Adventures in Time and Space

Graphite and glittery wrapping paper! Another very simple, crisp and clean image, stroking lines representing the clinical nature of the story’s threat, and the flow of life-force. A bit of a study of the contours of Jaeger’s face.

As an aside, I’ve noticed that there’s some distinct tendencies emerging between seasons now we’re getting into the swing of things – Season 1 might be characterised as brooding, dark, “atmospheric”, Season 2 much more colourful, but murkier – it’s harder to pin down to specific imagery, but to patterns and montages. Meanwhile, Season 3 is much crisper, cleaner, a futuristic minimality to complement some of the strongest adventure productions the show has seen.

The Wild Wild West! I wanted to do something that reflected the really atmospheric setting, the hot dusty streets, the bars and jails and desperate men on both sides of the law. I also wanted to bring some of my favourite American art into it, the Action Painting of Pollock, the Colour (or should that be color?) Fields of Rothko – at that is Romanticised, heroic. I did this all in a wide frame, though – intending to mask off and black out the top and bottom quarters of the image, reflecting the cinema’s infatuation with the Gunfight. However, I just really liked the splashes coming out of the picture and into areas of white, its got an airiness and a clarity to it which give the picture much better atmosphere, and sort of feels like gunshots and spilt whiskey.

I’ll be honest, this is one of the few Dr Who stories I really don’t care all that much for. I just find it really disappointing in the execution. However, it does present us with a handful of really strong images to explore – the idea of a game universe in some abstract sense, the images of playing cards and games, perhaps the first real use of the “Police Box” image in a metatextual way, playing on the iconography it had developed.

So I decided to go off on a tangent a bit, and try something a bit Pop Art. The sketch is a bit of a collage, with playing cards stuck on. The Tardis is an MS-paint drawing, blimey I haven’t used Paint in years, I really wanted the old atari/ceefax-type look, because all these games are kind of nostalgic, and it’s a lovely sense to be taking Dr Who fan art back to basics, to the times when images were simple, and a photo shop was where you took the film to get it developed! I’m pretty sure in everyone’s spare room or attic, there’s a box with an old deck of cards, a beer-mat, a couple of jig-saws, it’s the sort of thing that gets put away when anyone moves house and never unpacked again in years… sort of a little pocket universe in a cardboard box tied together with string…

Usurped! The plan has changed…

Someone will one day say, “ware that man [...] he has blood on his hands.” The Doctor sees cities burn, blood flow. Here, Hartnell’s dual role gives us a sense of foreboding of the Doctor that is to come. The familiar old grandfatherly professor is replaced by a completely different character, and perhaps it’s a harbinger of the change, and the loss of the man who has been the one constant on our journey so far…

Behind the arc of our solar system, across the curve of alien horizons, beyond the music of the Spheres, the Daleks are waiting for us. Beyond, even, the crisscross politic of our own world…