I'm A Grown Man And I Bought This: Doctor Who Seeds Of Doom Two Pack

I first started buying Doctor Who action figures around 2007. The original plan was to buy the Tenth Doctor and Rose and maybe a Dalek and that's it. You can probably guess how that turned out, five years and several hundred figures later. Sorry wallet. Sucks to be you!

These are my newest Doctor Who acquisitions: The Fourth Doctor and Krynoid figures from the Season 13 episode The Seeds Of Doom, which first aired in 1976.

The episode starts out somewhat like The Thing as an Antarctic expedition finds an extraterrestrial pod buried in the ice. The expedition's scientists apparently never saw any sci-fi or horror movies before, because they bring the pod back to their lab and start poking around at it. 

As sure as you can say "plagiarism lawsuit" the pod opens up, attaches itself to one of the scientists and begins absorbing his body, turning him into a plant based life form called a Krynoid.

The Krynoid then moves to the comparatively warmer climate of England where it grows to ridiculous proportions, becoming the size of the average office building before being dispatched by the Doctor.

In addition to the Fourth Doctor and Krynoid figure, the set comes with two Krynoid pods; one closed and the other sprouting a deadly tendril, so you can recreate the episode in the privacy of your own home while wearing your Doctor Who Underoos. Don't act like you weren't thinking about it!

In the Season 8 episode The Claws Of Axos the Third Doctor fought an alien invasion by a race called the Axons. The Axons were tall, pink, blobby unpleasant aliens who were represented by tall, pink, blobby unpleasant rubber suits, covered with strands of expanding insulation foam.

Because this is Doctor Who we're talking about, when it came time to film Seeds Of Doom five years later, the BBC, never ones to spend a pence they didn't need to, dug out one of the old Axon costumes, painted it green, added a few more tendrils and bits of moss, and voila! They had a brand new alien costume!

Life imitates art! Character Options (the company that makes the Doctor Who action figures) made a pink Axon figure two or three years ago. So naturally when it came time for them to make a Krynoid, everyone assumed they'd do the same thing the BBC did: take some leftover Axon figures, paint them green, say "There's your Krynoid!" and call it a day.

The promotional pics for the Krynoid Two Pack seemed to illustrate just that: a previously released Fourth Doctor figure (but with a sword accessory this time!) and a repainted Axon. I was underwhelmed to say the least, and decided not to bother ordering the set.

But then the actual figure came out and it turns out it wasn't just a simple repaint after all! They used the base figure of course, but as you can see here they added new and different tendrils to the torso, gave it new hands, and even molded a different pair of feet for it. It turned out to be an almost all new figure. In fact it was so different that I changed my mind and ended up ordering one after all.

So why wouldn't the Character Options marketing people say anything about that? Why rework a figure so extensively and not let their customers know? I'm sure many people felt the same way as I did and initially didn't want to spend money on a lame repaint. Who knows how many sales their incompetence cost their company? Someone needs a good firing, or at the very least to be forced to work as a grocery cashier for a month, so they'll appreciate their position when they come back.

The Fourth Doctor

I'm a big fan of Doctor Who, so I thought I'd start a series of vector drawings of the eleven (!) different Doctors (so far).

Tom Baker played the Fourth Doctor from 1974 to 1981, the longest tenure of any actor so far. With his bug eyes, manic grin, curly mop of hair and trademark endless scarf, he's the Doctor best known to most Americans. Probably due to all those PBS fund-raiser marathons.

The Fourth Doctor tended to distract foes with his odd behavior. He could be befuddled, aloof and somber all at once.

He also had many interesting companions, including fan favorite Sarah Jane Smith (who actually debuted in a Third Doctor episode), Leela (sort of an alien cave woman), K-9 (his trusty robotic dog) and Romana, a fellow Time Lord (Time Lady?) from the Doctor's planet of Gallifrey.

According to legend, the Fourth Doctor's ridiculously long scarf came about by accident. The BBC sent a box full of various yarns to a local seamstress to knit into a scarf. She supposedly got carried away and used ALL the yarn, resulting in a 16 foot long scarf. The studio was about to cut it in half, but Baker reportedly saw it and liked it, and the rest is history.

Like Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor, the Fourth Doctor didn't limit himself to just one outfit. He had at least four different costumes during his time on the series. I drew him in the one I like best.

Near the end of Baker's run, the creators began incorporating a question mark into the Doctor's attire (on his shirt collar), something I always found cringe-worthy. Doctor Who is the name of the show, not the character's name. He's always been known simply as "The Doctor." Wearing a question mark as a nod to the show's title always seemed a little too cutesy to me, and every time I saw it it would yank me right out of the story.

The question mark tradition continued all the way to the Seventh Doctor (who carried an umbrella with a question mark-shaped handle). Fortunately the creators of the revived series have seen the light, and Doctors Nine through Eleven have thankfully been question mark free.

Doctor #4 is a vector drawing, drawn all in InDesign. Toward the end I was cursing that frakin' scarf and all its stripes. I did my best to make the stripes screen accurate, but I had to fudge a little to get them all to fit. That's a bag of the Doctor's trademark "jelly babies" that he's holding.

Please forgive the ugly watermark on the illustration. I swore I would never add one to my art, because I know that 99.99% of my readers would never even think of stealing it. But earlier this year I had a run-in with an art thief who was not only stealing my work, but selling it as her own! Hence the watermarks. This is why we can't have nice things.

Stay tuned for Doctors #5 through #11!

Here's one of many, many, MANY sketches I did of Tom Baker. Since he seems to be the most popular Doctor here in the States, I wanted to make sure I got him right. Although you'd think a face like his would be easy to capture, it took a ton of sketches to get it right in this simplified style. This one wasn't quite right, and I ended up changing it a lot in the final drawing.

When I need reference for the various Doctor's outfits, I just check out my Doctor Who action figure shelf. Some of them are hidden behind others in this photo, but all eleven of them are there.