34 | New Scientist | 4 June 2022
Views Culture
SARNER^INTER
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UMS^ LIVERPOOLExhibition
Doctor Who:
Worlds of wonder
World Museum, Liverpool, UK
Until 30 OctoberIF YOU know one thing about
Doctor Who, it may be that the
TARDIS, the titular Doctor’s
spaceship, is based on a physical
impossibility: it is “bigger on the
inside”. Externally, it looks like a
small, blue telephone box, but
those who enter find themselves
in a multi-dimensional labyrinth.
While such a premise might
seem fantastical, in fact, many of
the ideas from the nearly 60-year-
old show – the longest-running
sci-fi series in the world – have
been drawn from science, from
the TARDIS’s ability to travel
through space and time, to the
Doctor’s capacity to regenerate
and all the weird and wonderful
alien life forms across the cosmos.
Exploring how science hasinfluenced the cult TV series is the
premise behind a new exhibition
at the World Museum in Liverpool,
UK. It is a fun and mind-expanding
experience, teaching visitors
about science and technology
alongside some of the strange
props, costumes and characters
from the show.
The exhibition is cleverly
designed so that as you walk
around, you almost feel you
could be in the TARDIS, or perhaps
somehow trapped within an
episode of the TV series. You enter
through a simulacrum of the
TARDIS’s famous blue doors and
are confronted with the spaceship’s
hexagonal control panel, albeit a
simplified version of it, as it is a
replica of the one from Doctor
Who’s first series, made in 1963.
Your journey continues through
rooms with dim lighting,
unexpected turns and sometimes
monsters around a corner.
It is a thrill to meet the original
Face of Boe, an immensely aged
being who has ended up as a
huge, disembodied head, living
in a jar and communicating
telepathically. Next to him is Lady
Cassandra, a human from 5 billion
years in the future, who is so vainalso learn how the Daleks’ famous
harsh voices are created – and you
can try it out on your own voice.
The presence of K9, the Doctor’s
old robot dog, as well as several
incarnations of the Cybermen and
other android-like creatures,
allows the exhibition to explore
our ambivalent relationship with
robots. Anyone who dismisses the
potential dangers of AI must never
have watched the 2017 Doctor Who
episode “Smile”, represented here
by one of their Emojibot killers.
In this storyline, swarms of
intelligent nanobots created to
keep humankind happy end up
murdering people who display
visible unhappiness.
The nanobots, called the
Vardy, were named after Canadian
scientist Andrew Vardy, who
studies swarm robotics and
biologically inspired robots. The
exhibition doesn’t reveal how
Vardy feels about this honour.
Another of the Doctor’s most
famous features is their ability
to regenerate. When the show’s
producers decided to introduce
Jodie Whittaker as the first
female Doctor in 2017, it caused
controversy among some fans.
But as the exhibition explains,
some real-life animal species,
such as clownfish, display such
sequential hermaphroditism,
the ability for one individual to
change sex within their lifetime.
If I have one complaint, it is that,
at times, I would have enjoyed
more in-depth explanations of
some of the scientific ideas; this
exhibition leans more towards
entertainment than education.
On the train home, I found myself
rereading an old New Scientist
article on treatments targeting
worn-out cells to remind
myself of the details.
If the exhibition’s aim is to
inspire people to learn more about
science, then it worked on me. ❚Daleks, K9 and the TARDIS
A mind-expanding new exhibition in Liverpool, UK, sets out to explore how
science has influenced the making of Doctor Who, discovers Clare WilsonThe science behind the
Face of Boe (bottom left)
is explored at Doctor
Who: Worlds of wonder“ It is a thrill to meet the
original Face of Boe, an
immensely aged being
who has ended up as a
disembodied head”and has had so much cosmetic
surgery she is now just a face
embedded in a single layer of
skin stretched taut in a frame.
Characters such as these allow
the exhibition to explore ideas
about lifespan extension,
including potential anti-ageingtreatments, like immune system
manipulation and removal of
worn-out cells from our bodies. It
also explores some of the practical
and ethical issues we will face if we
succeed in lengthening our
lifespans. Now Lady Cassandra has
been reduced to little more than a
“bitchy trampoline”, she has lost
sight of all that once made her
human, says Steven Swaby, the
exhibition’s creator.
There are old friends and
enemies as well as new. You
can turn yourself into a Dalek
by climbing inside one of their
casements and waggling their
notorious “sink plunger” arms. You