We Survived Planet Comicon — and Naka-Kon — and Night Vale

What a weekend!

My feet hurt.

It always happens at the end of Planet Comicon — or any other full-weekend event in which we participate. There’s always the moment when we look around and say, “That’s it? It’s over already?” completely ignoring the fact that for the last three days, we’ve been running around like headless chickens trying to meet our goals of actually covering the event.

All in all, it was a pretty productive weekend. For me personally, it was a thrill to be on stage with Margot Kidder and Lee Majors. And backstage with Michael Dorn showing me a video on his phone was … just surreal (he was flying a plane). Seeing Marina Sirtis again was fun, even after her tumble (hopes for a speedy recovery)…

One of the moments I’ll have a hard time forgetting — Gates McFadden backstage before Wil Wheaton’s Saturday morning panel. To hear her saying, in essence, “No, this is Wil’s group. They don’t want to hear about me.” … well, we were all looking at each other saying, “You’re Gates McFadden. Of course we want to hear about you.” Of course, we were just observing the conversation, not participating in it, so we couldn’t very well go up to her and say these things. But that was one of those moments when you get a glimpse into the real-world lives of these celebrities, and it adds that very human dimension to folks you just see on a screen.

So just to put this out there, I plan to invite Gates to be a guest on the new Live From the Bunker to talk about her theatre company. Because we want to hear about it.

And the cosplay! Our newest correspondent, Marie Lim, got a chance to interview Meg Turney about her cosplay work, and you may have seen the sampling of images on our Facebook page or Instagram account, but there’s plenty more where that came from, and we’ll be posting galleries here in the next few days, along with panel video and interviews over on our YouTube channel.

Like our interview with Femi Taylor (Oola from Return of the Jedi), who made some interesting comparisons between the original Jedi production and the Special Edition project…

Or the new James Show interview with the 7th Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, who didn’t bite…

Or the panel video with Eddie McClintock trying to speak over audio bleed from the Timey Wimey Puppet Show (we finally figured it may have been one of our wireless transmitters…), and then Eddie pulling a Donahue and going out into the audience to take questions…

Annaleigh got to moderate a few panels as well this year, sharing the stage with Zoie Palmer (Lost Girl) and David Yost (Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers), and she had a great time rocking the Alterac Valley Girl Tank cosplay…

All in all, it was a great weekend at Planet Comicon, but it doesn’t stop there, Formies. Oh, no. We also had Gena Ford out at Naka-Kon on the other side of town, taking photos and interviewing anime voice actors and cosplayers for the Cosplay Diaries, which is going to get some heavy focus in the coming weeks.

Plus, Annaleigh and Brie made their way to Lawrence, KS for the Welcome to Night Vale show. And yes, we’ll have a write-up on that, too.

Plus, we might also have images from the Kansas City FIRST robotics competition that also took place this weekend.

Whew! That’s a lot of material. A lot of things happened the same weekend — and yes, people like to complain about the schedule conflicts, especially when it comes to PCC this year. Usually, the event is held toward the end of March, but this year the available dates at Bartle Hall were few and far between, and this weekend was the best of the three choices. All in all, though, attendance was great each day. Some estimates going into the event had attendance close to 45-to-50,000. I expect we got close to that.

On a more personal note, I want to thank all of the folks who pitched in this weekend and made everything happen: Tim, Annaleigh, Dan, Maia, James, Garret, Micah, Marie, Mike, Toi, Derin, Gena, Jay at Wildcat Watch, Kirk at PCC, and everyone who came out to play in the big sandbox of fandom. It’s been fun again this year. Now we have to put all our toys away and get back to business — covering the science fiction multiverse with all the news that is news.

That includes new Week in Review, Level Eleventy-Seven, Echo Chamber, H2O, and more! More TV recaps! More Doctor Who news! New interns! Fresh content on our YouTube channel! Fresh coffee in the coffee maker! And new readers of our newsletter!

If this is your first time visiting the site, welcome! There’s a lot to see, so feel free to read more than one article. And join us over on the social media, because we sometimes post things and stuffs over there that don’t go anywhere else.

As always, we’d love to hear from you. If you ever have a question or comment, you can call our Hotline:

Thank you, Formies, for visiting and reading and sharing, and for being here to give us a reason to do what we do. SciFi4Me wouldn’t be around without you. Thanks for playing. The game’s about to amp up.

~ jph