TGSITG Day Two: Convention Report

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz5ioF_Gfok&w=320&h=266]
Day one of The Greatest Show In the Galaxy had been so incredible for us we thought Sunday would be a quieter day.  We were in for a pleasant surprise.
We had overslept so we rushed straight to the arena where we once again bumped into the staff member who had helped us get an interview with Chase on Saturday and the next thing we knew, we were interviewing Jeri Ryan! We felt like we had been stunned on a medium setting!
Jeri was an absolute delight and if we thought we were tired, she was very jetlagged but still maintained perfection.
Jeri is always surrounded by security, a sad necessity due to problems with stalkers. They were rather nice to look at all weekend though but maybe next time they could dress up as Klingons, or maybe even Hirogen?

Interviewing Jeri was a huge privilege and we are grateful to her, her management and the shows organizers for helping that happen. We can’t wait to share it with you!

We spoke about her twitter addiction and she even let us tweet a picture live after we had talked to her.

After we had phoned everyone we had ever met and bragged on every social media site. We felt quite phased after and walked around giggling like Bevis and Butthead. “We talked to 7 of 9…..huh huh huh cool”

But it was time for the next talk. This was a mash up of Voyager and DS9 actors and we weren’t too sure how this was going to work but it came together very nicely. The audience asked questions that were relevant to both series and we noticed that the actors started to ask each other questions to compare and contrast the experience of working in different Star Trek productions.

This was something we hadn’t seen at other events and it was refreshing because the talks can often only be as good as the questions asked.

An audience member asked “what is the scariest alien you have played?”  to which Ethan Philips replied “A Republican from Tennessee”. That scored a lot of laughs.

Colm Meaney talked about the time he, Rene Auberjonois and Avery Brooks had to dress up as Klingons for an episode. Michael Dorn was delighted but Colm was seriously miserable and complained all day. If you watch the episode you can see he doesn’t look at all happy but we presumed that was how he was playing the character!

Nana said she didn’t like the Cardassians – that made us laugh!

Raules Davies and the Beautiful Beata

Rene shared a story with us about filming The Ascent where Odo and Quark climb the mountain to send a subspace message. In the episode they play as if it were cold but in fact they were very hot. Armin’s headpiece kept filling up with sweat which made him very uncomfortable and eventually they had to make holes in the headpiece to air it out  and drain some of the sweat build up!! Ewww! What was so funny about this story was how Rene could barely speak as he was laughing so much at Armin suffering! He said “There is nothing funnier than a fellow actor in pain!”

Ethan Philips managed to bring down the tone again when the conversation got on to Jeri Ryans ‘peeing’ breaks that meant a twenty-minute production shut down. She described her elaborate costume and how she had a full time dresser to get her in and out. Peeing wasn’t easy.

Philips then described his costume “Blackman hated me, he made my costume out of his mothers old curtains, I pee’d in mine!”

Another good question from the audience was “If you wrote a book about your time on Star Trek, what would it be called?” to which Garratt Wang replied “Forever Ensign!”

Both casts spoke about how they felt when production of their series ended. Most of them would have liked a feature film like TNG and TOS had. They also spoke about how strange it felt for the incumbent series to be starting, as they were finishing. Voyager ended as Enterprise was starting and DS9 overlapped with Voyager.

It was a very enjoyable talk especially with the dynamic of the group altered. We’d definitely like to see more of this in the future. – Who doesn’t like a crossover!

After the talk we took some time to wonder about, browse the exhibitions and traders. We have noticed over the years so many more sci-fi fans dress up than they used to ten years ago. We suspect that this will increase as we get more US style conventions heading our way.

There was a big presence amongst Star Trek fans and they are definitely getting bolder!

We also saw lots of women dressed as Dr Who’s running around.

Time to film Trekkie Girls! This was our first time filming at a convention and the show organizers very kindly allowed us to film from their control office that overlooks the arena. We felt all professional-like and it is certainly a milestone for us. We would have liked to have had a live link up to Trek Radio too but the technology and timezone differences made things difficult. We think we need a Yeoman to service our needs at the next event (ohhh my!). See Live recording from Saturday.

Then straight into the Jeri Ryan Q&A session that was being presented by Caroline Pearce  (Why haven’t you heard of her?…because she is from sport!). She did a good job at fleshing out some of the answers to questions.

This time we got to hear a lot more about Jeri Ryan as a person, that she is a ‘nerd and a science geek’ (it just makes us love you more Jeri!), she likes to cook, hates exercise and she has her Borg Alcove in her games room.

Because we are greedy we asked her about her wardrobe on Body of Proof, although technically it wasn’t our question, it came from our TiT Sarah. With this lateral thinking she might get promoted to Yeoman!

Jeri said she loved the clothes she gets to wear on BoP but we suspect she is just happy to pee by herself!

All the talks we wanted to see were now finished so we decided to speak to Nana Visitor and do you know what? She offered us an interview too!

Once again, a lovely woman. We LOVE Kira but no one loves Kira like Nana loves Kira. She spoke about her with such passion…well you’ll hear for yourself soon.

Again, another privilege to have that opportunity.

We took the last couple of hours to get autographs. Carole got quite a few, mostly for her mum (Carole gets her geekyness from her awesome parents!) and Sam got a couple of autographs for her new Voyager cast picture.

As the show was nearing an end the queues were quieter and we got the chance to talk to some of the actors.

Robert Beltran showed us some pictures of his little girl, Tim Russ spoke about his band and gave advice to Carole about New York (she is going this week) and Garratt Wang was in awe with Caroles boobies! So much so, he asked if he could have his picture taken with us!

We left the show feeling like Trekkie Rockstars. We still sound like Bevis and Butthead now. We met some incredible people, caught up with old friends, got to see some of our favourite actors all whilst doing what we really love, being the Trekkie Girls and helping fans who can’t get to these events, feel like they were there.

Live Long and Party On!

Coming Soon:

Interviews with Jeri Ryan, Chase Masterson, Nana Visitor, Alice Krige

How to survive a Star Trek Convention

Thanks to:

The Greatest Show In The Galaxy
Trek Radio