TARDIS Set Tour – Roath Lock Studios

Having been the production home of Doctor Who for more than ten years, Cardiff Bay itself has become an immersive set tour for Whovians. Standing upon Roald Dahl Plass, beneath which the cavernous Torchwood base was located, you’re surrounded by buildings that have doubled as alien landscapes and streets that pretend to be London. Even looking out to sea, obscured slightly by the gleaming Norwegian Church Arts Centre, the plump blue-and-silver Doctor Who Experience building swells across the view.

This was my second time visiting the exhibition, after going in 2013 under the Matt Smith administration. I’ll spare you a detailed account of the Doctor Who Experience itself for three reasons. One: there are already plenty of blog posts about that on the Web. B: The interactive portion is better experienced than read about and contains a smidge of fan service that I don’t want to spoil and iii: that’s not really why I was there.

This time, I was going in the TARDIS! The real one! Well…real in the sense of the working set at Roath Lock Studios used by the BBC production team.

After leaving the exhibition through the gift shop, where I’d grappled with my inner child over the merits of spending £50 on a 13-foot scarf and ultimately won/lost depending on how you see it (I didn’t buy it), we joined a group of people hovering around the foyer. Promptly, a smiling young woman in a branded black fleece came over and introduced herself to the group as Lauren. She handed out our lanyards and led the group a quarter-mile up the road to Roath Lock Studios – a white and blue building adorned with shapes to represent various shows filmed there including Casualty (plus signs), Upstairs Downstairs (arrows) and, of course, Doctor Who (circles/roundels). We were led into the reception and buzzed through a barrier by a security man eyeing each lanyard carefully.

After turning into a corridor, we were funnelled down the immediate right into a large warehouse; a shuttered door in the far corner, air conditioning vents lining the walls at intervals. The room split almost in half by its contents: at the front, to your left as you walk in, stands an enormous structure, like a wooden pumpkin, punctured with walkways and scaffolding and studio lights. At the back of the room sits a familiar blue box, adorned with the graffiti that was added in the recently-concluded ninth series to memorialise fallen companion Clara. Left of the box an empty wire birdcage hung open, flanked by a lifeless Dalek. On the right, a large publicity print filled out the space.

Rather than let 22 people stampede through the TARDIS set at once, our party was split in half. We were led off to the trio of props at the far end of the room and introduced to Brad and Andy. Brad was young and skinny, wearing a dark jumper rolled up to the forearms and a mop of black hair graying at the temples. Andy, the older man who Brad introduced as a collector providing many of the exhibits to the Doctor Who Experience, chuckled as he described himself being from the “early days of fandom”.

Brad talked us through the items that had been put out, even disassembling the Dalek – a working prop that is still used in filming – to show us how the operator gets inside and controls its movement. “We were meant to have the Trap Street set left standing for the tour,” said Brad with an almost apologetic tone. He’s referring to the Diagon Alley-esque alien refugee camp that featured in the series nine episode ‘Face the Raven’ – the scene of Clara’s demise. The set, or at least parts of it, were needed for another production and it was disassembled. As I looked around the vast unused space in the studio (besides the TARDIS pumpkin) and the sparse selection of props on display, I couldn’t help wondering if the loss of Trap Street had happened at the last minute. Nevertheless, Brad and Andy spoke with a knowledge and enthusiasm that more than made up for it.

TARDIS doors

The other half of the group, the ones who had been sent straight to the TARDIS, had been divided further and were being taken through (as we soon would be) in groups of around six. Gradually, the crowd around Brad was starting to grow as people trickled out of the other side of the console room set. As the last stragglers of the first group were starting to emerge from the pumpkin, Lauren reappeared to take the second wave of fans through.

Lauren ushered us, in small groups, up a steep flight of metal stairs to a scaffolding – this tour has a lot of stairs but seems to be wheelchair-friendly. The tour group included a woman in a wheelchair and, though I didn’t see how exactly they took her around as she was in the first group, it appears that she was able to go inside and around the set without any problems. At the top, protruding through a black curtain that revealed the hint of a green-screen beneath, the bright blue police box doors waited. We lingered there for a while as the others in our group wanted photos at the door. While I snapped a few photos, I don’t appear in any of them. Mainly because I felt that I wanted the experience; to feel, not to pose. I slightly regret that now.

However, I did discover that not only does the “Pull To Open” smaller door not house a phone, but it needs to be pushed open! Eventually, Lauren stepped through the doors and strode to the console, now fully visible through the opening. Steeled in the presence of a set I’ve always wanted to see for myself, I stepped forward and entered the TARDIS.

TARDIS telepathic circuits

The first thing that struck me as I crossed the threshold was, ironically, how much smaller it seemed on the inside. Though I know that camera trickery is used on TV, I assumed a set built for the lanky Peter Capaldi would still dwarf me. Though the ceiling studio lights were switched off, the console room was ablaze with the light of the column and roundels. A subtle pulsing noise plays while the set is active, as though the place were alive (which, in the show, it is). I didn’t even notice until, as we were leaving, a momentary break in the audio loop made the silence more obvious. Between the fiery orange lights, the bookcases (filled with real books, Lauren informed us) and the warmth of the enclosed set, the room could have been a cosy library decorated with sci-fi kitsch. The only thing switched off, Lauren told us, was the steam vents built into the floor that would go off during filming to make the TARDIS seem more spacey. But, since I’d left my Marilyn Monroe dress at home, it wasn’t needed today.

Admittedly, the set may have merely felt smaller because, as you might expect given this is a working set on one of the BBC’s most popular shows, a lot of the console room is roped off. Despite the screaming protests of my inner fanboy, I resisted the urge to limbo under it and go careening around the set. We were later told that the restrictions can sometimes invoke the ire of younger children who want to properly play in the TARDIS. So they’d compromised by only roping off the walkways and allowing unobstructed access to two of the console’s frontmost panels. “Please don’t touch the controls!” said Lauren sharply, as though just realising she’d forgotten to tell us. “The console’s a bit fragile so please don’t play with it in case anything breaks. Matt Smith was notorious for doing that,” she name-dropped casually, “but if you want me to take photos of you looking like you’re about to then that’s fine.”

From the moment I’d bought my ticket I knew that, even if it meant being kicked out or banned, I was going to use a TARDIS control. Luckily, several of the people in our group were alone so, in order to get photos, they had to enlist our guide to take them. One woman was brandishing a complex DSLR and starting giving Lauren a detailed tutorial in using it correctly. With everyone distracted, I seized my chance! Hurriedly, I groped for the console, found the lever closest to me (below) and, without looking, yanked it down with a satisfying *thunk*.

TARDIS lever

If Lauren noticed, she gave no indication, still being lectured about how to achieve focus despite the harsh orange lights of the column. Not wanting to push my luck and risk breaking anything, I resisted another go. Though I’d always assumed the lights and column rotation were controlled externally, we were later told that one of the big levers was wired up to activate the set’s mechanics, since Peter Capaldi tended to pull it as a dramatic flourish when the scene involved the TARDIS taking off. My surreptitious lever pull had been random and, though the Dramatic Lever was safely roped off on the other side of the console, part of me was disappointed that I couldn’t have the giddy thrill of setting it off.

When we’d had our time at the controls, we trailed left down a short flight of stairs to the lowest level of the console room. There we were able to explore the underside of the console level where blackboards, workbenches, a guitar and amp (unfortunately lacking in clockwork squirrel) and other Twelfth Doctor staples were dotted around. Among the TARDIS architecture at the lower level the base of the central column and the recently reintroduced round things. After our guide listed off all the times the column base had been used on-screen, I asked if she’d had to memorise that or just knew it. “I’d watched and liked Doctor Who when I started working here, and we are given a basic script to follow, but that extra stuff just sort of comes with time,” she responded. I nodded, taking in the time machine around us.

Under the console

We exited the TARDIS through an archway and emerged into cooler air on the other side of the great wooden pumpkin. We hung around here for a minute as people got their final photos and drifted back to Brad and Andy’s crowd, Lauren answering questions from the group the entire way. Then, almost as quickly as we’d entered, we were led back through the corridor, out through the security gate and deposited into the mild Welsh evening.

Conventional wisdom says you should never meet your heroes and I suppose the same goes for fictional spaceships too. Seeing the set in person (and it very much is a set) has irrevocably changed how I imagine the TARDIS console room, but for the better. It now has a texture, a temperature, a scale both grand and intimate. It really is an experience, one that no camera can really capture. The guides and people involved in the tour clearly care about giving visitors the best time in the TARDIS they can, hence the lights and the sounds and screens – things that someone has to be operating – all being active. Brad asked us not to take photos of the TARDIS set from the outside (despite the fact most of us already had), to preserve the surprise for those who come later. Though I’m pretty certain you can find images of the TARDIS pumpkin online, I’ve removed that photo from the slideshow below because they seem to earnestly want to give people the Doctor Who Experience.

Photo credit: Stew Elliot

301+ : Interviews with the Internet

301+

301+ is a new series of blog posts I’m starting on the Huffington Post UK, in which I interview popular content creators, YouTubers and public figures on the Web who you don’t ordinarily hear about.

The first interview is scheduled for next Monday (16th June 2014) and there will hopefully be a new interview every subsequent Monday for as long as I can keep doing this. Meantimes, check out the release schedule by liking 301+ on Facebook, following 301+ on Twitter and encouraging everyone you know to do the same. I’ll also use the Facebook page to take suggestions of people to interview and questions to ask upcoming guests.

All 301+ Blog Posts

Series 1:
Part 1: Thug Notes
Part 2: The Blockbuster Buster
Part 3: Geek Crash Course
Part 4: Brock Baker
Part 5: Doctor Puppet

Series 2:
Part 6: Nostalgia Critic
Part 7: Lindsey Stirling

Moto G Review

Selecting a budget smartphone usually means compromising on performance and features just to stay within a sub-£200 price range. But Motorola’s first smartphone to get a UK release since being acquired by Google – the Moto G – comes packing an impressive set of specs for a paltry £135 price tag. So what’s the catch?

Moto G

The device itself has a fairly typical layout: power button and volume rocker on the right-hand edge, 3.5mm headphone jack atop and micro-USB port beneath. At the fore we have the Moto G’s 4.5-inch LCD touchscreen, speaker, mic and 1.3 MP front-facing camera. The notification light next to the front camera was a great design choice on Motorola’s part, as it glows softly rather than flashing brightly, meaning you could happily ignore it in a darkened bedroom at night but still notice it when you want to.

Unlike a lot of Android phones, the Moto G lacks mechanical touch-sensitive buttons as these are included in the OS. This was presumably a way to save costs on the casing since the gap left behind is not filled with anything and makes the screen seem a little off-centre, though it does act as a handy place to grip the phone while watching videos.

Considering Motorola’s history of designing handsets with quirky and interesting form factors, it’s a little disappointing that the Moto G is such a generic black rectangle, but this is understandable given the price. Many low-cost phones try to make up for lacklustre specs with a gimmicky design and the results are often hideous and tacky, so Motorola’s cost limitations may have turned out to be a strength.

Having said that, the Moto G comes out of the box sporting a glossy black back-cover that gives it a fragile and distinctly toy-like feel. The back can be replaced with a selection of coloured shells (£8.99) or flip covers (£18.99) slated to reach UK shores before the end of the year. The flip covers in particular, as they’re made of a more durable textured plastic, seem like they’d offer the best protection against the elements long-term, though they strike me as a little pricey for what they are.

Moto G Flip covers and back shells

But really it’s what’s under the shell that has everyone talking about the Moto G and for good reason. The Moto G is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 CPU with a quad-core Cortex-A7 chip clocked at 1.2GHz, not mind-blowing but very impressive for the price, and packs a respectable 1GB of memory. Navigating menus and using less processor-intensive features were as slick as you’d expect, even coping admirably when switching between apps rapidly with no visible latency. Though you wouldn’t expect a supposedly budget device to be much good for gaming, its Adreno 305 graphics chip is shared by a number of mid-range phones and, combined with the decent frame rate enabled by the CPU, makes the Moto G a competent gaming device.

It comes with comparatively meagre 8GB storage capacity, though a 16GB model is available for an extra £25, and there’s no way of supplementing that with an SD card. It also lacks 4G connectivity, which may be a dealbreaker in the US and some other countries but isn’t really a problem if you’re in the UK and live outside the major cities.

The Moto G flaunts a crisp 720p screen, matching that of yesteryear’s mid-range phones like the Nexus 4 and Galaxy S3, and plays HD video with incredible sharpness. My only complaint is that the LCD display lacks the colour richness you’d get with an AMOLED screen, giving videos a slightly washed-out appearance. The rear camera is perfectly serviceable and about what you’d expect for this price bracket. It won’t win any awards, but it’s decent enough for the casual photographer and is run on Motorola’s own software featuring a varied but straightforward menu of settings to control photo quality.

None of this comes at the expense of draining the phone’s power source either, since the 2,070 mAh battery is a stalwart companion in keeping the Moto G running. With Android’s built in battery saver systems, I was able to eke out a good 36 hours of life with moderate use and even a little over 12 hours when I was hammering it with updates, games and music streaming. Given the hardware it has to support, Motorola might have rendered the Moto G almost unusable if they’d skimped on the battery, so it’s encouraging to see thought went into even these minute details.

Android KitKat

At the moment, the Moto G comes running the slightly older Android 4.3 Jelly Bean but is slated to receive an update in January to the latest version (KitKat), with reports this has already begun rolling out for certain devices. Whilst the Android OS itself hasn’t undergone much alteration, Motorola has thrown in a ‘Migrate’ app that streamlines the process of copying the data on your old handset over to the Moto G (assuming it was also an Android). There’s also ‘Assist’, a somewhat over-auspiciously named app that simply lets you set times for your phone to fall silent automatically, such as during meetings or at night.

Along with the normal selection of apps for Google’s services pre-installed on the phone, you’ll be invited to enable ‘Google Now’ on first startup. This is effectively a system to deliver time and location-sensitive information to your phone’s notifications window automatically, such as traffic conditions for your commute home, weather and nearby restaurants. It’s an nice idea but I found it lacking in customisation, since it’s almost entirely automated rather than letting you adjust when certain notifications arrive. Eventually I just switched it off.


The Moto G is a great device all-round and almost indistinguishable in performance from a mid-range handset costing upwards of £100 more. It’s not without compromises, but clearly Motorola has taken pains to ensure these were done strategically: saving money in specialist areas, like the camera and case design, and putting it into improving the experience for a general user. It’s received rave reviews elsewhere and I think you can fairly predict that it’s going to be a game-changer in the budget mobile arena for 2014.

iPad Mini Review

In 2010, Steve Jobs veraciously denounced the batch of 7-inch tablets being created by Apple’s competitors to fend off the iPad, bemoaning the sacrifice in usability that had to be made to cram it into the smaller chassis. Two years later, incumbent Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage to unveil the more diminutive iPad – the iPad Mini – that Jobs said should never happen. Was he right all along or has Cook found the formula to condense the iPad without compromise?

White iPad Mini

Strictly speaking, the iPad Mini rocks a 7.9-inch display, nearly a full inch larger than its competition: Google’s Nexus 7 and Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets. The Mini is thinner and lighter than both rivals though bigger in other dimensions to accommodate the larger screen, home button and 1.2 megapixel camera on the front face. The 5 megapixel rear-camera is embedded in an aluminium aft which, while alluring, will probably show some battle scars before long.

Atop the Mini you’ll find the 3.5mm headphone jack and standby button, whilst the edges are clear of all but the volume rocker and lock switch. Between the dual speaker-grilles along the bottom sits the new proprietary “lightning” port that have been on all Apple devices since the iPhone 5. Other than being considerably smaller, the main benefit of this new connector is the ability to be plugged in either side-up, if you ever had trouble with that before.

Conspicuous is the lack of retina display, which may be a way to save cost, battery life or simply as an incentive to put into the next generation Mini. Nevertheless, its absence may be disappointing for those looking to use it to watch videos on the move and gives the Mini an overall underwhelming display than its less wallet-draining competitors.

Under the hood is Apple’s A5 chip clocked at 1GHz: notably less powerful than the A6 and A6X CPUs powering the latest generation iPhone and larger iPads. This may be another concession to bring down the cost or power consumption of the device. However, the Nexus 7 carries a faster quad-core NVidia chip and boasts the same 10-hour battery life, so this seems unnecessary.

Moving away from the hardware, the Mini runs iOS but with one crucial difference: thumb detection, which lets you use the multi-touch display when your thumb is resting on the screen without causing interference. Given the tiny bezel on either side of the display, this is a welcome feature and shows that Apple are putting real thought into the limitations of a smaller form factor. In terms of usability, it was surprisingly easy to type for prolonged periods, likely due to the slightly larger screen allowing the onscreen keyboard to be more spacious.

Green Smart Cover

The iPad Mini is available directly from Apple, priced at £269 for the 16GB model and scaling up to £429 for the 64GB storage. Tack another £100 if you want it to come with a 3G receiver. Like its commodious counterpart, the Mini can be decked out with a Smart Case cover (£35), though with only three folding segments on this version it doesn’t feel nearly as sturdy.

Apple seems to have taken pains to minimise compromising usability or design – two of Apple’s core principles – when coming up with the iPad Mini. Unfortunately, either a desire to reduce cost or to not show their hand too early means that unnecessary sacrifices have been made elsewhere. Time will tell if Apple has enough clout to sell the Mini despite its limitations, or if people will be drawn to the cheaper, more powerful Nexus 7.

Still Got Legs

Because my final year project is the biggest piece of academic work I’ve ever had to do, it naturally attracts the biggest opportunities for procrastination. I’ve been meaning to switch my blog over to a new host and redesign its template since 2011 but only now that I’m in the deepest, darkest, deadliest parts of writing my dissertation does the deed demand my diversion.

Continue reading “Still Got Legs”

Hello (new) World

If you’re reading this, then I’ve successfully transferred my blog over to a new web host. Now all that remains is to find a template I like or build my own. Shiny!