June has seen me continuing May's colour scheme - mainly in shades of white and gold, as I contained the 1988 story Remembrance of the Daleks.
It's taken all but the last couple of days of June to add the Emperor Dalek / Davros alongside the Special Weapons Dalek.
May has seen me working mainly in shades of white and gold, as I added the Special Weapons Dalek from the 1988 story Remembrance of the Daleks
To celebrate the release of the Doctor Who Season 17 boxset last year, which I have almost finished watching, here are the sections of the tapestry where Season 17 stories are represented. Well, all but one. I appear to be missing "The Creature from the Pit". I am so looking forwarding to adding a green phallus to the tapestry.
The majority of the characters stitched here were done quite early on during the expansion of the tapestry and are not as detailed as later work like the Ancient One from McCoy’s "Curse of Fenric". In some cases I think I will revisit a couple of these and try to improve them before declaring the whole project complete.
Season 17 opened with "Destiny of the Daleks". Here are Davros and a Movellan. I’m pleased with Davros but the Movellan could do with some extra detail. (1st Sept 1979 – 22nd Sep 1979)
The second story for Season 17 was "City of Death". (29th Sep 1979 – 20th Oct 1979). Here is Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth. Someone has suggested I add the Mona Lisa. Hmm not sure about that.
Next up was "The Creature from the Pit" (27th Oct 1979 – 17th Nov 1979) This is the one that is currently not represented. But it will, eventually.
Following on was "Nightmare of Eden" (24th Nov 1979 – 15th Dec 1979) Here I have a Mandrell, also an early effort and in need of additional work to bring it up to the current standard.
Prematurely concluding the season at the time was "The Horns of Nimon" (22nd Dec 1979 – 12th Jan 1980).
The last story of the season, never finished at the time because of a strike at the BBC and subsequently released with the missing scenes animated, was "Shada". This is a far more recent effort and has much more detail for Professor Chronotis, the sphere and a Krarg.
I often get asked the same questions regarding the tapestry: When did you start it? How long have you been doing it? It’s not actually that easy to answer because it has not been a continuous activity. But let me wind the clock back and try to provide some answers. (Parts One & Two here)
I Thought it was about time I continued the story, so where was I?
Oh yes, seven Doctors and the idea to join them. Joining them together wouldn’t be that easy, they certainly did not merge well. Plus, there were seven, not an easy number to arrange. At this point Paul McGann had not been announced, we were in those wilderness years when nothing was happening with the programme.
The only way I was going to be able to join them was to put something between them, but what?
The obvious choice were the Daleks and the Cybermen. So the first join, linking the 4th Doctor to the 5th Doctor with a montage of Daleks and Cybermen history. The Emperor from Evil of the Daleks, Davros and various Dalek forces. Various Cybermen, the cyber-motif from Tomb of the Cybermen and Cybermats.
The old Doctor Who Technical Manual was the main source of design for the Cybermen and the three pieces of aida were initially joined by extending the Doctor’s backgrounds across onto them. The problem was the lack of colour references available back then.
This seemed to work, although I never did quite finish the details on this panel, must finish these off.
This extended the width of the tapestry and defined the initial size that it was going to be.
Doctors 1 to 3 were going to form a strip along the top, joined by smaller inserts and 6 & 7 would go below, joined by a piece the same size as the Daleks and Cybermen section.
This would give me three strips of the design, but how would they join together, there would have to be additional inserts to join the three lengths together. I think this was the first point where I began to wonder what I was really creating. With all this extra space to fill what was I going to fill it with?
