Category: Gadgets

The Doctor Who Experience

i kissed a dalekHave you ever wanted to lay a big smooch on a cute little Dalek? Anyone? …Just me? Well, just in case I am not the only one, I thought I’d tell you guys about The Doctor Who Experience in London‘s Olympia, where I got to lay one on this little guy (make love, not extermination).

A couple years ago, I wrote about my trip to the Coventry Travel Museums Doctor Who Experience, and that was amazing. I thought this would be a larger scale version of all the awesome I experienced there–hanging out with the Ood and K-9, taking pictures next to the TARDIS, that kind of stuff…

K niiiiiiineAnd was I ever wrong. The Doctor Who Experience is truly an experience. Buy your tickets in advance and show up early, because you will join a group, and walk into what is basically an episode of Doctor Who, written for you to play in. Matt Smith (as The Doctor) appears on screen through out, to guide you through Daleks, Weeping Angels, and tons more while you help him get his TARDIS back and defeat the Daleks. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say the two children in attendance were not the only ones having a blast. When you come out the other end of the interactive portion, there are more displays, including all of the Doctor’s costumes, and most of his enemies.

I took a picture of The Silence, because…well, you know. The Silence

There was also a great space set aside to show what the Doctor Who writers’ office looks like, and perhaps geekiest of all, an entire display on how the theme music and sound effects are done (and have been done) throughout the series.

There is no shortage of things to make a Whovian go “squee”. I spent at least an hour snapping pictures of all the displays, which include life sized models of four different TARDIS incarnations, a ton of villains, and many of your favorite companions. I can’t recommend The Doctor Who Experience enough. As we were going in, there was a boy about seven years old, dancing in circles and chanting about how excited he was for the exhibition–when we left, goodie bags full from the gift shop, I admit, I was behaving similarly.

 

Matt Smith

 

 

It is a running exhibition with dates through (at least) November, so no reason to miss it, The Doctor is counting on you!

Out of this World-British Library

sciencefictionThere are at least a million different things a geek can do in London, and in my effort to do them all, alas, I failed. One major highlight was the current free exhibition at The British Library (for us yanks, it is like The Library of Congress), Out Of This World: Science Fiction, But Not as You Know it.

First, I am a bibliophile, so this was like Disneyland for me, except at Disneyland you can take pictures and touch things. Each section of the exhibition had a specific theme ranging from the birth of Science Fiction (in the 1600s!), Utopian societies, distopian societies, graphic novels, robots (did you know that the first “robots” in literature were actually synthetically made human slaves, and not machines?), and more. Among these were impeccable, perfect first editions, that made me drool, with some of the most beautiful, and outright cool cover art you will ever see. One major highlight was an original telegram sent from George Orwell to his publisher, lamenting that 1984 would have been “better” if it had not “been written under the influence of TB”, where he goes on to call Satre a “big bag of wind”.

I could write for days on the books on display and how amazing it was to see hand written pages of first drafts, books hundreds of years old, amazing posters (see?), but what really struck me were the interactives they had set up, for all age ranges. You (or your kid) can use an interactive touch screen to draw your own alien, and then watch it join other hand drawn aliens dancing around on the wall behind, there was a sleepy robot that was motion activated that carried on conversation about his favorite science fiction robots, a computer where you could challenge AI to the Turin’s Test, and at least five other things I didn’t have time for.

All in all, this would be an amazing stop in London (runs until September 25), even (or maybe especially) if you have kids in tow.

Tutorial Tuesday: Replica of the 7th Doctor’s Umbrella!

Via Crafty Tardis.

The Livejournal Group Crafty Tardis has had some great work in it recently (that’s why I’m featuring a helluva lot of it) but this one really grabbed my attention because it’s something I’d never even CONSIDER doing myself, and it’s just such a perfect costuming prop! (and the 7th Doctor is one of the Husb0t’s favourites, he gets VERY defensive about Sylvester McCoy… I dont get it myself… we don’t talk about it)

Crafty Tardis Contributor kingpinwriter modified an umbrella to emulate that of the 7th doctor with great results. The walk-through includes spray-painting, drilling, sand papering and acrylic bending, all things which I’d be FAR too afraid to try myself, and would probably result in a call to the fire station. So well done for not causing any major injury to yourself or others KingPin :-) (perhaps I should stop measuring others by my own perceived ineptitude)

Adventurous Dr Who fans, go forth, craft yourself the most awesome rain protection device known to man…

Jayne’s grenade

I am always pleased to find references to the tragically-short-lived, but epically-awesome TV series “Firefly“. I am of the opinion that any day with a little Firefly injected in it is a good day. Just the other night I had cause to exclaim, “Sure would be nice to have some grenades, dontcha think?”

Jayne Cobb's propsAnd lo, what does teh Internets yield up to me? One of Jayne’s grenades! (shown at the far left in this picture)

With all the fanfare for Jayne Cobb’s hat, I was very impressed to see someone step outside the knitting box and go straight for the ammo! Kudos to Brian at StormtrooperGuy.

Battle for Beauty Interactive Game Event!

battle-for-beautySometimes. the world just opens up for geeks. This is one of those times (or more accurately, Friday is one of those times) on Friday, June tenth, Battle for Beauty begins in Toronto, where real life players will use softballs to compete against online players everywhere.

I really feel like this is a time where I can use the word “epic” and not worry about summoning an LOLCat. Microsoft is hosting this mega-sized browser based party, to help “make the internet more beautiful”, players will do battle against such villains as “The Eternal Loadworm”. It is a geek’s dream, a LAN party on steriods!