transatlantic
i've never called myself an anglophile, though in recent years i've become increasingly aware that it's more or less impossibly true. i just hated the implications of the phrase. i don't love anything and everything just because it's english, i promise; for one thing, i really couldn't care less about the royal family, and while i think the word 'tory' is adorable, i've no idea how politics or bureaucracy work over here. those things do not interest me. at all.
and i'm sure that much of my fascination simply derives from the fact that it's...different. but that doesn't explain why the novelty of italy wore off so quickly; it was wonderful and amazing -- rome, the amalfi coast, pompeii, the volcano mall. adventures and brilliance and beauty, history and touristy goodness. but after a while, it just got kind of...tiring, being in a place so strange and feeling so very, very far from home. i loved it, but it felt...foreign.
england doesn't feel like that at all. i'm sure the lack of a language barrier helps, as does the fact that i've been enchanted by british accents since i was a child; i've been able to fake one passably for probably fifteen years. i grew up watching monty python, was later given blackadder, and it's been less than a year since i started watching doctor who, but i've been consuming it obsessively ever since. consuming it and embracing it and rearranging my life to make room for this fandom i never expected to take hold.
in case anyone's curious, doctor who is the reason this five week sojourn across the pond even happened. the doctor who experience opened in london this spring, and it was immediately decided that kim and i needed to make a pilgrimage. needed. i'm still in complete shock that all of this came together, that we're lucky enough to know someone who was living in italy and wanted us to visit, that we know someone in england who would put us up. people to give us beds and couches and show us around, feed us and take care of us. i'm shocked. awed. humbled and honored and overwhelmed. unspeakably grateful.
we fly home in a week; i've been gone a month. i miss my cat, and my bed - i haven't slept in a proper bed since, i think, the first night we landed in london, four weeks ago (i'm not complaining, though, don't get me wrong). i miss my wife, and i almost miss work-gossip and drama. i miss my car, and driving, though it's admittedly super fun and exciting, i think, walking all over birmingham (and london. i'm getting there).
but...i don't miss home. i haven't missed having my phone; turns out i really love not being able to talk to people much. i don't miss my family, i don't miss the stupid day-to-day life things that haven't mattered since we left. settling in again is going to suck. i am going to hate it. i am going to be cranky, i am going to be temperamental, i am going to be feeling very nostalgic for the extremely recent past. i won't have jammy dodgers or jelly babies, or chocolate digestives or almond biscuits (save the ones i am planning on stuffing in my suitcase). i won't be able to download any more doctor who adventure games or watch episodes on the iplayer; you can't unless you're in the uk.
pros and cons, i guess. the rest of this entry details the trip to london from earlier this week; it is the sort of lengthy, detailed report that, by rights, i probably should have been making all along, what with all the amazing experiences and whatnot. even the ones that weren't so amazing were still notable (the eight hour layover in the rome airport comes to mind on that one). but from the start, i was telling myself i wanted to both capture everything, and yet not forget to appreciate it while it was happening; it's easy for me to get caught up behind collecting words and photographs, and forget to actually enjoy it while i'm living it (which is why i don't really mind that you're not allowed to take pictures in the interactive part of the doctor who experience; it would kill the mood, as it were. distract you. distract everyone, really, and thereby just kind of ruin everything. but i'm getting ahead of myself. what follows is exceptionally long, and very verbose, and remarkably fangirly at times.
i fucking love london. we'd been there twice, each time only for a night, passing through; once on the way to italy, once on the way up to birmingham. a few days ago we finally went with the intention of going and doing, and while it didn't exactly go as planned, or as well as could have been hoped for, i'm not sorry. parts of it were awful and full of suffering, but the parts that weren't...are the sorts of things that people like me live for.
granted, the traveling itself is rough. it's less than two hours by train, and theoretically not that much longer by coach, but damned if they don't throw in a few extra stops. depending on the line and where and when you're going, they're pretty comparably priced...but making the arrangements is terrible, and stressful, and i keep forgetting that thirty-five quid for two round trip tickets is sixty goddamn dollars (currency conversion is going to kill me, and i am trying so hard not to freak over how expensive this trip has been. especially given that in my heart of hearts, i know i'd rather be here than at home). anyway.
one three hour bus ride later, we were in the victoria coach station, already cranky and sweaty (i swear on all that's holy, the heat was on in the coach) and dehydrated and hungry. awesome? awesome. fortunately, unlike the last time we navigated the city, we didn't have luggage; also fortunately, the london underground is a) very easy and b) i'm very, very good at it. in some ways, london reminds me -- vaguely -- of new york -- but while i've always found nyc a little intimidating, london just feels amazing. i've never been able to figure out the metro in the city, but i feel like i've already half-mastered the underground (having a photographic memory helps, as do all the placards plastered everywhere). it's also vastly superior to the metro because it is shiny and clean and a million times less dank and dark and sketchy, all of which are ways to warm my heart.
the natural history museum and science museum are adjacent to one another -- connected, actually, though the plan was only to visit the former. south kensington stop, if anyone cares; circle and district lines. it's a bit of a walk, but there's a tunnel from the station to the street corner. it's...it's magnificent. i am a nerd, and i love museums, though i admittedly take them in a little oddly. i am not one of those people who needs to look at every single item, read all the signs and placards and whatnot. i can't. you'd think so, given the fact that i tend to be a little obsessive compulsive about things, but this is a compulsion of its own. i like to see everything, but that just means i want to see everything everywhere; i get super flustered if i can't walk through every wing, every hall, every exhibit. so i love being turned loose.
the natural history museum is huge, and i think i blew through it in less than three hours -- much to my dismay (anger; annoyance) the dinosaur exhibit was closed. for cleaning. which is horribly upsetting, since dinosaurs are the best goddamn part of any museum anywhere, and people who don't agree aren't human. i loved looking at the minerals, the rocks, the statues and primates and birds and mammals, i love everything. but taking away the dinosaurs is just cruel.
i went through everything. all the exhibits, touching things and playing with things and running up all the stairs, everywhere, forever. the building is stunning, the architecture is just overwhelmingly beautiful. the juxtaposition of the classicky arches and stonework, the majestic staircases and marble next to some of the fancy modern exhibits is just breathtaking.
since it was still mid-afternoon, time was left for running about in the science museum. and run i did. i'd no idea when they'd be closing, and there's like, five floors and stuff everywhere and it's not laid out very logically or coherently, so there was a lot of scrambling. i only skipped one wing, something about like, the history and art of medicine, and that was only because i walked through another history of medicine wing and it was unbearably creepy, so i figured i'd be better off. the ship floor and flight floor weirded me out too. for one thing, they were ridiculously deserted, and quiet museums are just inherently sort of...unsettling. being surrounded by very tall glass cases filled with model ships did not help, given that you feel very small and lost. the planes were worse; i love flying, but planes freak me out when they are so still and lifeless and...dead. and when there are so many of them. racks and shelves of engines, floor to ceiling in a room almost the size of a hangar. a cross-section of a 747, with seats and storage and overhead compartments -- that's what got me. it was fascinating to look at, but when i get scared or creeped out really badly, i cry. and no, i have no idea why that's the response that gets triggered; i just know that if my eyes are welling up, i need to gtfo. so i did.
i don't think i did the science museum justice, but since i'm not a science person, i don't think it held my interest as much. and after an hour i was getting pretty sore and tired of running up relentless steps, so a respite was needed. that and food (having jammy dodgers for breakfast is only a good idea until it's late afternoon and you want to die of exhaustion).
no one warned us this ahead of time, but apparently london is not really good for the whole "let's wander around 'til we find food!' deal. or maybe we were just really, really in the wrong part of the city for that? i have no idea how far we walked, but it was around a few blocks in a giant circle back around to the museums. wound up back at the south kensington station, vowing that we'd go find the hostel and sort things out from there.
the hostel itself, on the website, claimed that westminster was the best underground stop to use. this is a lie. granted, it was awesome to walk outside and immediately be greeted with the london eye on one side of you and the abbey & big ben on the other (the thames is horribly dirty and gross, though). it was not awesome to have to walk another forty minutes, passing both the waterloo and lambeth north tube stops as well as two pubs that didn't serve much besides alcohol and thai food.
about halfway there we found a pub that was purple and called the pineapple, which immediately endeared it to me as those are two of my favorite things. the guy working the bar was adorable and so nice, we got burgers and chips (fries! damnit. i'm going to be insufferable when i get home, i already use an unusual number of british terms and i've just gotten worse. or better, depending on how you look at it) and felt a hell of a lot better. not good, by any stretch of the imagination, but...better.
the hostel is in the middle of nowhere, in a much seedier part of the city. it also managed to cram five three-bunk bunk beds into a room that is smaller than the living room where i am currently sat. and this is an average-sized living room. what have i learned? more or less just confirmed what i already knew. i am not a hostel person. i hate people, i hate bunk beds, i hate being confined when i'm sleeping, i hate sharing rooms with people, i hate communal bathrooms (two showers, two toilets, one sink on our floor. for probably at least fifty people?). in short, the room was stuffy and hot, we were tired and sore and cranky, there was no room to move about and yet i managed to sleep like the dead, given the physical exhaustion and half a dose of nyquil (i knew going into this i was going to hate the hostel. but hotels in london are atrociously expensive). there was also a strange boy, very nice, but very strange. he was being very inquisitive about us and i'm reasonably certain that yes, he was 'chatting me up,' as kim said. that is all well and fine, but i will never see him again.
the highlight of the morning was leaving, styrofoam cup of instant coffee in hand (england has instant coffee. it's one of the only things about this place i openly despise. what good is instant coffee? none. it's a waste of time and money and energy). this time we made for the lambeth north tube stop (bakerloo line), alighted at embankment, and took the district line to earl's court. from there it was only a matter of waiting for a train that was going up to kensington/olympia.
and this is the good part. this was the culmination of the journey, the realization of everything we'd done and planned and lived through in europe. leading up to this. i don't care how silly it is, how inconceivable it might be that any fandom could be such a draw. it was. it is. i legitimately do not care; i think i've mentioned this before, but i would prefer to always love a handful of things with an unbearable passion than to love a lot of things sort of mediocre-ly.
the doctor who experience is nestled on the second floor of olympia two. it's not very elegant, it's unassuming and not at all grandiose. for some reason that just makes it all the more endearing.
you go in, and up, and music is playing everywhere. the new version of the show's theme, the eleventh doctor's theme -- piped in literally everywhere, in different sections, at different times. there's the shop, and the ticket counter, a cafe looking out over the street through huge windows with big tardis and dalek stickers all over the panes. the entrance to the experience proper is a little tunnel-like, there's a screen with the tardis in the time vortex on it, and you go around it to the right and you're face to face with the liz 10 and winder costumes from last season's 'the beast below.' silurians and props from 'the hungry earth' and 'cold blood,' the world war ii dalek from 'victory of the daleks,' costumes and props from 'the vampires of venice.' it's a small waiting room, really, a place to gather the next group of people for the interactive walkthrough, which is the part you can't take pictures in. which is understandable, but sucky, because it's beautiful. the attention the detail is breathtaking, the way you're immediately immersed with your whole head and heart into this alternate world is...well, it's every superlative and then some.
you start out in a tiny screening room, very dark with a few low wooden benches. there are noticeable cracks in the screen, and you watch maybe five minutes of exposition -- clips from season five, linked together with an eleventh doctor voiceover, sort of explaining what and who he is. you're actually going to have to forgive me, as i'm sure my descriptions of this part are going to fall short. it's overwhelming and hard to pay attention to everything that's happening, hard to take in all of the sensory input when part of your brain is permanently stuck in "i can't believe this is actually happening" mode. anyway. exposition, a little boring, and then the crack appears -- the one from amelia's bedroom wall, the one that haunts the entire fifth season. it inverts, and aligns itself vertically with the main crack down the center of the screen. the wall splits open at the juncture, and you shuffle through the opening into a very darkened chamber.
the lights go up a tiny bit, and you're surrounded by stuff. things. artifacts, really -- screens tell you you're in the museum for the starship uk; one of the information statue thingies from "silence in the library/forest of the dead" is talking at you and explaining things in the calmest, most reassuring of voices. the telescope is there, huge and hulking in one corner. the exploding tardis painting from "vincent and the doctor" is there. smilers. the most random assembly of stuff, and yet it all seems so significant.
then the sirens. sirens, screens and lights flashing; the museum security's been breached. the eleventh doctor appears, screaming for amy. amy. or rory? we're not rory -- we're 'not even rory.' he calls us shoppers, and says we'll have to do; eleven is, in retrospect, not very nice to you during this prerecorded misadventure. but he is stuck, trapped in the pandorica again; he bitches at some length about how it's even the same color as the first one and prattles on for a while. he says something about sending us the tardis, and given that he's strapped in (hurrrrrrrr), switches a setting on his sonic screwdriver by leaning down and thwacking his head against it awkwardly.
it's quite an easy trick, and not hard at all to figure out how it's done. but that noise resonates like nothing else -- that most distinctive of noises, as the tardis is materializing. and it quite literally does, right in front of your eyes -- it's the strangest feeling. i cannot put that sensation into words. i can't. it's unparalleled, unrivalled. there is nothing in the world like having a tardis appear in front of you, and i don't care that it's not real. it doesn't matter. all that matters is that it is there, and the doors open, and you walk through them, into the eleventh doctor's control room. i wanted to cry, it's the most beautiful, perfect of moments. i want to cry just thinking about it.
it's a nearly-perfect replica; like i said, the attention to detail is so good it hurts. granted, i think the real set is bigger. and the set doesn't have screens on all the walls, or an extra set of doors (eleven mentions them in passing, though, in the video; it was a nice lampshading touch, for those of you who get lost on tv tropes too). but you're in the tardis, and eleven needs you to fly it, or land it, or i don't even know -- wasn't entirely paying attention. you can't touch the console, but there are little boxes on the railing around it that correspond to the actual panels on the console -- navigation, helm, mechanical, diagnostic, communication, and fabrication. each box is labeled, and has a joystick on it; eleven asks the people -- preferably kids, the younger the better -- at the navigation and mechanical stations, i believe, to follow his instructions. the floor shakes -- kind of violently, actually. eleven freaks out, since evidently she's not going where she ought to. and when you land he says that everything's fine but to please hurry out, and you leave through the second set of doors, through a darkened tardis corridor, into another very dark control room.
and then there are daleks, and they are yelling about exterminating the humans, and it's very disconcerting. and wonderful. this goes on for a while; some of the screens show actual live footage of the room and the group of people you're in, while it appears their system is scanning you. and then eleven breaks into the footage again, explains to the daleks that they oughtn't kill you all. they're shoppers, he says. a subset of humans, not worth it. and the daleks start hollering about the doctor, he is an enemy of daleks and must be exterminated...and then you watch through a 'window' at a spaceship battle outside, and the doors at the other end open and eleven urges you on and warns you not to blink.
his advice was greeted with gasps from our group; we were all adults, save one small child, a boy of maybe four or five, armed with a sonic screwdriver and not afraid of anything. the rest of us? a little freaked out. i think you pass through another corridor before you hit the forest, and, perhaps a little shamefully, i literally bolted through. weeping angels scare the hell out of me, and i didn't really see any on the way through. i also did not blink. you cannot be too careful. it was very very dark and very very creepy.
the experience attendant (BEST JOB EVER) hands you 3D glasses as you pass into the next room; there are more low wooden benches, but more like platforms to stand on, with railings. the stoney dalek's in a corner and you're face to face with the pandorica; eleven appears on yet another convenient screen, manages to dematerialize from inside the pandorica and back into his tardis right before the pandorica opens. which is bad. crack in time and space and all, opening, flinging you into it with daleks, cybermen, weeping angels. who are grabbing at you, and shooting at you, in three dimensions. it's fantastic. and eleven does some stuff and saves you, and thanks you, and goes on his merry way.
and you are turned loose into the rest of the exhibit. immediately upon exiting, the pandorica's just ahead of you; it's the prettiest, they light it a little from the inside so it's a little glowy green, and there are patterny blue lights on it from the outside at intervals. on the wall on the hallway just off that space are giant reproductions of radio times covers, featuring old doctors and daleks and ten's departure and eleven's arrival. the next space has a giant tardis, eleven's, and a wax eleven that, if i were matt smith, would make me very sad. it's not a bad likeness, but he looks old and icky and it's sad. the display is flanked at the back with a banner, placard, and outfit for each of the preceding ten incarnations. on the opposite wall is a photo op thing, green screened cubes where you can pose and be photoshopped into the pandorica or tardis or the like. which is kind of neat.
there are sonic screwdrivers, tardis keys, and some of eleven's gadgets in really poorly lit display cases (they're lit from underneath, so you can't even really see them) by the next passage, and some asshole decided to put a few silences hanging from the ceiling in the next corner, where the path sort of forks. behind the silence is the actual shooting set for the ninth and tenth doctor's tardis, which is...amazing. again, it's got railings up so you can't wander in it or touch the console, but...still. i touched what i could reach, obviously. a clip runs behind it, the few minutes leading up to ten's regeneration into eleven, which is really, really not a highlight of the series. ten's departure is terrible, and sad, but not really in an emotionally valid way. yes, ten liked being ten. but ten had horrible attachment issues to boot, and kind of ruined everything a lot of the time -- and yet, still, i adore the tenth doctor and i really, really don't think that his character deserved such a whiny ending.
having that clip playing on repeat -- ten's final moments, and eleven's first -- just makes it all the worse. it makes ten seem so despondent, which makes eleven seem that much better...and, come on -- i adore eleven, too, i love eleven and matt smith with a feverish delight that occasionally makes me feel all sorts of uncomfortable. but i still love ten, and that stupid clip just cheapens ten's legacy, i think. david tennant was the doctor for five years, and he was a brilliant actor even when his stories sucked and his character went to hell. he deserves a lot better than to have gone out that way, and to be memorialized like this.
/rant
next to the tardis set are outfits for most of the new series' companions -- amy (and amelia), rory, donna, rose, martha, astrid, river, captain jack, sarah jane, k-9. in the corner, past those, is the set of the fifth, sixth, and seventh doctor's tardis control room; complete with coat rack, which has one of four's scarves tossed on it. the exterior of one of the tardises from the '80s is further along, next to the original melkur statue from the fourth doctor's "the keeper of traken" serial. there are costumes from the time lords, the time lord president, and the master -- well, professor yana.
on the other side is a walkway of cybermen; a cyberman and a cybercontroller on either side of the walkway entrance, and heads of various cybermen in niches along the wall, showing how they've evolved over time. there's a huge line of daleks as you go further, from davros through the daleks of the sixties, seventies, eighties, right up to the colorful overgrown ones they're using now. we refer to them as the "power ranger" daleks. not ironically, really, but i think i'm doing it at least a little affectionately. they are also a lot bigger in person.
this section's basically a free-for-all of monsters and creatures. silence, the heavenly host, the abzorbaloff, judoon, hath, ice warrior, the empty child, sisters of plenitude, sycorax, vashta nerada, slitheen. there's a model-making display of the head of an ood, and a complete ood as well. in the screening room is the face of boe, a pig slave and a scarecrow. the film itself is a few minutes of last season's christmas special confidential, and a behind-the-scenes thing about the making of the experience itself, including filmed clips of when it opened, and people's reactions to it...including matt smith, being the cutest and nerdiest. have i mentioned i love him? i love him.
there's a mirrored chamber with a video that teaches you how to walk like a cyberman or a scarecrow, and a hollowed out dalek you can crouch in to move its suction cup and gun thing. in another corner there's a mock-up cluttered art studio, littered with books and papers and figurines everywhere, like, i gues, the ones occupied over at the bbc by the folks who actually put the show together. a video plays over there, too, i think it's about the production and stuff. alls i remember is a bit where someone's showing matt smith -- who's in costume -- some neat thing on the tardis, and matt goes, 'can i touch it?' and the guy's just like, '...yeah.' i almost laughed. hi, you're the doctor. pretty sure you can touch whatever you want. break a few more sonic screwdrivers while you're at it too. i'm sure that'd be fine.
there's abigail's cryochamber, kazran's giant isomorphic-controlled desky thing, and his leather arm chair from 'a christmas carol,' and that's pretty much it. you're at the end, in the shop -- which is amazing in its own right. shirts, mugs, stationery, toys, action figures, dvds. cardboard cut-out stand-up things. little kid backpacks and umbrellas. posters. lunchboxes. keychains, pens. pins. stickers. it's easy to want everything. i do want everything.
it's not a very big place, and since the interactive bit is timed -- which is terrible, it'd have been so unspeakably awesome to be able to poke about and explore a little, even if you can't take photos -- so we weren't there more than two hours, i'd say. and that was with wandering around the main exhibit two or three times and taking photos of everything several times over.
when we realized how far away forbidden planet was, the idea of going there was abandoned; plus there was still lots of soreness and hunger and residual crankiness leftover from the day before. it just didn't really get felt in the experience; literally, while in those walls, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. nothing. the world was perfect for two hours this past wednesday, and i plan on clinging to the memory for as long as possible.
we wound up back at the victoria train station for a late lunch, scarfing down carbs and salads like they were going out of style. we had a few hours to kill before the bus ride home, but with books it wasn't so bad...until the bus got delayed and was overcrowded. and three hours is a very, very long time. once back at new street station in birmingham, we had to catch the next train for the university, and then there was the twenty minute walk back to the house, during which time it started raining gently. when we got back trina fed and watered us, tended the worst of the feet-wounds and put us to bed. trina's an awesome human being.
i love being here. i can't quite get over -- or, oddly, stop worrying about -- how strange and terrible it is going to be to go home. i've never been gone this long before, but time has been passing so much differently than i've ever experienced. i couldn't believe it when the italy portion of the adventure had passed, and now i'm freaking out that there's only a week left here. less, at this point. tomorrow we go to nottingham (though it seems likely i won't be spending all weekend there with the others, as it's a gaming thing and i'm sure i'll get bored), and we're going back to london on tuesday. we are, probably not surprisingly, going to the doctor who experience again -- and this was actually the plan before we went the first time, but it's well-deserved. it needs to be done twice to really appreciate it -- especially the interactive bit. i want to see the tardis materialize, i want to walk through those doors again. i want eleven to be snarky at us, i want to be threatened by daleks and not run in terror from the weeping angels.
we're doing the experience again, and then probably forbidden planet and the british museum, which is going to be earth-shatteringly awesome. it houses the rosetta stone, amongst a million other things. the rosetta stone. i am terrible at history, but some things just fascinate me -- especially the mystery-type things, like the supposed evidence that templar knights made it to north america around the same time as the vikings? or something like that, anyway. i love that stuff. when i was little -- a kid, pre-teen, i think, i spent an afternoon one day by myself in the living room watching a special on tv about the rosetta stone. my dad found me and was ridiculously proud of his little girl, so utterly fascinated by something so old and arcane...things haven't changed. i'm still my father's daughter, still more or less enthralled by the world and so much of what we've created.
including time lords. i'm the nerdiest, and it's the best. went to england, only wanted to see museums and old things and history and science and cybermen. i do regret that we won't be doing westminster abbey, but timing these trips has been difficult, and it's not cheap getting to and from london. and it's also not entirely a bad thing, having reasons to come back. the doctor who experience is going to be in london 'til the end of november, and then it's supposed to be going to cardiff, which is where lots of the show is filmed. i would go to cardiff. i would go to cardiff to see the experience again, and also possibly to stalk matt smith and arthur darvill (whose birthday is today, and whose hometown i am in right now) and karen gillan. who is flawless.
i'll be home in a week.
but i'll be damned if the next week still isn't going to be among the best of my life, much like the four that have preceded it.
and i'm sure that much of my fascination simply derives from the fact that it's...different. but that doesn't explain why the novelty of italy wore off so quickly; it was wonderful and amazing -- rome, the amalfi coast, pompeii, the volcano mall. adventures and brilliance and beauty, history and touristy goodness. but after a while, it just got kind of...tiring, being in a place so strange and feeling so very, very far from home. i loved it, but it felt...foreign.
england doesn't feel like that at all. i'm sure the lack of a language barrier helps, as does the fact that i've been enchanted by british accents since i was a child; i've been able to fake one passably for probably fifteen years. i grew up watching monty python, was later given blackadder, and it's been less than a year since i started watching doctor who, but i've been consuming it obsessively ever since. consuming it and embracing it and rearranging my life to make room for this fandom i never expected to take hold.
in case anyone's curious, doctor who is the reason this five week sojourn across the pond even happened. the doctor who experience opened in london this spring, and it was immediately decided that kim and i needed to make a pilgrimage. needed. i'm still in complete shock that all of this came together, that we're lucky enough to know someone who was living in italy and wanted us to visit, that we know someone in england who would put us up. people to give us beds and couches and show us around, feed us and take care of us. i'm shocked. awed. humbled and honored and overwhelmed. unspeakably grateful.
we fly home in a week; i've been gone a month. i miss my cat, and my bed - i haven't slept in a proper bed since, i think, the first night we landed in london, four weeks ago (i'm not complaining, though, don't get me wrong). i miss my wife, and i almost miss work-gossip and drama. i miss my car, and driving, though it's admittedly super fun and exciting, i think, walking all over birmingham (and london. i'm getting there).
but...i don't miss home. i haven't missed having my phone; turns out i really love not being able to talk to people much. i don't miss my family, i don't miss the stupid day-to-day life things that haven't mattered since we left. settling in again is going to suck. i am going to hate it. i am going to be cranky, i am going to be temperamental, i am going to be feeling very nostalgic for the extremely recent past. i won't have jammy dodgers or jelly babies, or chocolate digestives or almond biscuits (save the ones i am planning on stuffing in my suitcase). i won't be able to download any more doctor who adventure games or watch episodes on the iplayer; you can't unless you're in the uk.
pros and cons, i guess. the rest of this entry details the trip to london from earlier this week; it is the sort of lengthy, detailed report that, by rights, i probably should have been making all along, what with all the amazing experiences and whatnot. even the ones that weren't so amazing were still notable (the eight hour layover in the rome airport comes to mind on that one). but from the start, i was telling myself i wanted to both capture everything, and yet not forget to appreciate it while it was happening; it's easy for me to get caught up behind collecting words and photographs, and forget to actually enjoy it while i'm living it (which is why i don't really mind that you're not allowed to take pictures in the interactive part of the doctor who experience; it would kill the mood, as it were. distract you. distract everyone, really, and thereby just kind of ruin everything. but i'm getting ahead of myself. what follows is exceptionally long, and very verbose, and remarkably fangirly at times.
i fucking love london. we'd been there twice, each time only for a night, passing through; once on the way to italy, once on the way up to birmingham. a few days ago we finally went with the intention of going and doing, and while it didn't exactly go as planned, or as well as could have been hoped for, i'm not sorry. parts of it were awful and full of suffering, but the parts that weren't...are the sorts of things that people like me live for.
granted, the traveling itself is rough. it's less than two hours by train, and theoretically not that much longer by coach, but damned if they don't throw in a few extra stops. depending on the line and where and when you're going, they're pretty comparably priced...but making the arrangements is terrible, and stressful, and i keep forgetting that thirty-five quid for two round trip tickets is sixty goddamn dollars (currency conversion is going to kill me, and i am trying so hard not to freak over how expensive this trip has been. especially given that in my heart of hearts, i know i'd rather be here than at home). anyway.
one three hour bus ride later, we were in the victoria coach station, already cranky and sweaty (i swear on all that's holy, the heat was on in the coach) and dehydrated and hungry. awesome? awesome. fortunately, unlike the last time we navigated the city, we didn't have luggage; also fortunately, the london underground is a) very easy and b) i'm very, very good at it. in some ways, london reminds me -- vaguely -- of new york -- but while i've always found nyc a little intimidating, london just feels amazing. i've never been able to figure out the metro in the city, but i feel like i've already half-mastered the underground (having a photographic memory helps, as do all the placards plastered everywhere). it's also vastly superior to the metro because it is shiny and clean and a million times less dank and dark and sketchy, all of which are ways to warm my heart.
the natural history museum and science museum are adjacent to one another -- connected, actually, though the plan was only to visit the former. south kensington stop, if anyone cares; circle and district lines. it's a bit of a walk, but there's a tunnel from the station to the street corner. it's...it's magnificent. i am a nerd, and i love museums, though i admittedly take them in a little oddly. i am not one of those people who needs to look at every single item, read all the signs and placards and whatnot. i can't. you'd think so, given the fact that i tend to be a little obsessive compulsive about things, but this is a compulsion of its own. i like to see everything, but that just means i want to see everything everywhere; i get super flustered if i can't walk through every wing, every hall, every exhibit. so i love being turned loose.
the natural history museum is huge, and i think i blew through it in less than three hours -- much to my dismay (anger; annoyance) the dinosaur exhibit was closed. for cleaning. which is horribly upsetting, since dinosaurs are the best goddamn part of any museum anywhere, and people who don't agree aren't human. i loved looking at the minerals, the rocks, the statues and primates and birds and mammals, i love everything. but taking away the dinosaurs is just cruel.
i went through everything. all the exhibits, touching things and playing with things and running up all the stairs, everywhere, forever. the building is stunning, the architecture is just overwhelmingly beautiful. the juxtaposition of the classicky arches and stonework, the majestic staircases and marble next to some of the fancy modern exhibits is just breathtaking.
since it was still mid-afternoon, time was left for running about in the science museum. and run i did. i'd no idea when they'd be closing, and there's like, five floors and stuff everywhere and it's not laid out very logically or coherently, so there was a lot of scrambling. i only skipped one wing, something about like, the history and art of medicine, and that was only because i walked through another history of medicine wing and it was unbearably creepy, so i figured i'd be better off. the ship floor and flight floor weirded me out too. for one thing, they were ridiculously deserted, and quiet museums are just inherently sort of...unsettling. being surrounded by very tall glass cases filled with model ships did not help, given that you feel very small and lost. the planes were worse; i love flying, but planes freak me out when they are so still and lifeless and...dead. and when there are so many of them. racks and shelves of engines, floor to ceiling in a room almost the size of a hangar. a cross-section of a 747, with seats and storage and overhead compartments -- that's what got me. it was fascinating to look at, but when i get scared or creeped out really badly, i cry. and no, i have no idea why that's the response that gets triggered; i just know that if my eyes are welling up, i need to gtfo. so i did.
i don't think i did the science museum justice, but since i'm not a science person, i don't think it held my interest as much. and after an hour i was getting pretty sore and tired of running up relentless steps, so a respite was needed. that and food (having jammy dodgers for breakfast is only a good idea until it's late afternoon and you want to die of exhaustion).
no one warned us this ahead of time, but apparently london is not really good for the whole "let's wander around 'til we find food!' deal. or maybe we were just really, really in the wrong part of the city for that? i have no idea how far we walked, but it was around a few blocks in a giant circle back around to the museums. wound up back at the south kensington station, vowing that we'd go find the hostel and sort things out from there.
the hostel itself, on the website, claimed that westminster was the best underground stop to use. this is a lie. granted, it was awesome to walk outside and immediately be greeted with the london eye on one side of you and the abbey & big ben on the other (the thames is horribly dirty and gross, though). it was not awesome to have to walk another forty minutes, passing both the waterloo and lambeth north tube stops as well as two pubs that didn't serve much besides alcohol and thai food.
about halfway there we found a pub that was purple and called the pineapple, which immediately endeared it to me as those are two of my favorite things. the guy working the bar was adorable and so nice, we got burgers and chips (fries! damnit. i'm going to be insufferable when i get home, i already use an unusual number of british terms and i've just gotten worse. or better, depending on how you look at it) and felt a hell of a lot better. not good, by any stretch of the imagination, but...better.
the hostel is in the middle of nowhere, in a much seedier part of the city. it also managed to cram five three-bunk bunk beds into a room that is smaller than the living room where i am currently sat. and this is an average-sized living room. what have i learned? more or less just confirmed what i already knew. i am not a hostel person. i hate people, i hate bunk beds, i hate being confined when i'm sleeping, i hate sharing rooms with people, i hate communal bathrooms (two showers, two toilets, one sink on our floor. for probably at least fifty people?). in short, the room was stuffy and hot, we were tired and sore and cranky, there was no room to move about and yet i managed to sleep like the dead, given the physical exhaustion and half a dose of nyquil (i knew going into this i was going to hate the hostel. but hotels in london are atrociously expensive). there was also a strange boy, very nice, but very strange. he was being very inquisitive about us and i'm reasonably certain that yes, he was 'chatting me up,' as kim said. that is all well and fine, but i will never see him again.
the highlight of the morning was leaving, styrofoam cup of instant coffee in hand (england has instant coffee. it's one of the only things about this place i openly despise. what good is instant coffee? none. it's a waste of time and money and energy). this time we made for the lambeth north tube stop (bakerloo line), alighted at embankment, and took the district line to earl's court. from there it was only a matter of waiting for a train that was going up to kensington/olympia.
and this is the good part. this was the culmination of the journey, the realization of everything we'd done and planned and lived through in europe. leading up to this. i don't care how silly it is, how inconceivable it might be that any fandom could be such a draw. it was. it is. i legitimately do not care; i think i've mentioned this before, but i would prefer to always love a handful of things with an unbearable passion than to love a lot of things sort of mediocre-ly.
the doctor who experience is nestled on the second floor of olympia two. it's not very elegant, it's unassuming and not at all grandiose. for some reason that just makes it all the more endearing.
you go in, and up, and music is playing everywhere. the new version of the show's theme, the eleventh doctor's theme -- piped in literally everywhere, in different sections, at different times. there's the shop, and the ticket counter, a cafe looking out over the street through huge windows with big tardis and dalek stickers all over the panes. the entrance to the experience proper is a little tunnel-like, there's a screen with the tardis in the time vortex on it, and you go around it to the right and you're face to face with the liz 10 and winder costumes from last season's 'the beast below.' silurians and props from 'the hungry earth' and 'cold blood,' the world war ii dalek from 'victory of the daleks,' costumes and props from 'the vampires of venice.' it's a small waiting room, really, a place to gather the next group of people for the interactive walkthrough, which is the part you can't take pictures in. which is understandable, but sucky, because it's beautiful. the attention the detail is breathtaking, the way you're immediately immersed with your whole head and heart into this alternate world is...well, it's every superlative and then some.
you start out in a tiny screening room, very dark with a few low wooden benches. there are noticeable cracks in the screen, and you watch maybe five minutes of exposition -- clips from season five, linked together with an eleventh doctor voiceover, sort of explaining what and who he is. you're actually going to have to forgive me, as i'm sure my descriptions of this part are going to fall short. it's overwhelming and hard to pay attention to everything that's happening, hard to take in all of the sensory input when part of your brain is permanently stuck in "i can't believe this is actually happening" mode. anyway. exposition, a little boring, and then the crack appears -- the one from amelia's bedroom wall, the one that haunts the entire fifth season. it inverts, and aligns itself vertically with the main crack down the center of the screen. the wall splits open at the juncture, and you shuffle through the opening into a very darkened chamber.
the lights go up a tiny bit, and you're surrounded by stuff. things. artifacts, really -- screens tell you you're in the museum for the starship uk; one of the information statue thingies from "silence in the library/forest of the dead" is talking at you and explaining things in the calmest, most reassuring of voices. the telescope is there, huge and hulking in one corner. the exploding tardis painting from "vincent and the doctor" is there. smilers. the most random assembly of stuff, and yet it all seems so significant.
then the sirens. sirens, screens and lights flashing; the museum security's been breached. the eleventh doctor appears, screaming for amy. amy. or rory? we're not rory -- we're 'not even rory.' he calls us shoppers, and says we'll have to do; eleven is, in retrospect, not very nice to you during this prerecorded misadventure. but he is stuck, trapped in the pandorica again; he bitches at some length about how it's even the same color as the first one and prattles on for a while. he says something about sending us the tardis, and given that he's strapped in (hurrrrrrrr), switches a setting on his sonic screwdriver by leaning down and thwacking his head against it awkwardly.
it's quite an easy trick, and not hard at all to figure out how it's done. but that noise resonates like nothing else -- that most distinctive of noises, as the tardis is materializing. and it quite literally does, right in front of your eyes -- it's the strangest feeling. i cannot put that sensation into words. i can't. it's unparalleled, unrivalled. there is nothing in the world like having a tardis appear in front of you, and i don't care that it's not real. it doesn't matter. all that matters is that it is there, and the doors open, and you walk through them, into the eleventh doctor's control room. i wanted to cry, it's the most beautiful, perfect of moments. i want to cry just thinking about it.
it's a nearly-perfect replica; like i said, the attention to detail is so good it hurts. granted, i think the real set is bigger. and the set doesn't have screens on all the walls, or an extra set of doors (eleven mentions them in passing, though, in the video; it was a nice lampshading touch, for those of you who get lost on tv tropes too). but you're in the tardis, and eleven needs you to fly it, or land it, or i don't even know -- wasn't entirely paying attention. you can't touch the console, but there are little boxes on the railing around it that correspond to the actual panels on the console -- navigation, helm, mechanical, diagnostic, communication, and fabrication. each box is labeled, and has a joystick on it; eleven asks the people -- preferably kids, the younger the better -- at the navigation and mechanical stations, i believe, to follow his instructions. the floor shakes -- kind of violently, actually. eleven freaks out, since evidently she's not going where she ought to. and when you land he says that everything's fine but to please hurry out, and you leave through the second set of doors, through a darkened tardis corridor, into another very dark control room.
and then there are daleks, and they are yelling about exterminating the humans, and it's very disconcerting. and wonderful. this goes on for a while; some of the screens show actual live footage of the room and the group of people you're in, while it appears their system is scanning you. and then eleven breaks into the footage again, explains to the daleks that they oughtn't kill you all. they're shoppers, he says. a subset of humans, not worth it. and the daleks start hollering about the doctor, he is an enemy of daleks and must be exterminated...and then you watch through a 'window' at a spaceship battle outside, and the doors at the other end open and eleven urges you on and warns you not to blink.
his advice was greeted with gasps from our group; we were all adults, save one small child, a boy of maybe four or five, armed with a sonic screwdriver and not afraid of anything. the rest of us? a little freaked out. i think you pass through another corridor before you hit the forest, and, perhaps a little shamefully, i literally bolted through. weeping angels scare the hell out of me, and i didn't really see any on the way through. i also did not blink. you cannot be too careful. it was very very dark and very very creepy.
the experience attendant (BEST JOB EVER) hands you 3D glasses as you pass into the next room; there are more low wooden benches, but more like platforms to stand on, with railings. the stoney dalek's in a corner and you're face to face with the pandorica; eleven appears on yet another convenient screen, manages to dematerialize from inside the pandorica and back into his tardis right before the pandorica opens. which is bad. crack in time and space and all, opening, flinging you into it with daleks, cybermen, weeping angels. who are grabbing at you, and shooting at you, in three dimensions. it's fantastic. and eleven does some stuff and saves you, and thanks you, and goes on his merry way.
and you are turned loose into the rest of the exhibit. immediately upon exiting, the pandorica's just ahead of you; it's the prettiest, they light it a little from the inside so it's a little glowy green, and there are patterny blue lights on it from the outside at intervals. on the wall on the hallway just off that space are giant reproductions of radio times covers, featuring old doctors and daleks and ten's departure and eleven's arrival. the next space has a giant tardis, eleven's, and a wax eleven that, if i were matt smith, would make me very sad. it's not a bad likeness, but he looks old and icky and it's sad. the display is flanked at the back with a banner, placard, and outfit for each of the preceding ten incarnations. on the opposite wall is a photo op thing, green screened cubes where you can pose and be photoshopped into the pandorica or tardis or the like. which is kind of neat.
there are sonic screwdrivers, tardis keys, and some of eleven's gadgets in really poorly lit display cases (they're lit from underneath, so you can't even really see them) by the next passage, and some asshole decided to put a few silences hanging from the ceiling in the next corner, where the path sort of forks. behind the silence is the actual shooting set for the ninth and tenth doctor's tardis, which is...amazing. again, it's got railings up so you can't wander in it or touch the console, but...still. i touched what i could reach, obviously. a clip runs behind it, the few minutes leading up to ten's regeneration into eleven, which is really, really not a highlight of the series. ten's departure is terrible, and sad, but not really in an emotionally valid way. yes, ten liked being ten. but ten had horrible attachment issues to boot, and kind of ruined everything a lot of the time -- and yet, still, i adore the tenth doctor and i really, really don't think that his character deserved such a whiny ending.
having that clip playing on repeat -- ten's final moments, and eleven's first -- just makes it all the worse. it makes ten seem so despondent, which makes eleven seem that much better...and, come on -- i adore eleven, too, i love eleven and matt smith with a feverish delight that occasionally makes me feel all sorts of uncomfortable. but i still love ten, and that stupid clip just cheapens ten's legacy, i think. david tennant was the doctor for five years, and he was a brilliant actor even when his stories sucked and his character went to hell. he deserves a lot better than to have gone out that way, and to be memorialized like this.
/rant
next to the tardis set are outfits for most of the new series' companions -- amy (and amelia), rory, donna, rose, martha, astrid, river, captain jack, sarah jane, k-9. in the corner, past those, is the set of the fifth, sixth, and seventh doctor's tardis control room; complete with coat rack, which has one of four's scarves tossed on it. the exterior of one of the tardises from the '80s is further along, next to the original melkur statue from the fourth doctor's "the keeper of traken" serial. there are costumes from the time lords, the time lord president, and the master -- well, professor yana.
on the other side is a walkway of cybermen; a cyberman and a cybercontroller on either side of the walkway entrance, and heads of various cybermen in niches along the wall, showing how they've evolved over time. there's a huge line of daleks as you go further, from davros through the daleks of the sixties, seventies, eighties, right up to the colorful overgrown ones they're using now. we refer to them as the "power ranger" daleks. not ironically, really, but i think i'm doing it at least a little affectionately. they are also a lot bigger in person.
this section's basically a free-for-all of monsters and creatures. silence, the heavenly host, the abzorbaloff, judoon, hath, ice warrior, the empty child, sisters of plenitude, sycorax, vashta nerada, slitheen. there's a model-making display of the head of an ood, and a complete ood as well. in the screening room is the face of boe, a pig slave and a scarecrow. the film itself is a few minutes of last season's christmas special confidential, and a behind-the-scenes thing about the making of the experience itself, including filmed clips of when it opened, and people's reactions to it...including matt smith, being the cutest and nerdiest. have i mentioned i love him? i love him.
there's a mirrored chamber with a video that teaches you how to walk like a cyberman or a scarecrow, and a hollowed out dalek you can crouch in to move its suction cup and gun thing. in another corner there's a mock-up cluttered art studio, littered with books and papers and figurines everywhere, like, i gues, the ones occupied over at the bbc by the folks who actually put the show together. a video plays over there, too, i think it's about the production and stuff. alls i remember is a bit where someone's showing matt smith -- who's in costume -- some neat thing on the tardis, and matt goes, 'can i touch it?' and the guy's just like, '...yeah.' i almost laughed. hi, you're the doctor. pretty sure you can touch whatever you want. break a few more sonic screwdrivers while you're at it too. i'm sure that'd be fine.
there's abigail's cryochamber, kazran's giant isomorphic-controlled desky thing, and his leather arm chair from 'a christmas carol,' and that's pretty much it. you're at the end, in the shop -- which is amazing in its own right. shirts, mugs, stationery, toys, action figures, dvds. cardboard cut-out stand-up things. little kid backpacks and umbrellas. posters. lunchboxes. keychains, pens. pins. stickers. it's easy to want everything. i do want everything.
it's not a very big place, and since the interactive bit is timed -- which is terrible, it'd have been so unspeakably awesome to be able to poke about and explore a little, even if you can't take photos -- so we weren't there more than two hours, i'd say. and that was with wandering around the main exhibit two or three times and taking photos of everything several times over.
when we realized how far away forbidden planet was, the idea of going there was abandoned; plus there was still lots of soreness and hunger and residual crankiness leftover from the day before. it just didn't really get felt in the experience; literally, while in those walls, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. nothing. the world was perfect for two hours this past wednesday, and i plan on clinging to the memory for as long as possible.
we wound up back at the victoria train station for a late lunch, scarfing down carbs and salads like they were going out of style. we had a few hours to kill before the bus ride home, but with books it wasn't so bad...until the bus got delayed and was overcrowded. and three hours is a very, very long time. once back at new street station in birmingham, we had to catch the next train for the university, and then there was the twenty minute walk back to the house, during which time it started raining gently. when we got back trina fed and watered us, tended the worst of the feet-wounds and put us to bed. trina's an awesome human being.
i love being here. i can't quite get over -- or, oddly, stop worrying about -- how strange and terrible it is going to be to go home. i've never been gone this long before, but time has been passing so much differently than i've ever experienced. i couldn't believe it when the italy portion of the adventure had passed, and now i'm freaking out that there's only a week left here. less, at this point. tomorrow we go to nottingham (though it seems likely i won't be spending all weekend there with the others, as it's a gaming thing and i'm sure i'll get bored), and we're going back to london on tuesday. we are, probably not surprisingly, going to the doctor who experience again -- and this was actually the plan before we went the first time, but it's well-deserved. it needs to be done twice to really appreciate it -- especially the interactive bit. i want to see the tardis materialize, i want to walk through those doors again. i want eleven to be snarky at us, i want to be threatened by daleks and not run in terror from the weeping angels.
we're doing the experience again, and then probably forbidden planet and the british museum, which is going to be earth-shatteringly awesome. it houses the rosetta stone, amongst a million other things. the rosetta stone. i am terrible at history, but some things just fascinate me -- especially the mystery-type things, like the supposed evidence that templar knights made it to north america around the same time as the vikings? or something like that, anyway. i love that stuff. when i was little -- a kid, pre-teen, i think, i spent an afternoon one day by myself in the living room watching a special on tv about the rosetta stone. my dad found me and was ridiculously proud of his little girl, so utterly fascinated by something so old and arcane...things haven't changed. i'm still my father's daughter, still more or less enthralled by the world and so much of what we've created.
including time lords. i'm the nerdiest, and it's the best. went to england, only wanted to see museums and old things and history and science and cybermen. i do regret that we won't be doing westminster abbey, but timing these trips has been difficult, and it's not cheap getting to and from london. and it's also not entirely a bad thing, having reasons to come back. the doctor who experience is going to be in london 'til the end of november, and then it's supposed to be going to cardiff, which is where lots of the show is filmed. i would go to cardiff. i would go to cardiff to see the experience again, and also possibly to stalk matt smith and arthur darvill (whose birthday is today, and whose hometown i am in right now) and karen gillan. who is flawless.
i'll be home in a week.
but i'll be damned if the next week still isn't going to be among the best of my life, much like the four that have preceded it.