Richard B
Active Member
Thanks Nick, and everyone else, for all your enthusiasm. (I'm Richard from The Wand Company.)
Sorry for being rather late to join the conversation. This is my first post on the RPF so please excuse any errors of etiquette. We're only a very small team and we're pretty busy at the moment getting this Sonic ready for production, but I'll try to answer some of the questions that have come up in this thread.
I'm aware that this particular prop has a bit of a history of, erm, "robust discussion" on the RPF, but I'm hoping that our product isn't going to cause any upsets - we're certainly not trying to claim that our Sonic is more screen-accurate than any other (licensed or un-licensed) 10th Doctor's Sonic - as you all know, there are some very nice replicas out there already but we're pitching at a rather different market - somewhere in between the Character Options toys and the high-end serious collector's replicas. Of course, we'll never sell the hundreds of thousands of units that CO do, but being a very small company, we don't need to.
So, to answer the questions and comments, in no particular order:
We won't be selling the product directly ourselves - ThinkGeek are our launch partner in the USA so they'll be the best place to buy from if you want to get hold of one quickly. For the full list of the retailers that will be carrying the product in October, see our website here: Sonic Screwdriver Universal Remote Control. I'm afraid it's unlikely that any other retailers will be stocking it until December at the earliest.
Yep, that's correct - the tail end is threaded, and the front of the body is a snap-fit into the aluminium collar. You can view the artwork for the X-ray side of the user manual here: http://www.thewandcompany.com/photos/albums/tenth-doctor-s-sonic-screwdriver/10th-Doctors-Sonic-X-ray-v10.jpg. However, please note that this was meant to be an interesting and entertaining artwork, rather than a detailed technical document - all of the text is technically correct but the design of some of the internal clip features is likely to change slightly - those are the things that we're tweaking at the moment to make it all fit together properly in production.
The tail end is fatter than any of the replicas I've seen (in particular, the waisted section of the aluminium is 15mm diameter), but it's the same as the prop that we borrowed from David Tennant - we didn't need change this to accommodate the USB port.
Yes, indeed - the MFX sonic was based on photos and measurements taken in October 2007, a good couple of years before the end of this prop's time on screen. The prop that we borrowed had quite a few differences compared to the MFX reference photos (different orientation of emitter head struts with respect to the slider, different shape of ridges and end bulb, etc.) so it's either a different prop or it had a lot of reworking during that time.
I hope this doesn't spark another debate about ridges, but I can explain what we did for our product. The shape of the ridges on the Tennant prop actually varies slightly around their perimeter - our version is "idealised" in that it's rotationally symmetrical (i.e. the same all the way around) and the shape is taken from an average of the variances on the prop that we measured.
The larger top bevel is caused by the extrusion that we're using for the emitter head being very slightly over-sized in the areas between the struts (so that when we turn down the diameter to create the waisted section just behind the blue lens, the bevel ends up being a bit too big). You might also have noticed that the edges of the struts are slightly rounded off - again this is in the extrusion. I'm afraid it's unlikely that these issues will be improved as we've don't have enough time to re-make the extrusion die tooling or the budget for the extra machining operations that could be done to correct the parts after extrusion. (Also, to be honest, we doubt that most of our customers would notice the difference anyway.)
Also, the thin tube in the middle of the emitter head has a wider section at the top and bottom where it meets the main emitter head part, making it look a bit like the "B" prop - this is simply to allow for the assembly method that we've chosen.
Nick Robatto told me that he typically repainted the props a couple of times per series, so there's no chance that the paint the Neill Gorton photographed in 2007 is still on any prop today. Nick doesn't remember repainting David Tennant's sonic before it was given to him, but after doing it so many times he can't be sure. There were a few chips and scuffs on the prop when we borrowed it - the photos were retouched to remove these for our press release last month. Either way, I'm sure that some of you will enjoy repainting our product.
I wonder if the classic sonic will be the next version to be tackled? That surely would be as cheap as chips price-wise?
I'm afraid we don't have any plans at the moment to make any more versions of sonic screwdrivers, but if this one goes well for us then we'll of course consider it. We have something else in the pipeline for next year, but I can't say anything about that just yet.
A few people have asked us that. It's technically possible with the electronic components we've got inside the Sonic, but I'm still working on the software and I'm already very short of code space so I'm afraid it's unlikely that I'll be able to add a TV-B-Gone type of feature. (Oh, and in case anyone's wondering, the USB socket can only be used for charging - we would have liked to have included a facility to upgrade the software but it just wasn't going to happen with the space and cost constraints.)
This time, the sounds are all sonic screwdriver sounds, rather than any other Doctor Who sound effects. Some people enjoyed the random noises last time, whilst for others they were an irritation.
That's correct - we've changed the FX mode (compared to our 11th Doctor's sonic) to make it more useful for cosplay - in FX mode, if you press and hold the button, it'll just make the "normal" 10th Doctor's sonic screwdriver sound (and light the blue tip) continuously for as long as the button is held down (ignoring any gestures), so you can run around as much as you like making the buzzing sound. If you double-press and hold the button down on the second press, it goes into a gesture-activated FX mode a bit like last time, except this time the sounds will continue to play until you release the button, rather than needing to be retriggered by another gesture every couple of seconds. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, there are a few fun "scanning" type sound effects that can be accessed this way (mostly from the 10th Doctor's era, but I just had to include the mine-detector scanning sound from the classic "Sea Devils" episode).
I hope that all makes sense and covers most of your questions - sorry for such a long and rambling post.
Cheers,
Richard
Last edited:
