Doctor Who Exhibitions in Scotland
Replicas
The Tardis Console
In early 1999, I and several friends were extremely impressed by the contents of an article in DWM about amateur Doctor Who videos. This article contained photos of two fan-made consoles. After seeing this we decided to see if it would be feasible to make a full-size console for the forthcoming Forfar display. Costing for materials and design was undertaken and soon afterwards I began construction on a replica of the version used during the Jon Pertwee stories. The console has been designed so that it can be easily dismantled and fitted into a transit van.
The console you see here was one of the most difficult things I have ever attempted to make. In terms of sheer size alone it was very awkward to work with, being around seven feet in diameter, and for practical reasons it had to be totally constructed in my back garden. What on Earth had I let myself in for? I had less than two months before the start of my next exhibition and as I began to see the scale of the task I had set myself I started to wonder if I would be able to complete the job in time.
The dimensions of this great undertaking were checked from several sources including articles, photos and plans in DWM, and it’s as accurate as I could make it in the time I was given. I spent a long while checking through my videos of early 70s episodes, scanning for any close-ups of panels and controls. It’s amazing how a control appears on one panel in one episode, yet by the next week it has either disappeared, changed position, or been replaced by a completely different thing! The result is as near as I can get to being a replica of the console which appeared in Doctor Who between The Claws of Axos and Death to the Daleks.
As it was a superb copy of the early console (built by Ashley Neal Fuller and the rest of the team behind the excellent Devious fan video and praised in DWM ) that had spurred me into embarking on this project in the first place, why then should I pick the Pertwee version of the console? Well, in my opinion, it is the most visually interesting of the later designs, the layout of the controls being surprisingly faithful to the Hartnell/Troughton version. I honestly can’t stand the incredibly boring BBC Micro style console used from 1983–89 — all those dull keyboards! — and the model immediately before that became so shoddy in its later appearances that it looked as though it would fall apart if anyone sneezed. I could have built a version of the original console, but the thought of constructing that complicated interior of the centre column filled me with dread!
