DB UK 2025 – Telford

Saturday 16th – Sunday 17th August 2025

I got to Telford late on Friday, so I sadly missed the Friday setup and pub social — although everyone who was there said it was great fun, with good food and even a “swap tables” kind of prompt to get people mixing. I’ll definitely try to make it next time.

Walking in on Saturday morning, the layout felt very familiar — the usual mix of Tombola (big shoutout to Giles and everyone who ran it all weekend, it looked like a huge success, with most of the prizes gone by the end of the weekend as far as I could tell), display tables, a free table for spare parts, a sales table, and even a dedicated spot for FrSky. There was also a tech help section tucked a bit away, which was brilliant if you wanted advice on electronics or mechanics (especially Astromechs builds).

It’s worth mentioning that two Johnny 5s were in attendance, a never seen occurrence since the movie as far as I can tell!

The photo booth was another highlight — not just for droid & builder photos, but also full body scans (of yourself and/or your droid), which was such a cool addition. And of course Darren Poulson’s racetrack was back, always a crowd-pleaser.

The absolute best way to kick things off was a five-minute video message from Alan Tudyk welcoming us to the event. Such a fun surprise, and it set the tone for the rest of the weekend.

Talks-wise, I really enjoyed Josh’s interview, conducted by our guest interviewer Lee — Josh’s worked in the creature department on so many projects, and hearing him talk about The Fifth Element (a personal favourite of mine) was amazing. The B2-EMO talk was super interesting, and I really liked FrSky’s session too — especially since he came all the way from the US to share it with us. I sadly missed Steve Baudain’s Padawan talk and John’s BB-8 session, but I heard good things.

Saturday evening was just as fun as the day. The food was good (both the meat and vegetarian options worked well), and the quiz was even better than last year — the new “picture page” was a clever addition, alongside the usual trivia and sound rounds. The auction was also fantastic, with lots of great prizes and a brilliant fundraising total of over £3000 in support of this year’s chosen charity – Alzheimer’s Society.

On Sunday, we had a real treat with Lee and Ian’s talk about working on Andor season 2, that left more than one of us teary eyed! Hearing the behind-the-scenes stories from them was genuinely awesome, with numerous builders who got the opportunity to participate on set chiming in with additional details, and probably one of my highlights of the weekend.

If I had one little comment, it’s that Sunday always feels like it ends too soon. I get that some people like the half-day format, but personally I’d love it if it lasted a bit longer. To be fair, I probably would feel like it ends too soon regardless of the time…

All in all, it was another brilliant DB UK. For me, the standouts were Alan Tudyk’s greeting, Josh’s talk, and the Andor session on Sunday — plus, of course, catching up with fellow builders and picking up new ideas and renewed motivation for my own projects. I left inspired, happy, and already looking forward to the next one.