the Key to Time?

[exilea]

Hi,
I don't know if it will help you guys, but I Think that I've got a photo of a completed key prop from a Panopticon back in '94, though I'm not 100% on this   :-/

I'll see if I can dig it out if it'll be any help? I may be mistaken, but I think the segments themselves had become quite yellow with age.

I'll have a look and try and get this scanned in.

Gaz 

The more the merrier!

[purpleblancmange]

Unfortunately I had to go about this the long way around as since I got this new computer, I have no image software... we just uploaded the new bits into Word and scaled from there.  It just about fits together now.

Having said that, I assembled the mystery segment with the grey on the outside, only to discover that it didn't fit in with the rest of my mirror image key - I had to take it apart and turn the segment inside out.  I now have a very rough mirror image Key to Time.

I'll take this round to my contact and see what he thinks.  Might get to do this tomorrow afternoon.

[karsthotep]

Amazing research guys I am watching this thread intently.

karst

[Teletran]

I had to take it apart and turn the segment inside out.

Yes I did those by flatpacking my 3d model and once that's done it's very hard to work out which way round it's supposed to go. Has anyone else had any trouble with the new segments?

[Teletran]

duly reversed

[purpleblancmange]

Right, something else to throw into the mix. 

I'm now really unsure about the over all size of the key.  Originally I thought that 8" was far too big and thought it'd be 7" - however, going by known sizes for the "buttons" on the tracer, the cube works out to be 6" in relative proportion.  Now that seems too small, but kind of makes sense when you look at everything around it.

I'm really going to have to get my hands on one of those "original" segments, just so that we'll know for sure.

EDIT: 
Ha, this is really annoying me now.

The tracer seems to be about 12" long; a 4" handle with an 8" rod end.  When the rod is inserted into the key on a flat surface, there's about a 1" gap between the key and the handle of the tracer - this suggests the Key is 7"x7"x7".

If all else fails, personally I'm going to stick with 7 as the magic number and be damned by it.  However, one of the segment owners said that if I call them tomorrow, they'll measure it for me.  I'm dubious about this, but let's see what number they come up with.  If they say something like 5" or 10" I'll know where I stand with them... especially after I was told that if I make a replica of the prop, it'll devalue the originals.

FURTHER EDIT:
More calculations suggest 6.5" x 6.5" x 6.5" - that's sounding better.  Makes more sense when you consider the original timber buck was created on a table saw.  The blade is just big enough to make the required cuts.

If anyone else wants to run the numbers and see what you come up with, please do so and let us know your findings.

[willytron]

AWESOME!  At the rate  you guys are going, pretty soon we will be able to stop everything.  Or at least create a localized 3 second time loop.

[purpleblancmange]

Well it would be nice to have this as a prop, wouldn't it?  I remember being extremely impressed with it when the series first aired... funny, it's just a cube when all said and done.

Other research / findings; I'm now convinced that there were three versions of the tracer prop, chiefly the clear rod section on it. 

1/  The very first type that we saw in Ribos.  This was constructed with a red rod in the centre, sat inside a clear tube of exactly the same length.  This was slotted into the widest, full length tube which had that funny end piece.

2/  The second version is the one with the longer rod, used in Kroll, though it's construction seems to match the first.

3/  The third is the version as seen in the final story.  Over all the same lengths, however the rod is simplified.  Look at Teletran's drawing a few posts back.  It starts out with a very short outer tube, then a full length tube with a short red rod in the centre.  So technically here, the diameter of the main bulk of the rod end decreases slightly from what it was in the previous stories.

I have a feeling that this one was probably rebuilt as a result of the new key prop being made from acrylic sheets and tubing.  Previously the core hole was drilled out using a pillar drill, but with the new hole being a tube, maybe they could not find a match and went for the closest size.  This would explain why the tracer end diameter gets smaller.

I'm not stating this as absolute fact, but it's a theory that seems to work out, given the pictagraphic evidence.

If anyone is interested, I've found pretty much everything you'd need to make the tracer prop, apart from the very end piece.  The syringes I've seen are very close, yet not close enogh.  If all else fails, I may just suggest turning something like it up... it's not as if anyone would know the difference anyway because the prop in general was never seen that closely.

[Teletran]

I think the pink tube in the centre of the tracer stem was meant to bob up and down like the alcohol in a thermometer depending on the distance to the next segment and its vector. It seems to vary in length throughout each story even when the prop is clearly the same. The props department probably popped in a new one between scenes.

[purpleblancmange]

Yeah, I don't doubt that the coloured tube (classed as "red" in the catalogues, although it glows pink) bobs up and down in the main rod as it clearly floats in there, Kroll is a good example to see this.  It's in the down position when the Doctor is heading towards the beastie, yet when he drops it, the inner bit has moved upwards when it's laying on the floor.  I'm guessing that if you held the prop in your hand and gave it a shake, the red/pink bit would rattle and bob about inside.

The point I was making was that the prop in the final story has most of the outer tube removed, it now being just over an inch long where the rod meets the handle.

[exilea]

If anyone is interested, I've found pretty much everything you'd need to make the tracer prop, apart from the very end piece.  The syringes I've seen are very close, yet not close enogh.  If all else fails, I may just suggest turning something like it up... it's not as if anyone would know the difference anyway because the prop in general was never seen that closely.

Well? Don't keep us in suspense!   

[purpleblancmange]

Well? Don't keep us in suspense!   

Let me do some further enquiries, I'll buy what I think is needed, do an assembly and evaluate that.  I could name all the parts now, but I'd hate for people to rush off and order the stuff themselves, only for us to find out later that parts of it may be wrong. 

One minor niggle that I have is that the tubes only come in 250cm (8'4") lengths these days, so I'm hoping the stockist can provide much shorter lengths.

I'd rather get it right first time around... though I can feel some trial and error coming my way.

[Teletran]

Here's a snap of my 3d model tracer

[Teletran]

Here's an update of my model, I've adjusted the colours slightly and added some lighting effects and here's some plans of the tracer I've made.

It covers the look of the prop much more than the construction and of course at this point the dimensions are very much open for debate however I am fairly confident the proportions should be fairly close. If anything is unclear or incorrect let me know, although I've already noticed that equally is spelt wrong. One thing I was surprised to discover was that the distance between the buttons has a direct correlation to the size of the buttons. This image should print out on a single A4 sheet of paper if printed in landscape format, this is the low resolution version so if you have any trouble reading the text let me know and I'll post up the big version for those of you who can change the print resolution. Oh and I've labelled the different components with my own nomenclature to allow me to refer to them easily in the annotations

[kiwidoc]

I've just been watching some of the Key to Time stories for the first time (possibly saw them when I was 5, on TV but don't know either way) and the INFO TEXT on Power of Kroll states that the Trace Prop was lost on that shoot and another had to be constructed for the following (final) story.

Don't know if anyone had mentioned that in this (long) thread so thought I'd drop that in - fogive me if I missed it in an earlier post.
Keep up the good work you clever people!
Cheers, glen