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At this point it is helpful to name the various elements of Brachaki's Tardis set. Wherever possible the terms used will be those used on the BBC's plans (where these are known). Where terminology is not known, I will try to use terms which 'best fit' what is being described.
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So, to paraphrase Huxley, what is actually known about each element of Brachaki's Tardis interior and what do we need to work out? And, in Tom Bakers words, since "we've got to be able to get in and out", what better place to start than with the main doors?
THE MAIN DOORS AND ENTRANCE WALL:
The PDF material from "The Rescue" obviously is little more than a sketch for the scenery shifters to 'pick' the required elements of the Tardis set from storage. Nevertheless it provides us with a starting point, stating as it does that the Tardis' main doors wall was 13' 5" wide and 10' 6" tall.
As part of the discussions regarding the Tardis' main doors and roundel diameters (see www.tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=1035.msg43647#msgx43647), this small section of the BBC's set plan was posted:
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From the BBC plans, Rob then gave us this drawing:
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(The measurements in red have been added by me as, from now on, all dimensions will be stated in inches.)
There are two problems with these drawings - firstly, the arrangement/spacing of the full-roundels above and to the sides of the door frame and, secondly, the the dimensions of the 'half'-roundels. Rob's drawing shows a wide gap between the roundels above and in each of the doors and fails to show the off-set in the actual widths of the doors themselves. This screen grab shows the differences - the green lines highlight the vertical spacings between the roundels whilst the blue lines show the horizontal spacings:
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There are major discrepancies between what was planned and what was actually constructed - the positioning of the 'full' roundels is clearly different. Less obvious are the differences in the positioning and dimensions of the 'half' roundels; in the drawing they are shown as being full semi-circles (there is a clearance of 1" between the full roundels and the base of the wall). In reality however, this one inch spacing did not exist as the 'full' roundels clearly 'sit' on the wall's base. These are from "Colony in Space" and illustrate this point:
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For the 'half' roundels to have been 'full' semi-circles, they would have to extend below the level of the bottom of the 'full' roundels - the yellow lines show that they did not.
This render (from Pete Wilson) clearly illustrates the true arrangement of the roundels:
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So, if the BBC's plans are so inaccurate with regards to the spacings/positioning of the roundels, how can we trust the other measurements stated in them?
At this point, the 'perspective line' methodology is useful. In this 'screen grab' from "The Time Monster" we see the Police Box prop standing directly in front of the Tardis' main doors:
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Though modified with the addition of the somewhat strange saucer-shaped mouldings, these are the original Tardis' main doors. We know that the original Brachaki Police Box prop had been heavily modified by this point in time - see www.tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=4489.12 - acquiring as it had, a new base, a simplified roof and reinforcing strips on the bottom edges of each side panel. These modifications meant that by 1972 when "The Time Monster" was recorded the Police Box prop looked like this:
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and in more detail
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Because the dimensions of the Police box prop are known, it is possible to establish the height of the Tardis' main doors
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This grab is helpful in that it shows a split has developed in the wall above the doors. We can also see that the 'drum' or roundel 'tube' has become separated from the wall showing the thin nature of the material from which the roundel tubes were made:
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A close study of the photo from "The Time Monster" shows that the Police Box's base (shown in red) is fractionally taller than the base of the 'half' roundel (shown in yellow). The Police Box's base at this stage was 4.5", so the base of the half roundel is approximately 4.25" higher than the studio floor. From the studio floor to the underside of the three-tiered stepped section on the side of the Police Box prop is 83" (shown in red) and we can see that the top of the Tardis' main doors are slightly over an inch higher than this (in yellow).
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In this screen grab from "Death to the Daleks", we can see the ratio of the diameter of the main doors' roundels to the vertical spaces in between them.
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From "The Time Monster" screen grabs the Tardis main doors are just over 84"
BUT, 3" of this height needs to be taken out of our calculations to allow for the castors/wainscoting. So, the 'available' height in which the roundels and the vertical spaces between them
must fit is a little over 81". 81" divided by three is 27" - this precisely matches the vertical distance stated on the BBC plans drawn by Rob.
From "the Death to the Daleks" photo, the ratio of the gap to the roundel is 30:400. 30 divided by 400 x 27" = 2.025". Thus, the diameter of the roundel is 25 inches and the vertical space between each roundel is 2 inches.
Together with the thin nature of the roundel 'tubes', this means that the arrangement of the roundels with regards to the wall's base looks like this:
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The arrangement of the roundels at the top of the wall is a 'mirror' image of that at the wall's bottom edge:
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This arrangement is even clearer in this publicity still:
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The spacing of the roundels' columns together with the fact that the 'half' roundels were not full semi-circles means that the Tardis' main doors
as built looked like this:
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As built, at 161" wide, the main doors' wall matches exactly the width stated on the BBC's plans (13' 5"). At 125" tall (including castors),
as built, the height of the wall is only one inch shorter than
was planned (12' 5" v 12' 6").
THE THREE DIMENSIONAL WALLS:
Again referring to the PDF material from "The Rescue" DVD, the approximate dimensions of the other three dimensional (3D) walls are given as 126" tall by 148" wide:
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Clearly, by reference to photographic evidence, there is no difference in height between the 3D walls and the wall containing the main doors (the apparent discrepancy in the heights of the walls seen in the publicity photo of Jean Marsh is due to the right-hand wall having lost its castors). Again, the 3D walls
as built are 125" tall and not 126" as stated in the BBC's plans and, again, this discrepancy is due to the 'half' roundels not being full semi-circles.
Whereas not all columns of roundels on the main door wall overlap, clearly the same was not true of the other two 3D walls - each column of roundels overlaps the next.
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The BBC plans for the 3D walls give their widths as 148". For six columns of 25" diameter roundels to fit this space (allowing for 1" at each end of the walls for the metal frame and a further 1/2" for the end panels), mathematically, the overlap cannot exceed one inch i.e., each column of roundels is centred 24" apart. A distance of 24" from roundel centre to roundel centre also matches the positioning of the outer-most roundels either side of the main entrance doors. Taking these factors together means that the dimensions of the 3D walls are as this drawing:
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No description of the Tardis' walls would be complete without mention of the mouldings with which the roundel openings were backed:
Made from a thin translucent pale grey/off-white PVc, the roundel mouldings could be back-lit to create a wide variety atmospheric effects and to suggest alien landscapes outside the Tardis. This can perhaps be best seen when Susan is sent by the Daleks to retrieve the anti-radiation drugs from the Tardis; lightning illuminates both the petrified forest and the Control Room interior.
Clearly the rear of the Tardis' walls were not designed to be seen by the camera. The Tardis' main doors are the exception to this and so were finished to the same (viewable) standards on both sides. These grabs illustrate this point:
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Whilst, for reasons of economy, it is unlikely that the wall-mounted PVc mouldings would have been fitted with anything more complicated than tacks or staples, those fitted to the rear of the doors were properly 'finished' with a collar or bezel. This bezel not only conceals the fixings but can be used to determine the maximum diameter of the mouldings (i.e., the mouldings meet but do not overlap - so, the diameter is 27" i.e., the same as the roundels' vertical spacing). This drawing gives the dimensions of the PVc mouldings and the bezels fitted to the rear of the Tardis' main doors:
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THE PHOTO BLOW-UP WALL PANELS:
It is popularly held that the budget for the Tardis interior was small. However, at a reputed cost of £3,000, when Donald Baverstock (then Controller of Programmes for BBC1) heard about this, he ordered a stop to further production of Doctor Who and was only persuaded to allow the show to continue when this cost was met from separate funds and spread over the entire first season. In the autumn of 1963, £3,000 was clearly not to be sneezed at and - in today's money (depending on how inflation is calculated) - is the equivalent of £120,000 to £150,000 . This is certainly not a 'tiny' sum and, indeed, is comparable to the cost of the current (2013) Tardis set.
Nevertheless, even with £3,000 at his disposal, Peter Brachaki had to make compromises - the most obvious of which are the photographic blow-up walls which were placed between the 3D wall and the Computer Banks/Fault Locator wall at the rear of the Tardis set.
In "The Pilot Episode" these photographic walls took the form of two enlarged photographs which were printed on canvas sheets and joined together. These enlarged canvas 'curtains' were then simply hung from rails in the studio's ceiling resulting in an uneven/wrinkled appearance. The join in these 'curtains' was apparent by the slight mismatch in the roundels (though, because the join was behind the lighting column, it can really only be briefly seen).
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Interestingly, for "The Pilot Episode", whatever was photographed to form the blow-up curtains seems to have been photographed broadly 'centre on' - these grabs show that the more of the roundel recess was visible to either side of the photo:
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Clearly, whatever was photographed, the roundels have a chamfered edge. For the visible chamfer to increase towards either side of the picture, then the picture must have been taken broadly at the centre-point of the object being photographed. This drawing illustrates this point:
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Rather than simply re-using the existing 'curtains', the remounted versions used for "An Unearthly Child" onwards appear to have used repeated versions of the left-hand curtain only - the visible wide side of the roundels now being solely on the left of the photographic panels. In these screen grabs the photo blow-up panel nearest the Tardis' main doors is numbered '1', the middle is number '2' and the third panel is nearest the Fault Locator:
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This render by Thomas Doran shows how much wider the left-hand side of each roundel becomes the further to the left of the picture the roundel is situated:
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Though the 'original' curtains actually gave a truer image
perspective wise, they were let down by not being properly mounted. The unsatisfactory quality that simply hanging these 'curtains' produced in "The Pilot Episode" was to be -
partially - corrected for "An Unearthly Child". This BBC drawing shows that the intention was to re-mount the canvas photo blow-ups on plywood panels and then to cut holes through the panels and then to fix vacuum-formed mouldings to the rear of the panel - a kind of 'half-way house' between the 3D walls and a purely photographic wall.
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In the event, costs again seem to have prevented this and the left hand side of the photo blow-up 'curtains' were simply reproduced and re-mounted (in the same way an oil painting would be) on three equal-sized frames or "stretchers" - each frame measuring 12 feet high by 10 feet wide. Whereas the plans show the intention was to conceal the panel joins with round strips, in actual fact the joins were hidden behind simple 'D'-shaped 6" wide timber strips painted in the familiar TX40/Silvan Green (as seen in the photo from Patrick Troughton's debut):
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These pictures show the thin, simple, construction of the panels and that they could be overlapped when necessary.
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Here Tom's renders have been reproduced to show the three photo blow-up panels as they were assembled (in full) for "Edge of Destruction" and "Brink of Disaster" (panel 1 is on the left, 2 is the middle and 3 is on the right):
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THE DIVIDING SCREENS/PARTITIONS AND DOORS TO THE LIVING QUARTERS:
The flexible nature of Peter Brachaki's Tardis set is, perhaps, best demonstrated by the use of the dividing screens/partitions: The dimensions of these screens are stated in the plans from "The Rescue DVD".
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Perhaps inspired by the sound-proofing partitions used in sound recording studios, the main use of these screens was to separate the Computer Banks/Fault Locator Wall from the main part of the Tardis Control Room - when the time machine's crew are seen behind these partitions, the distinct hum of the computers can be heard.
The first time these screens appear elsewhere in the Tardis set is in establishing scenes of the first Dalek story - "The Dead Planet" when Ian and Barbara are introduced to he delights of 'salty' bacon from the food machine. In this scene, both the food machine and screens have suddenly appeared in the middle of the Control Room. Only a few weeks later, the screens (and food machine) have miraculously moved to the Living Quarters!
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This photo is interesting in that it affords us the opportunity to study the partitions in detail. Whereas the sketch from "The Rescue" DVD gives us the overall dimensions, it doesn't give any details as to the construction of these partitions.
From the photo, it can be seen that there were at three least types of screen. Or, more accurately, that the screens were 'fitted-out' in three different ways - several partitions were made with clear (or at least only slightly tinted transparent Persex panels), others were fitted with translucent panels whilst at least one was fitted with a simple curtain (and therefore a curtain track)!
The second thing to notice is that the partitions were joined together at the top and bottom of each frame. Stability would be gained by joining the different sections at angles and the simplest way would be to use hinges.
Thirdly, "The Rescue" drawing doesn't make it clear that the partitions were each made up of two identical metal frames (1" square section) between which was 'sandwiched' the Persex sheet. The first drawing shows the dividing screen compared to the 3D wall (the rear of which can be seen in the Living Quarters) whilst the second shows the construction of the partitions in
exploded form:
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As can be seen in the last drawing, the colour of the frame has been presented as a metallic finish. In all probability however, the metal frames would have been painted to match the rest of the set i.e., in TX40/Silvan Green. The colour of the Perspex sheet, too, is for illustrative purposes only. Though the colour of the Perspex sheets used is not positively known, we can at least say what colours
were not used:
According to the British Plastics Federation (www.bpf.co.uk/plastipedia/default.aspx), in the 1950s and 1960s five manufacturers dominated the plastics market not least of whom were Rohm and Haas. In the mid-fifties, they invented a plastics colour numbering system which rapidly became the industry's de facto standard numbering system and is still in use today - a four digit number whereby the first two digits represent the colour and the last two represent the shade. These colour cards give the Rohm/Haas number and also show which colours were/are available in transparent, translucent and opaque finishes. It is highly likely that Peter Brachaki, along with other television designers, would have been aware of this numbering system.
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It can be seen that transparent Perspex sheets were (and are) only available in a limited number of colours - principally limited to shades of green, grey and blue. Other colours are either translucent or fully opaque. So, whilst the colours of the Perspex screens - and as we'll see later -
the colour of the Perspex fronts of the lighting columns aren't known, we can at least state what they were likely to have been i.e., Rohm/Haas numbers 2069, 2082, 2092, 2094, 2404, 2514, 2515, 2537, 2538 and 2540.
The dimensions of the Perspex partition screens are useful to us in establishing the measurements of the doors to the living quarters. (Again, the modular nature of the Tardis set also helps.)
The doors to the living quarters first appear in Dr. Who's second transmitted episode - "The Cave of Sculls". This element of the Tardis' interior consisted of a pair of double doors (each door being fitted with four roundels) hung inside a curved-sided recess, the lintel of which could be illuminated:
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The rear of the doors' roundels were smaller in diameter than the ones on the front:
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The difference in roundel diameters concealed by the fitting of a roundel collar or bezel on the Control Room side of the doors.
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These bezels appear to have been painted a slightly different colour to the rest of the doors and, from these (later) screen grabs, appear to have been made separately from the translucent 'membranes'. In this picture seven of these bezels have been removed.
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Whilst in this (from "The Chase"), the bezels have been removed altogether:
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The bezel details and profile construction of the doors are drawn here:
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It is possible to begin to establish the dimensions of the living quarter doors; in this first picture, it can be seen that the combined width of the two doors is the same as the width of the partition screen - so, 48"wide.
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The picture of the Living Quarters shows that the heights of the screens and the height of the section containing the doors are the same - so, 120".
From this snap from "The Dead Planet", we can judge the height of the living quarter doors compared to the Tardis' main doors - so, there is a difference of approximately three inches between them. The living quarters doors are therefore approximately 81" tall.
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Here, this picture is reproduced at 5 pixels per inch.
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Taking the width of each door as 24" (120 pixels), it is possible to determine the widths of the curved recesses and the diameter of the roundels. Allowing for picture distortion this makes the curved section approximately 9" wide and the roundel diameter 14".
These grabs enable the positioning of the roundels to be established showing, as they do, the relationship between the heights of the lowest cross-rail on the Perspex screen and the positioning of the roundels in the living quarter doors:
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The top of the dividing screen's cross-rail is 12" from the floor; allowing for the doors being recessed, the position of the lowest door roundel can be judged against this height:
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These drawings give the dimensions of the living quarter doors as calculated by comparing the various elements of the Tardis set:
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THE SCANNER/DOWN-LIGHTER ASSEMBLY AND COMPUTERS BANKS:
Occupying the rear part of the Tardis interior is the scanner/down-lighter assembly, behind which - separated from the main section of the control room by Perspex dividing screens - stand the computer banks/fault locator.
Here seen assembled to its fullest extent, this screen grab offers a good view of the principal elements of this part of Brachaki's design:
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Five curved faces surmount five square boxes each containing a circular down-lighter. The central down-lighter section contains the scanner behind which is a metal frame mounted on castors. To either side of this wheeled frame are two pairs of transparent dividing screens/partitions on each of which are fixed two columns of fluorescent lighting tubes. Each column is made up of eight fluorescent tubes.
As described in the introductory section, the entire scanner down-lighter assembly was modular and could be split into three sections which could be used either separately or together. In this photo only the central scanner and right-hand double screen elements have been used - note the distinct split between the down-lighter boxes behind the microphone and the joining bolts above and to the left of the scanner.
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In the Pilot Episode, the scanner is contained in a much simpler housing than is seen in the transmitted version. This screen grab shows the exposed supporting wires:
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Whilst in the transmitted version, the wires were hidden inside a slightly wider box:
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Every time the Brachaki Tardis Scanner is televised, it is seen with the wheeled frame. It seems sensible to suggest that the wheeled metal frame is an integral part of the scanner's means of support allowing, as it would, manoeuvrability. The fact that it could be separated from the rest of the down-lighter assembly supports this hypothesis.
Two factors should be considered - the weight of the television set and the fact that the wheeled frame is hollow and always appears with the rear down-lighter fitted. 1960s' TVs were heavy; some form of counter-balance would be needed to stabilise the structure. This counter-weight isn't visible and so
must be located above or inside of the rear down-lighter.
In order to visually 'tie' the wheeled frame to the Perspex partitions/dividing screens additional cross-rails were fitted at a height of 12" from the bottom of the wheeled frame and additional Perspex panels and frames were fitted to each side. The following pictures show the scanner's supporting structure in more detail:
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