Phoenix Cactus Con

Jan 26 & 27, 2008

Jeremy and Maureen Bulloch

I’d seen Jeremy at other cons but had never met Maureen. She was as nice as he is. I enjoyed getting to chat with her, even if briefly. I asked her if she'd ever been to the Valley before and she said she hadn't. (He said he'd been to West World in Scottsdale 8 years ago.) She also said they'd been in Las Vegas and went to the Grand Canyon for the first time during this visit and were really impressed by it.

I bought a set of the Star Wars Mighty Muggs vinyl dolls. I was only going to buy my most favorite SW character, Boba Fett, but amazingly Smoot encouraged me to get the entire set. Needless to say, I did! I had Mr. Bulloch sign the Fett Mugg. The next day I came back to have Peter Mayhew sign the Chewbacca Mugg.

Me watching Peter Mayhew sign the Chewbacca Mighty Muggs box.

While I was waiting, Mrs. Bulloch noticed and remembered me. She asked if I'd gotten the Fett Mugg there and I said yes. She asked if there were more of them. I told her I’d bought the only set the dealer had. I don't know if she wanted one for herself or was just curious. I found the dealer, Spazdog Comics, and told him she'd asked about the doll. He said he would talk to her about getting her one if she wanted it. I wonder if he did? According to Dan with Toy Anxiety, the comic store that underwrote Mr. Bulloch’s appearance, Jeremy gets things sent to him by fans all the time.

On Friday, preview, night we watched some great SW fan films including the newest chapters of Chad Vader. Smoot hadn't heard of that series and thought it was funny. On Sat we watched the first episode of Star Trek: Of Gods and Men and then listened to a panel with Walter Koenig, Tim Russ, the producer and CGI coordinator.

From left, Star Trek: Of Gods and Men CGI coordinator, produce, Tim Russ and Walter Koenig

Tim Russ and Walter Koenig

The movie was very well done, very professional looking, but then the people involved ARE professionals, not fans. I didn't recognize Cirroc Lofton, boy has he changed from when he played young Jake on DS9! It was amazing the number of ST actors that were in the film. These included Tim Russ as Tuvok (who was also the film's director), Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov, Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand, Alan Ruck as Captain John Harriman from Star Trek Generations, Garrett Wang (Harry Kim from VOY), J. G. Hertzler (Martok from DS9), Chase Masterson (Leeta from DS9), Gary Graham (Ambassador Soval from ENT), Ethan Phillips (Neelix from VOY) Jack Donner (Subcommander Tal in the TOS episode The Enterprise Incident and a Vulcan priest in the ENT episodes Home and Kir Shara), Lawrence Montaigne (Decius in TOS Balance of Terror and Stonn in Amok Time), Arlene Martel (T'pring in Amok Time), Celeste Yarnall (Martha Landon in TOS The Apple) and Tania Lemani (the dancer Kara in TOS Wolf in the Fold). It also had James Cawley playing Kirk's nephew, Peter Kirk; Cawley played James Kirk in the New Voyages series. And Jeffery Quinn who played Spock in New Voyages. And John Carrigan, Captain Kargh from New Voyages. Several of the other actors had been involved in the New Voyages production as staff in technical capacities. Another face from the past who was in the film, but not in Star Trek was Herb Jefferson, Jr. who played Boomer on the original Battlestar Galactica TV series.

Smoot was impressed with how practical and self-effacing Koenig was. He was asked if he was upset by the new ST film replacing his and the other original characters. He said, no that he only rented the character of Chekov, he didn't own it, which I thought was very smart. The panelist talked about how hard it was to do the filming and CGI, but how satisfying it was too.

I wandered around the Con and saw several famous faces.

Lou Ferrigno, the original Hulk

Wil Wheaton from ST: Next Gen. He had a funny and touching review of the Con on his blog. The first of three parts is at http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2008/01/phoenix-comicon.html

On the right shaking hands is Jeph Loeb. According to the Wikipedia article, Joseph "Jeph" Loeb III is an Emmy and WGA nominated American film and television writer, producer and award-winning comic book writer. Loeb is a Co-Executive Producer on the NBC hit show Heroes, and was formerly a producer/writer on the TV series Smallville and Lost.

This year the Con had a lot more big name guests and more attendees too, more than 5,200, an increase of 62% from the show last year. I’m looking forward to going next year. Paraphrasing Wil Wheaton, the Phoenix CactusCon was like the good old days when cons were done by and for fans not money.