Sunday, January 19, 2014

Lead Time Lords: The Fourth Doctor (1)

"You might be a doctor, but I am THE Doctor. 'The Definite Article', you might say!"I

Still working my way through Harlequin's Doctors Who, and so I'm up to Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor, or at least one of Harlequin's three versions:

This is, as far as I've seen, not that common a choice of figures among painted collections I've seen. But thanks to a UK-based friend from the over ten or so years ago this was purchased, this was the one I got sent (cheers Dave!) when Harlequin went out of business and places like Forbidden Planet had them going for a song. Je ne regrette rien as they say in Rome, and so this version is the one I have. I'll paint one of the other versions recently sourced (cheers Jamas!) in due course.


Actually, I rather like this version, as it strikes most of the notes you want to with the Fourth Doctor - jelly babies, long scarf, long coat, teeth and curls, wild eyes (though that might be my painting again.) My quibbles are small - for instance, the scarf should be looped around the Doctor's neck; it doesn't look quite long enough this way, but some things I just don't want to attempt with green stuff, because that would mean sculpting around the back of his neck as well, and I can't see how I could better things, really. It's a trade-off anyway - you get the scarf, but not the buccaneer boots (thus firmly positing the Doctor somewhere in his Seasons Fourteen to Fifteen phase), you get the hair, but not the hat - that sort of thing.

Still, face aside, the ensemble was pretty straightforward to paint once I'd found a story to base everything on (either Hand of Fear or Robots of Death - I forget which.) The coat is a chocolatey velvet, so a semi-gloss seemed the order of the day, and the scarf is in reasonably muted colours - that Begonia Pope, she knew what she was doing.

And that's one of the Fourth Doctors!

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