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Posted: 16:25:58 on September 10 2002
By: Steve Krutzler
Dept: General Star Trek

A Weekend in Las Vegas

Written for TrekWeb by Jacqueline Bundy

An extremely rare event took place this past weekend--a free Star Trek convention. The Las Vegas Bridge Party was quite refreshing and informal in tone. Quite a few of the stars turned out to mingle with the fans and support the event promoter, Slanted Fedora. Approximately 450 fans from around the world enjoyed a very relaxed weekend mingling with some of their favorite actors.

The laid back nature of the event and the presentations leant itself to lots of questions and interaction between the folks on stage and the audience. J.G. Hertzler, Robert O’Reilly, Wil Wheaton, Denise Crosby, Armin Shimerman, Aron Eisenberg, Andrew Robinson, Casey Biggs, John DeLancie, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Garrett Wang, Nicole DeBoer, Alexander Siddig, Marina Sirtis, Robin Curtis and several other Star Trek guest stars as well as popular actors from other Sci-Fi shows were all on hand. Each shared memories, posed for photos, answered questions and updated the audience on what’s new in their lives and careers.

JG Hertzler, a long time fan himself, spoke of his admiration for TOS and his recent project to put together the special features for the special edition DVD of “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” which will be released next year. He also spoke of his upcoming novels “The Left Hand of Destiny” which will tell the story of Martok’s return to the Klingon Empire as Chancellor. Mr. Hertzler is obviously very excited about these two books, which will be co-authored by Jeffrey Lang, the author of “Immortal Coil” and “Abyss”. The books are due in stores next spring.

The always entertaining Wil Wheaton kept the audience laughing as he shared the story of his first visit to the Las Vegas Hilton’s Star Trek: The Experience. He also answered questions about “The Weakest Link” and his cameo in “Nemesis”. Despite the fact that his one scene wound up on the cutting room floor Wheaton described the experience of being on a Star Trek set again as “awesome” stating, “it was so much fun to be with my surrogate family again”.

Denise Crosby was next up and the first thing the audience wanted to know about was would there be a sequel to “Trekkies”. Denise said, “Paramount is taking their time” but is still planning on a sequel to the popular movie about fandom. The current idea is to produce the project in partnership with the SciFi Channel as a two-hour television event. This time around the focus will be on international conventions and she would like to include a follow up on some of the fans that appeared in “Trekkies”.

Asked by an audience member why her Romulan character Sela wasn’t included in “Nemesis” Ms. Crosby said that not including Sela was in her opinion “a missed opportunity”. She told the audience that she actually called Rick Berman to ask him about the possibility but was told it wouldn’t work because “Sela wouldn’t know these Romulans”.

Sporting a beard, which he grew for a recent guest role, Armin Shimerman has been one very busy man. In the past few months he has made numerous guest appearances and next up is working on David Kelly’s new series for Fox called “Girls Club”. Shimerman has also been keeping busy with lots of stage work. He will be appearing this fall in a production of “Stand Up Shakespeare” at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles, which will be directed by Casey Biggs.

Casey Biggs has been doing a lot of directing lately. His recent production of “Richard III” won high praise from both audiences and critics alike. Mr. Biggs spoke of his appreciation for the classic playwrights like Chekov and Shakespeare, calling the themes of their work “timeless”. Whether working as an actor or director he considers himself first and foremost to be a storyteller.

Joined on stage by Andrew Robinson, the Cardassian duo talked about the quality of the writing on Deep Space Nine and the challenges of playing a role requiring such heavy makeup. Mr. Robinson feels one of the things that sets their series apart is that the writers on DS9 “had different sensibilities than the writers of the other series”. Robinson also informed the audience that he had just finished the first draft of his short story for next years Deep Space Nine anthology joking that the story is “very long, almost novella length”. Both actors thanked the fans for all their support and expressed their appreciation for the generosity with which Star Trek fans have donated to their chosen charities.

The Saturday afternoon events culminated with Alexander Siddig taking the stage. Mr. Siddig makes his home in England and he told the audience that it is very difficult for him to travel at the moment due to his Middle Eastern appearance. He did emphasize that most of the difficulties were on the British side, not here in the United States.

A truly unique and special day for everyone in attendance was capped off by a meet and greet period with all the stars and by an evening filled with comedy and music. I literally had tears running down my face I laughed so hard during “Jerry Doyle Uncensored”. Ethan Phillips also entertained the crowd with his own unique humor.

The music portion of the evening was to be Klingon Karaoke, hosted by Robert O’Reilly and JG Hertzler. But before the audience got into the act they were treated to selections from a few of the stars. Wil Wheaton got things started by interpreting a Dean Martin classic. Bob Picardo followed wowing the audience with the Platter’s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”. Last but certainly not least, Casey Biggs raised more than a few eyebrows by treating everyone to Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me To the Moon” followed by a fantastic rendition of “Fever”.

That was just the first day so be sure to check back for more news from this unique weekend in Las Vegas.

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