Star Trek Convention, Day Two: The Autograph Dance

I first swung around to Sean's Wrinkle in Time table (see picture on Day One) to pick up my Harry Potter shirt, then went around to look for Grace Lee Whitney. I found her easily enough, but she had a little line in front of her. The bigger line was next to her, for Max Grodenchik, bigger mostly because Max's autograph came with the Gold ticket. I secretly pitied them.

However, as long as Max takes, and as frequently as he wanders off, I was to have my own problems. As soon as I got to the front of the line, and started picking out which photo I wanted to have signed, it finally registered on me that she was having an argument with someone. I recognized his voice first, and then his face: it was Richard Arnold. Richard used to be Michael Piller's assistant (a Star Trek: DS9 producer), and now is helping with Creation. Richard was trying to get Grace to accept the point that people had to buy their autograph tickets for her autograph at the Creation table, not directly from her. She was having a tough time buying into that. However, I got stuck. I said to Richard: "So, I have to go to three lines -- one for her autograph ticket, two for her photo at the Creation table, and then three back to Grace for the autograph." Yes, he said politely, but the lines aren't that long. He waved me off.

So I got the autograph ticket (which took 5 minutes), didn't get in the photo line because I knew Grace would sell me her own photo, came back and found that some Creation security guy had capped the line. "She'll be here all weekend," he said, not knowing why people were upset. Someone else in line told me that she was due on stage. "Is that now?" I asked. Yep.

So I got out of line and went to watch Grace, Michael Forest and Sandra Smith (the latter I had never seen) on stage. I loved watching these old actors.

Grace performed as Yeoman Janice Rand on the original series. Gene Roddenberry had told her, "You're Kitty to Kirk's Marshal Dillon." Bring him coffee, lay out his clothes, stuff like that. Her first job had been on Some Like It Hot, which filmed in my hometown, Coronado, and she talked about how funny "it was seeing Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dressed up like women, snapping each other's bras." She watched Jack get married to Felicia at the Hotel del.

Michael Forest's first job was in Highway Patrol, with Broderick Crawford. In 1967, they brought him in to look him over for Star Trek. At one point in the audition process, they asked him to take off his shirt, for reasons that are obvious now. He played Apollo. He lived in Italy for about 10 years, and while there worked in 22 movies. An American came up to him on the street, asked him if he was an actor, and then she said, "Oh,my God. You're Apollo." Star Trek had become a cult phenomenon by that point.

Sandy Smith was in the Guiding Light soap opera as "the resident bad girl." They found out that their largest audience was truckers. She is currently working on her memoir. She told us that actors are basically liars. "But the one thing we have a hard time lying about is when we tell someone we love them. Watch them." They shake their heads when they utter the words, "I love you."

Max Grodenchik, who played Rom, the Ferengi brother of Quark, the owner of the bar, on Deep Space Nine, was up next. I rarely see him on stage by himself.

He asked, "Who's seen me before?" It was about 50/50. "And who here thinks I'm Jonathan Frakes?"

He met Patrick Stewart when he performed as a Ferengi for the first time on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Patrick shook his hand and said to him in the hallway, "If you need anything, put your request through me. I seem to have a little bit of clout around here."

Max told us his first convention was in Leicester, England in 1993, where he learned how to act during the autograph session. Say very slowly, hello, what's your name, how do you spell that, where are you from, etc. Which almost explains why he has the slowest autograph lines. His first visitor from England said in a very sophisticated accent, "How does it feel to be the super Wuss of the entire universe?"

What is he doing these days? A couple of weeks ago he filmed a commercial for Quiznos. He urged us to buy sandwiches there in the test markets when the commercial starts airing on August 15th. That way, they'll go national with the spot, and "there will be a little more latinum for me."

Max told us that during filming of "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" baseball episode on DS9, he told Nana Visitor that "I'll try to be a bad baseball player, so I'll wear the glove on my right hand. She said, 'I have no idea what that means!'"

After Max left, we were treated to a music video of Garak, the Cardassian tailor (played by Andy Robinson, who couldn't be at the convention). Two Japanese fans put it together, setting Garak's action scenes to James Bond music so we'd truly see him as a spy.

One of the people I had been looking forward to seeing most, Michelle Forbes, came on next. I loved her as Ensign Ro, but her recent stint as Admiral Cain on Battlestar Galactica was really above the bar.

She seems as commanding as Cain, but hopefully she makes better choices. "I thought (Cain) had the choice to be the victim (because of her upbringing), or a self-determined person. She conditioned herself to be fearless." She enjoyed herself on Battlestar very much because "the show is terribly profound and bold. As an actor, you always want to be part of those bold choices." She thinks Ron Moore is a genius, and "the cast is a crazy alchemy of talent and humor."

Why did you quit being Ensign Ro, someone asked, when they asked her to sign up for Deep Space Nine? "I wasn't ready for marriage. I'm still not ready to play one character for seven years." She did enjoy working on Next Gen, though: "The set was like eating salad with monsters."

I went out to find Grace again, and stood in her line. She wasn't there. Finally someone else in line told me that she was probably at the original series luncheon. "Is that now?" I groaned. Again.