Gally started full speed this year. LobbyCon was already in progress Wednesday night, and by Thursday it was insane. People had Fourth-Doctor-sized ribbon chains well before the con even began.

As for me, I had the chance to hang with the awesome local friends after I got in on Wednesday night. I’d planned to spend Thursday sitting in the lobby writing and socializing, but another pair of friends roped me into an excursion around town. So we traipsed off to the La Brea Tar Pits (equal parts fascinating and disturbing), then had lunch at Pink’s Hot Dogs.

Somewhere along the way, we heard the disappointing last-minute news that Alex Kingston had to cancel her appearance, since poor weather at her current filming location (Vancouver) had pushed filming out through the weekend. I think the screams of tortured Whovians could be heard throughout LA.

By about 5pm, when we got back to the Marriott after further tourism, LobbyCon was already a massive frenzy of ribbon trading. Even though I didn’t manage to connect with my ribbon supplier until about 10:30 (and therefore didn’t have any to trade), I still got a couple dozen ribbons. I turned in for what was my latest night to date, and counted myself well served.

Cosplay ate up much of Friday morning. This year’s group cosplay (dubbed “League of Doctors”) involved mashups of Who characters and superheroes/villains. We planned to meet up right before the live Radio Free Skaro episode, but as often happens with such things, the costumes my roommates and I had chosen gave us more trouble than anticipated. Despite an early start, we were fifteen minutes late for RFS.

The interviews were delightful as ever, and the hosts asked plenty of questions both predictable and a little more unconventional, but frankly I enjoyed the following interview panel more. If you ever get the chance to see Eve Myles in person, I highly recommend it; she was hilarious. Among other things, she has a wonderfully raunchy sense of humor—little wonder she and Barrowman got on so well.

After Eve, the League of Doctors headed to the pool for a photo shoot. We had four villain mashups and two heroes: Poison Ivy/Amy Pond (“Poison Amy”), River Song/Catwoman, Harley Quinn/Four, and Eleven/Loki (“Elevki”), Power Girl/Five, and my Thor/Eight (“DocThor”). We even had a stealth member (who also served as one of our photographers) doing Rory/Peter Parker. Photos are already floating around the Internet; I’ll share some here next week.

Some of us went through the Dealers’ Room to find comic artist Christopher Jones—partly because many of us wanted his “Bat Wolf” print, and partly because we thought he’d appreciate the costumes (which he did). After a mere four hours in costume, we called it quits and changed back into civvies.

We made it back to the con floor in time for the interviews with Naoko Mori and Burn Gorman. Mostly what I’ve gotten out of the Torchwood interviews is that Barrowman is a perverted practical joker (no big surprise). But both Naoko and Burn are really personable people, and seem like fun folks to hang out with. I’m looking forward to seeing more of them.

The next panel included the Classic Companions Carole Ann Ford, Sophie Aldred, Janet Fielding, Frazer Hines, and Wendy Padbury. That was another batch of delightful people. There was plenty of back and forth, especially between Sophie and Janet, who had completely different experiences with the way they and their characters were treated by John Nathan-Turner. I hope to see all of them more this weekend, too.

I had hoped that the last panel I attended on Friday would have been more enjoyable than I found it. With three panelists with serious writing chops (and two with whom I wasn’t familiar), I thought a panel talking about how they’d have continued shows that were canceled “Before Their Time” would be great fun. Unfortunately, they outright refused to touch Firefly, and most of the others mentioned I’d never even heard of, let alone seen. I came out vaguely amused but dissatisfied.

My evening petered off after that. My roommates and I ordered Indian food, I had hard cider in the lobby with a different friend, and I came in too late to “Doctor Who Live” to understand the rules of their improv. I simply gave up and decided to start fresh in the morning. There are two more days of the con. I hope I can make it through unscathed.