It’s not the sort of text message you want to get, especially when it comes a scant two days ahead of your annual sojourn to all things Star Trek. But when my friend’s message chimed into existence on my phone at an unexpected hour, I didn’t need the services of any of my detectives to correctly deduce my trip was in jeopardy. I called him back right away, of course, and the news was as grim as my gut had told me it would be: my buddy had picked up some sort of bug and was in no condition to drive seven hours to Sin City, let alone hobnob with our fellow fans. We talked through possibilities, but in the end, I had no desire to go solo nor anyone who could make the last minute trip with me. (As much as my wife loves me, and as willing as she was to be a pinch hitter, there was no way I could ask her to weather five full days of immersive Star Trek nerdism.)
So, after a little more than a decade of going, our run seems to have come to a rather abrupt end. We might try to go again next year, but by not attending this year, we’ve lost the seats we’ve had for nearly all that time. It’s possible we might be able to reclaim them if we hit the portal on the day tickets go on sale for next year, thought in all honesty, we’d already kind of informally decided that this year — the 60th anniversary of the franchise — might be our last hurrah. With no new shows in the pipeline, there’s an unusual level of uncertainty about what the future looks like anyway; maybe sitting back and waiting for the dust to settle might be the best option possible.
These things happen, of course, and usually at the worst possible moment. Ironically, the very first year we went to Las Vegas for the Star Trek, I was celebrating another first, namely a root canal that had taken place less than a week before we hopped on the plane. It wound up getting infected, so I was on a course of strong antibiotics that pretty much killed any hopes of sampling the exotic drinks that had been concocted specifically for the occasion. A few years later, my buddy tweaked his knee so badly we had to allow extra time for the long walk from tower for our room to the convention center. I suggested at one point that trip we rent one of those motorized chairs, but the look I got pretty much quelled that entirely.
The irony, of course, is that I’d opted for Star Trek over the biannual D23 convention Disney puts on in Anaheim; the dates are always on back-to-back weeks in the years they take place together, so it’s a tough double bill both financially and in terms of vacation time. Sitting at home when I was supposed to be in Vegas gave me this weird moment in time to consider how much my two core fandoms are in a constant war for my attention; that led to a far stranger realization that my love of Disney, by definition, covered an amazing panoply ranging from classic animation to movies to theme parks, each of which spanned multiple genres. Star Trek is pretty layered all by itself, but when stacked up against the House of Mouse, you have to admit the library is just a wee bit more impressive.
Plenty of things have come and gone in my fandoms over the years, but these two have remained with me. My love of them has bled slightly into my writing; Vasily is a huge Disney fan, of course, and Kate Oliver is a die hard Trekkie. And while Kate doesn’t strike me as the sort of personality who would want to attend a convention, I can completely see Vas dragging Alex to something like D23 and then spending hours dissecting the announcements over what new films or theme park rides were announced. Alex is fairly new to that intense level of fandom — he’d visited Disneyland as Tucson kid a few times, but that was about the size of it prior to meeting Vas — so it’s been a bit of adjustment for him to get acclimated to Vasily’s obsession. Then again, who doesn’t like a good pair of mice ears and a warm churro? (Or soft pretzel?)
Maybe next year will begin a new cycle, or perhaps something else will appear that will draw us to it. We’ve talked of going to New York to see the official Star Trek Original Series Set Tour, or sneaking into either Wonderfest or the IPMS Annual Convention. All of those sound like fun, and after a decade of heading to Vegas, maybe it’s time for a change.
Stay tuned.
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