Master & Servants

So I said I needed some Dr Who villains, so I decided to get some from 1971. Enter the Master and some Autons, ostensibly from 'The Terror of the Autons,' which was the Master's first appearance in Doctor Who, but the Autons' second.

Yes. I've been Googling.

The Autons are the, now unavailable, Crooked Dice Plastons that were part of the goody bags participants received at the Wargames Illustrated 7TV last month. They are a remarkably undynamic bunch, which isn't really a surprise seeing as they are meant to be shop window dummies come to life.

Because of this necessary lifelessness, I tried to keep the colours fairly drab, although I couldn't resist giving one of them a purple polo-neck - because all polo-necks in the seventies were purple (in my head, at least).

Here they are looking like the aryan Beatles...

To lead them, I have the Master. This wasn't a plan, it's just fortunate happenstance that these villains appeared together. The model is another from Crooked Dice, it's their original version of the Guru, the leader of the 7TV evil secret society SHIVA. It was a model which, until recently was unavailable as it had been replaced with a more dynamically posed model.

I was delighted by the model being made available again for two reasons. Firstly, it's one of the models that drew me to 7TV in the first place, as it is packed with character. Secondly, there is the fact that the model bears more than a passing resemblance to Roger Delgado, who played the original master.

I actually had a bit of an accident when assembling him (the model comes with a choice of three heads - resembling Ernst Blofeld and Ming the Merciless respectively) and clipped off a bit of his beard (don't ask me how). Fortunately I was able to fix this with liquid greenstuff and I'm not sure that you'd know the difference.

This almost gives me a starter sized villainous cast for small games of 7TV, and I supposed I could add some regular henchmen under the Master's hypnotic influence to make up the numbers, but I'm looking at adding a few more Autons through the cunning use of alternate heads.

I've also got some Daleks. But they've currently got me hiding behind the sofa in terms of painting them.