Episode 295. Star Trek Conventions

Published by austin on July 30, 2012July 30, 2012

Elizabeth Dennehy, who played Lt. Commander Shelby on Star Trek: The Next Generation, describes what it’s like attending sci-fi/fantasy cons around the world. Featuring behind-the-scenes details from the pivotal episodes The Best of Both Worlds (Parts 1 & 2), convention-goer categorization, questions about Charmed one is better off not asking, impertinent observations about The Next Phase, and a special appearance by Ensign Wesley Crusher himself. By Grabthar’s Hammer! (Length 20:18)

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Categories: Reduced Shakespeare Company Podcast

Tags: ActingElizabeth DennehyInterviewSci-FiStar TrekWil Wheaton

7 Comments

Megan · August 20, 2012 at 4:46 am

*With

Megan · August 20, 2012 at 3:48 am

Just thought you’d like to know that I was just notified of the marks I got for this essay. I got a distinction (75%) which I am very please with as I wrote the last part of it wioth a massive sinus infection.

austin · August 1, 2012 at 7:31 am

Megan · August 1, 2012 at 5:50 am

Re. writing while people are talking in the background…

It’s a skill I have learnt over many years although there have been times that I have write about what I was listening to instead of the essay topic!! I find writing in total silence distracting, although my younger brother says that he can’t write with background noise.

Megan · August 1, 2012 at 5:47 am

You say nerd like it’s a bad thing Austin! It’s a badge I wear with much pride!! 😉

austin · July 31, 2012 at 4:08 am

Nerd!!

That’s awesome. I’ll make sure Elizabeth sees your comment. (Although I don’t know how you can write while listening to people jabber….)

Megan · July 30, 2012 at 8:43 pm

Thought you guys might like to know I listened to this week’s podcast as I was writing an essay on the social differences and inequailties shown in science fiction or utopian/dystopian fiction for my Media and Society class at university.

While I didn’t write it on Star Trek ( I wrote about George Orwell’s 1984 which is one of my all-time favourite novels), I found it very enlightening and amusing as always!

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Michelle’s ‘Green World’

Michelle Ephraim – a Professor of English and (with Caroline Bicks), the cohost of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast and the co-author of Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas – joins us this week to talk about her frank and funny new book, Green World: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare. Michelle reveals she discovered Shakespeare surprisingly late; how “fun” is a a perfectly fine description of her sometimes fraught memoir; the shared curse of meeting hero Stephens; how Shakespeare became a source of both pain and solace in the wake of a parent’s death; how her relatively cushy job became surprisingly hazardous; and, finally, how Shakespeare – a dead European white man – became a very relatable force for inclusion. (Length 19:31)

Visiting ‘Shakespeare’s House’

Richard Schoch discusses Shakespeare’s House: A Window Onto His Life and Legacy, his wonderful new history of not only the building in Stratford-upon-Avon that William Shakespeare was born in, but how that building survived and became ground zero in the Shakespeare tourism industry. Schoch reveals how he discovered the dual focus of his book; how it took almost 200 years for people to realize the treasure that still stood in their midst; the shenanigans played by people who first depicted Shakespeare’s birthplace; the important distinctions between restoring a house and remaking it; the trick of hitting that sweet spot between writing an academic history and a popular one; and how the most important person in Shakespeare’s birthplace is not Shakespeare but the visitor. (Length 18:52)

All Our Yesterdays

Joel H. Morris discusses his debut novel All Our Yesterdays – no, not the penultimate episode of Star Trek: The Original Series – which tells the compellingly plausible story of the events that lead up to William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Morris reveals his multiple inspirations, both literary and personal; how investigations into the actual historical couple Shakespeare based his play on informed his novel; the ways in which writing is a process of discovery; how he balanced the political and the personal, the natural and supernatural; how he summoned the courage to explore one of literature's most famous characters; and the wonderful inability to let go of characters that won’t let you go. (Length 22:56)