Timelash

I've been holding back this cover for a few days to give 'Robot' a little extra time on the home page, seeing as that one was a bit late. But now we're into the monthly release schedule, I guess they'll all have their moment in the spotlight reduced. So now comes the turn of 'Timelash', that widely acknowledged turkey of Season 22 - although as ever, some like it and a DVD release, with its background information, always makes you look at a story afresh.

Not much to report on the creation of this cover - a pretty straightforward affair. The Borad and Tekker (once I'd found a decent colour photo) were given elements for inclusion, the android getting a look-in once I actually started to plan out the design. Originally the Timelash itself was going to feature too, between the Doctor and the android, and I tried this out but it proved too much of a squeeze and the glowing portal I gave it detracted somewhat from the standard glow around the Doctor. (Slightly annoyingly, being unable to source a photo of the Timelash, I drew it from scratch, it being a simple shape - only to discover a nice shot of it in the disc's photo gallery. Still, I was able to replace some of the ropey photos for the back panel with some better grabs from the disc.)

In fact, finding a usable photo of the Doctor from the story proved most difficult, and I was toying with using a general Season 22 publicity shot before deciding I could rescue a slightly grainy image from Tragical History Tour. The Borad was the other major area of work. I had a shot from the DWM Complete Sixth Doctor of his head and torso, but DWM more recently, for its preview of this DVD, printed the same photo larger, but cropped more closely around his face. This allowed me to use the better quality headshot (where I could bring out more detail around the eyes especially) composited onto the lower-resolution body, which I knew would be largely hidden ultimately. Also I realised I'd need to reverse the image so that his flipper didn't disappear off the right-hand edge, but obviously flipping his face would have been a noticeable 'error' (just look at the uproar about the back-to-front Davros on the official Genesis cover). So using the separate head shot anyway made this easier to achieve. It does mean that strictly speaking his flipper's on the wrong side on my cover, but to be honest I always thought it odd that the left side of the Borad's face was Morlox, but apparently the right not left side of his body. So I prefer mine! Finally, to fill the space below the title better, I repositioned his flipper. A bit of glowing Timelash set in the background, and it was finished.

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