The Brachacki TARDIS (Altered) (1966)

[markofrani]

Unfortunately those grabs are pictures of the quarter scale model that was used from time to time.
This was same model that was used in 'Fury From The Deep'....

[Rassilons Rod]

True it does look a bit rougher in those shots...

Hmmm... I wonder if I can find something better then.

[galacticprobe]

The script required a lock on the right door... - I think all they did was rehang the doors upside down, sawed off the section of door that was behind the stepped edge detail over the doors, removed the centre divide and replaced it on the original right door, so the lock now appears in the correct place...

Like Marc says, it's difficult to tell due to all of the missing episodes. However, working on the budget and extremely tight schedule that 'Doctor Who' had in those days, the above would have required lots more time, manpower (which added together means more money) to change the lock position than just drilling out a new hole and filling the old one in, most likely with the "plug" that was just cut out for the new lock position. I'm not saying they didn't do the above, but it does seem like far more effort and time than the production team could afford.

Dino.

[markofrani]

Hi, yes you may well be right. As I said, this is just a theory I have, and for me it certainly fits with the evidence of the door restraints and the differing cross-bar heights at the top and bottom of the doors.  The frustrating lack of reference pics/grabs from the  Hartnell era after the War Machines refit doesn't help provide a definitive answer. The earliest picture I've seen with these changes is from the first Troughton story 'Power Of The Daleks'.


With regards to manpower and extra costs etc involved in doing this, maybe we have to consider that this was only a small part of the job, as at this point the whole prop was undergoing a major refit. This was most likely have been done to enable the Police Box to be flat-packed for easier transportation to location filming, and also to possibly extend the life of the prop rather than building a new one, which would presumably have been far more expensive. There were new sign boxes front and back complete with new graphics, the overall height of the box had been reduced and simplified. There were also new window frames on the doors complete with pebble glass on all the panes. The roof panel had to be widened slightly to cover the gap made by pushing the sides outwards, and all the window frames were fixed in position and painted blue.

[Rassilons Rod]

Convention has it that the bottoms were sawn off due to damage. Unless we can find photos that match the paint wear I'm not sure we can corroborate (or deny) your theory.

The left door certainly sits lower in this shot. I would have thought though that if they went to the trouble of flipping the doors that they would have made them match each othter
at least, even if not the side panels.

[tony farrell]

Sorry, but everyone seems to be forgetting that (since at least "The Savages" and, probably, from the start) the Brachaki Police Box prop was fitted with two sets of doors - front and rear.

The rear doors have always opened outwards - this must mean their tops were fractionally lower than the three-tiered stepped section above them.

The 'accepted wisdom' seems to be that the front doors were somehow cut down so that this necessitated the fitting of the two 'clover-leaf' stops to stop them swinging outwards. This however can only be partly correct: In these photos we see the mis-alignment of the front doors compared to the side panels:
 

It has been suggested that the doors were cut down at their bottoms due to damage/rot/wear and tear and that, therefore, the tops of the doors were now lower than the stepped section. If this were true, why is the distance from the top of the window frame to the under-side of the three-tiered stepped section still the same i.e., approximately 3"?

This must surely mean that the doors were reduced in height by taking something off the tops of the doors as well as the bottom.

We know the depth of the Police Box prop was reduced when the corner-post quadrants were removed from the side-panels (thereby causing the re-used upper-tier of the roof to over-hang the 'body' of the Police Box at the front). As a result, it has been claimed that the two 'Police Box' sign boxes on the prop's sides were new. Yes, the signage may have been new, but, I'd argue, the sign boxes were the originals but with their widths reduced. In this we can see the layers exposed by the removal of the sign box end-piece:

     

So, we have lower front doors but with the same 'visible' distance between the tops of their windows and the underside of the stepped section above them. This must mean that the sign box and stepped section on the front 'panel' of the Police Box prop have been lowered as well. Yet the door frame appears to be the same height (the only other thing to have changed is the height of the doors' lowest cross-bars - these now appearing nearer three inches rather than their previous four inches). These photos show this difference:  



I think the photo of Jon Pertwee in the Tardis doors shows best what has happened: The front doors have indeed been cut down - losing approximately 3/4" from their bottoms. This has, in effect, been negated by the addition of a small edging strip which has been fitted to the Police Box prop's base across the front door opening (there is no evidence that I can see to indicate that this edging strip was present pre-1966). The Pertwee photo indicates the edging strip is somewhere near a 1/2" in height. There is clearly now a gap (albeit slight) between the top of the doors and the underside of the stepped section and, equally the doors easily pass above the edging strip on the Police Box's base. I estimate the top and bottom gaps to be 0.125 (1/8th)". So, a half inch strip plus two gaps = 0.75".

I've probably not explained that too clearly but, the result is to reduce the height of the Police Box front door frame to 77.75" (from 78") whilst the front doors have been cut down to 77.5". The visible difference in heights - i.e., how you would see the doors when closed is effectively cancelled out by the edging strip.

So, if the height of the front door frame is broadly unchanged from the original (77.75" versus 78"), why are the side panel sign boxes at least 3/4" higher than those of the front (and back)? Surely, they stand above the same frame height and the same three-tiered stepped section? I propose that the heights of the side panels were actually increased by 3/4" during the 1966 refit!

A bold claim? Well, we know that the side panel's central upright divider got broken in the early 1960s with the result that the bottom 6 or so inches were lost. The picture from "Power of the Daleks" shows this but the screen grab from "The Ark in Space" shows it more clearly. A horizontal cross-bar spanning the entire width of the side panel is clearly visible underneath the broken upright (this cross-bar is bigger on the grab from "Ark", but the point remains).

"Spearhead from Space" was filmed in 1969. In this story the Police Box prop was fitted with a temporary black base. Following this, the box next appeared in "Terror of the Autons". This publicity photo is from that story shows the prop is still missing its base:

 

Behind Mr Delgado is the same side of the Police Box prop shown in the photo from "Power" and "Ark". Clearly there is an unpainted piece of timber visible now that the panel-wide lowest cross-bar is no longer present. If the side panel was unaltered from the original 1963 height, why would this unpainted wood be visible? It might be battered but, it should still be blue.

To me, this unpainted piece of timber appears to be approximately 3/4" in height and the only reason we've not seen it before is because it was hidden behind the panel-wide cross bar shown in the picture from "Power". So, the side panels were actually made 3/4" taller during the 1966 refit!

Below is my drawing of the refitted Police Box prop - showing in more detail the suggested changes I've tried to describe here.

Tony

The front door edging strip, the additional 3/4" addition to the heights of the side-panels and the panel-wide cross-bar are shown in red as are the slight gaps above and underneath the Police Box prop's front doors.

What do we all think? And, yes, I'm well aware that this theory - if proven - would mean that I'd have to re-calculate the diameters of the roundels proposed in my Console Room measurement thread!

[Rassilons Rod]

In that Terror of the Autons photo, it actually has no base at all.

Also, just by the by, the lamp was changed back in Season 1.

WOW, those pics from Ark in Space and Android Invasion. Just what the hell had happend to the bottom of the right hand side? What an ugly fix

Nice plans, Tony

[tony farrell]

Thanks Marc, glad you like the plans - they took me all day!

I think the main structural alterations were carried out in 1966 (i.e., the cutting down of the front doors, loss of 6 of the original 12 corner post quadrants and the off-set in the heights of the sides when compared to the doors) but the original base was re-used (albeit cut down as per my drawing).

The original base continued in use until the end of Troughton's time but by the time Pertwee arrived, presumably it was beyond repair. I did actually state that in the publicity shot from "Terror" shows the Police Box prop without a base (in Spearhead, the prop had a temporary base to which, in all probability, it wasn't even attached, just 'plonked on top').

This temporary base disappeared by the time "Terror of the Autons" was made and the new base was then used from "Claws of Axos" onwards until the battered Brachaki prop finally 'gave up the ghost' and fell apart in "Seeds of Doom".

Does that clarify my thinking?

Tony

[celation]

Just wanted to point out that the picture from Power posted above is I believe from a (very good) reconstruction of the scene, and not actually from the episode.

[Rassilons Rod]

That's interesting, I'd never spotted the difference in those two shots until now, but you're right Chris.
The Dalek is clearly crushed in a different direction and there are no rocks around the TARDIS in the telesnap.

Tony, we are in agreement, I guess I must have skimmed a little too hard when I read it this morning

[DoctorWho8]

Perhaps the set was restaged for the photo to be taken.  Also not the light has a hole in it.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[Rassilons Rod]

Yeah, that hole is visible later too.

[cobalt]

(in Spearhead, the prop had a temporary base to which, in all probability, it wasn't even attached, just 'plonked on top').

I don't remember the source on this - it may have been something I read, or it may have been in the DVD commentary...

But what I'm remembering is that the base in Spearhead was just black construction paper that was taped in place to hide a wheeled dolly that the now baseless prop had been set atop.

[markofrani]

Just wanted to point out that the picture from Power posted above is I believe from a (very good) reconstruction of the scene, and not actually from the episode.

Wow! I never realised that.
When you say reconstruction, do you mean it was done recently, or a mock-up that was done by the BBC at the time using the Tardis prop?

[Rassilons Rod]

That must be a publicity shot from the story. I'm fairly sure it predates Photoshop :-)