This year I got an early morning flight home on Monday, and didn’t have time to finish this post before leaving. After a full day of travel, I didn’t have the mental fortitude to finish it off once I got home, either. My apologies for the tardiness.

Sunday got off to a bit of a rough start, when the hotel room alarm—that none of us had set—went off at 6 a.m. I’d been keeping a pretty early schedule anyway, so I just got up and headed for the lobby for breakfast and blogging.

After that leisurely start, I headed to Program A for the commentary on “Heaven Sent” with director Rachel Talalay. She was joined by writer Sarah Dollard, who wrote on Series Nine and Ten. Aside from the full cut of the episode, Rachel showed us a few other goodies, like deleted scenes and a pre-visualization clip. My favorite moment, though, was Sarah’s comment as we watched the Doctor break his hand on the wall over and over again: “Narratively speaking, this is the Doctor practicing to punch a racist in ‘Thin Ice.'”

Then I had a long break. I considered going to the Barrowman panel after lunch, but decided that as I’d seen him last time he was at Gally and I wasn’t too keen on sitting in that overcrowded space if I could help it, I took a pass this time.

Instead, during the following slot, my good friend Jeff found seats for us in Program A, staying for “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (the male headliner guest panel, sans Barrowman), while I went off to Program B for “Verity! In Defense Of” (IDO). IDO was, as always, full of hilarity, both from contestants’ answers and Verity moderator Deb Stanish’s reactions to a few key defense topics.

I also appreciated their slight change in format, where someone who won three times in a row would then be retired from the stage. This mechanic allowed for complete contestant changeover two or three times, giving even more audience members a chance to try their hand (and avoid the place where Deb’s 24 oz water cup had tipped over and spilled completely right on one of the couch seats).

Then it was time to go join Jeff in Program A again, where director Wayne Yip and voice-of-the-Daleks Nicholas Briggs did a live commentary on the New Year’s special Resolution. While I enjoyed what both guests had to say, especially about keeping the appearance of the Dalek under wraps (the code name that replaced “Dalek” in all the scripts was “Kevin”), I was really tired, and as I’d already seen the episode twice before, there wasn’t  lot to keep my brain engaged. I absolutely struggled to stay awake.

Fortunately, the next panel gave me more on which to focus. “The Women Who Lived” brought all the female headliner guests (except Catherine Tate) together. I could almost feel everyone on stage, panelists and interviewers alike, hoping and working to keep it from going down the same path as last year’s final panel.

In the end, it worked out, and programming moved on to the Year in Review video. I had already seen one or two of the clips before, but most of them were new to me, which makes it fun. And then the con staff pulled a fast one on program director Shaun Lyon and sneaked in a fifteen-minute video thanking him for his hard work over the last 30 years, to make Gally happen.

It made for an emotional start to the closing ceremonies—which was then made all the more emotional with the announcement that four guests would not be returning to Gally in the future. Staff brought these guests out for a final farewell: samples of the Marriott carpet.

Now the main pattern—the one on the far left in this photo—will be kept in the Gallifrey One archives, and probably put on display somewhere next year. At least two of the others, and possibly all three, will be added to next year’s charity auction. There are a lot of people who will be willing to pay a lot of money for a chunk of that history, so it will be interesting to see how that goes. But I did like the suggestions I saw on the hashtag on Twitter that perhaps one could be raffled, so those of us without huge funds had a chance at the carpet, or that many smaller chunks could be cut and sold at a lower price.

At any rate, one could hardly wish for a more Gally end to Gally. And that’s the thing that I don’t think I have ever gotten across in these posts—or will ever be able to: that whatever guest or panels or cosplays I tell you about, I’ll never be able to give you the true flavor of the con. Because when it comes down to it, the trappings don’t matter; it’s the culture, the people, that make Gally what it is.

And I can’t wait to see my found Gally family again next year.