On this weekend in 1988, the inaugural Starbase Indy introduced Indianapolis to the amazing world of Star Trek conventions. Though it later expanded its purview to include other sci-fi TV shows, and was in limbo for a few years during a dark era (long story), its current owners and staffers have spent the last ten years valiantly returning to its glory days and rebalancing the original confluence of actor appearances, hobbyist events, and fan participation/interaction. For local geeks such as my wife and myself, it’s a regular highlight of our average Thanksgiving weekend, more fun and with far fewer confirmed fatalities than Black Friday.
2013 marks SBI’s eighteenth iteration and its twenty-fifth anniversary (for the asynchronous discrepancy I again point you to “long story”), but shows no signs of deterioration. If anything, this was the most efficient SBI yet — speedy photo op lines, gregarious guests all happy to be here, multiple events requiring more room space than usual, wider snack selection in the Con Suite. Best of all: two of the headliners were main cast members from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the greatest Trek series of all time in our household.
Naturally there were also costumes. Apropos of our ongoing TV marathon (as previously mentioned), we had to mark the occasion by meeting a Doctor.
If the stakes were catastrophic enough, the training techniques were sufficiently intensive, and the world were just that unforgiving, who’s to say preteens couldn’t be accelerated to maturity and transmogrified into hardened soldiers like today’s eighteen-year-old American military volunteers?
On tonight’s new episode of The Tom Neville Show, “Dead Man Walking”, the best scene was shockingly not a Neville scene. Near the very end, a new character rides into the town of Willoughby, a mysterious Dr. Horn whose high-level connection to the Patriots implies big trouble ahead for our man Neville and his gang. I’m excited because, even though all Dr. Horn did this week was literally ride into town and wave hi, he’s played by Željko Ivanek (at right in the above photo), a recurring supporter from the great Homicide: Life on the Street who’s popped into dozens of movies throughout my lifetime and made them better places to be, for at least the span of his own scenes. If Revolution is adding him as a Big Bad, then…well, between him and last week’s strong episode, I may consider being excited about the frequent scenes that don’t have Giancarlo Esposito in them.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 