Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Have Spaceman Will Travel


Steve Cockayne
Originally uploaded by Flyingsquid.

Steve Cockayne was February's guest at the BSFA night. He brought along some of the marionettes from the show his family used to run. Some of his characters are based on the marionettes, but not this particular one, which he just brought to show us 'cause it's cool.

It really is cool. The head moves around independently inside the helmet, and he can do a quick-draw on the laser pistol. And there used to be a set of little flying saucers which went with him, but there's only one left now.

Steve also knows a lot about scaffolding, from his days working as a BBC photographer. He worked, among other things, on Dr. Who, including some of my favourite episodes - late Tom Baker stuff, and early Peter Davison. (Though he says he was junior enough then for his memories of it to be mainly crawling around repairing cables.)

He also writes pretty cool books. (Seriously - good enough that I actually read the third book of a trilogy first, because that was all the library had. And I never do that, but I couldn't put it down.)

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