Doctor Who’s Day Of The Doctor got an official Guinness World Record for being simulcast in the most number of countries of any TV show ever, a total of 94 of them. You can almost see me and my friend in the shot where they are facing the audience, but then Steven Moffat raises his hand and blocks your view of us and the 50 or so people immediately around us.
I am back, and I survived the Doctor Who 50th Celebration, which was amazing, no to mention huge. I could make every post to the end of the year about this, and still have material left over to take me into the next. I am not going to do that, but it is amazing that I could if I wanted to. The panels were epic, each with an excellent assortment of people, each different from the others. The displays and exhibits were likewise world class, not to mention the dealer area, with the high points being Big Audio Finish, Forbidden Planet, and the BBC themselves. The line to get into that last area went around the entire display area, because they were set up with a green-screen processing function that everyone wanted to be a part of.
What you can’t really tell from that photo is that the hall keeps going back, and is just as packed the whole way. The friend I attended it with has several much better cameras than I have, perhaps she will have a better version of that image for me to upload.
There does come a point where you have to admit some of this might just be the tiniest bit silly. But what’s not to love? The following video is quite tasty, an interview with Karen Gillan about the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary that also talks about her role on another excellent Sci-Fi franchise, Guardians Of The Galaxy, part of the Marvelverse, and perhaps one or two other projects she is in the middle of.
Not the Experience in Seattle, home of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, but a real live Museum of Science Fiction is being built in Washington, DC, and it is yet another project being built by crowdfunding. It will cover the history of the genre in all the various media, and examine its relationship to the real world. As they say on their You Tube page: Our mission is to create a center of gravity where art and science are powered by imagination. This effort is headed up by science fiction authors Greg Bear and David Brin, and their crowdfunding is centered at Indiegogo. They are starting by building a preview museum to open next year, and hoping to open the full scale facility by 2017. The preview museum will have exhibits including Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who artifacts, as both a warm up and an additional fund raising effort. Thanks to USA Today for the heads up on this one.
For those wondering what the count down clock is all about, it is all about the Doctor Who 50th Celebration and the episode they will air around the world that night, Day Of The Doctor.
MechaCon is the largest Anime Con in New Orleans, and runs this year from August 23rd to the 25th. There will be a ton of things going on there, including Cosplay and AMV competitions, with a wide range of guests to see and events to attend. What makes this memorable for me is the Red Carpet Affair, their opening night formal dance and party. The theme this year is When you wish upon a Deathstar, and they are encouraging costumes that are a blend of Disney and Star Wars, in honor of the franchise changing hands. I particularly like the Deathstar as Micky Mouse image, it is quite a hoot.
