The Great REDEMPTION REPORT
Okay, here we go, the Redemption Report of DOOM. There was seriously SO MUCH AWESOME this weekend that I know I left some major parts out, and I'm sure I'm forgetting what happened when and who was there. And also I was really terrible about learning people's LJ names, or really just learning their names in general, and there were too many awesome people to list, anyway.
Wednesday: Met snowgrouse at the airport, and the total elapsed time between arrival and her pulling out her sketchbook and assailing me with porn was under ten minutes, I would say. (At least I was rather expecting it, and by the end of the weekend I was the one telling her crazy cracky stuff to draw in her sketchbook.)
Thursday: We're sitting on the platform at Haymarket, waiting for the train, when a guy comes up behind Grouse and taps her on the shoulder -- it turned out to be gordon_r_d, who by some bizarre stroke of coincidence ended up with us on the same train, at the same time, in the same carriage. What are the chances of that, really? Especially when you consider that he was changing trains at Haymarket, when probably the usual change would be at Waverly.
We killed time on the way down watching Time Monster on my ipod with headphone splitters, because, really, can you think of a better way to kick-off a weekend of Doctor Who fannish geekery and Master-related pervery?
We got in mid-afternoonish, took a taxi to the hotel and got checked in. We killed time that evening making paper dolls. Doctor and Master ones (although I made a cyberman one, too.) Each of them got a pretty dress to wear, too. IT WAS LIKE PHOTOSHOP ONLY WITH SCISSORS AND GLUE.
There was the Thursday night dinner, and I met lots of nice people and then promptly forgot all their names. Afterwards we met someone named Sarah (I at least managed to remember her name, but not her LJ name) and somehow Grouse ended up showing her some of her manips. It was awesome to see someone sitting there, with their jaw hanging open, literally.
Friday: I learn how to pronounce 'Koschei', New Who and Old Who have a showdown, Brigade Leader Lethbridge Stewart wins my support, and Shalka!Doctor/Master were so very doing it
After breakfast, we somehow got roped into helping to set up the used book/video sale. At any rate, we met some other nice volunteers and I again completely managed to fail at getting their names, LJ or otherwise.
At some point, Grouse introduced me to Dave McIntee (wearing a Papa Lazarou "Hello DAAAAAAAVE" t-shirt). I thought he was just a super-knowledgeable fan until my brain finally clicked that Dave McIntee was the writer who, you know, wrote those Missing Adventure novels and came up with the name Koschei. We got a brief lesson on how to pronounce it -- it's something like 'KosSHAI', which I had been nowhere even CLOSE to. So! Lesson learned!
Old Who vs. New Who panel: Grouse had promised me fangirls wrestling in oil over Troughton vs. Tennant, and I think people were expecting (or possibly hoping for) an all-out riot, but this panel turned out to be extremely civil. Everyone was very polite, and it took 25 whole minutes into the panel before a very, very brave guy pointed out that we hadn't even mentioned, you know, the whole relationship aspect of New Who yet. For the negatives of Old Who, a lot of people seemed to be focusing on, "Well, the special effects were terrible and there was zero budget." Grouse had a good response to that, I thought, which was, "Come on guys, aren't most of us here Blake's 7 fans?" There was also the whole, "Old Who serials drag on and on and have lots of filler" argument, to which the response was "Watch The War Games".
The Well-dressed English Science Fiction Hero: This one was fairly interesting, since I'd never really thought about how British SF heroes, with their suits, are often working within the establishment, while American heroes, with their lycra and spandex, are often working AGAINST the establishment.
The Doctor/Master panel: There was this kind of oh SHIT moment when I turned around to look behind me just as the panel was getting underway and realised that PAUL FUCKING CORNELL was sitting in the back row. But, basically, the panel went something like, "So, they're totally exes, right?" "YES." Pretty much everyone there had the same opinion, and we ended up having a lovely little digression on the awesomeness of the Time Monster. (Again, the Time Monster will continue to be mentioned probably a zillion times over the course of the weekend.) Then, of course, there was the wonderful, wonderful moment when Grouse (in a totally gen way) asked Paul Cornell about Scream of the Shalka, and the Doctor's motivation for building himself a robot!Master, and his response was, "Oh, they were at it, definitely." <333333333333 I don't remember much of the panel after that, actually, because I was kind of in a fog of squee.
Opening Ceremonies: The candidates for Master of the Universe gave their pitches, but Brigade Leader Lethbridge Stewart had already secured my support, by posting A4 size print-outs of THIS PICTURE of Evil!Benton all over the place. (I ended up stealing one on Sunday, and am totally putting it up on my wall, because Evil!Benton = SEX.)
Afterwards there was a party in pinkdormouse's room, but I wasn't feeling well and ended up crashing fairly early.
Saturday: Paul Cornell slashes himself with Steven Moffat, Rob Shearman slashes himself with Paul Cornell, Grouse and I get creative (or at least she does, and I play with glitter and crayons), there are some surprises at the Strong Women in Doctor Who panel, and I get more than I bargained for at Wobblevision
Paul Cornell interview: Having completely cemented my love at the Doctor/Master panel the night before, Cornell continued to be wonderful and fascinating. After commenting that his answers about whether the Master was truly dead and whether he would be writing for Season 5 (the answer to both was "It's far too early to tell.") meant that it would soon be all over the internet that he's writing a new Season 5 episode featuring the Master, someone asked what internet rumours he would LIKE for us to start for him, to which he replied, "Well, I've always wanted to be in slash fiction..." With the best man from his wedding, Steven Moffat, it turns out. He kindly even provided a line to be used in said slash-fic: "You're my best man tonight." (And then he promptly face-palmed, groaning at the idea, while meanwhile Grouse was elbowing me in the side going, "Kinkmeme. NOW.")
(Apparently later on in the bar, Rob Shearman, upon hearing this wish of Cornell's and not wanting to be out-done, started regaling people with stories of his and Paul's epic but unrequited love. THIS IS THE KIND OF CON THIS IS, PEOPLE.)
Has the return of Doctor Who helped more children discover SF? The short answer was "Yes", but the long answer had lots of people reminiscing about how Doctor Who influenced their childhood, which was wonderful to listen to, especially as someone who got into it as an adult.
Why is fandom so tolerant of everything except shipping preferences? Another potentially dangerous panel that ended up being very, very polite. It was all very straight-forward: we bash other ships because we're threatened by them and protective of our own, and, really, we should all just embrace threesomes and multi-shipping. Because it's so much more fun that way.
In the afternoon, for some reason, there seemed to be a gap in the programming, so Grouse and I decided to take advantage of the giant crafts table in one of the social spaces to work on a poster to decorate our door. You may have already seen the result. (I coloured the Doctor's hair and the Master's suit. And made the French maid uniform for Ten. And that was the extent of my contributions, really.)
Cabaret: There was Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre! There was the best Liberator costume ever created! There was Victorian Torchwood! There was the 'A Tribble Can Never Be Buggered At All' song! It was all wonderful.
Strong Women in Doctor Who: This was another panel that could have been a bloodbath, but managed to stay civil. Rob Shearman was on the panel, and it was fascinating to hear him voicing some of the same qualms that so many fans have been griping about -- that RTD's idea of a comedy mother is problematic, Rose's return in S4 seemed like she was tearing down walls between universes just to get back to her man, etc. I was also surprised but pleased that Jo was actually accorded some respect at the panel (with, of course, her decision to press the button that would save the universe but kill the Doctor, the Master and herself, when the Doctor couldn't bring himself to do it, from the TIME MONSTER, held up as an example of her awesomeness.) But I think it was established, though, that BARBARA PWNS ALL.
Blake's 7 WOBBLEVISION: If you don't know it, Wobblevision is this thing they do where fans re-create episodes of things, in 16 photographs or less, using whatever they happen to have at hand. (The Blake's 7 ones are online here.) Previously they'd done 51 out of the 52 episodes of Blake's 7, leaving only the grand finale, "Blake". Characters are drawn out of a hat (and then you have fifteen minutes to come up with a costume and any props that you need for your character), and there are always far more participants than major characters, so you end up with people playing trees, dead bodies, and even things like the fire that Vila sets to keep warm (although not, I'm afraid, extreme sports calendars or naan bread, at least not in this episode.) So I went along expecting to be a tree, or possibly a trooper. Instead, who do I draw? AVON. Grouse drew Vila, but I was busy kind of spazzing. I was able to borrow a leather jacket off of somebody (even though it was a Ninth Doctor jacket and was lacking in silver metal studs, 4th season Avon without black leather would just have been WRONG) and Grouse kindly lent me her combat boots (although considering our size difference -- she's barely 5 foot, and I'm over 5'8" -- they were just a teensy bit too small.) It was incredible but embarrassing fun (the woman playing Blake, for example, managed to crack me up and I ended up bursting out laughing just as they took the picture that would be, er, a certain major scene at the end.) We did, by quite loud request, take a picture for the "DVD extra" version of Wobblevision. Which, of course, was Blake and Avon snogging.
After Vila and I survived Gauda Prime, we hightailed it to the bar, because I was in desperate need of a drink by this point. I was introduced to calapine, who was just as funny and wonderful as you'd expect, but I was unfortunately also just as shy and tongue-tied as I usually get whenever I read her LJ. I did get to talk with her a bit about the Time Monster, though, which was win.
I have vagueish memories of Rob Shearman looking at Master/Master porn on Grouse's laptop, but I'm hoping I only imagined that. I'm REALLY, REALLY hoping I only imagined that. At any rate, I think I ended up going to bed around 1 a.m.-ish.
Sunday: A true masterpiece of Blake's 7 slash is written, there is EVEN MORE photoshop porn, I go to way too many panels, and finally get to experience the legendary MAN OF IRON
Bad Blake's 7 Slash: So basically you throw a bunch of fangirls (and a few boys) into a room, give them a basic plot (all the cleaning mechanisms on the Liberator have broken down!), several items that they have to work into the story (an apron, rubber gloves, a long handled broom, a feather duster, a scrub brush, etc.) and give them an hour to come up with the GREATEST SLASH FIC EVER. I was in hysterics for pretty much the entire time. I mean, with lines like, "Tarrant’s hairy nostrils flared as the masculine musk of Travis’ scent hit his love-starved sinuses" HOW CAN YOU NOT BE? Our masterpiece is online here.
Grouse's Photoshop Panel: I got to this one maybe two minutes late, and it was COMPLETELY PACKED. Meaning I had to stand squashed in the back between several guys, while Grouse projected a bunch of gay pron on the giant screen at the front of the room. Kind of a different sort of experience than what I was expecting (I knew, of course, that guys do manips and what have you, but I was still surprised that the audience was two-thirds male. Grouse did obviously warn them at the beginning that there was going to be, you know, a fair amount of gay pr0n.) An hour is not nearly enough time to learn all that much about pasting heads on, but Grouse did demonstrate the technique by showing how to paste Patrick Moore's head on an underwear model's body (as Steven Moffat famously described Matt Smith in an issue of DWM.)
Doctor Who's relationship with Science Fiction: This one got a bit contentious, I seem to remember. Basically, though, the consensus seems to be: Doctor Who is only occasionally really Sci-Fi, but it really, really WANTS to be Sci-Fi.
American English vs. British English: This one was scheduled against the "Things They Never Warned You About" slash panel, and I should really have gone to that one instead, but obviously I have a special interest in the differences in American and British English, so I went to this one. There was quite a bit of griping that Americans are just plain doing it wrong (a few of the panelists seemed deeply morally offended whenever they saw words missing extraneous u's in them) and that Americans in British fandoms don't make enough of an effort to use British English (while my experience has been quite different -- all the non-Brits I know in Doctor Who fandom work very hard to make sure they use correct Britishisms.) I think it was agreed, though, that slash in British fandoms really ought to be renamed oblique. :)
Monsters in Doctor Who: Another really interesting panel, with both Shearman and Cornell on it. There was lots of discussion about the scariest monsters in Doctor Who (the Krynoids apparently have terrified quite a lot of people.) The troll doll from Terror of the Autons got a special mention in there somewhere, I seem to remember. (Obviously, though, it's the KILLER INFLATABLE PLASTIC CHAIR from Autons that is the BEST DOCTOR WHO MONSTER EVER.) Paul Cornell mentioned John Simm's Master as being particularly scary, saying that in that scene with Simm!Master in the dressing gown and Dobby!Doctor, his mind "immediately went to torture porn." (OH GOD, NOT WITH DOBBY!DOCTOR, PLEASE.) also, Rob Shearman was win for mentioning the Mara as being particularly scary (although he also said that the thing that scared him the most as a child was Tom Baker's head in the opening credits.)
MAN OF IRON: I don't think there are words that can do justice to the legend that is Man of Iron. For those who have never experienced it, Man of Iron is an unproduced Blake's 7 script from Season 4 -- written by Paul Darrow. Each year at Redemption, there's a dramatic reading of it, which truly has to be experienced first hand. With lines like, "For once in your life, Vila, you're on top," and, of course, "RELEASE GAYBOR!" it is truly a thing of beauty (as was Servalan with a Mancunian accent, this year.) At any rate: <33333333333333333
Closing Ceremonies: Brigade Leader Lethbridge Stewart ended up winning the Master of the Universe competition with something like 500 votes, which, since there were only about 300 people at the convention, was a pretty good achievement. Og, who hasn't ran since 2005, ended up with three votes. And the Drazi competition was won by GREEN, as, of course, is right and proper.
Afterwards there were still panels going on, including the It's not SF, but I like it one (House is pretty popular, it seems) and then finally I think everyone ended up at the Dead Dog Party, where we hung out with elance and mostly rambled at her about Doctor/Master, Two, and even the War Chief, I seem to remember, although once again I crashed fairly early.
Monday:
We watched the rest of Time Monster on the train, and then I seem to have induced Grouse into doodling AXON TENTACLE PORN. And also a Sea Devil in a tutu. I DON'T REALLY KNOW, WE WERE PRETTY CRACKED OUT AT THAT POINT. Oh, and in another one of those coincidences, elance and John were on the same train back. (But gordon_r_d was on a later one.) Then we got home, ate Chinese food, watched Claws of Axos (TO VERIFY THE CANONICITY OF THE AXON TENTACLE PORN) and L&O UK. And then crashed.
Tuesday:
Saw Grouse off to the airport and then had to go straight back to my Real Life. Ah, well.
Verdict: AWESOME. I really, really wish it was every year instead of every other year, but hopefully I'll be there at Redemption 11!
Wednesday: Met snowgrouse at the airport, and the total elapsed time between arrival and her pulling out her sketchbook and assailing me with porn was under ten minutes, I would say. (At least I was rather expecting it, and by the end of the weekend I was the one telling her crazy cracky stuff to draw in her sketchbook.)
Thursday: We're sitting on the platform at Haymarket, waiting for the train, when a guy comes up behind Grouse and taps her on the shoulder -- it turned out to be gordon_r_d, who by some bizarre stroke of coincidence ended up with us on the same train, at the same time, in the same carriage. What are the chances of that, really? Especially when you consider that he was changing trains at Haymarket, when probably the usual change would be at Waverly.
We killed time on the way down watching Time Monster on my ipod with headphone splitters, because, really, can you think of a better way to kick-off a weekend of Doctor Who fannish geekery and Master-related pervery?
We got in mid-afternoonish, took a taxi to the hotel and got checked in. We killed time that evening making paper dolls. Doctor and Master ones (although I made a cyberman one, too.) Each of them got a pretty dress to wear, too. IT WAS LIKE PHOTOSHOP ONLY WITH SCISSORS AND GLUE.
There was the Thursday night dinner, and I met lots of nice people and then promptly forgot all their names. Afterwards we met someone named Sarah (I at least managed to remember her name, but not her LJ name) and somehow Grouse ended up showing her some of her manips. It was awesome to see someone sitting there, with their jaw hanging open, literally.
Friday: I learn how to pronounce 'Koschei', New Who and Old Who have a showdown, Brigade Leader Lethbridge Stewart wins my support, and Shalka!Doctor/Master were so very doing it
After breakfast, we somehow got roped into helping to set up the used book/video sale. At any rate, we met some other nice volunteers and I again completely managed to fail at getting their names, LJ or otherwise.
At some point, Grouse introduced me to Dave McIntee (wearing a Papa Lazarou "Hello DAAAAAAAVE" t-shirt). I thought he was just a super-knowledgeable fan until my brain finally clicked that Dave McIntee was the writer who, you know, wrote those Missing Adventure novels and came up with the name Koschei. We got a brief lesson on how to pronounce it -- it's something like 'KosSHAI', which I had been nowhere even CLOSE to. So! Lesson learned!
Old Who vs. New Who panel: Grouse had promised me fangirls wrestling in oil over Troughton vs. Tennant, and I think people were expecting (or possibly hoping for) an all-out riot, but this panel turned out to be extremely civil. Everyone was very polite, and it took 25 whole minutes into the panel before a very, very brave guy pointed out that we hadn't even mentioned, you know, the whole relationship aspect of New Who yet. For the negatives of Old Who, a lot of people seemed to be focusing on, "Well, the special effects were terrible and there was zero budget." Grouse had a good response to that, I thought, which was, "Come on guys, aren't most of us here Blake's 7 fans?" There was also the whole, "Old Who serials drag on and on and have lots of filler" argument, to which the response was "Watch The War Games".
The Well-dressed English Science Fiction Hero: This one was fairly interesting, since I'd never really thought about how British SF heroes, with their suits, are often working within the establishment, while American heroes, with their lycra and spandex, are often working AGAINST the establishment.
The Doctor/Master panel: There was this kind of oh SHIT moment when I turned around to look behind me just as the panel was getting underway and realised that PAUL FUCKING CORNELL was sitting in the back row. But, basically, the panel went something like, "So, they're totally exes, right?" "YES." Pretty much everyone there had the same opinion, and we ended up having a lovely little digression on the awesomeness of the Time Monster. (Again, the Time Monster will continue to be mentioned probably a zillion times over the course of the weekend.) Then, of course, there was the wonderful, wonderful moment when Grouse (in a totally gen way) asked Paul Cornell about Scream of the Shalka, and the Doctor's motivation for building himself a robot!Master, and his response was, "Oh, they were at it, definitely." <333333333333 I don't remember much of the panel after that, actually, because I was kind of in a fog of squee.
Opening Ceremonies: The candidates for Master of the Universe gave their pitches, but Brigade Leader Lethbridge Stewart had already secured my support, by posting A4 size print-outs of THIS PICTURE of Evil!Benton all over the place. (I ended up stealing one on Sunday, and am totally putting it up on my wall, because Evil!Benton = SEX.)
Afterwards there was a party in pinkdormouse's room, but I wasn't feeling well and ended up crashing fairly early.
Saturday: Paul Cornell slashes himself with Steven Moffat, Rob Shearman slashes himself with Paul Cornell, Grouse and I get creative (or at least she does, and I play with glitter and crayons), there are some surprises at the Strong Women in Doctor Who panel, and I get more than I bargained for at Wobblevision
Paul Cornell interview: Having completely cemented my love at the Doctor/Master panel the night before, Cornell continued to be wonderful and fascinating. After commenting that his answers about whether the Master was truly dead and whether he would be writing for Season 5 (the answer to both was "It's far too early to tell.") meant that it would soon be all over the internet that he's writing a new Season 5 episode featuring the Master, someone asked what internet rumours he would LIKE for us to start for him, to which he replied, "Well, I've always wanted to be in slash fiction..." With the best man from his wedding, Steven Moffat, it turns out. He kindly even provided a line to be used in said slash-fic: "You're my best man tonight." (And then he promptly face-palmed, groaning at the idea, while meanwhile Grouse was elbowing me in the side going, "Kinkmeme. NOW.")
(Apparently later on in the bar, Rob Shearman, upon hearing this wish of Cornell's and not wanting to be out-done, started regaling people with stories of his and Paul's epic but unrequited love. THIS IS THE KIND OF CON THIS IS, PEOPLE.)
Has the return of Doctor Who helped more children discover SF? The short answer was "Yes", but the long answer had lots of people reminiscing about how Doctor Who influenced their childhood, which was wonderful to listen to, especially as someone who got into it as an adult.
Why is fandom so tolerant of everything except shipping preferences? Another potentially dangerous panel that ended up being very, very polite. It was all very straight-forward: we bash other ships because we're threatened by them and protective of our own, and, really, we should all just embrace threesomes and multi-shipping. Because it's so much more fun that way.
In the afternoon, for some reason, there seemed to be a gap in the programming, so Grouse and I decided to take advantage of the giant crafts table in one of the social spaces to work on a poster to decorate our door. You may have already seen the result. (I coloured the Doctor's hair and the Master's suit. And made the French maid uniform for Ten. And that was the extent of my contributions, really.)
Cabaret: There was Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre! There was the best Liberator costume ever created! There was Victorian Torchwood! There was the 'A Tribble Can Never Be Buggered At All' song! It was all wonderful.
Strong Women in Doctor Who: This was another panel that could have been a bloodbath, but managed to stay civil. Rob Shearman was on the panel, and it was fascinating to hear him voicing some of the same qualms that so many fans have been griping about -- that RTD's idea of a comedy mother is problematic, Rose's return in S4 seemed like she was tearing down walls between universes just to get back to her man, etc. I was also surprised but pleased that Jo was actually accorded some respect at the panel (with, of course, her decision to press the button that would save the universe but kill the Doctor, the Master and herself, when the Doctor couldn't bring himself to do it, from the TIME MONSTER, held up as an example of her awesomeness.) But I think it was established, though, that BARBARA PWNS ALL.
Blake's 7 WOBBLEVISION: If you don't know it, Wobblevision is this thing they do where fans re-create episodes of things, in 16 photographs or less, using whatever they happen to have at hand. (The Blake's 7 ones are online here.) Previously they'd done 51 out of the 52 episodes of Blake's 7, leaving only the grand finale, "Blake". Characters are drawn out of a hat (and then you have fifteen minutes to come up with a costume and any props that you need for your character), and there are always far more participants than major characters, so you end up with people playing trees, dead bodies, and even things like the fire that Vila sets to keep warm (although not, I'm afraid, extreme sports calendars or naan bread, at least not in this episode.) So I went along expecting to be a tree, or possibly a trooper. Instead, who do I draw? AVON. Grouse drew Vila, but I was busy kind of spazzing. I was able to borrow a leather jacket off of somebody (even though it was a Ninth Doctor jacket and was lacking in silver metal studs, 4th season Avon without black leather would just have been WRONG) and Grouse kindly lent me her combat boots (although considering our size difference -- she's barely 5 foot, and I'm over 5'8" -- they were just a teensy bit too small.) It was incredible but embarrassing fun (the woman playing Blake, for example, managed to crack me up and I ended up bursting out laughing just as they took the picture that would be, er, a certain major scene at the end.) We did, by quite loud request, take a picture for the "DVD extra" version of Wobblevision. Which, of course, was Blake and Avon snogging.
After Vila and I survived Gauda Prime, we hightailed it to the bar, because I was in desperate need of a drink by this point. I was introduced to calapine, who was just as funny and wonderful as you'd expect, but I was unfortunately also just as shy and tongue-tied as I usually get whenever I read her LJ. I did get to talk with her a bit about the Time Monster, though, which was win.
I have vagueish memories of Rob Shearman looking at Master/Master porn on Grouse's laptop, but I'm hoping I only imagined that. I'm REALLY, REALLY hoping I only imagined that. At any rate, I think I ended up going to bed around 1 a.m.-ish.
Sunday: A true masterpiece of Blake's 7 slash is written, there is EVEN MORE photoshop porn, I go to way too many panels, and finally get to experience the legendary MAN OF IRON
Bad Blake's 7 Slash: So basically you throw a bunch of fangirls (and a few boys) into a room, give them a basic plot (all the cleaning mechanisms on the Liberator have broken down!), several items that they have to work into the story (an apron, rubber gloves, a long handled broom, a feather duster, a scrub brush, etc.) and give them an hour to come up with the GREATEST SLASH FIC EVER. I was in hysterics for pretty much the entire time. I mean, with lines like, "Tarrant’s hairy nostrils flared as the masculine musk of Travis’ scent hit his love-starved sinuses" HOW CAN YOU NOT BE? Our masterpiece is online here.
Grouse's Photoshop Panel: I got to this one maybe two minutes late, and it was COMPLETELY PACKED. Meaning I had to stand squashed in the back between several guys, while Grouse projected a bunch of gay pron on the giant screen at the front of the room. Kind of a different sort of experience than what I was expecting (I knew, of course, that guys do manips and what have you, but I was still surprised that the audience was two-thirds male. Grouse did obviously warn them at the beginning that there was going to be, you know, a fair amount of gay pr0n.) An hour is not nearly enough time to learn all that much about pasting heads on, but Grouse did demonstrate the technique by showing how to paste Patrick Moore's head on an underwear model's body (as Steven Moffat famously described Matt Smith in an issue of DWM.)
Doctor Who's relationship with Science Fiction: This one got a bit contentious, I seem to remember. Basically, though, the consensus seems to be: Doctor Who is only occasionally really Sci-Fi, but it really, really WANTS to be Sci-Fi.
American English vs. British English: This one was scheduled against the "Things They Never Warned You About" slash panel, and I should really have gone to that one instead, but obviously I have a special interest in the differences in American and British English, so I went to this one. There was quite a bit of griping that Americans are just plain doing it wrong (a few of the panelists seemed deeply morally offended whenever they saw words missing extraneous u's in them) and that Americans in British fandoms don't make enough of an effort to use British English (while my experience has been quite different -- all the non-Brits I know in Doctor Who fandom work very hard to make sure they use correct Britishisms.) I think it was agreed, though, that slash in British fandoms really ought to be renamed oblique. :)
Monsters in Doctor Who: Another really interesting panel, with both Shearman and Cornell on it. There was lots of discussion about the scariest monsters in Doctor Who (the Krynoids apparently have terrified quite a lot of people.) The troll doll from Terror of the Autons got a special mention in there somewhere, I seem to remember. (Obviously, though, it's the KILLER INFLATABLE PLASTIC CHAIR from Autons that is the BEST DOCTOR WHO MONSTER EVER.) Paul Cornell mentioned John Simm's Master as being particularly scary, saying that in that scene with Simm!Master in the dressing gown and Dobby!Doctor, his mind "immediately went to torture porn." (OH GOD, NOT WITH DOBBY!DOCTOR, PLEASE.) also, Rob Shearman was win for mentioning the Mara as being particularly scary (although he also said that the thing that scared him the most as a child was Tom Baker's head in the opening credits.)
MAN OF IRON: I don't think there are words that can do justice to the legend that is Man of Iron. For those who have never experienced it, Man of Iron is an unproduced Blake's 7 script from Season 4 -- written by Paul Darrow. Each year at Redemption, there's a dramatic reading of it, which truly has to be experienced first hand. With lines like, "For once in your life, Vila, you're on top," and, of course, "RELEASE GAYBOR!" it is truly a thing of beauty (as was Servalan with a Mancunian accent, this year.) At any rate: <33333333333333333
Closing Ceremonies: Brigade Leader Lethbridge Stewart ended up winning the Master of the Universe competition with something like 500 votes, which, since there were only about 300 people at the convention, was a pretty good achievement. Og, who hasn't ran since 2005, ended up with three votes. And the Drazi competition was won by GREEN, as, of course, is right and proper.
Afterwards there were still panels going on, including the It's not SF, but I like it one (House is pretty popular, it seems) and then finally I think everyone ended up at the Dead Dog Party, where we hung out with elance and mostly rambled at her about Doctor/Master, Two, and even the War Chief, I seem to remember, although once again I crashed fairly early.
Monday:
We watched the rest of Time Monster on the train, and then I seem to have induced Grouse into doodling AXON TENTACLE PORN. And also a Sea Devil in a tutu. I DON'T REALLY KNOW, WE WERE PRETTY CRACKED OUT AT THAT POINT. Oh, and in another one of those coincidences, elance and John were on the same train back. (But gordon_r_d was on a later one.) Then we got home, ate Chinese food, watched Claws of Axos (TO VERIFY THE CANONICITY OF THE AXON TENTACLE PORN) and L&O UK. And then crashed.
Tuesday:
Saw Grouse off to the airport and then had to go straight back to my Real Life. Ah, well.
Verdict: AWESOME. I really, really wish it was every year instead of every other year, but hopefully I'll be there at Redemption 11!