Grand Slam In Pasadena - A Look At Star Trek, the Franchise

By FLAtRich
Fanatic eXoNews Editor

The Price of Fame - Twenty Bucks and Up

Hollywood March 24, 2002 (eXoNews) - Star Trek Conventions are a stand-alone franchise nowadays, but that's no reason to shy away from the big one in Pasadena - as long as you've got a few extra dollars set aside for such things.

Admission at the door was $37 this year, but hell, where else are you going to get a live hour of inspiration from the likes of William Shatner or Jonathan Frakes?

Plus there's all that other stuff to buy and stick in a drawer and pull out again in ten years to sell to somebody else. It's a collector's universe out there.

The Pasadena Con is particularly fruitful for autograph collectors because it is only a few miles away from Hollywood and Burbank, where many of the genre's favorite stars and production people actually work and live.

There was a very long list of the biggies this year. Gates McFadden, Bill Paxton, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Rod Roddenberry (son of Gene), Nana Visitor, Casey Biggs, Jeffrey Combs, Marc Alaimo, Majel Roddenberry, Robert Justman, Walter Koenig, Brannon Braga, Michael Piller, Jonathan Frakes, Gale Anne Hurd, Michael Biehn, William Shatner, and even Joan Collins ("Who's Joan Collins?" asked Patrick, the youngest member of our group. Don't feel bad Joan, the kid doesn't know who Whitey Ford is either.)

I want to stop, but I can't: Max Grodenchik, Aron Eisenberg, Chase Masterson, Patti Yasutake, Jonathan DeLarco, Jennifer Hetrick, Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, Scarlett Pomers, Ricardo Montalban, Robert Duncan McNeil, Roxann Dawson, Frank Marshall, Kate Mulgrew, Andrew Robinson, Connor Trinneer, Dominic Keating, Anthony Montgomery, Jonathan Billingsley, Linda Park ("Park?" asked Shatner when some of the audience got up to grab the Enterprise star's autograph in a side room. Don't feel bad Linda, Bill wasn't too sure of the name of your show either.)

OK, I'll stop, but not without adding Wil Wheaton and Colm Meaney. (Wil because he's a true geek and Meaney because he's a really great actor and Irish.)

So those are the names you might hope to see at any major Trek convention, right? But when you're this close to Hollywood the list never actually stops. Upstairs, in little rooms, were a bunch of names you don't know unless you really are a credits freak. People here were signing autographs for twenty bucks a pop, and walking into these rooms was more than spooky.

Barbara Luna and Lee Meriwether and Grace Lee Whitney were in one room with half a dozen more ladies romanced by Shatner's generation of TV leading men. Cast members of nearly forgotten epics like "V - The Series" and "War of the Worlds - The Series", stunt men from Babylon 5, etc., sat behind tables in other rooms. Some of them wonderful character actors you swore you'd never forget.

There was no line to get in.

Patrick (the kid - Joan or Whitey draw a blank) wanted to know why these people were charging $20 for autographs. Seemed like a lot of money, he said. I hated to tell him that some of them were probably doing it to supplement their union pensions and Social Security checks.

If the life of an actor in Hollywood is a long, hard climb, imagine what it must be like long after the climb is over.

Something to keep in mind as you watch the young stars of Enterprise, Buffy, Angel, Roswell, etc., rise: don't be offended by the price of fame.

For the next appearance of a Trek Con in your neighborhood, check out Creation Entertainment - http://www.creationent.com

William Shatner - Selling Re-invention As The Key to Success

Hollywood March 24, 2002 (eXoNews) - The folks at Creation Entertainment credit William Shatner as follows: "WILLIAM SHATNER Writer, Director, Producer, Spokesperson, Gameshow Contestant, Charity organizer, Comedian, Website host, and oh yeah, Captain Kirk." Interesting that they mentioned Kirk in this description but didn't list Shatner as an actor. There was a time when that was his only known profession.

Science fiction fans of all ages have already heard the story - for a while, Shatner got type-cast to the extreme from his few years as the leading man of the original Star Trek series and had a hard time finding work. As he tells it (in at least one book, in the Mind Meld interview with Leonard Nimoy, and when he talks to TOS fans), he was bitter about this at the time, but no matter what you think of Shatner as an actor, you have to be amazed at how the man overcame Hollywood's narrow-minded casting prejudice.

William Shatner practically invented re-invention. He followed Nimoy as a feature director of the Star Trek movie series with only moderate success. His Star Trek V is generally regarded as a lesser entry in the movie series compared to Nimoy's Search for Spock and The Way Home, and Nimoy also went on to score big with the non-genre feature Three Men and a Baby.

But Shatner is still directing (Groom Lake in 2002), and he has always had aspirations beyond acting. Look carefully and you'll find a Shatner story credit for a TV show episode way back in 1960 ("Checkmate" starring Doug McClure and Sebastian Cabot. Ran from 1960-62 - on CBS, I think.)

Shatner reinvented himself as an author and sold a "co-written" concept called Tek War to book publishers, comic books, and television. (Cynics might apply the term "ghostwritten", but at least the initial novel "sounds" like Shatner.) He is still producing books regularly, now working on a Star Trek book trilogy for Simon and Shuster.

He parlayed his love for horses into a major annual charity fundraiser. At the Pasadena Con he easily auctioned off two Rick Berman-sanctioned set visits to Enterprise for a $4500 charity donation!

Shatner began to make fun of his past when he appeared as a guest host on the original Saturday Night Live. He continued to develop his comedic talents after that as a reoccurring guest on the very successful sitcom Third Rock from The Sun. He's also played it for laughs in movies like Free Enterprise and the current comedy Showtime with Robert deNiro and Eddie Murphy. He's done his share of outright hawking too, but always as himself, from Commodore computers in the 80s to the infamous Priceline dot com commercials.

As an actor, he's appeared in hundreds of TV episodes and feature films since the late 1940s, but he never stops re-inventing himself. He's even an occasional host on The Iron Chef.

At the Pasadena Star Trek Grand Slam, Shatner revealed that he was currently in the development stage for a project with CBS which would start with a Star Trek convention appearance and then trace the "making of Star Trek" through his eyes. Nothing new about a "making of Star Trek" concept, but reworking the concept to start from a fan con was enough to interest CBS and get a big cheer from the audience.

His latest reinvention is the official Shatner website at www.williamshatner.com. It's been there for several years, but one of his daughters took it over recently and it's pretty cool even if Bill doesn't know the difference between a chat room and an email message. (Of course, Wil Wheaton's www.wilwheaton.com is THE Trek site to hit if you are a true techie Trekker and many other Trek stars have nice homes on the web nowadays too.)

Shatner must be an inspiration to other Trek alumnae, though, because many of them followed in his footsteps as the franchise took them out of the TV actor spotlight. Books are commonplace in their profession, but lots of Star Trek actors have moved behind the camera with marked success. LeVar Burton and Roxann Dawson are leading the pack as the next generation of actor/ directors chalking up episode credits. Robert Duncan McNeil, Gates McFadden, Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Alexander Siddig, Robert Beltran and Robert Picardo have notably tried their hands at it too. Michael Dorn recently confirmed that he will direct an upcoming first season episode of Enterprise.

If Shatner has left a shape-shifting legacy, Jonathan Frakes has probably had the biggest box-office success re-inventing himself. He started out directing episodes of DS9 and he currently serves as the Executive Producer of Roswell, which he has also appeared on (as himself - sound familiar?) and directed from time to time. In the more lucrative world of feature films, Frakes directed the current box-office hit Clockstoppers, and two successful and profitable Star Trek: The Next Generation motion pictures, First Contact and Insurrection.

Frakes  kidded about Shatner at the Con - he told a story about his mom having a full-size picture of Shatner on her refrigerator when Frakes was just starting his tour as Commander Riker on Next Generation - but he also admitted to one fan that the book she had read "by Jonathan Frakes" was a ghostwriter's creation. Sound even more familiar?

The audience tittered when he indicated that he hadn't even read it and roared at Frakes' offhand comment: "I'm just as big a ho as anyone else!"

As William Shatner has taught us all, having something to sell is only the beginning. Convincing the audience to keep buying it is the real trick.

The Official Star Trek Site - www.startrek.com 

Ultimate Star Trek news site - www.trektoday.com

Back to Table of Contents