… with a little friend.

His name is Hugo.

Thanks to all of you who gave "Blackwater" your vote.  We're thrilled that you enjoyed the episode  enough to vote it our genre's greatest honor.

Thanks to Rory, for coming all the way from Glasgow to help me accept the award.  He's just as tough as advertised; not only did he survive a Hugo ceremony, he downed TWO ghost pepper shots at the BWB party.  And thanks to HBO for sending him, with a special tip o' the hat to Mara and Stephanie, who made it happen.

Thanks to David Benioff and Dan Weiss, world's greatest showrunners.  My name is on the "Blackwater" script, but there's an awful lot of their writing in there as well, including that amazing original scene between Bronn and the Hound (I wanted to show that at the Hugos as our clip, but, er, LoneStarCon was concerned about the young lady sitting in Bronn's lap, so we went another way).

Thanks to Neil Marshall, who directed the hell out of "Blackwater," stepping in with barely a week's notice to make the episode everything we dreamed that it could be.  (And he's back this year for another battle!  There's a brave, brave man).

Thanks to our amazing cast and incredible crew.  The wildfire explosion was a thing of beauty, truly, but it's the performances of Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, Conleth Hill, Jerome Flynn, Rory McCann, Sophie Turner, Jack Gleeson, Sibel Kekilli, Eugene Simon, Roy Dotrice, Stephen Dillane, Liam Cunningham, Finn Jones, Charles Dance, and the rest of our company that made "Blackwater" what it was, bringing the words to life, and creating scenes that will linger in memory long after the green fire has faded.  The SFX were great, but without characters to love and hate and fear for, the big explosion is just a light show.

And yes, I was surprised when Paul Cornell called out our name.  I had hopes, of course, but DOCTOR WHO has taken this category in six of the past seven years, and we were up against not one Doctor, but three.   For those who care about such things, "Blackwater" had the most first place votes, but the Doctor was closing in on us as the lower ranked DR. WHO episodes were eliminated and their votes cascaded into the others.  It was only when the episode of FRINGE dropped out and their votes moved to us that "Blackwater" went over the top.  Ah, the complexities of the Australian ballot…

FWIW, this was the second Hugo for GAME OF THRONES, and the sixth for me.  I've won in five different categories now.  And no, it never gets old.

So once more, to all of you:

THANKS! 

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