THIRTEENTH DOCTOR CUSTOMS

This has been a long time coming. I finished off my Troughton batch in 2019, and planned a lap of honour (of which more to come hopefully soon). But while the series rolls on, there was always going to be unfinished business. And now Jodie's era has come to an end, I can finally take a crack at all the monsters therein. Starting with..

Tzim Sha

The big bad who bookended the Thirteenth Doctor's first season, and by

default one of her most significant villains. 

Base was an Eleventh Doctor, dremelled down, with lots (and lots) or armour details sculpted over. I sculpted in the face and then added the million tiny teeth. All in all, something of a test for my eyesight...

Pting

This was an interesting challenge - obviously there's no Who base body that fits the bill, so I had to cast around for options. Eventually I found a small Marvel capsule figure with a few points of articulation (arms  and head) that was about the right scale. I replaced the hands and feet, shortened the limbs and sculpted new head and body details over the top.

The articulation is still a little clunky, and the feet aren't great, but he gets the job done.

Thijarian

I previewed this an age back, so it's nice to finally show off the completed version. Figure is based on a Sycorax warrior, with a head

resculpt (tiny beads stand in for the eyes). The skirt is a solid sculpt.

The trickiest area to sort was the shoulder armour. I built this up in layers with thin pieces of plasticard and sculpt. I ended up sculpting over the shoulder joints to maintain the flow of the look, but this isn’t a character that necessarily lends itself to arms up posing…

Kerblam Man

Body was a cinch here - an Ian Chesterton suited body with minor tweaks. The bulk of the work was obviously the head - sculpting and resculpting, sanding and smoothing until it was a close enough match.

I also built a separate removable hat with a small rubber strap, though I doubt I’ll remove it much for fear of paint rub. His little parcel was made as a plasticard cube with a printed Kerblam design glued around it.

Dreg

I had issues with the story, but the Dregs are probably my favourite monster from the Whittaker era, so always a shoo-in for customising.

Base body was the Hoix, with all the armour removed. The head and body were all scratch sculpted, with small teeth snipped from other figures and built into the jawline. The hands came from a Marvel Legends figure - they’re 6” in scale, but that worked quite well in suggesting longer, clawed fingers.

Skithra Queen

The main challenge here was finding decent source images - the Queen is seen fairly infrequently on screen, and then usually in darkness and close-up. There’s one decent publicity shot, but otherwise the Eaglemoss figurine was invaluable for reference shots and colour matching.

Base figure was an Earthshock android, as it’s a decent slim build for layering over. The face came from Missy, as the wild grin worked quite well for the reference shot I was matching. I built all the head crests and spikes up around bits of plastic and small pegs. All the body armour and scrap pieces were sculpted in or offcuts from my spares bin, with the coat tails trimmed from a Tennant overcoat.

The tail was a rubber toy insect (a centipede, de-legged), trimmed and glued to form the curve and then mounted to the lower back - it’s quite heavy, so the figure has to lean forward so as not to overbalance.

Ashad

The obvious base here was the old faithful Tennant Cyberman. The chest is a mix of that version (the lower segmented armour, which I retained) and the Matt Smith Cyberman, from which I took a cast from my earlier custom.

I drilled out half of the head and glued in a section of a Capaldi face (as it seemed suitably dour and cadaverous!).

Rest of the head was resculpted around this. The arms and legs were simple enough resculpts and then it was just a case of painting in all the grime and glueing in the various tubes and bracing strips around the legs.

Cyberman

As with the last few Doctors, Jodie gets her own bespoke Cyber variant.

Again, the chest is a variant on the Smith version, but the limbs and head are all new and were scratch sculpted over a Tennant Cyber, with small spiked glued in at the appropriate places. Whole figure was sanded to death for a smooth(ish) finish and then spraypainted to try and keep it sleek - as ever, any paint instantly showed up all the imperfections…

This is the last major Cyber variant I needed to tackle, so I’m looking forward to taking a group shot. I know there are the Cyber Time Lords, but… well, they’re a bit silly, and the work that those filigree headdresses will involve terrifies me. I’ll probably grudgingly tackle it at some point, though possibly only as a headswap for this.

Karvanista

Onto Jodie’s last full season, and the villain turned hero of the Flux story.

I won’t do a full write up for the space dog, as he’s the subject of an exhaustive how-to elsewhere on this blog (soon to be completed). At that point, I’ll probably sort his axe too.

Swarm

The big bad of Flux (and a surprisingly snappy dresser).

The body was a standard suit body, with sculpted additions for all the detailing. The head was the bulk of the work, adding all the skull detailing around the existing features took a few goes before I was happy enough with it.

I’ll probably do an Azure to go with him for the Lap of Honour wave…

Sontaran

As with the Cybermen, Jodie’s Sontaran’s also got a revamp. Fortunately, the existing figure body worked well enough with the addition of sculpted armour pieces.

I wanted to rework the head to match the onscreen look in this story, but after a heavy resculpt and paint, it looks… a lot like the old ones anyway. Probably appropriate for a cloned race!

Sea Devil

And finally…

Another story where the monster redesign is better than the episode it serves. I liked the idea of a pirate Sea Devil though, so this was always on my list.

Body comes from Pertwee (finally vanquished by the earth reptiles!), with the long coat helm nabbed from a Tennant overcoat. The head was based on a cast from the existing Sea Devil, albeit with some resculpting of the features to match design tweaks (angrier eyes, for one).

The body details were all sculpted in, with some plastic netting embedded into the chest area. I find fiddly costumes like this are labour intensive, but really reward all the effort of creating straps and rivets.

And with the big group shot done, that’s the last big ‘by Doctor’ update finished (until Ncuti has a few seasons under his belt). I’ll doubtless tackle any worthwhile monsters from Tennant MkII (count on a Beep the Meep, if nothing else!), but in the meantime, there’ll be a trawl through the whole history of Who, picking up on figures I missed but wanted to tackle first time around - about 30 strong before all’s said and done. Watch this space…