Michael Pickwoad’s first Doctor Who story was A Christmas Carol, a story that asked its Production Designer to help realise a faux-Dickensian city, flying sharks, and Matt Smith sweeping the special chimney.

Doctor Who had moved to high definition at the start of the previous series, coinciding with a new production team of Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger and Beth Willis. After longstanding Production Designer Edward Thomas moved on, Pickwoad took over the role until Moffat left as showrunner in 2017. In this time he oversaw the design of a new TARDIS interior, several sonic screwdrivers, Peter Capaldi on a tank, and a nuclear submarine.

The Production Designer role first appeared in Doctor Who credits in 1996 for the television movie, but since 2005 has been present in the television series. Previously, costume, set and effects designers were allocated individual stories, feeding back to the director and the permanent producer. Now the Production Designer oversees every designed aspect of the show, liaising with all of those departments.

The demands of the role, then, are about more than visuals. You also have to be able to work with people in a stressful environment. For Doctor Who there are greater demands than on many shows, in that there are very few standing sets and each episode is usually set in a different location. Also, those locations can vary from an Ice Fair on the Thames in 1814 to a deep-space mining station in the far future, with different cast and varying crews on each story.