My Other Convention Reports:

San Francisco - August 1997

Fairfield - October 1997

Sacramento - January 1998

Fairfield - March 1999

Sacramento - January 2000

Sacramento - January 2001

As I said, I think it will take quite some time for me to get over this! It was so exciting, and being in an auditorium along with other Star Trek fans was an experience all in its own. But the biggest excitement was when Terry Farrell and Nana Visitor came out. They are two of my biggest idols, and I just could not believe I was in the same room with such great people!

But if you have never seen Terry Farrell and Nana Visitor together in front of an audience ... you don't know what you're missing. They're so funny together, always sarcastically ridiculing each other. But what was surprising was how different they were out of character. They didn't seem like the tough, duty-committed women we see on TV. They seemed like very normal human beings, each with a great sense of humor. They held a question-and-answering session, and people asked some very interesting questions. If only I remembered what they were ... I remember a few here and there, but there were just so many!

George Takei was great, too. Although he didn't have a question-and-answer session, he told us about a very amusing experience he had one time trying to get from Los Angeles to England. He had us all rolling by the end of the story. =)

I just wished I'd thought of taking notes about what was said, or something, because now I regret not remembering everything what went on. The schedule below gives me a vague idea, but it doesn't satisfy the specifics.

• When Nana and Terry first came on stage, the Klingons had just finished singing the Klingon National Anthem, and they persuaded Terry into joinging them in singing another Klingon song. Of course, I was busy trying to get up to the front of the aisle to take pictures (which you can find below).

• One of the funnier moments occurred when the subject of why Dax could travel by transporter and Odan ("The Host", TNG) couldn't, even though this wasn't what the person who asked the question actually meant. But Terry tried to give a vague explanation, and the person wanted a better explanation. Terry looked at him and said, "What, do you think I'm really a scientist??"

• Nana mentioned that her son, Django, was 10 1/2 months old, and had just started walking three days before.

• Nana recalled the shooting of "The Begotten" where Kira finally gave birth, and she said she'd just given birth to Django, and she was still very emotional. She said, in shooting the episode, she was literally weeping, mostly because she felt so bad for the baby they were using for the episode. This was a baby that they'd brought in, and smeared him with stuff like cottage cheese, and was completely naked while filming. Wouldn't you feel bad?

• Terry mentioned that her favorite episode so far is "Rejoined," and Nana said hers is "Duet."

• Someone mentioned that Nana's birthday was during the past week, and wished her a happy birthday. Most everyone was extremely surprised to find that she was 40 years old. She looked pretty good for 40, especially after having a baby only 10 months before.

• A fan asked both Nana and Terry to share the biggest mistake they've made on the show.

• Terry joked that going to the first audition was her biggest mistake.
• Nana said hers occurred early in the first season. In one scene she was supposed to rip something off the wall in rage, and toss it over her shoulder. But by mistake, she pulls off the wrong prop. The directors were furious because it was expensive to repair.
• Terry said one day she had such a bad day, she punched her hand through the window of her own trailer. She was ticked off that was given the script for the day after lunch, rather than before which would give her the lunch break to look over her lines. As she fumed back to her trailer, she realized she was locked out of it for the third time, and was so mad that she threw her hand through the window of her trailer. She joked that she gained the respect of everyone on the lot that day.
• Nana said that when they're filming, she is always given plastic tricorders and phasers because she has a tendency to act with so much force that she accidentally ends up breaking them, and they're expensive to replace. Terry complains that even though she herself doesn't have a problem with breaking the props, she often is blamed for it.

• A fan asked if the two of them would like to have one another's role. Both agreed that they would.

• Nana said she likes that Dax has had a 300-year and seven-lifetime experience, and having been both male and female, giving Dax a unique perspective to handle tough stiuations. Shortly after Nana was cast as Kira, she was in a reading session, but since the role of Dax had not been cast yet, Nana had to read both roles, and she said she enjoyed reading Dax's lines.
• Terry likes that Kira is a role that has a very wild emotional roller coaster, which is what often makes acting fun and exciting.

• Both agreed that being on the set in front of the cameras is like being at Disneyland for an actor/actress.

• Dax's spots used to be watercolor paints, but it had a tendency to run, so it was changed to an alcohol-based (I think that's what Terry said). Trills aren't supposed to sweat, so she constantly needs re-powdering.

• Nana said she thought that when she first got the role this would be "just another acting job," but in fact, she ended up getting a husband and a child.

• Nana said that she was really upset during the filming of "Trials and Tribble-ations" because the producers only gave Kira a very small role because she was very pregnant and really close to going into labor. The short scene with her in it was shot, and for the rest of the filming, she sat in her trailer pouting and grumpy.

• In one episode, Terry (or was it Nana? Anyone know?) had to be almost completely naked for a bath scene, and she was given some glue and pieces of plastic to paste over particular parts of her body. After pasting them on, the woman working on her make-up asked, "Well? Where's the rest of the glue?" Terry was puzzled and said, "The rest of it? I used it all." The woman was appalled and said, "All of it! You were only supposed to use a tiny little dab!" But they went on the shoot the episode anyway. The producers said the bath was enhanced with almond oils and orange oils to make the experience somewhat nicer for Terry. Partway through filming, Terry said she noticed some popping, and it turned out that the pieces of plastic were popping off. After the scene was finished, she asked the woman doing the make-up what takes off the glue, and she says, "Orange oil."

Pictures