My Creepy Middle School Crush

This blog was written in pieces throughout the day. Tenses may be a little off. Don't blame me for that - I tried.



George Takei was wonderful. He took a lot of questions and was very patient with his fans. One thing I noticed was that everything seems to be about Japanese internment with him, which is understandable, if irritating. People asked why he took so long to come out, but he says he already was out, he just hadn't talked to the press. He didn't talk to the press because he was worried about what would happen to his career. I think it's just made him more popular, and forced a lot of trekkies to confront their feelings about homosexuality.

Walter Koenig was also wonderful and very funny. He spent a lot of time teasing George, who was backstage, yelling, "George, I can hear you out here!"
The state of Star Trek is pretty damn shitty, if you ask me. He talked a lot about InAlienable, and showed us some world premiere clips of the new movie, which looks awesome. Walter cast his daughter, who is a stand-up comic, in one role, and Marina is playing a role that originally was going to Bob Picardo but that didn't work out because Walter was suppossed to go on the cruise, but then he didn't so he could film the movie, so then Bob replaced him. That's in case you care and I'm just realizing now how insane that sounds and how much you probably do not care one bitty bit.

And then I walked myself up to the room, and I left my notebook and my keycard. My Nichelle Nichols encounter was next. No notebook. Very sad.

Lucky for me, the front of my program was completely blank. Well, not blank, but it just had pictures on it, so I figured I'd take notes on that. Nichelle was very nice to everyone, and started with the questions right away, pretty much, and they asked about everything. They asked about her son's reaction to her being on Star Trek (positive) and about Uhura's relationship with Scotty (if you've seen V recently, you get that) and she actually told a very funny story about where that came from.

See, the joke on the set was that Nichelle and Jimmy were the "old married couple". They would friendly snipe at each other and tease each other and Jimmy was the crochety old man and when he had a heart attack Nichelle rushed to his side and said, "If you'd died on me I would have killed you." Stuff like that. So naturally, when Harve Bennett learned about this, it was worked into the script for V.

She talked about being in Are We There Yet? as a favor to Ice Cube. Some favor. She also shared details of "Of Gods and Men". The set, she said, is so realistic that when she walked onto it in the movie and said her line "As I live and breathe..." she didn't even have to act. That set is amazing. She told the Martin Luther King story. I love that story.

And then they did the State of Star Trek. And I decided to kill J.J.

Ten minutes before, I wouldn't have said that. I was happy with the new movie, J.J. Abrams, the works, right. Especially the part of M:I3 where they tell Tom Cruise he has an explosive in his head...

But I digress.

It's all over now. Kid gloves off, and if J.J. wants my loyalty back in any measure, he's gonna have to work his ass off.

See, J.J. didn't show up.

He's suppossed to be here, right now, as I write this. He's suppossed to be sitting in the sixth chair of the State of Star Trek panel, waiting for his turn (last, of course, for the movie publicity).

He didn't show.

He's not here.

It's a lack of respect for the fans, for the world into which he's entering. Now, if I see on the net tonight that his mother died today, I will forgive him. If his house burned down, if his dog got ran over, if Tom Cruise showed up and demanded surgery to remove the explosive from his brain, appendicitis, a really bad cold, the works. There is someone from CBS joking about James Van Der Beek as Kirk. They're doing some new marketing, there's manga, there's comics, there's some new books (including Captain Kirk's Guide to Women), but J.J. was suppossed to be here. He didn't show.

I want him to have appendicitis, or be held hostage by Tom Cruise. I want these things because I don't enjoy being let down, and I REALLY don't like being let down by Star Trek. I wish right now that I don't care so much as I do. Sometimes, you know, I wonder if I'm still a fan or I'm just used to it. Now I know. Definitely a fan.

They just announced that they're making a Martok action figure and an Ezri figure. Happy happy.

Okay, and then there was D.C. Fontana. Adam totally hogged her, but I got the first question - how did she feel about having established so much of the canon? She said she just made it up, and they had someone whose job it was to keep the continuity going. I think that position may have fallen victim to budget cuts before Enterprise came along. She was amazingly patient and had tons of information and real-world knowledge of the very beginning of, well, my life, as odd as it may sound.

And then they announced she was gonna do autographs. For everyone.

Well, wait a minute. I didn't have anything for her to autograph. I'd just written all over my program! Well, I could just run out and get one -

But then, right then, came Dominic Keating and Connor Trineer. These were half the reason Enterprise was tolerable! (T'Pol, as much as it pains me to say it, and various random decent moments are the other half.) This was tragic!

Just then my parents got back from wherever they'd gone, bearing a program. I managed to pry the program away from my dad and happily got in line when they called my row, able to listen to Dominic's repeated requests for more beer, Connor's constant being cut off, the insults, the laughter, and the story about Dominic signing the knickers (british word for panties) worn by Connor in one epsiode of season 1 for a transvestite at a previous convention. I should mention that the woman was wearing them at the time.

Some people...

Terry Farrell was up right away afterwards, and we finally learned the truth about why she left. She asked for more money, Rick Berman said no, and you know what that means in showbiz. The ax. Or the mystical energy to the stomach, whatever. She talked about her son, Max, and her husband. She seems very happy and I think she had a good time. It's been years since she did a con, so we were lucky to be able to see her. They showed a Jadzia music video that made me tear up - I really loved the character and it was hard to lose her.

I skipped the Okudas and went to Borg War. Big. Damn. Mistake. That's all I'll say.

Okay, plot holes the size of Jupiter. Now I'm done.

And then it was time for... The Party.


I missed meeting Connor, but I did meet Garrett Wang, who was not supposed to be here, but there he was. Ohmigod! I ran up to meet him. "I have to tell you," I said, "you were my creepy middle school crush!" I think that was way better than some generic "I love you!" or "You should have been promoted." He laughed and thanked me and posed for a picture with me. God, I love him! Still!

I met some Trekkies and we went for a drink afterward. I explained my Nemesis theory to a guy from Illinois. Sometime I'll detail it here, probably adjacent to a Nemesis viewing.

I'll post this tomorrow. Please comment if you're reading!

-Gillian