Doctor Who Experience: Video Promo

Source - SFX

About The Doctor Who Experience

Youtube.com

doctor who experence 19/02/2011

Youtube.com

Doctor Who Experience! (Digital spy)

Youtube.com

Bits and bobs Big update Dr who,podcasts,audios, Dr who experience and more!!

Doctor Who: The Complete Guide

New Who & Torchwood audio

3 Doctor Who Blends

Podcasts

Irish actor TP McKenna dies at the age of 81

Ep 5 - Smith and the Bomb (Torchwood Spoof) p2

Doctor Who giveaway: The Hounds of Artemis and The Rings of Steel

The Ood Cast S03E10a – Gallifrey or Bust: Day One

2MTL 191: Return to Gallifrey One (Time Dilation)

Doctor Who: Now fans can enjoy the Time Lord in his intergalatic battle with evil

I Flew In The TARDIS!!!

Geek Music: 15 Songs about Doctor Who

The Guardian & The Observer week of Doctor Who giveaways

Doctor Who Magazine and Doctor Who Adventures Sales Statistics

Docteur Who: la prochaine fois sur France 4

The Dandy and the ...

Gallifrey 2011 Update

Radio Free Skaro #239 – Radio Free Skaro in 3-D

2MTL 192: Looking Through a Time Lord's Eyes in L.A.

Doctor Who Experience: Gallery Number Three... part 4

Source - BBC Dr who

The Doctor Who Experience: Making It Happen part 3

Take two years, over 150,000 construction hours, installation experts, animators, writers, designers, restoration specialists and actors. Add an army of monsters, some spectacular sets, cinema screens and smoke, then blend well and what do you get? The Doctor Who Experience. Well, not quite. Because it's clear there's another ingredient that's not so easily definable.

Paula Al-Lach, Head of Exhibitions and Events at BBC Worldwide, the organisation responsible for the Experience, reflected, 'Everything about this project has been a challenge, but a really enjoyable challenge.' She comes close to defining that extra ingredient when she adds, 'What has been so brilliant about it is that everybody involved just loves Doctor Who.'

Read more at BBC Dr who 

Step Inside the TARDIS... Dr who experience part 2

In the very first episode of Doctor Who, two school teachers forced their way into a big blue box and found themselves in a machine that could take them anywhere in the universe, past, present or future. It marked the start of an incredible series of exploits. So it's fitting that almost fifty years later, the TARDIS doors are once again being flung open but this time it's visitors to the Doctor Who Experience that get the chance to journey through time and space, taking part in their own adventure...

The latest version of the TARDIS has been pain-stakingly recreated at the Doctor Who Experience. Many of the artefacts that were used on the original set were unique one-offs and so a dedicated team were tasked with building them from new, using photographs, videos, original designs and a dizzying level of detail. Did they get it right? Take a look at the gallery above and decide for yourself!

The TARDIS isn't just some static set, though. There's noise, lights and motion so it's as though the time machine is crashing through the cosmos. And like every good trip in what the Doctor called his 'frankly magnificent time ship', it's just the start of the story!

Aside from the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS you can check out the versions piloted by the Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Doctors. Take a look at our gallery to remind yourself of previous console rooms... which was your favourite?

Source - BBC Dr who

Doctor Who Experience, Part One

By now you've probably heard about the Doctor Who Experience but if you can't make it to London to enjoy it first-hand, don't panic! Over the week ahead we're bringing some of the Doctor Who Experience to you, with exclusive galleries, videos and the inside story of the whole spectacular.

The Doctor Who Experience has been described as 'the ultimate Doctor Who Adventure' and is part immersive experience, part interactive exhibition. Specially written scenes featuring Matt Smith as the Doctor, plus some fiendishly inventive sets, incredible FX and surprises conspire to make the Experience more than just an exhibition.

The premise of the immersive adventure is to take visitors through their very own journey across time and space, helping the Doctor, dealing with Daleks and whirling through a breath-taking world that's normally reserved for the Time Lord's companions...

But aside from the excitement of that story (and we can't give too much away!) there's a TARDIS-load of sets, monsters and mementoes from the show itself. The scope is ambitious and covers everything from the first ever episode back in 1963 to the latest series. We'll be bringing you an insight into much of this journey, from visiting Starship UK to trips though the various versions of the Doctor's time machine, giving you a glimpse into what makes the Experience such a full-on phenomenon!

The Doctor Who Experience opens in London on Sunday 20th Feb. We'll be there for the official opening, sharing the low-down from the launch... always assuming we make it past the Angels, Zygons and other old enemies!

Source BBC Dr who

Bits and bobs Big update Dr who Experience, Colin Baker, podcasts, David tennant and more!!

Book Signing at the Dr Who Experience

Colin Baker: "I watch the people who watch CCTV"

Podcasts

Free Doctor Who CD The Hounds of Artemis

Doctor Who Interview with the Doctor's French Voice Actor

David Tennant to feature on Royal Mail stamp

Official Doctor Who Book Signing

Doctor Who: Podshock - Episode 238 - A Conversation with Daphne Ashbrook on the 1996 Movie DVD Release in NA

Episode Two & Details of Our Third Selection

First Look at Bif Bang Pow!'s Retro Doctor Who Figures

Doctor Who: Bumper Activity Book

Interview with Clayton Hickman

Radio Free Skaro #237 – Road to Gallifrey

Gallifrey IV Podcast - 13 February 2011

Episode 15 – Series 23, Part I, The Mysterious Planets of Dominic Glynn – Part II – Dominic Glynn Interview

Pharos Project 38: Kate O'Mara's Throbbing Gland

Bits and bobs big update Dr who, k9 series, Colin Baker, Tom Baker, Dr who experience

Second Series Commissioned for Doctor Who Spin-off K9

Colin Baker: "Bedtime story was precious part of my childhood"

Cheese Please!

Doctor Who Experience retail and mobile plans

February Podcast 002 - 09 February 2011

Win a Signed Dalek Photo From Doctor Who's Barnaby Edwards

Doctor Who: a retrospective look at the Eighth Doctor

Wi-Fi Enabled Shop Will Be Included in the Doctor Who Experience

Patrick Troughton biography

The Finished Product Issue 7

Lost Stories - Series Three Moves Forward!

Eighth Doctor Retrospective - 09 February 2011

Doctor Who: Podshock - Episode 237 - Graeme Burk and Robert Smith? Interviewed, Gallifrey One 2011 Preview Continues with Shaun Lyon

Tim's Take On: Episode 56(The SFX Awards 2011 and The K9 Panel at SFX Weekender 2)

Mike Tucker ('Doctor Who Experience') interview

Featuring a unique walk-through experience and an exhibition, the Doctor Who Experience opens in London later this month.

The exhibition element will include original costumes, the Tom Baker TARDIS police box and two authentic TARDIS sets from the eras of David Tennant and Peter Davison. The public will also be able to get up close and personal with the Pandorica Box and Chair and confront numerous monsters including several generations of the Daleks and Cybermen as well as Silurians an Ice Warrior and a Zygon.

Can you tell us a bit about how you got involved with the Doctor Who Experience and what your role entails?

“My involvement came via Andrew Beech, the Artefacts Manager at BBC Worldwide. He was aware that I had worked on Doctor Who, both ‘classic’ and ‘new’ series, and that I was probably a good candidate for handling the refurbishment of some of the props and models that had been on display over the years. In some cases - such as the Dalek Emperor miniature - I was even able to get the model makers who had built it originally to work on the refurbishment.”

What should visitors expect from the experience?

“It’s a far more immersive experience than previous exhibitions, plus you can get up close to some of the props in a way that hasn’t previously been possible.”

What does the interactive walk-through experience involve and have you tried it yet?

“I’ve not actually been through that bit of the exhibition yet, so I’m looking forward to being as surprised by it as the rest of the audience.”

The original David Tennant era TARDIS set will be on display. Was it a tough job putting this back together after the explosive final scenes of ‘The End Of Time’?

“The David Tennant era TARDIS interior was actually handled by the Sarner crew plus a team from Cardiff. My involvement has been with the 1980s era TARDIS console used by Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, and has involved replacing switches and buttons that have come loose over the years and checking that the electrics are still in good working order.”

Which exhibits are you personally most excited to have on display at the exhibition?

“It’s exciting to see such an iconic monster as the Ice Warrior finally restored to its former glory. For it to have survived since the mid 1960s relatively intact is quite an achievement and my team have done a really good job of restoring him.”

When did you start working at the BBC Television Visual Effects Department and what were your first jobs there?

“I joined the BBC VFX department in 1985 and amongst my very first jobs were a children’s show called Galloping Galaxies, a documentary on John Lennon and Series 1 of Red Dwarf. I also had to build a model of the TARDIS for an episode of Doctor Who.”

Had you always been interested in model-making and special effects as a child?

“Yes, I grew up building Airfix kits or making models out of Lego or Meccano. I also used to use my dad’s old 8mm film camera to make films of my own. I was hugely influenced by the Gerry Anderson puppet series like Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, and also by films like Sinbad and Jason And The Argonauts, produced by Ray Harryhausen.”

More Here

SFX - Dr who experience interviews

SFX: So, how did you become involved with The Doctor Who Experience and what is your role?

“I was contacted by BBC Worldwide last year and asked if I would be interested in pitching for the refurbishment of some of the props from the classic era of the show that had been on display in various places like Longleat and Blackpool over the years.

“So I went down to the store in Cardiff and took a look at some of the key items that they would like to refurbish. And I basically made the recommendation that the best way forward was to strip everything back down to its component parts and try to put them back together as close as possible to how they looked when they were last seen on screen.

“Now, some of these things are 40 years old, and at the time they were designed to last for, what – two a half weeks of filming? So some of them were in a reasonably poor condition.

“But obviously, with my background as a BBC visual effects designer and with a lot of my crew being ex-BBC staff, I was in a position to say to the Beeb, ‘Well, look, not only do I know how these things were put together, but in some cases I can use some of the designers and assistants who worked on them the first time around.’

“So they agreed to that. We came up with a list of certain items that they would like in this exhibition and we’ve been in the process of making them look better than they’ve ever done before.”

Was there any monster that was completely beyond hope?

“You’d be surprised. One of the items that we’ve been doing is the only surviving Zygon. Now, that had rotted to the point where literally all of the foam rubber was falling to dust. And the Latex had gone extremely crispy. Because they’ve had actors sweating inside them; they’ve had slime spread on them; and they’ve been stuck under studio lights. Plus, it was, what, ’75 when the Zygon was done.

“But because some components of it are fibreglass, and there is such good photo reference of it around, we were able to do quite a good job by taking out all the pieces that were still in a repairable state, and then taking moulds off other items that weren’t, and just looking at how it had originally been put together. Also I gave that project to Colin Mapson, who is one of the original BBC effects designers from the ’70s and worked on a lot of Doctor Whos. So he has actually recreated the Zygon from the ground up.”

So, how “original” is the Zygon you’ve turned out?

“I would say we are 80% original and then 20% new build. But it has been done in such a sympathetic way to how the originals were made, I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised how good that looks.”

“It’s been that sort of juggle. I mean, one of the items we’re doing is an Ice Warrior. Now the Ice Warrior itself – the sort of turtle shell torso – is fibreglass, and that has survived very well, given that it was built in ’67. So we took that off the mannequin that it was on, and we discovered that it’s still got Bernard Bresslaw’s name written on the back of it – he was the enormously tall actor from the Carry On films who played the first Ice Warrior. So we’ve established that it is the original one.

“The legs were in pretty poor condition but we were able to salvage one of them in such a way that we could take a mould off it. So we recreated the legs from the original prop. Then the head and the arms have been brand new sculpts. But having got the leg and torso there, we were able to match textures and colours. So there you’ve got something that is maybe 50% original and 50% new build. But hopefully nobody’s going to able to spot the joins.”

“The idea, though is, ‘don’t try to update them; try to make them as they would have been back in the era the things were made.’”

Doctor Who fans, being Doctor Who fans, will clearly read something into the fact that there are going to be Zygons and Ice Warriors in the Experience. Are the kids being prepped for their return in the new series?

“We haven’t been told anything our end about that. Obviously, if there is a masterplan about why they’ve picked certain monsters we’ve certainly not been made aware of it.

“But one of the things we’ve tried to do is, if the monsters have come back in the new show, is there the possibility of finding an older version of the prop to refurbish? So with the Cybermen, for example, there is going to be an exhibit of Cyberman heads. So they’ve obviously got the ones from the new series, and then we’ve got a number of casts of ‘Silver Nemesis’ and ‘Revenge Of The Cybermen’ and ‘The Invasion’ and ‘The Moonbase’. But we’re also recreating a ‘Tenth Planet’ Cyberman, so you’ve got the evolution of the Cybermen right the way through.

“We’ve done a similar thing with the Sontarans. We’ve refurbished one of the 1980s costumes. And that’s going to be put alongside one of the new series ones to see how the thing has evolved.

“Daleks are the other ones. We’ve done the Special Weapons Dalek from ‘Remembrance Of The Daleks’. And there’s going to be a progression of Dalek types from the ’60s to the present day. And whereas from the ’80s era, we’ve got existing props, we’re actually using replicas to recreate some of the ’60s one. In particular we’re doing ‘The Dead Planet’ and ‘Evil Of The Daleks’.”

How are they going to be displayed?

“What I’ve told my guys is let’s pose them dramatically, rather than having them standing there like shop window dummies. We’ve tried to give them poses that match some of the publicity photos that we’ve been given. We’ve posed the Ice Warrior in the classic arm-pointed-ready-with-sonic-ray.”

“I remember being a little bit disappointed seeing the Ice Warrior on display once because it seemed to be on such a short mannequin. So what we’ve done is put it on a mannequin much more akin to Bernard Bresslaw’s full height. And it has actually surprised all of us. Because for something that is actually quite a simple fibreglass and Latex costume from 1967, it still does have the power to dominate the room. So I’m hoping some of the younger kids who come to the show – the eight to ten year-olds – this thing will be, what, three times taller than them? I’m really hoping that that is going to give them quite a nice buzz for what the old show looked like.”

How do you think that an effects-literate generation of kids will react to the old monsters?

“I’m still biased in that I think work done by designers like John Friedlander on the original Sontaran actually stands up incredibly well considering how primitive they are actually made. The Zygon – when you look at the way the thing has been built – you have nothing but admiration for the team that put these things together in frighteningly short time spans, with practically zero budget.”

We take it you won’t be spending time refurbishing Erato or the Myrka?

“No. The, erm, less well thought-of monsters have obviously been put on the back burner. There was also a fair amount of discussion about – from the items that still exist, which ones get left maybe for another time, so that the exhibition can be constantly updated with new exhibits? Hopefully if there is a good reaction to the things we’ve done from the classic show, there will be a certain amount of thought as to, ‘Okay, what else can we now put back together?

Is it just monsters you’re doing?

“The item that we’ve got in the workshop at the moment that we are about to launch into is the ’80s TARDIS console. That’s been in relatively good storage over the years. It’s the one that’s was built for “The Five Doctors” and ran pretty much to the end of the original run. It’s been in private hands for the past few years and has been looked after very well. But we’re just having to do a little bit of a dust and a clean-up of the mechanism, and a check of the electrics, and replace any switches that have been taken by eager souvenir hunters over the years.”

How close are we going to be allowed to get the exhibits?

“I don’t believe that they’re going to be behind glass. I believe they’re going to be roped off. But I think, potentially, you’ll be able to get closer to these things than you have ever been before.”

Are there any monsters you’d especially like to tackle if you are asked to do more?

“The original Michael Wisher Davros would definitely be on my list. It’s such a classic piece of design. But the other one I think would be good for ten-year-olds is the Morbius monster. Big claw, a brain in a glass bowl, eyes on stalks – it’s such a great mish-mash of things. I think that could certainly do with a lick of paint and bit of new fur, but I’d love to do him.”

“I’d be really interested in trying to create some of the things that don’t exist at all any more. A Zarbi, or a Quark. Things from the Hartnell era that are long gone. Ooh, a Mechonoid is another one. I’d love to show people how big these ’60s props were. If there‘s a suggestions box at the exhibition write ‘Mechonoid’!”

Source - SFX

Doctor Who Experience: Pilot test days

BBC Worldwide invites you on a journey of a lifetime. The Doctor Who Experience promises to be an unmissable adventure featuring an exhilarating and unique walk-through experience and an awe-inspiring exhibition.

You'll be invited to step through a crack in time to become the Doctor's companion on an adventure. Your challenge will be to reunite the Doctor with the TARDIS whilst fending off threats from a Dalek spaceship and Weeping Angels along the way, before exploring the wonders of Doctor Who at an out-of-this-world exhibition.

Prior to opening to the public on Sunday 20 February 2011 at Olympia Two, we are inviting an audience to take part in two pilot days to fully test the attraction. These audiences will be the first lucky people to view the new attraction, therefore their patience and understanding will be required due to the fact that it will be a test day.

The test days will take place on Saturday 5 February and Wednesday 9 February.

Due to the popularity of this attraction we are operating a random draw and limiting ticket requests to four tickets per household per day.

You can enter the random draw at any time until 4pm on Friday 14 January.

Further information:

The Doctor Who Experience operates a timed ticket entry. You will be allocated an arrival time between midday and 2.30pm. Guests are asked to arrive 20 minutes before their allocated time slot to allow for queuing time, ticket checks and security checks.

Source

Q&A: Philip Murphy talks 'The Doctor Who Experience'

What does The Doctor Who Experience offer that past exhibitions didn't?
"There's two answers to that! The first thing is something completely new. We have an immersive, interactive adventure, which lasts for basically about a third of the programmed time. It's estimated at 90 minutes and a third of that time is spent in an adventure. You're basically one of The Doctor's companions for a scripted walk-through adventure, with special effects and monsters. The most crucial thing is that you get to go inside the Tardis and you get to fly it!"

Does the interactive experience feature newly-written scenes with Matt Smith?
"That's exactly right. I obviously don't want to give the whole plot of the adventure away, but the basic premise of it is that thanks to the nefarious plans of the villains, The Doctor has been separated from his Tardis and he needs someone to help him get it back. Given that Amy's not around, the public get the chance to do it instead!"

And there's a full recreation of the Eleventh Doctor's Tardis interior?
"Absolutely, yeah. It's a faithful 100% reproduction of the current Matt Smith Tardis, with the addition of a couple of gadgets which The Doctor has sensibly planned ahead to include, to enable the public to fly it! Obviously there'll be more than one person in the room at a time. There will be batches of 50 people, so we've got some slight additions there that Steven Moffat has scripted in for us. But other than that, it's a 100% reproduction of the Tardis set as it currently stands down in Cardiff."

Was Steven Moffat involved in writing the script for this mini-adventure?
"[He has written] all of The Doctor's parts that were filmed for it, yeah. The actual premise for the adventure came from us and from the exhibitions and attractions company that we're working with. We then got Steven to work with us on making sure that all of the stuff involving The Doctor was spot-on, compared to the TV series."

The walk-through finishes with a 3-D finale. What can you reveal about that?
"There's a bunch of special effects throughout the whole walk-through, involving the Tardis and where you fly it to. It then culminates in a CGI sequence that involves 3-D animation. I should stress that it's the finale, but it's not a big part of it. It's a couple of minutes at the end of the sequence, but it ends things with a really impressive bang!"


What was the original inspiration behind the interactive adventure?
"It was designed because we did conduct some research and asked fans what they wanted from a live Doctor Who experience. The number one response was 'I want to go inside the Tardis'. We then had to find a way to create an engaging, interactive experience that let you achieve that. It was that fan response that led us to create the walk-through, because that created the need for an adventure and we built it up for there. It's genuinely a fan-led production, in that sense."

What can you tell us about the exhibition element of The Doctor Who Experience?
"At the start, I said that there are two reasons why this is different. The first is this immersive experience, the second is that it's by far the biggest Doctor Who exhibition that's ever been done. That's the crucial difference between the exhibition part of this experience and anything that's gone before. The total floor space is about 4000 square metres in Olympia Two, and that's getting on towards the size of a football pitch. It's a big, big space! Within the exhibition, we've got loads of props and memorabilia that have never been seen before. We've got the whole David Tennant era Tardis set - the original set that was blown up in his final episode. It's been rebuilt for us, so you actually get to stand in the real set. We've also got a Peter Davison era Tardis set from back in the '80s. They're both genuine sets, not recreations. We've got lots of genuine props and then obviously some recreations, because things have been destroyed or just aren't safe to make available to the public!"

How far back into the show's history does the exhibition delve?
"We go all the way back to the really early episodes. For example, we've got the original Ice Warrior costume, worn by Bernard Bresslaw in 1967. It's got his name inside it and everything! Obviously it was a bit moth-eaten and we had to do some repair work to it, but it's still the original. We've also got other original costumes, such as the Zygons [from 1975's 'Terror of the Zygons']. There's so much stuff that got put in storage and there was just never any room for it in the smaller end-of-pier style exhibitions that have been run before now."

Is it a balancing act appealing to both younger viewers and the long-term fans?
"Yeah, I think it's fair to say that we have to strike a balance on this kind of thing between people who are fans of the current series, people who watch it on a Saturday as a family but don't really see themselves as huge fans, and people who do really care about what Jon Pertwee wore in 'The Green Death' episode! We need to cater to them and to classic Who through the exhibition part, as well as provide stuff relating to the show since the relaunch in 2005. There is a balancing act, because you've got a lot of dedicated fans who really want to get something out of this, but fundamentally our big Saturday night TV audience is made up of families."

What are the long-term plans for the Doctor Who Experience?
"We have a long-term plan and we will be moving to Cardiff. I'm still working out the details of precisely when we move down there and how long we're there for, so I can't say very much about it. We want it to be down there long-term, so we'll be talking years, rather than months."


Will the exhibition be updated with new props and costumes as the series continues?
"Yes. It will be updated through the run in London and it will be updated again down in Cardiff. We're not expecting to change the actual immersive, interactive portion of the experience, but we will be updating the exhibition. There'll be new content and new monsters introduced on television, so we've got space set aside for that. We've already got hands-on experiences, such as learning to walk like a monster with the help of the TV show's choreographer and Radiophonic Workshop stuff. We'll look to change those around as well, as times goes on."

What are your thoughts on Doctor Who becoming more interactive, with the introduction of live events?

"My view is that these events make a real difference to our ability to interact with the audience, and it allows them to interact with us. Through TV and radio, we broadcast, and through digital mediums, we give people the chance to reach back to us. Through live events, we really let people engage in a very different way with the brand. We recreate real memories. In the case of the Doctor Who Live arena show, a huge number of people came up afterwards and said that their kids had an amazing time. They will remember it forever, in a way that they might not remember a particular episode of the show. I think it's a really exciting way to bring a much-loved brand into people's lives."

Source

Philip Murphy interview: The Doctor Who Experience, Doctor Who Live, and the 50th anniversary

The BBC has just opened ticket sales for its latest Doctor Who event, The Doctor Who Experience, which will be running at London’s Olympia Two from February next year. We got a chance to ask the head of BBC Live Entertainment, Philip Murphy, just what it’s all about…

Can we start with something a bit basic? What is it exactly that you do?

Basically, the Live Entertainment business unit is part of BBC Worldwide, and what we do is put on shows, whether they’re touring shows or one offs. Plus there’s exhibitions, events, attractions, and we do that in relation to a variety of properties owned by the BBC itself. So BBC Worldwide is the commercial arm of the BBC, and we exploit properties to generate profits for the BBC, which we pay back, because the BBC owns all of our shares.

And yeah, we sell the DVDs, we organise live events. We’ve done Doctor Who: The Arena Tour, Doctor Who: The Experience, which we’re talking about today, Top Gear Live, Strictly Come Dancing, Planet Earth concerts.

We’ve got lots of things in the pipeline, all based around giving people the chance to interact in some way in a live moment. And hopefully generate some really exciting memories to do with that property, which they don’t get from watching the TV.



Clearly, Doctor Who has moved firmly onto your radar in the last 12 to 18 months, with the arena tour and the exhibition. I’m assuming from what you’re saying that the interactivity is the key for you?

It’s the thing that most excites us about live events. With TV and radio, you obviously broadcast the stuff out. With digital mediums, you have the opportunity to have people come back to you. And live is just the same.

TV entertainment is changing, the way people consume the products that the BBC is making is changing. One of the things that I’m really excited about, in relation to live events, is creating the opportunity for two-way stuff between the audience and the programme makers.

The Doctor Who Experience, and I know it sounds like marketing who-ha, is a real demonstration of that. The reason for it is fan generated.

When we asked people what they wanted to get from Doctor Who, the number one answer was people wanted to go inside the Tardis. So that’s how we built the immersive adventure part of the Experience from the ground up, to deliver that.

So what we said is it’s not good enough to just have people step inside the Tardis and move on, it’s got to do something. It’s got to be the Tardis. You need to fly it, it needs to take you somewhere. That leads you to the immersive experience part.



I’ve been to a few Doctor Who exhibitions over the years, but my concern with the Experience, with flying the Tardis, is that it’s the kind of thing that sounds, when you get there, there’s a massive queue and you can get nowhere near it, because it’s the centrepoint of the event. What kind of things are you doing to manage the demand, to give everyone a fair crack at it?

It’s a time entry experience, so there’s a limited number of people per hour who can go in. We sell tickets on that basis. If you turn up, you can queue for tickets if there are any available on that date. But there’s no question of you not being able to get inside the Tardis.

We came up with [the story] to enable you to do something with the Tardis, that we then developed with Steven Moffat, who then wrote the script for Matt Smith’s scenes within the adventure.

The general plot, I won’t give it all away, is that the Doctor has been trapped and separated from the Tardis. And he’s got a plan to make sure it’d all be alright, because he saw it coming. But he needs you to fly the Tardis, and Amy Pond is not around. It runs from there.

It wouldn’t be any use if you couldn’t get in there and touch the Tardis.

There's not going to be people preventing you from getting to it. Obviously there will be a lot of people coming through the day, but it is a timed entry thing. Our expectation is that you’ll spend around half an hour in the immersive experience, and then around an hour in the exhibition afterwards. But that’s down to your personal choice, obviously.



It is a two-tier event. How big is the exhibition at the other end of it, which is presumably what’s bringing the legacy Doctor Who stuff in?

What we’ve tried to do really hard is to do stuff that’s fresh and relevant to the current Doctor, and the current production in Cardiff, to cater to the TV viewing audience.

But also we want to cater to fans and uber-fans as well, so the exhibition part is much bigger than anything that’s been done before. Having actual Tardis sets in it, for instance. So the David Tennant set, that was blown up at the end of The End Of Time, has been rebuilt, and it’s right there. We’ve also got the Peter Davison Tardis set. Loads of props. We are also displaying stuff that people will have seen at previous exhibitions, all of which have been much, much smaller than this.

We’re running about 4000 square metres for this thing, which is getting on towards the size of a football pitch. Nothing like this has been done before.

Is the longer term plan to take this around the country, once it’s completed its run in London?

The current plan is that we will move it to Cardiff in 2012, and it’ll have a permanent home there. And when I say permanent, you’ll measure it in years and not months.

The attraction of Cardiff, obviously, is that it’s where the series is filmed, and it gives us access to new props, to cast and crew, and for events. It’s also something that Cardiff as a tourist destination is very excited about, having this connection with Doctor Who.

I’m not anticipating touring it elsewhere. But once we’ve opened our doors and launched this, we’ll be looking at what we do with Doctor Who next.



You’ve mentioned that Matt Smith and Steven Moffat have been involved in the Doctor Who Experience. Is there any involvement from anyone else in Doctor Who past or present?

In relation to the Experience, the existing Cardiff production team were all involved in it, because we had to get it all right. We had to build an exact replica of the Matt Smith Tardis, and lots of people on the technical side have got involved with it.

There aren’t other companions, or actors from the series, involved in that side of it, no.

Can I go back to the arena tour that you ran earlier in the year, and it’s a question of value for money I want to put to you. Because there was some dissatisfaction that even kids were being changed over £40 apiece in some instances to go along to that. And there’s been middling feedback from it.

What do you say to people who do question the price of these events? Because in my view, personally, for all the merits of the arena tour, I don’t think it managed to offer full value for the price that was being charged.

Well, I’m not sure I agree with all of those comments about the arena tour. I haven’t had lots of complaints about pricing. In fact, what I have had is lots of very, very positive comments and compliments from families, because I’d say we created a really great piece of family entertainment, that the families who went to it loved.

Leaving that point aside, there is a big difference between the ticket pricing of the arena show, which as you say is very expensive, with lasers and flying Daleks. You can’t put that on on the cheap.

The costs [for the Experience] are on a different scale, and our ticket prices are on a different scale. Family tickets start at £42 for a family of four for the Doctor Who Experience. It is a very different scale of cost.

I challenge you to go to an arena show, though, and not pay [that amount]. I think the arena pricing was very competitive, and I think that the arena tour, and I think it’s competitive against other attractions on similar budgets.



I suppose I can only relate my point of view here, where I paid nearly £150 to take three of us along, and we walked out wondering if we’d really had £150 of entertainment for that money? But then you must have had an abundance of differing feedback.

We’ve had almost entirely positive feedback, genuinely. With people taking their families to a Doctor Who show, and what a great way it was to experience that. The music, and the excitement, and being in that room with something that a lot of people loved.

Finally, Doctor Who is very much in your crosshairs for the Live element of BBC Worldwide. The Experience is the second big event in two years. What do you have planned next?

Well, it’s fair to say that we have designs on doing more stuff with Doctor Who in the future. But what we don’t want to be doing is hitting Doctor Who fans over the head 18 times a week. We do very much want to develop what we did in live entertainment outside of the UK. A lot of the things we do with Walking With Dinosaurs, for instance, have worked well internationally. We haven’t done much with Doctor Who outside of the UK, and we do have strong audiences there, so we do want to look at that.

And I think we’ve got some good ideas as to what we can do with Doctor Who over the next couple of years. I can’t give anything away about that, but obviously we are coming up to the 50th anniversary, so we’ll need to do something special for that.

So a 50th anniversary event is somewhere in the thinking?

Well, we’ll be doing some more Doctor Who stuff in 2013, but I can’t say any more than that!

Source

Cybermen Storm London

More Here

Doctor Who Experience

Get ready for a whole new style of Doctor Who exhibition, as the Doctor Who Experience plunges you into an adventure which sees you at the controls of the TARDIS. Philip Murphy, the BBC’s Managing Director of Live Entertainment, reveals what’s in store



You’ll be able to fly the TARDIS with instructions from the Doctor, learn how to walk like a monster, create sound effects and see Doctor Who sets and costumes that have never been on display before. The Doctor Who Experience will be the biggest, boldest, most interactive and longest Doctor Who exhibition ever when it opens at London’s Olympia Two next February (before moving to a permanent home in Cardiff) and for fans who grew up with the Longleat exhibition it’ll be culture shock. Whereas at the Longleat effort, after you entered the Police Box doorway, you had a certain sense of “it seems smaller on the inside”, the Doctor Who experience has been designed to keep you entertained for at least 90 minutes, with no less than three TARDIS sets to keep you occupied. Hey, and if you love a little shop, there’s one of those too. And a cafe.

Unlike previous Doctor Who exhibitions, which have been licensed out, The Doctor Who Experience is being produced wholly by BBC Worldwide, and, according to Philip Murphy, the BBC’s Managing Director of Live Entertainment, it’ll be “a game of two halves. There’s a walk-through, interactive, immersive adventure where you get to get to be part of the story, and then there’s a fully-fledged exhibition, which is by far the biggest exhibition of Doctor Who props, and memorabilia and actual sets that’s every been done. Way bigger than anything else.”

How big? “At 4,000 square metres, it’s getting on to the size of a football pitch. So, it’s a big old thing. This is something that we’re doing 100% ourselves rather than involving external companies or licensees or anything like that. This is an entirely BBC owned and run project. So it’s essential that we do it well.”

So was there a feeling that previous Doctor Who exhibitions hadn’t quite lived up to the standards of the series?

“Each exhibition has to be taken on its own merits and I wasn’t personally involved in licensing any of them so I can’t really speak about them. I think a lot of people visited and enjoyed all the previous exhibitions. Could they have been better? Well, by its very definition, what we’re doing with the Doctor Who Experience will demonstrate that they can be done better, but it’s an expensive business. You need the size and scale to be able to make something like this work.”

Rumour has it that the interactive adventure starts with you stepping through the infamous “crack” we saw throughout series five.

“That’s correct,” says Murphy. “Basically, it’s a storyline that’s been generated from the fans that we asked. We asked the how them how they wanted to interact with the show outside the TV medium. The number one thing they said to us was that they wanted to get inside the TARDIS. So our whole process from then was to try to work out the best way we could do that, and making it more interesting than, ‘This is the inside of the TARDIS, now move on.’ So creating that whole storyline to give people the chance to be part of an adventure, and be the Doctor’s companion for the day – to help him out in this particular story – seemed like the perfect way of doing that, then leading through into the more traditional, free-flowing exhibition, albeit we’ve got interactive elements in the exhibition too.”

In the Experience as a whole there will be three TARDIS sets, Murphy explains. The Exhibition will feature the actual sets used during the Tennant era (“reconstructed after its catastrophic destruction”) and the Davison era (“There’ll be some differences in production value between the two of them, obviously”) but the set used in the interactive Experience adventure is a, “100% reproduction of the actual Matt Smith TARDIS that you’ll fly.” Also, while the Tennant and Davison sets will obviously be open on one side (hey, the cameras had to peek in somehow), the Smith set will be completely enclosed, “so it’s going to feel even more like the real thing,” says a genuinely excited Murphy. “To be inside this thing – which is just enormous – and feel the scale of it, it brings out the inner geek of me. I’m looking forward to seeing people’s faces for the first time when they get to be stood inside the TARDIS for the first time, and then take photos and put them on FaceBook.”

Source

Dr who experience tickets

Be the first to step inside the TARDIS by snapping up a limited edition preview ticket for the Doctor Who Experience. Exclusive preview packages go on sale at 9am on Monday 15th November, available ONLY from www.doctorwhoexperience.com/priority.

The Doctor Who Experience will open on the 17th, 18th and 19th February 2011 ahead of the official public opening on 20th February allowing you to experience the adventure before anyone else. In addition to being the first through the doors of the Doctor Who Experience, preview ticket holders will also receive special Doctor Who Experience limited edition merchandise created especially for these dates.

The Sonic Screwdriver (standard) ticket will include a special limited edition of the Doctor Who Experience souvenir brochure with a unique souvenir ticket. The TARDIS (enhanced) ticket will include all of the above, plus an exclusive preview edition laminate & lanyard set and a limited edition Doctor Who lithograph

The review tickets go out online on Monday 15Th November at 9 am view the site Here