A little break from Doctor Who this week. Happy New Year.

INSPIRATION

This story comes right out of my childhood when Mego made all sorts of Superhero figures be they from Marvel or DC. A time when Batman and Robin would team up with Spiderman to battle the Joker. Ah happy times. You see this isn't about fitting into any comic continuity or establishing boundaries between publishing houses. This is good old fashioned comic fun where the world is full of superheroes. (Image from Mego Museum)

CAST

Daredevil and the Green Goblin are from Toybiz's Superhero Showdown line. Batman is made by Takara as part of their Microman range. Commissioner Gordon and the SWAT team are a DC Infinite Heroes three-pack by Mattel.

The extras show blurred on page one include Lt Uhura (2009 Star Trek), Carmen Cortez and Donnegon from Spy Kids, Alan Grant from Jurassic Park and several Corps builders from Lannard.

SHOOTING

This story took a long time to get off the ground. At the time there were several superhero storylines that I'd written but just not made. This one at least was partially shot in Spring 2006. At the time I had a large paper cityscape put together and I'd used it to make Batgirl V Predator. But the images I took for this story were uninspiring and would have needed a lot of work to edit out the backgrounds. My enthusiasm waned.

Jump forward to 2007 and my nephew (at the time a fan of AFT and all things Marvel!) asked me to do more superhero stories. I decided to bite the bullet and get this one made.

The reshoot was all done on green screen (ok, orange and yellow). Instead of looking real, I went for a stylised comic-book look with photoshopped backgrounds. The forty or so images need were taken in a matter of hours.

EDITS

The edit too about a week, with each frame needing special attention.

CONTINUITY

This is a loose continuation of the Hunter/Prey Batgirl story which ends revealing that an alien egg is beneath the waters of Gotham. Clearly some villain has found it and is offering it to the one that can kill Batman. Among the papers and photos the Green Goblin looks through, I was going to put a photo of the Joker, suggesting it was him - but who knows?

TRANSMISSION

I'm not sure when it originally appeared on the site but it was probably in mid/late 2007.

It's was re-published on 30 December 2023 with behind the scenes images for the first time.

Twelfth Night

 

INSPIRATION

Ok, so officially, we don't do new AFT stories. But there are always exceptions, when I'm exceptionally inspired or for special occasions like Christmas. Last year, inspired by The Power of the Doctor, I wanted to relaunch the AFT repeats with a new Christmas story. This was one of the ideas I came up with on 30th November 2022, based purely on the title Twelfth Night, it had to be a 12th Doctor story - admittedly, not one of my favourite Doctors. Given his continuing struggle with being good or not, a retelling of Dickens' A Christmas Carol (yes, I know it's already been done on the TV show!) seemed appropriate.

The original idea was very nebulous but featured the Doctor about to vanquish an enemy, possibly a dalek and wrestling with his conscience. In the present he'd meet Bill while Yaz, Ryan and Graham were in the future section. Finally, the Doctor chooses to be a bad person and kill the enemy, but only to confuse the mind wraith that's caused the whole illusion.

Returning to the idea on 4th October 2023, knowing that Donna would return in the anniversary specials, I knew I had my past AND future sorted. I wanted this story to be far more whimsical and light than last year's quite doomy "Let It Snow".

For the enemy, I considered the Silents, the Weeping Angels or even the Ood but I knew it needed something new.

CAST

12th Doctor (B&M pack), Pepper Meanstix (custom), Donna, 10th Doctor, Missy (B&M pack), Bill (B&M pack).

The "companion heaven" scene features Captain Jack (coatless) Ryan, Rory, Graham, Amy Pond, Romana (Power of Kroll), Sarah Jane (SJA: Whatever Happened To Sarah Jane), Bill (Amazon exclusive), Ian Chesterton, The Brigadier (The Three Doctors), Peri (Vengeance On Varos), Yaz, River Song, Leela (Face of Evil, Martha Jones, Rose (series 2), Jo Grant (The Three Doctors), Romana II (Destiny of the Daleks), Ace (Silver Nemesis) and even my custom Angel from my 8th Doctor series.

Pepper Meanstix (a corruption of Santa's "real" elf, Pepper Meansticks) is a Toby Zed figure. His torso had already been painted green for when he appeared in the 3rd Doctor story "The Time Riders". I added the hat, collar and cuffs and painted his ghastly face. He was created on 9th October, painted on 11th October and the back of his head was teased on instagram.

SCRIPT

The script was started on 9th October and finished on the 12th. Donna's 'kick it's arse' line was totally nicked from the Wild Blue Yonder trailer.

SHOOTING

I started taking the pictures on 13th Oct with the relatively simple set of "companion heaven" which was just a silver crepe paper background.

On the 14th Oct, I shot Pepper's lair for the "past" sequence. This set uses a lot of bits and pieces I have in store including a Hulk pressure chamber, a Halo Cryochamber and lots of computers from the McFarlane Batman 66 batcave. Pepper's lever is an accessory from (I think) some Clone Wars figure. The viewscreen from the 2009 Star Trek enterprise set is above the lever and was supposed to show a view of a snowy city but since it doesn't appear in any shot, that didn't happen.

The Vault was the set I struggled with. I didn't have a lot of time but I thought it should at least try to look like what we saw on TV. It's very simple with paper windows stuck on the black backcloth. The centre piece is made of strips of blue paper with my mini Christmas tree and pipe-cleaner tinsel in the middle. It was put up on 26th October and the necessary pics taken the next day.

On 29th October, I shot the scenes in the Doctor's "purgatory" using printed purple stone walls I had in stock.

The last location was the street where the Doctor chases Pepper. You probably recognise it uses bits of Bannerman Road from The Sarah Jane Adventures. Those pictures were done on 31 Oct.

EDITING

Editing began on 27 October using photoshop. The pictures were added in the order they were taken, with the final images from the final location being added on 31 Oct.

Though the script was written in anticipation that Donna would be healed and would survive the specials, I waited until after the specials aired before completing the lettering, just in case I needed to change anything.

Since this is the first time I've used this new version of photoshop to edit stories, I wasn't sure what size to make the lettering. As a result, the letters were too big on the first page and I had to redo it. All the lettering was done on 10th Dec 2023.

CONTINUITY

This story obviously takes place during series 10. The Doctor has Bill as his companion, Missy in the vault and mentions Nardole. It's probably set after Empress of Mars because Bill is aware of Missy. 

Missy saying the Doctor has been very naughty for the past 700 years is me mis-remembering her 1000 year sentence in Extremis.

TRANSMISSION

The first teaser image of Meanstix was shown on instagram on 11th October. The title of the story was dropped, also on instagram) on 11th December.

The story went online on 23rd December 2023. 

Prime Directive

 

INSPIRATION

It's 2013. Character's line of action figures has regenerated, now into 3.75" scale. The plan was to make a new story to showcase the mini Doctor and Clara as soon as possible. This wasn't the story I'd intended to make but that tale would have taken more effort and time than I had available so I needed to come up with a short and easy to make adventure. To that end I turned to some pitches that I'd sent to Doctor Who Adventures that were never picked up. Among them was the tale of a robot in a junk yard...

CAST

11th Doctor, Clara Oswald and a Star Wars Dark Trooper.

This is the first appearance of the new scale character figures in any story. 3.75" was always my preferred scale and I've only strayed from it three times - in  the 90s for Batman and Star Trek and in 2006 for Doctor Who.

So when they announced that Doctor Who would be switching scale, I'd actually already been thinking that I'd like some smaller figures. Not at the expense of the wonderful 5" figures, but just the Doctor, TARDIS, maybe a companion and some iconic monsters. Enough to fight alongside Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones.

By the end of series 7a (The Angels Take Manhattan), I'd seriously lost interest in new Doctor Who. I found the stories overly smug, self-involved, utterly engaging and worse, totally lacking in new and scary monsters. The figure line needed something to reinvigorate it and the prospect of this new scale really did invigorate my enthusiasm. I viewed the next series (series 7b/ 2013) with fresh eyes and a renewed excitement.

Some people don't like change and many fans took an instant dislike to the new scale without seeing any prototypes and I believe that bile, vitriol and unjustified sense of betrayal has become a habit that has poisoned fandom.

Unfortunately, some of the figures weren't that great so many of the fans weren't won over. Extremely rare chase figures and a couple of waves of repaints and repeats meant that the figures never really took off. By the time they were producing really good figures, Amy Pond, the 10th Doctor, classic daleks, fans had all but given up.

As someone that did support the scale change and bought their first wave upon release in May 2013, I was really disappointed. Clara's hair was wrong and by the time they corrected it, I was loathe to buy another. And the daleks were just a shade too small.

SCRIPT

The pitch already set out what happened page by page so it didn't take long to work up a basic script to shoot from. This was done in June 2013.

SHOOTING

The story was on the same day using a single set dressed with various bits of paraphernalia from various toy lines. How much can you spot?

There's the vehicle maintenance engineer mini-rig from Star Wars, bits of the Star Trek 2009 transporter playset, the Queen's hyperdrive from Star Wars episode 1 and my own custom walls used in The Space Mutant.

The whole story was short virtually in order apart from a couple of reverse shots of the robot which were done out of sequence.

EDITS

The story was edited just as quickly and completed the same day.

CONTINUITY

This story could be dropped anywhere into series 7b. I arbitrarily choose to put it after Cold War.

TRANSMISSION

On it's original publication, I had intended to get the story out as quickly as possible but the AFT was stacked up its monthly episodes.

So it was originally published on Outpost Doctor Who forum, a page a day between 10th-13th June 2013.

It then appeared on the AFT main site on 24th Feb 2014.

It was republished here on 16 December 2023.

Run! By Steve A Williams

 

INSPIRATION

One of the things I had always wanted to do with Action Figure Theatre was to make it more inclusive and get other people involved, whether in writing stories, filming or editing but I could never really make it work. Over the time, we did have a stories by Jack Rees, Jim Sangster and Dave Spilsbury and art work from Luke Spillaine and Aaron Vanderkley.

In 2012, I mentored a group through the process of making their own one-part AFT story. This was one of those, written by Steve A Williams. What was his inspiration?

"This story was originally dreamt up over 2 years before but it stopped on page 2. That was it, a one page joke. The idea for it came from a 10th Doctor figure that had lost its hand - it was going to be bitten off by the T-Rex"

It was such an ambitious and imaginative story. Steve took the brief and totally ran with it (no pun intended) and made it his own, pushing the boundaries of the format.

CAST

The 10th Doctor, Martha Jones, Teletubbies, The Celestial Toymaker (custom)

"I've always felt that Martha was an underused character and wanted to use her, which meant I had to use the tenth Doctor. 

The Teletubbies were from my original jokey idea and my daughter still had the toys. The Celestial Toymaker was a custom I started a long time ago and when extending the original idea, a major classic villain seemed a good idea and I had recently listened to the Big Finish Companion Chronicles Solitaire, in which he features. The custom uses a Host body (Voyage of the Damned), Dr Constantine head and loads of Green Stuff."

It's an excellent recipe for one of the great and definitely underused villains of the 60s. I love Steve's attention to detail on the Toymaker's robes, wonderful!

SCRIPT

Steve changed the story (having lost the T-Rx figure). Phil encouraged me to develop the story firther (and helped with the rhymes). I developed the script with him, altering it when I composed it on screen.

The story uses elements from The Mind Robber, The Celestial Toymaker and The Sound of Drums as well as (on pages 2, 3 and part of 4) the layout of Rupert The Bear. Did anyone spot the hidden TARDIS in the layout?

SHOOTING

Most shooting was done in March 2011, with various pictures of the Doctor, Martha and the Teletubbies, their house and the TARDIS. The Toymaker was taken later, when the custom was finished, along with shots of the Doctor and Martha tied up.

EDITING

Editing took a long time because of the fx I used. For the first page I used Daz Studio for cgi work on the first page. The Teletubby landscape was originally modelled in cgi but because it wasn't good enough, I took screen grabs from a library Teletubby DVD. (The jungle set and dinosaur were made by others).

The speech bubbles are colour coded because I knew that there would be a fair amount of dialogue and I wanted to make it very clear who was speaking at all times. I borrowed the idea from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman (Vertigo Comics).

One thing I learned about photographing is that I really need to learn how to 'green screen' the figures - I wasted a lot of time cleaning up the background noise before I could cut'n'paste the figures into new settings! (BTW the penknife on page 4 is my own)

Steve's editing on this story really is top notch, bearing in mind every frame has required work and none of the backgrounds are real (apart from the TARDIS interior, but even those frames needed a 'green screen' background.)

Particular highlights are the first image of page three, where a combination of flawless cut and paste, and excellent lighting make it look like the Doctor and Martha really are in the tubby house.

Also, take a look at the last frame of page two. I didn't know the Martha figure came with eyelids!

Another thing I love is how the 'Rupert Bear' format appears as we enter the Land of Fiction, really creating the illusion that we're intruding somewhere that already exists.

CONTINUITY

The story fits between Smith & Jones and The Shakespeare Code. I posited that the Doctor took Martha into the distant past first before visiting Elizabethan Britain. I love the idea that the TARDIS team are in the middle of an adventure we know nothing about - the TV series never uses that and it works really well - see the Indiana Jones films for example. (If you look closely on part one you will see part of the reason for this adventure - this is a deliberate red herring for later!)

The implication that the Toymaker and the TARDIS are heading to the same place is not accidental.

SUMMARY

In summary, Steve was one of the reasons I decided to do the AFT Writers' Group project in the first place. He was one of the people that had expressed a desire to do a story but wasn't sure where to start so I'm really glad he has done it.

What he's produced is vibrant in its colours, showing Steve's enthusiasm. His story is incredibly imaginative and utterly ambitious in terms of execution and its a real credit to Steve that he's persevered and seen it through to its conclusion.

I'd like to thank Phil for the opportunity to do this, I've learned an awful lot on the way.

Steve's passion for the story has been evident from the beginning. Every so often I'd get a flurry of emails from him as he finds time to work on it, full of ideas and work-in-progress pictures. I'm really glad he saw it through as I think he's created something truly unique, fun and full of whimsical Who-iness.

TRANSMISSION

This originally appeared on the AFT in January 2012. It's back, posted on 9th December 2023 to coincide with the return to our screens of the Toymaker!

The Celestial Toyshop

Since the Toymaker is back on our screens tonight, I thought it might be appropriate to pull out this vintage episode from AFT which used my original custom action figures.

INSPIRATION

The Celestial Toymaker had always been an interesting character for me. A seemingly omnipotent being that brought a certain whimsy and macabre quality to Doctor Who. This adventure was heavily inspired by the original but also The Mind Robber where the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find themselves in the Land of Fiction.

Other inspirations come from Alice In Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz - especially where this 60s adventure turns colour in the Toymaker's realm.

CAST

Back when it first began in 2001, Dapol had recently stopped making articulated figures in favour of static statues, so I turned my hand to making my own customs, using copies of male and female Star Wars figures cast in resin.

This one has a minimal cast of just the 2nd Doctor, Jamie, Zoe and the Toymaker - all custom made 3.75" figures made by me back in 2001.

The Clockwork robots are made of paper and directly influenced by The Mind Robber. The snake was bought from The Early Learning Centre.

SHOOTING

The scenes inside and outside the toyshop use no sets but were filmed on a blue background with the backdrop filled in after in photoshop.

The giant cards used were (obviously) an ordinary pack of playing cards.

The story was filmed in 2002 but not edited until 2003.

EDITING

The whole story was shot in colour but using photoshop I made the opening and closing in black and white. This was only the second sixties adventure on the AFT at the time. The first, Land of the Dinosaurs had been presented in black and white, so that continued as the norm.

The Toymaker's snow globe was created entirely in photoshop during the editing process. Similarly, the silhouettes of the Doctor and his companions as the Toyshop is destroyed were also painted digitally.

The Toymaker's spherical monitor is a white polystyrene ball with an image from the story overlaid, using the 'spherise' filter. 

CONTINUITY

You will obviously know by now that the Toymaker first appeared in The Celestial Toymaker in 1965. He was supposed to return in 1986 in The Nightmare Fair, this time battling the sixth Doctor but the story was abandoned when the show was taken off the air for 18 months.

The Toymaker has appeared in numerous books and comic strips and returned to TV in The Giggle on 9th Dec 2023 as part of the 60th Anniversary specials.

The title The Celestial Toyshop was used for a story in the 1969 Doctor Who annual but doesn't appear to feature the Toymaker.

Our story is set in Season 6 and takes place sometime after The Mind Robber, since Jamie mentions that story.

TRANSMISSION

This was originally Action Figure Theatre's Christmas special for 2003. After the site was temporarily taken down in 2005, The Celestial Toyshop was reposted (again at Christmas) in 2007. 

The original novel-style cover uses artwork by Alistair Pearson in the style of the Target reprints from the early 90s.

It has been re-presented on 9 Dec 2023 to coincide with the return of the Toymaker. It had been my intention not to repost the 'vintage' AFT adventures but who knows, this may open the floodgates.

BONUS! Come back in 1hour for more Toymaker fun.