The Doctor Who Appreciation Society Capitol V 2022 Convention Review

In April I made my way to Crawley railway station in West Sussex for the annual two-day convention run by the Doctor Who Appreciation Society. The convention is a mix of guest panels, on-screen presentations, autographs, a photo studio, merchandise and other surprises. As the first officially recognised fan club by the BBC the society is affiliated with lots of local fan clubs up and down the country and organised one of the first fan conventions in the UK in 1977, the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

Its first honorary president was Jon Pertwee until 1996, then Nicholas Courtney (who played the Brigadier) until 2011. Currently, Colin Baker is its third president.

Even though getting a cab proved elusive initially from Crawley Station I’m so glad I finally got one. It’s the best six quid you can spend unless you really do fancy a bit of a trek walking, with your luggage in tow, to the Crowne Plaza Hotel. I arrived on Friday evening as the convention normally runs on a Saturday and Sunday. This convention had been rolled over from 2020 due to COVID so, after two years of waiting, I was quite excited to attend again having originally gone for the first time in 2019.

The event opens on Saturday and we’re off!

With a full English breakfast inside me served at the Cube restaurant, I went to the “Panopticon” room which is where all the various panels would be held over the weekend. Tony Jordan, part of the DWAS convention organisation team and whose responsibility is social media/Promotions welcomed us as attendees to the event and I just loved that. I think that’s what makes this event different for me from going to somewhere like London Film and Comic-Con.

At London Film and Comic Con it’s so detached when you are queuing for talks or photos but Capitol feels a far more friendly and personal experience. Yes, there are opportunities available to spend money at Capitol such as the artist’s room with prints to buy from the various creative design artists and a merchandise room but it’s a relaxed event where you take what you want from it.

Attendees for Capitol V got a draft itinerary emailed in advance this year which I’m rather pleased about as in 2019 I had to collect it on the first day of the event and the organiser behind a table just pointed me to a pile of envelopes as in “help yourself and don’t ask any questions about where anything is” Getting a draft itinerary helpfully means you can start planning what you would like to see, or do. There was a final version whilst at the event plus a special “just for the convention” free edition of their own in house Celestial Toymaker magazine.

After the welcome, the society acknowledged the deep-felt loss of artist Chris Achilleos who had been due to receive an ‘Outstanding Contribution to Doctor Who’ award from the society in 2020 but COVID had intervened on the schedule. His widow Natasha accepted the award on his behalf. I did meet the artist Chris Achilleos, a fellow Cypriot, in 2019 but remember arriving at my first Capitol and finding my way into the artist’s room.

I saw Chris in the corner on his own and we struck up an interesting conversation about gardening. I couldn’t resist buying a lovely signed Frontier in Space art print from him at the same time. Chris Achilleos was a modest man I felt generally but became animated when talking about his work so it feels a bit sad to not have him at this convention.

Autograph hunting

The DWAS do give convention attendees one free autograph token for most of their guest’s signed on personal items as a part of attending the event. Otherwise, you did have to pay for additional autographs which ranged between £15-£20 which is pretty reasonable compared to other events. Sometimes queues for autographs snaked out into the bar area, which was probably the only downside to the event. However, it gave you time to talk to other fans. I saw people I’d previously met at Capitol Four and had some lovely chats about local events they’d been to or I’d been to.

One of the longest queues was for the delightful Katy Manning, who I believe has attended every DWAS Capitol event. She wanted to chat to her fans who she has gotten to know over the years despite an ever-growing queue for her autograph. Following some gentle coaxing to speed along from one of the organising attendants Katy got up from her table and started moving along her queue, talking and signing but she kept us all entertained with good humour and being in the moment interacting with each fan. Having not met her before I was really touched that Katy remembered recording a short video from the BFI in 2019, a requested message for me at a difficult time. I hadn’t been able to attend the screening due to a close family bereavement.

That is part of the beauty of being at Capitol as due to the relatively low number of attendees compared to other events you do get a chance to have a chat with the guests as you get their autographs. Grahame Harper and Eric Saward both signed one of my Target novels and whilst Eric was fairly quiet and business-like Grahame Harper was warm and chatty and it was lovely to just pass on my own appreciation to a talented director of some of my favourite stories.

Talks at the Panopticon!

There were seven talks on Saturday and six talks on Sunday and if you attended all of them you wouldn’t do anything else but the talks covered a variety of topics in classic and new Who plus merchandise and spin-off media. There was something for everyone’s interest. The talks were normally around 45 minutes with either one main guest or a panel of people.

I fitted in three talks on Saturday and two on Sunday but it was sometimes a toss-up because of the timings, whether to go for guest autographs or photos or go and listen to a talk. The director Graeme Harper wasn’t able to attend the Revelation of the Daleks screening at the BFI for the new season 22 Blu-ray so seeing him and Eric Saward together discussing how they got into the business and Doctor Who was interesting as my era was the 1980s Who.

Graeme Harper started as a child actor and trainee runner who was on set with Pat Troughton, Anneke Wills and Michael Craze. He felt very appreciative that John Nathan Turner gave him a chance to see what he could do as a director. Eric Saward talked about the challenges of being a script editor and supporting other writers. At another session, John Ainsworth and Chris Thompson talked about the development of the Eaglemoss figures and magazine (as well as working on Titan Comics) and the licensing issues to produce certain figures.

My particular highlights of the Saturday…

Just Jackie Camille Coduri, aka Jackie Tyler herself, graced the stage on Saturday afternoon and regaled us with lots of stories. Possibly the most hilarious is the scene of Jackie driving the truck in Parting of the Ways. As Camille didn’t have an HGV licence, she had to straddle a stuntman in the cab whilst he moved the gears and she moved the steering wheel. She felt so apologetic but commented wryly “the things you do for love!“ She was sad to see Chris Eccleston go as she felt he brought a lot of kudos to Doctor Who but welcomed the fresh high energy of David Tennant. 

Afternoon Tea with Katy Manning – Katy Manning breezed into the room to rapturous applause from a full audience. Much hilarity ensued trying to get the afternoon tea for her which had been promised and didn’t involve a “dead animal between two slices of bread”. Katy is an effervescent speaker and acknowledged how much she enjoys coming to Capitol and feels a responsibility to talk to the fans who come to see her. Her character is very much of acceptance and as she explained came from a family background which was very open. It resonated with me very much when she talked of her close friendship with Stewart Bevan and about loss and having gratitude for the people in her life.

Crowne Imperial @ The Capitol – This is the Saturday evening event the DWAS hold during the convention. For the first time cosplay came to the stage with some brave people parading in their costumes. The winner was a Brigadier lookalike. It was a funny Alistair Pearson, the artist, who entertained the audience with his impressions of Tom Baker whilst also auctioning some prints of his work. DWAS raised money for Save the Children and Cancer Research UK with a charitable auction.

Guest auctioneer was the animation producer and writer Gary Russell. Also playing display host with the lots was Graham Cole OBE, who played PC Tony Stamp in the Bill and was also Melkur in The Keeper of Traken. I love a bit of bidding and it did become really competitive on a couple of items I liked, a colour photo from Marco Polo signed by Carole Ann Ford and a couple of albums of photo prints from John Nathan Turner’s private collection.

Enjoy to you who outbid me! What was fantastic was all the auctions raised much-needed pounds for the charities.

Easy like Sunday morning… Day 2 begins

It’s a hard life staying in a hotel with other Doctor Who fans as besides all the food and drinking you have to endure it’s also recovering after day one and the night before. There definitely is a social aspect to the DWAS convention with the opportunity to talk to old friends I’d met before at other events as well as make new ones in the evening and early hours.

But next morning, full of tea and breakfast in a relaxed mode we eased back into the Panopticon for a presidential address on screen from Colin Baker. Committed as he was to an event in Wales Colin promised to be back at the next Capitol convention in 2023.

More talks started for Day 2 including a Blu ray and animation panel featuring Chris Chapman (documentary maker), Lee Binding (artwork for the blu rays), Gary Russell (writer and part of the animation team for Galaxy Four and The Abominable Snowmen), Richard Latto (documentary maker at BBC Southampton).

Lee Binding gave an exclusive peek at early artwork considerations they had created for the Season 12 Blu-ray collection.

Gary Russell talked about animating Galaxy Four and decisions on the visual look of cult sixties sci-fi to “pop” the story and also improve on the all studio production. The Abominable Snowmen is an upcoming story and Gary discussed the lighting and colour palette decisions for what would be a visually dark story set in a monastery and how much he enjoyed doing the story. He used animation to make the spaces bigger but does feel that the soundtrack is “sacrosanct” so was averse to making any cuts but used visual cutaways to make it more interesting.

My particular highlights of the Sunday…

24 Carat: Actors Bonnie Langford, Richard Gauntlett and writer Stephen Wyatt popped in to talk about Sylvester Mccoy’s first season, Season 24. Bonnie Langford played 6th Doctor companion Mel Bush. Talking about the theatre she comes across very much as a seasoned and knowledgeable professional having started at a very young age in showbusiness. Both she and Richard Gauntlett have worked extensively in theatre and an interesting discussion started regarding “celebrity ” casting in theatre shows and the discipline required for doing eight shows a week.

Moving to Doctor Who the outline for Mel, Bonnie explained, was very brief namely that Melanie was into health, a computer programmer and came from Pease Pottage so it wasn’t a lot to work with. Life as a companion wasn’t straightforward as she recalled being in a freezing cold swimming pool for Paradise Towers. Richard Gauntlett, who played Urak in Time and the Rani joked about how his physical skills got him the role of the Tetrep. He is a juggler who started a theatre show career in Barnum with Michael Crawford. Both Bonnie and Richard talked about the challenges of being on location in a quarry and working with a monster costume.

Stephen Wyatt talked about the development of the script for Paradise Towers and revealed how he wrote the first drafts of episodes 2,3 and 4 in six days (incredible!) and the issues amid the production of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy where the studios had to be cancelled. In a convention exclusive, Stephen revealed that he has signed a contract to do an audio drama about 1980’s producer John Nathan Turner and his partner production assistant Gary Downie with the working title of “Me and Him and Who” coming out in the autumn. He knew John and Gary in a personal capacity and went to see them socially quite often. All the panellists recounted some very funny and favourite memories of being with John Nathan Turner.

The first Terrance Dicks Award for Writers was presented to Gary Russell. Terrance Dicks widow Elsa was in attendance with their sons…

The Photo Studio

This ran over the two days with a variety of guests either singularly or in a group. I couldn’t resist having a group photo including the “ two Susans “ from tv and the films. At £25 it was really fantastic value and the Photo Studio proved extremely popular with everyone (photographs counted as personal items so I used my autograph tokens included in the ticket price at no additional cost).

The Space Museum

In a small room downstairs just by Bar 92 was a neat exhibition taken from the Museum of Classic Sci-Fi Museumofclassicsf (museumofclassicsci-fi.com) based in Allendale. This exhibition was a memories treasure trove of scrapbooks of newspaper cuttings going back to the 1970s and 1980s, rare personal photos from John Nathan Turner’s personal collection and there was a whole table of letters to fans from 1980s Master Anthony Ainley. I also have a letter from the Master and it’s a treasured piece of my childhood. There were also unique original story costumes and prosthetics on display from the Colin Baker story Mindwarp…

Like the previous day, there was also autograph hunting to be done and I had some brilliant chats with Carole Ann Ford, Graham Cole, Bonnie Langford and also talking with Roberta Tovey about the Dalek films she had been in. I’ve already tweeted Russell T Davies to ask if Carole Ann Ford (Susan the Doctor’s grandchild,) can be invited to the 60th Anniversary special. Fingers crossed it could happen.

I left the event on Sunday evening before the final event and raffle but in conclusion, the DWAS convention has been overall a fantastically friendly and enjoyable event over the two times I’ve attended. Where else could I have had in 2019 a kiss on the cheek from Peter Purves to seal the deal in the charity auction on a Deep Breathe film poster print I won, had full-size replica Daleks (bring back the metal meanies DWAS) “escort me” in the lifts to breakfast, in 2022 almost do a Gok Wan style swap with Katy Manning over my much-coveted waistcoat jacket and have spoken to the original unearthly child Carole Ann Ford.

The DWAS attract their guests in an informal, relaxed atmosphere and for forty-eight hours you can live, talk and breathe Doctor Who with like-minded people. What’s not to love really.

Tickets are already on sale for next year’s convention – The Capitol Six Decades at the Crowne Plaza, London Gatwick on the 15th and 16th April 2023.

The DWAS has also negotiated a special room rate for attendees who stay at the hotel. I would really recommend, if you can afford it, to go for both days because there are different guests and highlights on each of the days you really shouldn’t miss. Put a date in the diary because you won’t regret it.