Archive | July 2006

Dalek ID Tags in seasons 27 and 28 of Doctor Who (the ‘new’ series)

EDIT: The Cult of Skaro Daleks are named Sec, Thay, Caan and Jast on screen. In print, they are named Sec, Thay, Caan and Rabe. Sorry for the confusion. Relevant Wikipedia reference here.

I went through and documented the id tags of the various Daleks in the Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant episodes. Note that there were several shots in Parting of the Ways that seem to have been flipped (as in a mirror), so I’m not sure that these are the correct orientations. Also, note that the spellings of the names of the units in the Cult of Skaro in the Doomsday episode are guesses.

Update: I created some simple png icons loosely based on the Dalek ID tags.

Update: Better shot of the emperor’s id:

Update: ID Tag from Rosco, a home-built Dalek by Mike Bull (from the project dalek forum) :

Update: Glen F sent me corrected spellings for the Daleks from the Cult of Skaro: “The cult is made up of Dalek CAAN, Dalek RABE, Dalek SEC & Dalek THAY”. Thanks Glen!

Doctor Who: Doomsday

The finale of the second season of the new series was excellent.

At first I didn’t like the humor of the Cult of Skaro Daleks, but I’m with it now.  I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the new-this-season Cybermen battle cry of “DELETE”, though.

Here are some thoughts that are nagging me (beware spoilers):

  • The Cybermen created in ‘this’ universe may still be around because they may not have void dust on them.  However, it is possible that the metal and augmentations used to create them could be from the alternate universe, so I’ll take it either way.
  • If there is a Torchwood in the alternate universe, then there must be a Doctor in the other universe.  Torchwood is created as a result of his involvment, right?  Would be interesting to see a spinoff episode or two where the alternate-universe-meddling-timelord meets up with Rose.
  • Is the new series Torchwood in this universe?  I hope the Doctor visits.
  • With this effects budget, when are we going to get a tour of the TARDIS?
  • The icon/badge/designation that the Daleks wear under their eyestalks: they are new with the Christopher Eccleston season, right?  In Doomsday I noticed that two of them differed.  Also, the casings of the Cult of Skaro Daleks were not uniform.  Really cool.

Vis, my favorite internal tool

Years ago, I downloaded Microsoft’s BootVis program to visualize my computer’s bootup timeline. When I later wrote a simple profiling tool for SiteBuilder, I named it vis, as a tribute to that cool tool. For more general purpose profiling, I recommend Numega’s line.

Here’s a screenshot of an early version of vis, comparing 4 runs of SiteBuilder:

vis

By the way, this image is hosted at Thomas Hawk’s company, Zooomr.