Yeah, that’s right. I’m a self-professed Nerd, Dork, whatever you wish to call it, and I’ve NEVER been to a Star Trek Convention – EVER. Sure, I’ve been to ComiCon once; I got that under my belt, but this is the convention that supposedly has the Nerdiest of all Nerds. The ones that live the show and movies in their everyday lives; the ones that even William Shatner himself told to “get a life!” Yeah, he apologized later, but you get my point.
Yeah, that’s right. I’m a self-professed Nerd, Dork, whatever you wish to call it, and I’ve NEVER been to a Star Trek Convention – EVER. Sure, I’ve been to ComiCon once; I got that under my belt, but this is the convention that supposedly has the Nerdiest of all Nerds. The ones that live the show and movies in their everyday lives; the ones that even William Shatner himself told to “get a life!” Yeah, he apologized later, but you get my point.
The Star Trek Convention at the Las Vegas Hilton is the biggest of its kind, so I was ready for the motherload of Nerd gatherings. I mentally braced myself for the insane throngs of people, the lines that stretch to the horizon, the battling in the vendor room for the prized Star Trek treasures. What I wasn’t prepared for was, well, almost the opposite.
I arrived in Vegas at about 4 PM, which I thought was fine, as I was hoping to catch the Friday evening performance of “Q vs. Janeway”, starring one of our resident Nerds Dean Haglund, and Claudia Christiansen from “Babylon 5”. Unfortunately, the Creation Entertainment website posted a time of 7:30 PM, when the show was actually at 3:30 PM. So, yeah, I missed that. I was, however, able to discuss the time snafu with Dean later and have a laugh about it. Wait, “Time snafu”? Isn’t that like a tear in the Time/Space continuum? Wow, Star Trek really DOES affect our every day lives, doesn’t it?
So, we were left to fend for ourselves Friday night in Vegas. What to do, what to do…? Right. It’s Vegas. The next day we got up (a fellow Trek Con curious friend came along on the trip) and went down to check in at about 11 AM. I expected a long wait, but not so. There were about 8 people in line. Took us about 5 minutes or so. That was surprise number one. Surprise number two was when we entered the vendor room; I thought it would be like a bunch of salmon swimming upstream into the Star Trek spawning ground, but again, not too bad. Sure, there were people there and it wasn’t empty, but I was able to move about freely and peruse any vendor table with relative ease. There were certainly no rabid Trekkies battling for particular items. No gnashing of teeth, or brandishing functional Mark II phasers in order to acquire their prized Enterprise replicas or framed autographed photos of Kirk, Spock or Seven of Nine.
That being said, as I was looking at some said autographed photos at a booth, I heard a man call out, “Hey, William, these are yours right here!” I saw a man pointing to some photos on the wall to my right, and another man pushed past me to look, and lo and behold, that man was William Shatner himself. Suddenly I realized there was a camera and boom operator right beside me – and about 50 people in tow with their point-and-shoots and near rabid, bug-eyed faces; even some with a glazed over look that bordered on catatonia. I managed to get out my iPhone and fumble with it long enough for Shatner to move on without getting a pic. But I quickly moved ahead of the crowd to get one. At one point, I was standing next to a couple guys from overseas, and one yelled out to Shatner, “We’ve come all the way form Israel!” Shatner replied, “Well, good luck with that!” I don’t know what that meant but that guy is hilarious.
So, I strolled around the vendor room, stopping to say ‘hi’ to Dean Haglund and grab a copy of the Q vs. Janeway on DVD since I missed it. I’ll bet you’re all wondering if I saw any kooky people dressed up in Star Trek uniforms and costumes? Of COURSE! Isn’t that one of the main reasons to go to these things? Such a vast array of interesting characters, too. There were Klingons, Vulcans, Federation officers, Orion slaves (the green girls), and even an Andorian or two. There were at least two people that had cut their hair to look like Romulans! Well, one may have been a Vulcan, but they’re related, so it’s similar. But they weren’t wigs – they actually got their hair cut and styled! Man, that is dedication. And frankly, the 20-something woman was absolutely gorgeous. Nerd bait!
We tried to get to see Shatner and Nimoy talk in the auditorium next door, but it was already standing room only and only got about 5 feet into the room. We had to bail. THAT’S the kind of crowded I expected. So back to the vendor floor we went. And outside the vendor room there were other rooms dedicated to certain autographs and photo ops with the notable Trek actors, such as the ever popular Jeri Ryan. She was charging more than Shatner or Nimoy for stuff. You can see where the Nerds interests lie, yes? $ 300 for a 30 minute Q and A with Jeri Ryan? Lol, what.
So Sunday another friend of mine wanted to go so I was up for day two. My other friend went, too, becuase one of the photos he bought was smudged by the people taking the money so he wanted to exchange it. Nerds are pretty nit-picky about this stuff. You’d think it was these vendors first time at a Trek convention!
We DID manage to make time to attend Brent Spiner and Sir Patrick Stewart’s talk in the next room. I’m glad we did, too, because it turns out they are both really funny and entertaining. Totally worth sitting in a chair for an hour plus to wait. Then they did some Q and A, and we discovered that Stewart will be doing only one more tour of his one man performance of The Christmas Carol. I MUST see this. It probably not until next year though. So, keep you eyes and ears open, Nerds! Oh, and the embarrassing moment of the day goes to a girl that asked Sir Patrick Steward, a Knight of the Realm and accomplished Shakespearean actor, if he had ever read the Horatio Hornblower books. The whole room had a good laugh at her expense. Trekkies can be cruel, too.
Strangely, we didn’t encounter any creepy Trekkies, albeit one. She was a girl with a lisp (classic!) and glasses and a bit of a complexion problem and she made a panel of some of the Trek actors, including John Billingsly, pass around a plush unicorn thing (Billingsly asked if it was a squirrel – Lol) she had on her shoulder. She was the weirdest we saw, and ironically bumped into her in an elevator. She got very loud and over-excited when we mentioned we had seen her at the panel. I became afraid to be in a small enclosed space with her. I’ve never wanted out of an elevator more quickly.
Otherwise, the crowd was relatively normal. Even the serious costumed fans were just regular people exercising their right to show their love of Star Trek. They didn’t seem weird or fanatical at all. There were some great things to buy – I got one of those working communicators from the original show, a couple of cool glossy photos, and of course Dean and Claudia’s performance of Q vs. Janeway. Saw Shatner from a couple feet away and that’s nothing to balk at. Hell, I’d go back next year, too. But now it’ll be at the Rio Hotel and Casino. I can’t help but feel a little sad about it leaving the Vegas Hilton. It’s been there a long time and now all the Star Trek Stuff is gone from there, and they’re now going to even gut the SpaceQuest bar area. Booo. Well, onto new frontiers, right?
I think this experience has made me even MORE of a Star Trek fan. And I guess that’s part of the point, isn’t it? It was a really fun time, and they’ll likely see me again. Make it so, number one.
~ Neil T. Weakley, your average movie goer, going where he has never gone before.
