Is that a harp in the Doctor Who time vortex? Irish screen industry travels far to reach the Whoniverse

The end credits of a recent episode of Doctor Who rumbled along to a twist that had me pressing rewind to check I had not imagined it: the incongruous image of a harp.

The unmistakable mark of Rialtas na hÉireann had somehow transported itself into the cloudy purple time vortex, beneath it the words “produced with the support of incentives for the Irish film industry provided by the Government of Ireland”. What timeline was this?

Growing up with “classic” Doctor Who meant watching television that hinged on adventure, possibility and otherworldliness while also manifesting as a knowingly British product, laced with the DNA of the BBC.

It didn’t matter which planet and which century the Doctor and his companions wound up in, the Irish government could be guaranteed not to exist in any of them. RTÉ did not, and still doesn’t, do science fiction. There was no overlap.

If I was to pop in the Tardis and show that end-credits harp to my childhood self, I might not spark the most exciting of temporal paradoxes, but it would still be equal parts thrilling and confusing to the 1980s version of me. Film industry? Ireland has one of those in the future?

Thanks to Section 481, the incentive implied by those end credits, it has one with tendrils that now extend delightfully to Doctor Who.

Some people frown at the mention of tax breaks, but once you’ve seen them granted to developers of multistorey car parks and purchasers of holiday homes, it’s hard not to be glad when they become the cornerstone of an industry that allows talented creative people to be talented and creative right here.

The first episode of Doctor Who I saw bearing the harp, The Devil’s Chord, was set in a 1960s London that was ominously failing to swing. Was this Ireland in disguise? No, it was the doing of an appropriately tedious villain intent on draining all music from humanity.

It was the visuals to which the Irish screen industry contributed, courtesy of Windmill Lane’s collaboration with Cardiff-based Doctor Who producers Bad Wolf to create visual effects (VFX) for the show, which is now a big-budget affair made for both the BBC and Disney.

In a reel available online, the Dublin post-production and VFX company breaks down how the episode, starring Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, was lifted by its 1960s London cityscape and another backdrop of a London in the grip of nuclear winter. Other effects included the addition of streams of floating musical notation used to suspend companion Ruby (Millie Gibson) in the air. Members of the Windmill team also worked on next weekend’s episode, Rogue.

“Additional VFX”, meanwhile, were generated for brilliantly creepy folk horror-tinged episode 73 Yards and last Saturday’s Dot and Bubble – in which homicidal slugs eat the vapid inhabitants of a supremacist colony – by another Dublin company, EGG, which previously contributed to Christmas special The Church on Ruby Road.

In keeping with the rules of Section 481, which specify that a production must provide opportunities for skills development to qualify, four “Ireland VFX trainees” are listed on the credits whenever the harp rematerialises.

According to State development agency Screen Ireland, “robust VFX pipelines have been key to Ireland evolving as a VFX hub with fluid infrastructures”, with this “allowing both rapid scalability for large sole vendor projects and a solid framework for multi-vendor work”. I think that means things are going well.

Few seem to be in much doubt, however, that all this evolution and scalability across the screen industry is underpinned by an effective, competitive tax incentive. This is, by necessity, in flux.

Section 481, a 32 per cent corporation tax credit, was extended in Budget 2024 for a further four years to the end of 2028, with the cap on eligible expenditure per project increased from €70 million to €125 million. That was important, but the conversations don’t end there. As we approach pre-budget submission season, expect to hear more about why the State needs to increase the available relief to 40 per cent for low-budget productions in order to match a just-introduced UK measure.

Failure to do so could both trigger a loss of international business and perhaps even prompt some Irish-produced projects that would have filmed here to up sticks to the UK.

For now, the change the Department of Finance seems most poised to push ahead with is a new tax credit for unscripted productions, with its officials holding video calls with Irish television producers and their representatives about how this might be structured.

Over the course of two recent Section 481-themed sessions, the Oireachtas media committee has also listened to industry participants stress the need to replace the expired regional uplift to the tax credit with another incentive that sustains and grows production activity beyond the Dublin-Wicklow hub.

The sharing of Ryan’s Daughter anecdotes at the second of these hearings suggests other people have far stronger memories of youthful encounters with the Irish film industry than I do. Instead, around the time that Charlie Haughey was busy shutting down the Irish Film Board, I was on the couch – not behind it – glued to Doctor Who, believing that this already long-running television series was completely alien to the culture around me in more ways than one.

Now Irish VFX companies help shape the Whoniverse and declare themselves “very proud” to do so. Fortunes are fragile in the screen business, but this seems like progress worth celebrating. Who knows who it might inspire?