Reviewed: Doctor Who Live

Things haven't changed much since. My nine-year-old son alongside me pulled his hood up over his head and covered the bottom of his face with his programme. Why does Doctor Who have this effect on people?
The time travelling Doctor has had such an impact on the nation since his successful TV resurrection in March, 2005, that it was only a matter of time before he took time off from touring the universe to bring a stage show to some of Britain's largest venues.
Make no mistake. This was a BIG VENUE production. Only in somewhere the size of the Arena can any show do justice to exploding galaxies and the gamut of monsters that has sent a shiver down so many spines on so many Saturday afternoons over the past 5½years.
The story was a vehicle for a carnival of aliens. A Barnum-type showman, The Magnificent Vorgenson - the Greatest Showman in the Galaxy (a necessarily over-the-top performance from Nigel Planer, formerly of The Young Ones) - had in his possession a minimiser, containing some of the meanest monsters in the cosmos, which he put on display for audiences throughout space and time.
But he claimed he was the Doctor's biggest fan, and wanted to add him to his collection. The conversations between him and Matt Smith - appearing in specially prepared big-screen video sequences - worked surprisingly well, with a timing that couldn't be faulted. But what else could we expect of a Time Lord?
The Doctor, inevitably, warned that the minimiser was dangerous, and that Vorgenson had been duped into inventing it by some superior and ineffably evil power.
Thus it came to pass that the Daleks came onto stage, in the wake of the Cybermen, the Ood, the Vampires of Venice, the Silurians, Weeping Angels, Clockwork Robots and Scarecrows. The special effects that accompanied them were first-class, and the denouement suitably thrilling. Few would sleep with the lights off after that lot, I thought.
The show would have been far less successful without the dramatic music from the stage orchestra, conducted with non-stop vigour by ex- Formby High pupil Ben Foster, 32.
Doctor Who's music has always been an integral part of the legend, and here the orchestra added an extra dimension (would that be the fifth, perhaps?) to the action.
There may be some purists who might take exception to their sci-fi icon masquerading as panto at times. But Who cares? Some Whovians take themselves far too seriously.

Check out more pictures from the show by Gareth Jones