BBC tv Special Effects Exhibition

The BBC tv Special Effects Exhibition opened on December 1st, 1972, at the Science Museum in South Kensington, London. It was also known as the BBC tv Visual Effects exhibition.

One notable aspect of the exhibition's title is the lower case spelling of "tv" — using a lower case "tv" was how the BBC's logo was written at that time.

Like the BBC's previous exhibitions of television special effects, in the 1960s, it focused on programmes across the entire range of BBC Television's drama and light entertainment output. But this was the first such event to have a significant proportion of its exhibits drawn from Doctor Who.

The exhibition ran at the Science Museum for six months, until May 1973, drawing huge numbers of visitors despite the restricted opening hours forced on the Museum by constant power cuts caused by a long running Industrial Dispute (see Notes, below). It then went on a very successful tour in the North of England.

The great success of the exhibition was adjudged to be due to the Doctor Who elements included in it. Although the Science Museum was also exhibiting items from the U.S. space program, and the 1969-72 Moon landings, including the Lunar Module and the Lunar Rover, the TARDIS console replica and original monster costumes were the most popular items. This led BBC Enterprises to create two permanent Doctor Who exhibitions in 1974: at Longleat Safari Park in Wiltshire (which ran every year until 2003); and on Blackpool's Golden Mile (running every year until 1985, from the Easter holidays until the end of the Illuminations in October, and attracting 250,000 visitors a year in the 1970s, at the height of its popularity). Some elements of the Blackpool exhibition survived, from 1994 until 2003, on display in the public areas of the DAPOL Doctor Who factory at Llangollen in North Wales, which attracted 50,000 visitors a year to its exhibition, The Doctor Who Experience.

Overview
to be added

Notable elements

 * A TARDIS console and some interior TARDIS panels.
 * Two Daleks.
 * Cybermen from The Invasion (1968).
 * An Axon and an Axos model from The Claws of Axos (1971).
 * A glass box containing a miniature UNIT jeep, showing how the heat barrier effect worked in The Dæmons (1971).
 * A Sea Devil from The Sea Devils (1972).
 * An Ogron from Day of the Daleks (1972) and Frontier in Space (filmed autumn 1972, but not aired until February 1973).
 * Draconian Prince from Frontier in Space (filmed autumn 1972, but not aired until February 1973).
 * Three spaceship models - the Axon ship from The Claws of Axos (1971), a spacerocket seen in The Ambassadors of Death (1970) (this was a commercial Airfix model kit of an American Saturn V moon rocket, painted fluorescent purple), and one other (currently unidentified, but probably the spacerocket prop seen in Colony in Space (1971)). All on a starscape set into the TARDIS wall.

Promotion

 * Jon Pertwee, Nicholas Courtney and Katy Manning appeared in costume at the Press Launch on 1st December 1972.