TV Oh, hi Mark. It's always good to have a familiar face at the start of something like this and here's the maître d' of the macabre, the star of the Web of Caves, Mark Gatiss, to introduce us to the programme and the theme of the exhibition, the interrelatedness of Doctor Who and real world science. He has a difficult job, though, being upstaged by the replica of the first Doctor's TARDIS console first seen in his drama An Adventure in Space and Time and most recently in the Fugitive Doctor's time capsule, with its retro controls and letraset labelling. But the overall feeling in this opening room is, you're amongst friends.
Finally. Back in May when WoW opened, tickets were at a premium, with slots only available days in advance. Knowing that the exhibition would be open until just after Guy Fawkes Night, I relaxed and decided to wait until the school holidays were over when the space would hopefully be a bit quieter and the day and time would be in my hands. Then, having studiously avoided spoilers so well, I forgot that it existed and having been reminded by someone passing though on the socials, quickly ordered a ticket for a slot this morning. Between this, the Sugababes concert and the Tudors exhibition, Liverpool has been having its own feeling listless cultural festival.
Which is why I feel a bit obligated to write about the experience. Did it live up to expectations? Yes. What were those expectations? Well, having read the publicity, I knew this wasn't going to have as extensive a display as Llangollen, Blackpool or the Doctor Who Experience (which seemed very impressive based on the shots in The Five(ish) Doctors) mostly because of the tension that Mark suggests in his opening statement is in the DNA of the franchise, between giving the kids what they really want to see, the bug eyed monsters, and the educational aspects buzzing away in the background. Come for the Daleks, stay to discover how electromagnetism works.
So the element that most Doctor Who fans will be here for, the props and costumes are mostly collected around a series of scientific themes, although they're usually broad enough to allow for a fair amount of license. "Welcome To The Lab" features such things as the Emojibots from Smile, the Kerblam Man from Kerblam and in honestly the creepiest exhibit of the whole show, the prosthetic heads of Matt Lucas and Greg Davies from The Husbands of River Song with their follicle perfect recreations of their faces. On pikes. There are a lot of heads in pikes throughout the displays. Poor Madame Vastra. Yikes.
Does this synergy work? For the most part. Each of the labels tries to find some scientific connection with the real world. The K1 robot (taller than I expected) offers a short explanation as to its original purpose, then says: "Four decades on from this story’s first broadcast, robots built for difficult and hazardous industrial tasks are in operation all around the world. Luckily, so far none of them have killed their creators, gone on a rampage and grown to an enormous size." The text is clearly written by fans of the show who're also steeped in science and they get the slightly irreverent tone just right.
Interspersed with the exhibits are screens in which experts explain the science behind some elements at I'd say about a BBC Four level of complexity (from about five years ago before they began repeating old BBC One programmes from about five years ago). Professor Clifford (no, not that one) discusses how time travel might work and the TARDIS can be smaller on the outside. There's an excellent and quite lengthy discussion with Kevin Fong about the resilience of humans and how micro-organisms help to keep us alive but also how vulnerable we are, even on our own planet.
And of the things which, lets be honest, most of us would be going for? I'm very aware that most of you have already seen this but spoilers, I guess. The majority of the costumes and props are from about the past ten years, so that's the Capaldi and Whittaker eras and often some of my very least favourite stories, the Skovox Blitzer, the Teller, the Wheezy, Clara's space suit from Kill The Moon (which is tiny!). But its impressive to see how well the creatures have been fabricated in a way which gives them the best appearance on television, which is especially true of the imposing Fisher Kind from Before The Flood who you can have loom over you at one point.
Perhaps its because I'm of an increasingly certain age, that it's the smaller props which are the biggest draw. In the opening room there's a display cabinet containing what looks like all of the Doctor's sonic screwdrivers from the second Time Lord onwards, including Eighth's from the TV movie (his only prop in the whole show), along with Missy's sonic umbrella and River's sonic trowel. They also have Mike Tucker's re-creations of the ships from Shada created for the 2017 reconstruction, Skagra's spacecraft, the Think Tank space station ad The Nosferatu. Absolutely beautiful.
If something did nag away at the back of my mind, it's which props were originals and which were recreations. Much of the time, the labels contain the words "screen-used" which adds authenticity, but part of me wishes that like an art exhibition, all of the items had some provenance. Which Dalek is this? What were the circumstances of its creation? Was this K-9 produced for an earlier exhibition or did it feature on The Sarah Jane Adventures? Is that really the prop Paul McGann held in 1996 or some made since for a different project? I know most people don't care about this stuff, it's all just photo ops, but ..
At the price of an old classic series DVD release on play.com, did I get my money's worth? Probably? I guess? There's a lot of empty space in the exhibition so that it can be spread through the horse-shoe display gallery in the museum necessitating lots of walls with text displays and a massive diorama of a publicity shot from In The Forest of the Night (some people like that episode, I suppose, and it was written by a local boy). Of the classic props, there are a few of the usual suspects in here, but this is probably as close as I've been to Morbius and Omega and in a well lit room for a change, rather than near darkness with a green light projected against them.
Nevertheless there's something quite magical, as well as expressively weird about being able to attend an exhibition dedicated to a television show you've loved for many years which has in this case has clearly been created by fans for fans, something which hasn't always been the case over the years, when its sometimes felt like the props have all been thrown in together in the shabbiest of conditions to make to exploit our loyalty. I was quite emotional on more than one occasion as the years peeled away at the sight of a Super-Voc robot head or Handles. If Worlds of Wonder shows anything, it's that time travel is possible.
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