Category Archives: Doctor Who

Sonic Screwdriver News

Posted on May 31, 2008 by jtokash| Leave a comment

MFXReplicas is planning to introduce their Sonic Screwdriver replica at the San Diego ComiCon in July.

Also, today’s episode featured a new type of Sonic Screwdriver:

Laser Etching at TechShop

Posted on April 5, 2008 by jtokash| 4 Comments

I Laser Etched Daleks and Patapons into a Moleskine notebook for my daughter last night. Epilog 45 W Laser (raster, p25, s50) at TechShop.

Here’s a photo!

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Posted in Doctor Who, Homestead, Make

Torchwood Trailers (Doctor Who Spinoff)

Posted on October 8, 2006 by jtokash| Leave a comment

Update: Warren Ellis, on his Bad Signal mailing list, agrees that the trailers left something to be desired: “… although TORCHWOOD’s trailer was horrible, I put that down to BBC3 not knowing how to make a decent trailer.”

Nothing earth-shattering in these clips, but I’m still excited to see what Torchwood has to offer.

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Posted in Doctor Who

Torchwood – the new Doctor Who spinoff starts in October. Right?

Posted on September 30, 2006 by jtokash| Leave a comment

Apparently, DigitalSpy thinks the air date is 10/22/06. Let’s hope so!

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Posted in Doctor Who

Dalek ID Tags in seasons 27 and 28 of Doctor Who (the ‘new’ series)

Posted on July 9, 2006 by jtokash| 7 Comments

EDIT: The Cult of Skaro Daleks are named Sec, Thay, Caan and Jast on screen. In print, they are named Sec, Thay, Caan and Rabe. Sorry for the confusion. Relevant Wikipedia reference here.

I went through and documented the id tags of the various Daleks in the Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant episodes. Note that there were several shots in Parting of the Ways that seem to have been flipped (as in a mirror), so I’m not sure that these are the correct orientations. Also, note that the spellings of the names of the units in the Cult of Skaro in the Doomsday episode are guesses.

Update: I created some simple png icons loosely based on the Dalek ID tags.

Update: Better shot of the emperor’s id:

Update: ID Tag from Rosco, a home-built Dalek by Mike Bull (from the project dalek forum) :

Update: Glen F sent me corrected spellings for the Daleks from the Cult of Skaro: “The cult is made up of Dalek CAAN, Dalek RABE, Dalek SEC & Dalek THAY”. Thanks Glen!

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Posted in Doctor Who

Doctor Who: Doomsday

Posted on July 8, 2006 by jtokash| 1 Comment

The finale of the second season of the new series was excellent.

At first I didn’t like the humor of the Cult of Skaro Daleks, but I’m with it now. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the new-this-season Cybermen battle cry of “DELETE”, though.

Here are some thoughts that are nagging me (beware spoilers):

The Cybermen created in ‘this’ universe may still be around because they may not have void dust on them. However, it is possible that the metal and augmentations used to create them could be from the alternate universe, so I’ll take it either way.
If there is a Torchwood in the alternate universe, then there must be a Doctor in the other universe. Torchwood is created as a result of his involvment, right? Would be interesting to see a spinoff episode or two where the alternate-universe-meddling-timelord meets up with Rose.
Is the new series Torchwood in this universe? I hope the Doctor visits.
With this effects budget, when are we going to get a tour of the TARDIS?
The icon/badge/designation that the Daleks wear under their eyestalks: they are new with the Christopher Eccleston season, right? In Doomsday I noticed that two of them differed. Also, the casings of the Cult of Skaro Daleks were not uniform. Really cool.

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Posted in Doctor Who

SketchUp is Free!

Posted on April 27, 2006 by jtokash| Leave a comment

YES!

Google just announced that they are releasing a limited version of SketchUp for free! Meanwhile, you can visit the 3D Warehouse to find everyone else’s (geographically-tagged) creations.

SketchUp is really easy to use. I suggest watching a few of the videos to get started and then dive right in. I made a Sonic Screwdriver 3D model in a few hours last month.

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Posted in Doctor Who, Google

SketchUp (now a Google company)

Posted on March 16, 2006 by jtokash| 1 Comment

I played with Google’s new property, SketchUp, tonight. After watching a couple of the videos, it’s easy to use. I hope they release a free version. [More on SketchUp over at Make.]

Anyway, I grabbed an image of the Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver (the Eccleston version) from Henriks, imported it as a texture and then reshaped a rectangle to fit its outline. Then I used the follow tool to wrap that outline around a circle, made a few adjustments and put some color on it. I’m pretty happy with it! The SketchUp file is here. Now where did I put that 3D printer…..

Render from SketchUp:

Henriks image:

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Posted in Doctor Who, Google

Bruce Schneier is reading “How to Survive a Robot Uprising”

Posted on January 24, 2006 by jtokash| Leave a comment

At least two of my coworkers own this book already. It’s a funny look at the techniques used in hundreds of scifi movies. Good stuff. That’s not why I’m posting about it, though. I skimmed Bruce’s comment section and found a reference to the Daleks in Doctor Who. No context, no explanation. Very few people(in the US) are going to get it – which makes the comment even more funny to me.

“Run up a flight of stairs. Oh, hang on…”

I’ll leave it to Wikipedia to fill you in:

Due to their gliding motion Daleks were notoriously unable to tackle stairs, which made them easy to overcome under the right circumstances. An oft-copied cartoon from Punch pictured a group of Daleks at the foot of a flight of stairs with the caption, “This certainly buggers our plan to conquer the Universe”. In a scene from the serial Destiny of the Daleks, the Doctor and companions escape from Dalek pursuers by climbing into a ceiling duct. The Doctor (Tom Baker) calls down, “If you’re supposed to be the superior race of the universe, why don’t you try climbing after us? Bye bye!” The Daleks generally make up for their lack of mobility with overwhelming firepower. A joke around science fiction conventions went, “Real Daleks don’t climb stairs; they level the building.”

In The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964) a Dalek emerges from the waters of the River Thames, indicating that they are amphibious to a degree. Remembrance of the Daleks (1988) showed that they can hover using a sort of limited antigravity — first implied in earlier serials such as The Chase (1965) and Revelation of the Daleks (1985) — but their awkward forms still limit their mobility in tight quarters. Despite this, the Daleks’ supposed inability to climb stairs is still frequently referred to for humorous effect by journalists covering the series.

The 2005 series episodes Dalek and The Parting of the Ways featured Daleks hovering and flying, the latter also showing them flying through the vacuum of space. In the Dalek episode, the Dalek said “Elevate” before hovering, in the same way it would say “Exterminate” before exterminating.

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Posted in Books, Doctor Who