Sunday, August 7th was the fifth and final day of the Star Trek 50th Anniversary Celebration here in Las Vegas. After the previous day’s three captains — Shatner, Bakula, and Mulgrew — in addition to Walter Koenig, Michael Westmore, and the crowd-pleasing Star Trek The Concert, one might wonder how Day 5 could hope to top all of that.

Upon arriving at Quark’s Bar this morning for some much-needed tea and coffee, it was clear that some of the festive spirit of the first four days had succumbed to the realization that the celebration was nearly over. There were hugs and even tears as some convention-goers were saying goodbye to friends, old and new, before rushing off to catch flights. The crowd of more than 6000 people who jammed themselves into yesterday’s Shatner session and last night’s Nevada Pops concert had been whittled down by Sunday travel plans (and perhaps also by raging hangovers), but it was nice to see that the Leonard Nimoy Theatre was still at near-capacity for the morning panel sessions.

Today’s programme had fewer items on it, but it was still an amazing day with some of the most candid and intense panel sessions of the entire convention — especially the incredible six-person DS9 session! You can read all about it below.

(Coverage of previous days’ events can be found here.)

Day 5 Round-up

Q&A and Music with Casey Biggs (Damar, DS9) and Vaughn Armstrong (Admiral Forrest, Enterprise)

The day began with an energetic session with Casey Biggs and Vaughn Armstrong! Regarding Damar’s drink of choice, kanar, Biggs had this to say:

BIGGS: I want each of you to go home and pour yourself a two-and-a-half ounce glass of carob syrup. And pretend that you like it.

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Today was one of the most anticipated days of the Star Trek 50th Anniversary Celebration here in Las Vegas!

Why? CAPTAINS! We had William Shatner (Captain Kirk), Scott Bakula (Captain Archer), and Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway) — not to mention Walter Koenig (Chekov, TOS) and Jonathan Frakes (Riker), Michael Dorn (Worf), and Marina Sirtis (Troi) from TNG!

The evening entertainment was provided by the The Nevada Pops performing Star Trek The Concert, a programme of instrumental music from TOS to the reboot films and everything in between!

It was a crazy, jam-packed day and you can read about it all below! The sessions were spell-binding for the most part, although I do take issue with the Jonathan Frakes / Michael Dorn / Marina Sirtis session, which I felt was unnecessarily combative with the audience. My recap of that is also below.

The sessions with Kate Mulgrew and Scott Bakula were fantastic, and there’s even a little something for Babylon 5, Quantum Leap, and Star Wars fans below!

(Coverage of previous days’ events can be found here.)

Day 4 Round-up

Costume Parade / Contest!

We finally made it to the Costume Parade, where hundreds of cosplaying Star Trek fans, some in incredibly elaborate costumes, marched around the convention centre in the early morning and arranged themselves for a massive photo-op in the Leonard Nimoy Theatre.

One awesome costume I spotted today was a fan dressed up in a homemade but extremely accurate white engineering suit from the TOS films. Later, I saw a group of fans dressed as a Minions version of the TOS crew!

Later in the day, the Costume Contest took place, during which Terry Farrell (Dax, DS9) was a guest judge. Here are the winning efforts:

• 4th Place: a pair of space jellyfish from TNG “Encounter at Farpoint”
• 3rd Place: a Tholian
• 2nd Place: a couple of guys with phaser rifles dressed in the spacesuits from First Contact

  

  
• 1st Place: a little more obscure, the aliens from the end of TOS “Catspaw”(Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to snap a photo of these costumes, but they were a nearly exact replica of the ones seen in the screenshot above.)

Michael Westmore Borgification Demonstration!

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I’ve just finished the third day of my 5-day mission to bring you the best of the Star Trek 50th Anniversary celebration in Las Vegas!

Things are really heating up here! The festivities started early today with the Starfleet Academy Cheerleaders who gave us a pep rally as the crowds shuffled in for the morning programme. The Leonard Nimoy Theatre in the convention centre was bursting at the seams as attendees with weekend-only passes began to show up. At the high point, more than 5000 fans were packed into the theatre!

And today’s programme was nothing short of stellar, including:

• An announcement of a project that will release long-hidden missing footage and audio from The Original Series
• A deeply personal session with George Takei
• A rare convention appearance by Kirstie Alley
• A bunch of stars from TNG and Voyager with some hilarious interviews!
• An announcement of a forthcoming DS9 documentary with a plot for Season 8, Episode 1!

(Coverage of previous days’ events can be found here.)

Day 3 Round-up

Costumes

My favourite costumes today were:

• A pair done up as the Borg Queen (complete with tubes in her occipital and parietal lobes and flashing LEDs embedded in her chest and abdomen) and the human skin-job Data from First Contact
• A fan costumed as Armus from TNG “Skin of Evil” (the black slime creature who killed Tasha Yar) — I’m not sure how this fan was able to breathe with the full-body shiny black plastic encasing him and so he gets extra kudos!

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The Star Trek 50th Anniversary Celebration continues in Las Vegas with Day 2 (Thursday)! On today’s menu were

• panel sessions featuring prominent guest stars from various Star Trek television incarnations over the years
• Michael and Denise Okuda, who were promoting a soon-to-be-released massive update of the Star Trek Encyclopedia
• Whoopi Goldberg, undeniably the highlight of the day!

The festive spirit was even more palpable today than yesterday, with participants continuing to arrive, bringing with them an increasing number and complexity of costumes, and musical acts such as The Roddenberries treating fans to impromptu gigs in the corridors! Not to mention the copiuous amounts of Romulan ale flowing at most times of day from Quark’s Bar….

Below, I’ll fill you in on what went on during the panel sessions and on some generally interesting things I spotted during the convention.

(For coverage of yesterday’s events, click here.)

Day 2 Round-up

Costumes

The concentration of costumes is increasing with each day as we approach Saturday’s Costume Parade. While I saw many notable ones on Day 2, the one that struck me the most was a fan done up as the injured Christopher Pike from TOS “The Menagerie”. Not only were his facial wounds a perfect match for those on Pike, the individual was confined inside a 23rd-Century wheelchair exactly like that seen in “The Menagerie”! The wheelchair was mobile and he was accompanied through the convention halls by a Talosian in equally perfect costume.

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