An Eccentric Museum

On our way back from excavating at Vindolanda I proposed a stop to our gracious drivers.  The Museum of Classic Science Fiction in Allendale. 

Allendale is an odd town.  It is a tidy little place full of stone buildings...in the middle of what looks to be barren wastelands.  In times prior there was a lot of mining in the area but this is now gone.  

It is also the home of a little museum that is the brainchild/labor of love of one man, Neil Cole.  

It is not hard to find the museum, parked out front is a rally car with a built in TARDIS.

On a more contentious note, the Dalek in front of the museum has apparently drawn the ire of some elements of the community that find it a bit....incongruous.  Here Mr. Cole holds forth with members of our little band of travelers.  I suggested he consider aiming the Dalek up the road at its main adversary just to see what might happen.

The core of the collection is vintage Dr. Who material but I found the other items more interesting.  An Ape, from the planet of same.  That's the one in back btw.

A Klingon head appliance used in one of the better Star Trek movies.

And speaking of Star Trek, this is part of the "Borg" costume worn by Patrick Stewart in Star Trek Next Generation.  I observed that the  crotch of this costume seemed quite outsized.  Mr. Cole confided that, no offense to Sir Patrick, it is all padding.

There was even a case of costume parts from Alien and from the later and lamentable Prometheus, a movie Mr. Cole, and I, both hold in disappointed disdain.

You learn a lot talking to a True Enthusiast.  I had not for instance known that Peter Jackson is a serious collector of Sci Fi memorabilia. 

I also learned that a regular visitor to the museum is a man called "George the Klingon", who rides the bus up from Newcastle.  In full Klingon regalia naturally.  George is said to be entirely fluent in Klingon.  I neglected to ask if he spoke anything else.  But I should think that if he was a true son of Newcastle and spoke the local "Geordie" dialect that it would take a full Professor of comparative linguistics to tell the difference between that and Klingon.