'Timelord Emergency Messaging System' Doctor Who Season 6: 'The Doctor's Wife'

[paulrw]

Morning all.

I was watching the latest episode of season six of Doctor Who last night, 'The Doctor's Wife'.

During the course of the episode the a 'Scrumptious little Beauty' of a prop makes an appearance in the form of a 'Timelord Emergency Messaging System' :

It's an amazing story, written by Neil Gaiman and the message cube is indeed a scrumptious little beauty. It looks fantastic , really crisply constructed and it even appears that the prop maker may have paid Homage to 'Millennium' too ....

Any one know anything about this prop ?

Can anyone identify off the shelf components ?

Paul

 

[kursosawa]

It looks like the outer box is similar to those acrylic boxes used to house baseballs. ive actually got a smaller version of those boxes around here somewhere.

 

[youngpaddy1]

The white cubes inside I think a battery powered night lights, looks like they just swapped out the colour changing leds for white ones.
The outside looks like it was probably made for the show the perspex looks pretty thick.
cheerio

 

[Sea Monkey]

This was a nice visual upgrade from the original message cube as seen in the 2nd Doctor story "The War Games" (which was rather plain):

However I think the designer missed a trick.

I wish the inner cube had connected to the other one to suggest a 3-D model of a hypercube (or tesseract) which is a 4-D object. In much the same way you can represent a 3-D cube in 2-D you can represent a 4-D hypercube in 3-D.

I really like the idea of a Time Lord messaging system being a 4-D hypercube as it just feels right. And it seems like a relatively simple modification on the original design. In fact the new design is oh so close that at first I thought it was meant to be a tesseract. After that I couldn't get the notion out of my head.

 

[SteamForged]

the hyper cube would have been a beautiful idea. shame they missed it.

 

[timelordjedi777]

Reminds me of a Jedi holocron.

 

[jedibugs]

CT has made a prototype, pictured below. It's looking REALLY good! (I have posted more with info in its own thread, here.)

 

[breen2057]

just to let you know they have brought out this to buy check out the link

Doctor Who 2011 - Time Lord Psychic Container - £14.99 : Forbidden Planet International, Your Online Entertainment Superstore for Star Wars, Doctor Who, Star Trek and more

and a Variant style

Doctor Who 2011 - Time Lord Psychic Container (Variant) - £14.99 : Forbidden Planet International, Your Online Entertainment Superstore for Star Wars, Doctor Who, Star Trek and more

 

[jedibugs]

Yeah, I saw that... it's not bad for £15... but it's like the CO sonic vs the CT sonic (or even the MFX)... One is an approximated toy, the other is a Replica Prop. For me, toys are a good fill-in until the prop becomes available. When CT finally releases his 11 sonic, I'll be giving away my CO Toy!

just to let you know they have brought out this to buy check out the link

Doctor Who 2011 - Time Lord Psychic Container - £14.99 : Forbidden Planet International, Your Online Entertainment Superstore for Star Wars, Doctor Who, Star Trek and more

and a Variant style

Doctor Who 2011 - Time Lord Psychic Container (Variant) - £14.99 : Forbidden Planet International, Your Online Entertainment Superstore for Star Wars, Doctor Who, Star Trek and more

 

[Sea Monkey]

Yeah, I saw that... it's not bad for £15... but it's like the CO sonic vs the CT sonic (or even the MFX)... One is an approximated toy, the other is a Replica Prop. For me, toys are a good fill-in until the prop becomes available. When CT finally releases his 11 sonic, I'll be giving away my CO Toy!

On the variant toy cube has anyone identified the Gallifreyan script yet? I wondered if it was something used in the show which had an identified meaning.

 

[NTBBCPD]

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[GeneralFROSTY]

Was the outer cube a found item or custome tooled for the show?

 

[jedibugs]

Was the outer cube a found item or custome tooled for the show?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the whole thing is a 100% scratch-built custom prop.

 

[GeneralFROSTY]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the whole thing is a 100% scratch-built custom prop.

That's what I figured - it's fun to track down those "found" items and build the prop replica, but I would like to see this one done. The CT version looks really good - the licensed toy version just does not measure up unfortunately (but what can you expect from a toy) so maybe Qmx will consider doing one down the road as well...

 

[NTBBCPD]

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[ShadowX81]

A bit of an "out-there" idea for the inner blue cube: Aerogel.
Expensive as hell, but it has that ethereal blue, otherworldly look.

Plus ive always just wanted to see someone use it for something.

 

[kursosawa]

Why make what you can buy.....


It's a Photo cube... and the little holes have magnets in them on this version. I saw a version for displaying Collector baseballs that was identical to the prop.

The prop designers may have had one of these on their desk when they were asked to come up with a Timelord message cube.

I've been searching high and low but sadly i can only find the thin walled acrylic baseball holders and photo cubes.

 

[Kris Lyssara]

Why make what you can buy.....


It's a Photo cube... and the little holes have magnets in them on this version. I saw a version for displaying Collector baseballs that was identical to the prop.

The prop designers may have had one of these on their desk when they were asked to come up with a Timelord message cube.

The six points is what made me think of a Baseball holder, as well. Great find! Do you have any more information on the brand or anything?

 

[NTBBCPD]

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[NTBBCPD]

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