ComicCon: Thursday

Today has been a long day. We got up early to get to the Floor to get better swag, but unfortunately most of it was already gone by the time we got into the Hall. OK, to be fair, I'm only bitter because they were out of Doctor Who bags at the BBC America booth. However, we did get tons of other stuff, including giant IMAX bags. They were pretty much full of heavy swag by the time we left, including four more sets of Doctor Who action figures! I got one of Jack and the Empty Child, one of a Clockwork Man, an Ood, and Mickey Smith (defending the Earth) (three of those cost $5 each; I couldn't resist). Alec split off from Ari and me for maximum swaggage, and he got a boxed set of the complete original series of Red vs Blue and a RvB messenger bag. He also got it signed by several members of the cast, who were at the booth.

Next we went to Ballroom 20, which is the second-biggest hall (where the thing last night was). We had to get there super early to ensure that we had seats for things that we actually wanted to see, so we saw about half the panel on Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey, which is an animated movie with Chris Pine (Kirk in Star Trek, he wasn't there, but he called one of the panelists' cellphones), William Shatner (Kirk in Star Trek), Robert Picardo (he was there!), and... uh... a bunch of other people who I'm too lazy to type out. Only Robert Picardo was there of the actors, anyway (at least who we recognized). Here's the IMDb page.

Next was a panel moderated by EW, called "Wonder Women," about strong female roles. The guests were Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse, Buffy, Angel), Sigourney Weaver (um... yeah), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), and Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet on Lost). We all thought Zoe was dumb at first, but she quickly proved us wrong. She tied for most articulate with Sigourney, who was also very articulate.

After that was the first of the panels that we actually came for: Burn notice. The panel had the creator of the show/writer and various other writers and directors. It also had the actors for two badguys, and the guy who plays Michael's brother. Oh yeah, and Michael Shanks (Daniel Jackson, Victor on Burn Notice) was the moderator! The real star of the show was Bruce Campbell, who plays Sam Axe. He is very well-known in nerddome for playing small but memorable parts (for instance, he plays a different character in each of the Spider-Man movies). He is best known among the cult crowd for playing the main character (Ash) in the Evil Dead movies. He was hilarious. He went off on tangents constantly. More than half the audience questions were directed at him, and he replied with consistently funny answers. He also did things like give money to members of the audience who asked questions that he particularly liked (for instance, one person asked if we would be seeing more scenes where Sam beats people up rather than the other way around). Finally, everyone in the audience got tickets which, when redeemed, got us big Burn Notice shirts!

The next panel was for Psych. The entire main cast was there, except for the Chief. All of them were hilarious. They picked two random characters out of the audience, and promised to name characters in the next season after those people. We also got more free swag! A Psych t-shirt, a "magic Psych ball," and a Psych comic.

The final panel of the day was for Dexter. Four main cast members and four writers/directors/producers were on the panel. There were few interesting questions asked by the audience, and Julie Benz was annoying, but it was still good. Alec had me plug my ears during particularly spoilery parts.

After that, we waited in line to redeem our tickets for our swag, then went across the street and ate at the Carpe Diam, which is/was basically a diner run by the SyFy channel (Carpe Diam is the name of the cafe in Eureka). It was generally overpriced, but hey, it's the SyFy channel!

After that we met Robert and William, who had been there that day with their friends, and rode the trolley back to their house.