Review: Custom Doctor Who Figures

Hi everybody! After a long hiatus (my life has been very busy lately), I'm back with a new review! Today I'll be doing something a little different, and looking at two of my custom made Doctor Who action figures.

The first I'll show you is my custom TV Movie 7th Doctor. This costume has always divided opinion amongst fans, but general consensus has always been that there should be an official figure made of it. Given the state that the 5 inch Doctor Who figure range is in, it seems unlikely that the TV Movie 7th Doctor will ever get his own official figure, so I decided to take matters into my own hands!

My custom is made from two different figures; a Classic Series Seventh Doctor and Series 5 Professor Bracewell. I started by boiling both figures in hot water to soften the plastic, and then disassembled the upper bodies, taking the lab coat and waistcoat pieces from the Bracewell figure. Using some scissors I then trimmed down Bracewell's lab coat to make it look more like the Doctor's jacket in the TV movie and painted it, along with the arms from the Seventh Doctor figure, dark brown. Taking the waistcoat piece, which was easily removed due to it being interchangeable with Bracewell's exposed robotic torso, I painted it a flat shade of red to match its on screen appearance. I then painted the shirt and tie white and black respectively. Technically this isn't 100% screen accurate, as the Doctor's tie was black with a striped pattern, but theres no way I'd have been able to recreate that at such a small scale! Finally, I painted the trousers of the Seventh Doctor figure grey; again this is not entirely screen accurate, but it seemed a much easier alternative to recreating the checked pattern seen on the actual costume. Topping off the look with black painted shoes, and his trusty umbrella, this new Seventh Doctor figure is a very welcome addition to my collection; especially considering the effort I put into making it!

The second custom I'm going to show you is another highly demanded figure; Doctor Who, as played by Peter Cushing!

This custom is based on the human character literally named Doctor Who, played by the one and only Peter Cushing in the two 'Dalek Movies' from the 1960s; 'Doctor Who and the Daleks' and 'Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD.' Given that the rights to these films are not owned by the BBC, figures of the characters will probably never be made. The closest we have is the Guard Dalek from 'The Chase' figure, the real life counterpart of which was a modified Movie Dalek. I personally love both of the Dalek Movies, and have longed for figures based on them to be released. I was thrilled when I got the Guard Dalek, but I want more than that! So, when I figured I could make a custom Doctor Who figure, thats exactly what I did!

Like the Seventh Doctor above, this figure started life as two separate figures; this time a Classic Series First Doctor figure and the head of a spare Seventh Doctor. I'm awful at sculpting details for custom figures, so I decided to do a simple straight repaint. The First Doctor's costume is somewhat similar to Cushing's in the films, so I painted the jacket brown, the cravat a very light blue, the waistcoat a very pale yellow and the shoes brown. The result was essentially an alternately-coloured First Doctor, which I initially liked but wanted to take further. I then painted the checked trousers a flat grey, to match the on screen costume. After removing the First Doctor's head, I then went about working out what to use as a replacement. As I said, I'm awful at sculpting, but I came to the realisation that with grey hair and a painted-on mustache, the Seventh Doctor head sculpt bears a passing resemblance to Peter Cushing. Better than nothing, I thought, so I painted it up and attached it to the body. The result is a custom figure that I am extremely pleased with! Pairing him off with the Guard Dalek, I now have something of a Dalek Movie figure collection, and I'm already planning on making a custom Movie Dalek to go with them!

So there you have it for this review! I hope you've enjoyed it, and stick around for more Doctor Who reviews coming in the near future!