ReGeneration Who took place March 23rd-25th in Baltimore, MD right next door to the Inner Harbor. This was my first time attending ReGeneration Who since their inaugural convention back in 2015. A lot has changed and some things have stayed the same. Now when I'm reviewing a convention, I like to look at Guests, Programing and Vendors. Just an FYI, I only attended the first 2 days of the Con.Guests:
ReGeneration Who went all out this year in the quantity and quality of Dr Who guests. The headliners were clearly Peter Capaldi and Michelle Gomez. These two were fresh off their final appearances on the show and the attendees were certainly glad to see them in a smaller setting. Not only were Peter Capaldi and Michelle Gomez there, but ReGeneration Who brought in a slew of more guests like Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding and the list goes on and on. The 2 guests that I was particular interested in were Matthew Waterhouse who played Adric and William Russell who played Ian Chesterton. Out of all the conventions I have attended, this was my first time meeting both of them. The character of Adric might take a lot of flack from fans, but as kid of about the same age when I started watching Dr Who, he was the character that I could most relate to. Then what can you say about William Russell? He was there from the beginning and was an intrical part in the early success of the show and it was a honor to meet and thank him for his excellent work on the show.My only complaint was about the autograph process at ReGeneration Who. It appeared to me that everything ran smoothly for most of the guests. Friday was pretty slow, so you could walk right up to a guests and get their autograph, but on Saturday if you wanted Peter Capaldi and/or Michelle Gomez you had to wait in a very long line, which can be expected when you are trying to meet big stars, My complaint is that to get autographs from Peter Capaldi and/or Michelle Gomez they had everyone wait in the same line. Some of us (like me) just wanted to get Michelle Gomez's signature and did not want to get Capaldi's signature, but we had to wait in a line with everyone else. Now halfway through the process they did smarten up and create a new line for people who just wanted Michelle's autograph, but that wasn't until after we had a spent a considerable amount of time in the other line. It would have been nice if they had figured that out beforehand. Now I cannot say how the photo op process went, because I did not buy any photo ops.
Programing:
ReGeneration Who packed their 3 days with a lot of programming from interviews with all the guests to even a variety show. There was probably something for everyone. I personal only attended 2 panels. The first was, the Trial of a Time Lord Revisited with Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant and Michael Jayston. This was a pretty good panel with the 3 main people from that season. Of course as in many panels that are supposed to be a certain topic, they get off point and most of the panel becomes something else entirely. But overall it wasn't too bad.
The other panel I attended was the Big Finish panel with director/produces Jason Haigh-Ellery and a surprise panelist Lisa Greenwood, who plays Flip on numerous Big Finish productions. This was an excellent panel, especially considering it was early in the morning. Jason and Lisa talked about the future of Big Finish and the direction they are headed. This was an excellent panel for any Big Finish fan, but I thought there would be more people attending it. If you are not listening to Big Finish, you are missing out.
The one thing I would have liked to see was another panel going on at the same time as the Peter Capaldi panel. I know pretty much everyone was at the Peter Capaldi panel, but for those of us that have seen him before or people who don't like huge crowds, it would have been nice to have an option to go to another panel.
Vendors:
This is where I think ReGeneration Who kind of fell flat. They had a vendor room and a separate area for artists that were selling goods. It would have been better if they were all in one room in my opinion. The vendor room was rather small and then they had some guests signing in there too, which made the room even smaller. When I attend a Dr Who Con, one of the things I look forward to the most is to see a huge amount of Dr Who merchandise in one area, because for a lot of us we don't have that back home. With a few exceptions, the amount of vendors and merchandise was a major letdown. Overall:
