A new Doctor! A new companion! A new title sequence! A new monster! And it’s in color! And all filmed on film! And UNIT’s back! With the Brigadier! And it’s a script by Robert Holmes! What could be better!
Not much! Jon Pertwee’s first outing as the Doctor, “Spearhead from Space,” is probably the second best to all debut serials of a new Doctor, second only to Patrick Troughton’s “Power of the Daleks,” the all time greatest debut serial for a new Doctor.
(No, no. Don’t argue. I’m right, and you’re wrong.)
What reminds me of “Spearhead from Space” today is that we headed towards Madame Tousaud’s waxworks museum in London, right off of Baker Street (yes, THAT Baker Street, of Sherlock Holmes fame, 221B, to be precise), and in “Spearhead from Space” exists a newer process of creating realistic, lifesize replicas of famous people using plastic rather than wax.
Why is plastic so important to the story? Well, because an octopus-like creature known as the Nestene Consciousness can make all kinds of plastic come alive, from toys, inflatable furniture, and even plastic replicas of real people at Madame Tousauds. And they all come alive, armed with a gun that appears out of the end of their arm after the hand drops down with a hinge at the wrist.
Imagine not only these Madame Tousaud’s replicas coming to life and slaughtering any passing human, but shop window dummies, too! So, if you were already afraid of shop window dummies, Doctor Who gave you another reason to be afraid. They could come alive at any moment, breaking through the glass of the display window, and with no warning at all.
No wonder kids hid behind sofas or watched Doctor Who between their fingers. Scary stuff indeed!
Fortunately, no waxwork replicas of famous people came alive at Madame Tousaud’s, and the Madame Tousaud’s we saw in Doctor Who (lots of overly serious people wearing furs while looking at replicas of bored dignitaries with nothing behind them except an overly serious curtain that looks like it’s made of some kind of overly serious velvet) was very different from the Madame Tousaud’s we saw in real life. (The Madame Tousaud’s we saw in the program, though, was much more scary place for plastic dummies to come to life, though, of course.)
Before you even attempt to enter Madame Tousaud’s, though, buy your tickets ahead of time as you could possibly wait up to 2 hours in line if you don’t and just decide to show up at the door. Buy ahead of time and you’ll be inside within minutes.
As you enter, you’ll be overcome with vibrant, red walls and a great, glassy chandelier at least 8 feet tall with long tendrils of elegant crystals of glass hanging in the center of a room with two curved staircases on either side that hug the wall and that take you to lifts to the beginning of the exhibit.
And then the real fun begins with the first section of Madame Tousaud’s, where you get to meet a whole bunch of film stars including Johnny Depp, Emma Watson, Helen Miren, Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Patrick Stewart, Colin Firth, Jim Carey, and many others.
They really do look lifelike, though. It’s really quite incredible. While the room is quite spacious, there is quite a crowd, but you never have to wait too long to take a picture of yourself within one of these lifelike waxworks. You could very easily fool someone into thinking you met a famous person by showing them a picture of you standing next to one of these models.
At the end of the first exhibit is an American style movie theatre food stand where you can buy popcorn and pop (fizzies, if you prefer) and candy. Just for a moment it feels like you’re back in the states at any old movie theatre, but then you look around and hear people speaking languages of all types and people speaking predominantly English with various British accents, and the illusion is broken, and you realize you’re back in the UK (but how fantastic is that!)
I’m forgetting the order of everything after the first exhibit, but other exhibits include a Hollywood exhibit where you get to meet John Wayne (and my goodness he was a tall man!), Whoopie Goldberg wearing a nun’s habit, Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, and others; a sports exhibit where you get to meet people who I didn’t recognize at all; a pop stars exhibit where the only person I recognized was Justin Timberlake; a Royal Family exhibit where you get to meet, naturally, all of the Royal Family as well as Princess Diana and replicas of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and Mary Queen of Scots, and I took a photo with Charles I where I posed while making a chopping motion with my hand over his neck; a “Culture” exhibit where you meet Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, and Oscar Wilde (and my goodness he was tall, too!); a world leaders exhibit where you get to meet Obama (although he was the only waxwork that didn’t quite look like the genuine article), David Cameron (who I really don’t like at all), Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and the Dhali Llama, who I just ADORE with his characteristic smile and geeky glasses. What man to aspire to be!
Of course, remember, too, that I’m leaving lots of people out that I can’t remember.
What’s funny about viewing all this at Madame Tousaud’s, though, is that sometimes you are so completely surrounded by people that you frequently find yourself standing next to a very still man thinking that they’re real only to be startled a bit to discover that they’re not, and it works the other way, too, where someone might be standing still admiring the work of a certain replica, and all the sudden they move and you’re startled a bit, commenting, “Oh! I though you were a waxwork!”
Following all this is a rather frightening exhibit that takes you through various torture methods throughout the ages (but not before you get to meet Alfred Hitchcock), where one of the most terrifying things you see is a waxwork model tied to a giant, spiked, wooden wheel, his back facing down with spikes driving into him, his head upside down, his face locked in a terrifyingly gruesome moment of absolute pain.
Also while down here, You also get to read about the French Revolution, too, and view replicas of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (as well as, terrifyingly, replicas of their heads impaled on stakes), because that’s how Madame Tousaud got her start in all this. She made waxwork replicas of the French Royal Family as well as other poor unfortunates who were killed during this time. After leaving her husband, she realized that she stumbled on quite the money maker, this talent she had, and started opening her own exhibits and passing down her methods to others.
Everything continues on with a kind of haunted dungeon affair where waxwork people stand about in a darkened area with lots of prison bars and corridors while real life people jump out or slink out of dark corners and scare you. And how they did exceed!
Lastly is a really quite jolly ride, where you step onto one of a long line of London taxis on a with room for two about half the length of the real ones, all moving along a track, and a bar closes you in like on a roller coaster, and you get to watch the whole history of London acted out before you by animatronic waxworks surrounded by the architecture of the day, from London’s Roman beginnings, the Great Fire, to the present day, a ride not all that dissimilar from ones you might experience at Universal Studios in LA like the ET ride (except much better), and rather done in a way that reminds you of House on the Rock in Wisconsin (except done better and the moving animatronics don’t look like they’ll fall apart at any moment). Towards the end, the ride takes a picture of you, and so naturally we bought two copies of the photo!
Your whole time at Madame Tousaud’s concludes with a Marvel Comics exhibit, but we skipped that.
Seriously, though, I didn’t think we would enjoy Madame Tousaud’s as much as we did! My mother was curious about it because she had heard about it all her life, and I was curious about it because of hearing about it in “Spearhead from Space,” so we went to go check it out, not knowing what to expect, and we came away thoroughly happy from having enjoyed ourselves so much! If you find yourself in London, do stop by. It’s fantastic!
Incidentally, Madame Tousaud’s is really close to Regent’s Park, and so we managed to visit all five of the main large parks in London (Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Green Park, St. James’s Park, and Regent’s Park). While all five of them are absolutely fantastic, by far the best of the lot is Regent’s Park, so if you only have time to check out one of the parks, do visit Regent’s Park, but they’re all rather somewhat equally splendid in their own right (and if you visit Buckingham Palace you’ll see Green and St. James’s Parks by default).
Regent’s Park, however, is a very posh park, as within it is Regent’s University, Queen Mary’s Gardens, and Open Air Theatre. The gardens, too, are very classically British with little strips of grass bordering well trimmed hedges in shapes of perfect squares or long, long rectangles, complete with roses and geraniums and all sorts of other flowers carefully placed and manicured. And don’t miss the Triton Fountain while you’re here, an elegant fountain with a man blowing a conk shell and whose surrounded by fish and mermaids.
We also found ourselves surrounded by the largest and most diverse group of birds yet as we walked by the Boating Lake, pigeons, swans, geese, ducks, and other water birds of so many varieties. One pigeon actually landed on me, and one of the geese actually took food from my hand, and one duck nipped away at my hand because I didn’t have any more food to give.
The park also provides you with some fantastic views of the headquarters of WOTAN, the evil computer that controls the War Machines in a serial of Doctor Who called, er, “The War Machines” (otherwise known as the Post Office Tower, as I always forget what the name was changed to). I can’t remember if I’ve described the building before, but it’s a kind of space age tower, very glassy and shiny and metallic, shaped like a long cylinder that keeps changing its circumference as if the tower was built by placing slabs of metallic and glassy circles of different sizes all on top of each other.
Flowing this, we made a quick side trip to the FDR memorial statue outside the US Embassy, a rather bored, rectangular monstrosity of a structure that wouldn’t be out of place in DC made of concrete and glass but that has an elaborate golden bald eagle with wings spread at the very top of this 6 story (or so) building, compete with flags of all 50 states right towards the front of the building in a long line that stretches from one end of the building to the other. We found Minnesota’s flag, took a picture, and moved on to another side trip to Twinings to buy some of the best tea ever to bring home with us (I hope customs won’t mind, but I imagine they won’t).
And so with that, another busy day taking in the sites of London comes to a close. And as I write this, I find myself becoming melancholy because I don’t want to go back to Minnesota at all. London is absolutely wonderful, and I wish I could transplant all my friends and family and their pets to over here, where we all could live in such a fantastic city that provides so much for everyone. I feel at home here in a way that I quite haven’t felt in other cities, Minneapolis included. I always knew London was the greatest city in the world, and this trip has now loudly and confidently confirmed that!
And the weather has been absolutely fantastic as well! It hasn’t gotten above 20 Celsius, and it’s rained off and on every day! Absolute bliss! This weather is MY kind of weather and London is my kind of town!
My next post will take us to the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, where there may be Cybermen lurking beneath in the sewers! Beware their hypnotizing sound waves, unless Patrick Troughton rigged up some sonic protection for you!