Dragon*Con 2008 II - Return of the Dragoning

[danceswithwords]

Saturday morning we were all up at a reasonable hour (!!) and had time to drift around the dealer's rooms and the Walk of Fame a little and rubberneck at the actors before we got in line for the Stargate panel. I also got to see the tail end of the parade, which included an impressive group of representatives from Cobra Command in really well-done costumes and a surprisingly large contingent from the Colonial Fleet. Middle Earth, not so much this year. Again, the distribution of the events worked well; the Walk of Fame was in the Hilton and although there were some big lines (Hayden Panettiere was there, and had a huge line), it wasn't oppressively crowded.

Saturday 2:30 Stargate panel
(Cliff Simon, David Nykl, Torri Higginson, Rainbow Sun Francks, Beau Bridges, some guy from the Canadian armed forces)

After yet more My Little Pony-related nonsense, the actors were finally able to take some questions. There was also a confusing incident when an alleged Rodney McKay look-a-like got on stage and harangued David Nykl, and it was funny for about ten seconds and not so funny for the eons of time that it lasted after that. You will notice that the list of panelists includes someone you probably don't recognize from the show. That's because the geniuses at Stargate Atlanta thought, for some reason, that it was appropriate to bring out a member of the organization who had just gotten back from serving in Afghanistan and put him on the panel to answer questions. I respect the man's service as much as anyone, but he had no business being up there; moreover, we have no way of knowing if there were other service members in the audience who weren't afforded the same recognition because they weren't members of Stargate Atlanta. The whole thing was just baffling and awkward, and had the nightmarish quality of the proverbial unfolding trainwreck. ANYWAY.

The moderator asked what they had been watching on television when they were 11 or so. Beau Bridges said that he didn't really have television; his family had just moved to a new neighborhood in Los Angeles, and he and his brother and friends were mostly playing, and a friend of theirs had had the first television in the neighborhood. Torri Higginson and her sister apparently weren't allowed to watch television; her family moved a lot, and one of the main objectives in any new place was making friends with televisions. David Nykl mentioned watching Battlestar Galactica. Cliff Simon remembered seeing television in what was then called Rhodesia when he was away for a swim competition, and it being grainy and black and white. Rainbow Sun Francks said he was watching Loony Tunes (I LOVE HIM).




They were all asked about how much input they had with the writers when it came to the development of their characters. Beau Bridges did say that when he was cast he'd gone back and researched American military leaders and taken a bunch of notes, which Brad Wright (I think?) had taken from him and actually incorporated into Landry's character by making Landry something of a military historian. David Nykl said he mostly just got the scripts, and the rest of them seemed to credit the writers for most of the character development. I can't remember whether this came up Saturday or Monday, but David Nykl also, in response to a question about their own favorite characters, talked a lot about what a different process it is to make the show than to watch the show, and how they're all seeing bits and pieces, part of it their own jobs, and often don't see the finished products and what the writers are going for overall until much later. Because of that, and because they interacted with the actors rather than the characters, they had much different attitudes about the other characters than the audience would.




Cliff Simon did mention that, in watching old episodes, the character he got the most kick out of is Teal'c; he thinks he's really funny.

Cliff Simon and Morena Baccarin answered a question about playing villains by talking about how most bad guys don't actually think they're bad; they always have some justification in their own minds, and you have to find that justification and work with it. Cliff Simon again mentioned that the thing he'd really tried to bring out in Baal was Baal's sense of fun, that he was really enjoying what he did. Someone also asked about the glowing eyes-I think it was Saturday and not Monday-and whether he and Morena knew when their eyes were supposed to glow; Cliff Simon said that that was something they always had to wait to see after post-production, though he sometimes had a pretty good idea that at the pause at the end of certain lines, his eyes would end up glowing. Morena Baccarin talked about the contact lenses they'd put her in at the beginning and how neat they looked, but how unbelievably painful and uncomfortable they'd been to wear. They kept popping out and her eyes were watering and they hurt, and she was gamely trying to go through with the filming anyway, and apparently Michael Shanks intervened because he thought it was ridiculous for her to have to go through that, and it ended up being a good thing because when a doctor looked at her eyes, her retina (that's what she said, though I would think it would be cornea) was scratched.

Someone thanked Torri Higginson for trying to talk to the writers about the way women were written on SGA, and that seemed to touch her a lot; she said it was a very risky and terrifying thing to do in general, but that she'd gotten a lot of support over it, and that had been very important to her. She also talked about how when you do theater, you get to interact with an audience, but you're pretty isolated from the audience when you're filming a television show, and how conventions are a good way of getting that audience interaction. She said she'd taken some of the things fans had told her the last time she was at Dragon*Con back with her to filming.

Saturday 4:00 DS9 panel
(Avery Brooks, Michael Dorn, Cirroc Lofton)

Even though I haven't actually seen all of DS9, I thought this panel had the potential to be really interesting because of the guests, and they did not disappoint. Avery Brooks was cool as ice and because of what seemed like a pretty extensive background in black theater organizations, had a pretty interesting perspective on commercial television. Michael Dorn was caaaaaaaaaaalm. Avery Brooks and Cirroc Lofton seemed to have a lot of affection for each other; one of the first questions was about the relationship between father and son Siskos, and they both said that although the dialogue was written by someone else, the relationship was real, and apparently Cirroc Lofton also has a brother-like relationship with Brooks's oldest son. Brooks also teased Lofton about the fact that, since the rest of his day was spent in tutoring, his scenes were like recess.




There were a couple of different appreciative questions about what a great thing it was to see a positive portrayal of black single fatherhood, and of a black man in a leadership position on the show. Avery Brooks seemed to be pretty conscious of that potential for the role, and told a couple of funny stories about his casting. One was about doing the audition and sharing a car back to the airport with a Belgian actor who was flabbergasted to learn that he was up for the same part as Brooks. The other was about the studio wanting him to have hair on his head so that he wouldn't be confused with that other Star Trek captain; he just sort of let the absurdity hang in the air there. He also talked about some ambiguous feelings that he had about the way his character ended up, related to stereotypes for black men on television, but at that point I was stuffing my fingers in my ears to try to absorb as little as possible about the end of the show, so I didn't hear much of it.

Michael Dorn answered a question about how much push-back he'd been able to give when he felt like something in the script wasn't something Worf would do by talking about some arguments with the writers; it sounded like he usually lost, but that it also wasn't an issue most of the time. Both he and Brooks seemed to think very highly of the writing. Dorn did say that although he thought the writing for Worf was good on both TNG and DS9, he thought he got to stretch his acting muscles a little more on DS9 because the show had the opportunity to take the character further. Someone asked whether they'd had to work to keep things fresh, after playing the same characters for a number of years, but they both said there was always something new and different, and there was never any danger of falling into a rut.

Saturday 5:30 BSG panel
(Tahmoh Penikett, Michael Hogan, Edward James Olmos, Kevin Grazier, James Callis, Aaron Douglas)

I can't remember whether it was this panel or Friday's panel, but at some point a really good Tigh impersonator came up to the microphone during the Q&A and cursed Michael Hogan out in the best Tigh fashion. It was eerie, because the guy looked remarkably like Michael Hogan but even more than that sounded exactly like him, to the point where it was difficult to tell who was speaking. Michael Hogan got an enormous kick out of it; he seemed, in general, to get an enormous kick out of the convention. He was very smiley, which was kind of disconcerting.




Edward James Olmos waxed enthusiastic about science fiction, and about its potential to examine contemporary issues with enough distance and abstraction to pull people into a conversation where their emotions weren't irrationally engaged. That was also something that James Callis was pretty excited about. Michael Hogan said something really interesting at that point about how he hadn't looked at BSG as science fiction at all, but rather as a military drama-until his character became a robot. Heh. I actually think that makes a lot of sense, given that Tigh was usually in the midst of specifically military conflict. Aaron Douglas was apparently really put out when he found out Tyrol was a Cylon; more than that, he'd read a list of four of the final five at David Eick's house and had to sit on what he knew for months because he wasn't supposed to have seen it. (One of the people on the original list he'd seen was switched out with someone else later.) It was only after seeing where the writers were going with the storyline in Season 5 that he resigned himself to the Chief being a Cylon.

Someone asked Callis at one point whether Baltar had really found god or just a convenient harem, and he indicated that it was complicated, because Baltar had changed a lot but was still very self-serving.

Edward James Olmos also waxed enthusiastic about science fiction fans and conventions like Dragon*Con, and got very angry when he talked about another convention he'd agreed to appear at, JumpCon, which had melted down under the weight of the organizer's (either malignant or delusional) grandiose ambitions, and promised to file a complaint with the New Hampshire attorney general's office.

Tahmoh Penikett, EJO, and Aaron Douglas also talked about how big the set was. EJO said that walking through the set was the first time when he really put it together that someone was putting a lot of money into the miniseries and it was a serious project. Tahmoh Penikett talked about how he'd basically been filming at other locations for Season 1, when Helo and Sharon were on Caprica, and when he started filming on the battlestar sets he kept getting lost and having to bang on pipes when he got lost between walls.

After the final panel of the day (for most of us--thomasina75 was off to a fan-run Supernatural panel), we had a nice dinner at the Asian fusion restaurant near the hotel that was only slightly interrupted by Richard Hatch's giant entourage at the next table and some kind of entourage drama that I didn't really get. We hit both the Colonial Fleet party and the Shindig, but the Shindig was between bands when we were there and the Colonial Fleet DJ was exhibiting an alarming amount of hit-and-miss in the song selection, which made dancing risky. So we ended up wandering around the Marriott, looking at the costumes, looking at Nathan Fillion hanging out in the bar loft and looking at the costumes, and finally looking at the bemused sports fans having a late dinner in the back of the bar.

Other actor sightings that day included Gigi Edgley (who, in her ginormous heels, is about three inches tall) and David Franklin, and Virginia Hey, whose cheekbones look like they'd cut glass at this point. She looks like she's trimmed down-not that she was ever big, but she seems wirier and more muscular now. We passed on the opportunity, however, to find out her secret by purchasing her yoga and meditation CD.


Sunday 2:30 Firefly panel
(Jewel Staite, Nathan Fillion, Morena Baccarin, and Alan Tudyk)

I did not get up in time for the 10am Dollhouse panel. Apparently Tahmoh Penikett, to his credit and against great odds, did. I was up in time to join asta77 in line three and a half hours early for the Firefly panel, though. We actually started in the pre-line, and then moved over into the actual line once the line for the previous panel had moved into the room, and it wouldn't have been so bad except that we were in front of the ballroom exit doors and therefore had to stand almost the whole time. Stupid fire marshal! Good thing I brought some knitting, and that it was the only panel I'd planned to see that day, because it was a surprisingly relaxing wait and we got good seats. (In general, the lines were long but relaxed; everyone was holding places, people would meet their groups and peel off to get food and come back. You could start up conversations with your fellow line-mates. The lines were not bad.)

The cast was again signing little cards and other pieces of memorabilia to give to everyone who asked a question. Nathan Fillion also asked at one point if the Jayne hat was there, and gave her a signed card. (There are always a proliferation of Jayne hats at this thing, but someone had taken it to the next level and made a costume that consisted entirely of a giant Jayne hat-and a very well-done one at that-and he had noticed.)

Someone asked about where they thought the show would have gone if it had had the opportunity for a few more episodes, and Nathan started talking about all of the story ideas Alan had pitched to Joss. One apparently involved the Serenity going to a planet that was half night all of the time, where wild dogs (!?!) roamed, with the plan of picking up some wild dogs to deliver to dog-fighters, but discovering while they were traveling to deliver the dogs that River had gone into the cargo hold and tamed them all and made them fluffy puppies. Alan also talked about wanting to do an all-Chinese episode-which would have been particularly painful for him, since he apparently had one of the worst times with the Chinese-because he thought the way the crew used Chinese, mostly as interjection and a way to curse, was kind of limited and he'd like to see it get developed more.




Someone asked about how they'd all gotten into acting. Jewel talked about having been in a school production about recycling and sang some lines from it that were utterly adorable. Alan talked about having done competitive debate and (I think) acting in high school in Texas, because once school officials there discovered that you could win trophies, they encouraged students to compete in non-football things like that. Morena actually went to the Performing Arts High School in New York (at this point, Alan started singing the theme song for Fame) and auditioned for (and apparently was accepted to) Julliard.

There was a question about whether they'd been able to contribute to their characters' development, and they all indicated that they'd had ideas about dialogue but had been shot down by Joss for the most part (this jibes with what I've heard about him not liking ad libbing or having his dialogue messed with).

Someone asked Nathan about the nude scene for "Trash" and he indicated that he wasn't necessarily someone who revels in the opportunity to be naked on camera, but thought the payoff-that opening shot, the "Well, that went well"--was worth it. They also joked about how when Morena did any work that required nudity, like the sponge-bathing scene in the pilot, it was always done on a closed set, while when they filmed "Trash" everybody who worked in the production office found a reason to come by.

Someone asked a question about what they all thought of the ways the female characters on the shows played against typical types, and they all agreed that the show had a lot of strong and unusual female characters. Jewel Staite said that the thing that she really liked about Kaylee was that she was a mechanic, but she was also really girlie. There was also some talk about how Inara, the "whore" (this was the word Morena Baccarin used repeatedly to describe Inara), was the only person on the ship to earn a legitimate living. Morena said that she had originally passed on the part, because she wasn't interested in the "space whore" role, but that once she actually read a treatment she thought it had a lot of interesting potential.

Morena also told a story about learning how to act tough from Gina Torres; there's a scene in Serenity where they're jumping off the ramp, ready to go hole themselves up and fight the Reavers, and she wasn't sure how to get down in her heels while holding a weapon until Gina Torres showed her how to hold herself.

Probably the highlight of the panel, though, was when Jewel had Nathan illustrate a trick of acting he'd learned while working in soap operas. It's a trick for the long reaction shot, going into the commercial, after some terrible and dramatic piece of news has just been delivered. Nathan described it as having three stages, which he illustrated with facial expressions: (1) Did I leave the oven on? (2) I did leave the oven on. (3) No, the oven is off. It was so funny because it described that shot exactly, and I also thought it was hilarious because I had previously described General Landry's reaction shots on Stargate as "Dammit, where did I leave my keys?" and it turns out that I wasn't far off. Heh.

After the panel we wandered the Walk of Fame some more. Julie Caitlin Brown was working her area like some kind of permanently enraged preying mantis; they were selling advanced tickets again for the Stargate actors she repped-which seemed unnecessary, since there weren't huge lines for them-and she had a ridiculously restrictive set of rules posted. As a twofer, 50mm and I also saw Kevin Sorbo, but asta77 actually missed him.

We got takeout Sunday night and settled in to watch the masquerade. The judges this year were Jerry Doyle (Garibaldi!) and Yancy Butler of Witchblade and the Florida attorney general who had prosecuted Joe Francis (?!? I DON'T KNOW). The acts were for the most part neither so awful they were hilarious nor terribly impressive, and I think they're succumbing to the cult of nice because the storm troopers only came out once, and then they let the awful act who had been swept off stage come back and finish their "performance"--and I use that term loosely-at the end. There were, however, break-dancing Thundercats, so. The emcee was Ethan Phillips (Voyager's Neelix), who kept up a patter of nonsensical and at times borderline inexplicable commentary, including such gems as "Well, I'm going to need to take a sleeping pill tonight for sure," and that was probably the (unintentionally) funniest part.


Monday 10:00 Stargate
(Rainbow Sun Francks, Beau Bridges, Cliff Simon, Jewel Staite, Morena Baccarin, David Nykl, Erick Avari)

For some reason, I seem to think Jewel Staite was also at the Saturday Stargate panel, but my pictures tell me differently. Anyway, she and Morena joked about being the kiss of death for science fiction shows, and how once they got parts, the shows got cancelled. They were both also asked about the difference between working on Firefly and coming into established productions on the 'Gates, and they talked about the difference between building something from the ground up-but everyone being very nervous-and coming into productions where everybody knows what they're doing and it's much more relaxed but also more set.

Someone asked what they thought of the convention. David Nykl talked about being blown away by fan creativity in general, the costumes and-here he paused and I thought "Don't say fanfic. Don't say fanfic. Don't say fanfic"--fiction. Someone else on the panel asked what I think was a totally sarcastic question about there being fiction, and Jewel mentioned that she'd started reading one story, but it had Kaylee getting it on with Jayne and she found it disturbing. I died a little on the inside, but they did bring it up, rather than someone in the audience pushing it, so it could have been worse. Jewel also told a really adorable story about having been awkwardly fanboyed in a restaurant while she was eating out with her husband, and then turning around at the SciFi party at ComicCon and awkwardly fangirling Matthew Fox. Beau Bridges said some really nice things about science fiction fans and their devotion, and how impressed he was by the convention.




After the woman asked Cliff Simon the pointed question about his CDs (AGAIN), the rest of them talked about what they were up to. Beau Bridges is going to be playing Alyssa Milano's dad on some sitcom that starts filming soon, but the rest of them are mostly looking for work. Beau Bridges brought up how much of acting is change-you join a production, you work with the same people for a while, you become close to them, and once the production is over that changes forever-and recommended a book he'd read in the sixties about embracing change instead of fighting it, and the other actors seemed pretty interested in that.

Someone asked a question about whether any of them had felt the need to push back against something that really bothered them about a role, or if there were any things they were too uncomfortable about to do, and Erick Avari had an interesting answer. He said, in effect, that he has done a ton of guest or episodic roles, and although he didn't say it, the context made it pretty clear that he was talking about often being cast in Middle Eastern roles; he said he's extremely careful about any role that touches on religious sensitivities; his mother still lives in India, and he's very conscious of the history between Muslims and Hindus there and is not interested in playing any part that could step on toes. He also will not play a terrorist. He then went on to describe one part he'd taken, of a Pakistani general, because the role was benign, but by the time he got to the first day of shooting, it had been rewritten and was something he felt he couldn't do, and he actually had to walk away during the shoot, which is a difficult thing to do, and for which he felt very bad. The show was The Agency, and Beau Bridges was on it at the time and remembered the shoot being canceled. Cliff Simon said he'd been offered the role of Osama Bin Laden in a movie that's in development right now, and he has been trying to decide whether to take it for a year, because he obviously has huge problems with who Osama Bin Laden is and what he did, but he also feels like it's an important story to tell. Erick Avari made a distinction between a role like that, which would have a lot of depth and background in the production, and those episodic one-shots that don't have much context. Again, he did not come out and say this, but I got the distinct impression that he was quite conscious of those episodic roles being representative of Middle Eastern and South Asian men, and not wanting to participate in egregious negative stereotyping. (Also, I have to say that Erick Avari annoyed the crap out of me at Dragon*Con two years ago, but I found him to be a thoughtful and engaging guest this year. I'm not sure what happened, but I was very glad for that.)

Monday 11:30 BSG panel
(Tahmoh Penikett and Richard Hatch)

This panel ended up being somewhat truncated; some of the guests apparently had to leave because of issues related to Hurricane Gustav, and there was a huge line of people waiting for Tahmoh's autograph at the Walk of Fame, and he wanted to make sure he could get through it before he had to leave. So Tahomoh and Richard took questions for the first half hour only. Most of them related to Helo's character development, and his role as moral compass in the show. He talked about how he thought Helo had a really hard time when he took a stand, because he knew what he was doing was right, but he was also facing down a lot of pressure. He was also really excited, after his specific role in the Caprica scenes of Season 1, and his rather limited role in the first part of Season 2, to have been given the character development he had, and to get such a meaty role. Someone asked about what he thought of the fact that Helo and Sharon had the most functional romantic relationship on the show, and I think he somewhat misinterpreted the question (or else I did) because he talked at length about his working relationship with Grace Park, and how both of them had been at the same acting school in Vancouver and had a similar approach, and how much he'd enjoyed seeing her grow as an actor, and how lucky he felt to work with her.




After Tahmoh left, Richard Hatch had the good sense to realize he probably couldn't carry a half hour of panel by himself and had arranged to show videos instead, so we got to see what was essentially a vid that Bear McCreary had made to the full version of "All Along the Watchtower" that he had recorded for the show, and we then got to see a long Season 3 gag reel, which had some hilarious pratfalls and a D'Anna montage set to "Three is the Magic Number."

And that was that. It was time to say final goodbyes, and Dragon*Con was over for another year, and I already miss everybody a lot.