Last October, during our first Collector Card photo shoot, three of our members dressed as female versions of The Doctor (Five, Six, and Ten to be exact), creating some of the most talked-about costumes of the series. When photos of the costumes made the rounds on our KdW Facebook page in the following days, we became inspired to recruit a whole slew of Whovian ladies to create femme versions of all eleven incarnations of The Doctor.
What began as a fanciful idea became reality this past Sunday when 14 of our lady Krewe members came out to Audubon Park on a gorgeous New Orleans afternoon, dressed in their Femme Doctor finest. Each incarnation of the Doctor was represented, and some twice! Our goal was to get some amazing individual and group shots of the ladies in our costumes, and put together a Femme Doctor poster that the Krewe would have available for sale at upcoming cons and other events.
Each Femme Doctor had her own series of photos taken, and we recreated some iconic photographs of The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors, Time Crash, and others, as well as some full group shots of everyone. Our amazing and talented photographer, Hillary Rustine, is a fairly new recruit to the Krewe, having moved to New Orleans shortly before the Chewbacchus parade earlier this year. She made us all feel like movie stars being photographed my the paparazzi, made us laugh and pout appropriately for our characters and captured some great moments. As the Femme version of William Hartnell's Doctor, I had a lot of condescending faces to make for my photos, and I've never had so much fun while scowling so much.
Personally, I have really come to enjoy cosplay, even though I'm fairly new. My style is more one of duplication than outright creativity - I enjoy finding pieces that are good approximations of the "real" outfits we see on the show, but I lack the talent and vision to create alternative interpretations. It was fascinating to see how different women interpreted their Doctors, some more straight-on (like me) and some taking the important elements of the original outfits and really putting a creative, feminine, new spin on them. Accessories and wigs and makeup all played a part as well. For me, portraying William Hartnell's Doctor, I decided to go full grayscale, as though my character was really in black & white.
Gatherings with our fellow KdW members are always a blast - let's be honest, half of the motivation to participate was so we could come in costume and nerd out with our fellow Whovians in the park all afternoon - but we ended up with nearly 1,000 photos on HIllary's camera to show for it. I'm more than confident we'll be able to create an amazing poster to share with fellow fans - I'm mostly worried about having to narrow down the photos to our favorites!
None of the success of Sunday would have been possible without some of our great non-Femme KdW members who assisted as propmasters, supporters, wranglers, and photographer's assistants, including Brian Held Jr., Seann Robbins, Tim Rustine, Bryan Tibbetts, John Branch, Paul Patecek, and Patrick Branan. Special thanks also goes out to Brandi Branan, who provided some amazing advice and helped plan this whole adventure, and to Meghan Davis, makeup artist extraordinaire, who helped us all look our best and who personally spent over an hour and a half desaturating my skin so I could be a proper black & white Doctor. Even K-9 came out to play and lend his support and tin visage to our photos.
Stay tuned later this year to see the results of our cosplay creativity as we unveil our Femme Doctor Posters!
And be sure to check out our Femme Doctor Jaunt. It has been receiving a ton of attention on several social media sites and blogs!