Our member and current Vice President of the Milwaukee Time Lords, Carl Féthière, has created a video of images taken at our 20th Anniversary Dinner, which was held August 15th, 2009. This is our first club YouTube post. You can help out by joining YouTube and posting a comment.
This weekend has arrived! Dragoncon 2009 begins as of Thursday at 4:00 PM, the time that registration opens. After nearly a year of planning this trip, all that is left is travelling to this annual gaming & fantasy convention. I still have my MARTA card, which I saved and thought to place in my wallet so I don’t forget it.
Last year, I was the sole Milwaukee Time Lord member in attendance. This year, my sister, Debbie Frey, will be with me. The cost is less more me this year. I found a cheaper hotel that is closer to the Chamblee MARTA station. Gas prices are much lower this year. At home I’ve seen prices around $2.54/gallon, whch is much better than over $4/gallon. I observed price drops as I travel southwards. Also, my sister paid for half the hotel and expenses. And this year, some help from mom. Thanks!
Last year, I also brought along ads to place on tables. This year, I am printing up ad cards, which require less hand processing than our MTL flyers. I was able to place six ads on one page, multiplying the number of cards. It’s still much less than the anticipated 30,000+ attendance, but I intend to mainly target the Britrack area, where I am most likely to find Doctor Who fans who may be interested in our club. We still publish a printed newsletter that includes a summary of science fiction and general tv/movie news. We mostly communicate with each other by email. I don’t know of any member who has a Twitter account or any other “New Media” online presence.
I will be driving to Atlanta, following the same route as before. Last year was a learning experience driving all through the night for the first time and longer than I ever have within 14 hours. We’ll stop at least four times, perhaps more if needed. I used both Mapquest and RandMcnally sites to plan the trip this year. I liked the RandMcnally print out format much better as a navigation aid and the maps were smaller and used less ink. It’s hard to be precise, however, when selecting stopping points. I was unable to select the Lake Forest Oasis as a stop, since the map site uses cities as stopping points. Lake Forest, ILL was as close as I could get.
I hope to take lots of photos this year. Last year I had a credit card sized camera that was powered by USB cable and had limited power and memory. This year, I purchased a Kodak EasyShare camera from an Office Depot bargain table. If I have my laptop with me, I can transfer images once memory is full. This camera used two AA batteries. I hope to switch to rechargable batteries once I get through the ones I got. I practiced using the camera at various events and situations this summer. I have a travel tripod which I can use to get timed and low light photos.
I will post images from this blog along with a summary for each day. After registration, I am really looking forward to a Star Party being held at the Bradley Observatory. There is a banquet at 7:00 pm and a lecture at 8:00 pm.
There is sure to be video recordings posted at YouTube so you can enjoy some of the panels. Do a search on “Dragoncon 2009″. Add name of your favorite series to narrow search. There are Battlestar Galactica cl
On August 26th, 1989, the Milwaukee Time Lords founded its private organization from a band of Renegade Time Lords, which was a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student club. (Non-students could be members, but not officers.) One of our founding members, Ed Hochman, obtained use of this residence hall meeting room at the Bradford Arms located in Milwaukee, so that we could begin with the business of establishing our club.
That evening, we agreed to the “Milwaukee Time Lords” as our club name. We named our club newsletter “The Relative Times” and our fanzine (no longer being published) “Qui To Time”. We had our initial by-laws drafted by our official parliamentarian, Christopher Cebula, also our official contact with our public television station, Channels 10/36. We had a board of five officers and a few committees established.
Then something happened that changed our business meeting to a Q&A panel meeting! Earlier that summer, Polariscon I in the Twin Cities, Minnesota featured two Doctor Who celebrities: Sylvester McCoy and John Levene. One of our members worked at the convention as a “gopher”. Connections were made and Mr. John Levene arrived as a guest at our club meeting!
Amazing! Right? How often does that happen? Here’s a photo taken and used in our club’s first newsletter. (Hence in black and white — better color submissions wanted!)
This is our 20th anniversary. We celebrated with a night out on a dinner cruise with Edelweiss from 7:45 pm to about 10:15 pm. The boat tour was very interesting and the food was excellent.
MTL Members: Tell your club memories here or join our blog and post your own stories. Let us know how you found us. If you attended the cruise, share your stories and photos here.
In the spirit of the lines exchanged in Doctor Who: Time Crash - All my love to long ago — and to the days yet to come. We’ve accomplished a very difficult challenge — keeping a science fiction club alive during the days of no new Doctor Who up through the current series. If anyone else has accomplished a continuous run for 20+ years in science fiction fandom, let us know!
Also thanks to the excellent service of Edelweiss Boat Tours. It was probably our best event in our 20 year history, next to our founding day surprise event.
The Milwaukee Time Lords had their day at the Renaissance Faire Sunday, July 26th. (With ComicCon 2009 going on at the same time in San Diego) We departed from the usual meeting place at Holt Park N Ride lot at around 9:00 am and got there at the gate before it opened at 10:00 am.
Here is my set of photos I took at the faire.
Please share your photos and stories!
As with the previous Doctor Who panel, I have the Torchwood panel here for you to enjoy without you having to hunt YouTube for all the parts. There are lots of Children of Earth spoilers here, so if you have not seen this yet, you might want to wait until you have (it’s on DVD by now).
Panelists: (left to right) Russell T Davies, John Barrowman, Eros Lyn, Julie Gardner
This one is in seven parts.
Enjoy the panel!
If you missed ComicCon 2009 or the Doctor Who Panel or were there and want to see it again, I have arranged a set of YouTube clips conveniently for you. It can take some time and effort burrowing through the ComicCon YouTube video posts to find all the video clip parts.
Here, I present to you the Doctor Who Panel, featuring Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Eros Lynn and David Tennant. The first part of the panel features questions by the moderator. Later, questions were taken from the audience. The usual procedure at these panels is to have those asking questions line up before a microphone so that everyone can hear the questions.
The panel was recorded for a Doctor Who Confidential, so expect to see a professionally edited version I suspect in the next Doctor Who video release.
Enjoy the panel in the comfort of your home!
(Also the two trailers referred to in the panel are as pop up links at the bottom of this post, which you can pull up when the trailers are run during the panel, so you get that experience, too.)
TRAILERS
End of Time
[This is the first in a series of MTL 2009 event reports. Feel free to contribute your impressions and photos if you attended this event.]
Milwaukee Time Lords viewed the Milwaukee Lakefront Fireworks on July 3, 2009, sponsored by US Bank. Here is a link to a few images taken of the fireworks show. We were located just to the east of the Milwaukee Art Museum/War Memorial building. There is a concrete area where it was convenient to set up and mark our spot early in the day. The building shadow crept over to block the sun sometime after 1:00 pm, giving us the benefit of shade.
Milwaukee Time Lord members are welcome to become blog posters here. Send an email and I’ll get you access.
The Dragoncon convention consists of groups devoted to areas of interest, such as British television, American television, comics, gaming, etc. Along with fictional and art-based interests, there are three tracks devoted to space, science and skepticism, the last track added in 2008. Many who pursue gaming and comics are also interested in science and applied science (robotics, computers, etc). Likewise, you’ll find some of the biggest science fiction fans in the fields of science.
If you have attended science fiction conventions in the past, you may see included a panel or two featuring space and/or astronomy slide shows showing many real accomplishments in part inspired by science fiction writers. Some space science groups may have a table to give out free literature and photos. The “swag” paid for by your tax dollars at NASA is most certainly worth a look to see if there are any cool posters, buttons and still photos to add to your convention bag.
At Dragoncon, a number of scientists and engineers have stepped up to the plate to show us what we can do today.
Here’s a list of the Dragoncon 2009 space/science guests who have signed up as of today:
C. Kevin Barrett
Dr. John E. Bradford
Laura A Burns
Ginger Campbell, MD
A. C. Charania
John Cmar
Brian Dunning
Stephen L. Gibson
Stephen Granade
Kevin R. Grazier
Dr. Stephen D. Howe
Richard Jakiel
Les Johnson
Bill Keel
Patrick Mason
Ginny Mauldin-Kinney
Joe Nickell
Friggatriskaidekaphobia Treatment Nurse
D.M. Paul
Phil Plait
Benjamin Radford
James Randi
Trina Ray
Richard Saunders
Jason Schneiderman
Eugenie C Scott
Seth Shostak
Alison Michelle Smith
John C. Snider
Kim Steadman
You have visit the Dragoncon site and click on their names to obtain more information about each guest.
The list has grown considerably since the last post. If you are fans of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Battlestar Gallactica, Farscape or Firefly, this year’s line-up looks great! The Dragoncon site lists guests alphabetically, so you need to scan through the list if you seek guests for your favorite series. The guests are by TV series.
Star Trek
John Billingsley
James Cawley
Robert Duncan McNeil
Kate Mullgrew
Leonard Nimoy
Dwight Schultz
Garrett Wang
Dr Who/Torchwood
Eric Roberts
Eliza Roberts
Battlestar Gallactica
Dirk Benedict
Aaron Douglas
Richard Hatch
Alessandro Juliani
Kandyse McClure
Mary McDonnell
Edward James Olmos
Kate Vernon
Babylon 5
Bruce Boxleitner
Claudia Christian
Stephen Furst
Tracy Scoggins
Farscape
Claudia Black
Virginia Hey
Lani John Tupu
Stargate-SG1
Michael Shanks
Firefly
Ron Glass
Other Guests
Catherine Bach
Trace Beaulieu
Julie Benz
Bob Bergen
Michael Connell Biehn
Jennifer Blanc
Barry Bostwick
Doug Bradley
Charisma Carpenter
Bill Corbett
Bruce Davison
Lexa Doig
Peter Facinelli
Charles Fleischer
Louise Fletcher
Paul Goddard
Dean Haglund
Kane Hodder
Richard Kiel
Traci Lords
James Marsters
Paul McGillion
Jason Momoa
Michael Nankin
Jasika Nicole
John Noble
Mary Jo Pehl
James Randi
Alan Ruck
John Schneider
Helen Slater
Kristy Swanson
Michael Welch
I have been through the Dragoncon guest list and it looks like an excellent line up for science fiction and fantasy fans. I have noted that the front list is much shorter than the list you see when you select “Current Guests” under “Guest List”.
Here, I have organized it by TV series (main series guest is known for). I think it will make it easier for those deciding to attend based upon number of their favorite celebrities attending.
Got any others you plan to see? Are there any major updates since I posted this? Reply with your support for your favorite guests and why you want to see them.
Bablyon 5
Bruce Boxleitner
Tracy Scoggins
Battlestar Galactica (old and new versions)
Dirk Benedict
Kevin R. Grazier - science advisor
Richard Hatch
Kandyse McClure
Edward James Olmos
Doctor Who
Eliza Roberts
Eric Roberts
Farscape
Virginia Hey
Paul Goddard
Firefly
Ron Glass
Star Trek (any series)
John Billingsley
Robert Duncan McNeil
Anthony Montgomery
Kate Mulgrew
Leonard Nimoy
Garrett Wang
X-Files
Dean Haglund
Other guests that looked interesting (with links this time) as I scanned the list include:
Richard L. Altstatt
Kevin J. Anderson
Catherine Bach
Michael Connell Biehn
Jennifer Blanc
Barry Bostwick
Bruce Davison
Peter Facinelli
Alan Dean Foster
Paul McGillion
Alan Ruck
John Schneider