More photos from today's filming.  Looks like the prop got some extensive touchups on it as the base doesn't look as knackered.












Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

Interesting: the Doctor in a different shirt/jumper (crew-neck, black or very dark blue, with sparklies spattered about it) and no sign of the cardigan. Is it possible that he's pulling from the 9th Doctor: keeping the coat and trousers and only changing his "shirts"?

As he said on 'The Wil Wheaton Project' last Tuesday when he ran the full BBC trailer: "Why isn't it August already?!"

Dino.

Which box be this?

I believe it's the current Capaldi iteration given the extra detailing on the Ambulance sign and the larger windows and panels.
Jeez these boxes... It's like there are several identical offspring but each grow up to be slightly different, one likes to be slimmer around the panels, one likes to have a nice bulky lamp, one likes it's coat of nice metallic car paint, one likes it's extra sign detailing. But obviously to all but know them well they all look identical!
Out of interest has anyone put some thought into why they chop and change prop so much? Was it suggested it was simply down to wear and tear in a glorious HD world? Must say seems an awful waste to me...

Methinks this is a Photoshop Special. Considering the relationship between Capaldi and where his shadow falls on the box it appears that he's quite close to it. Now, take into account how tall he is (and how wide at the shoulder) and how large the TARDIS prop is, and we're left with three choices:

1 - Capaldi's suddenly grown to Sasquatch proportions;
2 - the TARDIS prop has shrunk, or they're using a smaller version if it for this photo;
3 - someone's Photoshopped Capaldi and a TARDIS image together, and didn't take into account the size difference.

But superrichi1a is right; why do they keep altering the prop's look? Repairs for wear and tear are to be expected, what with the amount of times the thing is taken down, put up, dirtied up to show some rough times and then cleaned up so she looks nice again. But those repairs - even having to build a new prop if the old one is too damaged (Oi! Production Crew - take a look back at how long the Brachacki prop was in service!), surely they could do those repairs/rebuilds so the prop looks the same. More importantly, save money and just repair the damage, even if it means rebuilding a piece of the prop, but rebuild that piece so it looks like the broken one did before it broke.

Granted, the prop changed more times than one can count during the Classic Years, but jeez! This is "The New Series". Surely they can maintain a little more continuity in the TARDIS's appearance (if for no other reason than to make replica-building easier for people like us who are insane-in-the-brain about 'Doctor Who' and the "Old Girl" ).

Dino.

Dino summed up all sentiments perfectly there! Especially about what you'd expect from the New Series. When I first came to classic Who (I don't mean as a child watching Tom Baker reruns or the McGann movie I raved about when I was small, but when I really started to get into it as an adult when Chris Eccleston arrived) I was under the common assumption that there never really was a TARDIS prop - there was just another one they found or cobbled together every new scene. Obviously then I realised that that wasn't the case and later learned more about it. Yet that original feeling of inconsistency of props isn't a million miles away from how I used to feel. It's not THAT bad, sure, but to people like us who always SEE every difference all the time it feels a bit... disconcerting, maybe?

Also of note are the way the windows are lit here - not EL sheet, but good old fashioned bulbs judging by the colour of the glow. How interesting, I wonder if that's just for the image... The black inserts also seem to be left in here as the textured panes glow brighter - the exact thing I've been trying to work around with my build when I light it up! (Tried a few things but never found anything which brought them close enough together.)
That reminds me, I went back to the Experience last week and took some brilliant photos of the 7B prop as it had a little tantrum! The right half couldn't decide whether the windows should be on or off so kept switching between the two giving a severely lop-sided TARDIS. What caught my eye though was that again the black insert was left in but when the EL sheet lit up it was rendered totally invisible unlike the above. Got me thinking that in 2009 there was some talk of opaque black inserts having to be removed every time the lights went on - did we actually know that for sure or could they have been lighting it in this way since the start? The original promo boxes had opaque inserts to be sure but do we actually know for sure about the props?

You're right, definitely a photoshop. In particular his hair is making that obvious, just as much as the proportions are off.

Quote from: galacticprobe on Jul 31, 2014, 09:33 pm
1 - Capaldi's suddenly grown to Sasquatch proportions;
2 - the TARDIS prop has shrunk, or they're using a smaller version if it for this photo;
3 - someone's Photoshopped Capaldi and a TARDIS image together, and didn't take into account the size difference.

4 - They've got him up on a stool or block.


I don't know about you guys, but I'm feeling now's the time for the production to make a completely new TARDIS prop, one which looks more like a real Police Box, even if it's scaled down a little.

Seems to me, with Capaldi being such a life long fan, older, and from what I have read, wanting to be a more classic Doctor, It is entirely possible he could influence the TARDIS design to be more classic as well.  Perhaps not.  What do I know?

The wonk in me wonders if the BBC and the Metropolitan Police's lawyers play a role in it; if by revising the design to look more like an actual police box, they could reopen the can of worms about who owns the copyright. 

Don't get mixed up between copyright and trademark.  The copyright of the original Police Box design (as created in 1929) may well have expired now (85 years later), if it ever existed in the first place.  However the BBC has owned the trademark of a Police Box or TARDIS since 1996.

Here is the original 1996 decision, which makes interesting reading.

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/o33602.pdf

Copyright's a funny thing in Television circles.  Take K9 for example.  The BBC owns the copyright to the design, but Bob Baker and Dave Martin own the copyright to the character.  Hence the Australian "K9" TV Series only had to get the OK from the writers, as they didn't use the BBC's design. 

Similarly the BBC had to get permission from the original authors of "The Abominable Snowmen" in order to use the character of The Great Intelligence in "The Snowmen".

-and negotiated with the Estate of Terry Nation to bring the Daleks back in 2005.

Quote from: lorisarvendu on Aug 03, 2014, 12:24 pm
Take K9 for example.  The BBC owns the copyright to the design, but Bob Baker and Dave Martin own the copyright to the character.  Hence the Australian "K9" TV Series only had to get the OK from the writers, as they didn't use the BBC's design.

I wonder what other sort of negotiations they had to go through to have John Leeson (K-9's original voice actor) to voice K-9 in that Aussie 'K9' series. And let's not forget that K-9's first appearance in that series was in his "Mark I" design, and every so often throughout the series there were pictures (and some "flashback" K-9 memories) that showed the Mark I design. So maybe more agreements were made behind-the-scenes that we are unaware of.

As for the TARDIS (another new prop or not), since the very first episode back in 1963, she's never looked exactly like a real Police Box, and I think that's the charm of The Old Girl. Now with Capaldi being a huge fan of the Classics, if (that is IF) they were going to build a totally different-looking prop for his Doctor, what would a perfect fit is a replica of the Original Brachacki (series version, not pilot), but done in the size of the New Series props. Now that would be a TARDIS!

Dino.

I'd like to believe that if budget, construction, assembly/disassembly and studio limitations hadn't been an issue, the original TARDIS prop would've looked like a real Police Box.
It was intended to look like one, I don't believe they would've made it look different other than because of the limits that were imposed on the prop for the various reasons... hence why I'd love them to finally make one that looked like it could pass for the real thing.

Ah... but the fact that the TARDIS doesn't look like an exact replica of a Police Box gives the Old Girl part of her charm. (It also gives us the occasional chance to hear the Doctor comment on how the TARDIS got it wrong and wasn't the correct dimensions, or seeing someone like Adric crawling all over a "Police Box" taking measurements, or hearing Billy Shipton make a comment like "The windows are the wrong size.")

That's what I call real character acting: trying to look like something you're not, doing a decent job of getting it close, but still not getting it quite right while still being able to pull it off!

Dino.