lynch@biar.UUCP (Tim Lynch Guest Account) (07/19/90)
This weekend, I was down at Shore Leave in Towson, MD, a huge fan-run con which has been going on for 12 years now. It had its moments (though I was unpleasantly surprised to see even more "get-a-lifers" in costumes and so forth than I expected). Guests were Jimmy Doohan, Suzie Plakson (the actress who played Dr. Selar and K'Ehleyr, for those who didn't know), and Colm Meaney. Suzie and Colm are, obviously, rather new to the con business (it was Colm's fourth con, and Suzie's first), so haven't learned yet that you try NOT to have fun. :-) At the party Saturday night (called, what else, "Ten-Forward"), they were both out there dancing up a storm--and this right after Colm got off the plane from Chicago (he was tired, and drunk out of his mind). After all the news, I'll give a quick story about what my friend Jon Lane did to him after he left Ten-Forward. Great fun. Anyway, let's see what (if any) news came out of the guests that might interest you: ------------+ Jimmy Doohan| ------------+ Biggest news is this: about 3-4 weeks ago, Paramount began serious work on ST6. There WILL be one. According to him, Harve Bennett has been given the boot, and Ralph Winters will be coming in to produce. (Anybody here know what else he's done?) They've contacted Nimoy about directing, but when they told him they wanted something by 10/91 for the 25th anniversary, he told them that without a script (which they don't have yet), he couldn't promise it. Nimoy still seems to be a candidate, though. Shatner, he emphasized, is having absolutely NOTHING to do with the script. Most of the rest was reactions and news I'd already heard: --No, he doesn't want to be in TNG. "Who wants to look that old?" However, when pressed, he suggested that maybe Geordi find in the video library some tape of Scotty on how to fix the ship... --Why were there so many decks on the Ent-A? "Look--I think Bill Shatner drew a new ship for that one." --In ST6, will the Enterprise actually work? "Picky, picky." --He would like to "share the words" a little better in future films--i.e. less of the Big 3 and more of the others. --His dream scene: he, or some engineer, has to build something, virtually by hand, to save the ship. After all, that's what engineering's all about, he says. --He doesn't want to write or direct, and doesn't know why Paramount doesn't use the novels as springboards for films, etc. His exact words: "I play the part of Scotty, and that's _all_." He seemed a bit bitter to me--Lord knows he's got a right to be. He railed against Hollywood typecasting for the better part of ten minutes. I only saw him Saturday, not Sunday, so I can only say that I heard he was more pleasant company on Sunday. -------------+ Suzie Plakson| -------------+ Suzie, on the other hand, was remarkably charming on both days. She also stunned me and Mikey, who would never have pictured her as a redhead, which she is. (Boy...how's that for an incoherent sentence?) She had no news on season 4 (though she did almost slip once, but no one can figure out what she meant), but lots of interesting stories about herself: Selar, apparently, was originally supposed to be human. When Suzie tried out for the part, she tried to distance herself when reading Graves's prognosis. The director looked at her and said, "well, she does look kinda elfin, and she did that kinda emotionlessly--oh, hell, let's make her a Vulcan!" And thus, history was made. :-) There are no plans for her to return to the show as yet, but she'd love to do so. When someone asked if she'd like to come back as yet another race, she said, "Absolutely!" She said (with apologies to Brent) that she might be interested in playing an android, and then said that she'd really like to play one of a race no one has ever seen before. (Sounds good to me.) She clearly liked working with Mike Dorn, who coached her a lot on "Klingon- ness" when she played K'Ehleyr. When she was asked who she liked best of the cast OTHER than Dorn, she said it was a tie between Jon Frakes and Brent Spiner: "the funniest human beings that you will probably ever meet". She also said something like, "oh, and I heard something about him, that next season--whoops! can't say that!" No one I know has ANY idea what she meant, but my hunch is that she was going to say something about Frakes. Other questions: --Has she ever been recognized on the street? Yes--but only once. --What's she doing now? "Looking for work." --What keeps her in this business? "Now THERE'S a good question." She said that she first went into theater to help people, to try to enrich them, and that she's still there for that, despite the fact that most acting these days seems to be all about money. --How much did/does she follow Trek? She watched TOS all the time with her brother (who was there at the con, and to whom she's given both Selar's ears and K'Ehleyr's forehead :-) ), but since her TV's broken and she has no cable, she's seen virtually none of TNG. --Which character did she enjoy playing more? Both equally. --How tall is she? [God knows why they asked.] 6-foot-1. [Most of that is leg, I think. <<SMACK>> OW! Okay, okay, I won't say that again.] And so it goes. She mentioned that she was once eating with Darryl Hannah when a bunch of extras for TNG were coming through, and Darryl said, "Y'know, I'd really like to have ears like that." Suzie said, "I don't know--they seem like they'd be hot to me." The very next day, she auditioned for Selar and got her ears. Go figure. And yes, she's a great dancer. -----------+ Colm Meaney| -----------+ Colm was also a lot of fun. He said he's still a bit staggered by the effort and organization that fandom puts into these conventions, which doesn't surprise me in the least. First, he told the story of getting the part: His agent called him up and asked him to go over for "Star Trek: The Next Generation". His initial reaction--"WHAT? They're doing another one of THOSE?" He didn't take it particularly seriously, but he thought it might be a lark, so he went in. He got, as we know, the Conn on the battle bridge for the pilot. Apparently, in the "exciting" chase scene, when the ship's coming close to Warp 10, he expected lots of spine-tingling special effects on the set (everything moving around on lifts, etc.), but what did he get? "Okay, everybody--start shaking!" Later, when the saucer reconnected, they all had to stagger, too. ;-) (He was also considered for the part of Data, but obviously didn't get that.) He then went away for a bit, and did "Breaking the Code" on Broadway with Derek Jacobi (thus making me even angrier that I never got around to seeing it--it sounded wonderful), and fortunately for him, the writer's strike delayed the second season JUST long enough for him to finish his Broadway stint. They told him, "You're going to be in the transporter room." "Sure, okay. I'll go wherever you tell me." Then, a few shows later, when he was finally given the name O'Brien, he looked at the script and said, "Hey! Who's this O'Brien guy? I thought *I* was the transporter chief!" Things like that happened several times to him. For example, when O'Brien comes in to see Bev in "Transfigurations" after kayaking and Wes immediately knows he's been kayaking, Colm said, "well, it was the first I'd heard of it"... and everyone else's too, except Wes. Also, one scene which got cut for time reasons earlier on had O'Brien discussing problems with his girlfriend Mitzi with Troi. Colm ran around for days, asking everyone, "who the hell is Mitzi? Where is she? What does she look like?" It hasn't been brought up since. :-) He starts filming on Monday, 7/16--things got a little bit hectic, since LeVar Burton was apparently in the hospital with some kind of stomach ailment, but Colm says Levar's fine now. Questions: --The dreaded First Name question: he's heard a lot of suggestions, like Kevin, Sean, etc. His current favorite: Rodney. "Hey, Rod, what's happenin'?" --He's going to be in one other movie coming out this year--"Come See the Paradise", with Dennis Quaid, opening in September or October. --Has he been on British TV? Yes, lots, but not since '84, and probably not in much that's been seen here. --His favorite character other than O'Brien--Data. He's just marvelously impressed by how much Brent has developed Data, and thinks Brent is just an all-around funny guy. --How did he get into acting? When he was 11 or 12, he was looking through some teen magazine in Dublin (actually, he might have been in London by then...I'm not sure), and decided he wanted to be Steve McQueen. Since then, one of his greater influences has been Peter O'Toole. --Is working with so much SFX disconcerting? "It can be," but he hasn't had much to do. One exception he noted was in "The Bonding", when he and Worf got chased out of the transporter room by the energy-sphere. He said he felt really foolish running around and ducking so much. :-) --How would he have played Data, had he gotten that part? He doesn't know, but HOPES he could have done as good a job as Brent. --Was he ever a boxer? "WHAT? [pause] NO!" When he found out the question had to do with his nose, he said, "It wasn't in boxing...let's just leave it at that." --He never goes on away teams--far too dangerous, since he's not a contracted regular. :-) In fact, for a while a running gag on the set was, "Hey, Colm-- have ye seen this week's script?" "No, why?" "You're on an away team. Bwaha- hahahaha!!!" --He hasn't even seen the full script for BoBW, part 2 (which appears to be what they're calling it), but he said, "Come on! The Borg ain't gonna win, are they? I mean, if they do, we're ALL in a lot of trouble." He did say that he thought we'd be "surprised" at how the Riker/Shelby problem was resolved. --Did O'Brien throw the first punch in "Sarek"? "Of COURSE not! The other guy pushed me! [pause] Honest!" (He has a wonderful sense of comic timing, in case you hadn't guessed.) --Is he typecast? "No, not really." --Does he sing? "It's been rumored, but only late at night with a few beers..." --He'd one day love to play Falstaff. --Does he know the words to "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen"? [Where do they come up with these questions?-TL] Nope--a bit before his time. His father did, though. --Did he have any lines in "Dick Tracy" other than "Sure, Tracy!"? He had one other scene which ended up on the floor. --His plane crash in "Die Hard 2" took six hours to film, but he was on call for it for months, since it took them months to find an airport with snow. (This was one of the only times there was no snow in Denver when they wanted it.) Apparently, they finally finished it in Illinois somewhere, but a second film was shooting as well--and at times, the two crews were literally stealing each other's snow! --Does he prefer transporter scenes or poker scenes? "Give me a good poker scene any day!" --How is Frakes at poker, really? Awful. "The one to watch out for is Mitzi-- she's a killer!" --Did he ever get a tech manual for the transporter? Yes--LAST WEEK. "A bit late, isn't it?" --His dream storyline: Everybody else gets transferred off and O'Brien takes over the ship. --Does he like Doctor Who? Yes, but not so much since Tom Baker left. He likes what Sylvester's been doing (and Syl is a friend of his), but really didn't like Peter Davison's run at all. --How much of O'Brien is Colm Meaney? "Knees down, I think." He then got serious, and said that in the little development O'Brien's gotten so far, he thinks O'Brien's becoming more like him. He likes the fact that whereas everyone else on TNG is this devil-may-care, risk-your-life-if-necessary hero, that O'Brien's just a bit more cautious: hanging around his transporter room, never going on away teams, just going on with his day-to-day existence. And he's a good dancer, too. Which reminds me--as Colm was leaving the dance floor Saturday night, he apparently invited every cute girl he bumped into on the way back up to his room, giving them his room number. One of these girls told my friend Jon, who decided, "Well, at this point, he deserves what he gets," and drew up a little poster. It said in large letters, "DO NOT LET THIS MAN NEAR A TRANSPORTER CONSOLE!", had a drawing of O'Brien beaming two people in upside-down, and a little note on the bottom saying, "Make it Sober". Colm got it the next morning, and found it hilarious. That's a wrap. No real news (other than ST6), but lots of amusing anecdotes. If you haven't seen Suzie or Colm yet, try to someday. They're worth it. Tim Lynch (Cornell's first Astronomy B.A.) BITNET: H52Y@CRNLVAX5 INTERNET: H52Y@VAX5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU UUCP: cornell!biar!lynch Why are there so many songs about rainbows, and what's on the other side? R.I.P. Jim Henson, 1936-1990; we shall never see your like again. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edited by Jim Griffith - the official scapegoat for r.a.s.i. Email submissions to trek-info@scam.berkeley.edu or ...!ucbvax!scam!trek-info