A brand new batch of Doctor Who concept art reveals a darker version of the Neil Gaiman-penned episode "The Doctor's Wife." Check out with what Gaiman's aliens could have looked like, plus learn more about the origins of the Silence!
Doctor Who concept artist, David Bonneywell (Kaduflyeron on Deviant Art), was kind enough to share his images and thoughts on some earlier versions of the alien characters Uncle and Nephew from "The Doctor's Wife." Looks like he had a much more graphic plan for the creatures that collected alien parts from all over, like some sort of horrific chop-shop. Here is what Bonneywell himself had to say about the character of Uncle (above)
This is Uncle, a character design for the Neil Gaimen scripted Dr Who episode 'The Dr's Wife'. He has been kept alive by the Tardis eating, planet sized creature known as House. As his various parts wear out House grafts on replacements from whatever creature parts he has handy.
Originally scheduled for the 2010 series the episode got bumped to 2011. During this time script changes and some concerns that this might be a little too grotesque for the show left this as yet another of my unused DW designs...oh well!
It took me a little while to get into the Dr Who groove when it came to designs and I had a lot of stuff rejected for similar reasons before I started to nail the briefs to the producers liking.
And here is a bit of concept art for Nephew, who was eventually replaced entirely with an Ood. This episode would have been pretty terrifying, had they stayed close to this gorgeous yet freaky art.
And next, here's a bit of early work on the Silence, which were inspired by the infamous painting The Scream!
The design brief for these was a cross between grey aliens and Edvard Munch's The Scream painting. I absolutely hate grey aliens so there's more Munch here than ET.
The top photo's are of the sculpt. The middle photo's are of the painted masks. I actually made them quite pinkish as I wanted them to look soft and babyish. The open mouthed version you can see was used to create a digital morph of the creature's mouth's distorting as they used their psychic attack!
The bottom picture is a publicity shot from the show. They were eventually shot using extremely washed out colours, so all my subtle paint work got lost and in the end they looked closer to those damn Grey buggers after all!....curses!!!
To view more work by David Bonneywell check out his Deviant Art page.
And finally, in other Doctor Who news, Matt Smith was spotted at the 24 Hour Play charity show, sporting a totally ridiculous Batman costume. Feast your eyes on the foam-muscled results, and weep that you weren't there to see it in person. Read more about the event at The Telegraph.