Mike Tucker and The Model Unit – Celebrating Ten Years

Simon Mills is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Mike Tucker is such a lovely bloke at the head of an incredibly talented team of VFX artists born out of the in-house BBC VFX department and then resurrected as an independent company when the BBC no longer wanted to “do it themselves”.

I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with him a few years ago at the launch party for the Darksmith Legacy book series and also bumping into him recently at the Bedford Doctor Who Charity Con in May (make sure you go next year – it’s a great, fun, small, and intimate convention!) where he presented his show reel and gave us all a good talking to – in the best possible way, of course. He went into detail about the work they do and told us many entertaining stories – not all of them about Doctor Who, either. He covered Red Dwarf as well as other film and TV shows The Model Unit has worked on.

1st August 2015 marked the tenth anniversary of The Model Unit existing as an entity outside of the BBC and Mike commemorated this occassion with a post to The Model Unit Facebook page summarising those ten years and thanking everyone that works and has worked for him.

The team has won two BAFTA Craft Awards and had many nominations for other awards for their work, which has included, and I quote, “spacecraft and dinosaurs, we’ve destroyed buildings and crashed aircraft, we’ve recreated volcanoes, hurricanes, tornados and tidal waves, we’ve provided effects for shows that had inspired us when we were children, we’ve been involved one of the most successful British films for decades, and we’ve worked alongside some incredibly talented companies and individuals.”

In the past few days he has been reminiscing on the past with a post about the very last effect they created whilst still a part of the BBC, which was the explosion in School Reunion and also the first thing they did as The Model Unit, which was to build the interior of that glorious steampunky telescope seen in Tooth and Claw.

Read Mike Tucker’s Facebook post in full to find out more.

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