LFCCW Winter 2013 Michael Shanks/Garrett Wang

Hoards descended on Kensington Olympia this past weekend, 5-6 October 2013 for the London Film and Comic Con and well, hoards is definitely the right word to use.  Why do certain people think it's fine to queue jump, smoke endlessly whilst in the queue and just have a God given right to stare for no reason!  Let me say Star Trek has a more classier fandom!  Cos Destination Star Trek London 2012 was so better organized and had amazing people there, fans and crew!  Trekkies are cool.  No one acted like they were still at school.  Anyhoo, rant over!

The Star Trek talk was enlightening and interesting mostly cos Garrett Wang was doing most if not all of the talking.  Letting us into snippets of info most of us wouldn't have known about.  Like how he missed out on kissing Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine cos it wasn't in the script of a ST:Voyager ep!!  As an actor he said he was excited for it to happen but it didn't and even Jeri said he missed out on it.  Another fun anecdote was how not to upset Voyager writers when he did that one day, he found Harry Kim was killed off and no one noticed or said anything about it in the show.  Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) just kind of grunted!

Another thing he said was how JJ Abrams didn't want to cast anyone in his Trek movies who had been involved in the Star Trek TV shows: crews or actors, except for Leonard Nimoy.  How Garrett was annoyed that none of the actors from the shows were invited to the premiere of the movies either and when he met JJ one day whilst queueing for the 2009 movie at the cinema, he didn't really have much in the way of acknowledgement. Even when he told him he watched the movie like everyone else at the cinema about 13 times.  Garrett so kindly paid for tickets for the fans in front and behind him who had queued up to watch it.
Nicole de Boer interjected of how she auditioned for every show JJ was making.  She didn't say much, she had a cold.

Also how he thought Star Trek Into Darkness: STID stood for Star Trek into Die Hard, cos it was so action orientated.  Most of his shows are though, such as Alias and that was really fast paced.  Wasn't really into Lost myself, but Garrett mentioned how he thought the casting of Benedict Cumberbatch was wrong for the part of Khan.  As we know he was an Indian character and he would have loved Naveen Andrews to have been cast.  Also how the cast appeared like they wanted to get their lines out quickly and rush through them.  Which I have to agree with, especially Spock.  I said it in the first movie, Zachary Qunito spoke fast, whereas the original Spock spoke slowly and calmly.  Hence his overdoing: "Khaannn!"  Spock would never have made such an outburst.  Irrespective of being young in years. Ha.  The line most everyone hated in the movie.

Great talk Garrett, fun and exciting!

Gotta admit though one of the main reasons for my going was to have a chin wag with Michael Shanks.  Not much of a chin wag but it was great meeting him in the flesh and he looks even hotter than on TV! His talk was with his wife Lexa Doig, but I can't help feeling he would have done more talking if he was on his own, naturally, ha.  It didn't help that most of the fans questions were kind of a re-hash of something another fan had asked.  I mean how many times can you ask what they would have liked to have come in and who was their inspiration.  Michael is obsessed with Harrison Ford, ahh, he'd like to play Indiana Jones.

Lexa was trying to be sarcastic a lot of the times in terms of being funny, but she came across as a little like having Michael under her thumb!  Saying things like he'll get into trouble when he gets home...ha!

It was a shame there wasn't a full house for Michael's talk since it was a paid talk as variation in the audience would have been good.  I didn't get picked to ask my question, what is it something I said or didn't say, cos I had much to ask.  Let's see, would he play Daniel Jackson again; what was it like playing two different sorts of doctors, one on Stargate SG-1 and one on his new show, Saving Hope.  Would have been good to have him on Supernatural again as an angel even this time round, seeing as Amanda Tapping plays a recurring one on the show.  Heck anything would have been more interesting than the same old, same old.  Oh well maybe next time I'll get my chance...Dream on hey!! ha. At least I got me hug from Michael!!