Differences between the season 15 and 18 wall panels

[Teletran]

It's not something that is often remarked upon but but the structure of the console room changed significantly during this period.

Here are some shots of the room in it's season 15 arrangement:



and the season 18 arrangement here:



As you can see the walls from seasons 15-17 featured two staggered (sixty degree) panels of three and a quarter roundels joined by an angled bracket. These were later replaced with two panels of three roundels each joined to a smaller panel with two rows of non-staggered roundels with a small pillar on either side.

[rocket]

I never noticed that before, but when I look at the pictures together I have to wonder why. It's pretty bloody obvious...

[DoctorWho8]

They built new walls (but the same doors repainted) for Season 18.  For Season 19, they made a new door wall.  You can tell because of the additional roundels and the protruding door mechanisms for the tops and bottoms of the doors were removed when the new door wall was made.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[galacticprobe]

I never noticed that before, but when I look at the pictures together I have to wonder why. It's pretty bloody obvious...

It's that Architectural Configuration circuit. You know how it "drifts" and moves rooms and things about, which is one reason why the Doctor sometimes has trouble finding his way through the TARDIS every so often. Remember his difficulties navigating his way round in "The Invasion of Time", or how the library ended up in the pool in "The Eleventh Hour"? (Well... OK... so it was really on the fritz for that one!).

Dino.

[Teletran]

The internal door definitely changed at some point although that may have happened sooner than the walls.



I think the scanner may also have drop from a two shutter arrangement to just the one between logopolis and castrovalva because I remember watching them in order and thinking, 'hang on they were only gone ten minutes?' I may be wrong about that though.

[Teletran]

I was just checking to see if I had any shots of the pre/post season 19 scanner and I found this

Apparently the season 15 walls and the pillar from Romana's room were reused as Omega's Tardis in Arc of Infinity

[Teletran]

Rewatched Logopolis and Castrovalva. Changes include the scanner modifications the push bar added to the door (see middle and lower images above) and the well known addition of the tardis databank screen on the console. I think several new wall sections were built for the corridor scenes in these stories in addition to those recycled from previous console rooms, at least one is missing a half roundel at the bottom.

[Elvis Gump]

Are these wall panels the wooden ones from the wooden control room from 1976 MKII console room just painted white?



It is reported that the the set warped in storage was tossed, but not what pieces warped or what was disposed of seems to be an open question.

To me it looks like some of the wood console room could have had their 'fluted' columns salvaged and painted white and appear as the larger 'fluted' columns that appear in the subsequent seasons of the white painted console room sets.

EDIT: The reason I ask is I was reading this thread on the season 1976 console room here:
http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=1103.0

[Rassilons Rod]

Thats the generally accepted theory

I think hey painted the panels grey at some point - Logopolis? Also they painted the roundels yellow. By the time of Attack of the Cybermen.

-Marc

[Teletran]

In Doctor Who: The Seventies it is implied that the columns are new, and they do look larger in the new set but it's difficult to be sure

Designer Barry Newbery, who had created the TARDIS's secondary control room introduced in season fourteen's The Masque of Mandragora, found himself having to come up with yet another TARDIS interior for The Invisible Enemy.
"The new producer, Graham Williams, wanted to go back to the traditional white-walled control room. The old console was dug out of stock and refur¬bished by Visual Effects, so I had only to provide the main structure of the set itself. I aimed to make a modified set which was simple to assemble and as flexible as possible. I decided to use slatted columns constructed to go in the corners. The slats were vertical strips of wood, about two inches square, with spaces in between so that the ends of the wall flats just slotted in between them. Depend¬ing on which particular slots were used, the walls could be arranged with one another at virtually any angle. They could be moved round the column like the hands of a clock. That's where the flexibility came in. For the scanner screen, I retained the ar¬rangement of a CSO cloth behind a pair of me-chanically-operated shutters.'

[galacticprobe]

Now that's architectural configuration for you: change the shape of a room as needed. So that's how the circuit worked, and explains why the console room looked like it was shaped differently in some stories than in others: walls shifted to accommodate other elements of the sets. And it's brilliant in its simplicity.

It's something I never would have thought of. Outstanding research, Teletran!

Dino.

[Elvis Gump]

Thats the generally accepted theory

I think hey painted the panels grey at some point - Logopolis? Also they painted the roundels yellow. By the time of Attack of the Cybermen.

-Marc

It makes me wonder a bit if the 'wooden' walls were stained plywood with wooden roundrels, of if the whole thing was painted to look like wood?

I actually like the weirdness they did with the roundrels in the new 2010 TARDIS, but I'd like to see something between the white roundrels and those stained glass ones again too. It would be so very nice to bring back some of these looks if they show more of the 2011 and onward interior. I remember I think it was Turlough who pulled off one of the roundrels to tinker and sabotage behind it and I'd love to see them do that again, abet with more plausible looking techy stuff behind them. Heck a really crazy mess of wires that Tennant from time to time soniced would work too.

Still I'd love to see the current Doctor and Amy visit the old control room.

But I'd love it if they ever had the budget to do something like this

Love those virtual controls. There's one I saw on YouTube but can't find where walls slid open and there was a gargantuan library with several levels at least as big as the Library set that was that practical location in "Silence in the Library."

If they do a TARDIS library though I want it to look a lot like the old wooden control room. The TARDIS could use a little techno-relief with one good old wooden room...

[Rassilons Rod]

Ah! I bet that first internal door was from the Season 14 console room

(obviously repainted and with a plain roundel shoved in).

[warmcanofcoke]

Arc of Infinity.

If I see this correctly it looks like they used the 15" roundels for Nyssa and Tegan's room. 

[galacticprobe]

It also looks like the painted grey roundels are mounted on the front of the wall, whereas the translucent fiberglass roundels are mounted in recesses, or behind the wall panels. It should also be (somewhat) easy to extrapolate the roundels' size by using the door as a reference. If that's a standard 84-inch tall door, then someone with a better brain cell than what I'm running on now should be able to figure out the roundels' diameter by using that as a rule(r).

The door handle might also be a good ruler for figuring out roundel diameter as I think somewhere on here are the exact measurements of that handle.

Dino.