The Dalek Tree

Is this some terrible mutant secretly created by Davros!?!

No, it' s a wonderful mutant created by Africa's harsh climate plus a dash of natural selection.

It's called an Adenium Obesum, and yes, that's what it's supposed to look like. I did prune in the "eye" intentionally a few years ago to make it more Dalek-like though.

That's a 4 3/4 inch tall action figure Dalek next to it for scale, by the way.

These are wonderful plants, buy one if you ever get the chance. (bonded poly carbide armor not included)

The iDaleks

India ink on card stock

There has been a lot said on the subject of the new paradigm Daleks, a lot of it negative.

Their introductory story, "Victory" wasn't terrible, but it wasn't really firing on all eight cylinders either.

Many people have complained about the new design, but I think that they've been redesigned in a very clever way, from the inside out.

The Daleks have always had a huge problem from a story telling point of view, they're too hateful, too well armed, too numerous and too intelligent to lose against the Doctor.

Daleks are supposedly these super smart homogeneous hate machines with total intolerance for other living things, but you can't just have them glide into a room and exterminate everyone without some threats and dialog first. It's not a great way to tell a story.

The writers have always had to deal with this problem, had to concoct some reason or another why the Daleks aren't acting like their nature dictates that they should, exterminating first and asking questions later (if at all).

There are quite a few ways around this narrative problem, some of them brilliant, but they've pretty much all been done before in the long history of Doctor Who, and with repetition they'll seem more contrived every time.

Enter the iDalek-

Now instead of one race of identical killing machines, we have five distinct Dalek types; A Drone (red), a strategist (blue), a scientist (orange), a mysterious Eternal Dalek (yellow) and a Supreme Dalek (white).

I've heard plenty of people dismiss this as an artless attempt to sell more toys.

I really don't see it that way. It seems to me like it's literally a new paradigm, a whole new way of thinking about the Daleks.

Now for the first time they can have conflicting opinions and debates among themselves and realistically be unsure of which course of action to take, instead of constantly failing in the same way over and over again like a villain from the 60's Batman TV show.

Maybe the scientist Dalek is against exterminating the Doctor because he wants to question him about time travel, maybe the strategist Dalek is against exterminating the Doctor because he wants him to be free to rally their enemies and bring them out of hiding.

All of a sudden the Daleks can have differing opinions and therefore much more complicated goals and motivations, not to mention, dialog amongst themselves more in depth than "I Obey!"

If they sell a few extra toys, that's great too. From what I remember of playing as a child, it's a lot like story telling. Let's not forget Mr. Moffat's in the same line of work.

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D

Pertwee

conte pencil on black card stock

click image for a 1600x900 wallpaper

Kettlewell's Robot

gouache on black card stock

Well, it's not gouache exactly. It's water based and opaque though, it's sold as a "white watercolor".

acrylic

Robot was a turning point for Doctor Who, and what better to pivot on than a familiar old-school sci-fi standard, a big hulking robot.

watercolor & aluminum foil with computer CSO effect

With added silliness and very ambitious special effects, The fourth Doctor's era moves away from the "Imagination+Realism" formula which kept adults interested in the Pertwee era, to the "Big Ideas, no matter how silly it looks" formula which kept adults interested in the Baker era.

*click images to see them wallpaper sized. The first one is 1600x900, the other two are 1024x768

Frobisher

Now you can baffle those pesky non-Whovians with a beautiful and bewildering Draculasaurus T-shirt! This obscure joke makes use of fact that the tragic bureaucrat from Torchwood: Children of Earth, and the Sixth Doctor's shape-shifting companion from the 80's comic strips, share the same name.

Just imagine how long that would take to explain to grandma!

click on the top picture for a 1024x768 wallpaper

*No longer available due to the overly enthusiastic BBC legal department*

Pigbin Josh

watercolor/ink/gouache

For anyone who doesn't know, Pigbin Josh is a minor comic relief character from the 1971 Doctor Who story The Claws of Axos. He is a mentally handicapped scrap collector who encounters a crashed spaceship and becomes the first victim of the Axons.

I first became interested in painting him when I realized that without the comedic music and nonsensical muttering he's really quite a sad character.

The terrible weather and desolate slate piles of Dungeness provide an incredibly dreary backdrop for Josh's brief story.

It's no surprise that this series of paintings are consistently my least popular work. Am I dragging Doctor Who fan art, kicking and screaming, in a new direction or just being silly?

Probably a little of both.