Doctor Who 50th Celebration

The 23rd of November was Doctor Who's birthday. The show's 50th birthday. I started watching the 2005 remake of Doctor Who some years ago and absolutely love it. (Up until the fifth season that is). I haven't seen much classic Doctor Who, with the first eight doctors, but I will get to it as soon as I have the time. What I've seen so far is absolutely brilliant.

This weekend the official celebration of Doctor Who happened at the ExCel, and Karoline, my sister and I was lucky enough to get tickets.

Three panels were included in the ticket. First was "Regeneration." It was a panel with Tom Baker (the fourth Doctor), Peter Davison (the fifth Doctor),  Colin Baker (the sixth Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (the seventh Doctor) and it was led by Nicholas Briggs (The voice of the Daleks and Cybermen).

Tom Baker

The four Doctors and Nicholas Briggs.

Peter Davison

Sylvester McCoy

 They were so sweet and they really inspired me to go home and watch classic Doctor Who.

Next was "The Eleventh Hour," a panel with Matt Smith, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Steven Moffat and I can't remember the name of the last person, but I think it was producer Marcus Wilson. I'm not a fan of Matt Smith and certainly not of Steven Moffat, so I sat impassively watching this.

Matt Smith

Jenna-Louise Coleman

Jenna-Louise Coleman and Steven Moffat.

 After this we had some hours before the last panel, the Special Effects Show. There was so much you could do, I sadly didn't have the time to do everything. There were smaller stages set up between all the shops in the main hall, we caught a bit of someone talking about the design of the cybermen in Neil Gaiman's episode Nightmare in Silver.

We queued up for the Official Doctor Who Shop, bought a cup and got ourselves photoshopped into the Day of the Doctor poster. We also took a picture with the Tardis console, which I thought turned out pretty epic.

Epic pictures.

 My sister got to meet Tom Baker.

 I thought the Daleks were taller than me, but as you can see from Karoline in this picture, they're not.

Underground Toys got us to take a photo with their plush Tardis and Dalek.

 A lot of the costumes from the show was on exhibition.

I love this dress

Don't remember where this is from, but it is creepy.

Me between (the costumes of) my two favourite Doctors.

Karoline and the Doctors

I liked that they had put the costume of Captiain Jack Harkness and Captain John Hart beside each other.

Sarah Jane Smith and her car.

Embarrased Dinosaur is like "Oh, stop it, you. I can't handle the praise," or somehing like that.
Just look at its face!

 Then came the special effects show, were the boss of the special effects on Doctor Who talked about blowing things up, creating snow and wind and other cool effects.

A wild cyberman appeared

They enlisted help from a Doctor and companions to blow it up.

The cyberman goes boom

This is how it actually works.

 All in all we had a great day at the 50th anniversary celebration.

We then hurried to a cinema nearby to see the anniversary episode, the Day of the Doctor.

Cinema selfie
All the excitement!

As for the episode itself, I was disappointed. It is an awful feeling, realizing halfway through that this is not engaging at all. I was so looking forward to this, but this episode makes no sense and I am dissapointed. It was wonderful seeing David Tennant and Billie Piper again but other than that?

Warning: possible spoilers coming up. The whole plot made no sense. It started out with the Zygons as the enemy, but then that thread was just dropped halfway through. And what was the point of John Hurt as the doctor? And we didn't get to see Rose, it was just an interface taking her resemblance. And did this happen before or after Rose in the tenth Doctor's timeline?  What's the point of the Gallifrey plot? Gallifrey is in stasis? Wasn't it time-locked for a reason? Aren't Moffat pissing on the war-conflicted ninth Doctor and the regretful tenth Doctor by making the time war a big misunderstanding and bringing Gallifrey back?

I don't know, I don't know.  I am now looking forwards to Capaldi, but if Moffat writes him as badly as Matt Smith, I might break up with Doctor Who until another head writer shows up.