I’d be wanting to go to the Adventures in Time & Space exhibition in Peterborough, and thinking about it for a while. It’s a three-hour journey by train for me each way (I don’t drive). An old friend who is a fellow Who fan and who lives closer to Peterborough than I do was also keen. So I made the necessary bookings, and got on a train to Peterborough on Monday 13th October with the American hip hop band Public Enemy.
(Well actually two very jet-lagged members of Public Enemy and the guy who used to do the graphics at their gigs: I was sharing a table with them on the train. I like a good coincidence and am easily star-struck but this wasn’t very Who. They were talking about going to the Leeds International Festival of Ideas to meet their friend, Chuck, who was to be interviewed on stage there and whom, after some conversation, I confirmed to be Chuck D.)
By the time you read this, there’ll be little time for you to organise a trip to Peterborough before the exhibition closes on 2nd November 2025, but I do recommend it. It’s unofficial, not organised by the BBC, and so all the exhibits are on loan from people who own them – mostly fans, and sometimes people who worked on the show (who are perhaps also fans too; several items were on loan from Mat Irvine). Most of what I mention below are reconstructions, though plenty are not – for example, the Vervoid was present as an original costume.
There is love for Doctor Who that’s evident as soon as one walks into the museum, with references to the show outside the exhibition itself. We liked the fact that the ground floor lift had been changed to have TARDIS doors – but later realised that this wasn’t only done on the ground floor, but elsewhere in the museum too. The entrances to all the exhibits (Who and non-Who) have been painted TARDIS-blue and made to look as TARDIS-like as an archway can. The attendant who checked our tickets told us that he was born between the two original showings of An Unearthly Child, on 25th November 1963. And, uncannily, his parents had (presumably unintentionally) given him the same name as the man who was arguably the main character in those early episodes: Ian.
Before one enters the exhibition proper, there is a photo opportunity: a TARDIS with an open door for visitors to pose in. A 50 ft Fourth Doctor scarf is draped from the top floor down to this police box below; knitted by a group called SCARF (Sociable Coffee And Reliable Friends) at the museum, it will later be made into individual scarves for the homeless.
In the exhibition proper, there are three rooms, the first and last of which are larger than the middle one. Straight in front as one enters is a full-size reconstruction of the original TARDIS console. On the left are several costumes relating to Gallifrey, a Season 14 console, and K9; these stand opposite (on the other side of the An Unearthly Child console) one of each of all the major Sea Devil and Silurian variants – three of each kind. Easy to miss beside them is an original (!) design drawing for the Silurians.
The second half of the first room contains a TARDIS police box exterior and is otherwise devoted to Cybermen, with thirteen different variants plus a Cybershade, and additionally five Cybermen heads and other items such as weapons and a console. For me, The Tenth Planet Cyberman, with the eyes and hands of the dummy visible, was the most striking; the detail on the black CyberMaster is just as notable, in a very different way.
The middle room contains a large number of props, and a few costumes for humanoid characters. At the centre, several feet across, is an imposing reconstruction of the spaceship where the trial takes place in Trial of a Time Lord. In a very different scale, there are seven wonderful little reconstructed ships for the delegates from The Daleks’ Master Plan; the smaller ones could probably fit in the palm of one’s hand. The other items are extremely varied, from original Giant Spiders through the Doctor’s face on the mountain from The Face of Evil, up to the head of a Kerblam! man. Not everything is listed on a plaque, and two items – a gun and a space helmet – foxed us as to their provenance. The costumes include several Doctors and a number of other characters, some of which would be rarely seen, such as those for The Curse of Fatal Death Doctor and Princess Astra.
The last room includes a sofa to hide behind, which is a prudent addition since almost everything else in there is a monster. Half the room is taken up with Daleks. The Emperor from The Evil of the Daleks is cabled up in one corner, lights flashing on his head. Ten more Daleks, from The Dead Planet to a red Victory Paradigm Dalek, stand before and around it, along with a Genesis Davros, an Ogron, a pig slave, and the costume for a Resurrection of the Daleks trooper.
In the other half of the room are around twenty monsters. Again, not everything has a plaque, but I know a Quark when I see one. The costumes are arranged chronologically, from an Ice Warrior to the most recent type of Sontaran, taking in an Argolin (er, is that a monster?), a Weeping Angel, and many more on the way. In the centre, in a cabinet, are Fifi and the Destroyer’s head, both from late Classic Who. From the recent Doctor Who Magazine Horror Special, I knew to check under Sutekh’s bum. The people who made this new costume for another event had been asked for it to be as accurate as possible, and so they made a cast of the hand of the floor assistant who, briefly and unintentionally, played the Hand of Sutekh, which was visible on Sutekh’s chair when he stood up and was freed at last. The name of that floor assistant, by the way, is James Burge. A nearby button activates Sutekh’s eyes, which glow authentically green. I was also especially taken with robot SV7.
This being an unofficial exhibition, it’s no surprise that there are few Doctor costumes: at an official exhibition, one would probably expect a full set of television Doctors. I myself am fine with the omissions, as there were so many monsters and unusual props which I would otherwise never see. I have to wonder, though, if there was a Silent. None has shown up on my photos or video of the exhibits. But still I remain unsure if maybe there was… but I just don’t remember seeing him…
All images © Jason Zerdin
