My plan was to blog an intense account of everything I did at Gallifrey One this year. But you know what? I ran out of time. So here’s a gallery of the best moments.
Matthew “Adric” Waterhouse. “Now I’ll never know if I was right!”Matthew Waterhouse script reading. He is playing the Doctor, and the cosplayer is playing Adric.Billie Piper explains that she wanted to move on to more edgy and less well-behaved roles after Doctor Who“Hello, sweetie!”Derek Jacobi mortified with embarrassment as they play an old recording of him singing “Home on the Range”Οὐδεὶς δύναται δυσὶ κυρίοις δουλεύειν· Nobody can serve two Masters.Annette Badland, Shaun Dingwall, Jacqueline King, Camille Coduri, Fraser Hines and Matthew WaterhouseJenna: Where are you going? Cally: I’m going to clear the neutron blasters for firing. Jenna: Well, what are you going to fire at? Cally: Anything that moves.
(plus the second Travis)
Cosplay
Hannah, my partner in crime, as the 8th DoctorNine and Ten.The definite article, you might say.Leela cosplayThe Meeping Angel.Cally. (Previously Leela.)Annoyed that this ended up out of focus but maybe it’s more atmospheric that way.Robot Santas. Or something.Meep: “Will you be my friend?” Me: “No.”The littlest cosplayer.
Ribbons
Our contribution to the cult of ribbons.
My ribbon collection.
Writers
Writers panelLots of writersSimon’s book (review coming soon)Sunday dinner with Simon, John and España
A fantastic weekend while other things were on fire. No actual Doctor, but maybe that made it more relaxed. Hope to come back again next year.
Just a few more photos from last weekend, taken after I wrote my blog post on Monday.
First of all, a nice fannish moment in the hotel lobby with Daniel Anthony, who played Clyde in the Sarah Jane Adventures, and does not appear to have aged in the last ten years.
Also, fashionable slippers that I envied a little.
Then we went up to Hollywood with a bunch of Doctor Who writers, first stop the Mystery Pier Bookshop, owned by former actress Pamela Franklin and her husband. (She was out shopping.)
They specialise in first editions, including signed copies of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, and of Queen Victoria’s Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands.
Then it was on to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, which has a tremendous setting.
We were there to pay our respects to Tony Beckley, who played Harrison Chase in The Seeds of Doom (1976) and was one of the first prominent British actors to die of AIDS, in 1980.
We held a little commemoration.
Other interesting graves there include Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, with the epitaph “That’s All, Folks!”
This extraordinary grave belongs to Mike Szymanski, who is still alive:
Another striking monument to Romanian film director Mihai Iacob:
I had no idea that there were so many Armenians in the film industry, or in Hollywood at least:
And the cemetery has peacocks, though we are advised not to feed them.
Finally, H and I had a good long chat with Kenny Smith of Big Finish on our way home as he too was flying to Heathrow. He grumbled that I didn’t mention that in my previous post, but in fairness that was written first thing Monday morning, hours before we flew together!
Those who don’t know or don’t especially like Doctor Who may well query why a middle-aged Brussels lobbyist should devote any time at all to a family TV show which started the day after the Kennedy assassination. Query all you like; I have never made any excuse for seeking escapism. Brian Aldiss once said that good sf is not about asking “What if…?” but about saying, “My God, what if…!?” and Doctor Who at its best does that – whether it’s about schoolteachers trapped in the Stone Age or youths being kidnapped to be turned into cheetahs or a cosmic villain dancing to Boney M in the Winter Palace in 1916. It unites the consistent formula of the hero who is just a little more than human with the companions who represent the reactions of us, the viewers, to what is going on.
I’ve spent this weekend at Gallifrey One in Los Angeles, the biggest annual Doctor Who convention anywhere in the world. It was my fourth time there, and somehow I enjoyed it even more than the previous three occasions. Part of it was surely the presence of recently departed star of the show Jodie Whittaker, whose charm and enthusiasm captured everyone. I had a brief chat with her where I mentioned her role in the great Belfast film, Good Vibrations. “I love that film!” she exclaimed, and I noted the present tense. “But the accent was a bit hard.”
Let’s be honest, this was the point of the trip.
Having just flown in from Sydney, where she has been filming a new series after a year off, she did two interviews on stage, which were of course packed; and then charmed us at the closing ceremony by showing off her badge ribbons, a strip which must have been 15 metres long. A particular highlight which I missed, though my friend H was there, was her performing the script from her own last episode, taking on different roles.
There were some very good panel discussions and other interviews as well. Sophie Aldred (Ace) and Janet Fielding (Tegan), who both made reappearances last year, decades after they had been written out, did a hilarious double act on stage and then also provided commentary for the latest episode, which they are in, along with Chris Chibnall, the outgoing showrunner who wrote it.
Both are quite short so they insisted that fans getting photographed with them use a chair.
One particularly moving event was the screening of the film Doctor Who Am I by Matthew Jacobs. He wrote the script for the 1996 TV Movie, which turned out to be a false start, but had been into Doctor Who as a child – his actor father played Doc Holliday in The Gunfighters, a 1966 story which climaxes at the OK Corral. The film is about his personal reconciliation with Doctor Who through fandom, and particularly through an earlier Gallifrey One convention; so I had the weird experience of watching it while sitting in the room where several scene were actually filled (see eg 1:44 in the trailer). I had the pleasure of chatting to Jacobs a couple of times in the bar.
The other nice small event I did was a Kaffeeklatsch with Frazer Hines, who played the Second Doctor’s companion Jamie in 1967-69, and Michael Troughton, son of Patrick Troughton who played the Second Doctor. They have known each other since Michael was fifteen (“..and I was seventeen!” Hines quipped) and both in fact have performed as the Second Doctor in audio plays. They talked a lot about acting and a bit about Doctor Who. Hines also did photo shoots with his fellow companion Wendy Padbury, who played Zoe.
My other celebrity photoshoot was with Katy Manning who played Jo Grant in 1971-73, literally fifty years ago. Immediately in front of me in the queue was a small child dressed as the alien Alpha Centauri which appeared in two of her stories. I said to her, ‘That was awfully sweet, wasn’t it?’ Her eyes welled with emotion and she grabbed me for a hug.
Colin Baker, the Sixth Doctor, was also there, looking better than the last time I saw him in 2020, as was his companion Bonnie Langford – I did not go for a picture as I have one with both of them from a previous convention.
The Old Who team, somewhat blurry: Colin Baker, Bonnie Langford, Katie Manning, Sophie Aldred, Janet Fielding, Wendy Padbury, Frazer Hines.
That’s enough about me. The other big big thing about Gallfrey One is the cosplay. Some of the ones that caught my eye:
Loads of people dressed as the Thirteenth DoctorThere is more than one way to cosplay a Dalek.A Drashig and Vorg, from the 1973 story Carnival of monstersThree Tenth Doctors, or as someone put it on Twitter, the 0.3 DoctorsMartha Jones and the Fugitive DoctorThird Doctor, Seventh Doctor, Fourth Doctor
And finally, H and I, who had travelled over together, were charmed to meet with S, a fellow fan and emigrant who lives in Gent. S and I turned out to have a lot of people in common, and we did a fair bit of hanging out together. It’s not just the old friends you meet, it’s the new friends you make.
An Irishman, an Englishman and a Scotswoman walk into a convention
