The latest exhibition at Gunnersbury Park Museum is called Set To Stun and is all about designing and filming sci-fi in West London. A lot of plastic props and alien beings have been created in the boroughs of Ealing and Hounslow, and slightly wider afield, so this is a chance to see them up close. Unusually the exhibition's only taking place because the public crowdfunded it to the tune of £15K, but that's post-Thatcherite funding cuts and geeky devotion for you. Pick up a guide and you'll see there are three dedicated rooms, one upstairs and two down, and also several original artefacts scattered around the display cases elsewhere. The exhibition's free and is open until June so there's no need to rush, and if you're of a certain age and of a certain bent expect to go "oh I loved that" at regular intervals.
This is an Imperial Dalek from Remembrance of The Daleks which was first broadcast in 1988. I loved Remembrance of the Daleks, everybody did, it's the famous one where a Dalek climbs a staircase for the first time, and that was quite a shock I can tell you. It might even have been the Dalek in this display case that did the hovering, they made four white ones for this series in the BBC VFX Department in Acton so it's a 25% chance. I was out the night they broadcast the first episode, but thankfully they'd invented video recorders by then so I watched it the following day over breakfast, and little did I guess I'd eventually meet the author who wrote the classic elevation scene and see the actual Dalek in a case at Gunnersbury, though admittedly on the ground floor.
This is Star Bug from Red Dwarf, a model spaceship which first appeared in season 3 in 1989. I loved Red Dwarf, it was like nothing else on TV even though it was really a standard odd couple sitcom but in space. It had that grimy spaceship aesthetic, some of which was in the script but most of which came from BBC VFX at 250 Western Avenue W3. Star Bug's first mission involved Kryten piloting Rimmer to an alternative Earth where time ran backwards, this also being the episode in which Hattie Hayridge took over being Holly. I described it in my diary as "v good". Meanwhile in the background is one of the robots from The Robots of Death, a Doctor Who serial first broadcast in 1977. I loved The Robots of Death, it was like an Art Deco whodunnit set in space although I was only 11 at the time so I'd have loved anything Tom Baker was in. The robot's eyes still flash red, which is potentially scary until you read underneath that the costume is made from a green shower curtain.
This is a tripod from The Tripods, the classic sci-fi serial from 1984/85. I loved The Tripods, I'd already taken out the fictional trilogy from my local library and devoured the lot long before the BBC decided to televise them. It was always going to be a hugely ambitious task, given how alien the plot got, but I see now they used CSO Blue backgrounds superimposed on top of Surrey villages and life-size model legs for close-up encounters. Sadly I missed the first three episodes at the time because canal boats and weddings don't have TV rooms, and the BBC missed the entire third series because critical reception was poor and the money ran out. Meanwhile in the adjacent case is Davros from Resurrection of the Daleks, the 1984 Docklands reboot, plus two miniature TARDISes from Matt Smith's last episode (2013) and the Children in Need abomination Dimensions In Time (1993). Nobody loved Dimensions in Time because mixing 3D with EastEnders was a terrible error.
This is a Moon buggy from Star Cops, a lunar police drama from 1987. I liked Star Cops but it rarely thrilled me so I wasn't too distraught when it was cancelled after just one season. More excitingly the guns in the drawer underneath are from Blake's 7, the first from a single episode in 1981 and the second often seen in the hands of a Federation Trooper. I loved Blake's 7, I watched it religiously every week and have watched it all the way through twice since, even the embarrassingly bad quarry shootouts. I love that the top gun has actually been in the same studio as Jacqueline Pearce, the queenly Servalan, but not in her hand because she always preferred a sleeker Acton-built model. Be sure to look at the weapons in all the other drawers because Joan Sims waved that rifle, Adric faced that gunbarrel and Kryten fired that pistol.
This is the actual Marvin The Paranoid Android as envisioned for TV in 1981. I loved The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, the first series on the radio was like nothing I'd ever heard before. I still have the second series recorded onto C60 cassettes, and although it's brilliant it's not quite as brilliant as Douglas Adams' initial masterwork. Admittedly this metal robot isn't quite how I'd envisioned Marvin, it's Jim Francis's vision as knocked up on Western Avenue and filmed at Ealing Studios. But it now spends most of its time at Gunnersbury Park Museum so you can see it any time, including the little stickers on the front that say 'GPP' (Genuine People Personality) and 'Sirius Cybernetics Corp'. What's new for this exhibition is the amazing detail that Marvin's chest unit had previously appeared in Blake's Seven series 3 episode 1 and before that as a communicator panel in the living quarters in the film Alien.
This is a display of Star Wars toys and costumes, as sold in the shop Jedi Robe in Northolt. I loved Star Wars, but not to the extent I started spending enormous amounts on every element of memorabilia. It's also a mantlepieceful of prosthetic heads, not from actual TV or film but created by students at Delamar Academy in Ealing. It's also an original silver Cyberman, circa 1967, alongside a photograph of seven Cybermen waiting for a number 65 bus outside Ealing Studios. I always preferred Cybermen to Daleks because dehumanisation felt much scarier than extermination. It's also the actual storyboard from The Invisible Enemy, the 1977 serial which introduced K9. I loved K9, though perhaps not his TV spinoff where he rattled round a devil-worshipping village. It's also a bookcase full of Doctor Who annuals, plus the actual Astrakhan hat William Hartnell wore in the series from 1963 to 1966 (plus out of sight underneath a set of Doctor Who Top Trumps and a Tom Baker jigsaw, not to mention the WH Allen Doctor Who knitting pattern book).
This is an exhibition for sci-fi fans of a certain era, to be honest mostly gentlemen, and is already proving popular with gentlemen of a certain era, plus children who look like they might be gentleman of another era later. To the many crowdfunders who made it all possible we collectively thank you. And if you don't think it's for you because it won't make you go "oh I loved that" at regular intervals, the regular museum includes alternative delights like the bus pass used by Stanley Green the Protein Man who carried his placard up and down Oxford Street for over 25 years. Beam down to Gunnersbury Park and experience a universe of history.
