We had a more leisurely start this morning, only stopping for breakfast and at the bank. My stomach was being rather annoying all day; although I'd had both my Prilosec nothing quite seemed to assuage it, so I spent all day feeling queasy.

James went to another panel, but I decided to see Denise Crosby as my first panel of the day. She was personable and quite funny, although I found it sad when she talked about her grandfather having cut himself off from his first family after starting a second; there was no singing "White Christmas" around the fire with Bing for the older Crosby grandchildren. She told a hilarious story about an early-morning call with Jonathan Frakes, bathrobes, and an earthquake after which Patrick Stewart, unused to California's jittery landscape, declared he was going to return his new Jaguar because it "shook so much." He was apparently very shocked to find out it had been an earthquake, not the Jag!



Another fact she mentioned that I didn't know was that the characters had initially been written a bit differently and she was supposed to play Counselor Troi and Marina Sirtis was sleighted to play Tasha Yar. The original Troi was written as more of a coldly logical character, like Spock.

She said one of the things she rememembered most about the first year of the Star Trek: the Next Generation set was that the Craft Services director (Craft Services is a fancy name for the caterer who supplies the cast with food) never fed them very well. Sometimes they would subsist on crackers because he kept all the food locked up so the crew wouldn't eat it. Plus they had very nasty old trailers for dressing rooms which smelled of cat urine and were dirty, so they raided the props department and decorated the trailers with anything pretty (and sometimes bizarre) they could find. After the show became a success, though, things improved.

James was then off to finally attend the Mythbusters panel—ironically only one of the three cast members scheduled was there; their plane had broken down and had been turned back to the airport—and I had planned to see Nicholas Brendan from Buffy the Vampire Slayer until I tried to find the end of the line forming for the panel! I decided it wasn't worth it and went to see Mark Goddard and Marta Kristen from Lost in Space instead. I had seen them at DragonCon last year, but they are both fun in their own way and I didn't mind listening to their stories again. Kristen is a funny, sweet lady who is raising her granddaughter and still doing community theatre, and Goddard teaches at a school for abused and neglected boys. Mark Goddard is also what my mom would have termed "a hot sketch." He's irreverent and extroverted and tells a funny story. He didn't tell the classic one from last year about he and Bill Mumy dropping peanut shells on the stage from up on a catwalk, but he did tell several hilarious stories about Irwin Allen, one about his legendary parsimony and another about him rushing in and chewing out both Guy Williams and himself in rather ripe language.

Since I was already sitting in the International North Ballroom I was in a perfect position to save a seat for James at the Babylon 5 cast panel, which was comprised of Peter Jurasik, Julie Caitlin Brown,



Mira Furlan, and Stephen Furst.



This was one of those panels where the time just flew. They spoke about what they are doing now—Jurasik is teaching drama in North Carolina, Brown is an agent and teaches motivational speaking, Furlan has done several episodes of Lost, and Furst has gone into producing and occasionally directing, with a new SF/fantasy film coming in October on the Sci-Fi Channel, Basilisk. They all spoke regretfully of Andreas Katsulas, who passed away just recently, and also of Richard Biggs, who died some time ago, but told us about a new project Joe Straczynski is working on called Babylon 5: the Lost Tales. Apparently he just sold a successful screenplay which will be produced by Ron Howard and he has talked the studio into doing some half-hour stories set in the B5 universe. The first few will be about the humans and then will continue with some alien stories.

James and I split up again afterwards; he was going to a space battles panel (which he found dull and eventually left when they started doing Powerpoint presentations, the kiss of death). I stayed on to see an improvisational sketch done by Dean Haglund, "Ringo" Langly of The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen, and his partner in crime, Gary Jones from Stargate SG-1. Haglund, in pointed ears, was Spock, and Jones played Kirk; they picked one gentleman from the audience to do "sound effects," but the guy was so convulsed with what was going on that he kept forgetting to make them, as Haglund and Jones ribbed him about walking through the ship with not a door having to open for them. Later they picked a very tall gentleman out of the audience to play Doctor McCoy,



who later got to intone "She's dead, Jim," as the hapless red-shirted ensign plucked from the audience was killed on the Planet of the Cattle Prods. (Yes, these were all audience suggestions. Don't ask...) Another audience member became the Hypno-toad Queen who paralyzed Kirk and Spock and forced them to fight each other until she broke the spell by taking another photo of Spock's butt. Yes, it was all very silly. Yes, it was so funny I laughed so hard I gave myself a headache.

I joined James outside and we went back for another grand tour of the Dealer's Room. I visited the Benbella Books booth and bought Mapping the World of Harry Potter, edited by Mercedes Lackey and Boarding the Enterprise, edited by David Gerrold and Robert J. Sawyer. These are essays about different aspects of those universes. And that ends my planned purchases for this convention, since I suspect James bought me the Pocket Dragon I was describing yesterday, but I won't see that till our anniversary. Although there's a stuffed fox that's very tempting.

We also went across the street to see the second exhibitor's hall and also the actors on the Walk of Fame. Having missed Nicholas Brendan twice now, I could at least see him chatting with his fans! We did pass a bookseller in the second exhibitor's hall who was practically giving away remaindered books; I got an oversized, softcover, 375 glossy paged book on the history of animation from pre-Windsor McKay to Cartoon Network's Adult Swim for only $10.

Our final stop of the night was at the American Sci-Fi Panel room where Mark Goddard and Marta Kristen had said they were going to do live commentary on one of the Lost in Space episodes. At the afternoon panel they had indicated the ep would be "A Visit to Hades," one of my favorites, but Goddard really wanted to do commentary on what is considered the worst Lost in Space episode ever made, "The Great Vegetable Rebellion," with the Robinsons, Don West and Dr. Smith facing a killer carrot played by Stanley Adams ("Cyrano Jones" from "The Trouble With Tribbles"). Well, this bad episode is simply a hysterical riot when commented on by Mark Goddard. He kept pointing out the scenes where he had to turn his head away because he was laughing so hard and most of the rest of the cast were fighting hard to keep straight faces. This is an episode I have managed to miss since the first few times I saw it and I had completely forgotten they were throwing a birthday party for the Robot (!!!!!!!!!!) when the story opened, complete with party hats, crepe paper streamers, and the fixings for a birthday cake and punch, evidently the type of things space explorers would take with them upon a mission to colonize Alpha Centauri!!!! From there the story goes completely downhill.

Afterwards Goddard and Kristen answered some questions from an audience out of breath from laughing so hard.



And then we were on our way home to a singing budgie, a clinging terrier, and properly-working air conditioning.

Labels: conventions

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:52:00 PM

Comments:

As a full-blooded American male, let me be the first to comment that after all these years Marta Kristen is still hot.

# posted by  Ivan G Shreve Jr : 10:21:00 AM

 

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