Bad guys in hats...

Categories: artwork

Date: 12 May 2011 09:23:35

Loving Doctor Who at the moment: Steven Moffat is a heck of a writer/controller and I like the way it's moving from one organised scene to another.

The other thing I like is the look of the new group of bad guys. The cold blood/lizard two parter wasn't the highlight of series 5 for me but the lizards looked great. Similarly the Ood, Silents, new Cybermen design etc are all beautifully designed (esp the Ood which were spectacularly let down by the growth in their role to becoming a poor Eurovision boy band group led by - oh yes, the obligatory mad mystic)... I'm probably in the minority but also like a lot of what the Moff has done with the Daleks. RTD painted them into a corner and Travesty of the Daleks (can't remember the real name - the New York two parter) was one of the low points of modern Who for me. "Dalekanium!" was... well... I was glad to see the show change hands tbh.

Once an eps done and dusted I'm straight on my iPad drawing. Something about the show is so driving and energising and gets me wanting to create something straight off (which is ironic really because if I could point to some of the things that stopped me writing, for the time being anyhow, one woud be how effortless Moffat makes it look). I've decided to stick with a theme and the theme is bad guys in hats. If the good Doctor can be so obsessed I think it's fair enough that I can be too. Pic 1 was the Silent, of course, in a fez, ditto. Second is the new Cyberman - a design which I'm probably most fond of in the whole new universe of Who. The hat though, that belongs to a tech journalist who I'm equally fond of, Andy Ihnatko. In my mind he's the special guest star of a Cybermen in the US ep. He discovers their cunning plan to take over the online infrastructure and, in a glorious moment of self sacrifice he and his dog, Buster, alert the tech media to the presence of a malicious stampy menace, alerting the Cybermen to his alerting and they all come and delete him. And the dog. And the nation all goes 'ohhhhh' because it's impossible to dislike Andy I and everyone likes the plucky sci fi dog.

But then the tables are turned. Everyone grabs their smart phone, points it into the air, says "I believe in Andy" and one Cyberman, wearing his signature hat, manages to upload an app which takes control of the rest of the invading metal men and they all disappear into the cloud. While the AI Cyberman, released as a posable figure to coincide with the episode and named Cybernatko, glows and the metal C on his chestplate becomes an Apple logo. At which point he becomes Steve Jobs personal assistant, does half of each keynote and wipes out the competition, thus creating a dichotomy: did he become Andy in a metal suit or did he manage to take over the world, just as a half human/half cyborg.

Actually the end may need work (mostly a collection of silly ideas). Here's the pic anyhow.

And the occasionally obligatory video can be found here.