Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

The final few pictures to complete the TARDIS build.

Now I really have to get on with assembling and painting the Doctor and Martha. I guess that I shall bore you all rigid with those in due course, too.



The final model TARDIS. Assembly complete, dry brush highlights added, decals and weathering applied.
( the final stages below the cut )

Next weekend, when I have some more natural light, before I continue, I guess.

If you are a self-professed geek and you do not have a Flight Control TARDIS you are letting the side down: you should rectify the position post haste.

Once I had detached it from its box and installed the batteries (neither of them mean feats in their own right) and got the lights and sounds working, even a sceptical Furtle was moved to accept that it’s pretty damned cool. All I have to do now is work out precisely where to display it. Considering the size of the Athenaeum Club and the amount of shelving – admittedly book covered shelving - I am remarkably short of space for important stuff like TARDISes.

The rumour mill for season four, which is about to start filming, ( has this potential casting spoiler from The Sun: )

Make of that what you will, but following the casting of Derek Jacobi in season three, who knows?

I have on my desk, courtesy fencingsculptor, a shiny new Flight Control TARDIS, a season 3 Doctor figure and a Martha Jones figure all to the same scale. The seven year old in my head is experiencing geekgasm.

My plans for the afternoon are foiled, however, by the lack of three AAA batteries and a screwdriver – though to be fair, without the batteries a screwdriver would be redundant, nay taunting (though to have the batteries without the screwdriver would be frustrating, so there is no good way through this). You see this collectible¹ TARDIS is not only to scale with the figures, but the doors open inwards to reveal the control room. The side door opens to reveal the telephone. If the batteries were installed, it would all light up, inside and out and there would be SOUND EFFECTS.

Pick it up and get a dematerialisation sound; put it down to get a rematerialisation sound. Open the doors and there is a hum. Spin it and it makes the noise of the TARDIS in flight. Jog it around a bit and it makes the sound of emergency, interrupted flight. This sis the sort of toy collectible they should have made when I was seven.

But.

I have no screwdriver and am short of three AAA batteries. My afternoon is in ruins; I must work instead of driving my colleagues green with envy wild with annoyance with the repeated demonstrations of TARDIS noises and me humming the Doctor Who theme tune.

Grumble.


¹This is a euphemism for toy. It is marginally more acceptable (in my head at least) for me to acquire collectibles than it is to buy toys. Watch me tiptoe along the tight rope of semantics and marvel.

A man cannot have too many TARDISes!


The new Flight Control TARDIS, for the 5 year old in your head.

*runs off laughing manically*

My second day off ends and the weekend proper beckons. I have the place to myself until late Sunday afternoon; Beastie, armed with a bag full of kit, pictures of Lily Langtree and my Stetson, has headed for points north for a weekend's western role playing. I aim to get some writing done this weekend, but I've said that before.

This afternoon, at the second time of trying I managed to register with a local quack. A rather nice lady in her mid thirties took my details. Of course any mood that might have developed was squelched when she handed me a sample bottle and told me I'd need to bring that back when I see the nurse in a fortnight's time. Where's the romance?

My enjoyment of The West Wing was spoilt this evening by the continued frequent pixelation and sound interruption we get on digital freeview when the weather is anything other than still. I am wondering if this is because we are using an old On-Digital box and not something a little more up-to-date. If this is the future of UK telly, viewing will be very drab when the analogue signal is switched off in London in 2008. If the analogue signal is switched off in 2008... I think I might look at the prices of newer digiboxes on Empire Direct, with a view to a purchase if they are not too expensive. It would be better if we could have a satellite dish, but quite apart from the thought of sinking a portion of my salary directly into Murdoch's pocket, we are precluded from having one by the terms of our lease. It's not the priority it would once have been anyway, now I torrent the stuff I really like.

For those of you keeping count, I now have 101/2 TARDISes, though two have yet to arrive. A man can't have too many TARDISes, I say.

Few people agree with me.

This season's total waste of money must have item for incurable Sci-Fi geeks:




The TARDIS phone flasher (they could have given it a better name). A bit small at 3" high, but a cool piece of rubbish pop culture memorabilia nonetheless. Once it is tuned to your mobile, it will flash and make the TARDIS dematerialisation sound just before your mobile rings.

I assume it takes advantage of that annoying signal that makes the telly/radio of hi fi buzz just before the phone rings. Well from now on it will be entertaining. At least until it becomes intolerable.

I am going to have to start paying closer attention to things.

Earlier this afternoon, before I decided to waste 90 minutes of my life watching England attempt to play football against Austria (are we sedating our players or something...?), I decided to listen to the radio for a while before digging out a few CDs for a listen.

Imagine my horror when, deep in thought (about pretty much nothing, it has to be admitted), I am accosted by a disembodied voice. This followed rapidly by the realisation that Beastie's head was on the floor in the corner of my bedroom door, talking to me. I am not ashamed to admit that I yelped in momentary fright. The great lumbering lump had come part way up the stairs to say something, but instead of just climbing the extra five or six steps, had decided to curl his head round the door jamb and talk. From my point of view all that was visible was the head lying sideways on the floor. I might not sleep tonight.

Trust me when I say the entire concept is worrying.

On the plus side, I now have my new TARDIS. That's seven and a half in my collection now, although we had a philosophical debate last night about whether it is possible to have half of something that is dimensionally transcendent. This meant that the debate became more of a loud but cheery drunken squabble about whether I own seven or eight TARDISes.

They're mine; there're seven and a half. So there.