form. Not only did filming take place in the airport concourse but the Doctor Who crew were also granted the rare privilege of being allowed to go airside as well.

Only episodes one and three of this six-part tale, broadcast between April 8 and May 13, 1967, still exist. Gatwick Airport subsequently came under the aegis of West Sussex in 1974, when the county border was moved north.

The Doctor Who team returned to West Sussex for another Patrick Troughton story '“ The War Games '“ which was the actor's swansong as the Doctor before handing over the controls of the Tardis to Jon Pertwee.

The crew visited the bridlepath in Underhill Lane, Clayton, on March 28, 1969 while filming episodes three and four of this ten-parter for scenes involving companion Jamie, played by Frazer Hines, and were there again three days later for a scene where a First World War ambulance is blocked by a tree.

In this epic adventure, these locations were duplicates of areas where wars were being fought in different periods of Earth's history, set up on an unnamed planet as part of a plan by aliens to create a super-army to conquer the galaxy.

The War Games aired between April 19 and June 21, 1969 and was the last Doctor Who story to be made in black and white.

Fast-forwarding to the 1980s, we find Colin Baker as the Gallifreyan hero, and on January 10, 1985 he and actress Nicola Bryant, playing companion Peri, were at Halnaker on the Goodwood Estate and Tangmere Aerodrome for Revelation of the Daleks, and about to stumble upon the Doctor's top enemy and their creator, Davros, for this was '“ temporarily '“ the planet Necros.

Minor scenes involving the duo were filmed but a Dalek was present at Tangmere on the same day, where it was destroyed by another character, Orcini, played by William Gaunt. This two-part story aired on March 23 and 30, 1985.

West Sussex's most recent '“ and arguably its grandest '“ claim to fame as regards Doctor Who filming came in the summer of 1988 for the show's 25th-anniversary story, Silver Nemesis, which featured the Cybermen.

Sylvester McCoy was now in the title role as the seventh incarnation of the Doctor, with Ace, played by Sophie Aldred, as his companion.

This three-parter, set in the 17th century and the modern day, was filmed entirely on location, and West Sussex featured in most of the scenes (Greenwich and Harefield providing the others), with Arundel Castle doubling for Windsor Castle. The West Wing, Quadrangle, Keep and Vault all featured, as did Hiorne's Tower and the Shooting Range on the Arundel Estate.

A shot of Windsor Castle that had been used in Songs of Praise was, however, edited in as a scene-setter to create the illusion of being in Berkshire rather than West Sussex.

Also used were Tarrant Street, High Street and London Road in Arundel, the elegant house Casa Del Mar in Goring, which was made up to look even more like a South American villa, and '“ for scenes set in the 1600s '“ the 15th-century St Mary's House in Bramber.

Making a cameo appearance in this story, playing a tourist at Windsor/Arundel Castle, was actor Nicholas Courtney who, as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, the head of the British division of Unit, had been in Terror of the Zygons 13 years earlier.

Fittingly, this anniversary story brought the show full circle in a way, for it featured a character, known simply as the Mathematician, played by Leslie French, who was originally in line to play the first Doctor '“ a role that eventually went to William Hartnell.

Filming for Silver Nemesis took place locally between June 26 and July 2, with the story being shown between November 23 and December 7, 1988.

And there we have it '“ Australia, Scotland, South America and the far reaches of space by way of Berkshire, all to be found within a relatively small area of West Sussex.

Who says the camera never lies . . . ?

Filming information taken from Doctor Who On Location by Richard Bignell and published by Reynolds & Hearn