Gally 2020 (In the Time It Takes Me to Drink a Cup of Tea)

[tablesaw]

Last weekend, I attended the Doctor Who convention Gallifrey One for the sixth year. It was loads of fun, and I'd love to write all about it, but it's a big topic, and I've been bad at updating, so I'm going to post this blog the moment I'm done with my tea, regardless of what I left out. Maybe I'll make another post with more info, maybe not!

Gally is kind of a big deal in the Doctor Who fan world, but it's always been a little weird for Psyche and me, because it's also a local convention. On Twitter, I'm following people preparing a week in advance for intercontinental flights to spend a week in Los Angeles on vacation, but for me it's just half of my commute. In fact, for the first few years, we didn't even take Friday off to attend all three days of events.

This is also the first year that I was a part of the programming. A feature for the last few years has been a block of TARDIS talks. They're structured like academic talks, though that refers more to the approach to a topic than the occupation of the presenter. At some point the organizers described as something like a chance to talk about your favorite Doctor Who subject for fifteen minutes uninterrupted, and I took that to heart. For almost two years now, I've been obsessed with the connections between the ancient story of the Trojan War (which most people know about), the medieval story of Troilus and Cressida (which most people don't know about), and the Doctor Who story "The Myth Makers" (which pretty much no Who fans have actually seen because the BBC lost all the tapes). It's a superstorm of niche obsessions, and I finally had a chance to unleash it on the unsuspecting world (at least, the world that decided to skip the interview with Tosin Cole.

I'm hoping to put it online in some form, but the version I ended up with was mostly notes, so I need to reconstruct it. I'm thinking of putting it together as a video on YouTube, because I did some PowerPoint humor that I don't really want to give up on. Maybe set a goal to have that done by the end of the month.

The big guest was Christopher Eccleston, who was the Doctor in the first season of the rebooted show. I have big feelings about his performance, and it was really great to see him talking about his life, his art, masculinity, and vulnerability. We'd hoped to get an autograph, but the convention was overwhelmed, and we ultimately didn't want to give up most of our day to see him. But it seemed like he had a good time, so hopefully we'll get a chance to see him again.

And that's the honey-thick end of this mug of tea. Have a good night!

Comments

[dine]

your presentation sounds interesting - I hope you do get it online somewhere, and share the info here; I'd like to check it out

Christopher Eccleston is definitely my fave modern-ear Doctor. I'm a little jealous you got to see him, even if you couldn't get an autograph

[jadelennox]

Did Eccleston end up talking about any of the things he's been going public with lately, around mental health and eating disorders? 'masculinity and vulnerability" sounds adjacent, at least.