Star Trek Into Darkness: My Favourite Moments and My Biggest Pet Peeves

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

This post has been so long in coming for two reasons; one, I didn't want to spoil the movie for anyone, and two I was waiting to see it a second time, in the cheap theatre. :)

I realized I'm being really hard on Into Darkness because I expected SO MUCH from it - don't get me wrong, I think it's very good, especially when compared to a lot of other movies, but there were a few things that could have made it even better. I saw it opening night in 3D and when it was over I just sat there gasping like a beached fish because EVERYTHING happened so fast I almost wasn't sure what had happened. And after about an hour of amazed silence, the more I thought about it the more a few things annoyed me.

Star Trek was all BAM! Then it was BAM BAM! Then breathe, but no, just kidding-BAMBAMBAM! And I'm like WHAT JUST HAPPENED? Must see again...
— Michelle Heumann (@MichelleHeumann) May 18, 2013

And they still annoyed me the second time, but I think I understood the characters, at least Kirk and Spock, a little more. I still jumped out of my skin when Khan popped up off the floor where he was supposed to be stunned unconscious, and the friend I was with, who was seeing it for the first time, grabbed my arm. :)

One of the most entertaining internet things about Into Darkness has been all the crossover graphics, some of them combining Sherlock AND Star Trek AND Middle Earth, which I find highly amusing.




Source

 

See? Fangirl fodder galore.

As for the movie itself, there were lots of things I really like about it.

Scotty's facial expressions are brilliant. Simon Pegg's Scotty needs his own movie. BUT I was disappointed that he actually left the Enterprise. It turns out there was a job for him to do, so it wasn't pointless, but I didn't really think he'd actually gone, and when the warp drive failed and Chekov was sent to fix it, I expected Scotty to pop out from behind a console and safe the day. After keeping him apart from the crew for large chunks of both of the first two movies, I really hope he's more present in the third one.

Which brings me to Chekov, who's now probably all of 18 years old? Just a baby, really, and he's ADORABLE. His accent and his puppy eyes - I just want to pat his head and tell him he's wonderful. :) It's also sad that he's exiled from the bridge for a good chunk of the movie, because he's such a wonderful character. I guess that's the problem with such a big cast - there just can't be enough screen time for all of them.

Sulu does an excellent turn as acting captain, which is one of my favourite moments in the movie, as is Bones' response.

Bones gets the best one-liners of maybe any franchise ever. But what I didn't like was the fact that he just happened to have a dead tribble on hand, and he thought that injecting it with the blood of a super-human they knew little about was a good idea. (facepalm) I get that they were setting up Khan's blood as a cure for Kirk's radiation poisoning, but that had already been done in the sequence that introduced Khan at the beginning of the movie. I just though that was really lame. And does that mean that there are now super-tribbles infesting the Enterprise?

This is one of my favourite moments...

I didn't really buy the relationship between Spock and Uhura, just because it doesn't seem to fit with what I know about Spock. I don't dislike it, it just didn't seem that convincing, but it made for some really funny moments. When they actually talk on the shuttle to Kronos, then it started to make more sense to me. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with it in the third movie.

But I think my favourite part of the movie was Uhura standing up to the Klingons.

There was a job she could do, and she did it, and it wasn't blowing things up, but simply using her linguistic skills to try to complete the mission. It almost ended horribly, but not for lack of her trying. Her bravery was amazing.

For me the movie's biggest flaw was lack of character development. I've never seen the original Star Trek movies (except for the Voyage Home), and I didn't realized that Into Darkness was going to follow the same general story arc that the original movies did. I BELIEVED J.J. ABRAMS WHEN HE SAID THAT BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH WAS PLAYING JOHN HARRISON AND NOT KHAN. I think that's what ticked me off the most - he didn't need to lie, he could have just not talked about it. So lame! I was looking forward to a totally new bad guy, and given what little I do know about the original series, I was thinking of someone along the lines of Gary Seven. Alas, it was not to be. :(

Anyway, lack of character development... I felt like the movie relied too much on character development that I assume had been built in the original series rather then building its own. Kirk and Spock's friendship was rocky, and the crew's loyalty didn't seem to have much of a basis when Kirk was acting like a spoiled brat for the first half of the movie. He was just going to blow up a city on the Klingon home world, and then he (tried to) beat the crap out of Khan - I just expected more honour from the character, so I was really disappointed. It was hard to root for the 'hero' when I wanted to give him a good lecture and a time out.

Don't even get me started on the epic lameness of Quinto's Spock calling Nimoy's Spock for help, and how despite his vow, old Spock told him what he knew about the Khan from his timeline, when there was so much scope to do something new with the character. Spock says that Khan's goal is genocide of anyone he thinks is inferior, but the character doesn't actually display any of those traits - he seems like a straightforward eye-for-an-eye type guy, and in that moment when Kirk and Khan were waiting to space jump to the dreadnaught, I really thought Khan was going to get his happy ending. Crushing Admiral Marcus' head with his bare hands, in front of his daughter, was a bit sickening, but then the Admiral was a manipulative bad guy...

Kirk's death scene was unfortunate, and I actually didn't even really see it coming. I figured, given the demonstrated potency of Khan's blood in the opening fifteen minutes of the movie, that they'd get Kirk injected with it BEFORE he died. But even when he did die, I knew they weren't actually going to kill off Captain Kirk, so I was actually a bit bored. Apparently in the original, it was Spock who died, and he stayed dead for a whole movie? But I didn't know that, and the hero appearing to die is such an overdone trope that it left me cold. Not to mention the fact that ever since I saw K-19: The Widowmaker the whole idea of radiation poisoning grosses me out beyond words - I find it scarier then zombies or vampires.

And finally, other then the poor character development, my least favourite thing was Carol Marcus' underwear. I mean really, was it absolutely necessary that the camera take a long, slow pan down her body? Seriously? Her and Kirk's reactions to the situation are interesting, and I read a good blog analyzing it, but her state of undress could have been hinted at in order to achieve those reactions. It felt cheap, and quite frankly I expected more from Star Trek then 'sex sells'. I sincerely hope that they avoid anything like it in the third movie...there was a bit of it in the first one, but I don't think it was as gratuitous as this was. Her character is really great and has a lot of potential - she sees things that she can do something about and she does them - and I hope they make good use of her character in the next movie.

I'm only hard on it because I love Star Trek so much. I really, really, really hope that the next movie spends more time on character development, and that breaks away from the established storylines. When it was first announced that J.J. was going to be doing the new Star Wars movie, I was really excited, but Into Darkness has made me a little bit more hesitant. I love the action/adventure stories, but if they don't have good characters, I don't feel them, and that's a problem that plagued the recent Star Wars expanded universe stuff, so I hope the lack of character I'm feeling in Into Darkness doesn't creep into Star Wars as well.

Of course, that won't stop me from buying Into Darkness, or seeing the third movie, or seeing the Star Wars movies... :)

A Bag of Hair and a Trip to Vulcan

Lots of people who haven't seen me in person have been asking for a photo of my new haircut. I give you a bag of hair, and the back of my neck. :)

I sent 12 inches of hair to 360 Hair in BC - they make wigs for children with cancer - so I'm really happy about that. And people donated $225.00 through my Canadian Cancer Society fundraising page as well. I'm THRILLED to have short hair again, so all in all, a successful endeavour, I think!

Last Saturday I went down to Vulcan with Shelli to check out the parade, visit the new Star Trek museum (but the grand opening was actually cancelled :( ), and gawk at Robert Picardo (who played The Doctor on Star Trek Voyager). He was also there with Ethan Phillips, who played Neelix.




Parade Float - it played music, and there was smoke coming out of the nacelles.



Phillps and Picardo, in a blue Mustang.
(A vintage blue Mustang convertible is my fantasy car...)



This is HILLARIOUS on so many levels...



An old-school school bus.



There were bagpipes! I didn't get a good shot of them because there were too many people in the way. :P



Picardo and Phillps clearly understand the weight of responsibility that comes with being inducted into the Star Trek Walk of Fame in Vulcan, Alberta.



They gave him a replica of a hypospray used by a Star Trek doctor. I think it might be an original series hypospray - I couldn't hear very well! But it was a very cool gift.



The tourism centre

I give you tweets, mostly by Picardo, who is HILLARIOUS. He's wearing his "You never forget your first doctor" shirt in some of these shots, which is of course a Doctor Who reference, but his Doctor was MY first Doctor, so I really appreciate it. :)

Kelowna to Seattle

Finally at a campground with half-decent internet! But this will still be short as I'm sitting at a picnic table in the dark, luring bugs from miles around....

One week ago today we left Kelowna! But on the Monday afternoon while we waited for our friend to get off work, we wandered around the lakefront, and discovered something that we, for all our trips to Kelowna, didn't know about the place...

Kelowna has a Japanese garden! Right downtown, behind city hall! And it's beautiful....

Our first day of sightseeing in Seattle was Thursday - we spent Wednesday recovering from all the driving on Tuesday, as well as shopping for a GPS to help us navigate the mean streets of Seattle...and it did a great job of helping us find our plan B first stop (don't ask about plan A :), which was the EMP, otherwise known as the 'guitar museum'.

You can just make out the back of my head in the bottom left corner, next to the giant art installation.

Yes, I'm wearing a Star Wars shirt next to Data's uniform. I'm an equal-opportunity fangirl, ok?

Stargate props! They also had weapons from various characters from both shows. Yay. :)

Trevor getting up close and personal with a stack of Marshall amps in one of the soundbooths.

Next we went to the Seattle aquarium, and I have LOTS of photos from that, but I don't think this internet connection is up for that, so watch next week for more! :)

Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2012 - Sunday

I've been a bit slow with getting Sunday's recap up - after going five days with only cursory checks of emails, Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and Pinterest, I had a thing or two to catch up on. :)

Sunday morning I had been planning to go to the early service at church, which would have put us down at the Stampede grounds around 10:30, but since the first panel I wanted to catch was Amanda Tapping at 11:00, and in light of the chaos on Saturday, I figured the earlier we got down there the better. I got up before 7, and saw on Twitter that people were already talking about lining up, and the Expo twitter account was recommending that people be down there by 8:30, so I was a little concerned when we weren't there till 9 and the line was ENORMOUS. However, the line was actually moving as they ushered people along - I'm actually not really sure where they put all the people, because when we got into the autograph area, it was only about 9:30 and the vendor area wasn't open yet - they opened it as we were arriving. Trevor headed off to do his own thing and I went to track down Amanda Tapping...

The doors to the cushy conference rooms wasn't open yet, so I tagged onto a loose bunch of people standing around outside them. One of them commented on my Princess Bride t-shirt, and we got to talking a bit. The one girl was saying that she had come all the way from BC to see the Sanctuary panel the day before, but had been one of the unlucky who didn't get in, so I told her about my YouTube video of the panel. The security guard finally got permission from the higher ups to open the doors around 10, and by shortly after I had snagged a nice seat for the panel. I had some time to read, and listen to the people around me discuss fun things like Stargate, fanning, and Tumblr. The girl from BC I had talked to mentioned that she had a Tumblr, and that she was posting daily updates, so I tracked her down. I'm a wee bit jealous that she's also a student with a family, but managed to come all this way for the con, and do photo ops AND autographs with BOTH Chris AND Amanda. :)

This is her blog about Saturday: http://teaandscifi.tumblr.com/post/22026855229/okay-today-today-was-i-cant-even-describe
And here's her blog about Sunday: http://teaandscifi.tumblr.com/post/22093197876/calgary-expo-day-3

I find 'meeting' other fangirls through the magic of the internet to be incredibly fascinating. But that's probably a whole blog post in itself, so on with Sunday.

Amanda Tapping and a couple of other people started a charitable foundation called Sanctuary for Kids, and the panel was about the work they do. I mostly went because Amanda could make reading the phone book sound interesting - I already support a bunch of charities and can't really take on any more. But I was very interested to find out that one of the charities they work with is one that I sort of know - Next Generation Nepal. Last summer, the university had what they call 'the common reading program' where all of the first-years read the same book. The book was Little Princes, and it was about how Next Generation Nepal was founded. I highly recommend the book, and they do a lot of good work with children in crisis. Nepal is rife with human trafficking, and Sanctuary for Kids also supports a Nepalese charity that works with women who have been trafficked. They also work with a charity in Haiti that helps abandoned disabled children, and one in Vancouver that works with mothers and children who live on the streets. Amanda and Damien Kindler fund the administration costs for Sanctuary for Kids out of their own pockets, and choose charities with low administration costs, so that a dollar donated to the foundation is still a dollar going to the children in need. Pretty cool, hey?

Amanda Tapping

After that, I headed over to the Corral to meet Trevor. He'd sat in on the Futurama panel (he's a fan, I'm not!) and gotten us good seats for the next Star Trek panel. Troi, Riker and Worf were very entertaining, and had somehow managed to avoid having a Space channel 'moderator', which was great. Sirtis calls Michael Dorn "Dorny", Frakes kept singing the first line of O Canada, and they teased each other (and the not-present cast members) a LOT. I didn't know that Sirtis had been in an episode of Stargate, so I need to look that up now. (She needs to be told that tights aren't pants though! :P) One of my favourite bits was when they started heckling a group of people in Starfleet uniforms who were trying to sneak out early - turns out the people that were leaving were going to get in line for their TNG photo op. lol... Here's a link to the whole session: http://youtu.be/dceWdTS6wUg I love that I can re-watch so much of the stuff - it all seems to happen so fast at the time.

Marina Sirtis, Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn

After all of that laughing, I was ready for lunch. Trevor got in line for Wil Wheaton, and I battled the crowds for chicken fingers, a burger and fries. Lots of work, let me tell you! When I joined him in line I was pretty concerned that we might not get in, since it was in the same theatre as Saturday's Sanctuary panel fiasco, but they were much more organized, and we ended up with pretty decent seats.

Wil is a fun guy - I never had any particular opinion on Wesley Crusher, but I really enjoy the Big Bang Theory, and I follow him on twitter. The nice thing about about him is that he's a geek too, and he's really great to interact with as a fan. One guy asked Wil to say hi to the guy's wife who couldn't be there, and Wil was really nice about it (http://youtu.be/YFbC0oOlZSM). It was a great panel, although some of the gaming stuff he referred to went over my head. He mentioned that he's working on the second installment of a book reviewing all of the TNG episodes from the first season, so I tweeted him about my copyediting business. I'll probably never hear from him, but one of the nice things about fangirling is that sense of limitless possibility - who knows what might happen when you're only limited by your imagination? Agam Darshi from Sanctuary just accepted my Linkedin request, so you never know... :)

Wil Wheaton

After that, we had an hour before the final panel, and I REALLY wanted a fresh-squeezed Stampede lemonade, so we slogged against the crowds to the far side of the venue for snacks. We were talking to our friend Courtney who works for Stampede catering, when there was a loudspeaker announcement about the Phelps brothers, and that the Harry Potter panel had just started in the theater we had JUST left! Oh my, was I ever CROSS. After I had tried to sort it out on Saturday, here it was, and we were too far away and disorganized to get there. Hopefully they'll have a better organized Harry Potter panel next year! Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) had been supposed to come this year, but then ended up not being able to, so hopefully in 2013...

And then the panel I've been waiting for since they announced that the ENTIRE cast of TNG was coming to Calgary - Sir Patrick Stewart himself. Not only am I a fan of Captain Picard and Professor Xavier, I'm a fan of Sir Patrick's work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and most recently, the version of Hamlet he was in with David Tennant (Doctor Who). The panel was wonderful - he told the story of how he found out about his knighthood, and in a moment that made me squee with glee, he FACEPALMED. I don't even remember what the topic was, just that an internet meme came to life right before my eyes. Over on YouTube 'YoungJim409' has video of the entire panel if you want to check it out. It was a great way to end a fantastic con!

Sir Patrick Stewart

I was really happy that the Expo quit the procedure of giving every star to cross the stage a white Calgary cowboy hat, and the cheezy 'oath' that goes with it. It was SO annoying last year, and when you only have 45 minutes for a panel, I don't want to hear about white cowboy hats, I want the guest star to be speaking about interesting stuff! So that was a good change. As someone who does quite a bit of conference planning (although on a much smaller scale, of course...) I appreciate and am overwhelmed by the effort that goes into running this thing - it's amazing, and I'm tired just thinking about it.

One thing I need to stay on top of for next year is being a bit more situationally aware - this year Gates McFadden and Denise Crosby cut across a line right in front of me and Christopher Heyerdahl walked right next to me, and I didn't even notice until it was too late to say something witty. :) I don't remember if I had any close calls like that last year, but in 2010, my first con, I literally nearly ran over Paul McGillion (from Stargate Atlantis) as I was coming out of the washroom and he was going into the one next door. Trevor was watching and laughing at me...but I really need to get more on the ball about paying attention to what's going on around me. How does one train for something like that? If you have any ideas, please let me know. :)

May the 4th be with you!

Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2012 - Saturday

I was up and online early Saturday morning. The first panel I wanted to catch wasn't until noon, but I was trying to figure out what was going on with the Phelps twins, who play Fred and George Weasley in the Harry Potter movies. They were a late addition to the con, and there wasn't any info in the program guide about when they might be doing a panel, and the volunteers I talked to on Friday night didn't know anything about it. So before I went to bed, I tweeted @calgaryexpo and asked about it. During the night they did respond, but it wasn't very helpful - it just asked if I had gotten the update newsletter, which I hadn't. I did eventually find a copy - there was one in Trevor's goody bag, but not mine. Anyway, it didn't list a panel, just their photo ops, so I assumed that meant they weren't doing a panel.

But I was up early, so we headed down early and got there around 10:30. We basically walked right in - the only delay was simply the volume of people who also got off the same c-train. I wanted to walk down 'autograph alley', but it was literally such a dense crowd we could hardly move, so we gave up and headed into the exhibit hall. The problem was that they had all of the big stars down one aisle, and all of the old wrestlers down the other, so 90% of the foot traffic was stalled in one area.

The first panel I wanted to see was in the Corral, which was fairly empty during the Fringe panel right before the Star Trek one. We got seats and listened to the Fringe actors, and even though I don't know the first thing about Fringe, it was fairly entertaining. I need to check out what else John Noble has been in, because I really enjoyed him. While we were waiting for the Star Trek panel, we were joined by my new friend Stephanie who came all the way up from Lethbridge just for the one day. We secured decent seats further up after the Fringe people left, and were entertained by Spiner, Wheaton and Burton (Data, Crusher and LaForge). It was a fun panel, and each of the three of them got a fair amount of spotlight time. Burton's stint on Reading Rainbow came up, and the crowd sang the RR theme song. There was a lot of imitating Patrick Stewart's accent, discussion about Wil being easily amused, discussions of Timmies, and bashing of Microsoft, which is always a good time! The whole panel is up on YouTube, courtesy of 'oilcountryDon' if you want to look it up.

Brent Spiner, Wil Wheaton and LeVar Burton

A lot of the panels during the weekend were moderated by one of a trio of talk show hosts from the Space channel. As a trio, I find them highly annoying. However, thankfully, apart from each other they weren't bad at all. Still, I would rather just have the dynamic of the actors without having another person added into the mix.

Trevor left part-way through the panel to secure a place in line for the Sanctuary panel, since that was really the MUST SEE panel of my weekend. Isn't he great? However, it turned into a bit of a gong show. Steph went off to do her own thing, since Sanctuary isn't her thing (but I mean really, how can Sanctuary not be anyone's thing?! :) and I went to try to find Trev. The crowds outside the Corral were dense, so instead of trying to struggle upstream, I just went to a spot near the start of the Sanctuary lineup, meaning to meet up with Trevor as the line progressed by my spot. However, once a large chunk of the line had gone by, it completely stopped and there was no more line. My cell phone couldn't connect, and since there was no line in sight, I hopped on to the end of what was passing by me into the theatre doors, and managed to snag two decent seats. The panel was supposed to start at 1 pm, but by 1:15 it hadn't started yet, although I'd managed to get enough cell reception to let Trevor know where I was and that I had a seat, since they'd stopped letting people in. SO CLOSE! I almost didn't make it, and that would have made me cry!

Shortly after 1:15, Amanda Tapping and Christopher Heyerdahl came out with the Space channel guy and sat down. It gets a little blurry in my memory, because I was trying to start the camera recording at the same time as Trevor was standing down in the doorway looking for me, and it seemed like ALL THE THINGS were happening at once. Amanda was needling Chris for checking his cell phone on stage, and he was talking about how he had a text from Ryan Robbins, and that Ryan wanted a Biggie head-slap (Chris plays two characters on the show, and this one, as a sign of affection, smacks people on the back of the head, like Gibbs from NCIS). 

Now, my Ryan-radar was already in full gear, because of this great historical western that's filming its second season in Calgary RIGHT NOW. Chris is in it, which is why I started watching and keeping an eye on what was going on with it (but he's not on Twitter, which makes things more difficult), however, Ryan IS on Twitter, and on April 20th he tweeted that he was packing up in LA and heading back to Canada for an exciting opportunity. 50% wishful thinking and 50% knowing that his good friend Chris was in Calgary meant that I immediately responded asking if he was coming to Calgary for Hell on Wheels, knowing that it was a huge leap, but not being able to resist the urge to fan-girl. Of course, the details were still confidential, so he couldn't reply, but on April 24th, he tweeted that he was on his way to Calgary, and there may have been a bit of flailing going on in my office. I KNEW that he was coming for Hell on Wheels, because it's the only thing filming here right now, and I made sure the Comic Expo knew about it too, just in case they could squeeze him into the Sanctuary panel as well. Really, I tell you, if fan-girling paid money, I'd be a rich woman. :)

But thanks to being so excited and trying to do too many things at once, I missed the surprise of Ryan walking out on stage, and managed to not get any usable photo or video! D'oh! Thankfully Trevor was able to rescue the camera from me and get really good video footage of the rest of the panel, which you can find on my new YouTube channel, MichelleEdits.

Ryan Robbins, Amanda Tapping and Chrisopher Heyerdahl at the Sanctuary panel.
Photo courtesy of tea-and-text.blogspot.ca

The first thing Amanda talked about was the future of Sanctuary, which is in limbo right now thanks to  a whole bunch of factors, and while she didn't have the news we were hoping for, it was good to know that Sanctuary isn't dead - she said its chest is still rising and falling, and she's standing by with the paddles. So here's hoping! Sadly, thanks to the crowd control issues, the panel ended up being only 31 minutes instead of 45, but I'm SO THANKFUL I managed to get in at all! They're just a wonderful bunch of people, and it was so neat to see them in person, particularly Amanda, who I've been a fan of since I started dating Trevor and he introduced me to Stargate.

All the excitement meant that I was STARVING, so we headed back to the autograph area to meet Steph for lunch at the Ceili's pub tent. The food was a bit pricey, but it was better than Stampede hot dogs, and we shared a table with a Newfie from Edmonton and did a lot of people watching. We braved the bathroom, which was DISGUSTING, and then managed to wander down autograph alley.

I hadn't been planning to get any autographs (that whole unemployed student thing) but while we were standing around Amanda Tapping came out to her table to the cheers of the people in her VERY long lineup. As much as I'm a fan, I didn't want to pay $40 and stand in line for the rest of the afternoon, but we happened to be standing by Chris' lineup, which was short, and I was speculating that if Amanda had arrived, he soon would be as well, which he did. And since I was there and the line was short, I got in it. :) Steph went to wander the exhibit hall, and Trevor and I hung out in line. Chris was letting everyone take photos as well, which was really nice of him. The Shatners and the Stewarts don't do that sort of thing - well, to be fair, so many people want to see them that they can't take that time with everyone - but I'd rather just meet a Canadian actor and feel like I actually met him or her. And for once I haven't been replying my conversation over and over wishing that I'd said everything all different - I was coherent and normal. As normal as a 31-year-old woman in a Starfleet mini-dress can be, anyway. :)

Me meeting Christopher Heyerdahl

After all that excitement, I needed to do something a bit quieter, so I headed to a publishing panel in one of the nice plushy conference rooms. The two women doing the panel were Krista Ball (an Alberta author who I saw at When Words Collide last year) and Margaret Curelas from a small Edmonton publishing house. They had both previously worked with 'my' publishing house, Edge, and so I was interested to hear their perspectives on the industry. Sadly, there was something very loud and distracting going on in the conference room next door, and the panel was a lot more basic than I was expecting, but at least I got to sit in a comfy chair for a while. :)

Trevor and I met back up (he'd been wandering the exhibit hall) and he told me about this vendor who had cheap DVDs, including some of the Stargate seasons, so I was able to acquire season 3 for $15, which is a heck of a deal! Who knows when I'll get time to watch it, but at least it's in my collection now. We went to the Coco Brooks (a GREAT local pizza chain) stand to get a bit of a snack, and shared a cheese pizza and a fruit smoothie. I was very entertained by the crowd of people who were camped out on the floor by the stand - I thought it looked like a refugee camp.

A geek refugee camp

We met back up with Steph and caught the last panel of the day - 'Stump the Nerds' with the local 404 geek comedy troop. The person on the troop who I knew doesn't appear to be with them anymore, and the whole panel was pretty special. It was supposed to be PG-13, but I would have given it a 14-A, and some of it was just strange!

I'd heard rumours throughout the day that the fire marshall had stopped anymore people from coming in, but I didn't realize the extent of it until I got home and online again. What a gong show - I'm HEARTILY thankful that my OCD tendency to be over-cautious and early meant that I didn't miss out on any of the fun things that happened on Saturday! My priority before bed was to get my Sanctuary panel video up on YouTube, which ended up being a lot more work than I'd expected, and we were up till midnight, but it's online in three parts, and the first in the series has over 1700 views! Everyone wants to hear Amanda talk about the future of season 5, apparently!

I was going to post a couple of costume photos, but this had turned out to be so long I'll have to give major kudos to those of you who are still reading. (Hi, Mom - happy birthday! :) Stay tuned for Sunday's recap!

Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2012 - Friday

One of my favourite things about living in Calgary is the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. This is the third year I've been, and definitely my most epic yet! I don't know how they're going to top the guest list for next year, but I can't wait to find out! :)

I went down early on Friday, to be there for 11 am. Thanks to being over-prepared, I was downtown way earlier then needed, so I had time to pop by Trevor's office and meet him for a Timmies, which was a nice treat. Since I quit my job to go back to school, I've been trying really hard to reign in my Timmies addiction! I wore my new Gryffindor shirt from Think Geek, which I love. It's got long sleeves, and it's super silky, with a big Gryffindor crest on the front.

The people-watching at the Stampede grounds was excellent. I was waiting for my 'boss', Brian Hades from Edge Publishing, to help him set up his booth in the exhibit hall, and watching the other vendors arrive was very entertaining. There's a certain vibe of panic and expectancy in the air, four hours prior to the doors opening for the biggest geek-fest in western Canada, and the second-largest in the country (only Toronto's is bigger). People who only see each other on the con circuit are reunited, the security guards are bemused at the chaos, and lone vendors struggle to get their gear on carts and their vehicles out out of the loading dock so others can pull in. You can definitely tell the con veterans from the n00bs!

We unloaded boxes and boxes of books, and took them to the Edge location to get set up. Sadly, I forgot to take a photo once it was all organized and looking like a bookstore, before it got crowded with people, but here's one I found:

EDGE Publishing booth, courtesy of Billie Milholland's Facebook page

The first panel I wanted to see was at 4, so after setting up I had a bit of time to wander, and while I was wandering,  I ran across Katie Cook's booth. Katie Cook is a licensed Star Wars artist, and does super-cute little watercolour sketches. She'll do a special request sketch for $5, so I asked for a grey Jedi Kitten. Isn't he cute?!

Jedi Kitten by Katie Cook

The first panel I took in was Denise Crosby and Gates McFadden, who were Tasha Yar and Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. By the time I started watching tv, TNG had been over for years, but re-runs were almost always available on the Space channel, so I watched a lot of them. Voyager will always be my favourite Star Trek, but TNG had some great moments. Crosby and McFadden work together at a theatre company now, although they didn't have any scenes together when they were on TNG - funny, hey?

Denise Crosby and Gates McFadden

By the time that panel was over, Trevor had made it over from work, and was in line for the next panel I wanted to get into. David Prowse was the man inside the Darth Vader costume in the original three Star Wars movies. He's this cute little old man with a British accent, and he's adorable. He was supposed to come last year but couldn't - he had to have surgery on his knee, and this year he's still using a cane. I learned some interesting Star Wars trivia (I used to be nearly unbeatable at Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, until the new trilogy and extended universe abominations) and totally forgot to take any photos!

It was 6 pm by the time that panel was over, so I snagged a hot dog and a Coke and we went to browse the exhibit hall, which was the largest I've ever seen outside of Stampede. Typically the Friday night/first night of a con is the least busy, but it was already a zoo. After a crazy long day, I was already overloaded, and there were a couple of points when I just stopped trying to figure out where to go and let Trevor just steer me in the right direction! We did manage to wander up and down every aisle, although I avoided buying anything or taking any pictures of costumes, because it was just too busy to pull over without causing a pile-up. We left before it closed at 8, so we could get to bed at a decent time and get an early start on Saturday, which turned out to be a very good plan...