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Three Days And Three Nights
FedCon Bonn / Germany
May 21 - 23, 2004
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“I´m sorry, my English is very bad.” A fan trying to ask Connor Trinneer a question during one of his panels.
“My German´s crap.” Connor´s reaction to that.
...Well, hopefully my English isn´t completely useless, but I´d be very glad indeed if you will excuse any language mistakes I might have made in this report!
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Fortunate Fan
The official photograph session
FedCon XII took place from Friday, May 21st until Sunday, May 23rd at the “Maritim Hotel” in Bonn, the former capital city of Germany.
Around Friday noon, the place was already packed with hundreds of people, for although the official Opening Ceremony wasn´t to take place until evening, the action started long before. There were first interactive sessions to attend and merchants´ rooms to explore, one could reunite with good old friends or get to know some whole new people, or one could enjoy the for German viewers brand-new “Enterprise” episodes from the third season at the so-called “Holodeck”.
By then, I had already discovered the announcement of a photo session with Connor Trinneer in the programme that was going to be held in the afternoon, so after my first walk around the con area I lined up for it together with a huge crowd of other people in the corridor which led to the photo session room.
Perhaps I should mention that FedCon XII was my very first convention, and the whole thing already started to overwhelm me a little bit after only about so much as an hour – because Heavens! ...Here I was, waiting for my favorite Trek actor to arrive and take a photo with me. I guess, sometimes in life you just get to be very lucky :)
Most people in the waiting line were so busy discussing their first impressions of this year´s con (or applying some make-up for the photo :)), that they almost missed Connor when he came walking along the corridor after a little while. Only after he had waved and smiled and given a little “Yuuuhuu!” over to us did people look up and realize the photo session was going to get started!
I was lucky enough to be able to watch the people in front of me taking their pictures with Connor from the door, and it was with a mild surprise that I noticed he actually looked a bit smaller than on television :) However, his appearance at the series is no match at all for the exceptional charisma Connor has in real life, a very natural charm that comes along with an almost boyish smile and sparkling eyes.
Then it finally was my turn and my heart threatened to jump out of my chest for a moment! But Connor´s friendly, uncomplicated way in treating his fans immediately made me relax when I walked up to him.
“Hi, how are you?” he said kindly and took my outstretched hand.
I congratulated him on the very good news indeed that “Enterprise” had been renewed for a fourth season the day before, and his smile widend. “Thank you - I only got the news this morning!” At this point, I could clearly notice that Trip Tucker´s accent on the show is for real :)
Connor put his arm around me and we turned to the camera, both of us grinning like from a sudden command of Cap´n Archer. It klicked twice, and I thanked Connor before making space for the next waiting fan. “I thank you”, he answered smilingly.
Although very brief, this moment at the photo session was something quite special for me and a lot of other people I talked to afterwards – so again I´d like to say thank you, Connor, for taking the time and letting us have this really unique experience! :)
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Broken Prop
Connor Trinneer´s first interactive session
Connor´s first panel came up at 8 p.m. on Friday, right after the official Opening Ceremony.
There wasn´t one empty seat left on the balcony in the main hall from where my friends and I watched the show.
When Connor entered the stage, he got lots of cheering and applause from the audience, along with a flashing of camera lights that never stopped entirely during the whole of the session.
After he had thanked us and taken his denim jacket off, Connor invited the fans to ask him questions.
It wasn´t very long until someone brought up the already famous Trip/T´Pol-scene from “Harbinger”.
“What did you see what we couldn´t see on TV?” the man asked to a good deal of laughter from the crowd, and Connor dryly replied, “Well, you know, she´s a woman, and under her bath robe she was naked – so what do you think I saw?”
He then made a joke about actually having a video of Jolene Blalock´s “frontal view” from this scene, resulting in the next two or three men at the microphone asking him for this tape, of course :)
A woman wanted to know the differences between Connor and his series character Trip.
Connor grinned and stated that he was better looking, funnier, tougher and cleverer than Mr. Tucker, plus that he didn´t like pan fried catfish and pecan pie – and had better hair! To that, the audience heavily cheered.
When someone asked Connor what he wanted to see in “Enterprise”´s next season, “no more spacesuits” was among his answers.
“More T´Pol!” a guy from the crowd shouted up to him, and Connor laughed. “...Yes, and more T´Pol!”
Then the next fan walking up to the microphone asked Connor, “What do you want to do before you die?”
You really should have seen the look of horror that crossed Connor´s face for a moment! :) After he had recovered from his first shock, he told us that some time in the future he wanted to be a father, which I really think was a good and deeply honest answer.
Of course, Connor had to tell the story about the “stolen” bottle of Whisky, too. “John Billingsley, huh?” was his first reaction when the question came up.
For those of you who haven´t read or heard about that yet: At the evening of the first press conference for the new series of “Enterprise”, Connor obviously drank a bit too much and made himself the new owner of a full bottle of Whisky. The next day when Rick Berman called him, for a moment Connor really thought he was going to be fired for that! But when Berman cheerfully said, “Hi, buddy!”, he knew that he was going to be all right. The call was only about Tucker´s first name, which had been changed from “Spike” to “Trip” as there was already a “Spike” on “Buffy”.
Some people also brought up the renewal of “Enterprise” for it´s fourth season. Instead of congratulating the actors, though, they only could think of complaining about the new airing time which will be Friday night and – from their point of view – was exactly the slot that had “killed” the Original Star Trek series back in the Sixties.
Personally, I think it´s a bit sad most of the fans at the interactive sessions couldn´t simply share Connor´s and Anthony Montgomery´s happiness about a further year of “Enterprise” because it wasn´t too hard to notice how relieved and glad they both were after hearing the good news.
So, when a third fan insisted on Friday night being an awful new slot for the show, Connor quite frankly replied, “Look, I´ve just found out I´ve got a job. And if “Enterprise” will be running for seven years, we can have this discussion every single year.” The crowd reacted with a loud applause.
Connor explained that the new slot also meant avoiding last season´s competitive situation with “American Idol”, which he described as a show of some morons singing for a trophy :) He holds the opinion that “Enterprise”´s viewers simply have a much more intellectual taste. The audience cheered enthusiastically at that – you must know that we here in Germany are getting pretty tired about all these casting shows as well.
Anyway, Connor´s open honesty, his simply being himself during the whole of the interactive session clearly impressed the fans, and along with his sprakling sense of humor definitely was the point that made his appearance at the con so enjoyable.
Another already well-known story Connor had to tell again was about the props he tends to break on the set. He made it so funny that everybody listened to it as closely as for the first time, and stated at the beginning that John Billingsley obviously had given him away again.
When Connor declared himself guilty of breaking both of the phase-pistols while filming the pilot episode, the fan at the mic saw a chance to tease him a bit about it – “So they made the phase-pistols look so sturdy and realistic because of you?”, he asked :)
Connor told us that for the moment he really enjoyed being part of a regular series as it enabled him to afford a house and some cars and to take journeys.
He also said that his parents were his idols, and that if not an actor he´d probably would have become a football player. Lucky us, that in the end acting seemed to be more fun to him than playing football! :)
There were just so many more questions from the fans and answers from Connor, but as I didn´t actually record the session I tried to pick only the best ones for this report.
By all means, it was an extremely funny, interesting evening, with everybody clearly enjoying Connor´s wit and his refreshing frankness.
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Precious Souvenir
The official autograph session
The official autograph session of FedCon XII started on Saturday morning, but with more than 2,000 people attending the convention and wanting to get the souvenirs signed it wasn´t until Sunday noon – when the second part of the autograph session took place – that I made it to the lines in front of the actors´ tables. My compliments to all of them for their patience and their good spirits despite the hard job and the ache in their fingers!
Connor had been seated on the balcony in the main hall, and when a friend of mine and I walked up to his table, he greeted us with a good-humored “Hi!”
“Hi”, we replied and were asked by him whether we enjoyed the weekend.
“We are having a great time”, I said, and, two FedCon novices among each other, returned the question, “What about you?”
Connor answered that he really enjoyed himself, so when walking away with our autographs I couldn´t help telling him, “Well, hope to see you back again in Germany!” :)
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The Shakespearan Incident
Connor Trinneer´s second interactive session – together with Anthony Montgomery
The interactive session on Sunday afternoon with both Anthony Montgomery and Connor Trinneer on stage definitely was one of the con´s highlights. Had they already been extremely funny in their solo sessions, together they turned out to be just hilarious.
Again, I can only give you the highlights, otherwise my report probably would become even longer than it already did :)
Connor and Anthony are both hoping to get an episode where their two characters are able to really interact in the near future, because so far, the chief engineer and the pilot of the ship didn´t have too many good scenes together.
Both of them would like to do movies in the future, too, but – as Anthony put it – they are still yong and there are many possibilities for them just waiting ahead.
When someone asked them for their favorite Star Trek character, Connor´s answer came like being shot out of a phase-pistol: “Trip Tucker!” :)
Halfway through the panel, the microphone at the balcony suddenly stopped working properly, with the result that Connor and Anthony weren´t able to understand a single word of the next fan´s question.
After the poor guy had repeated his sentence for the third or fourth time, Anthony simply told Connor to “Stay there!”, took his own mic and left the stage for the balcony where under tremendous laughter from the audience he handed the microphone over to the startled fan.
Most of the crowd would look at Anthony at this moment, of course, but whoever had been clever enough to also keep an eye on the stage could enjoy a little performance of Connor hopping and dancing around as if he wanted to say, “Hey, I´m still here, too!” :)
Another fan stated that both Connor and Anthony had already played a part in Shakespeare´s “Much Ado About Nothing” at the theater and he asked them for a few lines.
Connor had to admit that he almost never rememberes his lines and therefore unfortunately couldn´t do any Shakespeare for us – oh boy, had he better made something up! Because next someone stepped to the microphone and actually tried singing a piece out of Shakespeare for Connor and Anthony. The idea might have been very nice but I´m awfully sorry having to say that the singing itself clearly wasn´t that good. ...Allright, if I am to be completely honest, the thought crossed my mind that after “Singing Shakespeare” here we would never ever see Connor and Anthony at a German convention again! :)
“You´re a brave guy”, was the reaction the fan caught from the stage after his performance.
Later on, Connor also gave an example of how bad he really is with remembering his lines. “The starboard nacelle is...” – and the sounds he then made strikingly resembled the garbled messages Trek ships tend to pick up in an emergency situation :)
The audience got to know something about the anatomy of action figures, too, when a woman asked Anthony and Connor whether theirs would be “anatomically correct”. As soon as the roar of laughter both in the crowd and at the stage had died down again, Connor told us, “Mine´s too short!”
After this interactive session and another one with Robert Picardo and Tim Russ from “Voyager”, the con suddenly began heading towards its end – and much too soon Connor and all of the other actors had to say their good-byes at the Closing Ceremony. Connor did this by pretending that the microphone had broken down yet again and by silently gesturing, first pointing at the fans and then to his heart, giving us all the thumbs-up.
So, thank you, Connor, for a fantastic weekend!
You´ll be more than welcome back here in Germany any time.
