Doctor Who is to be the next big attraction at Scotland's most popular museum, The Herald can reveal.
The largest-ever Doctor Who display in the UK, currently on show at Earls Court in London, will fill the exhibition halls at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow next year.
Its organisers are already expecting it to be one of the most popular shows staged at the museum, with attendance figures anticipated to beat those reached for the recent Kylie Minogue show, which topped 165,000.
The display, which is likely to have even more monsters, costumes and other Doctor Who paraphernalia added to it from the new series of the BBC show, which starts tomorrow, and a likely Christmas special, will open in late March next year and be in Glasgow until early 2010.
Visitors will be able to get up close to props, costumes, monsters and creatures from the history of the phenomenally successful television series, which currently stars David Tennant as the Doctor and Catherine Tate as his assistant, Donna Noble.
As revealed earlier this week, the first episode of the new, fourth series with David Tennant opens with a battle against a weight loss company called Adipose whose slimming pills are in fact a cover for a mini-invasion of tiny aliens who, while evil, are only six inches long.
The Adipose could also appear in the Kelvingrove exhibition, alongside the Tardis, the metallic cyber-dog K9, the Daleks, the Cybermen and many of the Doctor's more recent enemies including the Autons, Slitheen and Oods.
The Doctor Who exhibition was a welcome solution to a gap in Kelvingrove's exhibition calendar, caused by the move of its anticipated Glasgow Boys exhibition to 2010.
Originally, the Glasgow Boys exhibition was to be held in Glasgow in 2009, but that date has now been moved following an agreement with the Royal Academy in London.
Although highly prestigious, the showing of the Glasgow Boys exhibition - designed to be the definitive show of the art of the grouping of late 19th-century artistic pioneers who helped transform visual art in Scotland - in London led to a dilemma at both institutions.
For practical reasons, involving the huge amount of art involved, including many on loan from elsewhere in the UK and abroad, the Glasgow Boys shows in Glasgow and London had to run one after the other.
After lengthy discussions between the Kelvingrove and the RA, 2010 was appointed as the year for both exhibitions, with the Kelvingrove exhibition followed by a three-month exhibition in London at the RA's Sackler Galleries in September.
Glasgow's show will have more than 100 paintings and 50 drawings, and the slightly smaller London version will be a "cream of the cream" exhibition of the artists such as John Lavery, EA Hornell and James Guthrie.
However, this arrangement temporarily left 2009 at the phenomenally popular museum in the west end of Glasgow free of exhibitions - and so a deal was made possible with the Doctor Who show to come to Scotland.
Baillie Elizabeth Cameron, the chair of Culture and Sport Glasgow, the body that now runs the city's museums and galleries, said: "Following on from the success of Kylie: The Exhibition, and a refurbishment which exceed all expectations, I am sure Doctor Who will inspire the next generation of visitors to Glasgow's museums.
"Our ambition to maintain Kelvingrove's position as Scotland's number one visitor attraction remains a priority as we enjoy unrivaled success.
"Because it is the only Scottish destination for the Doctor Who exhibition, we look forward to welcoming visitors to Kelvingrove from all over Scotland and beyond."
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