Date: Saturday, October 5, 2013
Dress code: Hats
Region: Niagara Falls, Canada
Player Count: 5
Churro’s Words of the Day: “T-Rex” & “Job”

The smallest group to set sail for any round of the 2013 Tour, our five brave competitors traveled beyond space and time for two wild and wacky courses in Niagara Falls (Canadian Side, of course). Armed with random hats to protect them from international airwaves, our competitors began at the super-amazing Dinosaur Adventure Golf: two different courses, over 50 dinosaurs, impressive landscaping, and a fiery volcano that you could feel the heat from anywhere on the course (seriously: those flames aren’t Photoshopped).

Foregoing the original plan (redirected by coupons!), the competitors had a brief poutine-and-pizza break before progressing to the second challenge: Galaxy Golf, an underground glow-golf smorgasboard of crazy. Early holes themed to space exploration quickly gave way to unlicensed sci-fi pop-culture, before falling into 1960’s Simpsons, underwater, and Medieval decorations — all fueled by an early-2000s Top 40 soundtrack. (Note: apparently Galaxy Golf closed several months later, and was replaced in Summer 2014 with the less copyright-infringing Wizard’s Golf, which is still open). Topping off the afternoon with Dippin’ Dots (The Ice Cream of the Future™), our competitors had such a nice time in Canada that they decided to stay overnight, experience a public art festival coupled with a new variety of night terrors, and then partake in a fancy art museum, before returning home to conclude the tour. 

This became an ambitious undertaking faster than you can say “Exterminate!” Kara and Matt wore Tardis and Dalek hats while golfing and it immediately gave me the idea to turn this video into an episode of a Doctor Who-esque show from the 1950s. I had everyone walk “out” of the Kara-Tardis while we were on location in October 2013, but it wasn’t until the next Spring that Anna and I spent a night banging out a script over Frosties and dog-sitting.

Bridging it with Round 3 seemed to be a good way to work in more actors, and kidnapping Tour competitors seemed reason enough for our time-travelers to putter around the universe. We wanted the script to feel like old Who, while also filmable in only a couple of days (with no rehearsing and no dedicated crew members), and for a budget of less than zero dollars. My parents gave us the bubble wrap for the Overpar and — combined with some netting, one of Anna’s large googly eyes, and an enthusiastic performance by Paul— it became a wonderfully silly monster.

(left) Setting the scene. (right) Rehearsing the abduction.

Tardis interior set, in the backroom at CITY

Our primary set – the interior of the Tardis – was shot in the backroom of CITY Newspaper, after adding fabric-covered walls and a pile of junk, wires, and garbage. Anna, Molly, Kara, Adam, Eric and Matt set up the room and also acted as object-throwers during the “time turbulence” sequence. We shot all the Taris interiors, and then half of the Overpar’s scenes during our first day (whew!).

It’s not really a time travel show without a vessel by which to time travel, so Molly, Anna, Rachel and I spent an evening building our Tardis out of cardboard, foam, duct tape, and blue paint. It was built into two “v”-shaped halves and then taped together with blue duct tape once it was on location. It was extremely special, but served our ramshackle production well… until it began falling apart. Almost immediately. In fact, it barely made it through its three scenes; by the end it was caving in on poor Matt as he tried to “open” it. Once its shots were complete, we said some nice words and tossed it in a dumpster (RIP Tardis).

Our second-longest day of shooting involved dodging the rain while on location for planet Sandtrap. After throwing out my first two location choices, we ended up in a parking lot filled with steaming piles of mulch at Mendon Ponds Park. We wrestled with balancing a dog cage around Molly, muddy ground that was slick and occasionally bubbled, Paul’s lack of any visibility in the Overpar costume, trying to hide the fact that Eric wasn’t with us, keeping Anna’s flower pot in decent shape so I could return it after, and a very loud charity-event happening nearby.

Additional shoots involved Matt, Kara, Adam and the handmade Tardis in a parking lot, Kara’s Tardis dialog, two long monologues for Matt (for animated sequences that didn’t make the final cut — sorry Matt! — one of which goes into further detail about the Overpar’s plants), and the gang “exiting the Tardis” in Wadsworth Square’s park. We shot sporadically from late May through mid-August 2014. Dan and Kathy later shot their one scene in November.

I edited together the trailer in September 2014, while on vacation, but then turned back to editing the Round 3 video (still unfinished, as of this writing). I didn’t resume working on the “Doctor of the Future” episode until November 2015, and completed a rough draft by the end of December. I’m grateful for everyone’s enthusiasm, hard work (and play), and patience throughout the process, and I hope it lives up to expectations for a questionable-time-period, no-budget, Doctor Who ripoff! It certainly became the most involved mini-golf video I’ve ever worked on… up ’till this point…