30 November, 2009

I Lost My Love to Paul McGann



Psst. Do you want to know a secret? One of the managers at the Ocean Grill just off the Square is a geek. I saw him at Chicago TARDIS dressed as The Doctor in "Voyage of the Damned" while his lady friend was all gussied up in a maid's outfit just like Astrid. Next time you stop in, be sure to give him grief.

The con went by all too fast. It was a fun weekend of costumes, dorky panel discussions, listening to actors/producers talk about DW, and The Dulcinea giving her heart to Paul McGann. Seriously. She reiterated to me just how sexy his voice is multiple times. At one point he walked by us in the lobby and she just about melted into a puddle then and there.

As you can tell, the theme this year was the Eighth Doctor – both the 1996 movie and Big Finish audio dramas – which meant that, in addition to McGann, we were treated to Daphne Ashbrook, Yee Jee Tso, and India Fisher. Plus Nicholas Briggs, Jason Haigh-Ellery, Rob Shearman, and Gary Russell of Big Finish fame were on hand as well.



This being the case, I chose as my mission to get the liner notes to the audio drama The Chimes of Midnight signed by everyone. It is one of my favorite stories with its minimalist approach of repetition with slight variation. That and it's darn creepy. In my pursuit, I got a chance to at least meet all these folks and they were all very friendly down to the last person.

India and Daphne were total sweethearts. Paul was a hoot. Very funny man with a droll sense of humor. He seemed very excited when I asked about one of his upcoming projects, a TV show called Luther with Idris Elba who starred in The Wire. The Big Finish guys were quite funny and charming as well. Nick Briggs is definitely on the goofy side (but in a nice way) and Haigh-Ellery and/or Shearman played the straight guy (or straighter, anyway) during the sessions. They explained how Big Finish worked, what is on tap, and told lots of funny stories. For instance, after recording the final dialogue of an episode, McGann will launch into the Doctor Who theme. Although we asked, it seems unlikely that a CD of these impromptu themes will be released.



I attended a few seminars which were a lot of fun because I don't often get the chance to hang around hard-core Doctor Who nerds. The first was "Regeneration Blues" which discussed how unique the program is in having the actor playing the hero change from time to time. Plus fans reminisced about regeneration scenes from the past. At the "Can The Doctor Ever Be Female?" panel, everyone agreed that there was no good reason why not. One participant (I think it was Christa Dickson from Mad Norwegian Press) noted that the biggest impediment to a female Doctor was that action figures and other such things featuring women don't sell as well as those of men. Hence there is a financial incentive for the BBC to keep The Doctor male.

In the panel discussion about spoilers, I ended up calling Tammy Garrison a hypocrite. There was just something about her that rubbed me the wrong way. She loves Doctor Who spoilers so I asked her how she would feel if someone had leaked some of her creative work ("Torchwood Babiez") and she replied that she would indeed be angry. So I said, "Then you're a hypocrite because if you do it to someone else, it's OK; but if it's done to you, then there's hell to pay." I think Lars Pearson of Mad Norwegian Press and Tammy's co-panelist was taken by surprise by my accusation. Regardless, it was a fun, spirited conversation.



No con is complete without costumes. Most of my pics turned out for shite but a few are OK. There were two Sixth Doctor outfits, including the one above. I contemplated slipping them a Mickey Finn and stealing their costumes because, as we all know, the Sixth Doctor outfit is the best of all and I just gotta get me one. The Dulcinea says that, if I do get one, she will not be seen in public with me while I'm wearing it.





There were many more but my camera work was too poor. That and I missed the guy wearing a killer First Doctor outfit on Sunday. During the masquerade, a woman came onstage dressed as Harriet Jones. She pulled out an ID card and introduced herself whereupon the entire room shouted, "Yes, we know." Classic.

I generally don't think of Lombard as being a center of culinary delight but it is a part of Chicagoland. Ergo I indulged my addiction to Italian beef down the street from the hotel at Portillo's.



Come Sunday, The D wanted nothing to do with Italian beef.





The life-sized TARDIS and Dalek were really neat. A couple guys from up nort in Oconto built the Dalek – Dalek Sec, that is. The casing even opened up. Very slick.

I spent too much lucre in the dealers room. I got a Rose & K9 action figure set for Miss Regan's birthday, some Big Finish dramas, and, perhaps most prized of all, the three Missing Episodes novelizations: The Nightmare Fair, The Ultimate Evil, and Mission to Magnus. These were all stories that were being groomed for the show before it was cancelled in 1985 and the scripts were far enough along to be made into novels.

Ooh! I can't forget Mysterious Theater 337 which is a cross between DW and MST3K. They did "The Android Invasion", an early Tom Baker story. It was quite funny. And Elisabeth Sladen was such a hottie!

Final thoughts:

1) Lots of younger folk were in attendance, many of whom dressed as the Tenth Doctor. It was good to see the next generation of fans out there. There was even a boy who must have been about 10 that had a Cyberman helmet. He had about a million questions for Nicholas Briggs.

2) All the guests were wonderful. You had more time with the Big Finish guys and they were happy to chat and autograph whatever you put in front of them.

3) I didn't attend any events with Naoko Mori (a.k.a. - Tosh) from Torchwood though I heard that she too was a sweetheart.

4) As Nick Briggs reminded us time and again, Big Finish subscribers get extra content!

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