Doctor Who VR experience allows fans to pilot the Tardis and join space adventure
- The Runaway allows users to sit inside a virtual Tardis and to take part in a galactic adventure with a 3D animation of the 13th Doctor, Jodie Whittaker
- The 12-minute VR experience will be travelling to 70 public libraries in the UK
Ever fancied trying your hand at piloting Doctor Who’s time-travelling Tardis? Now you can do just that in Doctor Who: The Runaway, an interactive virtual reality (VR) experience produced by the BBC’s VR Hub and Passion Animation Studios.
Aimed primarily at youngsters, The Runaway allows users to sit inside a virtual Tardis and take part in a space adventure with a 3D animation of the 13th Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, who also provides her distinctive energetic voice.
The Runaway was one of the exhibits in the Virtual Arcade at this year’s New York-based Tribeca Film Festival, an event that has shown a strong commitment to showcasing new storytelling technologies. The stand-alone Doctor Who VR experience is currently touring public libraries in the United Kingdom.
While The Runaway features some interactive sections in which the user has to follow the Doctor’s instructions and perform some tasks, Zillah Watson, the BBC’s UK-based commissioning editor for VR, says it’s not a game.
“We describe it as an immersive drama. It has a structure of a television drama, with a beginning, middle and end, and we were careful to make sure that the interactive elements didn’t get in the way of the dramatic tension,” she says.