This morning, my friend Peter and I decided to forego our usual weekend brunch catch-up to attend the Dr Who prom at the Royal Albert Hall. This was prompted by a number of factors - Peter is a Prom addict who also has his own Dr Who connection (sharing a name with the Doctor's fifth regeneration, you can work it out) while I as a teenage Whonatic (Derby branch) wanted the opportunity to revel in childhood nostalgia while shamelessly eyeing up the delectable Karen Gillan (aka Amy Pond) who was hosting the performance.
The Proms is a wonderfully egalitarian institution, allowing anyone who fancies it to simply rock up on the day and queue up to pay a ridiculously good value £5 to stand right next to the stage and experience some world class music. Granted, you wouldn't normally be sharing the space with small children wearing gold all in one Dalek suits and Cyberman helmets, but at a Dr Who prom, you wouldn't really expect a crowd of scholarly Albonini afficionados or flag-waving Elgar enthusiasts. I began to regret not bringing my 8 foot long Tom Baker scarf that my mother knitted for me in 1987.
Once we'd got over the fact that apart from two bemused looking Chinese women, we were the only people over 25 in the audience not accompanying their offspring, we had a thoroughly enjoyable two hours. Music from the TV show, composed by Murray Gold, alternated with vintage classic pieces that had a (usually tenuous or completely non-existent) space, time and adventure theme - for example Mars from Holst's The Planets, Wagner's Ride Of The Valkyries and O Fortuna from Orff's Carmina Burana. Holding court serenely over proceedings wearing a most fetching evening dress was the aforementioned Ms Gillan, reading off an autocue with applomb despite being dazzled by the flashing of hundreds of camera phones.
Performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales accompanied by the London Philharmonic Choir, the compositions from the Dr Who series swung from breathless bombast to lumpen schmaltz, characterised by the kind of derivative blandness that one generally comes to expect from incidental music. To stop everyone getting bored during these sections, big screens showed clips of the most recent series and best of all, a random selection of monsters were occasionally let loose in the arena and allowed to wander around. As a result, I was able to enjoy a brief flirtation with a Venetian vampire girl, photograph the back of a Silurian's head and watch a Dalek appear from under the floorboards and order us to switch off our mobile phones or be exterminated. In the second half, the current Doctor (Matt Smith) himself made an appearance, teaming up with a randomly selected, bow-tie sporting small boy sat in the stalls to save the Albert Hall from a flouresecent glowing chemistery set that was apparently going to blow us all sky high. Great stuff.
Proceedings closed with a predictable gallop through the programme's timeless theme tune, which in its own way is just as memorable a piece of music as the more established classics we'd heard earlier on. On the bus back to Stockwell, after debating the full array of Dr Who villains Peter and I agreed that for a supposedly elitist activity, classical music is in fact incredibly accessible. What other type of performance in London could you enjoy for the price of a pint of imported Belgian wheat beer? Or even looking across the whole country, when was the last time you could get into any professional football match for £5?
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