Yeti in the Underground

Yes, I'm back making monsters and this one's my latest, a Yeti from the Doctor Who story 'The Web of Fear', lurking in my also-new underground set. Oh, and the eyes glow in the dark (which doesn't quite come across here).

Pertwee Tardis

And a slight reworking of my Hartell Tardis control room sees the addition of a new console for Pertwee.

UNIT Lab!

I always wanted this - a set for my Doctor Who dollies - and what better set than the UNIT lab?

I'd originally wanted to do the lab as it appeared in season eight, but the spiral staircase put me off. That and pressure from my chums made me go for the later lab, as it appeared in season 11. I could have gone for the lab from 'The Three Doctors', but it had too many windows. So I adapted the printouts that my pal Phil had made for his ActionFigureTheatre site to make it look like it did for Pertwee's final year.

Also included in this set are my custom Sarah Jane, in her 'Monster of Peladon' outfit, and my custom Master, in his grey suit and gold tie. You might also be able to make out the welding device from 'Terror of the Autons'. Oh, and the Tardis is a customised moneybox, repainted. That'll be replaced once I get the forthcoming classic Tardis from Character.

More Monsters

I haven't done this for a while, but prompted by Paul Cornell's blog, here's a few more monsters I've made recently.

This one's a Blatherine from The Sarah Jane Adventures, which was a present for the author for the episode that they first appeared in. It's customised from a Slitheen figure, with shorter claws, a remolded face and a paint job.




Next up, a Mutt from the Doctor Who story 'The Mutants' (1972). It's pictured in the UNIT lab set that I made. Ooh, there's a thought - I haven't put any pics of that up. That'll be in the next entry then.




Inspired by the brilliant Babyjelly from OutpostWho / GallifreyBase fame, here's a muto from 'Genesis of the Daleks'.




I decided I wanted to make a Navarino from 'Delta and the Bannermen', and then realised it had to be a present for my pal Neil, who always wanted to write a story called 'The Guns of Navarino'. Next to it are two Haemovores from 'The Curse of Fenric'.





And finally, in my quest to make more and more figures that will probably never be made by Character Options for the official range, here's the Keller Machine from 'The Mind of Evil'. It lights up an' evreefink!

More Tardis

Think I've almost finished the model Tardis now, so here are a couple of pictures.




And in this one, you can see the fault locator wall.



[Updated 18 Aug 2009)
And now with the floor plate in place:

Lazy Bar Steward

Haven't blogged for two months. That's what happens when work lets me manage a twitter account.

Chasing a punch-line has become a full-time occupation. Still, I'm spending my spare time productively, making a model Tardis control room, as seen in the Hartnell era...



Still a work in progress - have to work out how to do the innards of the central column for one thing - but I'm also having a go at doing custom figures of Ian and Barbara. Trying hard not to lose a finger while using a scalpel to carve an existing figure down to size.

Grumity Grump

It's a sad fact that most of the ignorant twunts online don't appreciate anything with any joy in it, because they wouldn't be online if they were happy in themselves. I'm prompted to write that after seeing some of the mindless crap that's been spewed in reaction to the Doctor Who Easter special. "Worse than 'Battlefield'," apparently. All I can say is, I bet they haven't actually watched 'Battlefield' since it was on. They just hand over their money, slot the DVD into its place and allow their prejudices to remain unchallenged - while pouring scourn on anything with even the thinnest vein of joy in them.

I loved the Easter special. Exacrly what I needed to be watching on a weekend that's supposed to be inspirational for Christians. Happy, energetic and all about putting your trust in someone and not about being cynical or self serving.

A while ago, I was in FP in Glasgow and was subjected to the smug whining of an Emo kid, shouting across the aisle to his pals: Christ, have you SEEN the latest Batman issues? C'mon DC - give us some 'Dark'!!"

Twunt.

I was half tempted to 'give him some dark' by telling him he was already past his sexual peak, that he's only got eight years before his hair goes grey or falls out, and that he should go easy on the wanking. Or at least wash his hands before he picks up comic books someone else might want to buy.

But I didn't.

Instead, I stood silently while flicking through a copy of 'Essential Howard the Duck', to spite him. Then, once he'd walked away, I swapped it for 'Essential Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man'. I had my reputation to think of...

Odd Outings

So, my other half (a mathematically inaccurate term, as if he's the other half, someone's definitely dividing the portions in my favour!) recently started a new job. On his first day, he was accosted by a colleague who'd heard he's a Doctor Who fan and that he's dating me. This seemed to be of some interest to him because, as the guy explained to someone else 'his boyfriend played Zagreus!'

[Followed by an explanation of why this was funny, because blah blah blah.]

So my poor beloved was outed as Whoover and Poof in one go. Not that he's ashamed of either, but it'd have been nice to have been asked if he minded first, I'd imagine.

Outed by Zagreus, though. That's hilarious!

Time Teaming

Doctor Who Magazine has been running a feature called 'The Time Team' since July 1999. Four fans commit to watching every episode of broadcast Doctor Who from the beginning. Back then, that was the small matter of 696 episodes - that was years before Russell T Davies caught the BBC Drama department in a whirlwind of enthusiasm (it must have been a Tuesday) and convinced them to resurrect the series. They've subsequently amended their mission to include the new episodes, so that total keeps getting topped up every six months or so.

Doing 'the pilgrimage' is something I think all fans should try to do, but it surprises me just how lazy fans are nowadays. Back in the 1980s, when I first joined a fan group, we didn't have the internet. We didn't even have that many official VHS tapes - I think only one had been released by 1984. I met fans who'd secured pen-pals in Australia, where the episodes were still repeated regularly, or who had contacts within the BBC who could get them copies of tapes through illicit means.

It's so much easier nowadays - especially with fans filling in the gaps of missing episodes by creating 'recons' of lost episodes using photographs and surviving clips - all for non-profit.

In January 2000, BBC Two began repeating colour episodes of the series from the first colour episode, 'Spearhead from Space'. However, during transmission of 'The Silurians', they decided to skip forward four years and do 'Genesis of the Daleks' again, before abandoning the repeats entirely. My flatmate and I decided we'd continue the job they'd abandoned and began to watch the colour episodes ourselves. We finished that trek with 'The TV Movie' just before New Year's Eve that year. That was possibly the last time I watched the TV movie with anything close to enthusiasm.

In January 2008, my flatmate and I decided to have a go at the full run - every episode in order, right from the start, just as DWM's Time Team have been doing. It really is the best way to enjoy the new series, by watching something so much slower and ponderous. It also showed us that our opinions of previously loathed or loved stories can change ['Your interest in Macra can go up as well as down.'].



One of the first rules we set out was that we'd only watch two episodes in any one sitting. We reasoned, on past experience, that some stories are just too much work to sit through in one go, and while we're not going to wait a week between episodes like they did on original transmission, rationing ourselves to two episodes at a time meant we'd be less likely to rush through a story and get bored of it. It also meant we could occasionally stop after just one episode if we really couldn't face carrying on.

We rediscovered just how brilliant those first couple of seasons were, with William Hartnell as 'the original' Doctor, and were surprised by how upset we got when the first Doctor lay down on the floor of his Tardis and turned into a scruffy man who seemed to want to spend his time dicking about with hats. We were more surprised by how long it took for us to warm to this new Doctor. We found that we couldn't stand Victoria one bit (whiney, pathetic little snot) and adored Zoe, but didn't like many of her stories. And then all too soon, just before Christmas, we finished the black-and-white era with the final episode of 'The War Games' and it was time to get all emotional and choked up once again.

A year after we began and we've just begun season eight - the one that begins with 'Day of the Daleks' and ends with... actually, I don't want to think that far - 12 of the worst episodes ever. Weep! Why couldn't we have stopped with Troughton?

Whatever, it's something every true fan should attempt - certainly they should have watched a story before they voice their opinions on it across the world-wide web...

Mind the Gap

Since computer animation became the kind of thing that could be done in the home, and spurred on by the BBC's animation of 'The Invasion' missing episodes, lots of Doctor Who fans have had a go at reconstructing missing episodes themselves. Marrying up images with the existing soundtracks, some use the telesnaps - John Cura's photographs of the TV screen when the episodes were broadcast; others go down the CG route and create their own versions, with varying results.

This, though, is the best of the lot. While there are some stunning Dalek CGI videos, this is the only one containing a human that's managed to capture a fraction of the personality and movement of the actor involved.

The video is pretty self explanatory, so.. here goes:

Monster Update!

Haven't posted one of my monsters for a while, so here's one I worked on this Sunday.

I've been thinking about monsters that are less likely to be materialising as Character action figures, and I reckon this one, which only has a screen time of less than two minutes, must be pretty way down the list.

Fans of 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth' won't need an introduction. It's the Black Dalek's favourite pet - the Slyther:





I had to cheat a bit, as the original really doesn't have enough detail to the main body, so I added extra detail, but I think it's fairly faithful to how it looked in episode five.

RAAAARGH-oooOOOOHHH!

Mr Smith - We Need You!

When I was a lad, we had Doctor Who books - novelisations of the TV adventures, written for young teenagers. But there were also a few stories rewritten for a younger age group under the banner 'Junior Doctor Who'. That was how I first experienced the good Time Lord's battle against the Brain of Morbius and the Giant Robot.

And that was my first thought when I saw who's been cast as the replacement for David Tennant. At last - it's Junior Doctor Who!

Doctor Who fans have never allowed change to stop them from frothing at the mouth at the slightest new idea. So you can imagine what they've been like this weekend. The online forums have gone into meltdown, all because the new Doctor hasn't given them the opportunity to be swept along in a liberal haze by the casting of the first non-white Doctor. Instead, he's white, skinny and 26 years old.

"I WANTED PATERSON JOSPEH - THEY'VE MISSED A TRICK THERE!!!"

Some online fans love to act as if their thoughts are the only valid ones, and that anyone who doesn't agree with them has 'missed a trick'. They also love to pretend that every single surprising thing is 'obvious'. So the casting of a man nearly 12 years younger than his predecessor is seen as both 'obvious' (because it taps into that Emo trend that's running amok elsewhere) and yet also reckless (because it'll make the show 'too CBBC').

It's hardly an obvious choice though, is it? No-one - not one tabloid hack - suggested him as a possibility. At least, not until Lizo from Newsround slipped it into his report the morning of the announcement. And if The Sarah Jane Adventures are anything to go by, 'too CBBC' would be seen as a criticism by only the most closed-minded, soulless of people.

Okay, that's a cheap shot. But then so are so many of Lawrence's posts over there.

Then there are those who will say 'I've never heard of him' as if that counts for something. You only have to look at the top wishlists of many online fans to see that they tend to only know actors who've already been in other 'genre' programmes. Would anyone have been seriously touting Chiwitel Eijofor for the part if he hadn't been in Lost?

Okay, I admit it - I have no idea what he's been in. Never seen him in anything. I'm told he's good though.

Edit: Oh yeah, he was in Children of Men. Never mind...

Course, there'll also be some who 'always knew he'd be great' as they've 'been fans of his for years'. They could possibly get away with such instant fandom with Eccleston or Tennant, but it's a bit harder to convincingly pull off with someone who has less than ten screen roles to his credit.

And that's my favourite bit about this casting - Matt Smith is someone who carries no preconceptions. He can create his character from scratch and surprise us all.

David Tennant has wrong-footed so many old-school fans by becoming something no-one else thought was possible - he's bigger than Tom Baker. And how did they solve the problem of the lead actor being bigger than the show last time? They surprised everyone by casting the youngest ever actor to play the part.

By the time young Matt Smith steps onto the set, he'll be just two years younger than Peter Davison was when he took on the role. I have to wonder though if the fans would have been quite so vocal if the 26-year-old had been black, though. Could it be that in trying to show off how open-minded they were, some fans have betrayed just how tokenist and patronising they were willing to be? Are there really that many people who think Paterson Joseph is the best black actor of his generation? Whereas do enough of them have enough knowledge of his work to say for certain that Matt Smith isn't a good enough actor to make this work?

At least they'll be able to spell Matt's name. Not even Davison could bank on that.

Back in the Archives

I recently completed work on a couple of collections for the BBC Archive site, which led to a brief period of media whoredom for me and a meet-up with a long-time heroine of mine, the lovely Janice Long.

Here are the two collections, first of all:

- The Genesis of Doctor Who: documents and images from the archives telling the story of the Time Lord's origins.

- Music from the Mersey: TV and radio programmes from the archives looking at Liverpool's place in the musical history books.

The Doctor Who stuff got picked up by the BBC News Magazine, who did a feature on the documents that was quite well received, even if my explanation of the archetypes that run through the series got a teensy bit garbled.

As a consequence of the Mersey collection, Janice Long was approached to stage a kind of reunion on Radio Merseyside with local hero Billy Butler. They plugged the collection like mad, so I emailed Janice and Billy to thank them both, Janice got back in touch and suggested I pop into her show to chat about the archives - which I did. Janice was every bit as warm and friendly as I'd always hoped, and we had to stop ourselves from gabbing too much before the recording. A brilliant plug for the site, and we're hoping we might be able to come up with ideas for a future collaboration.

A couple of weeks later, my flatmate and I were both asked to do some talking heads stuff for a documentary about 'The Perfect British TV Detective', which is on BBC 2 between Christmas and New Year. Radio Times says 29 December, so it must be then.

Sounds Like Brian

In the olden days, when TV was powered by steam and people crowded round a walnut cabinet to listen to obscure radio dramas about nightmares, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop used to create these amazing soundscapes. Electronic humming, musical stabs and other trickery that hammered home how other-worldly the production was trying to be. One of the kings of this kind of music was Brian Hodgson. You can hear the sort of thing he did for Doctor Who in this clip on YouTube from 'The Wheel in Space':



Now, according to BBC News, scientists have found a way of capturing the sounds of the universe - 'music' generated by the stars. And wouldn't you just know it, Brian Hodgson was right.

Rats Join Sinking Ship

Bloody hell, Doctor Who was good last night. It had the titanic, Kylie, Bernard Cribbins and the funniest Queen-related scene ever. In the words of my favourite film reviewer ever*, 'it made me laugh and it made me cry'.

The Titanic might have been a difficult sell to an audience sandwiched, as this episode was, between two grimfestive episodes of EastEnders, but trust Russell T Davies to find a way to make it tense and exciting without it feeling bleak. Sure, it wasn't the actual Titanic, but a space ship of the same name and design, but the first shots of the ship cruising above the planet Earth have to be the single best special effects ever made for British TV.

I got a bit teary-eyed at a few points - the frustration and shock of the young midshipman, shot by his loony captain and unable to do his duty while the captain lives, was heartbreaking, as were the deaths of the fat couple who wrong-footed me by being instantly likeable (Debbie Chazen is best-known for her co-starring role in the dismal sketch show Tittybangbang so I wasn't prepared for how good she actually turned out to be). But the biggest shock came with Kylie Minogue's character Astrid taking a decidedly active and terminal role in the conclusion to the adventure. I'd heard rumours that her character would turn out to be something a bit magical (based on her first name being an anagram of 'Tardis') but when that turned out to be wrong it was even more upsetting.

Then the final credit: 'Dedicated to Verity Lambert OBE'. I knew it was coming, but it still got me choked.

... and I wasn't pissed either.

So, I had high expectations for the ratings, which I didn't think would be available until tomorrow. The overnights (as reported by BBC News) are suggesting 13.8 million, with a peak just under 15 million at one point. Blimey - this is the show they couldn't get people to make, never mind watch, in 1989.

There are only a very few stories of the original run of episode of this series that managed to get ratings that high. Three stories in 1965 ('The Rescue', 'The Romans' and 'The Web Planet'). 'The Ark in Space' in 1974 and 'The Power of Kroll' each had individual episodes that peaked at around the 13 million mark, and only 'Destiny of the Daleks' and 'City of Death' went above 14 million (the latter reaching 16 million, thanks in no small part to a lengthy strike taking ITV off air).

The TV landscape has changed a lot over the years; the days when EastEnders can pull in over 20 million have long gone. Home computers, videogames consoles, multi-channel TV and home video / DVD have all combined to ensure TV is no longer a medium that can unite a nation. But Doctor Who last night was seen by about a quarter of the population of the UK, about 50% of the viewing public. The equivalent would be something like 25 million viewers in 1979.

It really puts the embarrassment of being a fan for the last 20 years into perspective. A show that was once so niche that even the regular viewers didn't like it now has an audience who might not call themselves fans but still love it to bits. With TV in the state that it is, that's no bad thing. Just ask ITV, whose highest-rated programme peaked at 8.9 million (a 35.4% share of the viewers). Sad though I am about this, Coronation Street can't claim to be the nation's favourite any more. 'Eighth-most-popular' is about as close as they get.

In 1988, when Doctor Who was watched by about 4 million people out of habit, it was scheduled up against Corrie. Some might say revenge is a dish best served cold, and on Christmas Day...

_________________________________________

* Some woman I once worked with, whose only criteria for a 'good film' seemed to be a binary opposition of emotions.

Bears, Sausages and Divas

'Do you like Madonna,' shouts the self-proclaimed Diva, and considering the clientele, the response was surprisingly apathetic at best. It's the launch night of an event for gentlemen of a certain persuasion, certain weight and certain type of facial hair that goes by the name of 'Ursus', and the cabaret act is... okay, although I find myself conjuring up Simon Cowell to be really off-hand with her.

I'm there for most of the night with my dear friend David, who's a sweet, sensitive soul who doesn't drink, so I'm on Shandy so as not to annoy him (not that he'd ever judge me, but I'd hate to give him cause to). In truth, the first part of the night is like a cut-price Duckie without the surprises but the second DJ manages to play a few electro-tunes that sparked the room up, including 'Over and Over' by Hot Chip. And the compere is a little too in your face and desperate. It's launch night, he's allowed to be, but I have to say his plate of sausages nearly turned my stomach.

It's strange being in a room full of people you mainly know from the internet. It's a bit like Terminator 2, where your inner T-1000 is scanning the room and applying data that you've skimmed from their online profiles: '6' 2", blue eyes, active, likes to be spanked... 5' 10" (liar!!), bottom, likes role-play... 5' 11", real name Steve, total homer sexual....'

Then there's the moment you realise you're the only person in the room who seems to be glad they're playing 'Wordy Rappinghood' (12" Version) by the Tom Tom Club - or maybe it just feels like that.

So then it's home and I manage to sprint across Brixton to catch my bus and be back in time to spend an hour listening to 'Uptown Top Ranking' and 'The Happy Man' by Thomas Lang, which helps to take the edge off the week. Tomorrow, it's a deliberate day of leisure, then on Sunday I'm being interviewed for a documentary to appear on a forthcoming Doctor Who DVD, in my 'TV and film historian' guise. I've got a lot of my comments rehearsed, but I know most of what I will say is going to be used as airfill. I just have to make sure I'm not used to just tell the story, but instead have something political or socially engaging to say, rather than 'I like dis wun' or 'Dat wus crappe'.

We shall see. I'll probably end up doing the Whovian equivalent of 'hats, gloves and shoes'...

Oh how I missed you...

He rang our doorbell and my flatmate answered the door. It didn't feel like just a week since we last saw each other, but as soon as I hand my hands of him I knew I couldn't let go. Not this time. Not again.

Yes, Neil brought back our copy of the latest DWM this morning. I pawed it as we chatted, flicked through its lovely pages, admired the simply gorgeous picture of Clay on his goodbye page (well done, Clay, you look about two inches taller since resigning x).

Haha - actually, nice as it ws to get the magazine back, it was much nicererer to see Neil, who's looking very well and smiley and gives just the best man-hugs. And even though he clearly thinks I'm a sad bastard, he never fails to encourage me with my latest monster-making or my addictive toy purchases.

... though I'm not sure I agree with the notion of chest-hair removal. Just saying....

Palavas in Pyjamas

When I was a child, all I wanted was action figures and Doctor Who books. Not much has changed. I have a memory that I suspect is stolen: being upset because some generous relative or other had obviously asked my mum what I needed and rather than saying 'some of the rarer Ewoks' or 'Philip Hinchcliffe's novelisation of The Keys of Marinus' she'd said 'pyjamas'.

It might have been my cousin who was upset, in which case it would have been my mum telling me about my cousin to teach me a vital lesson about being grateful for what we receive. That's how one uncle escaped seeing my tears of disappointment as he presented me with a game of Subbuteo for Christmas while every other member of my large extended family knew just how much I hated football. I invited my younger cousin John to join me on the other room to play it, then took forever to set it up so that I was saved from having to show that I didn't have a clue how the game worked when Aunty Betty told me to put it away because they were about to dish out the Christmas dinner.

(I've just had to look up how to spell 'Subbuteo' and was surprised that I'd got it right first time. Actually, 'surprised' is putting too much emphasis on it.)

It's possibly because David Tennant sported a lovely pair in last year's Doctor Who Christmas special, but this year I was dropping hints in various directions that pyjamas would be a good choice for me this Christmas. But Christmas Day came and went, and the ungrateful child who'd turned his nose up at World Cup Subbuteo was treated to a metaphorical lump of coal.

Last night, my trustworthy flatmate and loyalest friend returned from a shopping trip. He'd bought himself a pair of slippers in an 'after-the-horse-has-bolted reaction to stubbing his toe the day before. He'd also bought something for me.

They're navy-blue with light-blue-and-red dots. They're made of cotton. They have button flies so your knob doesn't flop out. They're the most perfect present ever, and I'm one very happy 35-year-old manchild.

See, Uncle Lenny? The big, flashy box isn't always appropriate. Sometimes, pyjamas are exactly what you need.

Sneaky Pics

The Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood launched this week. Ho-hum. It's okay, but it just reminds me how much I loved Channel 4's Ultraviolet a few years ago. Much more adult, much more subtle, much more involving.

Anyway, the clever people in BBC Wales have come up with a rather nifty marketing idea - leaking footage onto the net via YouTube. Here's a clip linking into episode two:



The funny thing is, by doing this on the sly, the BBC has missed a trick because the more reputable fan forums have banned users from linking to the videos, so reducing the likelihood that anyone will see them without a lot of help. Shame, because the clips are a lot of fun, and more in keeping with the theme of the show than a second bout of mobisodes would have been.

Making Monsters - in 5" Scale

When I was a little kid of nine, and Doctor Who Weekly had just arrived on the scene, my parents didn't have much money to buy me all those wonderful Doctor Who-related toys. Not that there were many available anyway: you could buy a talking Dalek that inevitably lost all its parts, or a friction-powered one that had a red top and was a bit lanky-looking; there was a gurning Tom Baker in his season 12 costume; an anatomically impossible Leela; a Cyberman with a nose; a friction-powered K-9 that had ear so fragile that every child in the country snapped them by about 3pm on Christmas day, and a larger 'talking K-9' that had a few lines of authentic dialogue but was too big to interact with your other dollies; a cardboard Tardis that, missing the actual point of the machine, could make any figure placed inside 'disappear' by spinning the light on top; and a rather splendid Giant Robot that never made its way to toyshops near me anyway.

I didn't even have the full set. But being the inventive, imaginative child that I was, I made my own figures. I used Plasticine to customise an Incredible Hulk into a looming Ice Warrior and turned James Bond's Moonraker space suit into a Cyberman. The black bases from cola bottles turned up as Davros's wheelchair and the base for a Plasticine Sil (somewhere, there's a photo of actor Nabil Shaban posing with my Sil and he seemed quite impressed). And every bit of plastic, tin foil and wire in the house ended up being recycled into various sets and dioramas for my figures, even beyond the age where I was actually playing with them, just because I enjoyed making them. Eventually, I used some of those sculpting tricks to make those macquettes for the Big Finish CD covers.

Now I'm 35 (shh, I am! No, I really am!), and Doctor Who is the number one show on telly, children are spoiled rotten. Right this minute, it's possible to buy a series of 5" 1/13th scale action figures, a little bit bigger / better than the ones we used to collect for Star Wars. the range currently comprises:

A Dalek Battle-pack with a gold Dalek and a non-canonical (ouch) black-and-gold Dalek that can be radio-controlled to dance around or just shoot the hell out of each other. This originally came with either a rather constipated-looking Eccleston figure or a Rose figure that looked more like Letitia Dean had been left on a radiator. It now comes with either a David Tennant Doctor figure or (rather excitingly) a Cyberleader not available anywhere else, yet.

A Tardis console playset with a set of Policebox doors that open onto a beautiful recreation of the Tardis room, and six buttons that produce sound effects. The central console lights up and the rotor bobs up and down. There's even a hat-stand to pop into one corner.

Plus figures of the 10th Doctor (at least three versions, one of which comes in a 'Regeneration' pack with an Eccleston figure)); Rose with K-9 (two versions - one rusty, one shiny... plus two versions of K-9 too, bu-boom!); a remote-controlled K-9; a Cyberman (two versions, one with wrist-gun, one without); a Cybercontroller, flashing brain; a remote-controlled black Dalek; a Moxx of Balhoon; Cassandra (two versions - one comes with her henchman, Chip); a Slitheen; a Sycorax leader; two different Krillitanes; a werewolf; and more to come by the sound of it.

But of course, a market as small as the one for Doctor Who cannot compete with Star Wars, which has figures for every costume variant, every background character and in some cases every possible physical position that the main characters are seen in. So, this is where modding comes in.



Modding is the 'art' of changing existing figures into new ones. Even Star Wars fans have a go, to fill the gaps in their collection or to avoid having to fork out all that money for yet another Princess Leia. I hadn't realised that I was modding all those years ago, but when one guy on the Outpost Gallifrey forum started showing off his customised figures, I thought it might be something I could have a go at. Course, I'm not using Plasticine for these things, but a substance called Milliput, which is like Plasticine, but it dries out and hardens in the space of a few hours.

The first one I had a go at was quite an easy one: swapping the heads of the Doctors from the Regeneration pack so that I had an articulated Eccleston figure. There's a 'how to' available at Whotopia's blog.




Next, I did the Sycorax warrior, because it looked like an easy one to do. I just resculpted the head, added a few details and painted it in acrylics. Babyjelly on Outpost Gallifrey had shown how to go about it, but after a while I left his instructions alone and just went my own way. But what to do next? Babyjelly has done a load of stunning mods of his Tennant figures in various costumes, so I didn't really want to go down that route. Instead, I chose two figures that were unlikely to appear in future releases. The Graske, a little critter from the BBC Interactive episode, was created from a Mini-Me Austin Powers figure by painting his grey suit black, resculpting his shoulders and adding a new head.



Having cannibalised one Austin figure, my flatmate suggested I do the same to 'Fat Bastard', who started out as a Scottish piper but ended up as the Absorbaloff. I wanted to retain the facial expression of the original figure because it matched the character so well, and also retain the joints of the figrue - so that the Absorbaloff could still do a rather sickening belly-roll!

Grr! Argh!

I've also modified my Tardis playset to give it extra walls and cables running across the ceiling. My inner nine-year-old is very happy with it.

Now my mind's in modder-mode, looking out for other figures that could be modified. Looks like this is the only way Mickey Smith's going to get into the range...