Whooverville 6 Blog
Travelling up to Derby on the 29th August was relatively straightforward with a train to Leicester initially then a brief-ish pause before catching a train to Derby itself.
My hotel near the train station proved less busy than previous years when it has played host to weddings and military reunions so checking in was quite fast.
After a bit of unpacking and radio listening, including Steve(Whooverville organiser) Hatcher’s appearance on BBC Radio Derby. I set off into the city centre to pick up my convention ticket for the next day. I also used this time to find the pub which was hosting the traditional Whooverville Eve get together and photograph birds on the nearby River Trent.
I briefly crossed paths with Steve and tapped his valuable local knowledge for a nearby eatery where I could have dinner, unfortunately the place he recommended had closed for the day so I was back searching nearby streets for an alternative.
I found a nearby take away and bought some Chicken and Chips but the noisy atmosphere(there was two rather over excited kids) persuaded me to eat my food on the move heading back to my hotel. At this point it had started raining, only lightly at first but by the time I was about ten mins walk from my hotel it had started chucking it down, my poor cardboard food container was thankfully not as wet as myself and by the time I reached my hotel room a change of clothes was needed!
My coat was v wet, so I hung it up to dry but sadly it took far longer to recover from the downpour than myself so I concluded no Whooverville Eve for me and I settled down to an evening of TV watching, by 8.30pm though I had an unplanned and rather long pre bedtime nap!
After a proper night’s sleep and and wonderfully filling breakfast I set off for The Quad(venue for Whooverville) For once I arrived a good few mins before the convention began, so early in fact that the TARDIS was still being assembled, so me being me had a close look at it so as to reverse engineer the build a bit. After that I had time to set things up in Cinema 2 which myself and other podcasters would be based in till early afternoon.
A couple of fellow podcasters arrived also bearing video cameras so we spread our cameras out so a multi angle edit can be produced of highlights from the podcasters room.
The first panel in the podcasters room included several actors who’ve had minor roles in Dr Who but it was kept interesting by podcasters Micheal(Tin Dog Podcast), Thomas(ex DWO Whocast) and Nick(The Pubcast).
You can see video of the whole panel here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNUoP7e1Pdo
The second panel actors Michael Troughton, Deborah Watling and writer Derrick Sherwin were interviewed by Micheal(Tin Dog Podcast) and Paul & Chris(The Pharos Project podcast) Near the end of the interview Paul asked THE question, a running gag and funny moment I don’t wish to give away it’s best to watch the video to see it for yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfNPLZQIETo
The third panel required myself to take to the stage(eek!), I was joined by Luke(The Minute Dr Who Podcast) and between us we interviewed actors Peter Davison and Terry Molloy and musician Dominic Glynn. Luke is a much better interviewer than myself but I think I did quite well and must thank Micheal(Tin Dog Podcast) for supplying me with a few extra questions. You can see this panel here including the moment when I suggested to Peter Davison that a director’s commentary for The Five-ish Doctors would be a good idea and may have planted the seed for it happening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MQ6ndnlkl4
Final panel of the day in the podcasters room was writer Bob Baker being interviewed by Karen & Adam(Staggering Stories Podcast), Micheal(Tin Dog Podcast) and two other podcasters whose names and shows escape me but feel free to post them in comments and I’ll amend this paragraph.
After this panel we had to pack up our various technical bits and pieces away and vacate Cinema 2 as The Quad would be screening a film in there not long after.
At this point I was able to attend the rest of the convention as an attendee rather than a podcaster so used this time to buy some books and a DVD and catch the tail end of one panel in the main hall(Cinema 1) and the last panel of the day, star guest Peter Davison an interesting interview covering a large part of his acting career, by this time I was running out of memory on my camcorder but did manage to film the beginning of this panel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSrADU7szXQ
You’ll be able to see the rest of that and more action from the main room when The Whoovers release a DVD of the convention in a few months time, so keep an eye on their website for details of that http://www.whoovers.org.uk/
At the end of the convention I sadly had to miss a large part of the social part of the evening(again) as I wanted to return my stuff to the hotel. I returned in enough time to buy some dinner and attend a screening of that night’s Doctor Who episode (Into The Dalek) with fellow attendees some of whom had been doing the “Ice Bucket Challenge” in my absence. We all seemed to enjoy the episode and it was great to record a few reactions to it afterwards for my podcast which you can hear here: http://tto.libsyn.com/tims-take-on-episode-242doctor-who-into-the-dalek-review
I returned to my hotel and having enjoyed the episode so much I rewatched it via the BBC iplayer, the rest of the evening included a bit of packing to make life easier the next day.
The next day started easy enough with another excellent hotel breakfast before finishing packing and checking out.
I then headed the short distance to the station, when I initially got the the platform the departure board informed me my first train(of what was meant to be three) was running 10 mins late so I started looking up later trains for my connection then an announcement was made that it was now running 80 mins late, a few mins past then a further apologetic announcement that the station was organising a replacement bus(not a prospect I was looking forward to with my amount of luggage)
A few more mins and a final announcement told us to board a London bound train and change at an obscure little station called East Midlands Parkway. Once there I was able to catch a train to Nottingham, a half hour wait at Nottingham station and I was finally on a train heading south that would get me as far as Ely(only 15 miles from home approx) Once at Ely another wait of a few mins and I boarded a train home, this one however was so crowded I didn’t get a seat for the thankfully short-ish journey.
In the end I was back in my home town just after 3pm only an hour later than originally planned but due to the delays and changes a somewhat stressful trip at times.
Whooverville 6 itself was enjoyable but I feel that the weather and the journey home marred it slightly for me this year. But thanks to Steve Hatcher and all the Whoovers for an excellent event and to friends and fellow podcasters for adding to the fun. Hopefully next year’s Whooverville will prove to be a more sociable event for me especially if the Derby weather plays ball.
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