While the event featured a plethora of guests from various films and TV shows including Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Gavin and Stacey and Wednesday, I was mainly there to meet guests from my favourite show, Doctor Who.
My first guest of the day was Michelle Gomez who played Missy, the female incarnation of the Master, in the Peter Capaldi era of the show. She was a bit late getting to the event but she was very apologetic to us all in the queue and was really taking her time to talk to everyone. Even more talkative was Alex Kingston (the iconic River Song herself), who was very excited when she found out we both shared the same name! Strangely enough, we mainly ended up talking about ER, the American medical drama she was on back in the 1990s. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that I haven’t seen a single episode!
The final two guests were Pearl Mackie, who I have met before but she was even nicer on this occasion, and Mark Williams, who was Rory’s dad Brian in Doctor Who Series 7, but is perhaps more well-known to you as Arthur Weasley in Harry Potter. I am a massive Harry Potter fan as well, so it was good to tick a Harry Potter actor off the bucket list.
There were many stalls and traders at the event, selling a variety of props, figures, illustrations, pre-signed autographs and more. It might not be good for my bank account, but for my brain and geeky soul it’s utter heaven whenever I’m surrounded by memorabilia.
even though this was hardly an intimate event, it still managed to feel welcoming
For me the main event was the Doctor Who panel talk, which featured Pearl, Alex and Michelle. It was a lot of fun, even though the fans were asking them somewhat surface-level questions (best memories of the show, would you come back for a spin-off, etc) they still answered them in detail and they were clearly having a lot of fun in that talk. I lost count of the amount of times Alex Kingston and Michelle Gomez decided to hug each other.
The other main highlight of the day was that Dogpool (the dog Peggy from Deadpool & Wolverine) was in attendance! You can moan about how silly it is that a dog is at an event like this, but everyone melted into a puddle the moment they saw her so hopefully it was worth the money they spent to meet her!
It was a shame I couldn’t attend on the Saturday (then again my bank account would’ve probably come to life and killed me), but the one day I had there was a lot of fun. I forget how great it is to go to a convention as a fan of something as you really feel part of the community and, even though this was hardly an intimate event, it still managed to feel welcoming. I can’t wait for next year!
Here's a link to the website for more information: https://www.comicconventionnortheast.co.uk/
