Mission objective: meet the legendary James Tiberius Kirk, and try not to be seduced or die.
Secondary mission objective: ask William Shatner to say, “Denny. Denny Crane.”
Mission status: boldly ongoing.
It wasn’t a Star Trek convention, and there was no Spock, but the
London Film and Comic Convention was the closet I was going to get to either one any time soon. And it offered one huge draw – William Shatner.
The LSO and I threw caution into the air Friday afternoon and bought train tickets . . .correction . . .we beamed into Earls Court at 11am on Saturday 17th, and I set about completing my mission objectives.
As soon as we arrived, I queued to buy a ticket to have a photograph taken with William Shatner, and as these things usually go, the person ahead of me bought the last ticket. I was tempted to use time travel to go back in time a few hours, so as to be first in the queue. But then I thought I’d likely meet the older me in some kind of doppelganger moment later in the day.
Before meeting the legendary William Shatner, we met
William B Davis (Smoking Man from the X-Files) and
Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck from the remake of Battlestar Galactica). There were lots of other stars there, but autographs are expensive!
The convention hall (Earls Court) was packed with stalls, look-alikes, and even a few authors. The only author I recognised was Robert Rankin (Retromancer), and I chatted to him about his books and my writing. I told him I’d never read any of his books; he didn’t seem bothered. When he signed a copy of Retromancer, he left a nice comment wishing me luck with my writing. Unfortunately, none of the other authors appealed to me – mostly medieval histories and crime – and I did feel a bit bad bypassing them. But our time was limited, and I still had my two mission objectives to complete.
After an exhausting few hours of queuing, browsing, and hastily drunk cups of coffee, we finally queued up to meet William Shatner. I quickly realised that this was going to be one of those ‘say hello, sign photograph, and move on moments.’ There were hundreds of people waiting to see him. No photographs were allowed, though the LSO did get a few sneaky ones. Sadly, none of me meeting him.
William Shatner (aka James Kirk or Denny Crane - if you haven’t seen Boston Legal, get it. Superb show) seemed nice. He said hello, but that was it. No time for anything more. So, I wasn’t seduced and didn’t die. Main mission objective successfully completed. But I failed on my secondary mission objective - I never got him to say “Denny Crane.”
So, was it worth the obscene amount of money we spent getting there and on autographs? Hell, yes. It might not have been perfect, but we loved every minute of it.