Programmes are HOW much?

Saturday 23 May 2015
 


The Audience take their seats

To Wembley Arena for the first  show of the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular UK Tour. Of course, when my husband booked the tickets, we had no idea that our local football team would be in the League Two playoff final the same afternoon. This made for an interesting journey in a train full of Wanderers fans in blue.  On arrival at Wembley, we went in search of a cup of tea, and soon cane across someone wearing a fez - we had found 'our people' at last.
 
Once we arrived at the Arena, we  located our seats, and then husband went off in search of a programme - a large, glossy 32-page brochure, but hardly worth the £15 he told me he was charged for it. 
 
At the appointed hour, we heard the metallic tones of Nick 'Voice of the Daleks' Briggs ordering us to turn of mobile communications devices and not to use flash. "Get lost Nick, you bald git', I muttered under my breath  [I can't help it - Pavlovian response from 22 years ago] and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, aka 'the Doctor Who House Band' were off, with A Good Man?
 

The show was introduced by Peter Davison, who made a number of jokes about the unexploded World War II bomb which had been found the day before, leading to the evacuation of the building, and wreaking havoc with the set up. He also joked about Colin Baker being on stand-by to take over from him in the event of an emergency, and the Doctors being 'like a family - some more so than others.'
 
With ten years of Murray Gold's music to choose from, the programme naturally had to be selective, and the emphasis was on more recent music, predominantly from the Twelfth Doctor's first season (series 8). However, there were also some favourites from previous series, including Song of Freedom and the themes from the first four companions of the new era: Rose, Martha, Donna and Amy. And then the Daleks took over, forcing conductor Ben Foster to play their quasi-Wagnerian operatic chorus. The first half of the show concluded with the music from the 2014 Christmas Special.
 

After the interval, Cybermen roamed the stalls for All the Strange, Strange Creatures. I was slightly disappointed that there weren't more monsters in the auditorium, as there had been at the Prom - though there were some Ood, the Teller and The Foretold on the stage at various points. The second half continued the companions theme with The Impossible Girl and then 66 Seconds from Mummy on the Orient Express. These were followed by The Pandorica Suite, which was a nice chance to see some of Rory on the big screen,  and then Abigail's Song, sung by soloist Ellin Manahan Thomas before we got to the fiftieth anniversary This is Gallifrey, another favourite of mine.  Death in Heaven Suite brought us back up to date before the show rounded off with the best and most famous theme tune in the world.

All in all a very enjoyable afternoon.  But £15 for a programme?

 
 

The Horror, The Horror (Channel)!

It's amazing what you can find in the deeper reaches of Freeview.  I recently discovered the Horror Channel (Sky 319, Virgin 149, Freeview 70), which is showing a rather random selection of Doctor Who classic episodes.

Tonight it was The Seeds of Death. See their website for details of what's on when.