VISIONS OF VISIONS
by Karen S. Mauldin

I arrived at Chicago airport at 6PM on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, and made it to my room by around 6:30 or so. We went to the Contributor's Party in the Forum. This was fantastic! We waited for about an hour, talking with the fans, meeting people we knew online, and so on, then the stars arrived. We managed to get a number of short conversations with Peter Davison. In the course of the conversations some things came out. Peter is definitely on AOL and will definitely not tell his screen name, but it is blatantly obvious. It also came out that he was a Dark Shadows fan. We later went and got our picture taken with Frazer Hines (Jamie), who was the second major highlight of the weekend.

Friday, we made it to the Opening Ceremonies, which were semi-amusing, and the first panel, with Peter and Frazer, which was fantastic! These two really get along together. The discussion included an explanation for the "crap" speech in THE DOCTORS. Peter said that he only meant that the special effects were crap', not the show itself and that crappiness, in a way, was a good thing for Dr. Who, part of its charm and pointed to one of the reasons why he was disappointed by the TV Movie, in that the special effects were almost too good. They also discussed their memories of Patrick Troughton. I caught the end of the panel on Terry Nation later where they discussed all his work and where the Daleks are headed and that the copyright on them has gone to Terry Nation's children. Later, my roommates and I met with another friend and in the course of the discussion with him, it came out that I could go with him to the Press Conference of Peter's on Sunday morning. Anyway, after dinner, where Suki further explained Dark Shadows to me, we watched some of my new Dark Shadows tape, and then Suki went off to the Estrogen Brigade party and I went to the masquerade, which was OK. There was a great person who did Nirvanah Crane from Holoship, a young man with a perfect Fifth Doctor outfit. Then I went to the EB party where they were drinking, playing with balloons, watching Paul McGann clips, which didn't interest me, and playing with wonderful muppets of the Fifth and Eighth Doctor. Then I went to Mysterious Theater 337, where they were MSTying "Four to Doomsday" which was a lot of fun.

Saturday started early again, as we had decided to do the Peter/Frazer autographs at the 9:30AM session and we got there around 8:30 AM and so were pretty near the front.

Then I went to the Celebrity Luncheon. There, I was at a table with Gary Lockwood and got to learn lots about behind the scenes at movies. He seems to think that everything in Hollywood now runs on the bottom line and that they used to give movies more than a few days to become hits. Peter never came to our table, which was right next to the EB table, which had brought the muppet of Peter which they presented to Peter later on, when I also presented him with something. We also talked with Sheelagh Wells and Joe Nazarro, mainly about Blake's 7, which was kind of interesting. Then, as Suki and Alane went to the Animated Who discussion, I headed for the line for the Peter/Frazer pictures. Then we went to the supposed Peter/Frazer, but what ended up being just Peter forum which was again wonderful, included lots of interesting stories about Adric, All Creatures, and many other things. He talked about "Stalker's Apprentice" (there may be more of these coming out, as this was part of a set of books), "Parting Shots" (which wasn't very fun to make because of the director and is a film - and he plays a lawyer who is the best friend of the lead), and many other things. He also described how he got into the computers, what he had done on them, and how he was still getting the hang of it - apparently it took him a couple of weeks to get his computer running.

Then we got together with Suki and the EB and talked a lot, and eventually went into the Variety Show. Peter was emceeing. He introduced each act, some of which were one star playing tons of songs on their guitar - one has a CD coming out. Peter said he may have a CD he does himself coming out. He did lots of little jokes including a hilarious top-ten list of oxymorons ending with "Matthew Waterhouse, Actor", a satire of the guitar-playing and poem-reading star, and lots of other fun things, including an introduction to the art of the Pantomime, where he got the audience to shout out greetings to him ("Hello, Doctor!") and he threw eggs (plastic) and candy at the audience, and many other things. Julie Caitlin Brown sang a series of great songs and Jeff Conaway did the mediocre songs and the poetry readings. Peter did this thing where he came out with a book and said he was going to read one of his favorite passages from "Wuthering Heights"and he just read silently! At one point, a piano player wasn't ready and they got Peter to go out and stall. Also, Frazer did a lot of funny things, including one where he had the audience doing bird impressions, one side saying "willow", the other side saying "tit" (which prompted Peter to do a gesture with his puppet from behind-stage - that puppet had a lot to do in that show). Also, Frazer did this interesting skit with the piano player. All in all, it was a great Variety Show.

On Sunday, the Press Conference was wonderful (at 10AM)! Everyone asked all sorts of great questions and we got lots of pictures of Peter. I asked him what it was like to do the "Wind in the Willows" tapes - he said it was fascinating - they did the voices before the animation, which is why I think the Mole looks in a way like him, at least in gestures and things like that, and he had a mole' voice all ready, but they wanted him to use his own voice. I later asked him about "Sink or Swim". He remembers that show most for he and Robert Glenister, the person who played his brother, getting laughing fits backstage and on stage, what he calls corpsing', which means laughing at yourself, I believe, or at least laughing when you shouldn't on stage and he described the baby Jesus' scene from"Christmas in London" as one he particularly remembered them having trouble on. He also said he had to same problem with Robert in "Caves of Androzani", especially in the android scenes. He also discussed how amazingly hard it was to drive the Lagonda on "Campion", as the brake and accelerator were reversed from that of a normal car. He also mentioned that when he worked with Patrick Troughton on "All Creatures", all he talked about was gardening! Anyway, the press conference went well.. I also heard more chat of Dark Shadows and found out that Bob got Peter to pose for a picture of himself holding up a Dark Shadows t-shirt and that Peter was taking pictures of fans at the autograph session.

Then I went to the Sheelagh Wells, etc.forum for a while.

Then we had the last Peter/Frazer forum which was fantastic again. Included Peter's and Frazer's memories of "Moonbase" which was the one that kept Peter from corpsing on camera while doing Who and many other interesting things, like the fact that Peter has 7 VCRs and that Campion had no chance of returning and that had been true for a long time, but that Lugg, Brian Glover, had been wonderful to work with. Unfortunately, I had a plane to catch at 4:55, so I had to watch my watch and left, at the last possible moment at 3:45, when a fan was talking, I believe, but I was near the front (3rd row, I believe) and the rest of the con had arrived since I'd gone there - how embarrassing!

Anyway, I made my flight home.