Okay, I’m five foot ten and that’s pretty much an average height, but Cybermen are a fair bit bigger. You can walk amongst the Cybermen at the exhibition but beware, when you enter the Cyberzone, you will be noticed! The one I stood next to was slouching somewhat but soon moved. It’s rumoured there’s going to be another kind of Cyberman we haven’t seen before in the Christmas special. Google is your friend for that kind of thing if you wish, we at The Web of Fear don’t do spoilers!
As you can clearly see, you’re not meant to touch things here. This is the model of the Blaidd Drwg power station, proposed for Cardiff by the Mayor, who just happens to be Margaret Blaine, who’s actually not human, but an alien of the Slitheen family from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius
Now, the model as you’ll know, is not actually a model of the Blaidd Drwg power station, but in fact, a tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator Or Pan dimensional surfboad, if you like.
We didn’t get to try it out unfortunately as there was a Slitheen at close quarters at the time. Suffice to say there were plenty of other things we did get to see and there were an alarming number of big red buttons that you could press. “A Great Big Threatening Button Which Must Not Be Pressed Under Any Circumstances”.
Further to yesterday’s events, David Ross will no longer be posting to Web Of Fear. Unless there’s an explanation involving a bit of wibbly wobbly timey wimey.
When I was nine years old I remember being driven along Blackpool promenade at night when the ‘illuminations’ were on and it didn’t excite me that much. Until I saw a Police Box down a side street. A TARDIS! That was the entrance to a Doctor Who exhibition as I later found out. I didn’t get to go to it and we didn’t drive past it again despite my “Dad, can we go back” pleas.
So, scarred for life and scared on a weekly Saturday night basis I finally got to go to a Doctor Who exhibition at Longleat on my 13th birthday. At the time I was a member of DWAS and got the regular Celestial Toymaker newsletter. My paper round money didn’t make it to a further subscription but I’d seen the news item about the Longleat exhibition and bleated significantly to my parents that they took me there for my birthday; if only to shut me up.
I’ve got pics from my visit, all with camera flash reflections off the glass around the exhibits; somewhere in a box in the basement. I’ll scan them and upload here at some point. I remember being really excited when I went around and could see Sea Devils, Silurians (actually, probably only one of each) and a wobbly Dalek that moved back and forth. Oh, and there was a TARDIS console. To be fair it was a good day out (lions are quite friendly and won’t normally eat irritating kids); I did leave feeling underwhelmed though. I wanted to go back to the exhibit and make it mean something, make my connection with The Doctor. Which of course would not happen as it was a collection of props with the occasional clunky moving creature.
So, the point I’m getting to is this: went to the Earls Court Exhibition Centre yesterday and took some pics. I’d been there last month and my camera had no charge so no pics but a friend got tickets for this weekend so I went again.
Going around the exhibit again was amazing. I’m 22 years older than I was when I went to Longleat. Seeing kids who are the age I was at the time, thoroughly enjoying it was just great. And… you get to take photos.
Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be posting the pics that we took, on Web Of Fear, with a topic to discuss.
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