Pegaus 2: Saturday
Waking up on Saturday wasn't too painful, thanks to the decision to get a relatively early night on Friday. paranoidangel42 and I made the decision a couple of cons ago that we weren't going to be the early morning queue people anymore so we got up as late as we could, dressed and ate breakfast in the hotel room. For complete efficiency, we also made sandwiches to take and set off for the Thistle at around 9am.
I signed in with my disabled pass and we found me a chair (so much easier to find chairs when you're looking pathetic on a walking stick) to sit on while we waited for the hall to open. When we were able to get in, PA and I set up what proved to be the weekend technique: she skipped lightly through the aisles of chairs to snag us two seats on the aisle while I shuffled in the long way because I Don't Do Sideways Walking anymore. The disabled pass got us in early so we had pretty good seats and I didn't have to do any crawling up and down aisle's to get half decent photos. Very strange but it was also quite pleasant not to be in too much pain during the con. Wolf Events really do make an effort to help the less abled enjoy the con as much as everyone else without feeling like we've been singled out.
As is traditional, we then entered Con Time. The talks were supposed to begin at 9.30 but it was after 10am when the first guest, Dan Payne, was ushered onto the stage.
Dan Payne is definitely a con guest worth seeing. He's very funny, doesn't take himself seriously and has tons of really great stories. Most of the stories involve him agreeing to do dangerous and crazy stunts, but the way he tells them had us in stitches. His "uh, OK," complete with buck teeth over the lip every time he agreed to being buried alive or thrown through walls was priceless.
Next up was Ryan Robbins, who plays Laden the leader of the Genii. He was another very funny guest with some brilliant facial expressions and plenty of taking the mickey of himself. He also came prepared with stories! All guests really need to have some good stories :-)
We then had a Q&A session with two of the Fandemonium authors, James Swallow and Sally Malcolm. This was in fact much more interesting than I thought it would be. Sally Malcolm is also a fanfic writers, James Swallow isn't, so it was interesting to contrast their approach to writing TV tie-ins. I was interested to hear that Sally still thinks there's a place for fanfic in fandom even when TV tie-ins are around (although obviously she's stopped writing SGA and SG fanfic...). There are no limits on what can be written in fanfic and, even though there's no limit on the FX and spaceships you can use in TV tie-ines, you still have limits set by the studio on what can be written. It was an interesting observation ;-) James Swallow is also obviously a big SG/SGA fan and actually takes the time to do the research, something that's a bugbear for many of us fans in TV tie-ins. I think we've all ventured into books where you only knew that it was based on your fandom because the names were similar (and sometimes not even then!)
For fellow Redemption goers, I think that the James Swallow at Red 07 is the same James Swallow at Peg 2 so he'll be an interesting person to corner over the weekend.
Erin Chambers (who played Sora) was the last guest before lunch and I spent most of her talk going "but she's so tiny!" in my head. She really doesn't look big enough to have done that fantastic fight with Teyla, but then Rachel Luttrel isn't a large woman so they obviously balance each other out. Erin had brought along her husband as moral support so he was called on a few times :-) We were also promised that she would sing on Sunday...
At lunch, PA and I found a quiet chair behind the queue for book signings and were joined by Louise and danamaree after a while, so it was a pleasant excursion. Some of the morning talks had been shortened a bit due to the time lost first thing so we were back in the hall not too far after the time we should have been.
The first guest after lunch was Ivy Isenburg. At the meet and greet she's been promising to spills the beans on who might have been cast in some of the roles and she didn't fail us. One title: Lois and Clark in Space! Yes, the producers were seriously considering Dean Cain for John Sheppard and Terri Hatcher as Elizabeth Weir. With Teyla played by a former Baywatch babe. Weren't we lucky to get the actors we did get?
David Nykl was our next guest and he was as good as I remembered from SG10. There was somewhat rapturous applause and screaming :-) Most of my memories have been dissolved by the last week, but I seem to recall that Radek/Elizabeth was mentioned, he got the Prime/Not Prime number (it was a prime) and his translation of some of Radek's swearing required extensive use of the beeper. In other words, when they say "and Radek swore" he doesn't hold back! Wonder whether that stuff gets cut when it's aired in Czechoslovakia?
As always, Brian and co. had left a couple of slots as "video presentations" in the program to accommodate our surprise guests so next we got Chuck Campbell. Chuck plays the gate technician in Atlantis and he's also the stand-in, reading lines off-screen when responses are needed to dialogue that's being recorded at another time (for example, when people are talking on the monitors) and being a body on set when lighting needs to be set up and so on. This means that he's on set a lot of the time, although he was very restrained about the gossip he passed on :-) He seems to get a kick out of playing Technician Chuck and doing all the other things he gets asked to do and he's good a rather wacky but funny sense of humour. Apparently the Technician Chuck thing is probably canon - Torri had a 'moment' in one of her scenes on an S3 episode and called him "Chuck" instead of whatever she was supposed to call him and the blip made the cut. No rank or surname yet, but after three seasons Chuck's character now has a first name :-)
Kate Hewlett, sister of David, was our next victim guest and she was lovely - very funny and very down to earth. She was really getting a kick out of the weekend and she was seen videoing various bits during the con for posterity :-) Or possibly for David...
She's mostly been doing theatre work, acting and even writing the odd play, but she's been doing bits of film and TV work as well over the last couple of years. Atlantis has been her biggest role yet and I think we're all hoping to see Jeanie Miller back again. Although it was funny that Martin Wood kept reminding them "Right, you're brother and sister..." which is the one thing they didn't have to act!
Last guest of the day was David Hewlett. I think the roof got blown off by the noise when he appeared :-) All the stories I've heard about him being a fabulous con guest and incredibly funny? Too true. Also very intelligent about his profession and enthusiastic about it all. It was actually quite easy to separate David from Rodney - they look different (sounds crazy, but the slightly longer hair and scruffy stubble make quite a difference), they move differently and they have rather different voices. David was the only one to get Prime/Not Prime wrong, which made most of the audience crack up. In fact, the audience spent a lot of the hour howling with laughter :-) He was asked some questions about film making and the films he'd been in and had some surprisingly insightful comments - obviously an actor who thinks about what he's doing and how it's being done. Not that he takes himself seriously at all :-)
The classic moment of the afternoon has been reported everywhere, but can't be missed. Part way through David Hewlett's talk someone obviously made the "going to a clip" signal and he announced that there was a clip of something to see. The lights went down, the Atlantis theme started....and morphed in the Doctor Who theme :-) The right hand side of the stage, which we'd all assumed was solid, split into panels that swung back rather like the briefing room on SGA and out stepped dalethetimelord in all his Cyberman glory! David Hewlett's expression at the site was a picture :-) Somewhere between total terror and "how cool is this?" Dale has some great photos on his LJ. It was a great moment and I loved the total geek fest that DH was having over the Cyberman. He's definitely a Doctor Who fan to the core.
We over-ran a bit due to the late starts (and unwillingness to let David Hewlett leave), but thankfully Brian had planned for that and the autographs still managed to start by 4.30pm. Although the auction was postponed to Sunday and that's a whole nother story...
PA and I had low numbered tickets so we hung out in the dealer's room for a while (managing not to buy anything for the first time ever at a con - go us!) and then joined the queue after our tickets were called. It wasn't too crazy and thankfully no one was doing a Rainbow Sun Franks impression. Or at least not on Saturday :-) PA insisted on grabbing me a chair to drag around some of the longer queues but it wasn't too bad.
The guests were all lovely and seemed to being genuinely enjoying the con. And mocking each other mercilessly. I think I managed some vaguely intelligible words when spoken to and have a distinct memory of telling David Nykl that Torri Higginson needs to come to Peg 3. Hmmm.
Autographs over, it was back to the hotel for a bite to each in the restaurant and then a nice rest before the party. In no way do I feel old for requiring rests before evening events :-)
We went over to the party for 10pm, assuming (erroneously as it turned out) that the fancy dress would be long finished by then. Hmmm. So we grabbed drinks and stood around chatting until Wraiths and robots started filtering past us. There were some good costumes this year (and some "you really shouldn't be wearing that" costumes too) and dalethetimelord was generous enough not to take part in the fancy dress competition :-)
PA and I grabbed some chairs near the entrance to the main hall and spend most of the evening talking to the various people we spotted, bitching about bad outfits with Dale, Vicky and Louise, and watching danamaree become rather intoxicated (although she denied it strenuously). Without knowing how it happened, it was suddenly 2.30am and it had been a fantastic evening :-) Somehow, we made it to bed by 3am (just), which was about two hours earlier than certain people....