We drove back to the convention and looked at the schedule. There were a lot of things happening at the same time which made it difficult to prioritise. Since Mum only had a standard pass, it was easy for her to sit in on all the talks, but in order for me to do the photo shoots, I would have to miss half of the talks. The crew have been doing a considerable amount of filming so I am hopeful that a DVD will be released in the near future.
First up was the photo shoot with Peter Davison. The Gold Pass holders were given priority over the Silver Pass holders, which was a shame as I had been there early to get a good spot. I was most excited to have my photo with Peter as he was ‘my Doctor’. I rushed back to the conference room for the rest of the Sylvester McCoy talk. I was surprised to see him in a mobility scooter. He looked quite sick and old but it was awesome that he still came to the event - he had just undergone a hip replacement. Given how much of Sylvester McCoy’s talk I had missed, I decided to go to the photo shoots near the middle of the talks when the queues would be shorter.
Colin Baker’s talk was next. He started off by asking who had travelled the furthest for this event. I was proud to stand up and shout out New Zealand! As I expected, he is a very intelligent man and very witty as well. He talked about his time on Doctor Who, his unfortunate dismissal, and his subsequent work. I resolved to get his book as soon as I could. Near the end of his talk, I popped out to get my photo with Sylvester. Up close, he looked even more tired but still managed a smile.
The queues were fairly short for Michael Jayston (aka The Valeyard) so I queued up for that while Mum went in to the conference room for Peter Davison and Janet Fielding’s talk. I returned to a massively packed conference room – standing room at the back only. I was right beside the door and had to open it a couple of times to let some air in! Peter and Janet’s talk was very good, and it seemed that their relationship was based on their on-screen love-hate relationship. Particularly amusing were their feeling for Matthew Waterhouse and their surprise that he was writing an autobiography. Apparently, he talked favourably about his time with Peter and Janet to which they quite surprised.
*INSERT MICHAEL JAYSTON PHOTO*
After the talk, I queued up for the Colin Baker photo shoot while Mum went to Michael Jayston’s talk. Colin is a much taller than I thought – it seemed to me that the Baker boys (Tom and Colin) were painted by the same brush. I was disappointed to see that there weren’t too many people in for Michael’s talk especially as it was rather good. When I came in, he talked about his time after Doctor Who and the other shows he had worked on. I would have liked to have heard about The Valeyard and what the producers had planned to do with the character.
I liked the sound of Colin Baker’s book, so we popped back into the merchandise room to get it. Just as I was buying it, Colin Baker came through to chat to Nick Briggs. He saw me buying his book and offered to sign it for me. How could I refuse such a generous offer?
After lunch, the rest of the conference was spent in queues for signings. I felt sorry for Janet Fielding and Baxter who had done their signings yesterday and had to sit there with nothing to do. The last thing we did was to go back into the merchandise room and meet the Big Finish crew. Rob and Nick seemed to be close friends and were very witty, and Lisa was friendly and charming, and Jamie and David were enthusiastically talking about the upcoming stories. I bought a few of the books and CDs and they signed them for me.
We were quite tired after the event. Just before we left, I asked the ladies at the main desk about the pile of group photos on the desk and she gave me one for each day that were taken before the Gold pass members went through – a special gift for the Gold and Silver pass members.
*INSERT TWO GROUP PHOTOS*
We sat down to dinner again. We ordered Pizza this time as we had been impressed by the Pizza that Peter had the previous night. While we were waiting, Peter and Aron walked in so this time it was our turn to invite them to our table. We had all taken some good photos so we exchanged details to keep in touch and share some of the images around. Aron owns a collectible shop and had some knowledge about the new series that he wasn’t allowed to share, but he did confirm that the Daleks have been redesigned, the Cybermen will be new versions of the original Tenth Planet design, and the Silurians are quite different from the classic series; possibly a cousin?
There was also talk about Tenth Planet organising a 50th Anniversary event that was going to be huge. Given my three year cycle of coming to England (2004, 2007 and 2010), a plan started to form in my mind that I will return in 2013...
After dinner, we packed up our gear, watched another episode of ‘The Big Bang Theory’, and then nodded off.
