Nana to Attend Austrek in Melbourne

Nana is scheduled to appear at Austrek in Melbourne, Australia, on May 7. More information is available at http://www.austrek.com.

The website addy should read www.austrek.org

Yikes they sent me an email for this a month ago. Forgot to open it.

For those who dont know, Austrek is the Star Trek fan club here in Melbourne. This is probably a fan run convention.

Ms Visitor is also listed as appearing in Adelaide on the same weekend (see http://www.terra-novaevents.com/index.htm ). The Adelaide convention will be on the Saturday; the Melbourne convention ( http://www.austrek.org/captain.html ) mentioned above will be on the Sunday

Due to the costs (& flighttimes) to .au, multiple appearances of guests as part of a convention tour are fairly common. Mesdames Christian & Kramer (who have been added to the Adelaide show) are also booked to appear in Wellington.nz on the previous weekend

Despite having been ripped off by another alleged convention organiser, i plan on attending @ least one & possibly both conventions. Are there any .au members making similar plans?

Live in peace
robtclements

The word is that this convention is likely to be cancelled due to fairly dismal advanced sales (a final decision may be made as early as next week; so if we have any .au listmembers thinking of attending this particular convention, gettum act together kimosabes). I haven't been able to confirm whether the Adelaide convention ( http://www.terra-novaevents.com/index.htm ) booked for the same weekend is also on the standing 8 count; but it's possible that the broader program & more recent successful track record of the Women of Sci Fi convention organisers may have local attendees choosing it over its Melbourne counterpart. Will try & find out

(Naturally, i'm currently booked for both conventions; but then - i'm weird. Also - & to be fair to Austrek & its partners - they actually haven't billed me for my attendance at their convention ahead of a final decision on staging)

It's unfortunate news; but not completely unexpected. I'm old enough to remember when the major .au cities were large enough to hold monthly screenings of selected TOS episodes in places like the ANZAC House theatrette. Using 16mm prints of high quality but questionable legality (@ least in terms of commercial-styled screening), i was able to see these shows in a form unmatched by any normal consumer up until the arrival of cable tv; & can't help feeling that the increased availability (4 episodes a week of DS9 alone - the number varies from 1 to 8 depending on programming) has both increased the value but debased the currency of ST product (@ least here). Pity

With a belated gong hei faat choi to the board....

Robt comments
>With a belated gong hei faat choi to the board....

And I'll have the kung pow chicken and spring rolls with that, please.

If it was a first-season TOS episode, it was probably perfectly legal. The studio neglected to protect those with a copyright. Needless to say, that's a loophole that has been fixed on all the later seasons.

On the subject of Star Trek, I highly recommend a fan-made DS9 trailer to be found (low res) here http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2746873152102171339

Carol

We're talking the majority of episodes (at least) from all 3 seasons. With 89? episodes of TOS in all & 6 episodes per monthly screening, it was only marginally slower to see the series in a 200+ seat theatrette than it would now be on pay tv. As an aside, i actually saw the TNG goof reel that Patrick Stewart took such exception to @ one of these screenings....

(For those who aren't familiar with the story: there had been a tendency to assemble outtakes from the TOS into gag stories (i've seen @ least three versions of this process; plus the short gag take which has been added to the ST5 movie dvd); but when this was done with the first season of TNG's outtakes, Mr Stewart turned Yorkshire. Having seen the reel, i can't completely blame him)

When it comes to the aesthetics & legalities of 16mm film screening, it should be noted here that i still have a Bell & Howell projector (with anamorphic capacity but no ST:TOS episodes) in the bottom of my linen closet; but the last time it was wheeled out was to give me the right art-film ambience when playing Criterion Edition's Stan Brakhage anthology ( http://criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=184 ). No - you probably wouldn't like it....

As foreshadowed above, the AusTrek.org convention has now been cancelled; & taken with it Ms Visitor's appearance @ the Adelaide show ( http://www.terra-novaevents.com/ - Enterprise's John Billingsley has taken the place of Ms Visitor). I must admit to being slightly unsure whether i'll still attend this show (attendance has been paid for but not accomdation & airfares); but so long as Ms Christian remains on the program, the answer is probably yes

A short postscript:

I've since been advised that Ms Visitor's non-appearance @ Adelaide is due to a change in shooting commitments; so even if both conventions had been financially viable, she wouldn't'ave been attending. Which is, i suppose, one reason it has become very difficult to get advance sales to a .au ST con; because if i'd known Ms Visitor wasn't attending, i wouldn't'ave booked either

(This is not meant to be a swipe @ Ms Visitor, although i'm sure it could be taken as such if someone wanted to - it's just the lie of the land when a guest has to put itself @ least a week (allowing for return flights, preparation & recovery; & allowing for the loss of a day due to IDL) simply to attend. It's possible - not desirable, but possible - to be working on location in the US on Saturday am & still be in LV for an evening commitment; but one would struggle to go from a studio on a Thursday with any realistic chance of getting to Adelaide.au for a Saturday morning show)