The Colour of the TARDIS

When we last saw my conversion of the Peco Police Phone Box to represent the tenth Doctor's TARDIS it was ready for scrubbing up for the paintshop. Cleaned up it was sprayed with grey primer and I checked for any blemishes that required attention. I then checked photos of the TV prop and something became very obvious that had completely passed me by...

The Peco roof has (quite correctly for a Metropolitan Police Phone Box) three "tiers" to the structure. The 2005 TV prop has only two, in fact the majority of the TV props only have two... I couldn't ignore this and resorted to reconstructing the roof by slicing off the top tier and opening out the resultant giant hole in the second tier to inset the top tier into. It was rather messy (and still is on the inside) but Milliput soon smoothed it out. After a re-prime of the roof I applied a black-grey wash over the whole structure as a base for painting.

Painting proper could now commence, at the beginning of the project I had searched for an appropriate blue paint, eventually choosing Citadel 'Stegadon Scale Green' as the best potential match. Despite the name, it is blue, and actually closely resembles BR Rail Blue! I applied three coats, the first straight from the tub but applied in a dry-brushing motion to leave a little of the accumulated dark grey in the recesses. The second coat was lightened with a drop of grey and again applied in a dry-brushing style to not 100% cover the first. The last coat was lighter still and less heavily applied. This process built up a nice 'patina' on the panelling. I then painted the floor grey, washed over with black-grey, and the boxes for the lettering in matt black.

The above photo shows the transfers in place for the 'Police Box' lettering. In order to prepare the matt surface for these I applied three coats of 'Kleer' to gloss the surface. After applying the decals another coat of 'Kleer' sealed them in place, before a weathering wash was applied over the whole panel to tone down the black and white, both colours I tend to avoid. The Peco decal for the sign on the door was a little undersized for the TV prop and this was substituted with a version found online printed onto matt photo paper and applied after carefully peeling away the back layers of the paper,

The window frames were picked out with a fine brush in the blue paint. One feature of the 2005 TV prop was that the windows appeared white behind the glass. I eventually resorted to spraying the backs with white primer, but not fully coating, to give a translucent effect. The white was a blessing as I wanted to add an interior printed on matt photo paper, in a similar manner to the TV prop. Again this uses an image downloaded from the web, printed with multiple version of the door sign.

Once the components had been matt varnished and the windows fixed in place, the interior print was cut to size and folded to shape. Some thin strips of basswood were applied at either end and the centre in order to balance out the effect of the window mouldings that sit approx 1mm behind the sides. You can just see the top of the centre piece at the rear.

With the interior print in place I could then add the door, gluing it in place using the supports onto the wall rather than along the hinge line. The roof, to which I had previously added the lantern, was then added the next day. From this angle it just looks like a Police Box, although strictly speaking the door on the real thing opens outwards...

But if you turn it around you can clearly see it is bigger on the inside! It is actually quite difficult to see the interior without shining a light in, but at least I know it is there.

So we have a TARDIS, we have a Doctor, the next post will look at the creation of a diorama base to bring the elements together.

Colin