Madame Tussauds

Madame Tussauds
Type:	Museum
Location:	London
First appearance:	Spearhead from Space
Appearances:	PROSE: Magic of the Angels, PROSE: Suspicious Minds

Madame Tussauds was a building in London, famous for its waxwork mannequins.

History

One of the museum's display halls was dedicated to the display of world leaders. In late 1969 or early 1970, Auto Plastics Ltd. were commissioned to produce new plastic figures for the museum's tableau of senior British government civil servants and military officers. These included army Major General Scobie. Instead of a replica, however, Auto Plastics secretly provided Madame Tussauds with the actual Scobie, held in suspended animation, while his Auton replica took the general's place in order to block or delay UNIT's investigation and reaction. Meanwhile, the other figures were dormant Autons waiting to be activated.

The Third Doctor and Liz Shaw visited Madame Tussauds in the early evening of 1970, in the course of their investigation into the Autons and Nestene Consciousness. An attendant drew their attention to the purported replica of Maj.Gen. Scobie which had just arrived that morning. While the Doctor agreed with Liz that a wristwatch would be expected on an accurate replica, his suspicions were raised Scobie's watch being kept wound and set to the accurate time. The pair returned at night, followed by Channing and Hibbert from Auto Plastics. Channing activated the Autons, who moved out to take their respective subjects' places in government as a fifth column with which to facilitate the Nestene Consciousness' invasion of Earth. Their dais was left bare, aside from Scobie's frozen self and figures of Mohandas Gandhi, two clerics, and two others.

The Doctor attempted to break Hibbert from his hypnotic trance when the man returned, but was unsuccessful.

Scobie awoke from this hibernation the next day, when his Auton replica was "killed" by the Doctor and Liz at Auto Plastics' factory. His movement startled the people around him, prompting mild screams. (TV: Spearhead from Space)

Madame Tussauds' world leaders hall; in addition to depicting the aforedescribed personages; included a dais dedicated to American statesmen, principally the nation's Presidents. Individuals depicted thereon included: Former ambassador and delegate Dr. Benjamin Franklin; former Presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson; and the then-current President Richard M. Nixon. (TV: Spearhead from Space)

During a tour of London in 2012, the Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond, and Rory Williams visited Madame Tussauds. They were thrown out when the Doctor drew on the waxwork of Guy Fawkes. (PROSE: Magic of the Angels)

Other references

Brenda Soobie once compared the likeness of the Tomdroid to the real thing favourably, in comparison to the "Tussauds rubbish". (PROSE: Death of the Author)

Behind the scenes

The two figures created for Madame Tussauds: Tom Baker in London (1981); and Jodie Whittaker in Blackpool (2018).

Parts of Spearhead from Space were filmed in Madame Tussauds, which is where part of the story was set.

Multiple Doctor Who-related waxworks were constructed by the Madame Tussauds crew for the London experience in 1981, specifically including a statue of Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor and one of Meglos disguised as the character (from TV: Meglos). During an interview in 1981, after his announced exit from the series, Baker stated that he was possibly the only man in Europe who had been "twice in Madame Tussauds".

A unique Dalek variant was exhibited at Madame Tussauds, the top half of which was originally constructed for The Dalek Invasion of Earth and paired with a specially made bottom half before being painted blue. This prop was later repurposed to depict the Black Dalek in Resurrection of the Daleks.

The figure of the Doctor was infamously used in promotional images for The Five Doctors, (DWM 48) when Baker was unable to attend the photo-session in person, one of which was featured on the back of Radio Times' Doctor Who 20th Anniversary Special.

The other Doctors interact with a statue of Tom Baker created by Madame Tussauds to help promote The Five Doctors.

The statue was designed to lean against a column inside the exhibit, which was convenient for photos of fans who wanted it to look like the statue had its arm around them. However, in the field where the 20th Anniversary photo-shoot took place, this looked quite peculiar. Several images from the shoot feature the other actors either trying to cover up the pose or jokingly play into it. The most famous features Jon Pertwee adopting a "hands-on-his-hips" pose to cover it up, another features the cast carrying the figure away.

By the mid-1990s, these Doctor Who figures were apparently taken apart, their heads placed inside the main Tussauds museum among those of defunct models. Their bodies were potentially reused, although the iconic pose of the Doctor figure might have made this difficult.

In 2018, a figure of Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor was unveiled at the Madame Tussauds location in Blackpool, where it remains today. For a brief time in 2019, the same location also held an exhibit on costumes featured in Series 11, dressed on faceless white mannequins, alongside the Dalek prop from Resolution. This followed the closing of the Cardiff edition of The Doctor Who Experience in 2017, which had commonly received such items before.

External links

• Madame Tussauds
• Madame Tussauds London
• Madame Tussauds official site
• Doctor Who: The Locations Guide - Madame Tussauds