My con report on Q-Trek:

I probably would have posted this a *long* time ago, but I've been 
fighting exhaustion all week; it happens to me when I don't get to crash 
on the weekend. :-)  Since Christine already covered the personal bits, 
I'll focus on what everyone really wants to hear: what about John?

Well, first off, the con itself was poorly organized, cramped and 
claustrophobic, with a truly, truly sucky dealer's room and really 
obnoxious huckster-types.  I didn't give a damn about any of that; I'd 
come to see John de Lancie, and the fact that I could entertain myself by 
expounding on the plot of Only Human to KC Kleinman (who *begged* me to 
tell her, I swear; I can get on a soapbox and pontificate about my 
stories for hours, but this time it wasn't my fault, I swear! :-))

The first thing I noticed was that he looked like death.  I'm going to 
say something mondo heretical here: John de Lancie is really not all that 
attractive, objectively speaking.  He has one of those faces that's 
almost entirely dependent on his force of personality to animate it. When 
he's "on", he's gorgeous, but I have seen so many really bad con photos 
of him that it didn't surprise me that he looked pretty bad.  His hair 
was a wreck, the dark blue suit he was wearing didn't suit his coloring, 
and he looked haggard and worn out.  Nevertheless, I was excited to see 
him-- my interest in the man, aside from his acting ability, is in the 
fact that he's witty and intelligent (and arrogant... why do I always 
fall for the arrogant ones? :-)).  
	He started out by saying he would answer any question but two.  The 
first was a what if question, "like, What if Q met Godzilla."  That got a 
laugh.  The second was questions like would Q be in the next movie, 
because he didn't know.  Promptly somebody asked him if Q would be in 
Voyager.  He responded that he didn't know, but right now time 
commitments made it unlikely.  These time commitments turned out to be 
his new series, "Legend" (premiering on UPN on Tuesday this week), so he 
told us about that.  But he didn't seem terribly enthusiastic about it-- 
I mean, he seemed like he was trying to muster up enthusiasm, but it just 
wasn't there.  Mind you, he's a good actor when you give him six takes to 
do a shot in, or when he's rehearsed for days, but he's not plastic in 
front of a real audience, not like some people, and he's not so 
overwhelmed and happy that he has fans that it carries him through stupid 
questions or stuff he doesn't like.  JDL has always struck me as someone 
who will try to modulate his responses, try to play to his audience, but 
with a basic core of honesty that will come through. And while he wasn't 
mean or condescending to the person who asked the question, I got the 
definite feeling he wasn't too enthused about "Legend."
	So, onward.  He called on a lot of kids, and told some amusing 
stories in response to people's questions-- he said he was rather annoyed 
by his own action figure, and related a story in which his family was 
going upstairs to dinner, when his son pelted back down the stairs saying 
"I forgot Dad!" "Dad", nonplussed, investigated, and found out that his 
son was talking about his action figure, which had been abandoned in the 
sandbox.  When asked if playing Q had helped his career, he said that 
sadly, it hadn't really.  While it had gotten him more audience 
recognition than any other role, the people who make casting decisions 
have mindsets like, "Oh, well, it's *only* television. Oh, well, it's 
*only* science fiction. Oh well, it's *not* on a real network." And so 
forth.  He said he appreciated the fact that the audience didn't care 
about such things and would follow an actor they liked anywhere.  While 
his description of this situation was mostly matter-of-fact, in hindsight 
it's easy to read a little bit of bitterness into it.
	There were a couple of other places where he was clearly off.  At 
one point he totally lost his train of thought, and apologized by saying 
"I'm tired."  At another point, when he was asked if he liked science 
fiction, he said he did a great deal, but that he didn't think that the 
Star Trek universe was particularly realistic-- he preferred a darker 
view.  Now I've heard this particular story before-- the last time he 
said this, he said "I prefer the sort of story where there are monsters, 
and the monsters eat the baby." Everyone laughed.  This time he said, 
"Actually I think we're all going to kill ourselves before we get to that 
point" ("that point" being the Star Trek universe's vision of human 
perfection.)
	There was an amusing bit where a kid asked him, "Did you ever have 
the hots for Denise Crosby?"  In a wonderful bit of facial mugging, JDL 
bugged out his eyes and asked "Where is your *mind?*"  Everyone cracked 
up.  "How old are you?" The kid was eleven.  "Is your mother listening to 
this?"  He then said that Denise herself would explain, and gestured to 
the door he had come through.  "Come on out, Denise, tell them yourself."  
Several people looked.  "I can't believe people looked."  More laughs.  
"No, I appreciated Denise *strictly* for her professional skills, as a 
fellow actress"-- this while making nudge-nudge-wink-wink-say-no-more 
expressions.  And he did call on children disproportionately.  On the 
other hand, when a kid at the back asked him if he liked working on Time 
Trax, at first he looked totally blank-- like, "when the hell was I on 
Time Trax?"-- and then, when he figured it out, responded with 
expansively Q-like sarcasm, "It was a *wonderful* experience."  Also, 
when a person asked him if Q had any elements of his own personality, he 
said succinctly, "No."-- after having told a story about the final shot 
of All Good Things, when he and Stewart were on a raised sound stage and 
he had his hand in a tank of "primordial goo."  The whole time he was 
talking, he was dripping the goo onto the head of the technician holding 
the tank up.  *Suuure*, John, you're *nothing* like Q. :-)  I think this 
was supposed to be a joke, since he's said at other times that he brings 
himself to the character, and that there are some Q-like elements of his 
personality, but if it was a joke it fell flat.
	
At the end of the talk, when the autographing began, Christine became 
very nervous about giving him her stories (something I would *never* have 
had the nerve to do in the first place :-)).  Security offered to let her 
go to the front of the autograph line, but we had to have a pow-wow 
first.  People weren't stopping and talking to JdL, they were just 
handing over pictures to be signed, boom, boom, assembly line.  I 
suggested that she go to the end of the Preferred Seating line, so that 
she might have a minute or two to talk and ask him her question, and 
sound him out on the stories before handing them over.  Then I 
disappeared into the dealers' room to see if it was still lame.  It was.
	Damn, I wish I'd gone with her!  What Christine reports (and you've 
probably all seen it, but still) is that when she asked him, "Mr. de 
Lancie, do you think growing up with a learning disability [de Lancie has 
dyslexia, and talks about it fairly freely at cons] has influenced your 
darker vision of the future?", he chuckled in a fashion that she thought 
was derisive, and replied, "No, I don't think there's any connection.  I 
just think we have such a hard time solving simplistic problems."  She 
told him that she shared a bleaker vision as well, and asked him if he 
would like to read her story "The Trial Never Ends", which has less than 
a rosy vision of humanity in the Star Trek universe.  He agreed, sounding 
bored.  Marshall reported that he had his head down and was signing 
pictures the whole time he was talking to Christine, so it was hard to 
see his expression.  But I'm shorter than Marshall, and I think if I had 
gone *I* would have concentrated on reading his expression, because we 
have no way to know if JDL was being derisive toward Christine or bitter 
toward humanity.  Did the question cut too close to home?  Has he been 
depressed lately?  He's said in the past that he would go stir-crazy if 
he had to do the same thing day in, day out, and now he's signed on as 
costar of a regular series-- has that scared him?  Did he take it for 
financial reasons, and now feels locked into a regular series he doesn't 
much like?  He also said, during the con, that he was getting a little 
tired of acting, and I've *never* heard that particular sentiment from 
him before.  What happens when you get tired of your life's work?
	So I don't know.  I'm inclined to believe that JDL was being bitter, 
not derisive, and that under less assembly-line circumstances he might 
have come off a lot better-- he was visibly having a hard time modulating 
himself for the audience, keeping himself from saying offensive things.  
At one point he was talking about leaving his fan mail under his bed, and 
said that frankly, for the three or four hours a week it would take him 
to read the stuff, he'd rather be doing something-- and here he seemed to 
realize he was coming across as offensive, and shifted his tone 
abruptly-- that *we* would appreciate more.  No, John, you mean that 
*you* would appreciate more, but hell, I can understand the sentiment.  I 
wouldn't want to spend three or four hours a week answering fan mail, 
either.  And I'm glad he tried to salvage it-- it shows he *does* care 
what we think of him, it's just that today he was having a hard time 
faking a good mood, and it showed.
	So.  My general opinion: I don't think any less of the man; hell, I 
knew from some of the interviews I've read that he isn't a paragon of 
tact-- and I *will* go to see him again; but damn, I feel bad for 
Christine.  And I wish there was some way to let him know that a highly 
intelligent and articulate person who was a great fan of his was let down 
by him, to give him a chance to say, "Sorry, I wasn't myself that day," 
but I know perfectly well it won't happen-- the power dynamic between the 
actor and the fan at a con is too great.  If I was a student at the class 
on acting he teaches, or something, it would be different.  But at cons, 
it's impossible to interact with actors as if we and they are both human 
beings-- we put them on pedestals, they distance themselves from us 
because they have to, there are too many of us.  
	The moral of the story:  When JDL is good, he's very very good; but 
when he's bad, he is *naughty.* Be forewarned.