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Would You Like To See Inside My Tardis?
Jul. 2nd, 2009 12:55 amWhat do you think of when you think of the UK? Dr. Who of course! At least, that's how my girlfriend's brain works. So when we decided to travel to the UK together, high on her list of things to do was to visit a Dr. Who museum. Now, there is no such thing as a Dr. Who museum as such, but there is more than one travelling exhibition on the subject.
There is also a building in Cardiff in Wales which apparently features in Dr. Who and Torchwood, a newish centre for something or rather, which is apparently also the secret headquarters of Torchwood. Deb wanted to go visit it, but I drew the line at travelling all the way to Wales! I did however allow myself to be talked in to visiting the Dr. Who exhibition which was in.... Coventry. (For those of you who don't know the UK, Coventry is a fair way out of London, sort of north east, and is mostly known for being a rusting industrial area. Well, not sure about rusting, but it is the centre of British car manufacturing, which will give you some idea of how thriving and prosperous it is at the moment!)
So we book seats on a train, and took the hour and a bit train ride out to Coventry, then went looking for the famed Coventry Transport Museum, where, for reasons unknown, they'd plonked a whole bunch of Dr. Who stuff.
Now, it's not a show that I have watched much since the early Eighties - I mean, THE Doctor is Tom Baker, and I will broach no arguments on the subjects - aside from the episodes Deb has been showing me lately. The revival certain benefits from advances in special effects and possibly budgets, I mean, there's only so much you can do with a bunch of balloons with a spray-painted sheet over them... But the baddies for the most part are still the same, Daleks and the like. A certain segment of the population, most of it female and some of it Deb, think that David Tenent is a hotty. Personally I think he's kind of funny looking, but I am a heterosexual man so my opinions on the subject are therefore suspect...
The exhibition was actually quite good, there was all the things one might expect to see, Daleks and Cybermen and what have you. K9 was also there, which was a nice throwback to the last Dr. Who Golden Age. And a Tardis, which strictly speaking should be written TARDIS, it's some awful acronym... Some of the exhibits were animated, which I wasn't quite ready for, so when Deb pushed the button which got the Cybermen moving I was a bit freaked out.
There was also a great Dalek display, with moving, talking, laser firing Daleks. We ran that one at least three times, and then filmed it, complete with Deb screaming. Two Daleks wave their sensors around and talk about detecting live forms, which they identify as human, and then they started shooting green lasers at the ceiling (and not at the visitors eyes), then Davros turns up and makes some random statements about his plans coming together.
And... That was about it... It wasn't a really huge exhibition, we'd looked through it in about forty minutes. And so there we were in Coventry, a town not unlike Geelong, apart from having been bombed to buggery in the second world war, with some hours to wait before our train back to London...
I killed some time wandering through the transport museum proper. Lots of funny old push bikes, two large jet powered speed-record setting cars (Thrust II and Thrust SSC, I think) and a Delorian, and that was about all I found of interest in the place.
We amused ourselves by sitting in a park next to a church, where we were befriended by a couple of squirrels - much to Deb's delight. We went to a pub which miraculously had a range of gluten-free dishes that Deb could eat. She also had a large bottle of Cider which made her go very silly indeed. And eventually we made our way back to the station, where our train was cancelled. But somehow we caught the one before it which was, instead, majorly delayed...
And that was how we spent our Thursday in the UK!
There is also a building in Cardiff in Wales which apparently features in Dr. Who and Torchwood, a newish centre for something or rather, which is apparently also the secret headquarters of Torchwood. Deb wanted to go visit it, but I drew the line at travelling all the way to Wales! I did however allow myself to be talked in to visiting the Dr. Who exhibition which was in.... Coventry. (For those of you who don't know the UK, Coventry is a fair way out of London, sort of north east, and is mostly known for being a rusting industrial area. Well, not sure about rusting, but it is the centre of British car manufacturing, which will give you some idea of how thriving and prosperous it is at the moment!)
So we book seats on a train, and took the hour and a bit train ride out to Coventry, then went looking for the famed Coventry Transport Museum, where, for reasons unknown, they'd plonked a whole bunch of Dr. Who stuff.
Now, it's not a show that I have watched much since the early Eighties - I mean, THE Doctor is Tom Baker, and I will broach no arguments on the subjects - aside from the episodes Deb has been showing me lately. The revival certain benefits from advances in special effects and possibly budgets, I mean, there's only so much you can do with a bunch of balloons with a spray-painted sheet over them... But the baddies for the most part are still the same, Daleks and the like. A certain segment of the population, most of it female and some of it Deb, think that David Tenent is a hotty. Personally I think he's kind of funny looking, but I am a heterosexual man so my opinions on the subject are therefore suspect...
The exhibition was actually quite good, there was all the things one might expect to see, Daleks and Cybermen and what have you. K9 was also there, which was a nice throwback to the last Dr. Who Golden Age. And a Tardis, which strictly speaking should be written TARDIS, it's some awful acronym... Some of the exhibits were animated, which I wasn't quite ready for, so when Deb pushed the button which got the Cybermen moving I was a bit freaked out.
There was also a great Dalek display, with moving, talking, laser firing Daleks. We ran that one at least three times, and then filmed it, complete with Deb screaming. Two Daleks wave their sensors around and talk about detecting live forms, which they identify as human, and then they started shooting green lasers at the ceiling (and not at the visitors eyes), then Davros turns up and makes some random statements about his plans coming together.
And... That was about it... It wasn't a really huge exhibition, we'd looked through it in about forty minutes. And so there we were in Coventry, a town not unlike Geelong, apart from having been bombed to buggery in the second world war, with some hours to wait before our train back to London...
I killed some time wandering through the transport museum proper. Lots of funny old push bikes, two large jet powered speed-record setting cars (Thrust II and Thrust SSC, I think) and a Delorian, and that was about all I found of interest in the place.
We amused ourselves by sitting in a park next to a church, where we were befriended by a couple of squirrels - much to Deb's delight. We went to a pub which miraculously had a range of gluten-free dishes that Deb could eat. She also had a large bottle of Cider which made her go very silly indeed. And eventually we made our way back to the station, where our train was cancelled. But somehow we caught the one before it which was, instead, majorly delayed...
And that was how we spent our Thursday in the UK!
