John’s Voyage           By John Anthony Blake (aka John Levene)

     My name is John Anthony Blake; of course most of you know me as John Levene,
Sergeant Benton between 1969 and 1974 on "Doctor Who", and of course my joy was
working with Patrick Troughton, four years with Jon Pertwee, and almost a year with
Tom Baker, but that’s not the point.  This is really in praise of Dan Harris’s
Sci-Fi Sea Cruise 1999.  I had never done one before, and I can’t tell you how
exciting it was!

     We arrived in Miami from Burbank, California; the sun is fabulous, the weather
is fabulous; and then of course we get driven down to the docks to see our ship, the
biggest ship that I’ve ever seen, the Carnival Imagination.  We arrived there on the
first day, of course the first day is a sea day, so we got to meet all of the fans,
having dinner & lunch & buffets with them all across the ship.  We had, of course,
all the evening entertainment, which was absolutely fabulous, the shows, Las Vegas
style, which were wonderful.

     So let me tell you about Grand Cayman before I tell you about Chichen Itza.
You go into the sea, you stand up to your waist in this beautiful, beautiful blue
warm water, which we’ve never even seen in England, Scotland, or Wales, or even in
California...  So there we are (on the tour boat), it draws up, we see a couple of
other little ferries that have brought other people from other ships, and we’re
thinking "this can’t be right...  you cannot see stingrays in the water, and we’re
certainly not going to get in there with them!"  Well, we arrived, and within five
minutes we knew that these creatures were friendly, and of course they had gotten
very used to being in the water with human beings; or rather having human beings in
the water with them!  So, half an hour, three quarters of an hour, in the water with
these gorgeous creatures, and by the end of that time I’d actually started touching
a few of them, although I didn’t feed them, because their mouths (as I’m sure you
already know, but I didn’t) are underneath- I for some reason thought their mouths
were on top!

     So back to the ship we go for another amazing evening with the fans.  The fans
were just amazing, sixteen of them, all dedicated to having a wonderful time.  And
we had with us Carrie Dobro from "Crusade", we had Wendy Padbury of course, from the
early days of "Doctor Who", & yours truly of course.  Well, another day at sea I
think & then the moment I'd been waiting for I think almost more than the stingrays...

     Chichen Itza, with the Mayan ruins.  A three hour ride on a luxury coach.  I
must confess that the luxury coach was wonderful, the driver and the tour guide were
just adorable.  They were Mayan, and you could see the Mayan faces; of course they
spoke awfully good English, which was very good for us.  First of all, the Mayan
Ruins are beyond anything you’ve seen, apart from Stonehenge in my home town of
Salisbury in Wiltshire, in the South of England.  But at these Mayan ruins, the little
guide (we called him Chichi) took us around, and it started to just shower; well, you
know, we English, we don’t care about it, and in all fairness nor did the American
fans.  We’re all in our shorts, and all in our little thin T-shirts, having said
"let’s leave the heavy clothes off because we don’t need it."  So we get to the ruins,
we start the walk around the ruin site, we see the actual Mayan temple, the one with
the big, steep steps, and we were about half an hour from having to leave.  I remember
looking up at this enormous staircase which looked as though it was unassailable, and
Jenny and I decided if we didn’t do it now, we were never going to do it.  As a runner,
and a climber of mountains in Burbank, California I had to do it.  So Jenny and I broke
away from the crowd, which had become at one with the rain.  We were freezing and
soaked, and Dan, I’m glad to say, caught it on camera, which we didn’t realize he had
switched on at that time, and he caught us running through the flash flood, straight
towards the stones, and sure enough I began to run, but only could do fifteen, but the
rest of the climb was the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever done.  Well, so that was
Chichen Itza and Grand Cayman.

     Well, then of course we come to the food.  What can you say about the cruise liner
food?  It was sensational!  Now, I’m a vegetarian myself; I’m not vegan, but I am lacto,
and the only thing I can eat is seafood, but the food, and the waiters, and the thrill
of these waiters serving these regular tables for a week as they get to know you.  They
get to know your habits, and what food you like to eat.  And there were all the
shipboard activities, meeting the fans one-on-one, two-on-one, laying up on the sun deck,
or going down to the ballroom, going to the Las Vegas shows at night, it never ended.
At a convention, you see the celebrities and you get the odd chance to speak to them,
but you never get to know them.  On this cruise, the fans, of whichever show they come
along to see, you get to know people like myself and all the other celebrities almost
intimately, it’s an amazing chance.  Next year Sylvester McCoy and a couple of other
superb guests are going along, and this may be the time that you’d like to do it...
so to the fans; to Zoe & Jane & Peter & Barry & Brett & Steven, and all of the others...
thank you for making it so wonderful, you made my holiday!  I don’t know whether I made
yours, but I’ve never had such a human being experience, and I never realized we’d
become so close on the cruise.  I’ve been to many conventions, but nothing was like the
comradeship that we got on this cruise.  So farewell from Sci-Fi Sea Cruise 1999, as we
set sail into a new millennium.