Doctor Who 50th Celebration

The 23rd of November was Doctor Who's birthday. The show's 50th birthday. I started watching the 2005 remake of Doctor Who some years ago and absolutely love it. (Up until the fifth season that is). I haven't seen much classic Doctor Who, with the first eight doctors, but I will get to it as soon as I have the time. What I've seen so far is absolutely brilliant.

This weekend the official celebration of Doctor Who happened at the ExCel, and Karoline, my sister and I was lucky enough to get tickets.

Three panels were included in the ticket. First was "Regeneration." It was a panel with Tom Baker (the fourth Doctor), Peter Davison (the fifth Doctor),  Colin Baker (the sixth Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (the seventh Doctor) and it was led by Nicholas Briggs (The voice of the Daleks and Cybermen).

Tom Baker

The four Doctors and Nicholas Briggs.

Peter Davison

Sylvester McCoy

 They were so sweet and they really inspired me to go home and watch classic Doctor Who.

Next was "The Eleventh Hour," a panel with Matt Smith, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Steven Moffat and I can't remember the name of the last person, but I think it was producer Marcus Wilson. I'm not a fan of Matt Smith and certainly not of Steven Moffat, so I sat impassively watching this.

Matt Smith

Jenna-Louise Coleman

Jenna-Louise Coleman and Steven Moffat.

 After this we had some hours before the last panel, the Special Effects Show. There was so much you could do, I sadly didn't have the time to do everything. There were smaller stages set up between all the shops in the main hall, we caught a bit of someone talking about the design of the cybermen in Neil Gaiman's episode Nightmare in Silver.

We queued up for the Official Doctor Who Shop, bought a cup and got ourselves photoshopped into the Day of the Doctor poster. We also took a picture with the Tardis console, which I thought turned out pretty epic.

Epic pictures.

 My sister got to meet Tom Baker.

 I thought the Daleks were taller than me, but as you can see from Karoline in this picture, they're not.

Underground Toys got us to take a photo with their plush Tardis and Dalek.

 A lot of the costumes from the show was on exhibition.

I love this dress

Don't remember where this is from, but it is creepy.

Me between (the costumes of) my two favourite Doctors.

Karoline and the Doctors

I liked that they had put the costume of Captiain Jack Harkness and Captain John Hart beside each other.

Sarah Jane Smith and her car.

Embarrased Dinosaur is like "Oh, stop it, you. I can't handle the praise," or somehing like that.
Just look at its face!

 Then came the special effects show, were the boss of the special effects on Doctor Who talked about blowing things up, creating snow and wind and other cool effects.

A wild cyberman appeared

They enlisted help from a Doctor and companions to blow it up.

The cyberman goes boom

This is how it actually works.

 All in all we had a great day at the 50th anniversary celebration.

We then hurried to a cinema nearby to see the anniversary episode, the Day of the Doctor.

Cinema selfie
All the excitement!

As for the episode itself, I was disappointed. It is an awful feeling, realizing halfway through that this is not engaging at all. I was so looking forward to this, but this episode makes no sense and I am dissapointed. It was wonderful seeing David Tennant and Billie Piper again but other than that?

Warning: possible spoilers coming up. The whole plot made no sense. It started out with the Zygons as the enemy, but then that thread was just dropped halfway through. And what was the point of John Hurt as the doctor? And we didn't get to see Rose, it was just an interface taking her resemblance. And did this happen before or after Rose in the tenth Doctor's timeline?  What's the point of the Gallifrey plot? Gallifrey is in stasis? Wasn't it time-locked for a reason? Aren't Moffat pissing on the war-conflicted ninth Doctor and the regretful tenth Doctor by making the time war a big misunderstanding and bringing Gallifrey back?

I don't know, I don't know.  I am now looking forwards to Capaldi, but if Moffat writes him as badly as Matt Smith, I might break up with Doctor Who until another head writer shows up.

Harry Potter Studio Tour

This weekend I went to London again. This time my sister and I spent our friday over at Warner Bros. Studio and the Harry Potter Studio Tour! We were as excited as the kids we are when we finally got there. Since the middle of November the studio has been getting ready for Christmas, meaning we got to experience Hogwarts in the Snow. We had an amazing time, and I am now going to just bombard you with pictures. Enjoy! 

Christmas tree just inside the entrance.

A Ford Anglia and the globe thing on the inside of the astronomy tower.

Starbucks has found its way to Hogwarts

The cupbord under the stairs was located by the queue.

Piertotum Locomotor!
"I've always wanted to use that spell," - Professor McGonagall

The Great Hall about to be opened by some lucky birthday kids.

Christmas in the Great Hall

Gryffindor clothes, that's Neville's clothes on the left there.

Slytherin Clothes

Ravenclaw clothes, Cho Chang on the left and Moaning Myrtle in the middle.

Hufflepuff clothes, Cedric Diggory second from the right.

The teachers

More teachers

Now we exited the Great Hall to a big room that housed a lot of the props and sets used in the films. We had digital guides, meaning we had Tom Felton's (Draco Malfoy) pleasant voice on our ears, telling us all about the props and the people making them.

The Yule Ball

The chocolate feast. 

Work bench from the guys that does hair.

Costumes, among other some of Luna's.

Umbridge's Educational Decrees

The Gryffindor boys' dormitory! When this set was built for the first movie it was built for eleven year old kids. It was not taken into account that these kids would double in length, so when scenes from when they are older were shot they curled up in bed to make it look like they still fit in the beds. 

The Mirror of Erised.

The Fat Lady.

The Gryffindor Common Room, with clothes from the third movie.

Harry's invisibility cloak

The statue guarding Dumbledore's office.

Dumbledore's office.

The potions classroom, featuring hundres of bottles with various ominous ingredients.

More potions classroom.

They had a montage over all the animals that played Hedwig, Fang, Mrs Norris and, on the picture above, Crookshanks. 

Hagrids hut. They had two versions of the hut in the films. They had this one where all the furniture are oversized to make Harry and the others seem small, and a version were the furniture were undersized to make Hagrid look big.

The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.

The Burrow, with the knife that cuts vegetables by itself. 

The burrow with the pan that washes itself. 

The Burrow with the scarf that knits itself. And the clock that shows where the members of the Weasley family are located. 

Death Eater masks

The Ministry of Magic lobby statue post You-Know-Who.

The Ministry of Magic

Umbridge's office. 

We have now moved into the backlot were I test drove the Ford Anglia. 

The Knight Bus! 

Time to try Butterbeer! The first sip was delicious, all sweet and caramel-tasting. But it soon became a bit nauseating and I had to struggle to drink it all up.

Almost like Guinness, the Butterbeer was slowly changing colour.

The ominous grave of Tom Riddle, here made not so scary framed by blue skies and school children.

Number 4 Privet Drive.

The Hogwarts bridge featured in the third film and onwards. 

The Potters' Cottage in Godric's Hollow

Chess pieces! Takes me back to the PC game.

Moving on to the Creature Shop were many of the creatures of Harry Potter are made with electronics and prostethics.

The Monster Book of Monsters.

Werewolfs

Buckbeak. He moved, it was amazing. 

Thestral and baby thestral.

The Hungarian Horntail

 And the next room was Diagon Alley!

The door at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes.

A look inside the window of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes.

Looked like the street went on, but it was only a flat, painted wall. 

The weirdest fountain/statue I have seen. Facing the wall, of all things!

Drawing room, filled with complicated sketches.

And now we rounded the corner and came into the last room, housing the castle itself. I must admit I almost shed a tear. It was BEAUTIFUL! This is a scaled down, very detailed version of Hogwarts. When shooting the castle exterior in the films this is what they film.

Finally there was a room with thousands of wand boxes. Each box had the name of a person that has worked on making the films.

Then we exited the tour into the gift shop. I wanted to buy everything, but it was quite expensive. I settled on a chocolate frog and a Ravenclaw scarf.

I recommend you all go see this wonder of a tour. Book your tickets, now!