Yes, I was! :) It was my first of three conventions. (Weekend on the Promenade, 1998) In this Q&A session I sat quite near the back, so my pictures are of tiny!Sid and Andy with lots of the backs of other people’s heads. Guests of Honour were Sid, Andy, Rene, and Armin.

It was a fan club convention with an attendance cap of around 120 people, with money going to the actors’ chosen charities. There were long, satisfying Q&As, at the lunches and dinners the fans would draw lots to sit at the tables of actors and spouses, and autograph sessions. There was a cool charity auction where they offered scripts and some fairly cool memorabilia.

Rene offered a baseball he’d liberated from the set of Take Me Out To The Holosuite, autographed by Avery Brooks. He said that in order to broach the subject of signing, he’d struck up a conversation about baseball. However, he knew nothing about baseball, and Avery knew everything about baseball. When he said, “Speaking of baseball…” Avery just laughed his head off and signed.

I was sat at Irene Robinson’s table for one of the meals. She was very nice — I remember she talked about Andy’s love of jazz music, her dislike of jazz music, and their arrangement that she would take a walk when he listened to jazz music.

During the auction Armin offered one of his own scripts, with the asterisks noting where the writers had “made some infinitesimal change” to the lines. Andy called from the audience to say, “Is that what the asterisks are for?” When Armin asked what he’d thought they were for, Andy replied “Decoration?”

Andy read from Garak’s Diaries, which was at that point in early development as A Stitch In Time. It probably won’t surprise you to hear how Garaky he became despite lack of makeup.

Both Sid and Armin discussed the episode Profit and Lace (which Sid directed). The initial director’s cut was much darker, and they were asked to go back and reshoot three entire scenes. (Unusual, possibly unique during the series.) They were reminded that this was “a Ferengi episode”.

Andy talked about directing Jack Klugman in Death of a Salesman. It was after Klugman had throat cancer — he talked about the parallel of Jack’s post-cancer voice and Willy Loman’s more metaphorical struggle to communicate.

Sid and Andy obviously have a lot of affection and respect for each other. They missed playing the relationship between Garak and Bashir onscreen and were unhappy with the decision not to pursue the relationship. They weren’t optimistic about getting any more scenes together. (This was around the beginning of Season 7. They’d filmed around 7 or 8 episodes; congoers were treated to a sneak peek at the season premiere.)

Sid was asked about Nana’s hairstyle change. He claimed not to have noticed until it was pointed out to him. He said it looked way nicer in person than it did on TV. (He said, “I’m only assuming it doesn’t look good because everyone keeps asking about it.”)

There were a couple of cute kid stories — Sid inadvertently left the window open while cleaning the cage of their bird Agamemnon, and “Agamemnon bailed”. Which prompted Django to wander around saying, “Memnon? Memnon sky?”

Another auction item: Rene auctioned his own “Nobody knows I’m a Changeling” t-shirt, first modelling it and then “stripping” down to an undershirt when it sold.

EDIT: Additional story — Andy was distracted by a plane taking off. (There were big windows and he was facing them.) He started to tell us something a pilot friend had told him about this airport, but Irene firmly shushed him. (People have to fly out of this airport to get home, Andrew! Don’t tell this story!) Later I found out that a tall building was built a little too close to the airport, so planes had to take off at an unusually steep angle to avoid it.