After months of anticipation, fans from around the world gathered at the Science-Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle to take part in Planet Xpo's Star Trek 40th Anniversary Gala Celebration & Conference on September 8, 2006. From the moment I arrived at the venue, with the sun glinting off the side of the EMP [Experience Music Project] casting dazzling patterns of color on the ground, I knew that this was going to be one memorable weekend.

Friday, September 8, 2006

The fun began when I received my badge and conference program. The outstanding program artwork by William Stout depicted a comic book cover of an alien wrapping its tentacles around the Space Needle with the Enterprise swooping in to save the day. After opening the program and perusing the schedule, I was excited to see that Planet Xpo had provided the fans with two tiers of conference programming. In addition to the standard convention fare of presentations by the stars, photo ops, autographs, and dealers' room, this event also included a conference with panels of scientists, actors, authors, entrepreneurs, and artists. All the breakout sessions looked so interesting, I wished I could attend them all.

Prior to the opening ceremonies, I hit the "Commercial Adventures In Space" panel featuring Charles Chafer, Pat Hoar, and Mike Laine. They shared the histories behind their various projects, including Chafer's meeting with Gene Roddenberry over lunch to discuss the goal of making space available for everyone. Roddenberry's ashes later flew on the first Memorial Spaceflight in 1997. Since then, five other rockets have flown and the next will carry our beloved James "Scotty" Doohan. The Celestis team brought the blue nosecone of the rocket to display throughout the weekend; little did we know on Friday what other surprises they had in store for us later in the weekend!

My next stop was the JBL theatre where Kristine Smith was "Remembering 'Bones.'" Smith read from her book, "DeForest Kelley: A Harvest of Memories" and fielded questions from the sizable audience. She had those members of the audience who were inspired by De to enter the medical or other helping fields rise and receive a deserved ovation. She told them that they were the legacy that meant the most to De, and when meeting a fan in the medical profession, he always signed their photos with "To the real McCoy from the reel McCoy!"

Rushing back up to the impressive Sky Church, I was able to catch "The Physics of Star Trek" with Dr. Lawrence Krauss already in session. Using a poster of the galaxy, he demonstrated how a wormhole works and said, "We don't know if time travel is possible, but it is plausible." When it comes to time travel in Star Trek, he said, "I give the writers a B+, because I'm an easy grader." He explained that the transporter seduced him into writing "The Physics of Star Trek," because he wanted to create his own. In the end, he determined that "transporters aren't impossible just impractical." He closed his session by showing a series of Trek physics bloopers, which included scenes from TOS, TNG, and DS9.

Prior to the opening ceremonies, an impressive array of writers took the stage to discuss "The Soul of Star Trek: the Prime Directive and Beyond." Unfortunately, I was only able to catch the last few minutes of their panel discussion, because I was taking a tour of the VIP lounge with Dr. Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute. Meeting Dr. Shostak was one of the highlights of my weekend.

After meeting our Masters of Ceremony for the weekend (Marc B. Lee and Richard Stevens), the celebration was kicked into high gear with the introduction of George Takei! Takei took the stage to a rousing applause and welcomed the thrilled fans to Star Trek's 40th birthday. "It feels so great to say, I'm 40!" A devoted fan called out, "You don't look a day over 30," and he replied, "Bless your blind heart!" His easy rapport with the audience instantly won us over and made the hour feel like a conversation between old friends.

Takei shared the history of TOS cancellation and Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future that endures to this day. Roddenberry saw the Enterprise as a metaphor for "Starship Earth." "The strength of a starship lay in its diversity and not just the physical diversity of ethnicity/race that you saw but diversity of backgrounds, diversity of cultures, diversity of ideas and opinions ..." He then discussed the turmoil of the 1960s in addition to the Cultural Revolution and Cold War with Star Trek providing an idealistic vision of what the future could be. "The amazing thing is that idealistic picture that was seen as pure science fiction, pure political fiction ... you know, with a trusted Russian member of the leadership team working together with all the rest of us ... I mean, during the Cold War that was pure fiction. It was cultural fiction, social fiction ... in 40 years — stop and think about it — we do today, in fact, have a spacecraft up there that we call the International Space Station, and the crew from that space station is made up from people all over the world. And the most amazing of all is that we have a Russian and American working side by side.

"We had technology that was pure science fiction." Yet, today we have computers on every desk. "We also had another amazing science fiction device that we wore, and we could talk to people forever if we wanted and wherever we needed to talk to someone, we flipped it open and we talked. Well, in a few decades, that became a very real nuisance in our society." At this, the audience erupted into an appreciate fit of laughter and applause. Takei then related a bad experience he had at a movie theatre when a man's cell phone rang during a crucial moment in the film. Instead of turning it off, the man had a conversation. Takei glared at him in hopes that he would politely put it away, but the situation escalated to the point where the two men faced off, fists balled, and the man ended up spitting in Takei's face. The audience in Seattle gasped in disbelief at this shocking twist of events. "We talk about how wonderful it is that technology has improved our lives, but technology has also cursed our society. Good manners have gone down. Civility has deteriorated. And because of the computer, good grammar has disintegrated. Have you seen some of those e-mails you get with no capitals, no punctuation? And there's spell check yet they still misspell words. Technology is wonderful, but unless we are aware and work actively to maintain the level of civilization, technology can be a contributor to the erosion of our civilization, as well."

Takei fielded questions for the remainder of the hour on topics as varied as the William Shatner Roast, his experience in internment camps, the current state of politics in the U.S., memories from the series and films, and a practical joke played on him by Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, and Jimmy.

The final question came from Rose, a 13 year-old member of the audience, who said, "I was wondering if you had any advice for ... you know how you've been talking about how technology is corrupting our youth and all and stuff. I was wondering if you had any advice for like, you know, kids!" Takei responded, "Well, you are the future, and we are looking to you to solve the problems that we are wallowing in today. I'm actually very hopeful despite the fact that technology is affecting your grammar and your good manners. I certainly hope that those of you from your generation who are aware of this situation will play a leadership role to uplift, maintain the standards we have ... we look to you to be the ones who are going to blaze a trail and boldly go where we literally have not gone before."

Page 2: Final panel, "Of Gods and Men" cast