Bow Tie and Braces anomaly

Amongst the publicity still released this week for A Town Called Mercy, there was one that caught my eye and made me sit up and look more closely.

It shows Matt Smith in character as The Doctor, but without his trademark tweed jacket.

He is wearing the striped shirt and bark effect blue bow tie, both first worn in the series six opener, The Impossible Astronaut – with burgundy braces!

Now as far as I am aware this is the first time he has ever worn mis-matching* bow tie and braces.

Throughout series five he stuck strictly to a colour co-ordinated shirt and accessories combination.

That continued during series six, and although new bow ties were regularly introduced, the were always matched by the braces.

So this is a bit of a departure from the accepted costume.

Can’t say I like it.

*For the purposes of the posting, I’m taking the striped braces seen last week in Asylum Of The Daleks out of the equation, as they were at least blue to match the bow tie.

Deputy Doctor

This week Doctor Who returns to the Wild West – the first time since 1966 when William Hartnell sought out a dentist in Dodge City during The Gunfighters.

As part of his Wild West adventure, it seems The Doctor picks up another Stetson (though it is not quite the same as the one seen in Closing Time and The Wedding Of River Song) and a Marshal badge! (see left)

It’s a nice simple addition to an Eleventh Doctor costume, so I’ve been looking around and have found some Marshal badges close, but not quite the same as The Doctor’s.

The first place I looked inevitably was eBay, where I found the follow.

This one’s quite nice, but a bit flat and without a boarder.

MARSHALL STAR BADGE BW - 70

Not badly priced at US$13.99

The lettering of this one is more central, but its a brass badge rather than white metal.

MARSHAL OLD WEST BADGE

Cheaper at US$9.99, but the metal is the wrong colour

This one has a boarder, though the lettering is a bit higher. Overall I like this one, and ordered it today.

MARSHALL STAR BADGE BW - 45

Also priced at US$13.99

WATCH: Impossible

One of my Christmas presents last year was a complete DVD box set of Mission: Impossible, the original 1960s series.

I’d seen a lot of episodes, but I’ve wanted to see it right through from start to finish – plus it stops me going mad while tailor jackets and coats!

So imagine my surprise when I’m watching The Freeze, an episode from series three. There is a tense moment while Jim Phelps and the team are watching their target over CCTV. Up against time, Jim looks nervously at his watch, and we see it in a close-up insert shot.

And it’s near identical to The Doctor’s current timepiece!

It’s an distinctive face, with the 2-4-6-8-10-12 in numbers, where most watches only have 3-6-9-12

If you look closely the logo under the 12 has been removed, but it would have been Buler, the makers of the watch.

And here is a screengrab from The Lodger, showing a good close-up of The Doctor’s wrist watch.

The Eleventh Hour photoshoot

The new series of Doctor Who started this week, and I thought I’d bring you some more pictures from my massive Cardiff photoshoot earlier this year.

After finishing in Cardiff Bay where we visited Eddie’s Diner as seen in The Impossible Astronaut; and The Millennium Centre as featured extensively in The Girl Who Waited as well as New Earth, we packed up and headed towards Southerndown Beach.

Literally on the way to the beach is the village of Llandaff, which has popped up several times in the new series.

In 2006 it was used in Human Nature and Family Of Blood where it was the setting for the Farringham School for boys; in the same story the cathedral was where John and Joan get married; the cathedral was used again in 2010 as the church in Vincent And The Doctor.

But its most recognisable appearance was in The Eleventh Hour, when it was used as the principle location for Amy Pond’s home town of Leadworth.

So we thought we’d have a bit of fun.

We already had our superb Eleveth Doctor look-a-like, Matt Elliott; plus our Amy Pond, Lisa Baxter - so the obvious thing to do was to recreate the scene where The Doctor tries to placate an irate Amy Pond!

Lisa has her own Amy Pond kissogram outfit, so that was easy; I was able to quickly pull together the Doctor costume by providing the tie and a pair of genuine GAP trousers. Matt supplied a cheap shirt from Primark, which Lisa appropriately distressed.

Shooting with a sports setting on my camera, we did half a dozen takes of the pair walking up the hill away from the cathedral.

We attracted a small audience, wondering if it was the real thing!
They soon realised it wasn’t, but a couple of school girls asked if they could have their photo taken with our look-a-likes, which was fun.



Our plans for some further shots had to be curtailed, as we realised the Olympic Flame - as referenced in Fear Her - was due to come right through the village on one of its early stages. (The following day Matt Smith carried it a few hundred yards in Cardiff city centre).