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TARDIS sighted at Pinnacles

The Fifth Doctor Peter Davison at The Pinnacles with the TARDIS. Picture: Iain Gillespie/The West Australian

Doctor Who never encountered an alien landscape quite like this.

Peter Davison, who played the fifth Time Lord in the early 1980s, landed his TARDIS among the stark and desolate Pinnacles ahead of hosting a Doctor Who symphonic spectacular at Perth Arena next Saturday.

The mini monument valley near the Mid West coastal town of Cervantes would be a better location than some of the English quarries that stood in for alien planets early in the long-running BBC series, Davison said.

Visitors to the striking landmark were more than a little surprised to stumble across the TARDIS in the guise of a 1960s British police box in such a surreal setting, he said.

"It caused great consternation among the few tourists wandering around," said the actor, whose credits include the young vet Tristan in All Creatures Great and Small and the husband in At Home with the Braithwaites.

"It is a bizarre alien landscape and there is something about that police box that when you put that down anywhere it attracts attention. Indeed, the tourists seemed to materialise out of nowhere. It was a very interesting place to be."

Doctor Who, which premiered in 1963, was pure science fiction which appealed to the creative mind and owed its recent resurgence to a new generation of writers and directors who had been childhood fans, Davison said.

"The reason for its success is that the lunatics are running the asylum now," he said. "It almost becomes a mission to produce Doctor Who, to bring it back."

He will host the Doctor Who spectacular, featuring anecdotes, film clips and music played by the WA Symphony Orchestra.

"It is a fabulous opportunity to hear powerful music played by a live symphony orchestra and as a theatrical event because we have monsters from the series like the Cybermen, the Silence and the Daleks," he said