Bessie, the canary-yellow Edwardian roadster was first seen in the third Doctor story, Doctor Who and The Silurians, is in reality a 1954 Ford Popular 103E on a fibreglass body, made by Siva Engineering of Dorset.
This is the Corgi Version with a seated Tom Baker Doctor Who figure with a Character Options Giant Robot in the background.
A driverless Bessie was released as part of the 40th Anniversary’ The Three Doctors’ gift set in 2003.
Like the Robot pic! The Cardiff exhibition was a good one!
ReplyDeleteThanks Kev. Yeah, it's a shame the exhibition finished a while back, but then again I think it's time they rested the series too!
DeleteI was going to send in a photograph of my Corgi model, but you beat me to it, and did a great job. Thank you. The reason the version with the DVD did not have a figure (besides saving a little on the figure) was that Tom Baker was not in The Three Doctors story, so including it would have looked odd. Nice little model.
ReplyDeleteI remember watching the Three Doctors first time round when Dr Who was a weekly must watch.I loved Pertwee and The UNIT team.
DeleteDare I say that if there's one thing that,for me, surpasses GA's shows its Dr Who. I was 6 months old when it started and can remember back to Fury from the Deep (although I also remember the Ice Warriors and Yeti from earlier, Fury is the first that I can remember some of the storyline). Jon Pertwee's Dr is the one I remember from his first ep. - those autons in Spearhead gave me nightmares!
ReplyDeleteBessie was a perfect vehicle for this Dr. The Whomobile was not. I hated it so much I have tried to expunge it from my memory (invisibility, flying, zooming along at 150 mph? Nooooooo!).
Despite being addicted to the doc, I can't remember ever having any related toys, booooo! (A Marx red dalek sold for £560 in the last coupla weeks).
Oh - keep a good lookout, you never know when those shop dummies will come to life and hunt you down.....
I thought I was alone on preferring Bessie to the Who mobile. I, like you am not a fan of it, it looked like a dodgy fairground ride to me!
DeleteWhilst the Whomobile car prop is impressive when seen for real (I saw it at the Smallspace sci fi model fest a few years ago), I always thought it looked too much like a rip off of Stingray and was the wrong style of 'futuristic' for the show in the mid 70s.
ReplyDeleteI went to that Smallspace too! Only one I've been to, it was very good!
DeleteSmallspace is one of my favourite yearly meet ups. Sadly a couple have been cancelled due to Covid, but hopefully they'll be back. I believe there's a standard hemex model show planned.
DeleteI'm hoping to get to the meet up at Cromford Mills this coming weekend.
I can - just - remember William Hartnell as the Doctor, but not any of the stories in detail. Then Patrick Troughton, but just fragments from his years. The 1970s, and Jon Pertwee, are a lot clearer. Gave on on the modern versions. I did not have any Doctor Who toys, but did have a number of the Target paperbacks in the 1980s.
ReplyDeletePaul Adams from New Zealand
I've still got all my original Target books from the eighties. I remember hunting high and low for an original covered copy of The Doomsday Weapon (Target's title for Colony in Space) and eventually finding one on a second hand bookstall in Ormskirk market!
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