LAS VEGAS — As is the tradition, the Official
Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas climaxed on its final day with appearances by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, which was particularly noteworthy due to the recent casting of Nimoy reprising "
Spock" in the upcoming
J.J. Abrams "Star Trek" movie. That 96-minute session with Nimoy, then Shatner, then the two of them together, has already been comprehensively covered in a previous article. The rest of Sunday was mainly devoted to
Deep Space Nine cast members, but a friend from
Enterprise also stopped by, along with another prominent "Star Trek" filmmaker.
Sunday, August 12
11:00 a.m. STARTREK.COM Trivia Challenge
Our whole team was there (all half dozen of us!) and we got to take over the stage and give the fans a chance to show off their trivia prowess. Armed with a stack of questions, Tim, Sandy and Larry fired them off to the people lined up on either side of the stage, while Grace and Erin handed out the prizes and Marc hosted. Our energetic pal David Reddick also took part, stepping in to read a question devoted to "The Trek Life." Everybody won — if they got the trivia question right (which the vast majority did, and they weren't all that easy!), they got a Fan Collective DVD or something else really cool, and if they missed the question ... well, we gave them a Trivia book! ("The Definitive Star Trek Trivia Book Vol. II") Too bad we didn't have more time to give away more prizes. It was fun!
11:52
Nicholas Meyer
It is generally agreed that the best of the TOS-cast movies are the even-numbered ones, among other reasons because these films have a distinctively literate quality. That quality can primarily be attributed to the one man common to all three movies, Nicholas Meyer, who co-wrote "Star Trek II," "IV" and "VI," and directed "II" and "VI." Convention emcee Adam Malin took the opportunity, like he did with Dorothy Fontana, to personally interview this creative giant.
Malin first explored Meyer's Sherlock Holmes story "The Seven Percent Solution," which he wrote as a novel then as an Oscar-nominated movie, as well as his subsequent directing effort "Time After Time" with Malcolm McDowell, which also involved 19th-century characters. "Do you have some fascination with the Victorian era?" Malin asked.
"My principal fascination with the Victorian era is that they speak English. And my principal difficulty with the present era is that they do not," Meyer answered bluntly. "One has only to compare the rhetoric of the incumbent with the rhetoric of, say, Lincoln, or Theodore Roosevelt — other Republicans, by the way. And I have this feeling that if you cannot speak, you probably have difficulty thinking."
He stepped from this remark into a cautionary tale he had prepared: "Let me acquaint you with the strange fate, fellow members of the Federation, of the late great Planet Earth. Planet Earth, which some of you may have heard of, was a planet that had ample supplies of air and water, and was the host to a bewildering variety of lifeforms, and it was apparently principally ruled by a species of flightless bird called Ostrich. The Ostriches were extremely clever, and they managed to build planes so they could fly, and they managed to do all sorts of remarkable things. They had two interesting characteristics, however, that may have contributed to their doom. One is that they could not abide silence. There always had to be some kind of chatter in every room that the Ostriches lived in, whether it was the waiting room of a dentist, or a barbershop, or in their nests — there was always chatter going on. And the thing about the chatter that seemed to be so essential to them was that it had to be about nothing.
"This goes to their other thing which led to the demise of this planet, was that, when threatened with real difficulties or problems, the Ostriches would plunge their heads into the sand, in the belief that if they couldn't see the trouble, the trouble couldn't see them. And so they listened on their communication devices to tales of people named Imus, or Hilton, or I don't know what. They're all gone now, and this poor planet disappeared because they were so busy amusing themselves to death... What was your question?"
Of course, the topic eventually turned to the "Star Trek" films and his involvement in them, with familiar stories such as how he regarded "Trek" as "Horatio Hornblower in space." For instance, he recalled his meetings with Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennett to discuss the premise of "The Voyage Home." When he heard the concept from Nimoy, he said, "Wow, this is a really great story. Do the time travelers have to go back to San Francisco again? I have already done this!" referring to "Time After Time." "Can't we go to Paris?" And it was pointed out to him that Starfleet Headquarters is located in San Francisco. "I didn't see why they needed Starfleet Headquarters to find whales, but anyway ..."
Later he responded to questions about breaking into show business as a writer. "It's not a business for the thin-skinned. It's very very hard, very competitive. And a lot of it I find, you know, not very rewarding. I keep trying to make movies about people — and I don't care if they're alien people or not — but I'm just trying to make movies about people, and there seems to be less and less call for that. It's all part of the Ostrich phenomenon. People don't want to feel that much, maybe they don't want to feel anything, maybe they want to put their heads in the sand and not think about Iraq or anybody stealing their country."
12:50 p.m.
Robert O'Reilly
Portraying one of the most compelling Klingons in Star Trek lore (Gowron), Robert O'Reilly presents a much different person on stage. He's funny and has plenty of experience for talking about the many aspects of his acting career. But one thing that Robert lacked this Sunday morning was his fellow Klingon, J.G. Hertzler.
"I'm missing my compatriot, who's gone off to teach Klingon!" he joked. Actually J.G. has gone off to teach back East at Cornell University, just not Klingon.
O'Reilly also quipped about having to go to Klingon university to learn the language, and it taking 82 years. He then reminded the audience that James Doohan more or less originated the language for the first Star Trek movie, but then Marc Okrand was given a directive to expand it and to "create a language no one could speak!"
O"Reilly talked a bit about the stunts on the show: "I did a lot of my [own] fights. Except for the last show. It was definitely the stuntman. That was a "one shot" where you have only one chance to do it," he said of his fateful demise.
A member of the audience wanted to know what it was like working with the late Carroll O'Connor on the TV show In the Heat of the Night. "Carrol was one of the most saintly men I have ever known," said O'Reilly, who played a thug in an episode of an earlier O'Connor show, Archie Bunker's Place, the spin-off from All in the Family. "It was my first job in LA … I didn't do much, but it gave me a start. But then to come back later on In the Heat of the Night, I said to him, 'Carroll, I have something for you as you gave me my first job in LA.'" He then presented O'Connor with a signed picture of Gowron! "He put it in his dressing room! He was an incredible man, the best of the best."
But things don't ever stay too serious with O'Reilly. When asked if he would consider a threesome with the Duras sisters, he was adamant. "Do you think I'm crazy?! I would never survive!"
On a more historical note, Robert offered a little nugget to the fans regarding who was largely responsible for the casting of both himself and Hertzler. "Jonathan hired both me and J.G., so the Klingon Empire owes much to Mr. Frakes."
Thanks Mr. Frakes!
2:30
Leonard Nimoy & William Shatner
Please see this separate report for comprehensive coverage of the Nimoy/Shatner appearance.
Page 2: Anthony Montgomery, Nicole deBoer, and the Ferengis: Jeffrey Combs, Wallace Shawn, Armin Shimerman & Max Grodenchik
