Gunpla 02: Let the games begin.

It's been several months since my Gundam RX-78 model arrived, but I somehow just haven't been able to find the time to start on it.  Part of the problem is that it's quite an intimidating array of parts and instructions, and I feel that it's not the sort of thing that you approach casually.  As such, I've been unable to find an adequate block of time that I can dedicate to the build.

However, at long last an opportunity offers itself.  Karli has planned a weekend away at Harrison Hot Springs with her two sisters and a cousin, and it occurs to me that this is the perfect time to make a start on assembly.  Feeling that I should make the most of it, I end up booking a vacation day for the Friday in order to give myself as much time as possible.

Friday morning arrives, and I bid a regretful farewell to my lovely partner - she's heading out directly from work, so I won't see her until Sunday afternoon.  I have breakfast, make a fresh cup of tea, and take a seat at the official workspace of hobbyists around the planet: the dining room table.

I have my tools ready on my cutting board:  hobby knife, files, scissor style eyebrow tweezers - some of the parts are VERY small - and what I think of as sprue* cutters, although there may be a more official name for them.  I'm a bit surprised to realize that I've owned the hobby knife since 1983 - that's a long run for an Olfa cutter.  I would rather work with an emery board than my selection of battered metal files, but sometimes you just end up using the tools at hand.

How hard can this be?

Opening the box for the first time, I'm a little intimidated by the number of parts involved in the assembly.  When I was in my early teens, I used to build Airfix 1/76 scale tank models, which max out at about 50 or 60 parts.  This model has over 400.

However, it's all done very logically: everything is labelled and numbered, with each sprue labelled by letter and/or number, each part individually numbered, and the instructions clearly indicating which parts are required from each sprue at every step.  It's a snap-together model, which means that at least I don't have to worry about all the problems related to using polystyrene glue.  On the other hand, I expect that there will be some complicated solutions to the problem of holding things together securely.

Bandai starts you off easy by having you assemble the Core Fighter, an integral escape/combat ship used by the Gundam pilot in emergencies.  It's a relatively simple stand-alone piece, and as such it makes a good introduction to the process.

My tea grows cold as I cut, file and assemble the tiny parts.  It's somewhat unnerving - it would be very very easy to break one of these little pieces of styrene.  

Some of the parts are connected to the sprues so that the removal cuts are quite obvious, and it's challenging to file a nub on a flat panel down so that it's invisible without damaging the surface of the piece. Usually you can rely on paint to cover the flaws in a model, but the whole reason for the multi-coloured spectrum of the Gundam sprues to to remove the need for painting, so it's important to do as neat a job as possible.

At one point I cut the wrong part off a sprue and panic a bit - I really really don't want to lose track of part numbers, that's my only line of defense against error with such a huge selection of parts. Fortunately it's a distinctive enough piece that I can recognize it when the time comes, and it's used in the same section of the model.  In a few minutes, it's snapped into place and I don't have to worry about losing track of it.

 

The final challenge is to connect the cockpit to the fuselage.  As initially suspected, there are some interesting solutions to the problem of glueless assembly, and this is one of them: a combination of pin and socket that allows the cockpit to rotate downward when it's pulled out of the fuselage (I think).  Fortunately, my choice of weapons makes it relatively straightforward to push the two parts together - I can't imagine how you'd do something like this without some kind of tool other than your fingers.

With the addition of a transparent undercarriage, the Core Fighter is finished. In some ways, I'm not impressed. I believe that the ship is articulated so that it can be folded up and placed inside the body of the model, but the hinges for the wings don't hold them in place very well.  (Subsequent online investigation reveals that I'm not the only person who is unimpressed by the wing attachment mechanism.)  I'm also disappointed by my own work on the model, the filing marks on the top of the cockpit are far too obvious for my tastes.  Nonetheless, it's complete, and I have a much better idea of how the process of Bandai snap-together modelling works - it's been a very useful warmup exercise.

The core fighter done, it's time for lunch.  One empty sprue, many more to go...

- Sid

* A brief explanation in case there's someone reading this who is unfamiliar with the process: 

Model parts are cast en masse using an injection molding process. The channels through which the molten polystyrene is injected into the mold are called sprues.  Generally model parts are cast in sets and left attached to the sprues, and as such it's necessary to cut the parts away from the sprues to assemble them.  Sprue cutters are a specialized modelling tool with flat angled blades that allow modellers to cleanly cut the sprues without damaging the parts, and with as little remaining plastic as possible left attached to the part itself.

May the Fourth: Shouldn't this have been the ministry of consumer affairs?

And now, ladies and gentlemen, an announcement from the Canadian Federal ministry of transportation:

#Recall All-Terrain Armored Transport the hydraulics could fail in extreme cold causing the #ATAT to fall https://t.co/5fTSLgdPJt #MayThe4th pic.twitter.com/axE5xmIprF

— Transport Canada (@Transport_gc) May 4, 2017

 

Between this and the Stats Canada announcement regarding Wolverine's military records, it just make me feel that we have the right people running things in this country. Let's face it, it's difficult to imagine that anyone in the Trump administration* is making Star Wars jokes today.

- Sid

* A little research reveals that President Trump has (apparently un-ironically) signed an executive order on religious freedom today as part of the National Day of Prayer in the United States. Hopefully that includes the countless thousands of Americans who identify as being members of the Jedi religion - countless because the US Census refuses to recognize them. Given that Jedi is the seventh largest religious group in England with over 175,000 members, and there are about ten thousand Canadians who list themselves as followers, there must be a few Americans who would like to have their faith in the Force recognized. After all, what better day to make that change, Donald?

Sightings.

 

Time is a structure relative to ourselves. Time is the space made by our lives, where we stand together forever. Time and relative dimension in space. It means life. 

The Doctor: The Pilot, Doctor Who

As I was sitting at my work computer first thing this morning, drinking a cup of tea and reading e-mails, our front desk person Kate came running into my office, all but dancing with excitement.

"I saw someone unloading a blue police box from a van this morning on my way to work!  It was just down the street!  What if it was for Doctor Who?!  You have to go look!!!"

"But Kate, I have a fresh cup of tea..."

She pointed a trembling finger at the TARDIS outline on my Doctor Who mug and exclaimed, "It was just like that!  Your tea doesn't matter!!!!  QUICK!  GO!  Take your phone for pictures!!"

To the best of my knowledge, shooting for the 2017 season of Doctor Who has long since finished.  The long overdue tenth season* started two weeks ago, and as such I don't think that the production team would be back in Vancouver - that is, if they ever were, I have yet to find any solid evidence that the BBC actually did do any shooting here (and some evidence that they did not).

Regardless, I would no more say no to Kate at this point than I would kick a puppy, so I quickly shrugged into my jacket and headed for the door.  Fortuitously, my manager is out of the office, so there's no need to explain my precipitous departure.**

Regarding the new season, we're only a couple of episodes in, but so far the chemistry between the Doctor and his new companion Bill Potts has been wonderful. I have to give full credit to Pearl Mackie for her portrayal of Bill, and to the writers for the creation of such a marvelous character - it's gratifying to see good writing and good acting combine to become more than the sum of their parts. Mackie's excitement and energy take over the screen, and it's a credit to Peter Capaldi's strength as an actor that he is able to balance out such a strong performance with his more deliberate style.

Bill Potts is clever and curious, but it's also clear that life has not been kind to her. I hope that the writers continue to have the Doctor respond to Bill based on the very human tragedy of her life, as when he offers to tutor her in the physics course that he's teaching, which she's been sneaking into on her spare time from her dead-end job in the school's cafeteria kitchen, or when he surreptitiously visits her past to take pictures of her almost forgotten birth mother and then hide them in her closet.

There's a very significant exchange at the end of their first episode together where the Doctor is preparing to wipe her memories of recent events to protect his anonymity, and Bill bitterly begs to be allowed to remember for just one day, or "just for tonight. Just one night! Let me have some good dreams for once." It's a poignant moment that reveals quite a different aspect of Bill's personality, and it bodes well for upcoming episodes. 

But what of Kate's police box sighting?  Sadly, I found no evidence of a Type 40 TARDIS in spite of doing quite a comprehensive search of the nearby neighbourhood.

But she must have seen something.  Perhaps a rogue port-a-potty?  Or private ownership is always a possibility, people do build TARDISes.  Ultimately, we'll never know.  I'd like to pretend that it was actually Bill and the Doctor, touching down for a moment to grab breakfast at Deacon's Corner before heading back out into the timestream, just as a change from all those English greasy spoons.

- Sid

* It's really the 11th season, although it's been 12 years since they restarted the series in 2005, and Capaldi is the 12th Doctor, but there have actually been 13 Doctors, 14 if you count the two 1960s Doctor Who movies that featured Peter Cushing, although generally those films aren't considered to be canon, so really just the 13, except for the Shalka Doctor who was voiced by Richard Grant in 2003, and Rowan Atkinson, who did a completely non-canon 1999 Red Nose comedy special as the Doctor, along with Richard Grant again, come to think of it, and Hugh Grant and Jim Broadbent, not to mention Joanna Lumley as the first actual female Doctor ...you know, never mind, it's not important.

** And even if he had been here, I'm certain that anyone as fundamentally decent, understanding, intelligent and yes, as handsome as he is would never stand in the way of something like this. ( I'm reasonably confident that my manager has never once looked at my blog and never will, but better safe than sorry.)