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So this is the hottest ticket in town this week - the Doctor Who Prom. More than 3,000 people languish on the waiting list for what is - failing the invention of a Doctor Who theme park (surely an urgent necessity) - the nearest most fans will get to interacting with the show.

In yesterday’s early sun, families with backpacks emit the smell of a thousand packed lunches starting to ripen in hot Tupperware. The girls are having pleasingly nerdy conversations about the planetary provenance of the Grask. The boys have all made the pleasingly girly decision to wear their Converse trainers - to be “like the Doctor”. The children are in a seldom-seen state - other and beyond excitement. This is not like the queue you get outside, say, High School Musical, or The Wiggles. There’s no screaming, hysteria or febrile vexing. It’s a silent, intense anticipation.

It’s kind of . . . how kids would be on Christmas Eve; if Christmas was in some way holy. These kids all know that, within the Albert Hall, is a promised, one-off cornucopia of Cybermen, Sontarians, Daleks, Martha, Mickey, Davros, Ood, and contra-bassoons - giving it some to Donna Noble’s Running Music.

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Inside, at the centre of the Albert Hall’s stage, is the Tardis - lit up from within, and looking, as always, as if it genuinely has bounced off planets, and travelled through time. Every chockfull tier stares at it in awe. In turn, my four-year-old, Eavie, stares up at the tiers in wonderment. She, like most of the children here, has never been in a building so vast, full or ornate. It takes her a while to work out what is happening.

“These are armies,” she concludes, eventually. “This is war.” And indeed, the nearest visual parallel is the Sycorax Council Chamber, in the Christmas 2005 Doctor Who special. You must imagine me pushing my glasses back up my nose as I say this, and then taking a sip from a weak lemon drink.

The concert that follows is a truly admirable piece of programming. It’s not easy to keep the attention of hundreds of kids in a hot, circular room for more than two hours but even by the interval, children are weeping at the idea of it all ever ending.

As a child’s introduction to orchestral recitals, it is peerless. No Arts Council-funded project can play, say, Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man - then reinforce kids’ attention by marching a phalanx of Judoon down the aisles, stamping the audience’s hands with marker pens. They can’t razz up Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet (or “The music from The Apprentice!” - a whispered realisation that goes round the room like a Mexican wave) - with a hit-squad of Cybermen suffering some manner of cyber-malfunction, and dying in agony.

And no one else on Earth could introduce the concept of the Proms with Davros rising from a trapdoor in the middle of the audience, and a Dalek escorting a “hypnotised” conductor, Ben Foster, on to the stage, with the announcement: “The Daleks have travelled back in time, and kidnapped Henry Wood. From now on, the Proms will only play - DALEK MUSIC!”

During the following DALEK MUSIC - and, indeed, the pumping space-time crisis of Gallifrey, and the always-devastating Rose - it’s hard not to feel a moment of squirming shame that Who composer Murray Gold still hasn’t won a Bafta. I mean, Ross Kemp has won a Bafta - and he’s never made me cry into an empty ice-cream carton at 12.30 on a Sunday morning. The odd bit of Wagner aside, this is nearly two hours of Gold’s music holding its own at a Prom. He should surely, at the very least, get a medal from TV Quick.

But despite the Oods, Tardis, Daleks and Davros, the most affecting moment comes in a five-minute Doctor Who Proms special, called The Music of the Spheres. Here, David Tennant delivered, to a rapt audience, one of Russell T. Davies’s trademark homilies to self-expression and joy.

“Music isn’t all Proms and rock guitars and orchestras,” the Doctor said, leaning into the camera. “You’ve got music in your head, too. Next time you get a moment, sit still and listen to it. Everyone can write a song.”

And what could have been a wonderful, yet surreal and overwhelming introduction to orchestral music - with its standing ovations, intervals and architecture - was brought back down to a rather lovely question. Did you like this orchestra, kids? What would you do with one?

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