Brilliantly said, abrxx!

And for those watching the episodes, remember: as every new SF show goes, there are always inconsistencies with operation of controls and equipment when first starting out. (Remember the pilot episode for ST: TNG, "Encounter At Farpoint". At the end when Enterprise fires her phasers to give the creature the energy it needs, those phasers' beams are blue, not the red-orange we're familiar with, and they came from a place where there were no phaser banks, and later when the phasers became their standard red-orange, they shot out of those "emitter array bands" that were placed at various positions around the hull, most used being the large ones on the saucer.)

So when you see inconsistencies in the early 'Who' episodes - and there are many as Rich has already pointed out, and abrxx has mentioned - just note them, and watch how things settle into place the further into the series things progress.

Dino.

I've just rewatched the bit in The Daleks where the Dr pulls out the fluid link. Its not as I previously remembered it!

1) lever 1L (left) and 1R (right) start in the upper position
2) The Dr initiates dematerialisation by pulling down lever 1L.
3) He then touches some controls on the panel immediately to the left of panel 1, and reaches over for a control to the left of that  one as well.
4) When the TARDIS starts reacting to the fluid link being removed, the Dr pulls down lever 1R. Whether this is changing the power mode or effecting a remat is in the realm of fan theory I guess.
5) Although this happens off camera, you can hear both lever 1L and 1R being reset to the up position, which appears to be their "off" position for when the ship is landed.

Note - this contradicts slightly with The Rescue, where the final position of levers 1L and 1R is DOWN not UP.

However, it does prove that Hartnell was consistently using levels 1L and 1R as demat/remat/flight power levers. Beyond that, you have to move into fan theory...

Quote from: abrxx on Aug 19, 2016, 09:17 pm
I've just rewatched the bit in The Daleks...

2) The Dr initiates dematerialisation by pulling down lever 1L.

I love that scene because just as Hartnell pulls that lever down, he's got this glint in his eye like pulling that lever was something he'd just thought of doing, sort of an ad-lib of action to make things look more interesting... and wondering if he'll get away with it, or if the director will yell "CUT!" and make them do a retake after giving Hartnell a talking to.

Brilliant bit of acting, and it worked. His timing really made it look like that was the lever that dematerialized the TARDIS. (I really do wish I could have been in the studio that day when Verity Lambert said Hartnell went into his dissertation on which control on the console did what. That would have been something to record!)

Dino.

One more quick post. I watched the beginning of The Planet of the Giants. A large array of controls are used to initiate and mange flight, but of particular interest:

1) First lever used is the one on panel 6. The column begins moving (remote control or stage hand activated it from the console panel 4?)
2) Then 1L and 1R are pulled DOWN simultaneously.
3) A bunch of other switches are moved
4) Two of the switches on panel 4 are moved. But I don't see anything much changing as a result. I recall previous threads had speculated about these.

So apologies when I said that the lever on panel 6 is always used mid flight. Planet of the Giants appears to be an exception (assuming that the scene begins with the start of a flight. Alternatively  the scene could be starting with the end of flight, as the Dr almost immediately starts talking about the ship landing. I prefer the latter POV to keep things consistent with The Daleks etc.)

No need for apologies, abrxx. If I'm not mistaken - having watched 'Planet of Giants' recently - the TARDIS was indeed in flight at the start when the Doctor pulled the Panel 6 Lever down and he was mentioning they were about to land, when the alarms went off and the doors started opening by themselves (and all hell broke loose).

So you were right on the mark with that one. Panel 6 Main Lever use at the beginning of 'Planet of Giants' was consistent with 'The Daleks', so it "could" possibly be either a materialization-initiator, or a sort of "throttle" lever for power levels - sort of like how a pilot throttles back as he brings a plane in for landing.

Dino.

What I've not figured out yet is that if 1L + 1R are used to initiate demat by moving them from UP to DOWN, how can the same levers then be in the UP position during flight requiring a second pull down movement to end the flight? We can either assume:

1) The correct position of these controls (up vs down) was not maintained while filming.
2) The controls are always in the UP position prior to an actor using them, regardless of whether the ship is taking off or landing.

Combining what we know so far:

- In The Daleks we see the levers being pulled DOWN (1L to start demat, 1R to do something else)
- we then hear the switches being reset to the UP position after a clearly failed demat operation.
- in the Rescue we hear the switches being pulled DOWN to power down the TARDIS after an automatic landing.
- In Planet of the Giants we see both levers being  pulled DOWN to initiate the landing. There are no remat sounds for landing in this episode, which doesn't help.

Possible theory:
- levers initiate a materialization.
- going from UP to DOWN triggers either a demat or remat, depending on the ship's status
- to abort a failed materialization, you flip both levers back up
- once a materialization has succeeded you can reset levers 1L and 1R. You are now in flight.
- to engage in vortex flight use lever 6

Now there are different types of landing, automatic and manual:
- Most landings are automatic. If the Rescue is a good example then one has to power down by moving levers 1L and 1R down after the end of flight.
- In The Planet of the Giants a manual landing was initiated by moving levers 1L and 1R down during flight. Note that once landed there is no need to separately power down as the levers are now in the correct position (as per Rescue).

- to power up and prepare for the next demat, levers 1L and 1R need to be reset to the UPPER position.

What do you guys think?

Wow... that's a lot of information to process! And what doesn't help matters, like you mentioned with 'Planet of Giants', the TARDIS sound was another of those inconsistent things throughout the Hartnell years; sometimes it was there, and sometimes it was a "silent" landing (or take-off). But you might be onto something with the resetting of the levers for powering up.

Another thing that doesn't help is, again like you said, the correct position of those levers (from the previous part of the scene) wasn't maintained while filming. A discontinuity, as it's called. Back then no one probably thought anything about that, and I'd put money on the fact that for a show everyone thought of as a kids' show and having only a 5-year run, would never be scrutinized that closely, especially 50+ years later by people like us with HDTVs and DVD players. So no one bothered to keep track of the continuity when doing retakes, or resetting for close-up camera angles vs. a first filming from a wide shot.

The same sort of things still happen even in the New Series; they either don't keep track of the continuity when changing camera angles, or they don't think anyone will notice. Just take a look at this deleted scene from the end of Series 5's "Flesh And Stone":

Right around minute 0:20 or so, Amy slams down the two Red-Tipped Levers (triggering the Cloister Bell). The Doctor immediately shoves the Levers back to their up position, but when the camera returns focus to Amy a second later, the Levers are down again, and a second or so later when she walks around the console to confront the Doctor, the Levers are up again - with no one touching the Levers after the Doctor returns them to the UP position. This is what's known as discontinuity. It happened more often in the Hartnell years, but it still happens in these days. (It certainly happened with those three red sliders on the transporter controls in 'Star Trek: TOS', with no one really keeping track of continuity for that franchise until the start of the TNG era. Now I think they actually hire someone to keep track of continuity so things like that don't happen - at least in the US film industry they do - but sometimes small things still slip through. Does the UK film industry hire or assign someone to keep track of continuity?)

It's this discontinuity that really makes the task we've set about for ourselves here a more than challenging one. And it only leads to more questions:

- Do we take the "initial" operation of the Lever(s) as "this is how it's done and what it means", and then write off any further position changes as discontinuities until we actually see someone move the Lever(s) again?

- Do we take that discontinuity as the result of the operation being done while we weren't looking, and the Lever(s) were reset for their next operation while our attention was diverted to something/someone else?

One thing I am certain of... it makes my brain hurt!

Dino.

Sorry guys, it has been a long time sense I did a post, I went to a Dr who place and brought DvDs, which means I could not do that day and the next day I was watching my DvDs, so not that day ether,

Well I am here now so,

Lets do Panel 1, this is what I have done by reading some of your comments, hope it's correct,  



- Rich

Quote from: Richman695 on Aug 22, 2016, 05:03 pm
Sorry guys, it has been a long time sense I did a post, I went to a Dr who place and brought DvDs, which means I could not do that day and the next day I was watching my DvDs, so not that day ether,

Well I am here now so,

Lets do Panel 1, this is what I have done by reading some of your comments, hope it's correct, 

[snip]

- Rich

As said previously, the "Stasis switch" is not referred to as such from the actual show. IN addition, it appears to be some sort of flight control. I've seen it used in The Rescue (off camera) and in The Enemy of the World (I think). It appears to be used in concert with the demat lever.

Also which episodes use that switch as a scanner switch? The scanner is first used in The Daleks, where a different lever on a another panel is used.

For Hartnell it appears the default position of the main levers is always UP before their first use. So if we see the TARDIS in flight first, the levers will be UP. For example, see the very end of The Daleks. If the TARDIS is ready to dematerialise (beginning of The Daleks), the lever is still up. If the TARDIS has just landed, as in The Rescue, then lever is again UP.

Probably Hartnell preferred the levers all to be up at the beginning of the shot. This discontinuity seems intentional for stylistic reasons: it looks good to throw the big levers down.

A second example can be given regarding the single main lever. Its UP at demat at the end of The Daleks, and its also UP at remat at the beginning of The Giants (assuming this is a landing from the beginning of the take). In both cases this lever is thrown DOWN as part of the control use. Note that I am not aware of this control ever being reset unlike the demat/power levers.

When Hartnell reset the demat/power levers in The Daleks its clear at least to me this was an intentional action (no doubt ad-libbed) by him as part of his fictional use of the controls. It makes sense - he pulled down the demat lever to start demat, when there were power problems he pulled the second lever, and then moments later he aborted the whole thing by flipping both levers back up.

Quote from: galacticprobe on Aug 20, 2016, 04:27 am
Wow... that's a lot of information to process! And what doesn't help matters, like you mentioned with 'Planet of Giants', the TARDIS sound was another of those inconsistent things throughout the Hartnell years; sometimes it was there, and sometimes it was a "silent" landing (or take-off). But you might be onto something with the resetting of the levers for powering up.

Another thing that doesn't help is, again like you said, the correct position of those levers (from the previous part of the scene) wasn't maintained while filming. A discontinuity, as it's called. Back then no one probably thought anything about that, and I'd put money on the fact that for a show everyone thought of as a kids' show and having only a 5-year run, would never be scrutinized that closely, especially 50+ years later by people like us with HDTVs and DVD players. So no one bothered to keep track of the continuity when doing retakes, or resetting for close-up camera angles vs. a first filming from a wide shot.

[snip]
It's this discontinuity that really makes the task we've set about for ourselves here a more than challenging one. And it only leads to more questions:

- Do we take the "initial" operation of the Lever(s) as "this is how it's done and what it means", and then write off any further position changes as discontinuities until we actually see someone move the Lever(s) again?

- Do we take that discontinuity as the result of the operation being done while we weren't looking, and the Lever(s) were reset for their next operation while our attention was diverted to something/someone else?

One thing I am certain of... it makes my brain hurt!

Dino.

Quote from: abrxx on Aug 22, 2016, 10:12 pm

Quote from: Richman695 on Aug 22, 2016, 05:03 pm
Sorry guys, it has been a long time sense I did a post, I went to a Dr who place and brought DvDs, which means I could not do that day and the next day I was watching my DvDs, so not that day ether,

Well I am here now so,

Lets do Panel 1, this is what I have done by reading some of your comments, hope it's correct,  

[snip]

- Rich

As said previously, the "Stasis switch" is not referred to as such from the actual show. IN addition, it appears to be some sort of flight control. I've seen it used in The Rescue (off camera) and in The Enemy of the World (I think). It appears to be used in concert with the demat lever.

Perhaps I can help - at least with the naming of the switches. In this topic http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=4825.0 I posted this diagram to help identify the controls:



With regards to the so-called 'stasis switch', I stuck with that description rather than trying to come up with a more appropriate description which would have had to read something like "the shallow pyramidal, brick-red, oblong-based, switch with the two screws at diagonally opposite corners"!

The panel numbering, too, is purely for convenience and because DWM used that numbering sequence, it seems to have stuck whereas in the show, I think I'm correct in saying that the only panel ever to have been referred to by number was in "The Time Monster" where the panel with the "Extreme Emergency" switch was designated as 'control panel 3'.

I still think Rich is going to struggle with a definitive 'fictional use' for the various controls but, its still quite enjoyable to read his efforts!  

T

Going back to the stasis switch, some people might no know this but do you know what 'stasis' means? mmh. 

It means slowing down; stopping, so which means when the doctor takes off, he turns the switch on, then he turns the switch off for landing, so stopping, hope you know what I am talking about. 

- Rich

As I mentioned previously it [the Stasis Switch] appears to have been used in The Rescue when the Dr announces he is "powering down" the TARDIS. So it appears to be a control related to flight power and/or flight itself. Which makes sense because its located next to the dematerialisation lever and a lever which is connected with dematerialisation/power. BTW in the 10th episode of The War Games Zoe suggests that they try a "power drive" and the Doctor uses the RHS lever. In my TARDIS Manual I use that as the actual name for this lever. In reality Troughton is using this lever because the actual demat lever's handle has broken by this point!

I watched this today. I see Patrick pretending to move the sliders, but I don't see the switches actually moving.

Could the switches actually move on the prop?

If they did move, are they faders with lots of movements, or essentially on/off switches? I have been wondering about this for years!

Quote from: Richman695 on Aug 19, 2016, 05:35 pm

Quote from: abrxx on Aug 19, 2016, 03:49 pm
One thing that has been bothering me: did those slide switches actually move? I never saw anyone onscreen actually flicking those switches!

Yes the slide switches did if you look in the episode 'the war games - episode 10' its shows Patrick pulling the switches down.

- Rich

PS: Thanks, abrxx