Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in 2019 my wife Anne and I attended our very first Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia. As one of the longest-running science fiction conventions in America, Dragon Con had received rave reviews from internet friends who refused to shut up about it. It’s become a biannual tradition for us, even in the face of 2021’s rigorous pandemic precautions and 2023’s unfortunate coinciding with Hollywood’s dual SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, which meant the celebrity guests couldn’t actually talk about work, as if actor Q&As at comic-cons weren’t already awkward enough.

Newbies no more, we once again made the eight-hour drive from Indianapolis and returned for our fourth nonconsecutive Labor Day weekend at that amazing colossal southern spectacle, this time unhampered by pandemics or greedy studio-exec shenanigans. We can’t conscientiously afford to do D*C every year, but we’ll see how long we can keep up an every-other year schedule before we’re too old or overwhelmed to handle it.

Dragon Con was our fourth con this year after C2E2, Indiana Comic Con, and Fan Expo Chicago. We’d barely recovered from the latter, which was just two weeks prior and was no small affair itself. As usual, one of our top priorities was to collect a new set of photo ops with actors from TV shows and films we’ve enjoyed, such as the four gentlemen in our lead photo. We’ll come back to them in a bit.

Also game to join us in a split second of joie de vivre: Karen Fukuhara! She’s known for playing the silent Katana in the first Suicide Squad; the even more silent, superhuman antihero Kimiko in Prime Video’s The Boys; and the rarely silent BFF Glimmer in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. (I’ve seen several episodes! It’s funny and adorable, but I haven’t finished season 1 yet because I keep getting distracted by other shows.)

Among the bigger names in the house that we hadn’t met: Simon Pegg! You may remember him from such films as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, the last three Star Trek films, six of the eight Missions: Impossible, the Ice Age series, Ready Player One, and more. Or there were such TV series as the geek-cult classic Spaced (now streaming!), The Boys (recurring as Jack Quaid’s dad), and Band of Brothers (he was so young!).

We also attended most of Pegg’s Saturday afternoon Q&A, which for us got off to an unpleasant start through no fault of his. It’s a long story involving the overflow line formed after his main line had already wrapped around the Marriott outside, vague directions given to several of us would-be attendees, a frightening crowd lunge, and a distressing moment of separation from Anne amid a confused horde. It was my first time ever standing in front of a crowd and feeling them surge behind me and verge on turning me into a welcome mat. By the time we were safely seated toward the rear of the Marriott Atrium Ballroom, the panel had already been going for nearly fifteen minutes. It took several more more minutes for my blood to stop boiling so I could listen to anything Pegg was saying.

Through a combination of audience members at a live mic and questions submitted via Dragon Con’s Discord channel, Pegg shared stories about old mate Nick Frost, confirmed the likelihood of future projects with Edgar Wright (who’s still finishing The Running Man), shattered anyone’s dreams of a Hot Fuzz II, patiently waited while one fan delivered a lengthy personal story rather than ask an actual question, expressed disinterest in climbing aboard any more major franchises after M:I‘s end, praised Sade for her graciousness after that one Shaun of the Dead scene, and roasted Shaun costumes as being the “laziest” (not harshly!).

Sometimes we’re okay with meeting actors at their autograph tables rather than going for the upgraded photo-op experience. On the Walk of Fame — what D*C calls their actors’ autographing ballroom — our happy encounters began with Oded Fehr! He’s best known for The Mummy series, where his warrior Ardeth Bay is in charge of prophecy exposition. More recently he’s recurred in the later seasons of Star Trek: Discovery as Admiral Charles Vance, the 32nd-century head of what’s left of Starfleet after the Burn, whom he’ll be reprising in the upcoming Starfleet Academy series.

He was charming to every single person in his line, which was much shorter here than it’d been at Fan Expo Chicago. That’s normal for D*C, whose longtime fan base isn’t as star-obsessed as your average comic-con. Consequently we’ve never had a Walk of Fame experience turn into an interminable endurance test. It’s pretty cozy by comparison, really, especially with its carpeted floors and its water stations generously provided for value-added hydration.

D*C’s more hospitable nature is why I decided to revisit one actor we’d already met before: Brandon Routh! I already shared a photo op with him and two Legends of Tomorrow costars at C2E2 in 2018, but thought it’d be cool to have him cosign my copy of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which Mae Whitman had just autographed for me at FEC. As of 5:00 Saturday he had virtually no line, having already greeted plenty of fans earlier.

Newly added to my Buffy autograph collection: Emma Caulfield! As the vengeance demon Anya, she was a fun addition to the cast in its later seasons, despite that idiot Xander leaving her in the altar and the series finale giving her an abrupt, unceremonious chump’s death. More recently she was among the townspeople in WandaVision, where I automatically assumed she’d be guilty of something, but in the end totally wasn’t…so far.

Longtime MCC readers know one of Anne’s biggest rules: if John de Lancie is a guest at a con we’re attending, it’s time for another photo. The omniscient, omnipotent Q is her all-time favorite fictional character, and she’s had fun tracking down his other works as well, from youthful ’70s TV cameos to supporting roles in films of wildly varying quality.

By staggering coincidence one of the two Trek panels we attended also included him, alongside Brent Spiner and Gates McFadden. We’d seen this exact trio share a panel three years ago at Indiana Comic Con, but we rightly assumed this wouldn’t be a verbatim encore.

The panel began fifteen minutes after Anne had been at his table, where she’d brought up two obscurities no one ever asks him about, thinks about, or remembers exist. Exhibit A: The Nutt House, a 1989 NBC sitcom that sounded on paper like instant comedy gold: from the minds of Mel Brooks (!!!) and Sledge Hammer! creator Alan Spencer, starring Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman. Eleven episodes were made, but only five were aired before NBC euthanized it. Our man de Lancie had a sizable role in the hour-long pilot as the spokesman for an evil hotel chain’s board of directors. Now that he’d been reminded of that time he worked with true comedy legends, he cheerfully chatted about it with our audience and fellow actors who’d all never heard of it.

In the same context de Lancie mentioned how fans will sometimes ask him about roles from his lengthy resume that he no longer remembers doing — so unmemorable, in fact, that he couldn’t recall which of his past roles he’d just been asked about within the past hour that prompted this remark. That, too, was courtesy of Anne: the gig in question was the 1985 revival The New Gidget, which starred Caryn Richman (Greg Brady’s wife in The Bradys) and Little House on the Prairie‘s Dean Butler as an adult Moondoggie. Our man was in its fifteenth episode as a new coworker of Moondoggie’s who happened to be a former jewel thief. He had no recollection of it whatsoever. Everyone thank Anne for ensuring at least one minute of this Trek Q&A was a Dragon Con 2025 exclusive!

On Saturday we attended another Trek Q&A right after Simon Pegg’s panel: a mini-reunion of some of the guys from Star Trek: Voyager. As you can tell from our lead photo, their camaraderie was infectious with each other and to us in the audience. It’s maybe among the funniest panels we’ve ever attended.

Subjects included but weren’t limited to:

• Their frequent on-set games of Combadge Toss
• Russ’ single line from Spaceballs, so iconic that he gets more questions about it than literally anything else he’s ever done in his entire life
• Wang’s dead-on impressions of Picardo and Kate Mulgrew
• How McNeill thought cons were just dull college seminars till he finally attended one
• Picardo’s complete recovery from the butt injury he incurred while being interviewed for Wang and McNeill’s The Delta Flyers podcast
• A Voyager prank war that culminated in multiple photos of Russ’ butt being hung in Mulgrew’s trailer
• That time Picardo appeared on Scarecrow and Mrs. King as a long-haired rocker
• Unlike Capain Janeway, they all totally would’ve saved her and Paris’ three space-salamander offspring from “Threshold”

…and more, more, more. And much joy was had by all.

To be continued! Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:

Part 2: Some Cosplay!
Part 3: Slightly More Cosplay!
Part 4: The Cosplay Parade, Star Wars Division
Part 5: The Cosplay Parade, Video Game Division
Part 6: The Cosplay Parade, Marvel and DC Comics Division
Part 7: Pimp My Cosplay Parade Rides
Part 8: More Than Cosplay at the Parade
Part 9: Did We Mention There Was a Cosplay Parade
Part 10: The Cosplay Parade Is COMING TO GET YOU
Part 11: “But Sir,” You Ask, “What About the Cosplay Parade?”
Part 12: The Cosplay Parade Marches Into the West
Part 13: A Conclusion of Convivial Concatenation