DWM - Blue Peter - Design the TARDIS contest

[The Smithsonian, Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard]

Fans to redesign Tardis console

CBBC show Blue Peter has launched a competition to design a new Tardis console that will appear in the next series of Doctor Who.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8295718.stm


OK does this sound like Madness?

Lets get Kids age 6 - 12 to send in their ideas of how to design the New Console room, and get Matt Smith to pick the new design from all the entries to be used in the show.

I'm 34, and have loved the show longer than these kids, and I live outside of the UK, maybe I have something to offer? Maybe the next great set designer will be in entries the kids 6-12 have sent in (or whatever the age requirements to send in an entry to Blue Peter are...) on the other hand , maybe not.

Lets pretend that anyone could send in an entry and lets not restrict it based on age or where you live.

The Tardis has an "Architectural Configuration System" or "Desktop Theme" if you will. If you had absolute choice over what your home looked like, what would you do?

I remember reading that for the 2005 series of Doctor Who the designers felt the Tardis wasn't the Doctor's home but more of a Volkswagen Bug or VW Microbus - The design team felt the Tardis was a conveyance only. I have a different view.

I think the Tardis console room should look like an Italian courtyard crossed with an atrium, maybe with a few Celtic accents.

Strong Bold solid stone doors set in an arch - a portal to the outside universe.
[Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley]


The doors interlaced with roundels. Corridors leading into distant parts of the Tardis. A second floor balcony leading out from the Doctor's room so he can look out over the courtyard. In one corner a kitchen and breakfast table. The Doctor is probably the kind of person who would really enjoy a good breakfast. The wall next to the doors should have an huge panoramic view-screen. Maybe even a water feature like a koi pond.

The console needs lots of levers and dials and probably similar controls to an editing console or a sound board. Sound boards have EQ radial potentiometers that can adjust the Q of the segment of a frequency you are concentrating on. You need that level of precision when traveling through all of time.