Dragonhead. 1960-something.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Given the age of those it's a bit much to recall witrh my addeled and pickled brain 

[Leon]

Leon cast up some 10mm Daleks around 5 years ago (as well as Cybermen and Time Lords) they were a private enterprise (I'm sure I still have some somewhere).

We did, as it was purely a personal project at the time.  When he wanted to start selling them we passed over the moulds and stepped away from the project as we didn't want to get ourselves into any trouble.  The Doctor Who miniatures license sits with Warlord and when they first acquired it there were a lot of 'Stop selling your stuff' emails sent out to any other companies producing 'Not Dr Who' type products.

[Nirnman]

We did, as it was purely a personal project at the time.  When he wanted to start selling them we passed over the moulds and stepped away from the project as we didn't want to get ourselves into any trouble.  The Doctor Who miniatures license sits with Warlord and when they first acquired it there were a lot of 'Stop selling your stuff' emails sent out to any other companies producing 'Not Dr Who' type products.

if warlord has the licence fro Dr Who products how come black tree designs still sell Dr who figures and Daleks in 28mm?

[Leon]

if warlord has the licence fro Dr Who products how come black tree designs still sell Dr who figures and Daleks in 28mm?

I can't remember the exact details but I've got vague memories that there was a particular company who had acquired a separate license in the 90's when Who was fairly dormant.  That license was still valid so they were able to continue production.  I've got Harlequin in my head though, rather than Black Tree, but that would explain why BT's ranges only go up to the 8th Doctor.

[Smoking gun]

Leon,
you're right the Harlequin (now Black Tree) license predates Warlords so the figures are legit (in some cases awful sculpts).

Best wishes,
Martin

[Leon]

..you're right the Harlequin (now Black Tree) license predates Warlords so the figures are legit (in some cases awful sculpts).

That's good, at least my memory cells are kinda working!

[toxicpixie]

Cracking stuff

I shall be in my bunk thinking of Mrs. Peel.

[fsn]

(Sorry. Will post some photos soon.)

Gentlemen. Before I resume my narrative of the goings-on at Dragonhead, perhaps I should give you a few more examples of how the world described differs from ours.  

In 1963, the FBI arrested Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas. Oswald squealed and Jackie Kennedy was later arrested for engaging a hitman to take out her philandering husband. Being a devout Catholic, Kennedy could not divorce Jackie, but swept to a landslide victory in the 1964 election, with Marilyn Monroe as his running mate. Unusually VP Monroe  moved in to the White House to ensure a close working relationship with President Kennedy.

Meanwhile, Professor J W Whittmer of St Andrews University develops a fusion power cell that is powered by oranges. In a period of two years, the bottom falls out of the oil industry. Ironically, Israel becomes one of the richest countries in the world.



We left our trio of protagonists -  Mr Steed and Mrs Peel from the Ministry and the Doctor from... behind the statue diving for cover as a T62 that had mysteriously appeared started shooting up the town.

As the tank disappeared around a corner, Steed saw with some relief a column of army Land Rovers draw up. Major Lethbridge Stewart dismounted gracefully and greeted the trio cordially.

"Ah! You made it here before us." he observed – a keen intellect the Major. "Find anything?"
"Well, there's a Russian tank just gone into the town." Remarked Steed.
"Good grief!" Ejaculated the officer. He motioned for his radio operator. "There are some tanks not too far from here. I'll soon have them here to deal with the blighter." He looked up, an annoyed frown on his face. "Corporal, what's that noise?"
"Civvies Sir. Coming towards us!"
"Take your section and get them off the street!" The Major looked at the Doctor. "Who the Devil are you?"
"I'm the Doctor. Jelly baby?"  The Doctor proffered his paper bag. Lethbridge Stewart waved the proffered confectionery away with an immaculate gloved hand and began giving orders down the radio handset.    

Steed laid a hand on Mrs Peel's arm.
"I'm not sure that Russian tank is necessarily an enemy.  Look it from their point of view. If the Doctor is right, then they have just been dumped here unwillingly. Next thing you know,  an American helicopter comes lolloping overhead and there's a big explosion. They're probably confused and frightened."
"And in charge of a very big gun." Added Mrs Peel, chewing reflectively on a jelly baby.
"Indeed. " Steed took off his bowler and daintily dusted away some specks of debris. "But I think I will go and find it. See if I can talk the crew into surrendering ... or at least not shooting up anything else."
"I'm coming too." Mrs Peel's delicate chin jutted defiantly, and Steed knew there was no arguing with her.

Their going would have been unnoticed anyway, but the Corporal and his section had come up to the approaching townspeople. The smoke from the burning Huey had obscured the soldiers view, but as they cleared the smoke they ran straight into the first wave of the undead. Stunned by the sight of the shambling creatures at first, the corporal did not give the order to fire before AK Su had sunk her broken teeth into his throat and began to suck luxuriously on the blood.
The rest of the section opened fire. A few of the undead went down, but they were replaced by seemingly numberless others. Within seconds, the entire section were down. A minute more and four of them twitched, and rose and joined the mass.

Steed and Mrs Peel had crossed the road and were carefully making their way towards the   council offices. Suddenly Steed stopped by the pet shop owned by Mr & Mrs Lewis.* He stared intently at a poster in the pet shop window. He pointed his umbrella at the picture.
"Do you see that Mrs Peel?"  The slim woman, who had more sex appeal than all the Kardashians dusted with icing sugar, dressed in black velvet and laid end to end on satin sheets, examined the poster.
"Rare Chinese cuddle hamsters" she read. She turned a puzzled brow to her colleague. "What's so unusual about that?"
"Do you remember that report last month – the one about the research lab in Wuhai?" Steed paced excitedly. "It said that the Chinese were trying to produce a virus that would kill off livestock."
"I remember" she said calmly. "The report said they hadn't found a suitable transmission method."
"Ah but they did. " Steed snapped. "they found that rodents were immune – perfect carriers." He pointed his umbrella at the picture. "What if the Chinese put their virus in some rodents which end up here, in Dragonhead ... as a test? It would just take one to escape and the virus is in the wild."
"But ... when is it true about what happens if it infects humans?" Asked Mrs Peel. The crackle of gunfire as the Corporal's section died gave an eerie answer.
"These aren't Chinese cuddle hamsters, they're Mongolian attack squirrels." Steed finished.

"Steed!" Mrs Peel's warning came too late.

Every town has its outcast. For Dragonhead, it was Liam May. He had been abandoned by his parents as a teenager – or maybe he had run away, but he had arrived in Dragonhead during the period of expansion, making a living stealing from the building sites or, if forced to, doing odd jobs. Small and skinny to the point of emaciation, Liam had never had enough to eat. The small amounts of money he got from begging or petty theft were spent on drink - or drugs if he could get them - rather than food. He was a creature of the shadows, sleeping in alleys during the day and only emerging at night. He couldn't remember not being hungry, but now the hunger seems to gnaw at his very innards. He was desperate to eat, to tear warm flesh with his teeth and his hands and to feast on organs from a still spasming body. The thing that had once been the mad Liam May almost fell upon Steed, talons flailing and jaw snapping. Steed fell beneath the undead, hand reaching for his revolver. He felt the pain of the teeth in his neck, and then no more.

Mrs Peel saw only the fountain of blood, and heard only the grunts of mad Liam May as he began to consume Steed's flesh. Without taking her eyes off the awful sight, Mrs Peel drew the Browning Hi-Power and put two careful shots into mad Liam May's head. She looked down at the corpse of her long time partner and waited. Sure enough, the torn body began to quiver as afterlife came to it.
"Sorry Steed." She said, and put two shots into Steed's brain.

Mrs Peel and the late Mr Steed
By the time Mrs Peel made it back to Major Lethbridge Stewart, she saw his force had been strengthened by three Centurion tanks.*** However, the Major seemed not to be best pleased. The object of his displeasure, a young Lieutenant wearing the tankers black beret , stood uncertainly at attention.

"You mean you have three very clean and tidy tanks, but not a single armour piercing  round between you?" Asked Lethbridge Stewart acidly.
"Yessir. Nobody said we needed to take on ammunition."
"Did they tell you there was a T62 on the loose?"
"Yessir." The Lieutenant tried an embarrassed grin. "But that was a joke, surely?" The grin slid off his face as the Major remained icily impassive. A tank sergeant offered that he had a box of Besa ammunition. The Lieutenant turned on him angrily.
"Consider yourself on a charge for having unauthorised ammunition!"

This sorry spotlight on the mindset of the British army was interrupted by the arrival of a fourth Centurion. Unlike the others, this was a slightly disreputable machine, its mud splashed dark green and black camouflage contrasting to the pristine deep bronze green of its sisters.
As it jerked to a stop, the commander jumped from the hull. He was a grizzled warrant officer, greying at the temples. He flung a smart salute to the Major.
"Sorry I'm late sir. Stopped off to pick up a half dozen APDS and a couple of boxes of mg ammo." If looks could kill, the Lieutenant's glare would have laid the WO low.
"Excellent!" Beamed the Major. "There is a T62 somewhere in this town and we need you to hunt it. These others" he idly indicated the Lieutenant's troop "will support you." A couple of sharp salutes, and the tank men were mounted, engines roaring as the Centurions moved off.


Captain Adam Steele marched cheerfully behind the flag his regiment had just received. It was a beautiful day in early July 1861, and the column of grey clad men were singing lustily. With this kind of spirit the Yankees would be defeated  in one battle, maybe a second to finish them off and then he would have his boots under a bed ion a plush Washington hotel.  The red light was on them for what seemed like no time at all. One moment it was bright Virginia sunshine, then the red light and then as quickly the red evaporated and Steel and maybe twenty of his men were ... some place else. The light was ... different, less clear and the smell of the pitch pine trees had been replaced by ... something dirty. Voices were raised in prayer and lamentation someone called out that they had died and the Devil had taken them straight to Hell.

Steele's Sergeant, a twenty year old storekeeper who gained his stripes because of his literacy rather than any military prowess, gasped the Lieutenant's arm desperately.
"What happened?" The edge of panic was plain in the man's voice. Steel roughly pushed the sergeant's hand away.
"I have no idea. Get a grip of your fortitude Sergeant." he hissed. Looking around, he saw a building surrounded by a wall. "get the men in there – it looks like a school house."  In short order, the Confederates were parading on the playground of St Catherine's School.
"Can't be Hell, boys" Steel spoke with more certainty than he felt, "this place is a school and dedicated to a saint. No saints in Hell."
"Nor schools neither" someone called from the ranks. It was a poor joke but it brought a reluctant laugh from the men.
"We'll set up a camp here. Then send out some scouts to find out what is going on".  The routine of setting up a camp brought a degree of calm, and with they settled in to await their fate.

"Captain!" One of the sentries called steel over. "There's a noise."
"What kind of noise?" Asked Steel testily.
"I dunno. Sort of a clanking and a hammering." Steel and the man peered over the wall. Steel could her the noise now. It reminded him of ironworks or a locomotive ...
"There!" The sentry pointed, and Steele spotted the movement. It was some kind of wagon, coming towards them. It was green and looked as big as a barn. It looked as if there was some kind of cannon stuck on the top. By now a dozen curious men lined the wall, rifles pointed at the approaching vehicle.  
The wagon stopped, and the cannon moved slowly back and forth. A shot went out from the Confederates, followed by an uneven panicky fusillade.
"Stop that shooting." Yelled Steele. "You might annoy it" he thought to himself. The cannon paused, pointed straight at Steele. A few of his men slipped off to hopefully safer locations. For long seconds Steel started down the barrel of the cannon, then, with a roar of grey smoke, the waggon backed slowly away.
"Captain!" someone called from the other wall. "Folk coming, plenty of 'em. Moving slowly."
"At last" thought Steele. "Perhaps now we can get some answers."



*What of the zoophilist couple? The day before, Mr Lewis had received a phone call from a nearby farm. The farmer had explained that his cat had kittened, and if the Lewis's didn't want the litter, they would be sent to join that navy.** The kindly Mr Lewis had gathered up his van key and his wife and set off immediately. "I'm sure we turn left here." Asserted Mr Lewis confidently. Rest assured the Lewis's are poring over a map at a bed and breakfast near Derby. They will come to no harm, but neither will they appear further in this narrative.    

**Put in a sack with a brick and thrown into a loch.
*** Come on chaps, you must have known that was going to happen.  

[fsn]

A further point of explanation.  

in keeping with the chaotic rules for this nonsense, every time a zombie unit is destroyed, it reappears somewhere else on the table. This mimics the extraordinary ability of zombies to be everywhere, and that anyone defeated by a zombie unit is likely to join their ranks.

The other mechanism of this game is that random units of random things get dropped onto the table.  

This means that this game has no end. The zombies will never be killed off, and even if they are, there is a ready supply of fresh meat as the red ball drops off unsuspecting combatants.

When I get bored, I think that in true 1960's style there may have to be a Canberra bomber with an atomic bomb. 


I may restage Steels Siege for photographic purposes, but joining the fun will be some zoom, zoom, zap, zap.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Yay! Great narrative, thank you.

A mention too! 

[Techno II]

Excellent, Nobby.

My eyes don't seem to be working. I'm hornswoggled if I can find the double asterisk in the narrative. (It is early, though.)

Cheers - Phil

[fsn]

Thank you, chaps.





*The double asterisk is in the footnote marked with a single asterisk.

[mmcv]

 

[Techno II]

*The double asterisk is in the footnote marked with a single asterisk.

Huzzah !! .....Got it, now !

Cheers - Phil

[Westmarcher]

 
.. and Steed's a zombie!   

.... didn't think his acting was that wooden .....