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My Star Trek Experience |
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Page 3 |
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Jimmy, George, Nichelle, Leonard, Walter, and Grace. |
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At 3pm, Leonard was joined onstage by the rest of the first Star Trek crew, including Grace Lee Whitney (Yeoman Rand), whose autograph I had been fortunate enough to get on Thursday. It was wonderful to see James Doohan, although it was sad to see him in such failing health. Nichelle was looking as beautiful and vivacious as ever, and George Takei barely looked a day older than when he had sat at the helm of the Enterprise. Walter had aged, but very gracefully. And if he no longer made a young girl's heart flutter, well . . . this girl wasn't so young any more either. And he was still a handsome man. They spoke about the show, but nostalgically, and I realized that it had truly been a long time since they'd worked together at Desilu Studios with good ol' Gene. But later, they livened up as they told us what they were doing now, what their children were doing, and in a few cases, what their grandkids were doing! It was a blissful hour spent in the company of a very special band of actors.
But more fun was coming up! At 4pm, we adjourned to poolside for a pool party. James, Nichelle, Walter, and George were doing photo ops for the fans and the proceeds went to charity. And the fans got a free drink too! I got my picture taken with Scotty. It was a very special moment. He reminded me so much of my beloved grandfather, and I suppose my hug was a little tighter than it should have been from a stranger because of that thought. But he didn't mind at all, his eyes twinkling merrily as he hugged me back. |
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A special moment with Scotty. |
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Later, I rushed into one of the hotel's many restrooms and changed into my evening gown for the evening show. When I returned poolside, I was fortunate enough to run into the incredible lookalike Picard. He'd been enjoying himself greatly at the Convention, having actors and fans come up and mistake him for the sexy captain, asking him for his autograph. Some just asked to have their picture taken with him, which he very graciously allowed, his soft British voice never losing patience or tiring of our foolishness. I learned later that they'd cancelled the Lookalike Contest because of him, Dave Scott going so far as to say that he'd have won, even without a uniform! In fact, Dave said that it would be a great joke if it actually was Patrick Stewart, and he'd managed to make it to the Convention after all.
We didn't have time for a formal dinner, and had in fact eaten pizza by the pool during the party. Our theatre show was at 7pm, and we didn't want to be late. We were seeing the Fab 4 of Voyager (Ethan Phillips, Roxann Dawson, Robert Duncan McNeill, and Robert Picardo) perform "The Midlife Crisis of Dionysus" by Garrison Keiller. We were in line early, but didn't take our seats until 7:20, since they had run into trouble with the podiums. Apparently the hotel had been remiss concerning their needs for the show and had supplied them with podiums that did not have proper lighting or microphones. In addition, Robert Picardo (The Doctor) insisted that the podiums didn't even match! It was a very comical few minutes as they dealt with these setbacks, and I told Picardo while getting his autograph the next day that the show was made more enjoyable by their humorous handling of the adverse circumstances. My mother and I took a taxi back to our hotel after the theatre, leaving my father and my son to enjoy the late show, which was "Into the Matrix," a play starring Alexander Siddig (Bashir) and Andrew Robinson (Garak.) When my son returned to our hotel room later to tell me about the show, I was organizing my many autographed pictures and deciding if Sunday's lines were going to be too long to get the last remaining signatures I'd been wanting from the Athena Ballroom. |
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Is it Picard or is it Memorex? |
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