Shirt...

...Troi-ing To Hyde

It was EM-CON Nottingham time, but due to financial constraints, Dufus was unable to accompany Shirt. It was therefore a lone Shirt that caught a train from London to Nottingham at a ridiculous time, listening to ‘The Kamelion Empire’ as he sped through the country, whilst those around him had to continually move due to the reservations not displaying correctly above the seats. When booking his ticket for the Con, the main draw for Shirt had been Brent Spiner, his favourite ST:TNG character, Data (who also appeared as Holmes in the episode ‘Elementary, Dear Data’). However, as with his Watson the previous year, Mr. Data was a late cancellation. Shirt consoled himself that Marina Sirtis, who as well as being ST:TNG’s Deanna Troi, was also a guest star in the Granada Sherlock Holmes, was still attending, along with Jonathan Hyde, also a Granada guest star.

On arrival in Nottingham, and having failed to get any free comics on Free Comic Book Day the previous year, Shirt decided to visit Naughty Asteroid International before making his way to the arena, in the hope of getting the DW Free Comic this time. On arrival an hour after opening, he found a long queue, snaking out of the shop, which after a moment’s doubt he joined like the good little fan that he is. The queue moved slowly, but finally after around twenty minutes, Shirt was within sight of the wall containing the FCBD comics.

“You can take five comics, but no duplicates”, the staff member explained to him.

Looking at the wall, Shirt could see that there were three copies of the DW comic left, but this swiftly reduced to two and then one, with Shirt five back in the queue. He therefore spent the next five minutes, mentally trying to stop anyone taking the final copy. This seemed to work, and it was soon his turn, with Shirt striding up and emphatically grabbing the comic, clearly displaying the purpose of his attendance. Picking up four other comics including ‘Buffy’, ‘Casper’ and ‘Catwoman’, and he was dashing out of the store, rushing to the arena in an attempt to make up time.

Shirt finally reached the arena ten minutes before general entry, but due to having an earlybird ticket, was able to go straight in. The gigantic queue for the tickets booth, meant that Shirt gave up on the idea of attempting to book photoshoots with Marina and Jonathan (Shirt had not realised that advance booking for photoshoots ended three weeks before the event), having to hope that both were allowing table photos.

Moving to the signing area, Shirt took a virtual queuing ticket for Marina, and was told to come back in five-ten minutes. Jonathan was signing at a table behind a gigantic queue for ‘Power Rangers’ guests, and so it took Shirt a few minutes to find him and see that he did not have a queue.

Paying for an autograph and a table photo, Shirt put down a photo that he had had printed of Jonathan in the Granada episode, ‘The Dying Detective’.

“Culverton Smith !”, commented Jonathan, recognising the role (the equivalent of which Toby Jones played in ‘Sherlock: The Lying Detective'), before signing the photo and posing for the photo with Shirt taken by his steward.

Moving back to Marina’s queue, he was told to “come back in five to ten minutes”, so grazed the stalls on the arena floor. This action was repeated around four or five times, due to the queue moving so slowly due to Ms. Sirtis’ chattiness. However, finally he was allowed to join the queue, which continued to move slowly. In fact the majority of attendees managed to meet the other two ST:TNG guests, Gates McFadden (Dr. Crusher) and Michael Dorn (Worf), within the space of ten minutes, before having to beg to be allowed into Marina’s queue. In fact the queue was moving so slowly, that almost as many people in front of Shirt, gave up and left the queue, as actually met Marina. Shirt’s heart fell on noticing Sixties-Doctor-Who-Fan (and his wife) a few places further up the queue. In front of Shirt was a family – mother, father, two sons and a daughter - all in Starfleet uniforms, with the young girl made up to look like a Klingon. Luckily, they only bought one photo between them, but Marina insisted on having a photo with the girl despite the fact that they had not paid for this. Finally Shirt reached Marina, paying for an autograph and table photo.

Marina was excited on seeing that Shirt had a Granada Sherlock Holmes video cover for her sign, but was initially confused, believing that it did not contain her episode, until she realised that underneath ‘The Man With The Twisted Lip’ it also said ‘The Six Napoleons’ (in which she appears as Lucrezia). In fact she was so excited that she insisted on showing the cover to Michael Dorn at the next table.

“Where do you live, Shirt ?”, asked Marina.

“Epsom”, replied Shirt.

“Is that in Kent ?”

“Surrey”.

Shirt knew what was coming next, being handed a flyer for ‘Dark Sublime’, a play that Marina was about to star in at London’s Trafalgar Studios, described as “a love-letter to British sci-fi television – those that make it and those that adore it”.

Posing for a photo with Marina, Shirt gathered up his cover, and moved off for a brief sit down.

Having had a brief rest, Shirt wandered around the rest of the stalls on the arena floor and around the outside of the building, picking up a free ‘Dark Sublime’ badge and a free ‘X-Men: Dark Phoenix’ poster, and buying a Titan ‘Rose’ figure and a custom Ninth Doctor Lego figure.

It was lunchtime, and so Shirt went in search of sustenance, buying a ‘Meal Deal’ from a local supermarket. Having met all the people he wanted to, having decided to forego ‘three Boys from the Dwarf’ (Chris Barrie, Danny John Jules & Robert Llewellyn), Shirt made his way back to Naughty Asteroid International, for a proper look round now it was not so crowded. Leaving without buying anything, Shirt made next for the other Nottingham comic book shop, to find that for the second year running, they were selling the FCBD comics for 25p each. They unsurprisingly had lots of copies of the DW comic, but Shirt baulked at paying for something that should be free, even to get copies for Chalky and Dufus. A little further up the road was an Oxfam Bookshop, which was selling off loads of copies of ‘Doctor Who Adventures’ (but none that Shirt wanted).

Shirt had over four-and-a-half hours until his booked train home, but had a plan, having held off seeing ‘Avengers: Endgame’ until that weekend. Therefore, for the next three-and-a-half hours, Shirt sat comfortably in a Cineworld seat (his assigned one, as opposed to several groups of seemingly unaccompanied boys, who kept sitting where they liked, despite being constantly being made to move, the screening all but sold out), both laughing and crying at the ensuing film.

Making his way back to the train station, Shirt stopped to buy his dinner at a burger restaurant whose Kids Meals featured toys from the forthcoming ‘Detective Pikachu’ movie. However, despite the deerstalkered Pikachu being the toy on display behind the counter, Shirt ended up with Bulbasaur. Getting to the station with fifteen minutes to spare, Shirt began listening to ‘The Hunting Ground’, before getting onto the train when it pulled in (having to stop someone else sitting in his reserved seat). Sitting back and enjoying the most recent Sixth Doctor audio, Shirt mused on a very successful, very enjoyable day, even with Dufus’ absence. Maybe EM-CON would try for Data and Geordi again next year, and he and Dufus could go together.

[PL]