Star Trek Las Vegas, The Trek Life, Uncategorized

Star Trek Las Vegas – Review pt. 1

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The five day long convention has passed us at Warp Speed! We’re sorry we didn’t do daily blog posts but we barely had a chance to eat or sleep! Hopefully you caught our extensive twitter feed covering all aspects.

1arrived

Wednesday

The convention formally opens at 2.30, we’re not sure why so late there must be a logical reason? On a selfish level this is fine as Sam has only just landed!
We spend the afternoon getting our bearings, walking in and out of panels, drooling over the vendors room (especially the MAC Station – more on that soon!) and bear hugging old friends and twitter acquaintances.

Something we discovered early on was that we were suffering ‘missing out syndrome’. This might sound insulting if you weren’t able to attend the convention and wished too but even at the event itself, there is always something else going on. When you’re sat in the main hall, you are missing out on what’s on in the secondary hall, when you’re in the Masquerade bar, you’re missing out on seeing friends at the Quarks. It’s not a bad problem to have and there isn’t too much you can do about it.

Popular question of the week no.1

Q. Have you ever been to to STLV before?
A: Sam attended in 2008 back when it was at the Hilton. We both visited in 2010 (again Hilton) but for a short visit as part of Sam’s Hen/Bachelorette Party.

Thursday

2dress
Spent ages making this costume and it turned out completely see through! Clever lighting made this shot possible!

After trying to sleep of the jet lag and a slight wardrobe malfunction on Sam’s part we decided to check out the venders rooms. We cannot give enough credit to MAC Cosmetics who sponsored the convention. They went above and beyond! We have talked before about their limited edition Star Trek range which will be available from September, it was introduced at San Diego Comic Con a few weeks ago and also made available for early purchase at the event.

We have to tell you about the set. It was a large bridge shaped set split into four ‘Stations’ including Engineering, The Transporter and 10 Forward. MAC provided 100 makeup artists and were offering free makeovers all five days!

We spoke to Ben from MAC Hawaii and he gave us some insights to how this came to be. Apparently MAC and CBS been in discussions for a while about collaborating as both feel there are many similarities in the ethos of Star Trek and MAC. Values of equality are at the heart of each. Therefor it was a a natural fit.
In regards to the set, the events manager at MAC Cosmetics used to work for Disney and is a perfectionist. A lot of time was spent digging through the CBS archives to ensure the accuracy of the set in terms of colourings and designs. Fun Fact; the tables from the 10 Forward section are the actual tables from the show!! (yes, then we had to touch them like Picard, Data and the Pheonix!)

But much credit must go to the actors they hired for the parts of Seven of Nine, Uhura, Troi and Vina (the figureheads of the Star Trek Mac range). The casting was spot on. Each would do a skit. Uhura would sing ‘Charlie is our darling’ with every bit as much skill and beauty as Nichelle Nicholls. Troi recreated the scene from In Theory discussing love with Data. Vina performed a dance and Seven of Nine nailed the drunk scene from ‘Timeless’. We had to listen carefully to check if it was dubbed. It’s not, she has truly captured Jeri Ryan’s portrayal of this scene.

Carole treated herself to a makeover and then we proceeded to buy almost everything. We were going to have a considered think about what buy but upon hearing that our favourites were already running dangerously low, we stocked up.
Although we have no regrets buying it we did come away feeling a bit like Harry Kim in the pilot of Voyager when he encountered Quark trying to sell precious gems!

The transporter set was another great feature and free content for us Convention goers. With so many ‘pay for’ photo shoots its nice for attendees to have photographic souvenirs  that say ‘we were there’ but allow us to save our money for meeting the guests. It also allows brand interaction for those who aren’t interested in the makeup. MAC record a transporter effect and the video is beamed to your email account immediately.

The effort achieved by the likes of MAC and the Star Trek Beyond Fan event have set a new bar for interactive Star Trek content, providing greater warmth, affinity and personal contact with Star Trek.
The popularity of Comic Cons around the world is sky high, with ‘geek’ becoming more mainstream. Star Trek fans were the first in organising conventions, but we feel conventions need to keep pushing the comfort zone of their traditional format of should we wish for new fans to join in, becoming more event/show driven. In the words of Captain Pike “We dare you to do better.”

Back to Thursday!

Popular Question No.2

Q: What was your highlight of the week?
A: There were many, but a top one was certainly the Whoopi Goldberg panel.

Appearing at her first ever Star Trek Convention, Whoopi brought energy, enthusiasm, humour and heart to the main stage.
The story of how Whoopi came to be on TNG is well known, that she was inspired by Nichelle Nicholls’ Uhura. She revealed that she liked to think that Guinan was related to Uhura in some way.
Speaking of relations, she gave the audience some secrets into Guinans background including that Gene had told her that Guinan may have been Picard’s great-great-great-great-great grandmother.

She also elaborated on Q and Guinans background, that they were neighbouring races which had similar powers but different philosophies on how to use them.

Because of all these connections Whoopi and Scott called on us to get #BringBackGuinan (for Star Trek Discovery) trending on twitter and spam Bryan Fuller  until he acknowledge it!

scotwhoopi
Scott Mantz, Nichelle Nicholls, Whoopi Goldberg

Now we must pay tribute and respect to the moderator of this panel, Scott Mantz. We had the privilege of meeting Scott at LA (Did we mention we went to the Beyond event in LA?). We had a good chat about the trailer and preview and we knew he was our sort of trekkie from the moment we met him. Scott is a producer/presenter on Access Hollywood and general Star Trek Guru. He brought SO much energy to the stage it was infectious. He was upbeat, with experience of working with the biggest names in hollywood as well as an eidetic memory of Star Trek.
If Scott was moderating a panel, we took that as a mark that it was going to be entertaining  and the one to pick.

The main panels concluded with a wonderful Tribute to Nichelle Nicholls who spoke well and with pride about her contribution to the advancement of women and especially black women.
The audience joined in sharing their tributes and thanks to Nichelle which left no dry eye in the hall. The most touching tribute was by Whoopi Goldberg who joined the stage and thanked Nichelle for being her inspiration. The love!

Whilst the main hall panels had finished, we ran over to the secondary stage to checkout the news from the Okuda’s regarding the release of Star Trek The Encyclopaedia.
‘The Beast’ as its known weighs a whooping 11 pounds and took years for the Okuda’s to rewrite plus add an additional 300 pages!
They created a key to separate the prime and Kelvin timeline whilst stressing that they wanted to give importance to both timelines.

Interesting fact; the term ‘Kelvin Timeline’ which has seemingly appeared from no-where, was coined by the Michael and Denise Okuda. They were originally considering the name ‘Spock Timeline’ but it wasn’t specific enough. The USS Kelvin incident was the starting point for the timeline, and thus got the name.
We salute Michael and Denise for their contribution and dedication to the encyclopaedia and particularly their stance on the Kelvin Timeline. We do feel that it needs more equality in its contribution to Star Trek particularly for it’s celebration of Star Trek’s 50th Anniversary.

Look out soon for our report on the rest of the show….