Last night was one of the best nights of my life. Getting tickets to the Doctor Who World Tour was like trying to get tickets to see The Beatles in their prime. Of course, the venue is a lot smaller (being that it is a theater and not a concert hall), so there wasn’t an overabundance of tickets. However, Doctor Who has grown in fandom size significantly over the past few years.

Doctor Who screening with my friend Erin back in April 2011.

I remember before they sold tickets to fan screenings in NYC, you had to wait all day on the sidewalk hoping you were able to get into the screening. The first one that I went to was in April 2011 (with Matt Smith, Alex Kingston, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill, and Steven Moffat). I arrived around 9am with a few friends, and the screening didn’t start until 7pm. Well, when we arrived at 9am, the line was already wrapped around the block and my friends & I had just made it into the 3rd theater. Not the theater with the cast & writer. It was a simultaneous broadcast in the theater I was in, and they did show the Q&A, but of course we weren’t in the same room. I would say, “we may as well have been watching them online or on TV”, but the experience was fun, and sharing a theater with die hard fans made it all worth it. I would have done it again in a heart beat (although, maybe arrived a few hours earlier).

Several hours into waiting in line for the Doctor Who screening in April 2011.

Three years later, the fandom has grown probably three times the size, if not more. I remember not even two years ago, you had to buy Doctor Who memorabilia online through BBC websites over in the UK, or perhaps at a comic book shop. It wasn’t easy getting your hands on figurines, sonic screwdrivers, a miniature Tardis or Dalek replicas. I made many friends through my love of Doctor Who. I even turned many on to the show, as I was turned onto it by friends of mine. It wasn’t easy coming across a fan randomly, but when you did it was generally an instant friendship. Now, you can’t walk into Hot Topic, Barnes & Noble, or any other nerdy store without seeing a plethora of Doctor Who merchandise. It’s both amazing and annoying. It’s very much a catch 22 for me because Continue reading →