JUNE 2024: Countdown to the Vegas Trek Con: News, Nostalgia, and Surprises!

Step into the world of Trek fandom with the TrekConvention Podcast!

Hosted by Bill and Jenna, this lively and engaging show brings you all the latest updates from the Trek universe, including convention news, Trek headlines, and fan-favorite discussions. Dive into the buzz around upcoming conventions, explore deep dives into your favorite series, and laugh along with our hosts as they share their personal Trek tales. Whether you're a seasoned Trekkie or a new explorer of the stars, the TrekConvention Podcast is your ticket to staying connected with the vibrant Star Trek community. Subscribe now and join us on a voyage through everything we love about Trek! 

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Transcript

Blink Dashing: 0:00

I welcome to the trek convention podcast. Thank you for joining us. As always, we'll be discussing all the latest convention updates, our favorite trek headlines, and discussing everything we know and love from the Star Trek universe or, of course, from a fan's point of view.

Bill: 0:24

Hello and welcome to the trek convention podcast. It's been a while since we've recorded a full episode. In fact, this is the first full episode of 2024 and our first episode of season number five. But we're back. Jenna's here. Wave Jenna, But a lot's happened since our last episode. Lower decks has been canceled. It has one more season, but that'll be the last one. The fifth season of discovery just just finished this past week. We're still waiting to hear. More on Section 31 although I've heard it's wrapped in production, Starfleet Academy is coming, and there's been a lot of conversation about Star Trek four, nothing terribly concrete, but this is the TrekConvention podcast, and with the word convention in it, we're going to discuss a lot about the big Las Vegas trek convention coming up in August, which is rapidly approaching As we're recording this. It's 60 days from now, which means I need to start packing. Start talking. No, I need to start packing anyway. Yeah, so let's get into it. Hey, Jenna, how are you?

Jenna: 1:37

I'm good. Bill, how are you?

Bill: 1:38

I'm pretty good. I seem to have a frog in my throat. But other than that, oh, poor frog. Frog killing me. But yeah, poor frog. And yeah, we're 60 days today is, I think, 60 days from the Vegas Convention. Woo hoo. Yes. It starts August 1. So I find that kind of exciting.

Jenna: 2:02

I mean,

Bill: 2:04

exciting. It is exciting. It's exciting for me. It'll be

Jenna: 2:08

more exciting when it's 30 days, and then even more exciting when it's 15 days. Will it be 10 days? It'll be the time of the convention, and you'll actually die, yes,

Bill: 2:20

yes. Not that I can afford to go, but I'm gonna go anyway. But, yeah, there's a lot of time ahead, but I do. I really, I'm a little concerned that I haven't started packing it quite, quite literally. So

Jenna: 2:33

we should talk about the fact that, if you're on a budget, what photo ops Are you gonna get this year that mean the most to you that you you know you can spend your money on. Yeah,

Bill: 2:45

that's gonna have to be, well, I'll have to see this point. There's what, 128 people on the list. Now they just had, yeah, there's 128 incredible guests. Incredible guests. They haven't added the lame guests yet, so we'll have to see how many of those are. But yeah, there's 120

Jenna: 3:03

that's why Mark Alaimo.

Bill: 3:06

Oh, now you're, you're turning on your love, turning

Jenna: 3:11

on my love. Now, now I'm, I'm turning toward Bobby Clark,

Bill: 3:15

yes, the cowboy, we love. The cowboy does not like, does not care for the price of eggs. By the way, talked to him in his booth. At his booth once, and he's like, ah, eggs are too expensive. And there you go. But I did buy one. Photo Op,

Jenna: 3:33

Oh, what'd you buy?

Bill: 3:34

I bought the buy. Who'd you buy? Who are you wearing? I bought and I go off on a tangent, because that's sort of my brand. It seems like our friends at Creation have gone whole hog when it comes to the digital wallets, because they I bought like I say, I bought a ticket. I bought my regular ticket, of course, last year, and then I got Dawn Lewis, by the way, they had a sale, speaking of being on sale, on saving money, they had a sale on all the captains. I think all the captains were like 50% off. Now, having said that, they still charge you like a $10, $15 convenience fee or something, probably to cover the cost of the the electronic tickets. But yeah, I got, I got, I got the cap, the only captain I didn't already have a photo with, which is Dawn Lewis from lower decks, yeah? So I Yeah, already spending money, not even there yet.

Jenna: 4:38

Isn't that the way?

Bill: 4:40

Yeah this is the way As far as the the people that are there, that they've added, they've added quite a few people from Galaxy Quest, which

Jenna: 4:52

I find strange. So I'm gonna be honest with you, I love the people from I love Galaxy Quest as a movie, and I. Love the people from Galaxy Quest, and that's my dog. I love Galaxy Quest as a movie, and I love the people from Galaxy Quest, but I like when a con a convention is about the the fandom that I am interested in. So I've been looking at LeakyCon, which is the fandom for a Harry Potter, and if you look at their actual schedule, it's all about other fandoms and not about Harry Potter. So I don't like that, but that's just me. So I like I have nothing against the Galaxy Quest actors, but I wish that they wouldn't

Bill: 5:44

mix them up and start just wish they wouldn't be there.

Jenna: 5:47

I wish they weren't there. Yeah, when

Bill: 5:49

I was a kid in science fiction conventions at all, especially in a small city, you did what you could. There was usually a lot of different stuff. You know, this guy was lighter and didn't have anything to do with the particular series or any of the any of the broadcast media. And, you know, this is a show, and this is a this. And you know, when I was a kid, of course, Space 1999 was something that people hated, especially if you were either in one camp or the other. Are you either Star Trek or space 1999

Jenna: 6:21

Yeah. And the truth is, is that when once they lost the licensing rights, you know, I guess this convention became less of a Star Trek convention and more of a sci fi convention. You know, they have more of the the actual scientists and everything that they're bringing in, and now they're bringing Galaxy quests. So maybe it's just my nostalgia for once, when it once was an actual Star Trek convention, yeah, and

Bill: 6:51

even last year they had the Orville, there were quite a few people from the Orville last year.

Jenna: 6:55

Yeah, I didn't like that either.

Bill: 6:57

Yeah, I don't dislike it, and I understand it. And I understand, first of all, it's not a Star Trek convention anymore. It's a trek convention. And that was made abundantly clear last year during the writer strike, because paramount in the studios own all of their character names and all of the show names and all of the so questions. I think I mentioned this in the remote podcast I did, which, there was all these, you know, it was the, what So, the franchise that shall not be named. How did you feel about working on that franchise? You know, you couldn't, you know, Shatner actually went so far as that. I think the moderator asked him a question, and he didn't stop talking after, I mean, he just kept, you know, I do this, which he can do anyway. I mean, he's quite capable of that. And then he kind of got up on time, and the moderator was like, you know, we're kind of, we're a little bit over. He's like, Yep, and I left no time for questions, because I don't want to have dance around and get any kind of trouble with any of the studios. Because, of course, he's a few generations before, where the studio owned your career, and he just didn't seem to want to cross that line. And he enjoys talking. So yeah, it's pretty clear that they don't answer. They're not realizing. I don't know why they haven't picked up the layer, why Paramount hasn't renegotiated that with them. I mean, I would think, I mean, their Paramount is for sale now, so I would think they'd be in a less stringent position, but maybe they're even more stringent now that they've got IP to protect but their events stopped. I think after the first one right, there was one in, there was going to be one in. I can't even remember. I knew it. I don't know if it was going to be in Chicago or if it was in Chicago, but I just found the notification from an old post about it being canceled from like, a million years ago. But anyway, Well, speaking of people that are going to be there, Bobby Clark is going to be there. Bobby Clark,

Jenna: 8:57

we love Bobby Clark.

Bill: 8:58

We do you want to Bobby Clark,

Jenna: 9:01

I do. I do want him on this podcast. So if he's listening, tell him he's got an open invitation. He doesn't

Bill: 9:07

strike me as a man who listens to podcasts and less so this one probably, maybe, if there was a podcast on ranching and horses and, you know, things around his core business, that would be something that would probably interest him. But, and one of my and one of my personal favorites is Nikki Tyler, Flynn, who I actually saw at the Burbank show, the Hollywood show in Burbank, the Burbank show in Hollywood, who played seven of nine's mother in an episode of Star Trek Voyager. Star Trek Voyager, in fact, yes, so, yeah. So we have some favorites. I know we don't know. I was gonna say I know we have mixed feelings about the other franchises, but. It. But I think it's kind of fun that the Galaxy Quest. Galaxy Quest has always been like, popular with the Star Trek fans. I've

Jenna: 10:08

got nothing against Galaxy Quest. I love that movie, and I love these, these characters like teb and laliari and lailari. Yeah, I can't say her name. It's not really anyway. It's not really her name anyway. Nobody pronounce her name, yeah,

Bill: 10:28

yeah, no. I they had a screening of it one night, hosted by Anthony Montgomery, and it was very popular. And he would they would pause it every once in a while when he would come and he's like, Yeah, we used to do this on set. Brent Spiner has actually commented that Galaxy Quest is the movie that tng should have made. He's like, why didn't we do this? This? Would we should have done this? And even Patrick Stewart apparently loves the film as well, because it's, it's a great film,

Jenna: 11:00

and the scene of that scene of them coming out of their space dock and scraping up against the side of the space dock was one of the funniest scenes I have ever seen in any any film like I took, I took my daughter to see it, and we were both. She was she was young. He was teens or preteens at the time, and she was literally holding her sides laughing,

Bill: 11:25

yeah? And it goes on forever, forever

Jenna: 11:29

it goes That's what makes it so funny, is that it just goes on and on and on and on,

Bill: 11:35

yeah? And given the time it the film came out, it was like, just the beginning of cringe comedy, where it's like, and I felt like, Yeah, this is, this is what it's like. Every time I see it, I'm like, this seems longer than I remember, and I remember being quite long, but yeah, I think we talked about this before. We won't do our photo op challenge, maybe until we're going to try to do these episodes, like once a month now, so we'll wait till the July episode to try to do the photo op challenge. And for those of you scoring at home, the photo op challenge is, if you had $300 to spend on photo ops, who would you get? And like, I say, they just added like 20 some odd people in the last week. So once we get to July, we'll be close enough to have a better sense, because this is a very scientific challenge. You know, this isn't some fly by night. You know, no lottery thing. We do our research here at the track, convention, podcast, everything scientifically measured. And yeah, so I do notice they have posted very generically, some of the, some of the events. And it sounds like, so far, it's, there's nothing to there's a painting party, which I think they introduced last year. And I do notice that, oh, the house band is the Roddenberry's I thought maybe they hit two. They do kind of have two musical components, because they're gonna have again, the action figures band is back, and, oh, and the my favorite, because I'm old and geeky, they have the Nevada pops will be playing, which I enjoy.

Jenna: 13:22

I do. Yeah, that's cool.

Bill: 13:23

I don't think they did it last I'm pretty sure they didn't do it last year, and I probably didn't the year before. There's a we're getting a large group of people on stage, post even during and post covid, but still sort of a challenge. A lot of people from podcasts, and I'm I'm shocked, they haven't asked us, yeah,

Jenna: 13:42

probably because we never do podcasts.

Bill: 13:45

I don't care for them personally.

Jenna: 13:47

Probably because we're lazy. We're lazy Oh

Bill: 13:52

yeah, the spy hearts podcast. Can I say you've said it twice now, so I apparently say, okay, all right, as long I think Apple is the only podcast people with the most stringent of requirements, but I think they're okay with that. I

Jenna: 14:07

think they can't, you can't say the F word, but I think you can say Okay? I mean, I'm just making that up as I go along, but it sounds reasonable.

Bill: 14:20

Terry Matalis was doing a writer's workshop, which I think would be kind of cool,

Jenna: 14:24

would be kind of cool. I

Bill: 14:25

mean, he's a success. You have to pay for it, you know, I don't know at this point, stuff is just listed. My guess is that, and I've said before, and I think it's on the site that don't take anything we we say as gospel, because ultimately, the convention show runners are in charge of what happens and and whether this stuff gets in or doesn't. So yeah, that's what I know. Four days of fan friendly entertainment and fun, a lot of alliteration. Yeah, they do have science panels. They always have science panels. So for them, we have a couple of them. Pointed out, if you want to be a vendor, it looks like they're still they're still doing that, and it looks like tickets are still for sale, which honestly, I think we mentioned before the show. I was a little surprised that nothing sold out. Usually, as you get closer to it, although I did look at captain's chair, because that's what I I get every year, and there's not the prime seats are gone. Let's just put it that way. Oh, I'm sorry. The Writers Workshop does cost money. It is Sunday. I don't see a time, but it's $249

Jenna: 15:40

Wow, that's a lot.

Bill: 15:42

It's it's a it's a little pricey. They do have a different, I think I didn't pay a lot of attention in the past, but it looks like they have a different vendor doing their tickets, maybe because of the the connection to the the digital wallets, which is a huge improvement, but they have, it seems a little more streamlined. You pick your person, you see the price, and you pick your person, who it is you want to have a photo taken with. Oh, we're talking, we're

Jenna: 16:12

talking about, well, okay, yeah, the ticket. We're still on classes.

Bill: 16:16

Well, I'm looking for the classes, but it's mixed in with the photo ops. Todd stashwick will be there, just so, you know, Todd stashwick,

Jenna: 16:25

Captain Titan, there

Bill: 16:26

you go. Oh, there's one photo. I'm here. I'm talking about photo ops. There is one group photo up available. No need. So, Wednesday. Painting, that's not it. Thursday. Painting, Friday, painting, Saturday, evening. Painting, Sunday painting, Sunday painting, literally, the very last one is writers workshop with Terry matalas. It is 249 if you buy it online, there is a$31.35 cent fee. It doesn't look like they're sold out. I can pick them. Yeah, it comes out to 280 36 if you add it all together, goodness doesn't probably include tax check your state for tax rules. I didn't know they had coupons anyway. Sorry, I'm getting down the weeds, but yeah, so that does cost money. I think we were talking before that. I'm wondering if maybe you can also buy the Saturday night Gala, which comes with the gold captain's chair and copper packages. But if you but if you wanted to spend $75 you could go to the Saturday night Gala. I don't know where you would sit, necessarily, because the golden Captain chair and copper keep their seat. So you're probably in general the mission. But yeah, so I don't know if that's new, whether they're trying to unbundle the way the the gaze in space had done with their convention. That was a little bit more menu we but

Jenna: 17:53

well, and what you mean by go gaze in space. What you mean by gaze in space is that they've got one price for the entrance to the to the convention, and then they have various activities that you can buy individually. So if you want to learn battle fighting, you pay for that. If you want to learn songs from the holodeck doctor, you can do you can pay that. Yes, exactly. You can pay for that. So I think that's what you're talking about.

Bill: 18:23

Yeah, and they did. They kind of unbundled everything, not everything. But whereas the creation folks have always been sort of a it's four days. It used to be five during the anniversary, but four days, here's all the stuff you can do. And there were very few like this costs more kind of a thing, so they rolled it in the price of the ticket, which means our tickets are a little bit more premium. But and there is still Thursday night dinner with the stars, which is reserved for the gold package people, which apparently will be Anthony ramp, Wilson Cruz and Celia rose Gooding, and as always, Sunday will be the Rat Pack, and Friday will be the action figures band, which is also free,

Jenna: 19:11

and explain what the action figures band is. Oh, they

Bill: 19:15

just set up little dolls on the stage, and they know they do not. Apparently, Greg Grunberg had started this band because he likes to play, and he has a number of people, friends and stuff that like to play, and his I guess the criteria for being a member is you had to obviously play an instrument, and you had to have an action figure. So last year, it was Todd stashwick, Captain Titan. It was Greg grundron, Chase Masterson performed. Tim Russ has a band of his own. He performed, I'm trying to remember who else was there, but yeah, it was sort of like this kind of a rolling performance. They would do a song, and then somebody would be featured, and it was fun. People really seemed to like it. So, yeah, glad to see they're back. I don't they don't have a list of who will be on stage quite yet, but that will probably unfold with time. They do have Scott Grimes, though, from Oppenheimer, the auerville American Dad Band of Brothers. He's a con artist, huh? Like you do there is a reunion. Last year they had a reunion with the the TNG crowd. This year, it's a reunion of the original series guest stars, which? Poppy Clark. There you go. He's on the list. Barbara, Luna, Beverly, Washburn, Deborah Downey, Sandy Gimple crown, Kenny Tanya Lee Mani, I want this karoke. You love that I do, hosted again by Colin Dre near and Dominic Keating. And then Friday, that's on Thursday. Friday night is Anthony Montgomery. For some reason, John Delancey is going to be telling us about his sailing adventures. He's a very entertaining man. Normally I'd be like, what? But he's very entertaining. So I expect to be entertained by an entertaining man easily. So that is everything we know so far about Las Vegas in August, the Star Trek themed convention. I think I can say that Star

Jenna: 21:17

Trek themed I like that. Yeah.

Bill: 21:19

Have you ever got your tickets yet. Apparently, there's still time. If you haven't started packing yet, you're just like me. But you probably should.

Jenna: 21:28

It's 60 days out. Yeah, I don't pack until the

Bill: 21:31

morning of I know we've talked about this for the last couple of years. You're like a pack as I'm driving to the plane, kind of a gal? Yeah, I gotta figure a way to, better way to carry my camera around, weapon that around. So that's it for this first of season five episode of the truck invention podcast. Anything to add? Jenna, any, any final words of wisdom.

Jenna: 21:54

I'm gonna miss lower decks. I thought that was the most unique and funny and wholesome, probably not wholesome when you think of all the curse words and stuff, but I just thought it was the most funny and unique offering from Star Trek that

Bill: 22:16

I'd ever seen. Yeah, I like it a lot. I've been rewatching I had planned on introducing a friend of mine to Star Trek, and kind of decided maybe lower decks wasn't a bad place to start, because you get to know the characters. You don't miss, you don't get all the deep cuts to, you know, previous trek iterations and things like that. But it's a good way to step into it without being like, oh, it's all science fictiony the end. And honestly, at this point, if I were to get a uniform, because I see them every once in a while, I really like the lower deck uniforms.

Jenna: 22:55

Let me now I have to look them up, lower deck uniform. Oh, yeah, yeah. I like those two, but the black across the front and across the top, I mean, yeah,

Bill: 23:09

and I like what they did in the crossover episodes where the two characters wore their lower deck uniforms in the strange new worlds era. Yeah.

Jenna: 23:20

I thought that crossover would be so lame, and it turned out to be so cute. Yes, I even

Bill: 23:25

liked the purplish hair of boiler. Yeah, of course, in the animated world, you can have purple hair and it just just another, another color. But in the real world, it's a little hard to pull off. But yeah,

Jenna: 23:40

my mother had purple hair. It's not that hard to pull off. I

Bill: 23:44

think a lot of our grandparents had purple hair. No,

Jenna: 23:47

not like purple as in, she's turned gray and turned purple. She actually dyed her hair purple. Oh, okay, you're like, I don't know what else to say to that. Well, I

Bill: 23:57

worked with a guy who had purple hair, but it wasn't because he died at purple it's because somebody used so much regression formula for too long. Oh, dear.

Jenna: 24:07

Yeah,

Bill: 24:08

he looked better when he stopped.

Jenna: 24:12

Are we done? I

Bill: 24:14

was gonna say so that's the end. We have a couple different endings. It's like watching a Marvel movie. You think it's over. You want to leave? There's more. So that's it for this episode of the trip convention podcast. Thanks for joining us. Look for us again in July. Be sure to check out the site, and until then, bye, y'all.

Blink Dashing: 24:45

Are you enjoying the trek convention podcast? Why not follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? Just look for trek convention and for convention updates, convention photos and merchandise. Head to trek convention.com. I'm blink dash. Thanks for listening. Have you got something to say about Star Trek and want a chance to be a guest on the trek convention podcast? Head over to trek convention.com/podcast and tell us a bit more about yourself and be sure to keep listening.