This was the first really big and B5 only convention that I went to and I was full of anticipation. The guest list read as a who is who of B5 and with the author list nearly complete, it would be a good educated guess that the missing ones would be there too. We were with eight dutchies going to Blackpool by plane, for some the first time they flew, for others another of those horrendous experiences. All without reason, of course, the flight was as uneventful as might be expected. The AIR UK flight touched down a titbit late in Manchester Airport, but at least, at last, we had arrived in England. The only thing that separated us now was a train trip and a taxi ride.

Let me tell you about Blackpool for a second, I just can not make an article about this trip without mentioning… Blackpool. I always believed the Monty Python sketches about older English women were just that, sketches, but now I know better. Blackpool is a holiday resort for Pythoneske elderly people, it is just full of them. Our hotel was straight out of one of their scenes, flowery wallpaper, plushy lamps with those small ropes on the side, comfy chairs with real springs in which you disappear after sitting down. Everything, the people, the buildings, the furniture was a testimony of a fallen empire emitting a lost grandeur of times past. Which might constitute for the number of elderly people there, reminiscing over memories of a lost paradise. Anyway, a holiday resort for them, but I wouldn’t even want to be buried there.

But here it was about to happen, in the Norbeck Castle Hotel, which is indeed build like a castle, complete with cantles and all, including the need for a thorough renovation. We went early to register, around 8 am we were queuing, something we would be doing frequently that weekend. And luckily so, since when we left the short queue after only half an hour, it had backed up alongside the parking lot, swirling around the entrance and in to an adjacent street. I really pitied those people, they would have to wait for hours and hours only to get registered.

After registration we went scouting around. The dealer room was big and packed with goodies, unfortunately still much more Star Trek stuff than B5 merchandise (because of jms’ tight grip on licensing) but that is changing rapidly. It was nice to see merchandise IRL which I previously only had seen on web sites, like the mugs, micro machines and T-shirts. I only bought a thing to hangs your keys on from the Psi Corps fanclub, I’m not a real merchandise buff, I’m mostly interested in B5 books (and I already have most of those…).

The hotel where we stayed the first night sucked, so we tried to get a room in the Norbeck Castle Hotel. Fortunately, there still was a two person room available, so we took it, but asked them that if a three person room would become available to put us in it. Again, luck was on our side and we got it. We were with five people, so one had to sleep on the floor, but that was no problem, we had a room in the place to be! And I am very glad that we did, having a room at the convention site has a lot of advantages. You can get drinks at the bar after 1 am, things can be dropped off in or retrieved from the room at a moment’s notice (so when I saw Mira Furlan sit down for an autograph session in the dealer room I could immediately get in the short line and ask Jan V. to get my autograph stuff from our room) and when it rains… well, you get the picture.

This is where my the comprehensiveness of my memory ends, from the moment I walked in to the convention centre until the moment I sat in the train back to Manchester, all kind of is a blur of individual moments and cherished memories. Lack of sleep, no lack of alcohol whatsoever, mixed with an enormous amount of fun made my memories in to a haze. I am not able to give you a chronological list of events, but I will share with you my memories to the best of my abilities.

The great hall was exactly what it pretended to be. Here the presentations, parties, award ceremony, etc. would be held. The opening ceremony constituted of the introduction of all guests who entered through a huge fan-made stargate (with smoke and all). It was quite a sight seeing all those actors and producers on stage and they all got a deafening applause, especially jms. He continued with a small introduction which was hard to follow because the sound system wasn’t properly tuned yet, but he talked about being happy to see this many people and having the 5^th season and all.

During and between various presentations they showed some music videos where scenes from various episodes were matched to a song. E.g. something like ‘he is a hero’ to Sheridan during a fight scene. They were awesome and a lot of fun to watch. It would be nice to have them on video some day. And of course we got various blooper tapes, including the famous ‘General Hague is doing Deep Space Nine’ one. I don’t remember too many details, except that Mira Furlan never seems to forget her lines or mispronounce them, CC and Bruce Boxleitner on the other hand…

I decided to attend as many panels as possible, since that was where the most fun was to be had. Some actors were hilarious, for example put Richard Biggs and Jason Carter together and you have yourself a comedy show. But I’ll discuss panels below in the picture section.

The last night there was an auction for charity and it probably was the most hilarious one I’ll ever see. Signed cups, signed posters, signed whatever, they all went for a nice amount of money. Wayne Alexander auctioned off all of Lorien’s fingers (for £120 a piece?) and a £500 guitar signed by all celebrities present and played on by Bill Mumy and Julie Caitlin Brown was auctioned for about £1500. But the serious money was yet to come. The closing piece was a whole day on the set of B5 including a make up session of you as your alien of choice. £200, £500, £1000, this baby went sky-high real fast! Around the £2000 pound mark alliances began to be formed (what did Delenn say about humans building communities??) so someone bidding called for something like £3000 for two people. And jms and John Copeland accepted. From then on there was no stopping the two groups formed. The bidding went higher and higher for more and more people. There were some people with serious money there. The bidding started out with jms, John Copeland and Bruce Boxleitner, but other actors came on stage when they heard how much money was being offered. Finally, after an hour or so, the two groups kept on bidding against each other and it became quite obvious that there was no end. So someone called out of the audience to let both groups come to the set, because otherwise this would become real silly and financially dangerous real fast. The idea was contemplated on for some time, because this would mean they had to accommodate about 13 people (out of their own pocket), so Jerry Doyle offered to pay for all the lunch, which solved this. He even said he would come to the set even if he had a day off, because he didn’t want to miss this! Finally the idea was accepted and for about 17.000 pounds some people were real lucky and a lot poorer (especially since they also had to pay for their trip to LA…). I just hope no-one overbid themselves and got in to serious trouble over this…

A lot has been said about the autograph queues at this convention. Yes, they were long, you didn’t know who would be signing when you finally got there, security was a pain in the but sometimes (letting through friends…), but overall I had great fun the six hours I stood in line, which I did Sunday morning. Queues always are a great opportunity to meet new people and this time was no exception. And it helps to pass the time splendidly. There were also pre-autographed pictures for sale, but they are not for me. Every autograph has a memory connected and this is exactly why I want and like them. Because of the long waiting periods some actors started signing in the dealer room, sometimes signing everything that came in sight, other times only the pictures they sold themselves. I got some from Richard Biggs and Mira Furlan this way, it cost me a couple of tens of pounds, but hey, who’s complaining? Unfortunately, I was in the queue that was forgotten. There were to be two rooms where actors would be signing, with one queue for the first room and a second one, which would be created by the people already having their autographs from the first room, for the second room. But the plan failed, since apparently the actors didn’t know and all sat in the first room. After waiting in vain in the second queue for two hours (it was lined up outside, so that was a small conciliation) it began to rain. No, let me rephrase that, it began to pour. The security guy didn’t want to let us in, but decided it was the wisest thing to do because the mob was very near to rioting. It was at that moment they realised we had been forgotten. This stunk, but you simply can’t let your good mood go down by this. It’s your weekend, you paid good money for it and you are going to have fun no matter what. I was pissed for about 15 minutes and then got my spirits back up again, because this was the only negative thing that had happened the whole weekend and I wasn’t going to let it spoil it. Anyway, the second queue got exclusive rights to walk passed Bruce Boxleitner’s table (to much anger of the first queue whom had been told they would get to see Bruce too), and so I finally got his scribbling as well.

I do remember jms’s and John Copeland’s first panel. Because in the middle of it the fire alarm sounded. For those who were at Wolf last year, it was an unpleasant deja vu, since it went off three times during the night back then and everyone had to get out of the hotel. This probably was the most important reason for the actors now being at a different hotel (except for Ed Wasser that is). Anyway, jms asked everyone to calmly leave the building and (we were in England after all) everyone did. On the other side of the building (where the autograph queues were) the actors had to go outside too and started telling jokes to the public. I didn’t see it though, since I was at the opposite site of the hotel, near the great hall. There was a lot of misinformation as to what caused this alarm. First we were told it was a malignant fan (which it wasn’t), then that someone smoked in a no smoking area and that set it off. I still don’t know the real reason, but later I heard that it was the fire alarm itself which set itself off, because the system was so old and that it had happened before. Anyway, after about twenty minutes we went back in and the panel continued. He showed some bloopers and fragments from new episodes as well as from the two TV movies, without giving anything away, of course. But we did see a very young Ivanova and a young Sheridan screaming that he knew what was in Dukath’s secret place. John and jms talked about what they do at Babylonian, John being responsible for the budget and planning and general managing of the whole team. Jms told us about his directional debut and that he was just trying not to make a fool of himself. He thinks it went quite all right. He has no urge to do more directing, he is a writer and that’s that, but he did it to gain a greater understanding of what’s involved so he could be a better writer. After the day was over the crew made T-shirts with ‘SHHHH! The Great Maker is Directing’ and ‘And On The Seventh Day, We Rest, JMS, 4.22’ on it. They have a tradition that at the end of the day when someone leaves, someone else shouts ‘say goodbye to …’. At the end of the last day of shooting of the last episode, jms tried to sneak away, but he got noticed, so when all shouted ‘goodbye Joe’ he became overly emotional and couldn’t turn around so he just kept on walking. Another anecdote was from this convention itself. On the front lawn there was a barbecue with, as they said, 100% beef (British beef, we wonder??). So jms stood in line and got himself a burger. At the first bite, though, he knew something was wrong. He went back to the BBQ guys, and asked them if it really was 100% beef. Absolutely, was the response. Well, there is a pristine difference between soja ‘beef’ and real beef, so jms got them to get the box where the beef came in. Which bluntly said something like ‘vegetarian beef with soja’. Real beef? Don’t think so.

Pat Tallman talked about doing stunts and stuff. In one particular scene she had to hang upside down on a kind of bungee rope from a crane. They would lower her down rapidly and stop just before she hit the ground. This generally isn’t a pleasant experience for anyone, but for her it was extremely uncomfortable since she is afraid of heights…

Jeffrey Willerth told us the practical joke anecdote from when he was in the Kosh suit and the crew started covering him with toilet paper and put a toilet seat on top of it. He couldn’t do anything about it being in the suit, so he had no choice but walk around looking stupid. Operating the suit is a team effort, he doesn’t operate all those moving thingies, someone else does. The same with the, what shall I call it, the Vorlon eye. Also, the suit is so large that it can’t move straight through a door, you have to turn 90 degrees and walk through it sideways. This is why you’ll never see a Vorlon walking straight through a normal door. He also revealed the secret Vorlon walk to us, being how he manages to make it look like the Vorlon glides over the floor. He simply puts one foot in front of the other. This way the weight is balanced evenly and you don’t get the waggling effect produced by walking with the feet next to each other.

And then… there were Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas… We were informed that they would be doing a very special scene on stage and special it was! A couple of months ago at another convention they pulled a joke on jms. They agreed with the audience to be absolutely quiet and not laugh or applaude when jms came on stage. Jms has this fright from way back in his youth for talking in front of people, so he volunteered for showing tourists around in the town where he lived (if I remember correctly…) to lose it, it didn’t help much. Anyway, here he was in front of lost of people telling jokes which had always worked, and it seemed he had lost it. No reaction. After a while they told him about the arrangement and he was relieved but swore revenge. The scene Peter and Andreas were about to do was the revenge. This scene was part of an episode at the end of season four. He circulated the script, but no one really believed it was true, that he would do it. But when the make up department called for Andreas to be fitted a new head, they all became very nervous. In the scene, jms let G’Kar transform in to a female and have sex with Londo. Only at the last minute when everyone was sweating it out, he told them the truth. But everyone started to like the concept and after a while, they were even prepared to come to the set one their day off to put it on film! Anyway, Peter and Andreas did this script in front of 3000 people and it was hilarious, Andreas apparently (??) gave Peter a real French kiss… It was much more fun than I can put in to words here, you just had to be there I’m afraid.

One night at the bar I was pleasantly surprised by seeing Gareth Thomas come to get a couple of drinks. Fortunately Nicolien and Monique knew him from before and I was introduced. We casually chatted, I don’t remember about what (the beer was plenty), but I remember it being a lot of fun. I vaguely remember something about a T-shirt being torn off a body (nothing to do with Gareth, more with Monique, now don’t you get any strange ideas), but that is, as they say, history.