TNG Movie Night S3: Sights, sounds & tales from L.A. to E.P.

We'll keep collecting anecdotes here, but it's safe to say Thursday night's "Best of Both Worlds" TNG Bluray movie night from CBS and Fathom Events was easily the biggest Trek blowout event in this series. And kudos to TrekRadio for having podcasters and others (like moi) call in from theaters around the country for a little live flavor of Collective fun.

TREKLAND had our ticket-giveaway winners among the hordes of non-drones heading to cinemas nationwide, and Canada too. As promised here's a round-up of what we got in—including a wedding proposal, thanks to Locutus (or at least thanks to his timing of return).

Of course, the fact that the newly HD'd show in question was "The Best of Both Worlds"—and an all-new cinematic edit to boot—didn't hurt the turnout.

The fact that the flick in question not only packs its own punch, but evokes for all who were around in 1990 that long-ago innocence of witnessing a breakout hit in the process, your reward for  standing by in the lean early years... before all the movies and sequels and had-to-get-a-job worldweariness. It calls to you, back to the days when you really could obsess over the world's best cliffhanger... all. summer. long.

Which, as @SirPatStew recounts in the new documentary, applied to parents as well as kids. (And I won't spoil his story, if you haven't seen it elsewhere yet.)
 
Still, I heard that some goers were confused with that Other Star Trek Movie coming next month ...

"There were five people (looked like a family) who got up and left at the beginning as soon as the Fathom trailers finished and the documentary came on. They apparently thought they had bought tickets for the new J.J. Abrams film-—you know, the one that hasn't even come out in the U.S. yet. Pretty amusing!"—Frank Gruber, Paramus, NJ screening

"Guy came out of the theater, saw an Into Darkness poster, said to his friend: 'That's what I THOUGHT we were coming to see!'—@gregharbin (Seattle)

Unofficial ground central for TNG movie night may have been at the Century City Arclight in L.A., where goers got to hear remarks from TNG staffers and Blu-ray project consultant Mike and Denise Okuda, LeVar "Geordi" Burton, onetime TNG S3 writer Ira Steven Behr, and even Elizabeth "Shelby" Dennehy herself, plus Blu-ray doc producers Robert Meyer Burnett and Roger Lay Jr. The Westmores Michael and Michael Jr, who did the Borg electronics, were also in the house—and thanks to my Vegas Vanna, Mary "Televixen" Czerwinski, for these photos while I was "on location" in El Paso:

Listening to Ira wax historic are (from left) Rob, Roger, Denise, Mike, and LeVar ...

...plus a zinger from Elizabeth!

And friend/photog Mary snags those Westmore boys

But meanwhile, in Charleston, S.C.:

"As the director of Carolina Alliance of Star Trek Fans... last night at a local Regal theater we hosted an event. I've worked with NCM Fathom Events since Season 1 and last night was our largest attendance yet!!! We even had a couple get ENGAGEd!"—Erika Y. Figueroa

Our ticket winner in Philly sent this:

"I attended the showing at the Rave 6 University City... It seats about 200 and was a sellout. As I waited for my friend Amy, I talked with members of the Philadelphia Star Trek Meetup Group and the Southeastern PA Nerd Herd.  I ended up missing the pre-show trivia questions and the [documentaries] and instead spent my time talking with my new friends! (Even more members of these 2 groups showed up after this photo was taken.)—Loretta Painter (in TNG T-shirt), Philadelphia

From our Cleveland-area winner, too, in North Canton:
"The theater was almost sold out, and I bought the tickets for our others there; I was going to help the less fortunate anyway."—Roger Scritchfield, Akron


We also heard from the USS Ticonderoga crew in Salt Lake City:
"We had more than the previous two showings"— @TardisCaptain_p

And the USS Atlantis in Idaho, too:

And yes, here in El Paso, where I was in town for Sun City SciFi con, the small but rowdy group at the "overflow" Tinseltown Cinemark theater stood up for my camera to yell out for TrekRadio, and then racked up a few raffle prizes from the con promoters:

Family night!: "Not a great shot, but here's me and my daughter, @ConeErica in Provo, UT"—@cone_is










We also got some thoughts from Treklanders who simply pinged me:

"Modern me got hit almost as hard in the gut as the 1990 me: Fleet graveyard scene hits me right in the feels every time. —@thejoncon, Phoenix area

"That was fun! Loads of #TNG fans, Trek t-shirts everywhere & even a few costumes. Too bad about tech issues tho."—@wetodded, San Diego

"Unfortunately, here at the Orem, UT event, nobody was in costume. Except me."—Scott Armstrong

"I wonder how many Miley Cyrus fans were disappointed last night?"—@doubleofive, Bedford, IN

"Yes [ennoyed],  but thanks to technical difficulties we lost 30 minutes of the episode #dontgotoAugustaGA —@The_Don_Burrito


"Awesome big sceen show, almost full theater, lots of fun, laughing, clapping, true ST fans." —@laura_leclair8, Revere, MA


The event has not dropped off, the numbers keep growing, and a TNG Season 4 promo night seems a sure thing—especially with that trailer for the set on view as well.  I have it on good authority that plans are well along for a repeat of this special edition and documenatry, so we'll see you in a few months back at the theater—even after that other Trek movie... and hopefully glitch free and with cheer to spare.

20 years since "Emmissary"? Happy birthday, DS9!

In honor of Deep Space Nine's premiere anniversary week—and YES, it was a syndicated show, and premiered on a different night in each market city where it was shown, for a week after Sunday, Jan. 3, 1993 ...

Here's a mystery DS9 "premiere" photo (at right, and below): Can you identify it? While you ponder, here's also a quick dive into a vidchat with Ira Behr from 2011 (below the fold), the fourth of a series we ran a year ago, as he waxes on about DS9 at my urging—and why it's appreciated more as the years go by than it was back in the day. (Some of you newer readers may never have seen it; it was shot during his first-year tenure as showrunner on Alphas.) I always am peeved a bit at how we always celebrate the premiers of series, but not the finales or other major moments—but there you go. We are only human... at least, us Sol III natives, anyway.

So, the mystery picture first:

And now Ira reminiscing (and for a spacer):



Gee, did you really need help on this? Our mystery pic is a rare shot of the Promenade going up on Stage 17 from what you might call even before the Terok Nor days: the spring of 1992 prior to the pilot filming that summer—"the biggest standing set in all of Hollywood" for seven years, as the Paramount tour guides used to brag. This shot does not do its scope justice, even with the crew guys for scale... but you get the idea. And a cool snapshot in history. Enjoy!

Vegas Khaan 2012: Thoughts & thank-yous in review

I've been talking about this curve since 2009.

I was stupid enough to get separated from my Canon HD cam and didn't grab any vidchats this year—and I missed a few great ones.

And I don't care IF the "numbers" were down 10 % this year (blame it on the "last Nimoy con" spike of 2011), or that the Guinness Trek-costume-meetup world record didn't get broken (though "we" still hold it, by the way).

Fact is, this was still an incredible Vegas Khaaann we all just survived—and not just for the Hollywood2Vegas Tour I hosted before it (more on that soon).

You Trekland readers may recall I dubbed 2011 the "Comic-Conification" of Vegas Trek because of the explosion of really clever, obscure or elaborate, "out of the box" costumes—a huge jump last year.

Not only did that trend this year go off the scale, Captain, but my predicted "Comic-Conificiation Phase II" phenom came true as well: Vegas-goers simply had a slew of Secondary Theatre panels to choose from—from fun fan debates to hands-on updates from licensees, in non-stop schedules that kept that stage as busy as the main. A chunk of that was under the banner of the newly revitalized startrek.com, finally, and the rest was just licensees and our Trek names getting to their expanding audience.

Virginia Madsen: TruFan since TOS

Personally, I finally got to meet both writer-bloggers John Tenuto and Jordan Hoffman (though I missed meeting Trek professor Anthony Rotolo). And my theory of Virgina Madsen's appearance on Voyager was totally turned on its ear. Virginia was a table-mate of mine, and confided that she's been a Trek fan all her life, thanks to her mom: "I had to FIGHT my agent to get on Voyager," she told me, in between hopping up to take pics with every cool fan costume character who walked down our tween-table aisle.

Sorry, Paul R: it's not my book, it's yours—but I happened to have a Voyager Companion on me and presented it to her, with her "Unforgettable" right there in the sixth season where it belongs.

The above was an example of my Vegas Resolution 2012: to get out and see more peeps—pro and fan—than I did a year ago, when the scale of the new huge Rio environs just sneaked up and exhausted everyone who were used to the Hilton's smaller scale. I think everyone did a better job on that count, too.

Aside from success with my own projects, like our first Vegas fund-raiser meetup for The Con of Wrath—and my surprise CD, still yet to be fornally "launched"—I want to thank everyone who jumped into the RECORD-sized line at my annual Rapid-Fire Trivia on Thursday, and who seemed to enjoy and bravely speak out at our "state of the franchise" forum on Friday. I appreciate those of you came by to say you enjoyed that more than any other panel... at least, by Friday afternoon.

Kudos as always to CBS' Bill Burke and John Van Citters for our trivia prizes—the fans' smarts level was way up this year, and for the first time ever I had people pining for more trivia session later, on Saturday, before the stage pace got even more insane. I was thinking the Secondary Theater's turnout was smaller than last year, until stagemaster Doug Murray tipped me off that one wall had actually been opened up to make the room bigger this year for the Guinness record try (whew). But more on numbers and demos in a post to come, thanks to great points to ponder from my CBS buds. (That includes you too, Marian and Yasmine!).

I didn't get to see as many of our old actor peeps around stage as before, but did high-five a lot of them. That runs the gamut from Avery's really perception-challenging midnight concert Saturday, to Ira Behr's comical takeover of my table for pics (left). Most of all, I had not talked with Gates McFadden since 1995, so our chat was especially welcome (stay tuned).  It was also wonderful to see the last surviving brother of original Enterprise designer Matt Jefferies, Richard, tabling with his book on Matt's life again—after our chat in 2008; you really DO need one of these beautiful coffee table tomes if you are a fan at all. 

But most of all, those costumes! (I still avoid saying "cosplay," as that should refer to those who actually roleplay as well as don the duds—and there were still some of those. I'm looking at you, all-day-Pakled Ron Aponte (right). :-)  My regrets at not seeing the Vasquez Rocks live, nor any of the Crystalline Entities.

And those new fans! How many, one after another, came by the table and let me worm it out of them that this was not only their first Vegas Khaan!, but their first con anywhere, of any stripe. Some had been armchair fans for years, some came in with JJTrek—but all said it was just time to do it.

Trek teen geekgirls rule!

And that brings us to all the stereotype busters, god bless'em. Nervous Trek marketers worried about the under-30-fans dwindling, and that seemed to be true in the mid-Aughts—at least as far as the barometer of con attendance. Middle-age folks with hard-core jobs, more into actors than con-going, turned out on Saturday and/or Sunday on one-day tickets, especially for the TNG reunion or the "Four Captains." But the Vegas phenom has exploded since mid-decade for twentysomethings—thanks to JJ's movie, and thanks to the TNG-watching parents' kids now in their 20s and coming alone when their parents remained armchair fans (I heard that over and over, too: those '80s babies finally grew up).

Our other meme-buster remains women—and how. Not to be all sexist, but I've long fought to undo the meme that there were no women, much less attractive ladies, in Trek fandom. Of course that's silly: Spock's Vulcan sexual aloofness/seductiveness DROVE fandom in the first decade. But the con-going generation didn't replace that until recently, in big numbers, and now we have delightful young ladies all over the place--and smart, savvy, sassy ones sciencing and entrepreneuring up a storm, as part of the geekgal revolution. And thanks to 24/7, cross-platform media and online awareness.

Vegas Trek is also now so big that one can spend all their time in just one non-actor-focused angle—say, Star Trek Online's parties and events and developer-worship... much less the costumes... or the exploding podcaster community, led this year by a huge "Podcasters' Row": G&T Show, Priority One, Podcast UGC, Primetime UGC, Gates of Sto'Vo'Kor, and STOked Radio—all syndicated or live on Trek Radio, taking turns at their booth. (BTW: All you Cryptic and pod folks I finally met in the flesh are just a blur! Avatars and handles—not helpful!)

Ex-McFadden's: lost opp

Of course Vegas is still the place to see sights and hear news like no other: Mike and Denise Okuda inspecting the new Qmx Enterprise-A and Enterprise-D, or the unveiling of LaLaLand's amazing all-in-one TOS soundtrack  project. News that William Shatner's follow-up is a TNG doc with David Zappone and his Get a Life crew... and that David Gerrold is filming a doc on his works, too. Oh, and a personal mini-reunion with my old colleague Dan Madsen as he helps to ease Ashley Eckstein's Her Universe geekgirl fashion line into the Trek realm, with my buds Mary "Televixen" Czerwinski, Charity "Bye Bye Robot" Wood and Kayla Iacovino. Or see Rod introduce the slick and in-depth  Roddenberry episode-review podcast Mission Logs with host John Champion (and getting to meet co-host Ken Ray that night). Not near enough time with my buds Ian Spelling, Alec Peters and Anthony Pascale... or missing many, many others. (Ron and Brannon, my regrets.) 

Thanks also to all the early-birds who hit up our "Party Like a SpockStar" event at the Masquerade Bar, cosponsored with DVDGeeks review podcast; John and Mary's Bozo Buckets were a DVD-prize hit. Not so lucky was my voice, lost along with our space last year in the former McFadden's (above right) to rebranding/weeknight closure and the dull ambient roar of the Masquerade Village "stage" we were stuck with. So much for my karaoke.

Amid the mobs, there was a place for little moments: my Twitter bud and STO's Thomas Marrone fulfilling a lifelong dream of having Mike O. signing his TNG Tech Manual (left)... introducing "FX Ron" B. Moore, VFX supervisor from TNG's pilot through Enterprise's finale, to the radio guys (right) and getting him on live (and seeing his Memory-Alpha page for the first time!)  .... and catching a Nog-Jake reunion, as Cirroc Loftin and Aron Eisenberg found each other for a quick chat just at Sunday closing time in the vendor's room, right across from me:

Ferengi-Hewmon unscripted reunion

Touching history

Or even me, finding a rare fanboy moment and actually touching a piece of the original Galileo shuttlecraft plywood hull with the actual builder, car customizer Gene Winfield (right) in the original AMT Models deal that paid for the set piece.  But not to say, in all that, that I was crowdaphobic: I had to see the TNG reunion and most of Four Captains as well, myself.



But Vegas Khaan has gotten not just large but diverse—the 9-p.m.-bedtimers and the party peeps alike—and even spawned empowered fans who make their own events and spinoffs to fill the gaps that still remain, even after Creation's Adam and Gary keep expanding it ... proving that there's  plenty of small moments and personal bits that everyone can take away.

Thanks so much for all of you Khaaaners who shared little moments with me—either a question, or a trivia try, or a photo op (yours or mine).  My gratitude and thanks for all the support so many of you give Trekland, my new CD "On Speaker", and The Con of Wrath—both at the table and at the events.

And most of all—thanks to all of you who admitted, one way of another, that this was your FIRST Vegas Khaan... or first con, altogether. (Hey, don't forget to find and support your local sci-fi fandom, too!)  That's what keeps this event fresh, that's what keeps fandom fresh... that's what keeps STAR TREK and Gene's vision fresh and alive.

As if they need any help.



(Like so many others, I have these and more choice Vegas pics in an album at my Trekland Facebook page. "Like" the page, would you, if not already? There's plenty more albums of pics there, as well.)

STV: Finally, Niners: Part 4 of our Ira Steven Behr vidchat

A lot has happened since I first caught up last year with Ira Steven Behr—he of the TNG pivotal Season 3, and then showrunner the final five of his brilliant seven-year stint on DS9—and then ran three parts of our four-part video chat. For one thing, he's moved on from working on SyFy's Alphas, and for another he's confirmed to be a guest—after many years—for this year's Creation Vegas Khaaan in August!


Frankly, I'm shocked—shocked!—not to have been deluged with your demands for the promised but unfulfilled finale Part Four. Well, you can call off your non-existent email campaign, and just shut down the fax, okay?  Thankfully, in the final minutes we mainly wax poetic and/or nostalgic about DS9, so no ham, no fowl—it's just as pithy as it was a few months back and no worse for the delay. Here you go ... 

Anybody have any lingering questions for Ira for NEXT time? Comment below!

STV: Ira Steven Behr, Part 3 of 4—On "Alpha"s AND "DS9"...

Have you been watching Alphas on SyFy at 10 p.m. Mondays?  Exec producer Ira Steven Behr is an old friend from his Trekland days heading up the writers on DS9 (and the creator of Jennifer Hetrick's rogue archeologist Vash on TNG, to boot).

If you haven't caught the earlier installments of this interview, here's Part I and Part 2 all ready for you—where, among other things, Ira runs through the David Straithaim-led cast and characters of his new hit (it's doing very well).  In Part 3 here, Ira makes the point—in case you haven't been keeping up!—that the Alphas' "superhuman" abilities are natural, right from the brain: neither the comic-book super-Heroes style, nor of The 4400 alien-additive variety (and he should know, having headed up the latter show).

In fact, we finally turn the convo in this segment to waxing reflective on DS9 ... and yes, it all concludes in Part 4, coming up soon.



BTW: As Ira describes, here's real-life "Alpha" Stephen Wiltshire in action with his Manhattan memory mural.

STV: Ira Steven Behr, Part 2: On his new ALPHAS of SyFy—and DS9, of course

It's been some weeks for Ira Steven Behr since we posted Part I of our pre-ALPHAS vidchat.... In that time, the new 10 p.m. Monday series has come in for great critical and audience approval alike and become SyFy's newest hit.  


Meanwhile, here's our next piece with the DS9 showrunner, also of the late great The 4400 and many more—in which Ira addresses more of his new show and can't help but shout out to his old Trek days. Especially since I lead him there...with even more to come in Part 3: we're just getting warmed up.

STV: Ira Steven Behr, Part I—on "Alphas," "DS9"... and what about that manuscript?!

Congrats to Ira Steven Behr, showrunner for the new SyFy Monday-night hit Alphas—according to early numbers and critical response—and thanks to him for sitting down for yet another talk about it... but this time, on guerilla-cam for Trekland.

Can I tell you a story? On my second working trip to Hollywood—but the first not be crazed, not on an insane deadline and for longer than five days—Ira was my very first interview subject during his first year on DS9. At the time I had no idea he'd just had a run-in with a well-known genre magazine writer. And his first sentence to me was, before I ever sat down on a chair in his Hart Building office: "You aren't going to fuck around with my quotes, are you?  You better not. Because I'm tired of being honest and being misquoted."

Welcome to Hollywood and Trekland, Larry.

But what a bonding moment. So thanks for sharing again, Ira—my ST VI Blu-ray audio-mate. I guess I faked the trust thing good enough.



And everybody else, stay tuned for the rest with Ira next week ...and for more new eps of Alphas on SyFy Mondays at 10 pm ET/PT. As for DS9 and The 4400—you can find 'em on DVD (October for Netflix).

As for Ira's book ...we'll have to be patient.

STV: Long-lost chat! Alphas/DS9's Ira Steven Behr—novelist?

In honor of Ira Steven Behr's new show Alphas premiering this week on SyFy (he's the showrunner, just not the creator—sound familiar?) ...

...Here's a vidchat he and I did, pre-HD, that was ready to go but delayed in posting at Trekland.com from back in December 2008, during the Hollywood writer's strike and just after the end of his show The 4400. I taped this just after we'd had lunch and recorded our joint audio commentary for the Blu-ray edition of ST VI: The Undiscovered Country.

The passion, idealism and, yes, a slightly twisted dark side all come through in Ira's years of running DS9--as well as his stint on UPN's Twilight Zone redux, and especially The 4400. What's you don't sense by merely watching his series, though, is that Ira is a hoot. And he knows his Hollywood stuff.

It all came back to me recently that, aside from his DVD bonus appearances, most fans haven't had a real chance to meet Ira—so I was pleased when he let me hound him for a little catch-up chat outside Mulberry's Pizza. The guy who brought multiple mainstream Ferengis, the Bell Riots and swingin' Vic Fontaine to Star Trek is the real deal. (And he's even using a computer now—wow.)

We had a hoot with ST VI, and the Blu-ray edition subsequently saw the light of day—which is more than I can say for this chat ... until now! (Notice this clip is still 4x3 aspect, not HD, and lacks the STV endtag theme: I chose to keep it pristine here, and not re-edit.)

I didn't realize it going in that day, but we wound up talking mostly about his big project of the strike-caused hiatus... a novel!  So—did he ever finish the manuscript from '08? For the answer, stay tuned HERE this week, and see... and check out Alphas at 10 p.m. Mondays PT/ET on SyFy, with encore airings through the week.

(More Ira, and of a more recent nature. Coming up this week ...!)