Many of the fans packed into Hall H on Thursday waited overnight on the street outside of the San Diego Convention Center for their chance to catch Peter Capaldi’s first appearance at SDCC since becoming the Twelfth Doctor on Doctor Who. Capaldi himself had visited the line for Hall H earlier in the day, embodying the goodwill actors portraying the Doctor have shown fans going all the way back to the classic series era.
Headoverfeels.com creators and editors Sage Young and Kim Rogers held their spots in line for 21 hours, with only one break to rest at a nearby friend’s house. “We had an amazing time,” Rogers said of the nearly day-long experience, “we thought it would be miserable but it was a gorgeous day. We had food, we had friends, and we knew we would have an amazing seat.” The pair ended up being some of the first 100 people let into the massive 6,500 seat hall.
If the fans were tired from their line-waiting experience, their enthusiasm was undimmed as Capaldi took the stage with co-stars Jenna Coleman and Michelle Gomez, who portray the Doctor’s companion Clara and long-time nemesis The Master respectively. The stars were joined on the panel by showrunner and long-time Whovian Steven Moffat. Chris Hardwick of The Nerdist and Talking Dead moderated the hour-long discussion.
Hardwick kicked things off by commenting on Capaldi’s take on the Doctor’s newest regeneration, saying: “I love that you’re kind of cranky and intense.”
Capaldi replied: “I think he [Steven Moffat] just saw those qualities in me, and just cast me.”
For his part, Moffat explained that writing for the different Doctors wasn’t what made them unique, saying: “On paper the Doctors are actually quite similar, it’s what the actors bring to it.”
Putting on the mantle of a character that’s over 50 years old is no simple task. “Did you feel the weight of Who immediately?” asked Hardwick of Capaldi, who is still in the midst of filming the show’s ninth season.
“It’s in my bones, it’s the only show I’ve followed since I was six years old,” said Capaldi, who then referenced his first appearance on the BBC series in the rebooted fourth season. “I thought that would be the only time of being in Doctor Who.” He then related how excited he was to be on set while David Tennant was playing the part of the Doctor’s Tenth incarnation, asking: “‘David! David! where’s the TARDIS?’ I got quite teary.”
Coleman revealed that her character, Clara Oswald, companion to both the Eleventh and and Twelfth Doctors, “has a rule that that she gets dropped off 30 seconds before she left. I think she’s a bit of a control freak.” Coleman then added that “This series she’s more head first into the TARDIS,” and would be spending more time on-board the Time Lord’s time-traveling spaceship.
Following “Death in Heaven,” the finale episode of season 8 which saw Gomez’s character seemingly de-materialized in the final moments of the show, there was much in the way of fan-speculation that we hadn’t seen the last of The Master’s game-changing female regeneration known as Missy. Her appearance on the panel confirmed the theories correct.
When Hardwick asked Gomez’s approach to playing Missy, she replied: “Luckily I never know why I’m saying what I’m saying…the writing is all there for me. It’s just a thrill to turn up and get this opportunity to be The Master, it’s still ‘pinch me?’” Gomez further explained her take on the long-running character, saying: “I think he or she or it is the best friend you love to hate…the rules don’t apply to her and that makes her really fun to play.”
Moffat agreed with Gomez’s assessment of the Doctor/Master relationship: “They are friends, which is terrifying. It’s like a friendship between a vegetarian and a hunter.”
Gomez added: “It’s this great friendship that just went wrong. And we’ve all had those…and you’re trying to get in the way of me destroying the universe,” she said, looking to Capaldi, “which I have to do! We both kill a lot of people, he feels bad about it, I don’t.”
Capaldi expounded on his feelings regarding the character of the Doctor: “ I think he doesn’t know who he is, he’s always scrambling around trying to figure out who he is…he’s a constantly growing character.” Echoing a debate his Doctor has with Clara’s love interest Danny over his military past, Capaldi continued: “He’s not a soldier. He’d rather sit at night in a car park looking at the stars than be blowing up Daleks,” before adding: “I like blowing up Dalek’s.”
Though Capaldi felt his Doctor was still mostly a “bohemian/philosopher/rebel time lord,” Coleman was asked about her character’s trouble with the transition of the Eleventh into the Twelfth Doctor.
“She was familiar with how it was working,” said Coleman, “then suddenly your best friend changes his face and who knows what to trust anymore? It’s changing all the rules basically.”
Hardwick inquired after the health of Twelve and Clara’s relationship, asking: “Are they okay now?”
Coleman felt they were, saying: “They’ve found their groove, eating up all of time and space with reckless abandon.”
A never-before seen trailer for Doctor Who’s upcoming ninth season was then shown, which announced the return date of the series as September 19th and ended with a shot of highly publicized guest star Maisie Williams squaring off with Capaldi’s Doctor. The Doctor clearly recognizes Williams’ mysterious character, saying, “You?”
To which Williams replies: “What took you so long, old man?”
When the lights came back up, Moffat explained he could say no more about the episodes featuring the actress, best known for her work on Game of Thrones as fan-favorite character Arya Stark.
Capaldi told the crowd about the first moment he felt he was really the Doctor: “I think it’s when they threw a rubber spider in my face and said: ‘fight it!’ I said, it doesn’t work, where’s the operator? And they said: ‘there is no operator, it’s just a big rubber spider. Fight it!’”
Coleman was asked about her character’s difficulty in returning to a normal life after adventures on the TARDIS, to which she answered: “I think it becomes addictive and I think that’s the problem.”
Pondering the fact of the TARDIS’ “bigger on the inside” feature, Moffat said “I used to wonder why the Doctor didn’t use that more? ‘Don’t believe I’m an alien? Look at that!’” When the crowd didn’t react, he continued: “I guess that was just me, then. My Mom was right I should have got a girlfriend instead. Applause for my imaginary girlfriend!” The crowd offered some, and over the sound of the clapping Moffat teased: “Virginity kept me pure.”
The Doctor, for all his humanity, often fails to understand human nature. This seems particularly true of Capaldi’s incarnation, with Coleman commenting: “Clara teaches him how to interact with humans more this season…helps him with his social skills, makes him more of a welcome party guest.”
Speaking again of the Doctor/Master relationship, Moffat said: “This is not new, the Doctor and the master being friends.” He explained he recently went back and viewed “the Delgado and Pertwee episodes.” Said Moffat: “One of them wants to blow up the world the other one wants to stop it, but they don’t let a little thing like that get in the way.”
When the panel opened up to questions from the audience, one came from a young boy who thanked the panel for helping him with his “Make-a-wish.” Moffat seemed visibly moved in recognizing the child, who asked what Capaldi felt was iconic about this Doctor.
Capaldi answered: “Eyebrows.”
Hardwick extended the question to the other actors on the panel, and when Coleman balked at answering, Moffat chimed in with: “Eyes, huge eyes!”
Gomez added “Lips. Obviously.” She then talked of her kiss with the Doctor in episode 11 of last season, asking fans to decide who was kissing who, saying that if they watched it back again: “Peter is — there’s some suction there…what you couldn’t see was I was also holding Clara’s hand.”
“That’s hot!” a fan cried loudly from the audience.
Another fan asked of Moffat what literature he drew most from for inspiration. Moffat answered: “Doctor Who is what made me wanted to be a writer…. I was so inspired by Doctor Who.“He added: “Every screenplay William Goldman has written is great, and if you want to know about comedy writing read Neil Simon.” He later added: “For the record, I do anything for a laugh, I’m a tart.”
When the panel was asked to describe their character’s perfect day, Gomez replied she thought Missy would start her day with a croissant and some tea before saying: “And then slapping Wonder Woman in the face.”
One of the final questions asked if the panel had any advice for aspiring actors. Gomez said: “My agent calls me the roach because I keep getting squashed like a bug and coming back,” before encouraging the audience: “just never give up. This world is abundant, there’s enough for everyone.”
As the panel drew to a close, Capaldi reflected on his first SDCC experience: “To come here and find this warmth and affection for something I’ve been following since childhood is extraordinary….I feel the warmth of the full 50 years pointed right at me.”
Hardwick closed the proceedings by showing a trailer for the recently announced Lego: Dimensions video game featuring a Lego version of Capaldi’s Doctor interacting with Lego Batman and character’s from the Oscar nominated The Lego Movie. Hardwick also announced that his Nerdist network would be broadcasting a TV special titled Doctor’s Finest on August 15th, showcasing the Nerdist’s top 8 favorite episodes of Doctor Who hosted by Youtuber Hannah Hart.
While the Nerdist Industries’ arena event at WonderCon this year was ostensibly about the future of the Youtube based pop culture conglomerate, and, indeed, plenty was said about upcoming projects, the question and answer period really expanded into a call to arms for fans to help directly determine the future of pop culture.
Nerdist founder Chris Hardwick took the stage, joined by panellists Paul Provenza, Troy Conrad, and Matt Bennett, on March 31st, in the lead up to the season finale of The Walking Dead. Hardwick’s job as host of Talking Dead meant there was plenty of frisson in the audience about the upcoming show, and Hardwick teased, but didn’t deliver, spoilers on the show’s finale several times. In fact, he informed the audience that he was about to “get into a car to film Talking Dead” following his WonderCon appearance. Envy at his early viewing of the finale was palpable.
While Hardwick has a cult following as host of Talking Dead, and also from plenty of Nerdist projects, his presence live is even more dynamic, bringing with it plenty of his stand up comedy background. Since it was also Easter Sunday, Hardwick opened with a relevant quip: “That’s one person who came back from the dead and didn’t do it to rip someone’s heart out. Just put the love in it”. About a thousand attendees found this hilarious. Hardwick showed a promo video preview of upcoming Nerdist projects, often punctuated by applause and cheers from the audience when they recognized an anticipated segment or a celebrity guest coming up on a project, and followed by discussing several of the projects in a little more detail with his panellists.
Bennet’s new series, currently being filmed, entitled Nerdy Jobs, a play on Dirty Jobs, got particular attention. The series will involve him visiting nerdy “cool” companies like tech industries and comic book shops to give an insider’s view of working there. Hardwick pondered what Bennett would find to say if he visited NASA for the show: “Uh, sorry about your funding?”. Another big push for Nerdist is the launch of a comedy combination of stand up and improv based on the British series concept Setlist, a competition that will tour around the world. As a veteran of stand up, Hardwick was particularly enthused, commenting that forcing stand up comedians into an improv situation is like “looking for the God particle of comedy”. His request to the audience about the upcoming new shows: “Please don’t feel compelled to say horrible things IN ALL CAPS in comment threads”.
This led Harwick to speak for a moment about Youtube as a venue for hosting programming. Though delivered in a comically serious tone, the message had some bite: “No longer do companies tell us what to watch”. It was the first of several comments that indicated that Hardwick still has a lot to say about the role of open access and its giant-killing capabilities in relation to big media. Nerdist Industries, he said, is going to be expanding, but not along the lines of some of their peers on Youtube, who branch out into “piles of channels”; instead, they are aiming for a “hyper-curated partnership” with 6-8 channels and plenty of intensive “cross promotion”. They are also considering a move, based on fan request, to try out video podcasts, though Hardwick is a little skeptical of why people would want to watch them. Demand has been high enough that he’s prepared to yield to the experiment. Upcoming guests for the video podcast will include Seth Rogan, Steve Young, Scott Adsit and “surprises” too. Nerdist will also, finally, launch a major app to link to its content and, even more surprisingly, will be venturing into filmmaking following their purchase by Legendary Entertainment. They hope to work as producers on smaller budget films in this new role.
While Hardwick was delivering his energetic spiel, Provenza interjected, “Do you ever sleep?”. It was true, Hardwick looked a little peaked. “I have a robot heart”, he intoned, and continued on to the question and answer period. Questions began with a repeat offender from SDCC who Hardwick had once hugged in the past for his super fandom regarding Superman. “Comic Con is about getting super freaked out about stuff you love”, Hardwick reminded the audience (and he would deliver another hug later to a girl dressed as Wario in sympathy with his own Mario Brothers t-shirt). Harwick was then asked what he would do if his girlfriend was found to be “patient zero” in a potential zombie apocalypse. “Oh, I’d shoot her in the fucking head. That’s what you do for your loved ones”, he said without hesitation, to much hilarity, and added that he hoped she’d do the same for him.
He seemed pretty serious about that topic, but not as serious as he became immediately after the question on the subject of open access production. “There is literally no excuse for you not to pursue things that you love now. You are living half a life if you do not pursue the things that you love”, he said, referring to the tools now available for fans and pop culture creators alike. When a middle school teacher asked him for ideas to keep her students interested in pop culture in their newly formed lunch club, he gave a very invested answer, repeating that the most important thing the teacher could do for them would be to get them to “make things”, whether videos, or other media. “Teach them to be creators vs. consumers”, he pleaded, to much approbation from the crowd.
One of Hardwick’s winning qualities that keeps him from drifting too far from his fanbase due to his ever increasing media success is his earnestness, often placing himself in the role of the fan once more. He described himself as a “lamprey” feeding off the “giant sperm whale” of pop culture products and feeling grateful, trying not to “impose” when working with actors from major shows. The Nerdist panel emphasized again that Hardwick still sees himself as an outsider in the mainstream, and an insider to “nerd” culture, no matter how many celebrity friends he accrues. That lends credence to his requests and his advice that fans continue to interact directly with the things they love through becoming “creators” too.
Photo Credits: All photos in this article were taken by semi-professional photographer and pop culture scholar Michele Brittany. She’s an avid photographer of pop culture events. You can learn more about her photography and pop culture scholarship here.
Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.
Actor, director and typewriter collector Tom Hanks recently appeared on the Nerdist podcast, thanks to a beautiful bribe–a crimson 1934 Smith Corona typewriter.
The Nerdist podcast host Chris Hardwick knew that Hanks collects old typewriters, so he mailed the invitation along with a Depression-era machine. Above, you can read Hanks’ reply to the invitation, typed on the same typewriter. Below, you can see a photograph of the lovely typewriter. Here is the original letter sent by The Nerdist team:
Please accept this typewriter–o–gram as a formal invitation to be a a guest on my wildly-popular-with-the-kids Nerdist Podcast. It is a super relaxed, fun chat that will probably cover comedy, NASA, and whatever else you want to talk about — a new WEBSERIES, perhaps?? We are nice guys who are easy to get along with and have never murdered anyone. Other guests have included folks like your son Colin, Tina Fey, Conan, Jimmy Fallon, Bryan Cranston, John Lithgow, Willem Dafoe, JJ Abrams, Neil Patrick Harris, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Joel McHale, Jon Hamm, and THE MUPPETS. It would be an absolute dream come true to add you to this list. Please accept this 1934 Smith Corona as a gift for even considering this request. It should only VERY SLIGHTLY affect your decision.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Pretty much what the headline says. Both shows experienced very good ratings by airing after the behemoth hit THE WALKING DEAD, and both will return, in a similar time slot, but as 16 half hour episodes.
The Talking Dead is a talk show hosted by the Nerdist Chris Hardwick featuring interviews with WALKING DEAD cast and crew members.
“Talking Dead has been an amazing experience, and I cannot pile enough hugs and thanks onto AMC for renewing it,” Hardwick said in a statement announcing the news. “I CAN’T WAIT for Season 3 of Walking Dead, so that we can finally talk about Rick meeting [SPOILER] and [SPOILER]-ing him with a heavy-duty [SPOILER] at the [SPOILER]. And let’s not forget all the rest of the [SPOILER]s getting in on the action! [EXPLETIVE] me! It’s going to be great.”
COMIC BOOK MEN is a bit more contentious — the Kevin Smith-produced show about guys standing around talking in a comics shop was the recipient of nearly universal fear and dread, with many finding it more horrifying than the zombie feasts and close-up friend killing of THE WALKING DEAD that preceded it.
“Pinch my fat ass, ’cause I must be dreaming!” Smith said in a statement. “A thousand thank-yous wouldn’t cover the gratitude I’m feeling right now. And as you might imagine, everyone at SModcast Pictures is in love with everyone at AMC today! Rest assured, Walt, Bry, Mike, Ming and I are suited up and ready to hit the ice for our second season with Team AMC.”
“AMC set out to build shows around authentic characters and original worlds, and Comic Book Men really delivers on both of these,” said Joel Stillerman, AMC’s exec vp original programming, production and digital content. “Talking Dead is just great synergy, and it gives our audience a destination to continue the conversation about The Walking Dead. We are thrilled that Chris is back to lead the discussion. He is genuinely knowledgeable about the genre and truly entertaining.”
Previously, Smith has hinted a female would join the all-male store line-up in the second season—which would at least defuse one of the biggest criticisms of the show.
Just guessing here, but the half hour format will probably see the program turn into a more Pawn Stars/American Pickers/Storage Wars type-show that revolves around the value of stuff that customers bring in—stuff most likely planted by the producers but it’s TV after all. As long as they don’t just sit around fantasizing about the Invisible Woman, we’ll be happy.
For those who want to go all the way on looking ghastly, a newly announced show on The Nerdist YouTube channel should provide all the fashion tips you need. BLOOD AND GUTS will star Anthrax founder and horror expert Scott Ian on a gruesome journey as he learns the secrets of special FX makeup from masters such as Greg (The Walking Dead) Nicotero. The show is a joint venture between Nerdist and Fangoria, the venerable horror magazine.
BLOOD AND GUTS will show Ian learning how face wounds, ripped off arms and zombie pallor are created from the best in the makeup FX business. “I’ve been neck-deep in blood and guts for the last 30 years playing in Anthrax,” Ian said in a statement, “so I couldn’t be more excited to be hosting a show called ‘Blood & Guts’ for you horror and metal fans.” He also recently went under the latex himself to play a zombie on a Walking Dead webisode, above.
The show is yet another example of how new media is shortening the production gap says Chris Hardwick, the Nerdist himself. “A week ago we sat down with Fangoria and talked about doing something horror related,” he told The Beat. “They showed us a test run of a makeup effects show, and I said, ‘Scott Ian might want to do this,’ and we asked and he said, ‘Sure!’
“From the time we came up with the idea for the thing to having a thing was three days,” he continued. “That’s what’s so great about new media—there’s no speed bumps, and no corporate infrastructure to get in the way.”
Ian is well known as a horror fanatic—and a sometimes comics fan as his LOBO miniseries showed—but he met Hardwick through yet another medium. “He’s also a comedy nerd. We met from hanging out in LA in, weirdly, the comedy scene.”
The Nerdist Channel launched on April 2, 2012, with a slate of YouTube programming from Hardwick, Neil Patrick Harris, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Rob Zombie, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Harry Knowles, Comic Book Club, and, our favorite, “Weird Sh*t from Japan” which features Finnish thrillseekers The Dudesons testing different toilets and so on.
By Nicholas Eskey If you label yourself a “nerd” and wear it with pride, undoubtedly you already follow Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist News. The quick witted comedian and mega-nerd took heads the podcast driven news network for nerds with a wonderful collection of colleagues and special guests, discussing everything from the current state of all things […]
Why would Kylo Ren be able to lift the hammer? He isn’t worthy. Force or no force, that doesn’t change.