SDCC Day 1: Morning
Comic-Con International 2022 (SDCC from now on) was always going to be different. After a Con hiatus since 2019 (I don’t count Thanksgiving weekend 2021) the full San Diego Comic-Con experience has now fully descended on San Diego. Well, almost fully.
Comic-Con International did not start out well, but it’s going to get better.
As always, I’m traveling with Alyssa, my daughter and fellow BestEntertainmentReviews.com editor.
Our Uber driver dropped us off at the back of our hotel, where the doors were locked. We had to walk around to the front of the hotel at midnight. No feelings of danger, just disappointment.
After being told we had an upgraded room on the app, we found we didn’t have one when we arrived. I won’t bore you with the unnecessary roll-away bed logistics.
And then the bus route, which doesn’t really go near the convention center anymore. Badge pick-up and rejection for not having our Covid wrist band. (SDCC, please tell people coming off the buses and trams to get a wristband before going to badge pickup and backtracking!).
We found a short Covid verification line near the Omni and then walked by to entrance C and Sails Pavillon to retrieve our badges.
I share all of this because this year, we had to work ahead of SDCC. Badges didn’t, at least for us, appear in the mail—and even if they had, we would still need to Covid verification, a process that wasn’t that spelled out ahead of our arrival.
Then finally, through the badge reader and into the rarified air of nerd-dom.
It seemed a bit smaller. The Sails Pavillon with more seating (but never enough) and fewer signing stations.
We walked the floor, bustling with cosplay and genre t-shirts, toward our next stop, the Paramount Hospitality Suite at the Hilton where we picked up studio seating passes for the Hall H Star Trek Universe Panel and for the Evil panel.
And we finally had breakfast. Some of my thousands of dollars spent on Star Trek recouped in a chocolate croissant, a hardboiled egg, and a cranberry muffin.
And then back to the floor. Factory Entertainment toured me through their Star Trek prototypes and treated me to review units of their Phaser bottle opener and their Star Trek Enterprise D Tea Cup Prop Replica
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Heading over the Roddenberry Panel, my first of the day. More soon.
SDCC Day 1: Afternoon
The Roddenberry Panel consisted of Rod Roddenberry, Trevor Roth, facilitated by Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Clare Kramer, who now podcasts for Roddenberry.
The opening of the panel focused on what being Roddenberry versus being Star Trek meant. Roddenberry said it came down to the idea of IDIC, Infinite Diversity from Infinite Combinations, a wonderful early view of a diversity message on television. Though Lincoln Enterprises, the early version of Roddenberry Enterprises was mention, and some have speculated that while Gene Roddenberry very much believed in diversity, IDIC was introduced so it could be sold through Lincoln Enterprise.
The majority of the panel focused on the new Paramount+ properties of Discovery, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds. The later received the most thankful applause from the audience.
Roddenberry shared at one point that the U.S.S. Cerritos from Lower Decks was named the San Diego, and he’s not sure why that changed. The audience seemed to lean into the San Diego as a better name given San Diego Comic-Con’s long affiliation with all things Trek.
Roddenberry expressed his thoughts that Paramount+ did themselves a disservice by not allowing for a bigger transition between streaming and broadcast/cable. While the shows have done fine with fans, they don’t broaden the appeal through wide access.
More details when I listen back to the audio I recorded for quotes
Shatner on Shatner
Let me just say Shatner was hilarious, stole the show every time he opened his mouth, including his curse battle with none other than Fuck’n Keven Smith.
Shatner’s best question exchange came with a young man who asked, if not Earth, what planet. Shatner basically said, to paraphrase, I’ve been to space, there is only one planet, and that is Earth. Everything else nearby will kill you.
I’ll leave you with a couple of images, but more to come on the hollow moon, the mycelium network on earth, and all the stuff Shatner is working on…more soon.
Interestingly Shatner said Roddenberry would be turning over in his grave over some of the choices made by the new showrunners.
SDCC Day 2
Primarily a floor day. A few fun shots.
SDCC Day 3
Started with Evil panel. Entire episode, then three cast members (Katja Herbers, Aasif Mandvi, & Christine Lahti). Pictures for now, commentary later.
Star Trek Universe
Star Trek Universe covered Picard, Lower Decks and Stange New Worlds. The biggest announcement was the crossover episode between Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks. Lower Decks will also visit Deep Space Nine in its third season. Back to the Future‘s, Lea Thompson facilitated the panel. She is also a Picard director.
Here are a few pictures from the panel.
The Star Trek Party
Getting into the Star Trek party proved a wonderful experience. Alyssa and I got to meet many of the stars from across the Star Trek Universe. The biggest twitter blow-up came from my brief chat with Anson Mount where I asked if he would be reprising his role as Black Bolt in a proper MCU Universe and he responded, “From your lips to G-d’s ears.” That quote has ended up widely posted across several sites.
Day 4
Day 4 was all about the Science in Science Fiction Panel that I spent about five years getting on the Comic-Con docket. It was wildly successful with a full 400 person audience in 24ABC.
Many thanks to Dr. Jame Tuttle Keane, Dr. Erin MacDonald, Dr. Tiffany Kataria, and Alyssa Rasmus for a great panel.
