Minnesota Xena Viewing Society's convention report on MarsCon2002

I went to several panels at the con this year. The Delvian Seek hosted a Farscape panel. Pictured here is a puppet that one of their club members made of the character Rigel.

There was a very interesting panel comparing Lois & Clark to the new Smallville series and other Superman adaptations. At one point the discussion turned to why Supergirl has never become a major female Superhero but Xena and Buffy have. Basically the conclusion was Supergirl was too much of a carbon copy of Superman and didn't offer anything new to people.

I also attended the Doctor Who panel. Bill Baggs of BBV Productions was a guest panelist. It was a very positive panel. The discussion this year was centered more around "how" Doctor Who will come back, more than "if" it will come back. They also discussed how a return of Doctor Who to televison would affect the original audio dramas and novels that are being produced currently. Would fans still support the novels and audio dramas featuring the original Doctor Who series if a new series is made? Would the fans support a new series if it had little to do with the original chronolgy? I'm sure Xena fans will have to deal with many of these same questions if a new Xena series or movie were made someday without Lucy and Renee. Even if a movie was made with them, how would fans react to someone else in the role of Ares?

The main guest at MarsCon that I was interested in seeing was former Dr. Who cast member John Levene (Sgt. Benton). It's been well over ten years since I've seen anyone from Dr. Who at a con. He's a bit of a ham when it comes to telling jokes. I got to ask him several questions during his two Q&A sessions and got my picture taken with him. All in all a fun experience.

Cetainly one of the most learned guests I've seen at a con. Peter was a co-star on the short-lived Babylon 5 spin-off "Crusade". He was also in the movie "The Patriot" with Mel Gibson. Peter has co-written and starred in several doccumentaries for the History Channel. His sessions centered mainly on his work on the Egypt and Masada doccumentaries. He had some traveling adventures just getting to Minnesota. Apparently his flight was delayed several hours because the plane had a flat tire and no one had the equipment available to fix it right away.