Earlier this week I learned that not only Karen Gillan but also Matt Smith would be across town at the end of next week for a convention. My first reaction was surprise. The second was glee. The third—which has continued ever since—was dejection.

Why such a gamut? To start, I never expected such big stars to visit my adopted home town. Living in the American Midwest, I’ve become inured to the disadvantages of “flyover country.” No one would ever have a (major studio) film opening in Chicago—the only city “important” enough to have a chance at shaking off its flyover status—let alone here in the Twin Cities. Minneapolis is not the place to go for “sightings” of film or television stars at restaurants or social hotspots du jour.

So hearing that Minneapolis Comic Con (the Wizard World run convention) had wrangled both recent Who stars (among an impressive list of others) came as a bit of a shock. That’s when I started dancing in my chair. “Woo hoo!” I thought. “I could meet Matt and Karen!” The mere idea that they’d be within a half-hour drive made me giddy. While I am not one of those folks who thinks their characters were the best thing since sliced bread, I liked them both well enough, and respect Matt and Karen as actors.

The relevant weekend is fast approaching, though. I wasn’t sure I’d have time, and cash is certainly in short supply lately. How much would it be just to get in the door? I knew I wouldn’t go all three days, but a single day might be do-able. Those tickets range from $35-45 (currently ~£21-27). That’s a little more than I’d like to spend, but I could almost justify it, to see Matt and Karen. Once I was in, though, I’d want access—after all, that’s what I’ve come to expect at Gally. Even if I couldn’t afford to get photos, I reasoned, I’d at least want autographs.

This week I put out a call for topic ideas, and one friend suggested I talk about a Companion I’d like to see return, either in the main show or in their own spin-off. “Brilliant!” I said. Interesting, I thought. How will I decide? What criteria should I use?

Going about it systematically, I should look at whose stories might be considered unfinished, or could be easily picked up again. Maybe Dodo Chaplet, Liz Shaw, Harry Sullivan, Tegan Jovanka, Grace Holloway, or even Peri Brown, whose fate is ambiguous. The actors’ deaths or unwillingness to engage in the community eliminates several of those, but leaves some interesting options.

Maybe I should think in terms of who might be off doing their own Doctor-esque work these days, like Sarah Jane Smith did (or does—she’s not “officially” dead (yet) in the Whoniverse!). I can envision several Companions doing their own thing, especially recent ones: Martha Jones, Rose Tyler (alt universe spin-off could work…), Ace, Nyssa (very much not Earth-based, though, which would be tricky), Jo Grant, or Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright (who, according to alt media, eventually married each other).

Spend enough time in this fandom, and eventually you’ll run across a plethora of “collectibles.” These insidious items may come in the form of mini-figures, statues, radio-controlled toys, or any number of other knick-knacks, but they all have one thing in common: they come in sets, and there are a lot of elements in each set.

I know from other experience that I simply must never buy any Doctor Who collectibles. It would spell my doom. Take, for example, the Case of the Buffy Trading Cards. Several years ago, a friend gave me a couple of random packs of Buffy collectible trading cards he’d picked up for free at a con he works. He knew I like the show, and figured it would be an amusing little gift for me, just for the hell of it. He did not, however, count on my obsessive personality.

Once I opened the cards and looked at them, I inevitably coveted the entire set. Thus began one of the less dignified periods of my life. I spent a ridiculous amount of time and money on eBay trying to fill in the gaps in my collection until I had every last one, complete with binder. Oh, and I’m not talking any old binder, either—I’m talking the officially licensed, covered with photos, designed especially for this collectible card set binder. It had multiple pages, each with room for probably a dozen cards to be encased in their own little plastic cocoons, to display the collection to its fullest.

It would not have occurred to me, years ago, to think that my view of a character might change depending on what I learned of the personality of the actor or actress depicting said character. As a society, we tend to bombard ourselves with minutiae about celebrities, so much so that even someone like me—who doesn’t particularly care about the private lives and lies of “the rich and famous”—can’t help but learn a few things. But more often than not, neither the dirty little secrets nor the heartwarming anecdotes had much impact on me.

More recently, though, I’ve dipped rather thoroughly (at least for me) into the stream of pop culture via Twitter, and from there peripherally via tumblr. The pop culture I view is heavily skewed toward Doctor Who, as one might expect, so I hear a lot of things about—and from—folks who are involved with the program in one way or another. One of the things I learned, to my own surprise though perhaps no one else’s, is that how these people interact with fans really sways how I view them.

To take a case in point on the negative end of the scale, a couple of years ago, one of my Twitter friends (a self-proclaimed feminist) objected to some tweets that Simon Pegg made from San Diego Comic-Con regarding women cosplayers. Specifically, she called him out for implicitly comparing a group of slave Leia cosplayers to food (with a Homer Simpson/doughnuts comment). I won’t go through the entire exchange, but suffice to say, he reacted badly and didn’t do anything to curb the abuse his fans subsequently heaped on her. Now I can barely watch scenes in The Long Game in which Pegg appears (though he’s a baddie there, so that helps), and get pulled out of the narrative whenever Scotty is on screen in the new Star Trek films. So bummer.