We attended the second ever Oxford Comic Con, which alongside myriad cosplayers, gamers, comic book artists and nerds galore hosted The Sixth Doctor himself, Colin Baker!
For a weekend, Oxford played host to cosplay, celebs and myriad nerdalicious events as Comic Con invaded the city of dreaming spires.
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Shazam! OxCon 2016 – that’s the Oxford Comic Con – happened, and partly because we’re located just around the corner, but mainly because it was totally badass, Who Back When (in this case represented by Mirimu, DrewBackWhen, The Roarmeister and Ponken) made an appearance.
We attended two Doctor Who talks: one by writer Matt Fitton on Doctor Who Audiobooks and writing for Big Finish, and another by Miranda Loughry on Doctor Who as a modern Gilgamesh. We also met Simon Fisher Becker (aka Dorium Maldovar) and saw a bunch of cosplayers, so have a listen to our thoughts and impressions, and check out these radtastic photos from OxCon 2016.
Firstly, your podcast is fantastic. I’ll certainly continue listening in future.
Also, it’s wonderful to hear that you enjoyed my talk. I wish I had addressed the resolution of the Doctor’s hero’s journey in Human Nature and The Family of Blood (and to a lesser extent after the Human-Time Lord metacrisis in Journey’s End). Certainly, those episodes are so beloved because they’re pauses in the otherwise immutable cycle of the monomyth. These episodes necessarily depict the Doctor taking on human flaws and emotions, thus rendering him more relatable to a human audience. The Doctor’s abilities also change, sometimes liberating him from the limitations of his quasi immortality (i.e. aging more slowly than his companions, thereby being condemned to a life of perpetual solitude). Furthermore, the Doctor’s human avatars’ ability to save people demonstrates that we’re also capable of meaningfully impacting our world. In this way, episodes that humanize the Doctor combat nihilism.
Thanks for continuing to discuss this point. I’ll certainly incorporate it into future revisions of my paper.