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Post by Paul McDermott on Dec 19, 2014 8:24:45 GMT
Don't mock the Shower cubicle reactor it was the latest in British engineering  I'm sure it was the best they could manage - budget cuts and all! And that little fireproof sock on the professor's head looked very sturdy as he was mending it! But the Bristol Boys got better with the atomic malarkey by the time we said farewell to Sarah Jane - now the reactor was a big meat locker freezer door kind of affair!  Mind you, the strafing run - 'nuff said!  |
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Post by johnbarbour on Dec 19, 2014 14:24:46 GMT
Don't mock the Shower cubicle reactor it was the latest in British engineering I'm sure it was the best they could manage - budget cuts and all! And that little fireproof sock on the professor's head looked very sturdy as he was mending it! But the Bristol Boys got better with the atomic malarkey by the time we said farewell to Sarah Jane - now the reactor was a big meat locker freezer door kind of affair! Mind you, the strafing run - 'nuff said! I think the shower cubicle was superior to the meat locker (perhaps we should run a poll  ) which was typical of some of the Baker era with square/rectangular grey rooms holding (usually) a couple of 70's style computer consoles... The vastly more expensive US Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea had the Seaview that looked superb on the outside but beyond the nose section appeared to consist of big box-shaped rooms more akin to buildings on land than a sleek underwater craft so don't anyone tell me that Dr Who sets showed their price tag (many were very inventive - burying the Axon craft was clever!). |
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Post by Patrick Coles on Dec 19, 2014 16:30:27 GMT
I seem to recall in addition to the control room (which got much bigger in the colour seasons) & nose area the Seaview's missile room which also housed the mini sub and diving bell was a pretty expensive looking set as well, and they had a galley, the flying sub, plus the divers room with a hatch (which various fishmen used to climb aboard the sub after the show went into colour and the scripts got more predictable by Irwin Allen's cheaper staff writers....)
Dr.Who did have some decent sets too despite a much smaller budget - the submarine control room set in 'The Sea Devils' is very good
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Post by Tony Ingram on Dec 19, 2014 16:39:42 GMT
Mind of Evil, definitely one of Delgado's better outings. Most of this season is a little too "cosy" for my liking, I think.
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Post by Paul McDermott on Dec 20, 2014 9:17:13 GMT
I'm sure it was the best they could manage - budget cuts and all! And that little fireproof sock on the professor's head looked very sturdy as he was mending it! But the Bristol Boys got better with the atomic malarkey by the time we said farewell to Sarah Jane - now the reactor was a big meat locker freezer door kind of affair! Mind you, the strafing run - 'nuff said! I think the shower cubicle was superior to the meat locker (perhaps we should run a poll ) which was typical of some of the Baker era with square/rectangular grey rooms holding (usually) a couple of 70's style computer consoles... The vastly more expensive US Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea had the Seaview that looked superb on the outside but beyond the nose section appeared to consist of big box-shaped rooms more akin to buildings on land than a sleek underwater craft so don't anyone tell me that Dr Who sets showed their price tag (many were very inventive - burying the Axon craft was clever!). Between talented designers and model makers, set builders, costumiers, and clever folks figuring out how the flippin' heck to realise the unrealisable on telly every week, with still change left over for the meter, I'd think if ever a real working TARDIS were possible, the Doctor Who production office would have built one. Probably out of Jablite, bailing wire, and assorted odds and sods. I've never understood the notion in some circles that "Doctor Who is better when the visuals/sets are rubbish". I think that's insulting crazy talk, often spoken by people who never really watched or understood it.  In the old days, yep - a simple solution was the correct one. Why blow a season's budget on one shot? That's no way to make telly, let alone one as ambitious and experimental as Doctor Who was. Only the Beeb would have been mad enough to try making the show we got, and thank the heavens they did. If Verity et al had approached it as a sort of "my way or the highway" with regard to visuals, we mightn't have even got a restaged pilot. (But thank goodness they got out of Lime Grove! To be suffocated in there, making impossible dreams every week, must have been maddening.)  And that approach held the series in good stead for ages, even now there's a little more in the kitty and better tools than ever before to push to their very limits. Sometimes, excellent model work was the way. Scaroth's spaceship springs to mind as a 70s example, but there's plenty of others from the previous and following decade too. Shada - cancelled thought it was - had inherent cleverness. An invisible spaceship in a public place! Tell me Harve Bennett, Leonard Nimoy et al hadn't thought the same thing when they parked the Klingon Bird Of Prey in Central Park for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home? (Like the saucer under the ice challenge faced by the makers of The Thing From Another World before them!) The appropriate solution isn't always to throw a lot of money, or to give up, or to just do something naff. Every technique, every hue on the palette of options, is worth having, applying. (Well, okay maybe not wobbling Mirrorlon at the camera as in The Mutants, but you get my point I hope!) Doctor Who is a show about a remarkable alien who faces impossible challenges and solves them with his keen mind and in so doing, makes the world better off. Life imitating art at the BBC!  |
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Post by johnbarbour on Dec 20, 2014 15:19:08 GMT
Daemons is catching up - perhaps The Master has conjured up a barrier around the website and is keeping out the plastic dummy voters? Mind of Evil is doing Good now and those golden era Axons are clawing their way back into a respectable position. Colony is left in its own Space. Apologies to anyone who bothers with this but I've just started Christmas leave...
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Mind you, the strafing run - 'nuff said! 
) which was typical of some of the Baker era with square/rectangular grey rooms holding (usually) a couple of 70's style computer consoles... The vastly more expensive US Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea had the Seaview that looked superb on the outside but beyond the nose section appeared to consist of big box-shaped rooms more akin to buildings on land than a sleek underwater craft so don't anyone tell me that Dr Who sets showed their price tag (many were very inventive - burying the Axon craft was clever!). 
