THE GIRL WITH THE BIG FIRM BUS
On Saturday 18 April 2009 ITV's sadly now-extinct show "Primeval" featured a very large biped dinosaur emerging from an anomaly in the space-time continuum to terrorise a freight Boeing 747 and a small helicopter at a surprisingly quiet airport while on Saturday 25 April 2009 the action moved to the newly refurbished St Pancras station with a fungus like creature taking over humans in a number of scarily confined spaces beneath the Eurostars.
On Easter Saturday - 11 April 2009 - however, the show that "Primeval" wanted to be - BBC Television's "Doctor Who" - had already gone one better with the episode "Planet of the Dead" featuring ex professional dancer and Eastenders actress Michelle Ryan as a girl with a big firm bus - a Gloucestershire built double deck Bristol VR no less!
Bristol buses - often with Lowestoft built Eastern Counties bodywork - were at one time seen all over Britain and 4mm scale models of some of the earlier double decker types are currently for sale on the Railway Operating Department's Flightline diorama.
The company grew rapidly through the Victorian and Edwardian eras so that while in 1885 Mr George White and his City of Gloucester Tramways Company took over the six-year-old horse drawn tram network of the County City 1910 saw Sir George White’s Bristol Tramway & Carriage Company Limited building its own motor buses and operating motor lorries, buses, taxis and hearses. The association with bus and car building continues to this day, but in 1910 Sir George White also founded a "flying machine factory" in a former bus depot and works at Filton. The result was the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company, later absorbed into the British Aircraft Corporation which went on to build Concorde - later a key "prop" in the Peter Davison era Doctor Who story "Timeflight"
By then however Gloucestershire already had quite a history of Dr Who transport connections. The first time that The Doctor was seen driving - in the 1968 story "The Invasion" - was at the wheel of a UNIT Land Rover emerging from the rear of a Lockheed Hercules at RAF Fairford while Patrick Troughton's successor Jon Pertwee piloted a hovercraft on the River Severn.
In fact the plot of "Planet of The Dead" sprang from Gareth Robert's Seventh Doctor novel "The Highest Science" in which a London Underground train became stranded in a desert, although the script soon evolved beyond this premise, especially when - in real life - one of two buses used by BBC Wales for filming became damaged in a dockside accident.
Viewers with keen eyes for continuity would have realised that two Bristol VRs were involved - one for the "London" - actually Cardiff - scenes and one for the Dubai desert - by the registration plates.
The bus stuck in the sand had the registration RUA 461W and chassis number VRT/SL3/2875. Fitted with Eastern Counties Coachworks ( ECW) Series 2 body 24379 it had a Gardner 6LXB engine or - as customised by The Doctor - anti gravity clamps which enabled it to fly!
In reality RUA 461W began its working life as West Riding Automobile Company fleet number 911 in April 1981 before going on to Yorkshire Woollen District Transport Co with the same fleet number in May 1993. It was officially withdrawn in June 1994 before spending October 1994 to March 1998 with Randall and Donnelly (Devaway) as Chester 88 and then spending a month as Crosville Wales Ltd DVG 461 after which a further month was spent with the same fleet number as part of Arriva Cymru Ltd.
After passing through the hands of dealers Lister Bolton and Stephenson Rockford the years 1998 to 2008 were spent with Hedingham & District Omnibus Ltd as L288 although during a loan period of two months at the end of that year the Southern National fleet number 003 was carried. Red and cream livery was applied in February 1999 and RUA 461W was sold to dealers Ensign of Purfleet, Essex, in November 2008 prior to acquisition by BBC Wales.
After arrival at Dubai Docks, the front entrance double decker was sideswiped by a shipping container being traversed by a crane and so a second Bristol VR had to be obtained to finish Welsh filming - and had to be similarly mangled about the top deck while the lower saloon had to be altered to match its expatriate sister.
During studio filming in Wales, a 360 degree background translight device was used to give the illusion of the Dubai desert being outside the bus windows and harmless sheet silicon used to represent shattered glass. Much of the location filming was centred on the Queen's Gate Tunnel on the A4232 in Cardiff's Bute Town.
GGM 84W - with Bristol chassis number VRT/SL3/2724, ECW bodywork and a similar Gardner engine, began work for Thames Valley and Aldershot Omnibus Company (Alder Valley) Ltd as fleet number 614 in November 1980
GGM 84W continued as 614 with Alder Valley South from 1986 to 1987 and Alder Valley Ltd to 1992 when the PSV became 559 of The Berks Bucks Bus Company Ltd ( The Bee Line ) and then Q Drive Buses up to withdrawal in January 1995. It then joined Hedingham as L237 and followed RUA 461 W into Ensign and BBC Wales ownership.
The official designation given to the Dr Who bus in the script was W 974 GHM although the front numberplate reading RUA 461 W was still visible. Indeed, it is not impossible that viewers might see this bus again. Instead of Michelle Ryan's character Lady Christina De Souza joining The Doctor in the TARDIS after the wormhole to San Helios had been closed, she flew off in the Bristol VR!
Indeed, Lady Christina de Souza's departure could be likened to that of Jenny in "The Doctor's Daughter" as they are both feisty young women with their own transport looking for adventure: definitely worth a spin off series on their own in my humble opinion.
Similarly, while the whole of "Planet of the Dead" can be seen nodding toward such films as "Flight of the Phoenix", "Pitch Black" and the Indiana Jones franchise, the character of Lady Christina - while being very much of early 2009 as the daughter of an aristocrat who lost the family wealth in the Credit Crunch - also draws on a number of earlier heroines.
My own first impression was Diana Rigg's black leather suited Emma Peel from "The Avengers" although her adrenaline junkie antics also mirror Michelle Ryan's own earlier take on The Bionic Woman, Lara Croft and Modesty Blaise ( pictured below in Peter O' Donnell's story "The Gabriel Setup"). Unlike the 21st Century Doctor's other female companions, Lady Christina also has her own blend of upper class glamour and cunning intelligence which brings a frisson of suppressed attraction between her and the wandering Time Lord - more like that between Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen in "The Thomas Crown Affair" or Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in such 1960s films as "Charade" and "Topkapi".
Indeed, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck also shared a motor scooter in "Roman Holiday" - just like David Tennant and Billie Piper in "The Idiot's Lantern". And Michelle Ryan comes from the motorcyle manufactuing town of Enfield, also the home of Exclusive First Editions 4mm scale model buses and actor Reg Varney, famous both for his role as driver Stan Butler in ITV's "On The Buses" and for his own "bank job" when on 27 June 1967 he made the first ever ATM cash withdrawal from the Enfield branch of Barclays .
So if on your TV in future you see
a bus jumping the barbed wire of the Swiss border to get away from
Daleks, don't be at all surprised!
