Saturday was cosplay day for me! Ever since last year, when the usual suspects got together on Sunday night and said, “What’s our group cosplay going to be next year?”, I’ve been looking forward to wearing this costume. Having already done TARDISes, K9s, Doctor Who/comics mash-ups, and one of us (with a different group) Daleks, we decided it was time to try Cybermen.

Our different decades approach worked well for the TARDISpod, so we decided to go that route again for the CyberSquad. Unfortunately, a couple months later, one of our number decided she wouldn’t be able to make it to the con this year, and I kind of stopped talking about it with the others. Another of us sadly had to skip Gally entirely due to a death in her family, and the remaining two of us never really coordinated anything. We saw each other briefly in the hallway before the Masquerade.

However, I enjoyed the hell out of my ’60s-themed Cyberman, which I dubbed the Cyber-hippie. I’m particularly proud of the Cyber-paisleys on my tunic, which I designed, and my fabulous husband (who constructs all my costumes) translated into a pattern and stitched on his embroidery machine.

It was very gratifying to have so many people smile, comment, or ask for pictures. A few people clearly liked the costume, but didn’t clue into the “hippie” part until I made the peace sign; watching their eyes light up as realization dawned never failed to delight me. It all made for a good reminder of why I enjoy original cosplay.

I also came across a few other cosplayers with whom I had to take pictures, like this other friendly Cyberman with a service to offer (I don’t know why anyone would turn it down) and my friend Derek Kompare (@d_kompare), who made a very natty Twelve.

As for programming (yes, there was lots of fabulous programming, too!), after a social delay in the lobby, I ended up at the Tony Curran (van Gogh from Vincent and the Doctor) interview partway through. I will admit that I very nearly walked right back out, because I came in at a point where someone’s question had clearly turned to van Gogh’s mental illness, and Tony was expressing his opinions about modern treatments. As someone who has suffered from mental illness (depression) and been successfully treated with pharmaceuticals, I found his dismissive attitude mildly offensive, but I decided to stay and see how the conversation turned. The rest of the Q&A was more palatable, and I didn’t feel like I’d wasted the time.

After quite a bit of wandering, my next event was my own panel, “Jodie and the Yorkshire Cats.” Moderator Riley Silverman (@rileyjsilverman) stated up front—and the entire panel agreed—that the silly update to the panel title changing it from “Cats” to “Cast” was absolute rubbish, and we were keeping the originally printed title. The conversation centered around the four leads in Series Eleven, and I felt like all of us on the panel (the others being Richard Dinnick, Anita Sengupta, and Robert Smith?) had a chance to contribute to the discussion, which the audience seemed to enjoy, too.

Since much of the cast of Babylon 5 was here, I considered trying to get Walter Koenig’s autograph (because Chekov—I have to admit I’ve never seen B5) while the autograph session was happening, but when I realized I’d have to stand in the line for the entire B5 cast to get that one autograph (and the line was redonkulous), I decided I didn’t need it that much.

Instead, I went to Program A to watch the “This or That” panel with Nicola Bryant (Peri), Rosie Jane (Bill Potts’s mum), Caitlin Blackwood (young Amelia Pond), and Rachel Talalay (director extraordinaire). There were some amusing moments, like how Nicola kept finding a way to have it all, and Rachel needing to refrain from answering (e.g., Marvel or DC). However, I left early so I could drop off ribbons at Catherine Tate’s signing table (to help in her battle against Barrowman for ribbon supremacy) on my way to the Verity! meetup.

The meetup room was ungodly hot, and set up for a panel rather than milling around and chatting, so it was a somewhat less satisfying experience (for me, anyway) than previous meetups, but I wouldn’t miss a chance to hang with the Verities even so.

Then it was time for the “#meWho” panel, which spent some time deconstructing the final panel of last year’s Gally (“Gallifrey Waits No More”), which unexpectedly turned to story after story from those panelists about their experiences of sexual harassment and assault in the industry. I felt privileged to be in the room last year, and I was again privileged to experience the vulnerability and support this year. It’s a hard, raw topic that we need to continue to treat with dignity and respect. I appreciate that those on this panel did so.

I was grateful that I had a scheduled break at this stage; I needed some time to process. But the next panel I attended, “Healing Through Sci-Fi: Why Representation Matters,” was also pretty intense. The panelists discussed several axes of marginalization, including race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, size, physical ability, and mental illness (and possibly others I’m forgetting).

It was thus something of a mental whiplash experience when I left the panel early in order to get to my kaffeeklatsch with Christopher Jones and Greg Weisman. Mostly we talked Young Justice, but there was some discussion of Gargoyles, Doctor Who comics, and just general discussion of the business of comics and animation.

Then I got a break for dinner at the food trucks before the Masquerade. As always, the Masquerade provided everything I could hope for: the costumes were fabulous (the novice cosplayer who did Donna with the beetle on her back—with fully animatronic beetle!—was super impressive, as was the Victorian era femme Fifth Doctor, the LED-lit TARDIS, and about a dozen others that I can’t even remember to name), Tony Lee was snarkily funny, and the halftime “Would I Lie to You?” show hosted by Paul Cornell (with guests Rob Williams, Rachael Stott, Christopher Jones, Lisa Greenwood, Tim Treloar, and Chase Masterson) was hilarious. It was, as ever, a great capstone to the busiest day of the con.

And just like that, it was down to the final day.