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corrielleNeko, Rae,
noirrosaleen, and I woke up at a terribly early hour of the morning (6 AM, I think), and I made a breakfast of oatmeal and tea for those who wanted it. We were actually out the door at a decent hour, and Neko left before us to save us a spot in the Ballroon 20 line. I had gotten the room as packed up as I could with several other people still asleep, and I left knowing that by the time I got back, it would be mostly empty and I'd just have to grab the last of my things and check out. We got to the line around eight when no one had even let the beginning of the line into the building yet. We found
caedhe, got into line, and waited. We managed to see most of our Torchwood cosplay crew while we sat there, and I think that noirrosaleen made xanmuse very happy when she wondered if maybe, just maybe, we hadn't been talking to Naoko Mori instead of a very convincing cosplayer. (Yep, our Tosh is that good...) We made room for yamikonubmer7 when she got there, which wasn't too terribly long after we arrived, and eventually they started letting us into Ballroom twenty. We got amazing seats. We weren't front and center, but we were... front and to the left. We were close enough that I got some really good shots of people that I took with my camera's zoom and some stabilizing from
noirrosaleen's shoulder, not from the screens. (Though I got some good shots from those, too.) The first thing they did was show a trailer for "The End of Time." (By the way, have I mentioned how much I love Doctor Who episode titles? I do. They're grand and melodramatic, and I love them a lot.) The trailer was... eerie. It starts out with the narrator saying something like, "At the end of the world, people began to have bad dreams..." followed by some very creepy shots of a bearded fellow laughing a bit psychotically. From what I remember of the rest of the trailer, we see Donna's grandfather Wilf (yay!) Donna herself (OMGYAY!!!!), and in a bit of cross-fandom casting that makes me happy, David Harewood (Tuck from Robin Hood) looking very classy but ominous in a dark, tailored suit. In fact, he's one of the first people we see after the crazy laughing dude, and I may have screeched a bit loudly when I recognized him. (This makes me think he's someone important... good for him!) Also, at the very end of the trailer, we hear someone say, "He returns," and then a deep, computerized voice says, "My name is the Master." Again, the crowd went crazy. Actually, we were kind of going crazy the whole time, what with Donna being back and all. When the guests came out on stage, there was uproarious applause for just about everyone, but Russel T. Davies and David Tenant, obviously, got some pretty big reactions.
David is an absolute geek and I love him for it. He came out on stage wearing a t-shirt with a storm trooper helmet made of silver sequins(?) on it, and the first thing he did when he sat down was ask them play the new trailer again so that we could all see it without the shock factor. And they did. Here are the fun things I wrote down from that panel (in no particular order):
One of the fans asked David what one of his biggest fannish moments was when he started filming, and he talked about the first episode he filmed with Sarah Jane. He said it was amazing hearing a voice from his childhood calling him "Doctor," and he told the story with this look on his face that tells me he's still amazed that it happened after all this time.
He also talked about being very nervous on the first read-through because every BBC executive in the universe apparently showed up and took notes... at one point, he joked about wondering when he was going to lose his job since they were writing so furiously. (He SO didn't need to worry.)
Both Russel and David talked about being surprised that Doctor Who was getting so big in America. They're something of a cultural artifact in the UK, but they weren't quite prepared for how many people were going to know and love them here. (Apparently, one of the people who was at the San Diego TV station where they'd been doing an interview that morning had been wearing a Doctor Who shirt!) When one of the fans asked about how Russel dealt with writing for an international audience, his basic answer was, "I don't... I think that most of the people outside of the
Russel talked about going for "blockbuster" stories and thinking big. From the beginning, he didn't want to do little, safe stories. He wanted to do thing that would get people excited and rock the foundations of the Doctor Who universe. I don't always agree with how he's done these things, but I have an enormous amount of respect for him for daring to think big and bring back the Doctor with such big, fun stories.
I don't know how they got on the subject, but apparently there was some kind of gameshow/race thing that happened between the cast members, and Billie won, and this led to David saying, rather facetiously..."If Billie Piper didn't have such good breasts, I'd be higher up on the leader board!" and looking pouty about it.
Fans were really lovely in this segment. A lot of people prefaced their questions by telling David he was their Doctor, and he took it really graciously and humbly. I have... so much respect for the man. He talked about how it's weird seeing his face on everything from action figures to, of all things... cake. I want a Doctor Who cake with Ten on it now!
Lucy Saxon is going to be back! I don't remember how this came up, but I have the words "Lucy Saxon" underlined with a lot of exclamation marks in my notes.
The last thing they did is show a Waters of Mars trailer. I think it's a little bit different from the one they showed at the end of Planet of the Dead. I'll have to go back and look. I can tell you one thing: it looks creepy. I've never been so terrified of water before. It looks dark and atmospheric and interesting and the people who have been "possessed" by the water look... really scary. And the last thing we hear before the trailer ends is something knocking on a metal door four times. It was... a really well put-together trailer, and I can't wait to see the actual episode.
As soon as the panel was over, I made sure someone was saving a seat for me, and I made quick time to the trolley station and then half-walked half-ran the seven or eight blocks to our hotel. The Doctor Who panel let out at around
11 AM, I needed to check out by noon and be back at Ballroom 20 long before the Torchwood panel started at 2:15. I had no idea how hard it was going to be for me to get back into that room. We had a plan where some kind soul who didn't really care about Torchwood was going to wait for me to get back and then procure a bathroom pass and let me have it... but we didn't end up needing to be that complicated.
I got to the hotel in good time, let them know I might be a few minutes late checking out, and did a few runs down to my car (which was parked gloriously close to the elevator doors this year). I did a couple of last sweeps of the room, grabbed a cold soda from the fridge, turned in my keys and got my receipt, and booked it back to the convention center. On the way back, I ran into Mike, who is the Boy!Jack from rum party. I somehow managed to run into people I knew every time I was running between one place an another. Mike while getting into the Torchwood panel,
xxdreamwaterxx while trying to get to Rae in the Boondock Saints line... it's weird. There are 120,000 people at Comic-Con, and yet I always manage to run into almost everyone I know who's there. Anyway, it turned out that when I got back to Ballroom 20, they were still letting people straight in with no waiting. So, I went back up to the front where my group was still sitting and claimed my seat. We sat through a couple of panels for a couple of small things that I know nothing about, which was fine. Why they didn't put Supernatural in Ballroom 20 instead of the tiny little room they try to have it in every year continues to baffle me. At the same time that I got back to find Ballroom 20 was half empty, Supernatural fangirls were probably trying to eat each other to get into the way too small room where they had scheduled it.
devidarkwolf managed to shed some light on this for me, though... if they'd had Supernatural in the big room, they would have had two warring fandoms. Supernatural fans would have crowded out a lot of the Doctor Who people by getting in line and waiting through the DW panel since they don't clear the room in between. It would have been... bad for the Doctor Who fans. Also, I think that there is a money issue going on as well. I wonder if it costs more to have your show's panel in the big room... and the CW isn't willing to shell out like BBCA is. And finally... I think that they underestimate the size of the Supernatural fandom every year. They could have filled that big room with Supernatural fans. It was good for me, though, because I was able to run to the hotel telling myself there was no way I was going to get into the Supernatural panel. If it had been in the room where I already was, I would have been really angry at being forced to leave. In fact, I probably would have done everything in my power to make sure I didn't have to. In one of the more infuriating occurrences of the con, we sat through a couple of other panels and I tried my hardest not to murder the two rude morons sitting behind me. *WARNING: RANT AHEAD* I don't care if you're not there for the panel that's going on at the moment... be polite and respectful and shut the hell up about how you think what you're seeing is dumb. There are people there who don't and they don't need your idiocy. Don't ruin their fun or make fun of people who enjoy... whatever is being presented. You are the one sitting in a panel for something you don't even like and making fun of people, which is a thousand times more lame than being a fan in the first place. *ahem* Um... yeah. These are the same guys who were making cracks about how "gay" John Barrowman was (were they just figuring this out now?) and being loud and homophobic during Jack and Ianto's last kiss in the Children of Earth recap. I almost wanted them to be just a little louder so that a hoard of Jack/Ianto fans would descend upon them with the fury of a thousand suns... I'm just saying it was a dangerous place to make fun of the death scene of one of the fandom's most beloved characters. There were a lot of already-pissed-off Ianto fans (for one reason or another) in that room... (And I say that with all the love in the world for the Jack/Ianto fans I know... heck, I would have helped.)
Anyway, the BBC America panel started off with Being Human, which was fine by me. I'd seen the original pilot, and I was anxious to see the new cast. All three of them were there, as well as the creator, and they are all as cute as can be and were obviously very happy to be meeting fans. They showed a decent amount of footage and managed to play some pretty dramatic scenes involving each of the three main actors, so the audience got a good introduction to them. I'm anxious to see the show now. A vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost sharing a flat and trying to "blend" looks like a lot of fun.
And then... the Torchwood panel. It was basically the same faces from the Doctor Who panel (Russel, Julie Gardner, Euros Lyn, who directed some DW episodes and Children of Earth) but this time the big star was John Barrowman instead of David Tenant. I'd seen John the year before, but he's always fun to watch. He has such love for the show and the fans and for Jack... it's impossible for me not to love Torchwood more than I usually do when I'm listening to him talk about it.
Things I remember from the panel:
John Barrowman telling everyone that they were "cute" - he told the moderator, he told Euros Lyn (and someone eventually quipped that it didn't mean anything if John said it to often...)
The reason we never really got to see the 456? Plain, old fashioned "what you don't see is scarier than what you do." And it worked for them, I think. Seeing the child that is attached to the alien is enough to imagine the horror of the rest, and each person's horror is going to be a little bit different.
John talking about how he has to view what Jack did at the end of Children of Earth as "The right thing." Because Jack thinks it's the right thing. It was a terrible decision, but Jack has always been the one making hard, calloused decisions that no one else has the stomach to make. And from what John says, he has to believe it pretty intensely himself to play Jack right.
There was a lot of love for the actors who played Frobisher and Lois. Russel had been dubious about cross-casting Frobisher from Fires of Pompeii, but he was glad he did because that actor did one heck of a job.
Russel T. Davies has some serious guts. Twice during the panel, he fielded questions from fans about the negative fan reaction to Ianto's death. (A caveat before I go on: What I'm about to say is in no way meant to insult people who were sad when Ianto died, or even upset at Russel. I hurt when that happened. I'm talking about entitled fanbrats who overestimate their own importance and think they have a right for everything to go exactly the way they want it to on their favorite shows because the creatures owe it to them.) If I remember correctly, the first person was fairly polite. I don't even remember exactly how she phrased her question, but it was something about the negative fan reaction. Russel cheerily said, "I'll take the blame. I killed Ianto. No one could talk me out of it. I killed him, and no one's bringing him back." You could have heard a pin drop the moment after he finished speaking. He wasn't rude, he wasn't condescending, he was just... direct. And it was kind of amazing. I think he might have been a little ticked off about the vitriol that some crazy!fans have directed at people who really had nothing to do with the decision. (I'm looking at you,all you you meanies who said nasty things on James Moran's blog...) He went on about how it was important that Jack lose something big to set up the decision to sacrifice his own grandson. And... as much I love Ianto, I think he was right. Losing Gwen wouldn't have had the same effect. It had to be Ianto. (And I think that Children of Earth treated Ianto well, actually... we got to see him develop and grow and have conversations with his sister and try and figure out what exactly it is he had with Jack... they may have killed him, but they respected his character even as they did so. Unlike some OTHER SHOWS I could name.)
The second question that made me blink was the girl who asked Russel if he wanted to clarify what he'd said (either earlier in the panel or in other interviews, I'm not quite sure which she meant) as to avoid offending Ianto fans. That was hilarious in and of itself, but the calm way he handled it was golden. First of all, he said very politely that he had never meant to offend anyone, and that he was very sorry if he had. He went on to say that he understood that people were upset about Ianto's death, and that he was glad that he had been able to create a character people cared about so much. (And somewhere in here he brought up that it was the nature of the show for people to die and for characters to have a high turnover.) He said he even understood that there were some people who would stop watching because Ianto had died, and that he wished them well. However... he also brought up that the "send coffee to the BBC Wales office" plan had so far turned up nine packs of coffee, so the ones who are so angry they stopped watching seem to be outnumbered by the vast number of people who watched Day Five (the last day of Children of Earth) on BBC1. Apparently they had great ratings, and they deserved them. I'm glad for the show. Anyway... I thought it was an answer to a kind of rude question that managed to be both polite and the slightest bit snarky.
The last thing I remember is John talking about which scenes were most difficult to film. He talked about the last scene with Ianto being Gareth's last day of filming and how that was really hard, but he said that the scene that takes place the day after with Gwen and the red tarps was harder to do. This was the moment that Jack realized that his kiss hadn't saved Ianto this time. (I hadn't even thought that this was what he was trying to do... but it makes sense. It's worked before.) But this time, Jack's body had been dying too, and whatever life-energy he has to give couldn't save him and Ianto at the same time. And he sits up, finds Gwen kneeling next to him, and knows that he couldn't save the one person he most wanted to live. I... am so glad I got to hear him talk about that scene. For the insight it gives me into Jack, for the way John's voice broke a little when he talked about it... it was amazing. And to lighten things up, he told a story about how one time, when Eve Myles lifted the tarp over his face, he was wearing a big, fake handlebar mustache. I really hope that's on the DVD blooper reel.
After the panel was over, we headed met up with our Torchwood cosplay friends, took some pictures of them in their snazzy updated costumes, and went down to the exhibit hall one last time. I meant to get myself an SGA sweatshirt, but I couldn't find one in my size. Luckily, I rand into
devidarkwolf, who helped me to pick out appropriate TOS science officer/medial badges and a Starfleet medical patch. We geeked out over Star Trek and fandom in general for a while until the hall closed and they kicked us out of the convention center. On the way back to the hotel for the last time, we stopped at a little pizza place called Pizza Bella that always had Sinatra playing every time we walked by it and smelled absolutely divine. It was a small, cozy little restaurant with delicious food. Rae and I split a personal pizza with Italian sausage, mushrooms, olives, and sun-dried tomatoes and some manicotti (or something very similar... I don't remember what it was called!). I also splurged and got tiramisu for desert and was glad I did. I love tiramisu, and this was good stuff.
Back at the hotel parking garage, we had to rearrange our stuff so that we could fit four people, all of our luggage, and all of our con swag into my usually very spacious Camry. Rae is magic because she eventually did it, though she and
noirrosaleen were tucked into the back seat like sardines in a can. The drive out of San Diego was filled with traffic as every single con attendee tried to go north on the I5 at the same time. It was very late by the time we got home, and caedhe, bless her heart, spent the last forty-five minutes of our drive coming up with increasingly ridiculous questions about characters I write about in order to keep me awake. We were both a little loopy when we pulled up at the house. So, we dumped everything that was absolutely necessary on the living room floor and fell into bed, exhausted and a little dazed. Con is tiring, but if you come back from Comic-Con rested and chipper, you're doing it wrong. And now, some lists...
Things I didn't purchase because I couldn't find them:
I. Want. A. Hypospray. You'd think that in a room filled with geeks, nerds, and vendors wanting to take our money that someone would have a replica hypospray... TOS, movies, new movie... I'm not picky. But no. I contented myself with Star Trek patches instead.
An SGA sweatshirt in my size. I was all ready to buy this awesome sweatshirt that had the gate symbol for earth inscribed over an actual photograph of the earth, but they only had men's larges (which would fit three of me) and men's X-Larges (which would fit four of me)
A Star Trek t-shirt in my size. Apparently, the t-shirt booth I was at didn't have anything smaller than a men's large either, and unless I want to sleep in it, that's way too big. And that's really too bad, because there was an awesome shirt that just had the words "Star Trek" filled in with well-chosen scenes from the new movie... I would have loved to have it. But it seems that they don't think that girls who come in small sizes buy shirts at con. Hmph.
Purchases:
Vampire Haiku book
Athena Voltaire comic book (I bought this because of a quote saying, "...like if The Mummy and Van Helsing were actually, you know, good" on the artist's display table... The quote made me laugh even though I adore The Mummy, and the comic looks like a whole lot of fun, and the artist was really sweet and signed my copy for me.)
Starfleet medical patch and TOS gold badge
Two Stephanie Law art prints
Swag report:
Bright yellow Burn Notice t-shirt with a pixelated orange image of Michael's face. (Thank you, Rae, for making sure we got the tickets for that... we almost got skipped and had to run down someone who worked for the con to get our "free shirt" tickets.)
Red True Blood Shirt with "It Hurts So Good" on it
True Blood Tote bag
A frajillion book samplers, fliers, key chains, and bookmarks.
Twenty free novels/books (two of which I've already read!)