Report by Me! - yes, I finally got to go to a con!

After several attempts, I finally made it to a Robert Beltran convention ... and yes, I had a great time :) It was great to meet up with people I know online - Suz, Andi, Sharone - and via people online - Fiona, Hilary, Wendy ...

The Dominion is one of this year's major UK Star Trek conventions - and, besides Robert, guests included Colm Meaney (in his first convention for 6 years - nice guy :), Doug Bradley (Pinhead from Hellraiser), Diane Duane (Trek author) and others ...

This was Robert's first UK convention - he had two main appearances, Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon, and several marathon signing sessions (there were around 1200 con-goers).

Brief impressions from both sessions and a close encounter in the signing room ... he does a lot of impressions ... either doesn't understand English accents or was playing for time to answer questions (my vote goes with the latter) ... the grey hair is back ;), and his hair was longer generally than it has been for a while ... weirdly enough, he looked exactly the way I expected him to look [I was somehow expecting him to not look the way I was expecting ... I'd better give up this explanation as a lost cause!]. And my new favourite sport? Beltran butt-watching - he was just ahead of me on a flight of stairs on Sunday afternoon ... very nice ;)

Saturday morning
The session was crowded, to put it mildly, but perseverance (and an early start) meant we got some pretty good seats, just behind the stewards area - there's no reservable seating, it was first come first served. Those prepared to sit through everything else got the good seats ... three of us saved each others seats so we could wander off to the dealer rooms and so on while waiting ... thanks Suz, Fiona :)

Robert arrived around midday, to a deluge of flashbulbs and applause. The guests were on a stage, about 5' above the audience, with a black backdrop behind them (note to con-organisers - please don't put black behind guests, it makes them very hard to photograph :)

The first question was about Riverdance, as mentioned in Teri's report on Vulkon Baltimore ... apparently this joke started when they had a new set - Robert christened it by dancing, quickly joined by Garrett and the others. Other questions followed rapidly ... the more interesting produced comments such as this one comment about Kate Mulgrew: "We do each other a lot". Pity he was only referring to their impressions of each other ;) He also referred to the Tim Russ/Kate Mulgrew feud, saying that if taking your trousers down is "a moon", then the photo of Tim Russ that Tim pinned in KM's trailer was "an eclipse"!

He's been on holiday in Amsterdam and London since FedCon - in London he saw a few plays, including Enemy of the People and Misanthrope - and would like to do theatre in Britain, although he has no plans to do so at the moment. When asked what plays he'd like to do, he mentioned Othello and Macbeth. He may direct Voyager soon - he commented that he had "nothing else to do" on the set. He clearly has little patience for some of the inconsistencies in the series ... for example, about the Kazon, "these guys have warp speed but they have no water!?" His description of Borg foreplay: "Brace yourself, I'm coming in"!

The session quickly turned very hormonal, with requests for kisses, hugs, autographs etc ... it all got a bit out of hand, but we did get the sight of Robert tap-dancing (besides all his protestations, the guy clearly knows how to do a timestep!)

Saturday afternoon - autographs!
I arrived too late on Friday to attend the signing session I supposed to (it was organised by numbers ... I was in the first 200). This was a good thing ;) Those of us who'd missed the Friday evening got to go first on Saturday afternoon, avoiding the 3+ hour wait in the queue! Yes, he is charming; yes, he is tall; yes, his hair is going grey (looks cute!); and I was pretty impressed [no, duh!]. For the signature, see my front page! The montage of photos that I originally created for the front page of this site was used in place of a photograph in the con book, so I asked him to sign it! And thanks to Elise, Lee etc from the con, who asked me if they could use it - I'm very flattered! My first published piece of art ;)

Sunday afternoon
Sunday was a better session - more questions, less hormones ;) There was definitely a touch of Murphy's Law hanging around somewhere ... a fuse blew in the lights as he came on ... the microphone packed up halfway through ... the audience completely failed to manage a Mexican wave to greet him, despite the best efforts of one of the stewards! Our co-ordination was somewhat lacking ... it might have been improved if Robert had handed out his hangover cure on Saturday! He swears by a combination of beer, tomato juice, lemon and Tabasco to cure hangovers. Sounds like kill or cure ...!

The quote of the day for Sunday: "I'm a lesbian" ... yes, said by RB! - he was discussing 7of9 with one of the DeepSpace Dykes group :). Later, half the audience (guess which half? :) started making plans to visit Bakersfield when he mentioned that there is a "strong family resemblance" between him and his brothers (all seven of them!).

His arm can be twisted ... and was! ... he claims to have crashed "over 1000 shuttles" but that there's no problem because Voyager has "7000 or 8000 more" ;) His favorite episode "changes each time someone asks that question" but is presently Unforgettable - he admires Virgina Madsen's work ... and was interested in Voyager because he wanted to work with Genvieve Bujold ... he likes reading history and biographies ... and likes new places but isn't wildly fond of the travelling involved in getting there ...

There were more non-Voyager questions in this session ... his motivation for acting came from classical theatre, particularly Shakespeare - he likes the tradition behind theatre, and its effect on society ... he's presently writing (with a friend, Dan Ryan) an adaptation of Macbeth, set in a modern day crime syndicate family. This project was originally to be for Roger Corman ... he enjoys writing - letters, poetry, short stories - but doesn't get much time to write at the moment ... he does a great Dean Martin impression (aided and abetted by Dan Ryan, lurking in the audience) - that's what he's doing in the picture on the right (just in case you were wondering!) ... he does a lot of impressions, including one of a London cab driver that sounded suspiciously like Dick Van Dyke's atrocious accent in Mary Poppins ... we also had impressions of German fans in Bonn, impressions of Michael Flately, Kate Mulgrew (priceless!), members of the audience ...

These were the highlights ... a lot of questions were ones that have been asked at other cons, and have been included in other reports, so I haven't repeated them ... but he gives very good con, go see him if you can! :) The con lasted from Friday to Monday ... due to work and other little inconveniences, I arrived (very) late on Friday and left on Sunday, immediately after RB's second appearance ... Ailsa's report has much more detail and more photos!

Katane

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