Fans once again made their annual spring pilgrimage to Pasadena to celebrate Star Trek and other science fiction at Creation Entertainment's 14th annual Grand Slam: The Sci-Fi Summit last weekend, March 10-12. And once again, the Pasadena convention center found itself the gathering place of Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, Starfleet officers, Terran Empire officers, at least two Picard clones (Shinzon and Prof. Xavier), and a bevy of other aliens and characters.

The cable network G4 was a corporate sponsor of the event, using the opportunity to promote their upcoming presentation of "Star Trek 2.0," an interactive experience of watching classic Trek beginning April 10 (related story). To that end, almost every attendee at the convention walked around with a blue foam hand (like those seen at sporting events) in the shape of the Vulcan salute, with the tagline "Tune in and prosper" printed on it. These foam hands were passed out at the G4 table, where a plasma screen demonstrated the "Star Trek 2.0" concept.

Something else unique took place at the convention on Friday. As previously reported, the buzz of the day was the presence of a video crew from the late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, with Jimmy Kimmel himself visiting the convention. After perusing the dealer's room, Kimmel entered the autograph room where he interviewed such celebrities as Grace Lee Whitney ("Janice Rand"), Don Marshall ("Lt. Boma") and Orion slave girls Crystal Allen, Menina Fortunato and Bobbi Sue Luther. He also talked to fans in costume, including a couple with two dogs dressed in Starfleet uniforms.

Kimmel and crew then made their way to the other side of the convention center, where Kimmel sat among the audience until Adam Malin, co-founder of Creation, opened the "Creation Sci-Fi TV Trivia Competition" and asked for volunteers to be "trivia experts" on stage. Kimmel was the first to very eagerly raise his hand (we don't know if this was all planned in advance, but if not, Malin very humorously went along with it). Two other fans joined Kimmel on stage, and the three contestants were instructed to work as a team to field questions from the audience. The first question was easy for Kimmel: "Who was the first Star Trek actor to be a guest on the Jimmy Kimmel show?" (Again, we don't know how much of this was staged.) The answer: Jeri Ryan. One point for the experts. "I know you were looking for Shatner, but you can't trick me that easily," Kimmel commented. He added, "I just want to say how great it is to be at the Apollo Theater. Wazzup everybody!"

The second question was also easy enough: "Which Star Trek actor directed episodes from four different Star Trek series?" After some game show music played, Kimmel gave the response: "We would like to say, LeVar Burton of Reading Rainbow." Correct. But after that, the questions got more difficult, going outside Star Trek (because the competition was about general TV sci-fi), giving Kimmel reason to act indignant. Who played "Commander Quark" in the short-lived 70's series Quark? "We think it's a stupid question," Kimmel huffed. "This is outrageous! Get out of here, get out of this convention center! Throw him out! Next question!" he feigned. "I just want to say how great it is to be here at the Apollo," he then reiterated. (The answer was Richard Benjamin.)

We don't know exactly how the Kimmel show will use the footage taken on Friday, but the crew people told us they expect the segment to be edited and ready to air sometime this week. (No guarantees of anything, though.) Jimmy Kimmel Live! runs on ABC after Nightline in most markets, so set your TiVo or VCR.

As usual, the Grand Slam was a celebration of all things sci-fi, with celebrity appearances from Farscape, Andromeda, Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly and "Serenity," and the "Star Wars" series. One of the highlights of the weekend was a visit by three stars from Lost. But the primary focus was on Star Trek, and the following are some of the highlights from Friday and Saturday. (Sunday, the biggest Trek day, will be covered in a subsequent report.)

Robert Picardo

The first Trek celebrity of the weekend, Bob Picardo, opened his time on stage talking about Stargate. He had just come back from Canada shooting the season openers for both Stargate: Atlantis and SG-1. "So I am unavoidable," he said. He's also recently had roles on E-Ring, The O.C., and the sitcom Eve, and he worked for his old friend Joe Dante on a segment of Showtime's Masters of Horror. "I did a very controversial script called 'The Homecoming,' which was a pretty head-on indictment of the Iraq War in the form of a zombie movie." He played a character based on Karl Rove, "and I suffered a very unpleasant fate, I must tell you."

"I used to be on another little show called Star Trek — you may remember it," he added, turning to the topic at hand. "Star Trek is currently on life support. I think it's going to come back sometime — I haven't recommended that they remove the feeding tube yet. I think that Star Trek will be back sometime in the future with a bright, sassy young cast that all have cute butts and interesting hair, and can, y'know, wear the uniforms."

"It's very important that you can wear the uniform on Star Trek," Bob continued. "The hardest thing to get used to in the first year was the uniforms, because I'd never had wardrobe that didn't have any pockets in it. That's really annoying. If someone handed you a phone number during a break from shooting, and then the camera rolled, you had to eat the phone number. There was no place to put it. Once I tried to bend over and hide it under my shoe, and I slit my crotch from here to here... you could see everything. They had this little undergarment that sort of snapped under your crotch. I don't know about the rest of you guys, I'm really not crazy about things that snap under my crotch. I don't like any funny sharp noises down there, of any kind."

He then solicited questions from the audience — "Do you want to know, for example, why I'm so much more extraordinarily beautiful in person than I am on television?" — and then auctioned off a signed Stargate script and call sheet for $900, to benefit his several charitable causes.

Grace Lee Whitney

Grace Lee, still looking in top form at age 76, came on stage thanking Adam Malin for the intro-compilation reel that preceded her appearance. "Isn't it great to see your life flash before your eyes?" she said of the classic Trek clips.

The Yosemite-based actress loves attending conventions, meeting the fans, and talking about her life with Star Trek. "This is a 40-year reunion for Star Trek. Do you believe that?!"

"Actually," continued Grace, "I was a little longer than 40 years ago because they had to design my hair," she laughed. "It was out of this world!" Of course, fans will remember her character's shiny blonde tresses that seemed to have their own light source.

Grace reminisced how she and "the boys" (Shatner, Nimoy) were the new kids on the block and how it was quite a chaotic time, but one that was all about bringing Gene Roddenberry's vision to life. However, as exciting as it was, it was also a time when uncertainty reigned; they didn't know if they would get picked up as a series.

Grace Lee's career has seen its share of ups and downs. After having success early on, Whitney had personal demons to confront soon after her role in Star Trek ended. Following Yeoman Janice Rand's removal from the show (technically not "written out" — Gates McFadden was "written out" of The Next Generation, i.e. the writers provided an excuse for her character's absence), the pain of having her character unceremoniously dumped ("I was fired") sent her spiraling out of control emotionally. As an adopted child, this was one too many rejections for her to handle, ultimately leading to her alcoholism, which she has written and spoken about extensively.

But Grace Lee — a strong, vivacious and vibrant person — bounced back. Her subsequent Star Trek roles in the movies and in Voyager, plus convention appearances, her penning an autobiography and accepting a "higher power" have all gone towards making amends in her personal life. Now living happily up near Yosemite, Grace Lee is sure to continue gracing conventions for many years to come.

Garrett Wang

Garrett has established a tradition at his convention visits: Because he always moves around so much while he speaks, people complain they can never get a good photograph of him, so he starts each appearance with... "Poses!" On each side of stage, he did GQ poses, "action poses" and various sundry silly expressions. One pose, he claimed, was how his six-inch action figure was positioned on his mantle. That got him reminiscing about the first time he saw his action figure.

He described the process of how he and his castmates were scanned and photographed by the production company making the action figures. Then months later, "I was in my trailer and one of the production assistants came up and knocked on the door," he recalled. "When the actual action figure was put into my hand, I started shaking. 'Oh my God, this is me in plastic! Little kids will be buying me!' This was a major milestone in my life — 'I'm an action figure now!' And of course, who ruins the whole moment? Robert Beltran comes out of his trailer, sidles up behind me, he looks at it and says, 'Hey man, you kinda look Mexican!' He ruined it! And I looked at it and I was like, 'Yeah, you're right, I do kinda look Mexican!'"

Pointing out that he was the first Voyager actor to attend Star Trek conventions, Garrett said that he enjoys doing them because it gives him a chance to let his personality show through and make people laugh. "Which is very different from Ensign Kim, if you think about it. I mean, Ensign Kim is a very serious guy. And unfortunately, after playing that character for so long, I got a lot more serious too. And my vocabulary changed. When I was talking to people, I would use, like, sci-fi terms outside of work, which is very annoying."

He recalled that at the beginning of the show, the cast members playing human characters were instructed to downplay their roles, keep them stiff and military-like, "because this is the only way that the aliens are going to look real," they were told. Garrett felt this was wrong. "This doesn't make sense. We're humans, we should be full of emotions," he thought. That explains why Captain Janeway came across as such a "hard-ass," he said, and there were a lot of re-shoots in the early days. "The first couple of seasons, Kate Mulgrew shed a lot of tears on screen that you will never see, because it was decided that if you're human, you've got to downplay it," he said. "I think that was the wrong move, to be honest with you. And I can say that now!"

Friday Night Cabaret

The evening entertainment in the main auditorium featured the talents of Tim Russ, Chase Masterson and Robert Picardo. Tim performed several rock songs on electric guitar, accompanied by a drummer and keyboardist. Chase and Bob each sang solo, with taped accompaniment. Chase, scantily clad in a silvery outfit, drew from her CDs "Thrill of the Chase" and "Ad Astra," including "Pure Imagination" — "because you guys get it," she said in her intro.

Not so scantily clad, Bob Picardo had his own special wardrobe for the performance — he wore a stylish "leather pork pie" fedora hat he picked up in his hometown of Philadelphia. "I got it for 30 dollars because the guy was a Star Trek fan. Otherwise it would've been 25," he said. He sang some of the parodies from his CDs "basic bob" and "extreme bob," but with a few new lyrics referring to his recent gigs on Stargate. But he also did some straightforward, spirited covers of songs from the Platters and Van Morrison.

Gary Graham & Jeffrey Combs

Saturday morning, the day got started with a dual appearance by recurring Enterprise players Gary Graham ("Soval") and Jeffrey Combs ("Shran," plus "Weyoun" and "Brunt" in Deep Space Nine). "Together again! Except I'm not torturing you this time," Jeff opened. "Well, the day is young," Gary retorted.

Responding to audience questions, Jeff and Gary talked about the broad range of projects they are or have been involved with aside from Trek. Jeff announced he will appear in over half the episodes of the new season of The 4400, plus he's doing the voice of a faceless character named "The Question" in the animated Justice League Unlimited, and he just finished a horror movie called "The Wizard of Gore." Gary just finished a movie called "Siren," and he also reminisced about Alien Nation. He has a new book called "Acting and Other Flying Lessons," which includes a chapter about the last episode he and Jeff worked together on in Enterprise, "Kir'Shara" (playing this weekend in syndication), where Shran tortures Soval. The book is available through www.GaryGraham.com.

Talking a little bit about his Trek experiences, Jeff commented on acting in heavy makeup. When he was first cast as Weyoun, he had no idea what the character was like or how he would carry himself. "I was at the mercy of a creative design that I did not see until about 5:00 in the morning on the day I was going to shoot. It's kind of an actor's nightmare — you just don't know what's gonna be put on you before you have to step in front of a camera. There's no real prep time." Gary chimed in: "And a lot of great stuff comes out of that desperation at 5 in the morning when you're due on the set in about an hour — a lot of great stuff comes up out of that sheer panic."

Gary mentioned that playing the emotionless Soval was not nearly as easy as he initially thought it would be. "People look at me in that role and say, 'Well, you're not doing anything!' But that was the hardest damn thing to do in the world." Jeff commented, "I think that the Vulcans are the most difficult role to do. And Gary, you did it. I couldn't do that. How do you convey without conveying?"

"Hardest damn thing I've ever done in my life," Gary continued. "And I had an instant newfound respect for Leonard Nimoy. Oh my gosh!" he exclaimed to audience applause.

Brent Spiner

The popular actor behind "Data" and several related roles was not booked for any stage time, but he did drop by on Saturday to sign autographs. He also had a table in the dealer's room where he held a "garage sale" of many of his personal collectibles, such as models and action figures. During the day Brent took the opportunity to catch up with some old friends, including Wil Wheaton, who had a table in the auditorium annex.

"Free Enterprise" Panel

To promote the new two-disc Extended Edition DVD of "Free Enterprise," Mark A. Altman (co-writer), Robert Meyer Burnett (director, co-writer & editor) and Daren Dochterman (the character "Tiberius" and occasional Trek visual effects artist) made up a mini-panel to discuss the film. Before anyone could ask, the panel answered the burning question: What's "new" about the new edition of "Free Enterprise"?

"Well," noted Burnett, "the movie is about six minutes longer, it has an anamorphic transfer and it has new CGI special effects, because you can't have a special edition without new CGI special effects. Whether they're needed or not — you just gotta put them in! It also has a 5.1 sound mix and many special features, including a [new] Shatner commentary where he compares himself to a small, little green guru 'Yodo' [sic]."

One fan asked about how they got Eric McCormack ("Will" on Will and Grace) to do the movie, to which the makers expressed total surprise. Everyone else, it seems, wants to know how they got Shatner to do the movie! The writers actually wrote the movie without a commitment from William Shatner. "In our infinite stupidity," said Altman, "we just thought that he would be so flattered by this role that he of course would do the film. Which was anything but the case! We sent him the script and he said 'I'm not doing your movie.' Four times!"

They got many of the pieces of the puzzle in place — the cast, the crew, and the financing — but it didn't look like Shatner would be on board. "Finally," continues Burnett, "he called us after reading what he called 'the tear-stained letter.'"

When they got Shatner on the phone, he was still not convinced. They finally said, "Is there any way we can get you to do the movie?" Shatner still said no. "But he finally said, unless you change your script and 'make me less of a guru ... more of a real guy. I'm a screwed up man. If you put that in your script, then it could be funny.'"

"And that's exactly what we did," continued Altman. "The movie was really about hero worship, guys who grow up worshipping William Shatner and become friends with him and realize that he is more screwed up than they are. Which is exactly what we went through in real life ... in a good way."

"Deja Vu" Panel — Russ, Masterson, Wang

At one of the dealer's room tables, a DVD was on sale of a sci-fi short film written and directed by Tim Russ called "Deja Vu." That film was introduced at the convention by Russ and the film's stars, Chase Masterson and Garrett Wang, along with producers Jim Nestor and Robert Michael Conrad. In the 14-minute futuristic thriller, Garrett's character buys a chip containing the memories of a deceased stranger, and severe consequences ensue. Chase plays his girlfriend.

On stage, Tim talked about how he trained to be a director. "I spent three years during the run of Voyager interning, basically, spending my time off sitting in the editing bay and watching them cut together the dailies, the raw footage, into scenes. I learned a great deal by doing that, and sat in on the production meetings and things like that. And also, on the set, paying attention to what was being done and talking to the DP [director of photography] and talking to the director." Tim then graduated to directing the Voyager episode "Living Witness." "From that point on, it was just a matter of staying at it, and finding projects to direct to keep my chops up and learn new things."

"There's a real fun and lightness and confidence in working with people that you've known for a long time," Chase said about her experience on the project. "We had to stop and take 'laughter breaks' in the shooting of this film. We had a good time together." Something she noted as "hysterical" was Garrett's idea for a take-off on "Girls Gone Wild":

"Show these Asian college students ripping up their textbooks, stomping on calculators, breaking rulers — Asians Gone Wild!" Garrett elaborated. The DVD includes outtakes with some of those very "laughter breaks," the producers pointed out.

The producers intend to enter the film into several film festivals, and hope to show it at Comic-Con in San Diego. There are no plans to expand "Deja Vu" into a feature film, but Russ, Nestor and Conrad are working on more shorts to compile onto a DVD, including one called "Eye of the Beholder" starring Chase and Menina Fortunato.

Wil Wheaton

In the Little Theatre of the convention center, Wil Wheaton stayed true to his tradition of reading blogs from his Web space WilWheaton.net, during which he talked about being a parent and a geek at the same time. When he took questions from the audience, he responded to an inquiry about whether he will get back into TV and movies as an actor.

"Y'know, I really don't know," he admitted. "I've tried real hard my whole life to be an actor, and I've put a lot of energy and a lot of what makes me a person into that creative pursuit. The artistic side of that is completely fulfilled by performing on stage," particularly at comedy and improv venues, he explained. "A performance is a performance and an audience is an audience, and you put those things together and I'm happy."

However, he continued, "From a business standpoint, the thing that I bring to the party as an actor — the things which are essential to me, that make me different from the other guys that are about my same age and generally my same type — just doesn't really seem to be popular in television and movies right now. And hasn't been for a while. The entertainment industry kinda moved in a different direction. A really terrible reality in the entertainment industry is that you're only as good as your last thing, and you're only as good as your last thing if it was in the last six months."

He decried the fear-based business environment which has led to sensationalist reality television like "the Wife Swap show, which is the worst trainwreck pile of s*** in the history of television." But, he concluded, "I think that my path back to being on television or movies is to write something for myself, and perform it. I spend all of my time writing anyways, and it makes me real happy." He may soon produce some sketch comedy for broadband distribution and/or iPod downloads.

He has done a few VH1 specials, what he nicknamed the "I Love the Last Five Minutes" shows (e.g., "I Love the Eighties"). "They call me and they're like, 'Do you want to come in and talk about the last five minutes?' I'm like, 'I love the last five minutes! Are you kidding? I have something snarky to say about the last five minutes! And I can do it in a craazy voice! Check it ouut!'"

Wil had some high words of praise for Michael Piller, the former Star Trek executive producer who died last November. "I think Next Generation got good around the time of 'Best of Both Worlds.' I think that's when we figured out who we were... More than anything else, that's when the stories got real solid. Michael wasn't afraid to get the [Enterprise-D] crew into all kinds of trouble, and that's when things are interesting... Michael wasn't afraid to take real risks, and wasn't afraid to accept submissions from fans of the show, and wasn't afraid to challenge people in the writers' meetings."

"He listened to our feedback as actors," he continued, "and, like Gene Roddenberry, treated me like my opinion mattered. Whether it did or not. He made me feel like I deserved to be there, and was happy to see me, and was really a pleasure to work with... Michael has a phenomenal legacy. He was a great man."

COMING UP: Astronauts Wally Schirra and Alan Bean, Ronald D. Moore, the Roddenberry family, Jonathan Frakes, Alice Krige, and Avery Brooks!