Good Times! #20 Blue Box 4 and Battlefield 6 2001

Blue Box 4(first published in Fringeworld 2001)

Bristol is not Mars but for the country's beleaguered public transport system it may as well be. Why else would I have to board the 9.13 train (itself a journey up to town from where I live) a full 24 hours before the event began? Arriving at 12.30, I had to wait two hours to meet Neil Hutchings from his London train and, after exploring the city for a while, the moment came to find the venue. Most conventions are within a stone's throw of a town or city centre but the Aztec Hotel is approximately 15 miles away in a bleak, deserted industrial park served by one bus; the only option as a taxi fare would have been prohibitive. Tallying all this up with the registration fee for the weekend, £45 and the (admittedly very favourable for a 4 star hotel) £30 per night room fees, something like £125 has been spent before a single person asks Wendy Padbury what its like in space. The real bone cruncher, however, comes as it gradually becomes clear that the Aztec holds a monopoly on all food and drink in the area. There is a lovely country pub opposite owned by them which has marginally lower prices, but check these out - a pot of tea £2.50. Sandwiches £6.95, buffet £10. Any money saved on the room rates is soon clawed back because there is nowhere else to eat or drink; even the alcohol is higher than London prices. So, let's face it, overpriced photos of Sylvester gurning with a stuffed ferret are the least of our worries!That said the Aztec is an excellent hotel full of wooden floors, beams, low ceilings and faux Tudor decoration. The staff are tremendously helpful and friendly more so than in any convention hotel I've been in. Hopefully they get a fair cut of all that cash flowing in. 

Good Times! #19 Battlefield 5 and Resurrection 2001

Battlefield 5 (first published in Faze 2001)

The best thing I saw all weekend? Well, actually it was a band called Mr Bridger playing at the Rocket pub, just round the corner from Coventry station. Funky Hendrix-like with a touch of Nirvana, they made US style rock seem like it could be interesting though for all the attention the Friday night punters were paying, it might as well have been Mr Bridger's Dixieland Showband. It wasn't that they were bad; it was just that they were the wrong group for this crowd. Two days and many panels later, I've come to a similar conclusion about Battlefield 5. The temptation to go on and on with anything creative is always strong but sometimes you need to sit back and remember the sparks that brought the subject to life in the first place.
Battlefield began as a feisty alternative to the established convention lore, which stated that huge gaps would elapse between panels, there would be as much behind the scenes stuff as front of camera celebs and that evenings would consist of funny videos and large scale parlour games. The convention scene needed this boost and it worked well at first. Never had the two-day event seemed so jam packed with stuff nor had it ever passed so quickly. Now ambition has inspired the team to extend the latest event to a three day stretch, the glitzy celebs are still, for the most part, the same people who've been to all the others and the cabaret has mutated from the slightly old school music hall mentality to amateur hour at a nightclub. 

The Doctor Who Monster Book

Published in 1975 and penned by Terrance Dicks, `The Doctor Who Monster Book` was in essence a boiled down version of the `The Making of Doctor Who` with all the Making part removed. It’s got lots of photos, some awkward graphic design and a text that tends to repeat things that Doctor Who fans would surely know. The main attraction of the book was a glorious colour poster of the cover which certainly earned a place on my wall and no doubt many others. The poster – reproduced on the cover- was another excellent Chris Achellios job even though he doesn’t appear to be mentioned in the credits! Luckily he etched his surname under the Dalek just in case! It’s also devoid of his trademark fizzling static but even so there’s something about his art which makes it as good as photos. The book retailed for the realtively princely sum of £1.75 and was designed by Brian Boyle A.R.C.A. Whatever that qualification may be it still doesn’t excuse the lines emanating from a Wirrn on page 57!!

Good Times! #18 PanoptiCon 2000

(first published in Faze 2000)

Manchester became the second home of conventions during the Nineties with its seemingly endless collection of huge hotels guaranteeing the necessary space and more than a touch of grandeur. The Palace Hotel has to be the ultimate in faded glamour though. The lobby alone is like a Victorian chapel and the ballroom, where most of the event happened, was filled with large wood panels and rich carpets. Such a setting inevitably infused the most enduring convention series with an air of sepia tinged nostalgia. True, there was a whiff of modernity with talk of Big Finish and the Radio Four pilot but PanoptiCon 2000 started off the decade by looking back.

Good Times! #17 DWM Birthday Bash (1999)

(first published in Faze 1999)

To begin at the end I'm being handed a slice of birthday cake topped with blue icing by none other than Mark Strickson. I've even got a bit of the '0' from the word 'WHO' so technically I am living, breathing and eating Doctor Who. Not that such a pleasure is mine alone - the lobby outside the City University's overheated Oliver Thompson lecture theatre is teeming with fellow cake scoffing fans, each being presented with their portion by a celeb. Just what is going on? Well, we're here to celebrate two decades of what is fast becoming a genuine publishing phenomenon. 

Good Times! #16 PanoptiCon 98 (1998)

(first published in Faze 1998)

Have you noticed how Doctor Who gives great clips? More and more, the only really new things we can see are artfully collated sequences with suitably powerful music that give the impression of wonder. Conventions too are increasingly about celebrating 'bits' of the show. Close on a decade after the last regular story, time inevitably moves on and while hard core fans and, increasingly, professional writers delve into ever more trivial and miniscule territory the people who made and appeared in the show recall less and less detail and much of what they do remember is anecdotal and samey. Thus the success or otherwise of guests depends increasingly on their strength of personality. Some things don't change though; if it's PanoptiCon, it must be the Leofric Hotel in Coventry, a city that this very weekend celebrated the arrival of Sunday shopping with Morris dancing and clangey rock groups. Yes, that's the Sunday shopping everywhere else started two years or more ago but at least we can look forward to a right knees up, in honour of Labour's election win, next year! 

Good Times! #15 PanoptiCon 97 (1997)

(first published in Faze 1997)

Coventry was demolished during the Second World War and had to be rebuilt almost from scratch afterwards allowing planners the unique opportunity to design its city centre with practical considerations in mind. Paradoxically this has made it now seem less modern than other places. It resembles a bizarre mixture of Alpine village and concrete jungle; everything is in squares and straight lines and the railways station is about a mile from anything else. It’s as if, faced with the freedom to create, the planners instead came up with something very much of its time. More recent attempts to modernise have given the city a weird canopy in its main square and an indoor precinct that looks like every other indoor precinct. The only significant old building is the shell of its cathedral. Nestling in one corner of a covered walkway, the Leofric Hotel is an excellent convention venue and even the bar staff, often the most harassed people at an event like thus, cope with good humour as the place fills up with the buzz of a Doctor Who gathering.

Good Times! #14 ManoptiCon 5 (1997)

(first published in Faze 1997)

"There were other Doctors?" Tom, when asked his opinion of the other Doctors.
Taking place in the middle of a week in which we, finally, have a Labour government, won the Eurovision Song Contest and it became winter again, Manopticon 5 was going to have to try hard to make an impression; a feat not helped by the tropical temperatures, faster than light speed lifts and unhelpful staff which characterised the hotel. Nevertheless the organisers ensured that this fifth and final Manchester event had a good go at matching up to the May's already memorable happenings. And a lot of it had to do with the man we call Tom.

Good Times! #13 ManoptiCon 4 (1996)

(first published in Faze 1996)

By the time you're reading this, the telemovie will be out and you'll all know what attendees of Manopticon 4 know now (April 8th) and a lot more besides so it's going to be difficult to convey exactly the significance of the event's happenings for Who fans. I'll therefore cop out by stealing Gary Russell's on stage comments about the significance of certain dates which become landmarks in the Doctor Who calendar. By any standards then, April 7 1996 will figure quite highly in that calendar as the moment when the new production became something more tangible than magazine photos; if I'm getting rather excited then I make no apology. This year has turned from being just another in the wait for a possible new series into a helter skelter of developments and possibilities and touching down amidst some hard, solid facts is even better. You'll shrug and think 'so what' now you've seen the whole thing but it was quite a thrill to encounter the project in what we might call its chrysalis stage. 

Good Times! # 12 ManoptiCon 2 and 3 (1993 /94)

ManoptiCon 2 (Originally published in Top 1993)

It was the lifts that did it. Normally it’s the alcohol. This time it was the lifts. O to 60 in about 2 seconds or something equally as bone crunching and the problem was you had to use them to get above the ground floor. Thing was they went so fast it took until about the seventh floor to recover your senses. Manchester has to be different like that. You arrive to find a city centre full of trams. Not those clunky old ones but streamlined modern versions gliding about majestically as you try to work out what direction all the different types of traffic are coming at you from. Then there’s the Piccadilly Hotel itself. 47 quid a night! Are they kidding? Besides the rooms across the road in the Britannia are a mere £30, they’re bigger and it’s got fabulous chandeliers and deep blue stair carpets enigmatically illuminated like some grand club. By comparison the Piccadilly is tacky light browns and greens- faceless and for the price decidedly un- accommodating.

Audio taping Doctor Who

Growing up, we didn’t have what Doctor Who kids have these days where all the existing episodes are relatively easy for them (or their parents) to obtain. Back in the Seventies Doctor Who was actually quite a fleeting thing. Beyond its 25 minute Saturday evening broadcast an episode would rarely be glimpsed again. It might be repeated on a Bank Holiday. A photo might show up in a magazine but basically all you then had was your memory of it and the Target novelisation. There were not even video recorders in general circulation then but one thing that you could do – if you had the equipment- was make an audio recording. Nowadays Big Finish produce new audio adventures but they are made for the medium knowing full well that things will have to be explained verbally for listeners to know what is going on. Audio recording television is another matter altogether. 

"Doctor, it's like we're hearing the same wild animal noises again and again" "Er, come on Jo, they must just be moving around alot." "Mmmm"

The Original #4 The Firemaker

As has been apparent all the way through the series’ debut story the combination of writer Anthony Coburn and director Waris Hussein has been vital in turning what could easily have been a far less impressive affair into something stylish and clever. Here in the final episode they both triumph bringing matters to an interesting conclusion. 

Sensorite Gone Wrong!

When I was a child I was a Doctor Who fan (see, not much has changed) and in the fabulous book `The Making of Doctor Who` there was a photo of two Sensorites which I found oddly fascinating. I'd never seen Sensorites before and imagined they were very evil, dangerous aliens. However the book's episode guide told me that in serial code G (which I didn’t even know then was called `The Sensorites` though I might have guessed) the enemy had been a disease killing them so they were not evil. Still they looked it. These aliens were quite unlike anything I’d seen lately which were things like the Sea Devils.  Anyway at the time I was also a member of the Doctor Who Fan Club and members used to send in their drawings so I foolishly drew a picture of a Sensorite and sent it in. 

The Original #3 The Forest of Fear

People have complained lately that Peter Capaldi’s Doctor was too angry and unfriendly in his first season or that David Tennant’s Doctor acted out of character by imprisoning the Family at the end of `Family of Blood` but what do they know? You only have to travel three episodes into the entire series to find the Doctor at his most unforgiving in a manner that makes his later incarnations seem like big softies by comparison. This episode is a tautly staged, powerful spin on how people react in extreme situations and really deserves as many plaudits at `An Unearthly Child` which it is the equal of.

Good Times! #11 Nebula 91

Photo Special! Snaps from the acclaimed  September 1991 convention held in Liverpool and featuring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Anthony Ainley, John Nathan-Turner, Mary Tamm, Frazer Hines, Nick Courtney, David Banks and even a couple of people from Blake's 7!