Thursday, November 21, 2013

Geeks Who Drink: Doctor Who Pub Quiz at The Complex

With the upcoming Doctor Who 50th anniversary episode, it's likely that many Whovians have been celebrating for weeks, if not months, watching Doctor Who marathons and geeking out to the slow trickle of sneak preview photos and video clips.  It's the kind of behavior that is perfect training for days like Saturday, November 16th when Geeks Who Drink hosted a nation-wide "Don't Blink: A Doctor Who Quiz" night.


My "Cheering" Dalek Doodle during the
Doctor Who Pub Quiz
I want to regale you with a tale of my team's amazing trivia skills and random Doctor Who knowledge.  I want to tell you about how much we studied for this event, memorized the Doctors and the villains and the plot points of new and classic Who, watched countless episodes in marathon stride.  Or to even say we possessed a Doctor Who eidetic memory and didn't need to study.  But...that didn't happen, and it was kind of more fun that way anyway! 

The Los Angeles event was hosted at The Complex in Glendale.  It was a full-house of Whovians, some cosplayed but most helped to collectively display an impressive array of Doctor Who-themed shirts.  Teams were limited to six players maximum and, as admission was by first arrival, it was suggested to arrive at least an hour in advance.  My friend Jessica and I arrived an hour early to see the room was almost full.  In fact, when the rest of our team - Raul and Thomas - arrived we had to switch seats with another group to ensure that our team had seating space. 

A reflection of our team's preparation for this event? We didn't even have a team name when we were initially asked  to give one (trivia newbie hint: Make sure you have a team name!).  After a short discussion, we agreed on "The Smiths" (re: Matt Smith - actor portraying the 11th Doctor; John Smith -10th Doctor's human identity in Human Nature / Family of Blood; and, you know, that one English rock band).  Though newly minted, we embraced our team name fully - as you can see in my Instagram photo of our cheering Dalek. 

Among our challenges, we were faced with a visual round (Match the Doctor to a Companion), a dating profile round (Name the appropriate villain/character), a sound-based round (music used in Doctor Who), a lines-based round (Is the line from Doctor Who?) and others.  Typically each round began deceptively easy and became increasingly complicated toward the end.  But no matter how challenging the question, the entire event was incredibly geeky and fun.  After all, it was an event to geek out with friends and fellow Whovians alike, enjoying food and drinks.  The Complex has a great drink selection and, for this event, shepherd's pie and Dalek chocolate figures (made of cupcake, marshmallow, and Pocky Sticks in case you're curious) were available for purchase.

So how did Team The Smiths do? Not amazing, but not bad at all.  Sure we had many blank and confused shared stares before trying to make an educated guess, but we also had one moment of shining glory.  At an early point in the game, we were ranked third place!  To add to the moment of glory, when our ranking was announced we were completely silent.  Of course, we were emulating the powerful The Silence, not at all because we couldn't believe we were in third place.  Obviously.

We ended the night talking about when we were going to go to our next geek trivia event.  Good thing Geeks Who Drink host pub quiz nights nationally every week, including several Los Angeles-area locations.  Check out their site for more information.  You can also follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

The 50th Anniversary episode of Doctor Who - "Day of the Doctor" - will be airing on a global simulcast this Saturday (11/23) and at select theatres nationwide in 3-D on Monday (11/25).  

-Charity Tran, ExperienceLA.com Editor




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