Back at the beginning of the year Showmasters announced
Destination Star Trek which was scheduled to be on the weekend of my birthday.
After much thought I decided to get tickets and go as it was all the way up in
Birmingham.
On the Friday Matt and I headed up to a travel lodge where
we stayed for a couple of nights before heading to spend the Sunday and Monday
with Laura and Sammi over in Nottingham.
I woke up on Saturday and got ready and finally put on my
Star Trek skant that I had made earlier in the year. You can see the making of
that here. I was so pleased with how it turned out and I couldn’t wait to get
there. We headed off super early on the Saturday morning to the arena and got
in really quickly compared to London Film and Comic Con. I had a photoshoot
with William Shatner on the bridge of the enterprise first thing, so I got that
done and I was super happy with how that turned out.
After that we went to a talk called ‘For the Love of Spock’
where Leonard Nimoy’s son talked about his father and the documentary that he
made. It was fascinating to listen to him speak about his father as much to my
dismay I will never get to meet him, and was a lovely tribute to him.
Afterwards we decided to also go to the George Takei talk too, which was fantastic. He is a living legend and hearing him talk so passionately about LGBT issues and how he struggled for years was really inspiring. It was also great to hear stories from behind the scenes when they were making Star Trek.
We did have a look around the stalls but to be honest, they
were very disappointing. I was expecting something more like perhaps when we
have been to smaller shows like Brighton Film and Comic Con (I excitedly took
all my birthday money), but there was very little there. Luckily and also
unluckily the queues for everything were SO bad that we didn’t have much
sitting around time so at least we didn’t get bored. Well except for being in
queues.
They did have an art exhibition and a ‘museum’ area where
they had props displayed and that was cool to look at. Some of the artwork was absolutely
stunning. Towards the end of the day I took part in breaking the world record
of most people in star trek costumes in one room which we beat which was
awesome and I ended the show by getting to meet the legend himself George Takei
with a photo-shoot.
After the show shut we queued up to attend ‘Shatner World’
which was pretty much William Shatner just talking about himself for a solid
two hours. It was pretty entertaining and funny and I just had to have the full
William Shatner experience. I’m not 100% what I actually watched but it
certainly was an experience. That man defiantly will never have any self-confidence
issues in his life haha!
We then headed to Wagamas on the way home, had a little
birthday dinner and went and chilled out in the hotel room.
I did enjoy the day and I treasure the photos and experiences
that I had there, but I really don’t think the event itself was worth traveling
all that way and also the price alone to get in was crazy expensive. I don’t
think I would attend a Destination Star Trek again in the future, but I am glad
I did it and hey not many people if any can say they meet William Shatner on
the bridge of the enterprise on their birthday!!
