Whilst arguably it doesn’t attract the glitz and glamour of San Diego Comic-Con, it was my first London Film and Comic-Con experience and I was pretty damned excited. The variety of costumes included Starfleet Commander, Prince Joffrey, Superman, Beetlejuice, and even, weirdly, Chuckie’s Dad from RUGRATS (no, we don’t get it either!). However, it was still a brilliant couple of days and I got to rub shoulders with a few of my favourite actors, as well as ask them a few questions.
If you want 5 minutes to have a quick chat with some of the guests, then I suggest you go on the Friday night previews. I was lucky enough to talk to Armin Shimerman of DEEP SPACE NINE fame. He played Quark, a ferengi. He was truly lovely to talk to, and we had a semi-profound chat about the philosophy of STAR TREK. Armin said STAR TREK was all about different species attempting to find common ground. He commented on how, not so much in DEEP SPACE NINE but more so in the other STAR TREK series, humans would march into a problem thinking they could fix things. When asked about the ferengi’s philosophy, he said who can blame them for their belief system when all they want to do “is make a buck”.
Following on from the DEEP SPACE NINE theme, I then had a chat with Rene Auberjonois. I was told to not take too much of his time so I asked him what his favourite storyline from STAR TREK was, to which he replied ‘Children of Time’- when Odo loses his powers and is transformed into a human. However, he then adopts a baby Changeling whose death restored his own Changeling powers. After our STAR TREK chat, I asked him the same question except about the excellent series BOSTON LEGAL (and to be quite honest, he looked taken aback to be asked about that show at Comic-Con). He described the storyline about his character’s daughter’s battle with drugs as being incredibly engaging and his favourite one to act. Alas, I resisted asking questions about William Shatner.
There were so many talks going on that we were really spoiled for choice. The free GAME OF THRONES weapon talk was sold out (yes, it sounded awesome) so we caught up with the STAR WARS talk with Kenny Baker (R2-D2) and Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca). It was a great opportunity to hear about working with Harrison Ford, as well as a few anecdotes about the legend of Sir Alec Guinness. From attending the STAR WARS talk and having a chat with the producer, Gary Kurtz, that it was a shock for the movie to be so successful. Possibly one of the best moments of the talk was when Peter Mayhew was asked:
‘Knowing what you know now, would you go back to 1977 and do it all again?’
‘Absolutely’
I took a bit of a break from science fiction and went to a talk by Charles Martinet, the voice of Nintendo’s Mario and Luigi. He was bubbly and excited and at times just broke into some of Mario’s best sayings. Yet, the one thing that stuck in my mind from his talk was that he said he loved doing his job, and could go on for another twenty years voicing those beloved characters.
The atmosphere was worth the experience alone, along with the merchandise, the characters, being able to rub shoulders with some of the greatest stars from sci-fi and fantasy (and get told by Peter Dinklage that he was suffering from “the crazies) and it was just a good chance to meet like-minded people. I would recommend everyone who loves television or film to go at least once – you can check out some of the fun we had in the pictures below!
