Logopolis & Castrovalva: Wandering the corridors of the TARDIS

[elvis gump]

Looking at the alert in my email of your new post I didn't have my reading glasses on and thought I read Powder Room instead of Power Room which made me go - WHOA - did I miss a mention in the Classic Series of a loo in the TARDIS? Alas!

 

[MttElby]

Looking at the alert in my email of your new post I didn't have my reading glasses on and thought I read Powder Room instead of Power Room which made me go - WHOA - did I miss a mention in the Classic Series of a loo in the TARDIS? Alas!

Not saying there isn't a powder room, but it's not on my list.
A conventional bathroom, with a shower, is a different matter - and already done. As is Romana's en suite. You just won't see either of them on my Logopolis and Castrovalva tours.

 

[MttElby]

Been a slow week, just adding a few lights here and there. For a little diversion, I added the round grilles to my version of the down-lighters from the Hartnell TARDIS interior.

I'm still having trouble predicting what I'll get with lights, because you can't see the virtual lightbulb in Blender, just the light that is emitted and then hits other objects.

This is a view looking up at the down-lighters and the reflection of the light is really bright, but you can't see the same brightness in the actual tube.


All very odd...

 

[MttElby]

I saw a post with close-up of a mercury fluid link, so I added a few to the little storeroom:

 

[MttElby]

Another unscheduled diversion back to the console, when I saw this behind the scenes photo:

In all the screengrabs I'd taken, the top light of the three is black and the vertical lines were black (or at least dark), not red.
A few examples:

Although it was a season 18 image, I thought it might be from an earlier episode - when the bulb definitely was red - but the double red lines around the collar of the central column were only added for Logopolis, so it must be from that story. That leaves either: the bulb was swapped out between filming different scenes in the same story (precedents for this in other stories), or that it is a trick of the light somehow. The best explanation is that the plastic of the bulb is a very dark red that looks black when off and red when on. It doesn't look to be illuminated in the new pic, but that's the explanation I've gone with.

Here's another (BTS) image that makes it look less red, while the vertical red lines still do look red:


And here's "on" and "off" in my version:


As always, it could use some tweaking, but I think it definitely captures the impression of it being black when off.

 

[elvis gump]

I don't know about how PAL video worked, but the old NTSC used back then did weird, uh, stuff when it came to thin lines and light sources when it recorded them. It was really "contrasty" for lack of a better word compared to film and the scan-lines messed with thin lines and small light sources in the picture and you could color balance all day long twirling dials on scopes and you couldn't fix it completely.

But then your eyes would see one thing and even film stock saw something else - a most interesting example was the 'gold' velour shirts in the 60s "Star Trek" which were some sort of almost day glow green, but came out very yellow gold on film. If you remember Shatner wore a wrap-around shirt occasionally and I think it was made out of wool and was very green - and best I can tell it probably matched by EYE the green of the pull overs. Before that the first two pilots fabric came out on film more mustard color. And whatever the green dye was in the season 1&2 series tops has long since faded away.

In the third season frustrated by the always shrinking every time they were washed velour tops, they went to a bright yellow satin fabric which came out the same color the green ones had looked on film. Plus the old velour tops had to have the braids and Federation delta logo removed and resewn back on or so I've read when they laundered them. It's why in a couple of shots in "The Enemy Within" the duplicate Kirk has no delta breast emblem as someone forgot to sew it back on. Oops! Well I think they reasoned it might rerun in the summer and never be seen again and hardly anyone noticed anyway. Like WHO would obsessively ever watch this stuff for decades right?

So film isn't perfect when it came to recording colors either which all us old photographers lamented. Practically every fashion shoot I ever did despite shooting color charts and holding back duplicate rolls of things, and lab adjustments and re-processing in that era before post-digital manipulation customers complained things were the slightest wrong tint or hue and blame went every which way. Oy vey!

When you look at screen grabs of old footage be they from a pure video or transferred film recordings - seeing isn't always believing.

 

[rassilonsrod]

You should check out the old sitcom Porridge. They have some scenes shot in Ealing, on film and some of it shot at bbc tvc.

The contrasting looks of the two mediums is very clear.

You can see this in old Who, too, but when essentially the same kinds of sets are used the contrast comes over much more immediately.

 

[elvis gump]

You should check out the old sitcom Porridge. They have some scenes shot in Ealing, on film and some of it shot at bbc tvc.

The contrasting looks of the two mediums is very clear.

You can see this in old Who, too, but when essentially the same kinds of sets are used the contrast comes over much more immediately.

Yes, the film footage on locations and outdoors was because I'm pretty sure they had few if any portable video gear before the 80s. I think it's not until Davison's era where you see stuff that was probably shot on something outdoors akin to Betacam. I'm not sure if it had a PAL version as all I know is the US NTSC format.

I worked with NTSC video cameras - there was 3/4 tape - Umax or something - I barely remember it in the early 80s left over from the 70s at college and to call the cameras and recorders 'portable' was generous - they were luggable.

It's been too long and everyone I worked with is dead from that time, but I'd guess the recorders separate from the camera had to weigh like 25-35 lbs. The straps were very thick and cut into your shoulder after a few minutes. I think a lot of the weight was that they were ruggedly over-engineered and the tapes didn't just slide in like a VCR, there was a whole pop-up eject system.

The shoulder cameras must have been 15-20 ;bs. Sometimes it set down if the camera was on sticks for static shots. I have a vivid memory of being in a hotel with one of those decks taken all apart as we tried to clean vomit out of when a guy we sent up in a helicopter up-chucked on it.

There was much cussing and the Lord's name taken in vain whilst the cleaning went on. It was THE only deck we had on location stupidly. Someone had to eventually drive all night back to the college from and back to the location with a spare and the up-chucker student videographer never heard the end of it!

And for all that - the footage looked like crap. We had older cameras before Triniton which was RGB all in one chip sensor - the older one having three tubes for each color and if you jostled them at all you'd have to get a target card that looked sort of like the "Please Stand By" card with black lines on a white background and shoot it with one whole side removed from the camera and use a screwdriver to realign the tubes!

I wish thinking back on this I'd had the malice of forethought to shoot a lot of behind the scenes stuff of how it all worked. It was tedious!

Betacam was the end of all that nonsense and led the way to consumer video we knew in tape camcorders.

But the contrast sans post processing has always been a problem for video. I've seen outtakes from 2005-2010 Who where they just used the raw camera footage and you can see it looks off because they didn't post process it to lower the contrast and add that film-grain like effect. It's in some stuff from Tennant's era outtakes. I have all the old DW Confidential shows where that really shows up.

I think it was only when Matt took over that they even bothered to upgrade to true HD cameras which don't have the same problems.

It's sad they didn't shoot old Who on film from the beginning so it could be upscaled and restored today. Even 80s TNG shot all on film was able to get upgraded to HD recompositing shots and redoing effects with higher rez CGI.

With the aid of AI enhancement though they might be able now to upscale that old video and create better SFX if anyone bothers to spend the money.

 

[MttElby]

You should check out the old sitcom Porridge. They have some scenes shot in Ealing, on film and some of it shot at bbc tvc.

The contrasting looks of the two mediums is very clear.

You can see this in old Who, too, but when essentially the same kinds of sets are used the contrast comes over much more immediately.

Yes, I remember it being very noticeable in Porridge. They sometimes looked like they were outside, even though they were inside.

 

[MttElby]

It's sad they didn't shoot old Who on film from the beginning so it could be upscaled and restored today. Even 80s TNG shot all on film was able to get upgraded to HD recompositing shots and redoing effects with higher rez CGI.

With the aid of AI enhancement though they might be able now to upscale that old video and create better SFX if anyone bothers to spend the money.

Although it does need to be done carefully. I was very disappointed by the filmed outdoor scenes in the Blu-ray of Mawdryn Undead, because it looked like they had used a sharpen filter that created high contrast noise. The same scenes look better (to me) in the making of documentary, where they haven't been processed.

 

[elvis gump]

Although it does need to be done carefully. I was very disappointed by the filmed outdoor scenes in the Blu-ray of Mawdryn Undead, because it looked like they had used a sharpen filter that created high contrast noise. The same scenes look better (to me) in the making of documentary, where they haven't been processed.

I've only gotten to see DVDs of Who stuff so that was still noticeable enough. I've never bothered to look it up but I always suspected the film segments due to low budgets may have been done with 16mm rather than 35mm which would increase the grain. Then looking at a lot of stuff over time some people like to pump up grain and contrast - it's their take on things like painting their house in day-glo colors. Taste is quite variable.

One of the old jokes when I was young was that tv attracts a lot of people who have no visual or narrative sensibilities because of the money or fame and it's so true when you watch a lot of stuff. Since Capaldi and Moffat bowed out it's been painfully on display in current DW.

 

[MttElby]

I was trying to work out how the thick roundel that Nyssa pulls out in Castrovalva should be set in the wall - flush or recessed - when I noticed there are actually notches in the front of it, to make it possible to pull out. It doesn't directly answer the question, but means it could be recessed and still be possible to remove.

I haven't fully decided on its position, but felt spurred to put in the thermal regulator disc too (safely on blue ):

I was going to do the arrow too, but on close examination it's a lot more complicated a mechanism than I realized, so that will have to wait till next time.

 

[MttElby]

Now with arrow:

Still haven't solved the green splodges on the roundel cover, but at least I've done the bit that will be hidden by it and won't show in the video anyway.....

 

[MttElby]

Green splodges done. Took way too long, though...

 

[MttElby]

Briefly back to the downlighters, to make them more like real-world lights.

First in bright white:


And then in warm roundel yellow:

 

[MttElby]

Of all the bits to do in the cloister room, doing the tangles of dried grass has always been the bit I've least wanted to do, but everything else is done now, so that's all that's holding up doing the final animations.

I've tried a few different modelling approaches - all tedious and disappointing - but I thought I'd do a render to see how bad it looks.
The answer seems to be "like slimy tagliatella"

This sort of stuff also makes my computer crawl, so drawing these tendrils becomes even more tedious.

 

[elvis gump]

Of all the bits to do in the cloister room, doing the tangles of dried grass has always been the bit I've least wanted to do, but everything else is done now, so that's all that's holding up doing the final animations.

I've tried a few different modelling approaches - all tedious and disappointing - but I thought I'd do a render to see how bad it looks.
The answer seems to be "like slimy tagliatella"
View attachment 773913
This sort of stuff also makes my computer crawl, so drawing these tendrils becomes even more tedious.

I wonder for the actual set did they have someone go out and follow the groundskeeper of that BBC studio center place and come back with leaves and clippings - or did they have bins of the stuff meticulously catalogued and stored - kinda funny because a studio tends to be a place you keep meticulously sanitized and moped and so on?

Modeling and animating such randomly organic stuff will always be a nightmare - I worked on some medical animations 20+ years ago and I feel your pain. I remember being at SIGGRAPH in LA like 30 years ago and the big thing in 95 was animating a whole human head with individual strands of hair moving in the breeze though it looked more like say seagrass swaying underwater. Everyone was crowded around this booth watching the animation loop with slack mouths because it hadn't really been done up to that point.

On a long enough timeline though everything is kind of like that.

I wonder how many of the people that conceived of The Cloister Room and executed it from idea to reality to tearing it down are still even alive now?

There's stuff like that where there is a certain - "How are we going to pull THIS off with the resources we have?" to "That came out better than I thought it would!" to "Thank Bog we don't have to do THAT again!" as they tipped it into the rubbish bin.

The Doctor's line from "Logopolis" of "I've just dipped into the Future..." has a certain irony. If they could see what you're doing now some 45 years ago what would they think of it? Would it be a 'who would imagine someone in the Future would care about this?' or what?

I'm working on some TARDIS stuff this morning, wandering past the old girl as I fake a telephone and wishing it she was functional as I sit here in the shop. I'd like to drop by, pick you up and we time-travel back to late 1980 to see that set in person. "Before you go crazy taking reference pictures and using the tape measure - I just want you to stand here and look at it - where we are - and drink it in!"

No matter the setbacks and ughs - you are really already doing that as close as can be got. Don't sweat the grass strands...

 

[MttElby]

I wonder for the actual set did they have someone go out and follow the groundskeeper of that BBC studio center place and come back with leaves and clippings - or did they have bins of the stuff meticulously catalogued and stored - kinda funny because a studio tends to be a place you keep meticulously sanitized and moped and so on?

The irony has not escaped me that the bit that's taking the most time for me - all the leaves and ivy strands - was probably the quickest and easiest part of doing the cloister room for the production team. One trip to the nearest woodland and then just scatter and hang foliage randomly over the set. Tip out a bag of leaves, push them around a bit with a brush and you're done.

On the flip side, I can knock out new roundels and walls in seconds...

The Doctor's line from "Logopolis" of "I've just dipped into the Future..." has a certain irony. If they could see what you're doing now some 45 years ago what would they think of it? Would it be a 'who would imagine someone in the Future would care about this?' or what?

Given that the cloister room never put in another appearance on TV, I think anyone would be amazed that someone was trying to recreate it (in any form) decades later.

I'm working on some TARDIS stuff this morning, wandering past the old girl as I fake a telephone and wishing it she was functional as I sit here in the shop. I'd like to drop by, pick you up and we time-travel back to late 1980 to see that set in person. "Before you go crazy taking reference pictures and using the tape measure - I just want you to stand here and look at it - where we are - and drink it in!"

While I'm not at Mike Verta levels of attention to detail, if I could go back in time and get a comprehensive set of photos of the cloister room set, I would certainly have liked to place every fallen leaf in the right place on the floor in my version.

Anyway, I tweaked the materials a bit and went too green on the dying grass, but as it ended up almost looking more like a scene from Dr Who (fluorescent alien tentacles), I thought I'd post it.

Even with the lurid colours, I think it's still an improvement.

 

[elvis gump]

The irony has not escaped me that the bit that's taking the most time for me - all the leaves and ivy strands - was probably the quickest and easiest part of doing the cloister room for the production team. One trip to the nearest woodland and then just scatter and hang foliage randomly over the set. Tip out a bag of leaves, push them around a bit with a brush and you're done.

On the flip side, I can knock out new roundels and walls in seconds...

Given that the cloister room never put in another appearance on TV, I think anyone would be amazed that someone was trying to recreate it (in any form) decades later.


While I'm not at Mike Verta levels of attention to detail, if I could go back in time and get a comprehensive set of photos of the cloister room set, I would certainly have liked to place every fallen leaf in the right place on the floor in my version.

Anyway, I tweaked the materials a bit and went too green on the dying grass, but as it ended up almost looking more like a scene from Dr Who (fluorescent alien tentacles), I thought I'd post it.
View attachment 773998
Even with the lurid colours, I think it's still an improvement.

Killer alien grass! That would be a funny gag where a companion stumbled into "aggressive alien grass" that turned out not to be a serious threat, but merely a temporary annoyance. "Oh - I forgot to mention that - be careful where you trod - the grass doesn't like being trodden upon. And be quiet - the tiny grass spends most of it's day asleep dreaming!" I remember seeing some sign saying 'tiny grass is dreaming' on the net once - an Asian mistranslation probably asking English speakers not to walk on the grass I've always wanted to put into Doctor Who!
"Here on (funniest alien planet name we can think of) the local lifeforms don't necessarily think vegetarian and vegan lifeforms are all that moral. There's irony for you!"

I once for a fashion shoot had to scour LA for a source of fall leaves that an art director had given me the task of finding. I was lucky that a few blocks away in the downtown produce district area there was also a flower mart wholesaler that I picked up the phone and called and they were able to sell me a bushel or two of fake fall 'leaves' that were made of silk. They had a whole section of stuff like that that Hollywood across town relied on for such 'propping' supplies.

My relief was palpable to solve it so quick that I kinda strung Aswan my art director along bringing them up to the studio and calling him in to come and see the 'best workaround' I could come up with - pretending to be worried and he walked in and we had spread them around on the set - glorious oranges, yellows, reds and brownish rust colored which were very vivid and he burst out laughing!

Unlike the real thing nothing disintegrated into dust like real leaves might and we had a lot of fun playing with them. Despite not having so much we could rake them into a giant pile we played with them like children and everyone that saw them was amazed such a thing existed. I've lived a funny old life...

This was back in the late 1980s LA but I wonder if such a thing existed for BBC prop people back then?

 

[Volpone]

I was thinking along similar lines about the organic items and irony--back in the day they were trying to come up with a way to make Styrofoam columns and whatnot on a soundstage look more convincing and the solution was assorted vegetation. And all this time later, the way to make a digital set look more convincing is the exact opposite. Trying to add organic items is a pain in the butt while it's much easier to do something like the original control room from An Unearthly Child, with it's clean lines and geometric shapes and relatively sterile look. It's like the challenge of car restorers: If you have a car that had a know design or manufacturing flaw do you reproduce that flaw to make the car as authentic as possible or do you fix it to make the car better than it originally was?