The BBC’s official Doctor Who convention has been a controversial event since its announcement. The main culprits were the £99 pound ticket price for one day (compared to, say £90 for the upcoming three-day 11th Hour Convention) and the suggestion that the event was not recommended for children. The second point was the most worrying to me, as a fan, as I assumed that it would mean the event itself would be a little dry.

I arrived at the Millennium Centre (a building heavily used as a location in Doctor Who, meaning the venue itself was a huge part of the experience), to see a huge phalanx of fans already in position in front of the two entrances: the attendees were split into two streams (not, sadly, Red Anchor and Green Waterfall but rather Ood and Silurian), more on which later.

What should be the selling point of an official convention is the amount of access it affords you to the stars, creators and technical crew, so let’s look at some of the panels.

Creators/Directors Panel

A little different to the advertised panel, this was essentially a “making of” for Series 6’s The Girl Who Waited, featuring writer Tom MacRae (looking like a potential future Doctor) and producer Marcus Wilson, hosted by Gary Russell.

This was an interesting insight into the episode, covering how the originally more complex script was simplified to put further emphasis on its emotional core and the steps taken to age Karen (greying of her hair was considered but rejected). The highlight, though, was the appearance of a Handbot from the episode (which MacRae admitted he mainly came up with as he wanted something in his script that would make a good-looking toy).

Meet the Stars

The big centrepiece for most present, this panel saw Steven Moffat, executive producer Caroline Skinner and the show’s three leads (who literally arrived leaping onto the stage); Arthur Darvill, Karen Gillan and Matt Smith.

In aid of Sport Relief, host Jason Mohammed made the audience promise to donate if Matt, using his still considerable football skills, could do fifty keep-ups with a ball that had mysteriously rolled onto the stage. Smith and I both kept our sides of the deal. Though it was an enjoyable panel and a great opportunity to see the cast, not much was actually revealed. Matt is still weirded out by seeing his face on merchandise, Rory exists because Moffat likes having two companions so decided to “sneak one in” and when Karen first heard of Matt’s casting, she thought it was ludicrous that they’d cast a 26 year-old as the Doctor.

Opening it up to the floor there were some good questions (and a few wasted ones) from the audience. As announced on Saturday, Amy and Rory will leave in the fifth episode in a Weeping Angel story filmed in New York, while Arthur made comments about having been using a flying rig, Moffat discussed his first Doctor Who memory (being annoyed at the change in lead actor – “he can’t be the Doctor! He’s far too young!”) and whether there should be a female Doctor (Smith: “I’m sitting right here!” Moffat: “I didn’t say we’d recast”).

Doctor Who Uncut

Despite the exciting title, this turned out to be a rather straight-laced discussion on the pre-production process (read-throughs, casting, location scouting, tone meetings etc) with another appearance by Caro Skinner as well as casting director, Andy Pryor, production designer Michael Pickwoad, director Julian Simpson (The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People) and director of photography Stefan Pehrsson, all hosted by the affable Barnaby Edwards. This was the panel that had the exciting new trailer shown during it, but was also the only panel I saw people leave during.

Lost Episodes/Prosthetics/Special Effects Demonstrations

Largely entertaining, if a bit ramshackle, the most fun of these panels was Danny Hargreaves’ FX workshop due to a series of burning cork explosions and other loud practical effects (as well as the Con’s only appearance by a Dalek or Cyberman).

Led by Millennium FX’s Charlie Bluett, the prosthetics demo had rotating content during the day and so, while we missed seeing Gary Russell turned into a Silurian, we saw an interesting presentation on life casting, making models of peoples’ faces and body parts for prosthetic applications.

A small props and costume exhibit was open throughout the day – feeling very much like a scaled-down Doctor Who Experience and, if you’d booked it, you could take two and a half hours out of your day to go on the TARDIS set tour.

In all, the day felt – as a fan said to me – more like an expo than a convention. The splitting of the crowd meant that the event didn’t suffer from the famous overcrowding witnessed at 1983’s Twenty Years of a Time Lord event at Longleat and everyone was able to see the theatre panel talks, but it also meant that there was less of a sense of community.

The venue, while stunning, wasn’t used to the best effect – the Prosthetics and Lost Episodes talks occurred in the lobby of the building making them hard to pay attention during, due to the distractions of the nearby shop and café and people passing by. Another knock on-effect of using the lobby like this meant that there was nowhere for fans to congregate.

It’s clear that the BBC have plans to make this a recurring event and so these teething problems may be ironed out subsequently but, as it stands, it was a nice day out that didn’t entirely justify the ticket price.

Perhaps a two-day event at a similar price point, with concessions for children, and at a different venue (or making better use of the available rooms at this one) would make a 50th anniversary convention genuinely unmissable.

What did you think of the convention? Let us know below…