A brief note about last weekend’s Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles, and some of the other things I did there. I was actually feeling rather under the weather for two days of the three of the convention, so didn’t take my usual cosplay photos, but I also got out and about a bit.

To begin at the beginning: I was a little hesitant to go to the USA at all, under current circumstances. One American friend urged me to simply boycott her country. But going through Dublin Airport is very smooth and straightforward, because you get preclearance for US immigration while still in Ireland. There was no queue at all for border control on the Irish side, and it meant that when we landed in Los Angeles at 6pm, it was straight to the baggage reclaim and shuttle bus, and checked into the hotel by 7pm. The price difference of flying with Aer Lingus is not much, and it is massively helpful to not be standing for hours in an immigration queue when you are already jet lagged and worrying about whether you will be immediately deported, or worse.

Also, Gallifrey One is a very safe space, woke, queer, éclairé, however you want to put it, in Los Angeles which is itself a very anti-MAGA city. Driving from the Getty Villa to the Griffith Observatory takes you through an extraordinary array of cultural diversity. It is places like LA that actually do make America great.

And there is some cause for hope. I had a very nice lunch in Playa del Rey with my former colleague K, who I had not seen for 25 years. She teaches at UCLA, and also served in the U.S. Treasury at the start of the Biden administration. She is now advising Pete Buttegieg’s team, preparing plans to repair and reverse the damage caused by the Trump administration, indeed hopefully more than that, assuming that they can win in 2028. Good luck to her, and to everyone involved with the fight.

To Gallifrey One. The top new headline guest this year was Millie Gibson, who played Ruby Sunday to Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor. She came across as charming and positive in real life as she does on screen. I had forgotten that although she was one of the youngest actors to have a regular part on Doctor Who, she already had years of experience, including a regular part on Coronation Street from 2019 to 2022, first appearing in the month of her fifteenth birthday. Like all first-time Gallifrey One guests, she was clearly having a whale of a time.

And thanks to E, who was part of our three-person delegation with me and H, for lending me the Fourth Doctor scarf for this photo and another one below.

I caught parts of both of Jo Martin’s stage interviews, but to my regret missed both of Freema Agyeman’s. I had seen Freema speak very eloquently at my first Gallifrey One in 2012. She looks exactly the same now as she did then; I cannot say the same for myself.

The top Classic Who guest was Peter Davison, still looking very fit. I went to a closed script reading with my partner in crime, H, and she joined him in performing a scene from The Visitation; of course it is not visible in the photograph, but here Peter Davison is playing Tegan and H is playing Adric (the poor chap standing between them is the Doctor).

I mentioned to Peter Davison that I vividly remembered one of his first scenes in the 1978 adaptation of James Herriot’s memoir, All Creatures Great and Small, where as young vet Tristan Farnon he admits to his older brother Siegfried, played by Robert Hardy, that his exams did not go all that well. Peter Davison said that he remembers that scene very well too, his first dialogue with the intimidating veteran Hardy, aged 23 in his first big role. I said that his feelings of tension clearly came across in the performance. See for yourself.

(Fun fact: the real life counterparts for Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, brothers Donald and Brian Sinclair, were only four years apart in age, rather than the 26 year gap between Robert Hardy and Peter Davison.)

The other Classic Who participants were three of the Davison-era companions (Janet Fielding was also due to attend, but cancelled) and the perennial Fraser Hines. They did a panel together where I had some difficulty getting a clear view of everyone, mainly because almost every time I had a good shot of Sarah Sutton at one end, it was because Peter Davison at the other end was saying something funny and had the microphone obscuring his face. This was my best effort.

Rebecca and Joel Nation, the children of Terry Nation, inventor of the Daleks and Blake’s Seven, were also there to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Rebecca’s World, Terry Nation’s book for younger readers first published in 1976, which I read and enjoyed back when I too was a younger reader. Big Finish have smartly brought out a limited commemorative edition and Rebecca Nation herself was signing copies of Rebecca’s World; of course I got one.

As usual the cosplay was excellent, but I failed to take any photos (apart from the above with myself wearing E’s scarf). The convention as a whole was fun. There was a plethora of former and future Worldcon chairs, with Conjose’s KR a regular, KB travelling down from Seattle, E herself of course representing Glasgow, and Joyce Lloyd who chairs both Gallifrey One and this year’s LACon V (a lot of the Gallifrey team are involved with this year’s Worldcon). The USA is in general not an attractive travel destination right now, but the Gallifrey One community made me feel very welcome. A special thank-you to C from San Diego, who gave me these lovely coasters that she had created herself.

It was a very special occasion for some. When I went down to the hotel pool for a dip one morning (the first time I have done that, despite it being my seventh time at Gallifrey), I spotted actors Jo Martin (the Fugitive Doctor) and Steph de Whalley (Anita the hotel receptionist) lounging and chatting by the poolside. As I got out and dried off, I saw a couple getting engaged on the ornamental bridge over the pool, and the two actors applauding and then posing for photos with the newly betrothed. I asked both Jo Martin and Steph de Whalley separately about it later; one of the two was a volunteer at the convention, and had invited them to be there for the moment. Awww!

(The post convention newsletter tells me that another couple also got engaged over the weekend, and that two fans who met for the first time at last year’s Gallifrey One have since got married.)

Finally, here’s a lovely five-minute video capturing the spirit of the event. I am not visible myself, but H is clearly in full fire warden mode at 3:20.

Let me give a shout out to Denny’s down the road, where I qualify for the over-55s special breakfast: scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns and pancakes for a mere $8.69 plus tax. Definitely enhanced my convention experience.

My one excursion before it started was to the Getty Villa and the Griffith Observatory, stopping off in Venice Beach to admire the surfers.

I had been to the big Getty Museum last year, but the Getty Villa was then closed because of the fires. Having finally got there, I was not disappointed by it. It’s a large reconstruction of a Roman villa, based on a real example from Pompeii, and stuffed full of classical art and artifacts.

It was full of school groups on a Thursday outing, with educators describing the Greek and Roman art to them, and perhaps concentrating more on some exhibits than others. (“Miss! Miss! What are the lady and the man doing?”)

The single piece that impressed me most is an anonymous painting of a forgotten man from Ptolemaic Egypt, painted to lay on top of his mummy in his tomb. The realism is striking, and you feel a connection across two millennia.

But it’s all classic stuff, with the Victorious Youth and the Pharnakes Shield among the memorable exhibits.

As already noted, it’s quite a drive from there to the Griffith Observatory, but the views from the latter are spectacular. I also love the 1934 Astronomers Monument, which is reminiscent of the 1909 Reformation Wall in Geneva.

The astronomers commemorated are Hipparchus, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and interestingly William Herschel.

And it’s just generally a good place to pose.

So, other things being equal, I hope to be back next year, when the political situation may (inshallah) have started shifting after this year’s midterms.