This page was created back in 2005 when I first began to watch Doctor Who. I'm not sure if it was related to the 2005+ "NuWho" as I mainly focused on Doctors 1, 2 and 4. I've also read a few of the novels because most of the older episodes are lost. The Novels often contain additional meat that's useful reference. Out of the new stuff I've seen up to mid-Capaldi era.

But I'm probably partial to the charm of old wonky sci-if, and that original Dalek design in particular. I had seen pseudo-Daleks around growing up (e.g. in Paradroid and Laser Squad), not really knowing much about their origins. It was a very iconic design, often borrowed for covers and sprites just like the Tie-Fighter and Enterprise.

I drew a fair amount of stuff in 2005-2010, most of it junk so only a little ended up on this page. Now I treat it all more as a stepping stone for new designs and ideas.

It's also 2022 and the lore is even more complex with all the NuWho stuff on top. So I've decided to focus on world design and a particular moment in time, perhaps set in some other universe. Here the Doctor and Master roles could be reversed (a mirror universe?), but they're not active in the current history which is simply the end result of their tampering.

My story is developing into something more like Star Trek TOS/TNG, with the Galileo shuttle being replaced by a door that the characters conveniently pops out of for this week's adventure. I'd redesign a selection of the future era factions, giving them more rigid structures for power struggles, cultural and military might. I'd use the old map that I made for this page.

I didn't like the first Dalek story at all, aside from the Daleks' visual design. I think I prefer the Daleks being pure robots of unknown origin, but here drew a little walking octi here anyways (maybe a symbiotic relationship... a creature found by the otherwise robotic Daleks? Different factions have different creatures trapped inside?). A lot of the early material was vague about the actual shape of whatever was inside. They had claws in one episode and in another they were more like standard octopuses, and in some they were goo. Often destroyed props revealed an empty top.

In NuWho we got much clearer views of the Dalek mutants, which were originally humanoid but now look like blobby rotten squid-faces. I suppose this transformation is essential to the core idea that they're Nazis - humans distilled into monstrous extermination machines. The Daleks were taken to the irredeemable extreme, but in terms of social commentary I think the meat lies more in the journey there. But the episodes around that journey fails to highlight many of the transformative mechanisms, and thus to warn about them.

Without time travel in my story that journey is in the distant past, but I have plenty of lost colonies and planets were a similar thing can happen. My Daleks would best be relegated to being enemy robots. The bottom of my Dalek design is different, with retractable parking legs and a hover drive. The hover effect could probably could done by hiding an arm behind the prop or out of frame, using wire controls for the arms/eye. Tough to pull off in tight corridors with several crowded Daleks though. In a comic or novel it's not even a problem at all of course.

As for Davros, I never liked his design. I was thinking something more like Scorpius might work but I wouldn't make him the creator. Could be an engineered commander of one of the Dalek factions, an bit like Star Wars' Thrawn. Caves of Androzani strangely enough has character with Scorpius'ey makeup

Seen here is also the Place Box, which lacks many of the TARDIS features and is more like a transwarp Enterprise with a phasing cloak or dimensional offset feature so the whole door thing works. It's probably not armed as we want the characters on foot exploring planets. Later on in my story it picks up some Trooper crew (disposable). The "streamer" turret on the side-top can be weaponised towards mid-endgame.

My Wheel space station redesign is maybe 2/3rds faithful to the original. Its crew is small, just like the Nostromo's. Speaking of which, and if the pantsu weren't any indication indication, my first story is deliberately playing around with elements from Alien.

> > > 2021 Story < < <

I don't know if the Master will be in the story, but since my universe is different he could be one of the good guys (some kind of Hari Seldon professor)... perhaps left the Place Box behind to find at a strategical point in time. It's nerfed, without a time circuit.

I noticed that the Drahvi soldier actually has a haircut shape similar to the Rill's Chumbly robot... maybe intentional? The Drahvi are a thrall species of the Dominators I'm thinking, and similar to the Sontarans (but quite tall). They're grown rapidly, educated only in warfare, and don't survive long.

Movellan ships bury into the ground I think, so maybe a turret on top would be useful.

Galaxy 4 (Drahvis vs Rills) is one of those lost* stories with only one ep recovered. The basic idea is that the Drahvi are good looking... only on the outside, whilst the Rill are the inverse (~what a twist~). The Rill breathe ammoniac or something so I thought their ship could have some greenhouse stuff going on. The Drahvi ship is seen in some clips and has a spider-claw theme which I elaborated on. Makes it a bit nasty and grabby looking, hinting at their nature. I gave the Drahvi some snow/dazzle-like camo since they're militaristic. Didn't like the trypophobia eyebrows so I arranged the face dots in another fashion. Could be a rank "barcode" thing. The Rill would have to be active outside of Galaxy 4, an expansion which might annoy the Dominators who have tolerated the Rill so far.

I don't know where the horned black suit is from, I just saw it in a still. * Lost because BBC unfortunately junked their tapes after airing back in the days of the first and second doctor. The tape copies that survived were those sent to be aired abroad, and forgotten. Returned copies were also junked :/

In my headcanon, The Dominators are a bit like the Kzer-Za from The Ur-Quan Masters. They dominate rather than exterminate/cleanse like the Daleks/Kohr-Ah. If we are to believe Rago and Toba, the Dominators have conquered several galaxies. Perhaps Galaxy 4 too, home of the Drahvi and Rills. I can imagine that the Drahvi are thralls and the Rills are mostly left alone as they are pacifists. The more aggressive Toba does attack the pacifists on Dulkis in the TV story, but the Dominators don't know much about the Dulkians having just landed to refuel. Rago is more pragmatic and often advocates against violence. The Daleks are more prone to facing extinction... well, they have more stories and are facing the timelords. Still, I don't think they are as quite as powerful, with their one-track minds.

The 2nd Doctor story The Space Pirates has some mixed costume and ship designs. Five out of six episodes are missing but some stills survived. The Space Corp cruiser design has an interesting top silhouette but it's much too flat/squished I think. It has a hangar bay which can carry a smaller needle-nosed ship (the studio model appears to be around hte same size for these, so a separate bay model was used to shrink the shuttle). I gave my version some volume with a cylinder shape, then a flat back and wings. I want to avoid modern ship aesthetics, and also limit my shape usage a bit to establish a dialect.

I simplified the Government Beacon relying more on the front view silhouette. It can split into modules (with internal life support). I gave the dominator ships a horn on the top, similar to the Quarks and the hair style I used.

I liked one of the helmets in The Ice Warriors, it reminded me of the Zeon soldier helmet a bit, judging by a degraded still shot. Could be combined with a breather mask.

The Abominable Snowmen were robots made by an ethereal and evil great intelligence to assist it in taking form in our dimension. It's hinted that it's some sort of semi-transcended being which got banished and turned rogue. The props team did a great job with the suits, giving them a rather iconic shape. Again five out of six episodes are lost. The novelization* goes into a bit more detail than the TV episodes and is quite evocative.

There's apparently a Star Trek food replicator onboard the TARDIS. There was so snow on location so the idea of tracking footprints in the snow couldn't be used when filming. It's a pretty spooky and atmospheric story overall (Tibetan monastery with an ancient monk which gave me 40K Chaos Emperor vibes), and a sequel called The Web of Fear was made soon after. I don't like that one as much. Not sure if I like any of the stories set in contemporary UK cities actually. Perhaps one of the reasons why I stayed away from the 3rd Doctor and a lot of the newer stuff which hyperfocuses on contemporary companions.

* I found it as an audiobook (read by David Troughton) floating around on YT.

I haven't seen the episodes with the calcified Melkur creature, nor the story with the Gundans, but I liked their design (potential).

It's always fun with big collars in sci-fi so I borrowed some from an unknown episode. I remember Planet of the Vampires (1965 movie) had some too. My Dominators have a hair spike like their Quark robots.

I was listening to the The Daleks audiobook, which is the second story of the first doctor I believe. I never liked the origin story of the Daleks, and the early Doctor is a bit of a nuisance before the character develops.

Anyways, the writer took some time to describe the internal facilities of the TARDIS, including the shower system, which is a cylinder with water jets coming in from all directions... plus there's some sort of oil massage mode. There's also a big contraption which does haircuts, and the food replicator is also mentioned here. It seems it produces something akin to nutritious "Mars Bars" of some programmed taste (like bacon & eggs), meaning, no fancy finished Star Trek meals.

On my more primitive space station the showers could be more like a car wash with a spinning thing to make it more exotic than a regular shower. Onboard the Place Box, which is an advanced but older relic, there could be some maintenance and cleaning robots. The design of these share a lineage with the Mechon. One of them looks a bit like the Place Box itself. Built by something like Star Trek's Soong perhaps. One of the cleaning robots are described as a box with four polishing pads... I think by Terry Nation who rarely described anything in detail but left it up to the art & prop designers... so many franchises owe it to these people. H.R.Giger is one of the few known ones I'd say. Maybe James Cameron too (I believe he did designs for the Queen, Powerloader, and T-800). After the success with the Daleks attempts were made to repeat it with the Chumblies, Quarks & Mechanoids, but those fell rather flat. The Cybermen and Yeti did better but can't really compete with the Daleks. Had the Dalek design been mediocre the show would've been cancelled after episode 2, I'd wager.

...

Now where were I? The maintenance robots. On the abandoned/forgotten (human) colony world Mechonus these robotic helpers evolved into the Mechon(oids) over the centuries. They'll eventually come to match even the Daleks in strength.

Elite for the BBC Micro has polygonal ships which might fit the Mechon in style. My meshes here are different though. Don't wanna swipe the Cobra MkIII.

The Place Box was adrift in space for centuries and never found because it's in black body surface mode, i.e. absorbing all sorts of radiation (using it to charge its power cells perhaps). It is found only when it eclipses a larger asteroid in the belt.

Since the Place Box might be a nerfed TARDIS the control room is different, though I'm unsure about the layout. In the show we rarely ever see much beyond the control room (such as corridors, bunks, storage). The first Doctor has a bunch of strange decorative stuff scattered around in the main room. Sometimes they use a scanner screen to view outside. I like the idea of putting some green plants and library bookshelves in there to make it more homely. A slide-out resting bed might be useful too, for when a character needs rest or is wounded but should remain in the scene.

Also on the sheet: a doodle of Padmasambhava from The Abominable Snowmen. He's got two modes: tired/ancient/kind, then strong and ominous when Tzeentch possessed (basically). Not a character for my story but I wanted to draw him. The faces at bottom are random and I might exclude the Silurians (they have multiple face and mask variants in the show) and stick to just the Sea Devils.

My protagonist could be different from story to story (Kroton, Human, Movellian...). This will allow me to show different locations or the same location but from a different perspective.

Like in Star Trek, ships could also be more fleshed out and character-like. With the new Doctor Who series, they put some emphasis on the TARDIS being a living complex thing, but I think that the TARDIS is a bit too mysterious. It has a mysterious light thing, and you never see the other rooms it has, or its true exterior. In Star Trek you can relate to certain parts of the ship as biological functions, the shields and hull being the skin, the warp core is the heart, the computer is the brain, the engines are the legs, the weapons and tractor beams are the fists, the crew is the blood cells, and the shuttles are, uh, babies...

Instead of a Doctor, I could use a female Nurse... nurse something. I've also thought about basing a character of Zoe who is kind of Doctor-like. She travels in her "Place-Box" (a nod to the police box) but it can only travel to places, not in time. Actually, I think teleporting somewhere would actually move you in time too, because of the light cone deal, but I'll hand-wave that away.

I also thought some about how the spaceship/place-box might look, and I decided that since it's not really a regular spaceship and the exterior isn't important, it should be a box.

My Dalek redesign was iterated again (2010). I had some unnecessary greeble at the bottom which I removed. They hover around but may lock down with legs when they use full fire power.

I'm trying to interpolate a new female Cyberman (a stealth unit perhaps) based on the Cybermen and their sleek android design. It's very roughs still, but it might develop into something interesting later.

The Wheel in Space could be an interesting episode to use as a starting point for a plot, so I played around with a similar uniform design.

Since I'm a concept artist, I tend to focus on the design of the characters and setting. However, a story isn't interesting if it's just presentation of information (though that formats worked for Terran Trade Authority, and for some tabletop game fluff books). I was thinking of using a TV series format, with scene, episode, season, and final story plots which kinda overlap and create continuity. I often feel like the most important plot level is at the scene/dialog level where wit and drama keeps the reader constantly amused and interested in what will happen next. Easier said than done. If the plot design is passable elsewhere it works for me... but a really bad plot or ending can ruin it all of course. If instead the plot design is great but the individual scene drama is consistently lacking, I'd say that's much harder to get though.

I'm guessing that once the solution to a conflict is clear to both the protagonist and reader, it's not very interesting to show it being perfectly executed. It's probably better to cut the scene, or create complications. There's a lot left for me to learn about writing still.

One thing which I don't like about NuWho is grand, world changing season finales. The buildup to these is often poor with standalone episodes getting uninteresting "clues" forced into them. And then after it's all over there's a new season and everything is immediately forgotten. I feel like universe-shaking arcs should be planned from the start, foreshadowed, built up, and saved for the actual true ending... and if it continues after that the repercussions should be felt for a whole season after.

Regular season finales can be relatively small things but still remain interesting because the events themselves are interesting. This kind of big-picture shaping is hard to do with Doctor Who because there are so many writers I guess.

Another thing which I'd like to do is to avoid silly baddie weaknesses which the doctor discovers when all seems lost. Example: a seemingly invincible robot puts the protagonists in a tight spot. The protagonists figure out that the robot is made from potassium nitrate. Aha, that's one of the ingredients in black powder! However, with coal and sulphur unavailable to them, the protagonists instead throw household sugar onto the robot, which promptly explodes.

Elaborate 'scientific' explanations will have to go as well, as they never hold up to scrutiny. I'd rather have my characters fire 'Capacity 9 C-beams' or something abstract. That said, I'm still doing some armour penetration, volume and kinetic impact math to ensure my designs are in the realms of the reasonable.

I'm quite fond of vintage sci-fi material because of its simpler visual designs, wonky oddness, and shapes unaware of our contemporary cool compulsions. These qualities can simplify designs and make them quite memorable. Sometimes modern design hides behind superficial detailing (aka greebles), and recently with 3D printing and "great concept art" props can look a little artificial and designed. Improvised and cobbled together props can ooze functionality because they were made from functional items and have features which we don't know that we expect to see so they're hard to draw. The early Star Wars movies did this well.

Doctor Who is a bit hit and miss in this regard, but the (first) TARDIS console room with the hexagonal console is a quite clever prop. Characters can gather around it. If a more active scene is needed they can whirl about reaching knobs and levers. The central piston can be used in interesting ways too. The set allows for a bit more range than that of Star Trek's with its shake and sparks. The central thing can indicate the pulse and health of the ship and can be used in place of pyrotechnics. In more quiet/safe scenes it can help to set the mood with a lower pulse. An economical set design, and right there starting with episode 1.

The Daleks in the TV series sometimes deadly and sometimes garbage bins you can simply kick over. I'd like to think a Dalek is about as powerful as a modern main battle tank in terms of armour and firepower. To take them out you need something more than a regular RPG ('bazooka'). I wanted my redesign to look like something which could be threatening to a space adventurer, so I decided to change both the design and 'stats' a bit.

The 'skirt' on the Daleks is rather big and clumsy, and it makes the them look like they have difficulties getting around. Of course, it was designed that way so they could roll around with a guy sitting inside. I wanted my Daleks to look more mobile, so I redesigned the skirt into a radially symmetrical hover thing. Without knowing it, my redesign ended up somewhat close to the Japanese Dalek ('Dareku') with the cone shape and rounded bottom. Anyways, if I do a comic I don't need to consider issues like how to fit a guy inside a suit or how to make things hover.

I drew some inspiration from the notion of spider Daleks and gave mine a few tube-hose-legs (kind of retro). These legs are used when the Dalek is resting (although some might use alcoves instead). They're also used to secure the Dalek when it fires a... big powerful beam. Indoors, Daleks also have the option to fire a weaker beam which does less damage to the surrounding environment.

Daleks also needs to be able to build stuff and manipulate objects, so I like to imagine that the plunger is some sort of grappling hook which can create tiny microscopic 'hands' using a forcefield technology of some sort. This allows the Dalek to grab things, build things, mine, interface with consoles, crush foes in close combat, etc.

Japanese cover art. Darthor Who battling chonky Dareku while another mysterious Timelord watches?