June Hudson - Doctor Who

Hudson first worked on Doctor Who in 1978, and (after being briefly reallocated to Blake's 7 later that year) became de facto principal costume designer on the series in 1979, a position which was formalized in 1980. Her opulent costumes for her first two productions, "The Ribos Operation" (1978) and "The Creature from the Pit" (1979) won praise from the producer, Graham Williams, who requested Hudson's allocation for at least two further productions in the 1979-80 recording block.

On the strength of her success at producing lavish effects on a limited budget, incoming producer (and former production unit manager) John Nathan Turner in 1980 asked Hudson to be sole costume designer for the show's eighteenth season. While she was happy to accept, the BBC costume department felt that the schedule and demands of Doctor Who made sole stewardship of design an excessive burden, and Hudson was therefore asked to nominate a second designer to work with her; she chose Amy Roberts, whose style, though strongly idiosyncratic, was commensurate with Hudson's in its boldness and fantastical sensibility.

Among Hudson's best remembered designs on Doctor Who are her costumes for the main characters. In both her first two years on the show, she was responsible for establishing a sartorial style for the Doctor's new companion -- Mary Tamm as the Time Lady Romana in 1978 ("The Ribos Operation") and Lalla Ward as Romana's second 'incarnation' in 1979. Hudson's collaboration with Ward was particularly fruitful: the designer created more than half of the outfits Ward wore for the role, establishing a playful, tomboyish style for the second Romana, which was popular with fans.

More controversial, and initially troubling to the designer herself, was the production office's forced redesign of Tom Baker's costume as the Doctor. This was the first time in the show's history that control over costume had been taken away from the incumbent leading man by a producer. Hudson felt strongly that any change, especially an insensitive or radical one, could undermine Baker's performance. She therefore devised what she says was meant to be an "apotheosis" of the established costume image, retaining the iconic scarf, long coat and hat rather than departing too strongly from precedent. Her new design for Baker is marked principally by the fact that it is largely monochrome, with plum colored overcoat, hat and Norfolk suit offset by touches of rust and aubergine in the predominantly plum scarf and gold thread in the vintage-velvet waistcoat. Hudson was also asked to design a new, distinctive shirt for Baker, and the producer required her to put embroidered question-marks on the resulting garment's pointed lapels - much to her chagrin, as she felt embroidery was fussy and inappropriate, and the joke it embodied crass. (The question-mark motif was to become a branding gimmick that endured on the Doctor's costumes as long as the classic series was in production.)

Of the incidental costume designs Hudson devised for the show, perhaps the most striking were the white, cigarette-quilted outfits for the exquisite android Movellans in "Destiny of the Daleks," the faintly chiton-esque yellow robes for the Argolin in "The Leisure Hive," and the Gundan Warriors for "Warrior's Gate." The armor for the Gundans, gorgeously conceived and finished, typifies Hudson's capacity to produce safe, comfortable, impressive costumes on a tight budget: the armor was actually made of thin, vacuum-formed plastic, and given is pewter finish by metal deposition, while the grills on the helmets were made from junked mail trays.

Hudson is surely one of the most broadly imaginative costume designers to work on Doctor Who, espousing not one but a whole range of different aesthetics, from faery-tale, "Pre-Raphaelite" richness to minimalist, machine-turned modernism. She is certainly one of the most influential and best remembered Doctor Who costume designers of the 1970s and 80s, equaling the output of James Acheson and Ken Trew, and producing designs of comparable importance in the enduring legacy of the show.