Cushing Phone Door

[hb88banzai]

Related to the postings on the St. John Ambulance thread, here are pics of the Phone Door sign on the Cushing TARDIS.




Full image from second movie for wording, layout and font.




Top part of sign from first movie for better font identification.

I did verify with what full shots there were in the first movie that the fonts, layout and spacing appear to be identical between the two films.  

Was not able to verify the color of the type (the first film is the only one with any closeups and as you can see above the stage lighting was pretty overbearing), but based on stills on the DVD sleeves I think it likely that they were a dark blue on a white background.

A couple times it looked like a bit of glare was coming off the sign so it is possible it was glass covered, but not sure as I would expect more reflections than we got.  What shadows there are in the above pictures sure make it look like there is a gap for glass though.

Note that the sign frame was painted blue.

The Phone Door handle was dark, so it either had a patina on it or it was also painted (dull gray-black or blue).  From what I can make out of the color, however, it was most likely an antique brass/bronze patina.

Could not tell if it was a two-screw or a four-screw handle, but the larger main door handle was definitely a forged-type four-screw with all the screws in a vertical line.

[handofomega]

Ah, was the Cushing phone door permanently mounted in the closed position, OR was it transendental engineering???   From the inside the phone door would always look closed, but from the outside, you open the phone door to find a phone hiding in an extra-dimensional space.   I mean if you can fit something that big inside a Police Box then a little cubby hole shouldn't prove to be THAT much of a problem.   

[armadillozenith]

Did the Cushing phone door ever get opened?
Could you see the Cushing phone in interior views, as with Eccleston's TARDIS?
Was the inside of the Eccleston doors copied from the Cushing doors as a tribute (embracing the films as canon? :-)!)

How weird would this all sound to anyone coming upon this site by chance!

Did Cushing's Doctor ever EXPLAIN why his machine looked like a police box? (A human scientist is somehow so brilliant he discovers how to travel in time... and through space... and how to fit a bigger inside into a smaller outside... and decides to keep it all secret... in the disguise of a police telephone box? Analyse that...)

[Rassilons Rod]

How weird would this all sound to anyone coming upon this site by chance!

Did Cushing's Doctor ever EXPLAIN why his machine looked like a police box? (A human scientist is somehow so brilliant he discovers how to travel in time... and through space... and how to fit a bigger inside into a smaller outside... and decides to keep it all secret... in the disguise of a police telephone box? Analyse that...)

To quote Doc Brown from Back to the Future...

"Well I figured... If you're gonna build a time machine [into a car] then why not do it with style..."

[hb88banzai]

Did the Cushing phone door ever get opened?
Could you see the Cushing phone in interior views, as with Eccleston's TARDIS?

No, the Cushing Phone Door seemed to be permanently mounted in a closed position - you can see the additional moulding to mount it on the insides of the doors in close-up shots as the prop's doors were also used for the TARDIS interior shots with the doors hung on a special frame.  And no, unfortunately it didn't have a phone, either.

Here is a shot of the inner doors from the second movie:



Note that the first movie's doors were identical, save they were painted the same blue as the exterior rather than white.