Official Creation Star Trek Con Philadelphia 2012 Day 1 Coverage

If you haven’t read it already, read my First Impressions.

Things started off Friday afternoon with Creation Entertainment CEO Adam Malin giving a brief introduction about how Creation does its thing and what to expect for the weekend. At this point I will mention that I tried to take pictures when I could, but my camera is a piece of crap, I was just out of optical zoom range (I don’t believe in digital zoom, that’s what Photoshop is for), and I am a horrible photographer when it doesn’t have to do with still life. I included only the best I could, but there are a few, like the one above, that came out blurry no matter what I did. Friday was a day full of scrubs, all guest stars with at most 5 appearances on the show. I didn’t really care at all about these people, but they were there and I got their autographs for free as part of my package, so I showed up.

First up was Suzie Plakson, who played Dr. Selar (a Vulcan in 1 episode), K’Ehleyr (a Klingon in 2 Episodes), the Lady Q (1 episode) and Tarah (an Andorian in 1 episode). She absolutely would not stand still, she kept ping ponging back and forth across the stage, so my pictures are pretty poor here. She started off with with a quick FAQ list: She is 6’1″, it took 4-6 hours of makeup for the Andorian, 3-4 hours for the Klingon, and 2.5 hours for the Vulcan and Q makeups, and her favorite character she played was the Female Q. Someone then asked her how she felt about her character Lady Q’s role in preventing the death of Janeway in the book series, and she said she doesn’t really follow all of that, but knows that Dr. Selar is a part of the New Frontier books and is apparently pretty popular there. She was then asked how she would have decorated the Q Continuum, and she said if it were up to her it would have had a lot of “sweeping velvet” and “not have been so grey”, and her character would not have been as demure, not wear the housecoats she was saddled with, and would have dressed with “lots of boobage”. When asked about her favorite crew to work with, she said they were all great and couldn’t really choose just one. Then she told the story behind the writing of her album, available on iTunes, and sang a song. She then told us about the kickstarter for her new ebook/audiobook project, The Return of King Lillian, which she described as “an allegorical mythical journey tale”.

Then it was time for the next session, which was delayed after having some tech trouble. There were various tech issues all weekend long. You wouldn’t think it would be hard to wire a stage with 4 mics, and two in the audience and have them all be loud, but it was apparently something the hotel had never done, and at least one mic always seemed to be at the wrong audio level. After that got fixed, Richard Arnold got up to do a slide show about the history of The Next Generation. Richard was Gene Roddenberry’s personal assistant for years after meeting him at the first Star Trek con in 1972. He started by talking about how the idea for The Next Generation started with the studio, and that “no one asked [Gene]” about it. When Gene found out about their plans, he went to the studio and said “I can do it dammit”, intent to prove Star Trek was not a fluke and he could do it a second time. While showing a slide of Gene with the original 2′ Enterprise model, he started talking about how other ships were designed through the years. Voyager was designed in the studio cafeteria, being a upside-down spoon with two nacelles attached. Andy Probert had originally designed the Romulan Warbird in a vertical fashion (as seen in last years Ships of the Line calendar). Originally, Gene did not want his wife Majel on the show, he didn’t want to be “that type of Hollywood producer who put his wife in all his shows”, but she pestered him about it constantly. When Trace Torme handed in the script for “Haven”, Lwaxwana Troi’s first episode, Gene told him that “You just saved my marriage!”. When Gene told Majel about the part he called “the Mother-in-Law from hell”, he told her “You won’t even have to act!”.

Richard then related a story about how generally the sets for The Next Generation were closed, but they once made the exception for Ben Kingsley. While doing a take, Richard could see one of Kingley’s kids start to fidget, until he started to whine, ruining the take, and he had to be the one to ask Ben Kingsley to leave the set. He also revealed that the way John Tesh got his guest appearance as a Klingon was that the two of them went to the same gym. He then had a few stories about how the studio were a bunch of assholes, like that the “Little Gold Ships” in Picard’s ready room were an idea from a fan. Rick Berman had them destroyed because he didn’t like them. However, for the time travel scenes in the final episode “All Good Things”, they needed to be recreated to maintain continuity. Fortunately the art department still had the original molds to remake them. When he found out, he had the molds destroyed to prevent it from happening again. He also relayed about the many times he literally had to go to the studio and stop them from throwing things out, which was not always successful. Paramount had 5 warehouses full of Trek stuff in storage, which cost them $600,0000 to store, which is how the Christies auction came about, they would have been happy just making that much back. Instead they made over $7 million, at which point they asked “Can we throw the rest out now?” The 10′ stunt saucer from Generations, that was crashed into the planet was a causality of this indifference. The Hollywood Entertainment Museum tried to have it saved for the museum, but then the studio asked what they would be willing to pay for it, and the Museum explaining that they were in fact a museum, and were offing to take it as a donation, rather than give it away, the studio had it chopped up to bits and thrown away. Richard then told of some original casting ideas. The part of time traveler Berlinghoff Rasmussen played by Matt Frewer (Max Headroom) was originally written for Robin Williams, and the Comedian who attempted to teach Data comedy, played by Joe Piscopo, was intended for Jerry Lewis.

Then after some more tech issues came the featured panel for the day, featuring Eric Menyuk (The Traveler in 2 Episodes), Robin Curtis (Saavik in ST-III and IV) and Hallie Todd (Lal, Data’s daughter in 1 episode). I honestly had very low expectation for this panel, but it turned out to be very fun. Eric is a real cutup and very funny, which is odd that he was the other actor in the running to be cast as Data, who is incredibly straight laced. Right after the panel started, Robin’s phone rang from her boyfriend, and Eric made fun of her for it. Hallie revealed that her step-father was the bartender in “The Trouble With Tribbles”. Everyone discussed what they were currently doing. Eric became a lawyer, focusing on special needs children and getting them the care they need after fighting a similar battle for his own son. Robin and her boyfriend of nine years now make custom homes in upstate New York. She said that her and her family recently held their own version of The Biggest Loser, at which point Eric looked her up and down lecherously, and I don’t think anyone else noticed, but I found it hilarious. Hallie apparently is well know as the Mom on Lizzie McGuire, I had no idea she ever acted again after The Next Generation. She ended up opening an acting studio, and recently completed shooting a movie with her students and family. There wasn’t much of a Q & A for this. When asked how she worked on portraying an android, Hallie said that besides following in Brent Spiner’s lead, she also watched the movie Starman for inspiration.

So that wrapped up around 6:45, and then it was time for autographs. One thing a little different from most shows (and it’s how Creation gets you) is that the guests doing signings with the show (as opposed to at their own booths) don’t have anything of their own to sign for you as part of the autograph. However, the very first thing in the dealers room is a booth, run by Creation, that sells nothing but glossy 8×10’s of all the actors at the show. I didn’t already have anything with either Hallie Todd or Suzie Plakson on it, so I had to spend $12 to get my “free” autographs. I also bought all my other photo ops and autographs online. They then emailed me a PDF to print out, but I paid like $55 in shipping and handling, I don’t exactly understand what for. The way autographs work at Creation shows is they call everyone up to the stage a row at a time, starting with the front, until everyone who has an autograph ticket gets their turn. It’s a pretty good system, but it leads to very long waits, especially with four Chatty Cathys like these four were. But it is nice that the guests will stay as long as they need to ensure everyone who paid for a signing gets one. After I got my things signed, it was then end of the day, unless you were a gold member.

Gold Members had a exclusive cocktail party that night. I sat at a table randomly and met some very nice people. A couple from upstate New York, a guy who I talked out of the platinum package at Wizard World because he thought he got individual pictures with each captain, not one picture with all four, and some others. Things started with a centerpiece contest. However, there was only one legitimate entry, the U.S.S. Trout, a fish with nacelles attached. It managed to win the $250 dollar gift certificate by default, however when it went to the charity auction later in the weekend, it only fetched the minimum bid of $20. We were all encouraged to make centerpieces out of whatever stone knives and bearskins we had available to us to try to win, and I made the following, which was good enough to win a coffee mug (one of which went to every table anyway, but it’s the principle of the thing). They were impressed we were able to make something so creative that was legitimately Trek.

So after the “judging” of the centerpieces, the guests were brought in. Everyone then had 2 minutes to take pictures of the guests before we were asked to put our cameras away. Then each guest made their way to each table, spending two minutes with them until their handler pushed them along to the next group. I can’t imagine that being an easy thing to do, make small talk to several groups of people like that, it’s basically speed dating. Robin Curtis was very nice, and asked us all what our passions were, everyone else said their kids, I said excluding Star Trek, computers. I don’t know if I should feel bad that she immediately assumed “Oh, I never had kids of my own either”, but it was nice to see she was paying attention. Gary Graham talked about how he formed his band and what types of music they play. Eric Menyuk asked for advice on his panel the next day, “Star Trek: The Spoof”, and I told him if he wanted a serious suggestion, what does Picard do on his day off behind closed doors, I’m sure you could make something funny out of that. He then said that was stupid and leave the comedy to the pros. Hallie Todd and Suzie Plakson just made general small talk, asking what we liked so far about the con and that we were having fun. After all five hit our table, I went home. Worth the extra money? Eh, maybe. Two minutes isn’t really enough time for anything.

I’m not done yet. Move onto Day 2 and Day 3 Coverage.

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook