| BABYLON 5 |
Welcome to my Wolf 359/The Alliance (1997) Report!
This was possibly THE Babylon 5 Convention, and will almost certainly have been
the biggest collection of the stars of the show we will ever see on this side of
the pond. As a result, this was a seriously big event at the Norbreck Castle in Blackpool,
and a far cry from the casual affair that was The Gathering two
years previously. The atmosphere was also different; this wasn't just UK fans, this was a
global con, and the response of the often huge crowds to the cast was incredible. The photos
below will give you a good idea of just how many people did attend...
I attended the con with a couple of girls I'd met two years back, the Smart sisters. They were accompanied by a non-SF watching friend, taking the place of the boyfriend who hadn't been able to make it. Suffice it to say she was rather bemused by the whole thing, although she did stoically sit through some of the talks. The rest of us just did our best to catch at least one talk by each of the cast members. The weekend was made complete by the late arrival of Jerry Doyle aka Mr Garibaldi, a surprise guest, jet lagged and sans luggage, on Monday. So, what were the highlights of this particular con? Well, Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas stole the show with what can only be called JMS' revenge. This consisted of them acting out a scene which JMS had written for the two, in which G'Kar was to change sex and bonk Molari, as payback for a prank they'd played on him during a US convention. There was barely a dry eye in the house as Katsulas got... passionate towards Jurasik! Speaking of passion, Julie Caitlin Brown's arrival on stage heralded the dropping of all the male jaws in the audience with tongues rolling around on the floor. Remember that in the show she's totally made up as a Narn so I think a lot of people, myself included, had no idea how drop dead gorgeous she was in her own flesh! Along with episode previews, and some scenes from the new TV movies played following a question I posed to JMS about how much control he intended to have over the new productions, there were the normal fancy dress parades and some musical interludes from Bill Mumy and Caitlin Brown. Jason Carter won a lot of attention being the resident Brit on set, and he and Richard Biggs played off brilliantly against one another. If I remember rightly, Biggs also proposed to his girlfriend on stage! Walter Koenig's talk was very revealing. He is apparently far more comfortable with the attention he gets for playing Bester rather than the Trek based attention he gets for having played Chekov who, he points out, was only ever a bit character at best on the show. I would like to take this opportunity to thank whoever the plonker was that set off the fire alarm by smoking right under a detector. Why? Well, although it interrupted JMS's talk, the exit I left through brought me into the car park where all the autograph signing actors and actresses had moved to. This gave me a great photo opportunity. So I moved up onto a bit of grass to get a shot of the steps where several of the guests had gathered and half registered this man wearing jeans and a lumberjack shirt. Then something in my head told me to take a closer look at him. It was Walter Koenig. Three feet away from me on the same bit of lawn, looking on with some small amusement. I recovered from my surprise in time to get the superb close up shot which you can see below, and proceeded to take several others. The guests, Wasser in particular, entertained us with dirty and not so dirty jokes until the all clear was given. The other major part of the convention for me was to meet what was by now the established London Babblings crowd for the first time, with me helping them play their Drazi War (pictures below!) To give you some idea of the trust between con goers, the parents of two small kids let me hang two Drazi notes, worth points in the War, around the kids' necks, so that they'd be walking bonuses for anyone who spotted them (other notes and treasure being hidden more statically around the hotel!) I also got the opportunity to meet the younger Manchester Babblings members like Zathras and it turned out that one of them was responsible for the Tech manual which I'd contributed a small piece to, and was thereafter acknowledged for! I've since managed to get down to one of their Laser Quest based Drazi Wars; great fun. The convention closed with a gob smacking charity auction where incredible amounts of money were shelled out by groups so that they could go to the US and visit the B5 sets. Air fare not included! So, come the end I drove the girls to the station, packed up my specially commissioned T-shirt and my Drazi War kit and headed home. At that point in time I didn't have Net access at home and this was post University. It was some weeks before I discovered from Falken, one of the Manchester Babblings crowd, that JMS had been angered by the lack of organisation of the autograph queues and Wolf's apparent failure to give money to charity as indicated. It was also at the con, apparently, that Claudia Christian announced her intention to do something outside of B5 which resulted in JMS effectively writing her out of the final season. For me that simply reflected the fact that Babylon 5 had now gained the sort of following previously attributed to Star Trek alone, and with that degree of attention there are bound to be more stresses involved. This Wolf was a far cry from the... intimacy of my first convention experience. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it; the weather was great and the company was brilliant, it was simply a more impersonal experience than the one I had previously had. I count myself lucky that I attended Wolf in '95, because I doubt that any B5 con will ever again have its ambience, and the feeling of anticipation which accompanied it.
If you've read The Gathering report page,
you'll know that I abandoned my zoom camera some years back and I have been
using a pocket sized Olympus AF-10 Mini ever since. There are therefore some
very dodgy "digitally enhanced"(!) stage shots in this collection. I've only
tried to put them in for completion's sake.
These photos also record that little event called Drazi War - the UMTSB5
run game which ran during one of the convention days. I would be very grateful for a
little bit of audience participation here - I would like to be able to label the
relevant photos. Any help in identifying the characters involved would be appreciated.
Feel free to make copies of the JPEGs, amend them as needed, and mail them to me. So,
without further ado, I think it's time to Babble on! (FX: Ducks and runs for cover!)
If any person in these photos doesn't wish the photo to be reproduced here,
please let me know.
This report was put together on 24th August 1998.
Cheers
Last updated 31 January 2002
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