"Exterminate The Museum" Said The Dalek (Doctor Who Museum)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Doctor Who Museum
Date:	19/04/06 (1947 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Indoor = suitable for badweather in early/late season

Disadvantages: It's poorly presented and over - priced

This weekend stunned by the excellent bank holiday weather for the first time in ages we did something else we've not done in ages, and ventured into Blackpool despite the recent on-slaught of tourists. We passed up amusement park fun to venture to the Doctor Who exhibition instead, a quite old set-up a few doors down on the promenade. This has been there for years, but has recently been modernised and is heavily advertised in the local area.

The museum has a small, narrow shop front on the prom, but is, quite appropriately, somewhat Tardis-like inside, spreading out over a much bigger area than you'd ever imagine. The entrance way is also the shop and the ticket office, and as such gets quite crowded with people wanting to buy tickets, or have a nosy at the merchandise, or just find out more about the museum itself. Prices are on the steep side for what you get - £7 for adults, £5 for children or £20 for a family of 4 - and seem to have recently increased since the adverts in the local press imply tickets are slightly less than this. For your money you get a boring receipt instead of a swish ticket, and a brochure guiding you round the exhibition.

On the face of it, the idea of the museum isn't an all that bad one. Doctor Who is a popular show with a devoted fan base, akin to other Sci Fi shows, and has been around since the 1960s meaning there's a decent level of history for them to cover. The museum boasts over 600 original props from the series, a mock-up of a Tardis for you to walk through, a couple of TV screens showing everything from 'Who themed Blue Peter to the first episode of the latest series (not counting the one that started tonight). They have a monster alley full of characters from the shows, from Tetraps to the Husk, a Robot Zone, a Costume Gallery and 'the largest collection of Daleks ever brought together in one place' which, incidentally, is still not all that large, with maybe 8 or 10 of the exterminating things, including the Emperor Dalek.

The problem I found with the museum though was that it had the potential to be really good, or at any rate fun and interactive, but they just hadn't tried. There was typed 'information' stuck on the majority of the display windows, but this was strewn with grammatical errors, written in sentences which didn't make sense, and obviously proof read by someone who failed to see a new sentence as requiring a capital letter but was absolutely certain that new lines did. All in all, the sheets did not go down well with our group of 3 which included 2 linguistics degrees, a TEFL teacher, a proof reader, an op writer, a university lecturer and, um, an astrophysicist (we're multi-achieving types in our family).

In addition to this, the opportunities to get involved with the experience were limited. You couldn't touch a lot of the models, and photography was banned from the vast majority of the sections so you couldn't preserve your trip for prosperity / a slating review (though this being Blackpool, other guests blatantly flouted the rules and snapped away).

You could play at being a Dalek (you could climb inside a carcass, and speak through a silly voice synthesizer thing) but that was it. By far the most notably bad bit though was the numerous buttons attached to displays. "Some of the buttons are for show only", read one of the signs. "Great," I thought, "that means some of them aren't. Let's press 'em and see". We did and, well, not much happened. Then we saw another sign: "Please do not touch the buttons," it said. "Hmmm", we thought. "Perhaps we should have read that first. Let's read all the signs to check they don't have anything else to add." The last one on that panel was especially illuminating. "Please, " it said, "press the buttons once only unless it says to press and hold." This was only the 2nd display we came to, but was perhaps a sign of things to come. As we progressed round we came to lots of buttons, so we decided that 2 of the 3 earlier instructions seemed to imply some button pressing was allowed and tried this out. Here's an idea of what pressing buttons lead to:

· sometimes a display lit up briefly - the button was, in effect, a temporary light switch which helped to conserved electricity when there were few guests

· sometimes an already illuminated display would be switched off and then back on again by the button - interesting

· sometimes the buttons would cause a noise - a peep, peep, or even a beep-ety-beep - albeit a noise that was in no way related to the stage of the exhibition you were at

· sometimes…nothing at all would happen

Thrilling, n'est-ce pas?

The exhibits were interesting for die-hard fans, and palatable for the rest of us, but I couldn't help feeling that if you did fall into the former group you might come a way a little disappointing. The displays were ok, but just seemed so amateurish. The new section - a room dedicated to the Christopher Ecclestone / Billie Piper version - really didn't have much to it, and the rest was a really mumbo-jumbo of things, including various bits and pieces with for sale- signs which made me wonder what would happen if people did come along and buy them, leaving the museum even emptier than it currently was. On the other hand, if you fancy shelling out a grand on a Doctor Who slot machine, you know where to come.

The other problem with the museum was the evident lack of upkeep and updating which, in a show like Doctor Who, is vital due to the constant evolution of characters and plots. The museum is already out of date as of 7.15pm this Saturday just gone, but I'd bet all the 2ps I won on the slots today that it takes them a good year to even make reference to the new doc in town.

As we left we returned to the shop for a look around, but it was again, below expectations. The souvenirs were expensive and very limited in range, and frankly you'd do better having a look on eBay if you did want anything. The museum didn't have a café or any other facilities, but is located in between various other eateries - rock, ice cream and burgers are all a matter of meters away. The museum is suitable for those in wheelchairs but you would need someone with you to open the heavy doors that separate some areas. It falls down Drastically on other accessibility though, including a distinct lack of literature or signs in any languages other than English, though these days it's not just Brits who come to Blackpool, nor is it just us who watch Doctor Who.

As we left the exhibition I heard one of the other visitors say that he "liked all the funny strange creatures", and I almost stopped to tell him that Blackpool was always like that on bank holiday weekends until I realised he meant the exhibits we'd just left behind. I was less positive about the experience: it's £7 of my mother's money, and an hour of my life gone forever. It's not the worst attraction in Blackpool (WHICH magazine assures me that honour goes to the newly revamped displays at Louis Tussauds waxworks), but it's not a good 'un either. Save your money and go the Sandcastle or Tower instead - they may not have aliens but they'll be full of tourists which are equally worthy of gawking at in this town.



www.Doctorwhoexhibitions.com

Doctor Who Museum, The Golden Mile Centre, Central Promenade, Blackpool, FY1 5AA

Open daily from 10am

Summary: A wasted opportunity - expensive but unimpressive