At 5.16 on Saturday 23rd November 1963 a modestly budgeted family drama programme went on air. 24 minutes later  - though they wouldn't have known this at the time - the members of its audience had witnessed the birth of a television legend.

In this, the fiftieth anniversary year of its creation and as a present to Tardis Builders everywhere, I wanted to pay tribute to the man whose designs brought the Tardis to life - Peter Brachaki.

What better to do this than to try to reproduce his designs as they appeared on BBC1 on that cold November evening? As near screen-accurate blueprints as possible, all together and all in one place for ease of reference.

http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=4825.0

I hope that you find my efforts informative but, more importantly, that you enjoy them. Tony Farrell

http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=4825.0

Tony has spent at least a year on these blue prints and has endured a lot of hassles and problems to bring them to us on this wonderful 50th anniversary!

The breadth, depth and clarity he has bought to these plans is awesome and although that is an overused word in these days of hype, it is fully deserved here.

Thank you very much for this anniversary gift Tony. I am sure it will bring enormous pleasure to all of us.

I echo Graham's comments. Tony, saying this is a job well done is understating all of the research that you've put into this. Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication to this project! Being at a loss for words, I'll venture into the absurd and say this is one serious supercalifrackilisticexpialidociously phantasmagorical feat! And thank you once again for sharing this with us!

Dino.

Thanks to all involved and a big thanks to Tony.

This is extreme TARDIS research and should satisfy most hardcore Who fans.

You do realize that just tackling the variations of the TARDIS' exterior shell, console rooms (to include interior doors and roundels), corridors, living quarters, etc., etc., and for a "proper" Tech Manual, all of the gizmos in the TARDIS Toolkit (sonics, as well as all goodies from 1963 to the here and now) with all the notes like Tony has put into his article, would yield a book about the size of the Manhattan telephone directory! (And that wouldn't be so far off from the TARDIS Manuals seen on screen in the Classic Series!)

I would love to get my hands on one of those manuals! (The one temporal engineer is talking about, that is.) Not to say that I wouldn't also love to get my hands on one of those "TARDIS Manual" props that was used on screen - even if it was just long enough to take a look inside to see what sort of things they'd put in it since what we could see looked hand-written.

I think the Dalek and other alien info would have to go in another manual of its own: "The Extra-Gallifreyan Species Manual". And I think that would take up several volumes! (FAB idea, though!)

Dino.

Quote from: galacticprobe on Nov 24, 2013, 06:55 am
You do realize that just tackling the variations of the TARDIS' exterior shell, console rooms (to include interior doors and roundels), corridors, living quarters, etc., etc., and for a "proper" Tech Manual, all of the gizmos in the TARDIS Toolkit (sonics, as well as all goodies from 1963 to the here and now) with all the notes like Tony has put into his article, would yield a book about the size of the Manhattan telephone directory!
I think the Dalek and other alien info would have to go in another manual of its own(FAB idea, though!)
Dino.

To be honest Dino, the bulk of the time it's taken me to get the 'article' ready was taken up with getting everyone's 'buy-in' to it:

When I started - 14 months ago - all we really had were grainy screen-grabs and a few high(ish) definition photos. By which I mean not much was available to the public (and I count myself as being very much a member of that public in that I have no special knowledge or contacts within the TV industry).

The method I used to work out the missing dimensions - in principle - works; provided you know the measurements of one object, using perspective drawings you can work out the measurements of everything else in the same picture. But, I made two mistakes: Firstly - when I initially tried to work out the dimensions of the Tardis' main internal doors, I assumed that the dimensions of the Police Box were unchanged from 1963 (in fact they were see - my 'history' of the Police Box from 1966). Secondly, I assumed the console was always placed centrally within the hexagonal metal floor plate - it wasn't. This caused a lot of debate but, in the end, I hope a consensus was achieved.

With hindsight, I should have started with the Police Box exterior but, we live and learn!

Over the course of the last year, various people have seen what I was trying to do and, like Rob here on TB, have obviously taken sympathy on me and posted snippets of the BBC's set plans which have been invaluable (particularly 'the ceiling canopy' where the damn thing was hung at different heights, angles, was altered three times and was too far away from anything whose measurements were known).

So, what I'm trying to say is that the bulk of the work is in 'ferreting around' and getting agreement.

But - crucially - it's been done; all the plans are now here TB for the original Tardis interior, the Pertwee and early Baker versions can be worked out from these; the set plans for the later Baker and Davison and Five Doctors' versions are also here on TB. They're dotted around - hidden in variously named threads - but they are here!

Crispin and the other mods have created an index which seems to work very well (but I bet is a bugger to administer). My only suggestions would be  that the reference section should be split into "The Tardis Exterior" and "The Tardis Interior" (rather than as it is now "The Tardis" and "The Console").  There's a lot more to the interior than just the console.  Secondly the reference articles in each section aren't particularly obvious in that they need a picture/logo/'avatar thingy' to make them stand out. (Again, that would probably be a bugger to administer.)

I'd be happy to contribute with drawings for the Tardis interior up to Pyramids of Mars and Nathan/Warmcanofcoke has done great work on the Five Doctors (onwards) versions of the Control Room. We have what appear to be very accurate drawings of the central column/time rotor, so, if someone wants to draw the Mike Kelt Console, the principal elements of the interior all the way to 1989 could be presented as a series of reference articles.

As for the gizmos - well if someone wants to attempt that, good luck! 

Tony

Tony, I realize that all of the info is here, and some of it could probably be expounded upon to the level of detail - with the notes - as you did with your drawings. I was just basically saying that putting all of that into a "Tech Manual" in the way temporal engineer was thinking about (which, like him I would love to get my hands on!), it would probably end up being several inches thick (gizmos aside).

As for the Reference Section being split into "The TARDIS Exterior" and "The TARDIS Interior"... The "Exterior" sub-board would then need to be split further into sub-boards for "The Brachacki", "Brachacki-Altered", "Newbery", etc. in order to keep all of the topics for each specific model TARDIS together. (That would be a headache to administer, as you probably so rightly guess.) But as it is now, with the sub-boards done by year - including "Cushing Movie TARDIS" and several specific Brachacki sub-boards - the Exterior bit is pretty well separated. And a new sub-board is added anytime a new model TARDIS is introduced. (Of course, those sub-boards could simply be renamed to "Brachacki-Original", "Brachacki-Altered", etc. to go with each model rather than trying to guess which year went with which model, without having to move any of the topics under them; but I don't know if that would really be needed?)

On the same token, "The TARDIS Interior" would need to be further split into "Console" (strictly for console matters, with right now the sub-boards for the console are done like the TARDIS exterior, by year, which is probably the best way to go with them), "Console Room" (for walls, doors, scanner, etc.) "Corridors", "Living Areas"... You'd need to add a new sub-board anytime a new section of the Interior was dealt with. (Again, as you say, a headache to administer.)

Although, the Console section could be left as is, and either include the Room with it, or make a Sub-board for just the room, also with the Room one broken down by year (with one specific sub-board for the one-off story "The Time Monster" and the washing up bowl roundels). After that we could have another sub-board for "Other TARDIS Interior Areas" to cover corridors and other places, like the Cloister Room (which hasn't gotten much attention yet, probably because we've only seen two: the simple version as in "Logopolis" and the elaborate expansive one in the 1996 Series Revival Pilot Movie).

Anyway, you're quite right; just thinking about trying to administer all that is making my brain hurt!

Dino.

My only suggestions would be  that the reference section should be split into "The Tardis Exterior" and "The Tardis Interior" (rather than as it is now "The Tardis" and "The Console").  There's a lot more to the interior than just the console.  Smiley Secondly the reference articles in each section aren't particularly obvious in that they need a picture/logo/'avatar thingy' to make them stand out. (Again, that would probably be a bugger to administer.)

I am with you on this Tony, sorry only just read it! I will run it with the other mods to see what they think!

Graham