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Gallifrey: Saturday
Ah, now, there’s the jet lag. I held it off until half nine on the Saturday night, then fell asleep in the middle of a conversation (Simon Guerrier has plotted and cast a number of Muppet movies, including the Muppet Jane Eyre and Muppet Deliverance, ‘squeal, Piggy, squeal!’). No, no, he was fascinating.
It’s all going by much too fast. We still haven’t even got into the swimming pool.
Best Panel of the Day (That I Was On): it’s a tie between the Fifteen Years of Bernice panel, where Simon, Big Finish’s head of all things Bernice, showed a brilliant short documentary video about the making of the audios, and the Battlestar Galactica panel. Everyone on the panel, including Shaun Lyon, organiser of the convention and Geordie genre journo Keith Topping, loved the new Galactica with a passion. The audience, however, were slightly irked and set against it. And so we found ourselves speechifying, cajoling and convinving, and the audience, in the way they only do at American conventions, became a full part of the panel, speaking up and calling out. I love it. It’s like being in the Roman senate. Only about Battlestar Galactica.
Best Panel of the Day (That I Wasn’t): Ben Aaronovitch and his mates launching the new audio Blake’s 7, with another short documentary. I must admit I was sceptical, but hearing the dialogue and seeing the new cast going at it (Daniela Nardini is Servalan! Colin Salmon is Avon!) I was hooked. Ben, Marc Platt and Jim Swallow are doing the writing, and it sounds like they’re making all the right choices. They’ve even put an apostrophe in the title. Out of the blue, this looks suddenly great, and when I have a link I’ll share it with you.
Best Panel Heard Through a Wall: Moffat was next door during the Galactica panel, delivering his commentary on his ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ episode of Doctor Who. He ought to call it An Inconvenient Time Paradox. Through the brickwork he sounded like he was just saying ‘Hugo Hugo Hugo’.
Best Baked Goods: one of the loveliest bits of Gallifrey is just hanging out in the Green Room, where there are continual bowls of home-made produce and good coffee, and getting into the rambling conversations bunches of creative folk have when far from home. Watching Gary Russell’s nerves on being about to interview the actor Eric Roberts onstage was fun too.
Best Meal: we went for a meal with our friends the Henrys, Darin and his wife Ursula, who write for an appear in the sitcoms The War at Home and the American version of The Office respectively. They’re lovely, and they brought with them their baby son, who had his first piece of bread that night, and was so pleased with it he did a post-bread dance. (As much as someone who can’t walk yet can dance.) Today Darin is going to take him onto the panel about ‘the care and feeding of a young Doctor Who fan’. I fear he may have taken the panel title too literally. Though judging by the little chap's effect on the Green Room, nobody will mind.
Most Looking Forward to Today: A Tribute to the Fanwank God. It’s a panel devoted to Craig Hinton, who passed away last year. Craig was a reviewer, writer and unashamed fanboy, who liked to both create and consume texts that were heavy on the continuity, pleasing to the hardcore rather than the masses. (Hence ‘Fanwank God’.) We’re wearing badges at this convention saying ‘Fanwank Acolyte’, except when we step out of the hotel. (And I have my ‘Got Squee?’ badge on.) Hopefully the panel will be as funny and sharp as Craig could be.
Caroline’s doing better now, so hopefully we’ll get some serious hot tub time in today, and enjoy the mellow post-show feeling of the Sunday night. Let’s hope the weather holds for the cricket. Until tomorrow, Cheerio.
It’s all going by much too fast. We still haven’t even got into the swimming pool.
Best Panel of the Day (That I Was On): it’s a tie between the Fifteen Years of Bernice panel, where Simon, Big Finish’s head of all things Bernice, showed a brilliant short documentary video about the making of the audios, and the Battlestar Galactica panel. Everyone on the panel, including Shaun Lyon, organiser of the convention and Geordie genre journo Keith Topping, loved the new Galactica with a passion. The audience, however, were slightly irked and set against it. And so we found ourselves speechifying, cajoling and convinving, and the audience, in the way they only do at American conventions, became a full part of the panel, speaking up and calling out. I love it. It’s like being in the Roman senate. Only about Battlestar Galactica.
Best Panel of the Day (That I Wasn’t): Ben Aaronovitch and his mates launching the new audio Blake’s 7, with another short documentary. I must admit I was sceptical, but hearing the dialogue and seeing the new cast going at it (Daniela Nardini is Servalan! Colin Salmon is Avon!) I was hooked. Ben, Marc Platt and Jim Swallow are doing the writing, and it sounds like they’re making all the right choices. They’ve even put an apostrophe in the title. Out of the blue, this looks suddenly great, and when I have a link I’ll share it with you.
Best Panel Heard Through a Wall: Moffat was next door during the Galactica panel, delivering his commentary on his ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ episode of Doctor Who. He ought to call it An Inconvenient Time Paradox. Through the brickwork he sounded like he was just saying ‘Hugo Hugo Hugo’.
Best Baked Goods: one of the loveliest bits of Gallifrey is just hanging out in the Green Room, where there are continual bowls of home-made produce and good coffee, and getting into the rambling conversations bunches of creative folk have when far from home. Watching Gary Russell’s nerves on being about to interview the actor Eric Roberts onstage was fun too.
Best Meal: we went for a meal with our friends the Henrys, Darin and his wife Ursula, who write for an appear in the sitcoms The War at Home and the American version of The Office respectively. They’re lovely, and they brought with them their baby son, who had his first piece of bread that night, and was so pleased with it he did a post-bread dance. (As much as someone who can’t walk yet can dance.) Today Darin is going to take him onto the panel about ‘the care and feeding of a young Doctor Who fan’. I fear he may have taken the panel title too literally. Though judging by the little chap's effect on the Green Room, nobody will mind.
Most Looking Forward to Today: A Tribute to the Fanwank God. It’s a panel devoted to Craig Hinton, who passed away last year. Craig was a reviewer, writer and unashamed fanboy, who liked to both create and consume texts that were heavy on the continuity, pleasing to the hardcore rather than the masses. (Hence ‘Fanwank God’.) We’re wearing badges at this convention saying ‘Fanwank Acolyte’, except when we step out of the hotel. (And I have my ‘Got Squee?’ badge on.) Hopefully the panel will be as funny and sharp as Craig could be.
Caroline’s doing better now, so hopefully we’ll get some serious hot tub time in today, and enjoy the mellow post-show feeling of the Sunday night. Let’s hope the weather holds for the cricket. Until tomorrow, Cheerio.
Labels:
Blake's 7,
Gallifrey
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I so dearly wish I could see (or be part of) the Craig Hinton panel... *SIGH*.
And good to know Ben Aaronovitch still kicks the ass.
--- Geoffrey D. Wessel
I so sorry that I missed you at the bar. :( Thank you for the invitation, though! :D I'd love to take you up on that at another point, like next year if you come to Gallifrey (please, please, please!) I only went one day and that wasn't enough (though my pocket book is thankful for just the one day). I wanted to go to the Craig Hinton panel, too, not to mention the Tennant panel. But instead I get to be working at that time. *bangs head on the wall* I work at Borders and as much as I enjoy helping the customers and shelving my section, it's the most tedious work I've done.
I hope today is a great day! :D And the cricket goes well tomorrow.
Did you watch the Ten Doctors play last night? Fabulous work, even if it was interupted by a fire drill.
Muppet Deliverance FTW!!! Ahahahahahahahahaha
Ah, but... how's the Challenge going?
Wish I could be there too. Sadly, I'm looking after the broken-legged convention DJ. Paully C *really* wishes he could be there as well, so if there's any way you can slip his name into one of the panels at the end I'm sure he'd appreciate it :-)
Just popping in to say hi. Enjoyed the comic panel, it was interesting to hear about the British collecting viewpoint. Good luck on Wisdom. I may have gotten my local shop order quite a bit since I mentioned I wanted a copy. And with Marvel MAX line's no re-order policy, I represented 10 other possible buyers.
I have to say that in the embarassingly large amount of time I've spent discussing 19th Century novels I feel are ripe for Muppet movies, Jane Eyre has never come up. Although Piggie would make a tremendous Blanche Ingram, I'm at something of a loss for a fitting part for Kermit. He's certainly no Rochester. Personally, I think that Austen is just crying out for Muppetefication. A Pride and Prejudice with a human Lizzie and Darcy, but Piggie as Jane and Kermit as Knightley?
Alternately, Jane and Lizzie could both be humans, but the rest of the Bennets could be muppets (Kermit and PIggie and Mr. and Mrs. respectively, with Bettina and Belinda as the flighty Kitty and Lydia), thereby making the figurative alienation the two eldest girls feel from their family into a literal construction.
See, and I bet you thought Simon was the only one who thought about these things...
Sorry I missed you, Jen. I slept through the fire alarm that night! A Paul Condon DJ experience would definitely have been welcome as always, let's hope we see you next year and get well soon. Thanks for your comic shop help, Zach. Maggie, pop over to Simon's blog and dive in, those are great.
I believe I ran into you all of once, quickly, as I was entering the masquerade. I ended up in that Moffat commentary for Girl in the Fireplace, and I think it was the attendees chanting 'hugo, hugo, hugo', but that could just be my faulty memory. I then missed Sunday, due to a bit of a headache, or rather, a very impressive headache, and I didn't even wake until 3pm. There was no way I was going to make the drive up there, even though I had won some art in the art show. Luckily some friends were able to pick that up for me. But it was nice to be at Gallifrey, I always get to relax and never make myself crazy trying to do too much.
I'm sorry you missed some of that. So that was what the noise was.