Wednesday Wonderfuls: SFX Article & Visions From Behind The Sofa.

Hello blogland, I have two exciting titbits to share with you from my rather eventful Wednesday. Firstly, way back in July I was interviewed for a special edition SFX Collection titled: Doctor Who The Fanzine. The 180 page issue was finally released on Wednesday 23rd November and is available here.

The article is called The Battle of The Superfans, and here are the overview and my bits for your perusal. 

They even kindly gave this very blog a shout out!

As you can I see I scored 6. I came third out of six, and as the youngest fan I think that isn't half bad. The winner was Peter Trott and second went to Keith Lloyd. The six of us are now all acquainted through the joys of Twitter and Facebook and I must say I am very proud to be in such good company as an SFX Doctor Who Superfan. Thanks SFX!

Secondly, I went to the University of Hertfordshire's Doctor Who Symposium: Visions From Behind The Sofa.

It was a great day, full of Doctor discussion with a panel of experts including documentarian/director Kevin Davies, ultimate DW authority/comedian Toby Hadoke, Who Visual Effects Supervisor and K9 wrangler, Mat Irvine and online blog sensation Blogtor Who, Cameron K McEwan.

Throughout the day, topics of discussion included: the inception of the show, the role of women and the companion, the wilderness years when the show was cancelled and the programme's return. 

We met K9 and a Dalek and as a highlight we were made privy to the world premier of Chris Chapman's documentary Taken Out Of Time which looks back on the making of the famously unfinished 1979 Doctor Who story Shada. 

It was filmed in Cambridge, and includes interviews with Tom Baker, Daniel Hill, Ralph Wilton, Les McCullum and Olivia Bazalgette.The documentary will be included on THE LEGACY BOX, which includes Shada and the documentary More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS. It's a very funny and heartfelt piece. It was wonderful to get this exclusive chance to view this brilliant documentary so far in advance of it's release. Big thanks go to the documentary's excellent producer Chris Chapman.

I also had the serendipity to be sitting next to an illustrator, Emily and I are currently discussing plans on how we might be able to work together in the future. Hat's off to Howard Berry and Ivan Phillips for organising and running a very successful event. I went for food and some drinks with Cameron, Kevin, Howard and few other lovely people I met on the day. I had a great time, talked a lot of Who, and made some new friends, all in all a pretty good wednesday.