BY PENNYPOST · MARCH 26, 2012 ·
They came from the US, from Australia, from Germany and all parts of the UK – and a few visited from galaxies beyond ours. Wearing bow ties and tweed jackets, odd hats and home-made Dalek dresses, the Time Lord’s most fervent fans gathered in Wales this weekend for the first official Doctor Who convention since the show’s 2005 relaunch.
Appropriately, for a television series about time travel, much of the talk was about the future, chiefly the imminent replacement of the Doctor’s companion Amy Pond, played by Karen Gillan, by former Emmerdale actor Jenna-Louise Coleman. Matt Smith, who plays the 11th incarnation of the Doctor, admitted he would miss Gillan and her on-screen husband, played by Arthur Darvill, as they had become “two of my closest friends”.
“I’m really sad but the thing with Doctor Who is that you have to keep moving, or the show will leave you behind, it’s that fast. I’m looking forward to working with Jenna, but I will really miss them as we have a real laugh together.”
The dynamism described by Smith is widely credited with reviving the fortunes of the science fiction series since it was brought out of hibernation seven years ago.
And if proof were needed that the Doctor had successfully rematerialised at the heart of British culture, the £99-a-head convention in Cardiff, billed as the ultimate Doctor Who fan event, did the job. “Yes, we came especially for this.
We love Doctor Who, we love Matt Smith and we couldn’t resist it, so we planned a holiday around it,” said Lula Stratton, 39, from Chicago, who came with her husband and brother-in-law and was carrying armfuls of T-shirts and a giant autograph book. “We’ll be doing a tour of the filming sites around Wales later.”
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