Day one of the biggest Star Trek convention this side of Alpha Centauri has wrapped. Panels have been had, gallery’s have been viewed and excitement enjoyed by all who attended, and those that weren’t there have lived vicariously through those that did… including this intrepid blogger!

Colm Meaney and Hana Hatae took to the stage in the first panel covered over at Trekmovie, with Colm explaining that he wasn’t big on SciFi until working on Deep Space Nine – he enjoyed the breadth of story telling they were able to achieve, something which would never get past a typical network show.  Colm also spoke of his initial hesitation in moving onto the third spin off show, but Rick Berman convinced him to take the plunge.

Speaking of her time on the show, Hana explained that she was 5 and everyone treated her “like a princess.” She got the role when she was 4 without a callback and without a twin – a way of allowing the production to utilise the character without breaking union rules on work time (there are similar rules here in Australia too, to protect child actors.) Hatae also spoke of Colm and Rosalind (Chao, Keiko) as her second parents.

Hana appears in 5th Passenger, while Colm is about to start work on a new project – The Happy Worker.

Over in the authors’ panel, Ed Schlesinger explained how the three so-far released novels around Discovery have helped build the backstories for the characters, and linked the series to The Original Series.  2018 was a quiet year for Trek novels, unusually so, but 2019 kicks everything back up a gear with a few novels announced and more to come.

First up will be The Way To The Stars, focusing on Cadet Tilley, followed in March by Greg Cox’s The Antares Malestrom set in TOS and April will see Dayton Ward’s TNG book Available Light.  Kevin Dilmore has a non-fiction book about Trek coming later this year written in limericks apparently… should be a fascinating read!

Obsessed With Star Trek is getting an updated release, featuring 200 Kelvin timeline questions. That’s coming October 16 to the US, no word on international release dates. VP of product development at CBS, John Van Citters explained that their waiting to see where the Kelvin universe is going before committing to a story set there.  The always debated canon V non canon contribution of the books came up in this panel too… Van Citters says that the Discovery books are as close to, but they don’t want to stand in the way of a great future episode or movie.

It’s a quiet start to the week long celebration of Star Trek, and I’ll have four more articles like this in the days to come. Stay tuned.