Children of Mirth: Day Three [The Gallifrey One Report]

• 21st March 2010 • Blog Post by Ben Paddon •

Yes, I know it’s nearly a month late. yes, I know. I know. SHUT UP.

Sunday’s Events

Saturday was a tricky day for me, seeing as it actually started around 11:30am and continued more or less downhill from there. Y’see I’d gone to bed at 7am after spending the night at “lobbycon” – the post-closing gathering of con-goers who lurk in the lobby of the hotel drinking, chatting and occasionally sexually propositioning each other (although not as much as you’d think with a bunch of socially-awkward scifi geeks! I know! I’m as shocked as you are!). In fact I outdid the esteemed Mr Tony Lee who, as I recall, retreated to his hotel room at around 6-ish.

So yes, Saturday did not get off to a great start for me. It didn’t help that I was feeling less than healthy, too. Conventions are naturally loud places, and cons spread over a few days tend to lead to the development of two ailments – Batman Throat, and Con SARS. I had both. Glee.

I’d planned to attend three panels – an introduction to the Eleventh Doctor, an IDW comics presentation, and a panel discussing fan reaction to character death. As it turned out I attended only one panel, and it wasn’t even a panel I’d planned to attend in the first place. Not being as much as a comics buff as other URP! staffers, a panel celebrating 70 years of Marvel comics didn’t really appeal to me, but it gave me an opportunity to sit down.

It also gave me a legitimate reason to shout “THE PUNISHER MEETS ARCHIE!” in front of a room full of strangers.

Most of Sunday was a blur up until the Closing Ceremonies, and I can’t even remember much of that because I was so braindead. What do I remember? Well, they replayed the “sorry I can’t be there” videos from both Peter Davison and Steven Moffat. I can’t find the Moff’s video anywhere online, but I do know that Peter Davison’s vid is on YouTube. Fancy a peak?

After that I went home, and I slept and slept and slept. And that was Gallifrey One. 1,595 people attended this year – Gallifrey One’s highest attendance to date – and with the Moff taking over the show that number is only going to get bigger. Or possibly smaller if, for the first time in Moffat’s career, he is an inexplicably shit showrunner.

What should we expect from Gallifrey One next year? Well hopefully I’ll be slightly more coherent for the thing. Hopefully I’ll be better-organised and get to attend more panels and events. And hopefully, hopefully, I’ll be able to enter the costume contest and look a right tit on a stage in front of thousands. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll get more than one URP! staffer to attend the thing so that if one of us gets absolutely shitfaced there’s someone else to back him up. Or maybe not! Airfare to the US isn’t cheap, y’know.

Ben Paddon certainly isn’t here to help a malevolent entity to bring down the website. Ben writes and hosts PortsCenter, a webseries about video game ports that exists solely because someone once asked him if Doom on the PSone was any good. His favourite colour is mope.

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2 Responses

  1. 6am? That’s fighting talk. We didn’t take the photo of the Lobby Con survivors til almost 7am! And I was sorting out a hotel room cock up until 8am!

  2. I vaguely recall the group photo being taken closer to 6am, but of course my memory of the morning is pretty damned fuzzy. Mostly I remember you and I casually destroying American English, and offering our valuable skills as confectionery critics.

    I’ll give you the 8am time, though. You definitely weren’t with us, and I assumed you’d gone to bed.