CONVENTIONS ------------- Edited by Simon Plumbe ------------------------ More news and views from the world of Trek conventions! CONTAGION '92 --------------- 18th - 20th July 1992, Central Hotel, Glasgow, SCOTLAND --------------------------------------------------------- Report and photos by Simon Plumbe ----------------------------------- Out of all of the conventions I attended last year, there were none I was looking forward to more than Contagion. After their incredible start with Silvercon in 1991, the committee were taking on a big challenge to see if they could produce the goods a second year running. Fortunately, I wasn't to be disappointed. If you will have read my report on Silvercon (Issue 1) you'll remember that the organisers managed to persuade their guest of honour, John de Lancie, to turn up during the opening ceremony in a kilt! How could they beat that, you may ask? Read on and find out... The guest line-up itself was very impressive with Richard Arnold, Susan Sackett, author Jean Lorrah, and the guest of honour, George Takei and it was George that ended up being the focal point of the whole opening ceremony. It started with the obligatory introduction of all the convention committee, followed by the guests, who were introduced and who walked up to the stage one by one. Until George, that is! They introduced George and everyone turned around, expecting him to come from the back of the hall as the other guests had done. A few seconds later and he still hadn't appeared so the committee introduced him again. Again, there was silence and no George for a few seconds... until all the lights suddenly went out! Then a large number of fans dressed as Klingons burst in from one of the side doors, firing off guns as they entered. After a few seconds of this, they made their way to the front of the hall, climbed on stage and announced that they had "kidnapped" George and were holding him for ransom. They then proceeded to play a very funny "hostage" tape starring George with him pleading for his release! Immediately after, the Klingons went around the hall collecting their "ransom" for the Telethon charity and proceeded to raise almost г400 in 10 minutes. Then they release George who entered the room beaming and offering the Vulcan salute to anyone and everyone! At that point, I didn't care about the rest of the con as it was already better than the previous year (or any other con, for that matter!). Like most other conventions in recent years, the con book was a small A5, 28 page affair, although that's where the similarities stopped. Most con books recently have been little more than glorified programmes with one-page profiles on the guests, no articles and little else to go with it apart from adverts. In contrast to this, although the bulk of the book was taken up with the "traditional" items, there were also two re-prints of very good articles written by George Takei and Gene Roddenberry, spanning 5 pages. Nothing fantastic overall, but it was something to read in between videos! The programme was well balanced, running 24 hours a day(!), and spanning 4 function rooms! The first was the main hall that offered all of the guests talks along with all of the latest TNG episodes from Season 5 along with a sprinkling of older TNG episodes throughout the night. Next was a smaller room able to seat approx 150-200 which had a continuous showing of Classic and TNG episodes throughout the con, only stopping to host the autograph sessions! The third, somewhat smaller video room was devoted to Classic Trek, and this only ran for about 17 hours a day and finally the video programme was wrapped up with another 17 hour a day room showing a random selection of assorted sci-fi and fantasy TV shows including Alien Nation, The Flash, Red Dwarf and much more. At least you can't say there wasn't any variety! The talks given by the guests were superb. Richard was his usual entertaining self, and there was a wonderfully moving talk by Susan Sackett with her recalling her memories of working with Gene. There was also a fascinating joint writers panel with Susan and Jean Lorrah providing invaluable information for budding writers. As far as the talks were concerned though, none could come close to the myriad of anecdotes from George, including a FULL account of his journey to the Alton Towers theme park in England a few years ago that took about 35 minutes to describe! Very funny and you can read almost ALL of George's talks in this issue! However, the highlight of the entire weekend was sparked off by a causal remark from George in his first talk of the weekend. He was talking about Mann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood (where all the big stars get to sign their names in concrete) and a fan called John Bathgate (who, for some obscure reason likes to be called "Baggy") thought it would be a good idea to try and get some concrete and get George's handprint and signature in it! George mentioned the handprints on the Saturday and John spent most of the weekend trying to track down some cement. He finally succeeded on Sunday morning! If you can imagine, there were about 700 people in the main hall as George was about to start. Then the committee reminded George about the concrete and a builder came on stage with Baggy and started to prepare the concrete while George explained what was going on. At that point, there must have been at least 50-100 fans rushing forwards with their cameras trying to get as many photos as possible! It's not an exageration to say that there were more cameras flashing than there were when George did it for "real" in the States!! Finally, Baggy also seemed to take over the convention during the charity auction, buying most of the more expensive items, including a piece of the Next Gen Enterprise from the episode "Cause and Effect" - if you haven't seen the episode, the Enterprise is seen to explode -- 4 times!! Surprisingly, a separate Enterprise was constructed for each explosion and Baggy paid г140 for a large chunk of the back of one of them! Overall, it was an incredible convention with a great, friendly, occasionally manic atmosphere and I would recommend next year's con to ANYONE! T'KON '92 ----------- 13th - 15th November 1992, The Hotel Arcade, Birmingham, ENGLAND ------------------------------------------------------------------ Reports by Simon Plumbe and John Kitts ---------------------------------------- Simon Plumbe нннннннннннн This, the 8th T'Kon convention to have been organised to-date, run by the fan club Genesis II, was a notable convention from my point of view -- not only was it my tenth convention, but it was also the first that I assisted as a steward. As with their previous cons, there were no big guests. In fact, the only guests they had were stuntman/martial arts expert John Carrigan (a regular at T'Kons past, who gave two very funny and entertaining talks, especially the live stunt demonstrations), Andrew Lound from the Planetary Society and Trek fan and member of the Interplanetary Society, Bo Maxwell. The video programme on offer during the weekend was a mixed bag. There was a superb TNG programme showing up to episode 8 of Season 6, but there were only 2/3 Classic Trek episodes and only one of the movies Star Trek V (where only 1 person turned up -- the steward, namely me!). The majority of the non-TNG programme was taken up with other sci-fi shows and films and a large amount of Japanese Anime films. This is fine if you like them, but there were rarely more than 5 or 6 people watching them at any given time. Another problem, while on the subject of video rooms, was the stewarding. If you've never been to a con before, stewards are the fans who have volunteered to help out with security at the con, watching over equipment, supervising video rooms and making sure that nothing unruly goes on. Unfortunately at T'Kon, many of the people who had volunteered to help just didn't turn up and it was left to just a small handful of people to keep everything running. At one point, both myself and John Kitts ended up stewarding a video room for almost 5 hours as the "official" steward failed to arrive. I also found this problem with the art room which was frequently locked when I came to run demonstrations of the mag. There were a number of special events taking place during the weekend. On the Friday night, there was a midnight showing of Star Trek VI arranged in the cinema next door, to which almost everyone at the con attended, many in uniform! There was also a superb "Fashion Show" with around 20 or so fans parading in assorted Trek/sci-fi costumes. Best of the lot had to be the hillarious Klingon Madonna, accompanied by a rather suggestive floor show!! I've never met anyone braver than the GUY who did that!! As well as this, there was a trip to the local Laserzone(laser combat centre), although out of around 400 people at the con, only 4 turned up!! The hotel itself was quite nice, although the rooms were a little cramped. One thing that immediately attracted people's attention was a large fish pond in the reception. Within 30 minutes of the con starting, a sign had been put up assigning Trek names to all the fish. The largest of all was referred to as Scotty and several red fish were Security Guards! Unfortunately, for some strange reason, most of the fish died during the weekend (!) and they were all re-named to either Tasha or just Enterprise Security Guards (with accompanying comments of `He's dead, Jim!')! Overall, it was just as much fun as the previous years and although it didn't have the glamour of the larger cons, it captured the friendly fan-club atmosphere and made the con so much more enjoyable. A great con, and I can't wait for their next in early '94. John Kitts нннннннннн The trouble with mini-cons is that you only really get one full day (the Saturday), but this one started off well with some season six Next Generation episodes and then a reasonably well attended ten-pin bowling trip in the afternoon (shame I couldn't seem to bowl straight!). Friday evening saw the con opened by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham (seemed to enjoy himself), then most people seemed to go off to the Next Generation video room. Now, if I had to pick a fault with the organisation, it would be the Next Gen room. Ever since The Next Generation has really got going (88/89), every con has shown up-to-date episodes (all well and good), but of course, being up-to- date, not many people will have seen them yet. So, of course, everyone tries to see what they've yet to see and every single time the video room ends up vastly over-filled. A reasonable solution would have been to have duplicate tapes for when Video Two (which actually had quite a good programme) ran out of people (as it did), and turn that into another TNG video room. I went to bed early Friday (midnight because I had a cold!), so I couldn't tell you much else about that. From Saturday, the problem was that there was no programme as such - it was more or less made up as it went along, presumably on the (sensible) basis that a printed schedule ALWAYS changes anyway. Saturday passed fairly quickly - I went to the Laserzone Klingon Hunt, plenty of people said they would come, but in the end the turnout was very poor -- a shame as it was good fun (and I won!). The rest of the weekend was usual con-type-things, the dealer's room was reasonable, the hotel was nice (and new), although it was a shame to see their fish dying off. It's true many of the stewards were no-shows (which is unusual), but that was no fault of the organisers. Overall, an enjoyable con, decent venue - I look forward to having the extra day (or two?) next time. -------------------------------- F O R T H C O M I N G C O N V E N T I O N S ------------------------------------------------ TREK/DWARF (Star Trek/Red Dwarf convention) ------------------------------------------- Date: 5th - 7th March 1993 Place: Swallow Hotel, Peterborough, ENGLAND Price: Guests: Contact: Trek/Dwarf, 47 Marsham, Orton Goldhay, Peterborough, PE2 5RN, ENGLAND (enclose 2 SAE's) WARP ONE -------- Date: 30th April - 3rd May 1993 Place: Middleton Tower Holiday Centre, Morecambe, ENGLAND Price: г30 Guests: Contact: WARP ONE, 69 Merlin Crescent, Edgware, Middlesex, HA8 6JB, ENGLAND CONTAGION '93 ------------- Date: 17th - 19th July 1993 Place: The Hospitality Inn, Glasgow, SCOTLAND Price: г30 Guests: Contact: Contagion, P.O. Box 867, Rutherglen, Glasgow, G73 4HR, SCOTLAND HOLODECK -------- Date: 27th - 30th August 1993 Place: Telford Moat House Hotel, Telford, ENGLAND Price: г25 Guests: Contact: Holodeck, P.O. Box 29, Hitchen, Herts, ST4 9TG, ENGLAND LIGHTSPEED - 1993 (TNG) ----------------------- Date: 17th - 19th September 1993 Place: Hilton International Hotel, Leeds, ENGLAND Price: г20 Guests: Contact: Lightspeed '93, 16 Bramwell Street, Eastwood, Rotherham, S65 1RZ, ENGLAND HAMBURG PHANTASTIC 1994 ----------------------- Date: 3rd - 5th June 1994 Place: Congress Centre Hamburg, GERMANY Price: г20 Guests: Contact: Achim Sturm, Woltersburger Muhlenweg 10, W-3110 Uelzen, GERMANY -------------------------------- CONVENTION NEWS/RUMOURS ------------------------- * There is talk currently circulating that there are some VERY special guests lined up for some forthcoming UK cons including William Shatner, Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner!! * It is also believed that Leonard Nimoy may be attending TWO UK conventions in the near future - one of which is believed to be his own annual convention in Nottingham this year. -------------------------------- Send in your convention reports/photos (old and new), news or details of forthcoming cons to this address: The Final Frontier - Conventions c/o Simon Plumbe 14 Rousdon Grove Great Barr Birmingham B43 5HN ENGLAND Next issue: Reports and photos from STARBASE '93. If you're at any of the major UK cons in '93 (including WARP ONE, CONTAGION '93 etc), feel free to come up to any of the I.F. team and say hi!