Armageddon Expo 2008

Don’t forget to check out our interviews with Stargate guests Andee Frizzell, Gary Jones & Kavan Smith.

The 2008 Armageddon Expo in Melbourne was well attended with an estimated 10,000+ people through the doors over the weekend. A constant flow of traffic around the many comic, anime, sci-fi and other booths indicated the level of interest in the event.

Click all images on this page to view larger versions

Special guests at the event included Stargate Atlantis & SG1 actors David Hewlett, Andee Frizzell, Gary Jones and Kavan Smith. Other celebrities included Hellboy’sDoug Jones, Greatest American Hero William Katt, Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson and various annimation, comic and wrestling guests including Crispin Freeman, Jim Lee, The Sandman, Christy Hemme and Traci Brooks.

Many visitors to the expo wore astounding costumes and included a Master Chief, Poison Ivy, Wraith Queen, various Storm Troupers, Stargate personnel and many, many others.

Click all images on this page to view larger versions

During photo & autograph sessions with the celebrity guests, there was a steady stream of people lining up to have their moment of interaction with their favourite guests. Armageddon were trialling a new system this year and it appeared to be an improvement on 2007 but still needs a little work as there was some confusion about who needed to be standing in line when but nobody missed out on their autographs or photo opportunities with the stars.

David Hewlett Panel

David Hewlett (Dr Rodney McKay)

David Hewlett’s Q&A session was held at noon on Saturday and was packed to the brim with eager Stargate fans who enjoyed the telling of many funny stories. David shared how he originally auditioned for a different character (Ingram) in Atlantis all the while trying to convince the “Powers That Be” that the character should be McKay and how they kept fighting against it. Eventually he got the role of Ingram and then got a call saying “We don’t think this Ingram thing is going to work, let’s do McKay!” When someone asked why Atlantis had been cancelled David joked about calling the new show “Stargate 90201″ [Stargate Universe, due to start in 2009] and said he really didn’t know why Atlantis had been cancelled, that he was upset as we were and indicated that it had come as a surprise to the cast.

In response to a question about how he got started with acting, David said he’d watch Doctor Who as a kid and wanted to be a Time Lord and he was good at lying and thought that was necessary for acting. He’d love to play the Doctor now that David Tennant is leaving.

David Hewlett (Dr Rodney McKay)

David briefly mentioned some projects he’s working on. In addition to auditioning, he’s writing a film called “Design of the Dead”, a Martha Stewart of Horror about a home renovation show that goes in to fix up a house and bring it back to life and in doing so bring back the dead. You get “design tips and how to kill the un-dead tips” combined in the one movie. He’s also working on “Starcrossed”, a show about working behind the scenes of a fictional sci-fi show and he oked that it would have “nothing to do with Stargate, there’ll be no dirty laundry aired there, I’m sure.”

David talked a little about his film “A Dog’s Breakfast” and some of the problems with distribution. He encouraged people outside the USA to write to MGM to try and encourage them to release the DVD in other regions. He said the distribution system doesn’t make sense to him and he thinks they need to try some different approaches to releasing their own “pirate” versions with ads on them to try and combat the piracy problem. He encouraged people wanting to make films to do so independently, to just go out and do it. He said it’s more exciting. He also mentioned he has some ideas for a sequel called “Heir of the Dog”. Someone asked what he thought of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and David said he loved it and that Joss Whedon had been smart about using the fans to help with promotion.

David Hewlett (Dr Rodney McKay)

David also talked about working with his sister Kate, filming the episode “Grace Under Pressure” and how they were making up “Stargate the Musical” while working on the episode Trio and that it was going to feature musical wraith.

David said that it was easy to make fun of Rachel Luttrell on set but that Jewel Staite was too hard because she’d had lots of practice with Nathan Fillion and she could really get you back. He also talked about the future and how he’d like to do more writing and directing, but that will always have to act.

In response to a question about the worst injury he’s ever sustained during filming, David told us about his experience in “Lost Boys” where he was tied to a bed and fighting the enzyme and afterwards he had no feeling in his left arm and it was a couple of months before it got better.

There are a couple of episodes from this year’s Stargate Atlantis that David really liked, “The Shrine” and “Brain Storm” (yet to air) where they had a couple of real scientists on the show. David says he’s “waiting for the call” when it comes to being involved with Stargate Universe, but admitted that they (the Atlantis cast) actually know nothing about it.

Gary Jones Panel

Gary Jones (Walter Harriman)

Gary Jones’ panel was held right after David Hewlett’s and all the fans had to move to the Madman Theatre which was much smaller than the main stage. The panel involved a lot of fun Stargate stories.

Gary talked about the audition process and how he had no idea what any of the lines actually meant and how he decided to progressively “ramp it up” and make it funnier as he did the “Chevron one encoded” … “Chevron two encoded” … and progressively turned into Jerry Lewis. He figured out that he’d gone a bit over the top, but that they called him back later saying he was the only one that actually did anything.

Gary talked about how he spent most of his time on the show “sitting in a chair talking to a piece of glass” and even when he finally got to do a death scene in “Avatar” that he even had to swivel and die in his chair. He told a funny story about an episode where he got to fire a machine gun and how they’d had to reshoot the scene because of the way he’d backed out of the room, giving an hilarious recreation for those in the room. He also shared a funny story about playing a practical joke on Don S Davis one day during filming a scene where he was supposed to open the stargate iris but instead he suddenly said “Open your own **** iris…” and went on for a bit. He also told us that that Peter DeLouise would make him redo his scenes as William Shatner including the first day Beau Bridges was on set.

Gary Jones (Walter Harriman)

Gary told us about how his character’s rank kept increasing and also the many names his character went through before settling on Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman. Walter comes from the episode 2010 where Richard Dean Anderson just came out with it one day and Harriman came about because of the way that Don S Davies pronounced “Airman”.

Gary’s favourite Stargate moment was in Season 6 of Stargate SG1. Baal was about to attack and the team were sitting in the meeting room trying to work out how to handle the situation. While all the prep was going on, Gary was sitting at the table reading a copy of Vanity Fair and he wasn’t paying too much attention, next thing he knows, he’s hearing them say “ok, moving on” which means that they’d finished filming the scene. He knew he had to confess to Peter DeLouise to tell them what he’d been doing, he battled over whether or not to say anything, if he didn’t say anything and the producers noticed DeLouise would be “on the block” over it so he told him what happened. His response was …. “oh, yeah, yeah, I know” turns out from where he was it looked like he was reading a tech manual. Later Gary thought…”Wait a minute, the world’s going to end in ten minutes…who reads a tech manual?”.

Gary’s panel was followed by a huge applause as he invited people to come and see him in the main hall for autographs & photo opportunities.

Andee Frizzell

Andee Frizzell (Wraith Queen)

Andee Frizzell who plays the Wraith Queen in Atlantis’ first four seasons was the first Stargate guest to do a Q&A panel on Sunday. She started out by telling a story about a friend she’d met while in New Zealand the week before. The pair decided to go to a massage place and somehow ended up at a brothel. I can’t do the story justice in retelling it but can only say it was one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a very long time.

Andee talked about the makeup process for the wraith and how she handled it really well and often slept through a good part of the process. She found it most frustrating at the end of shooting for the day knowing that she had to sit through a two hour removal process.

Andee Frizzell (Wraith Queen)

Because she had to turn up so early to get all the prosthetics done and leave hours after everyone else on set had gone home, there were cast and crew members who for some time had no idea what Andee really looked like. There was a party at one point and Andee had been to a modelling gig before hand, when she turned up to the party, nobody recognised her but it hadn’t dawned on her that the reason people were treating her strangely was because they had no idea who she was!

Someone asked about the Atlantis movie and Andee said “It takes place in space. That’s all I’m going to say”.

Andee was very funny and a joy to watch on stage.

Kavan Smith

Kavan Smith (Major Evan Lorne)

The last Stargate Q&A panel for the weekend was Kavan Smith who began his Q&A by apologising if he fell asleep after only getting two hours sleep because of people running up and down the hall outside his hotel room all night. The first question was about how he moved from Stargate SG1 to Atlantis. He told us they were going to introduce a new character to Atlantis, and after he got the role they decided to keep him as Major Lorne.

A lot of the time Kavan spent joking about David Hewlett like having to get to set before David does or there won’t be any food left. He said the Atlantis set was very nice. The crew were all like one big happy family and that there wasn’t a single person on the show that wasn’t terrific to hang out with.

Kavan Smith (Major Evan Lorne)

Someone asked “After 14 hours on set, who’s the person you’d most want to assassinate”. Kavan responded with David, joking about how much he complains. He also said David would be the easiest, you could give him a heart attack and just jog slowly away from him. He went on to talk about pranks played on set and said that he and Jason have a farting competition but that Jason usually won because “his diet sucks”. The best prank he ever played on David Hewlett was while visiting his house he would hide David’s baby “Baz”. He said he’s so mellow you can do anything, you can put him in a cupboard and he didn’t’ seem to mind, he said Jane (David’s wife) did get annoyed about it though!

Someone asked what it was like working with Amanda Tapping on her new show Sanctuary and Kavan responded that it felt almost like going to Stargate because there were so many of the crew involved. He said that he really loves it and revealed that the show is likely to be picked up for 20 episodes!

Kavan Smith (Major Evan Lorne)

Someone asked about the episode “The Last Man” and he said that people had said the old David Hewlett looked like Richard Nixon and that Kavan looked like Ronald Reagan. He laughed at that but then said that there’s a book released by his wife where he looks frighteningly similar.

When he was first told that Atlantis was ending at the end of season 5 he thought it was a joke and when he found out later that it was true they were all really surprised.

Someone asked if he considers himself a nerd, but he would never admit it to anyone “outside this room”!

Someone asked if he’d taken a souvenir from the set and he told the audience that someone had given him the name plate that said General Lorne. He also told a story about how he’d held onto a watch, not realising it was expensive and thinking they wouldn’t miss it but they did and called looking for it. The same thing happened after a movie he’d filmed when a year after he got a call asking about the watch and insisting that he “find it” and make sure it was returned. Oops!

Kavan talked about the episode he filmed of The Outer Limits where he had to do a sex scene and how awful the audition process was and how embarrassed he was about filming the scene in front of a green screen.

Kavan said there were a few things he’s working on right now including a drama pilot, Sanctuary and he’s trying to “weasel” his way into Stargate Universe.

Armageddon 2009

If the past two years are anything to go by, Armageddon 2009 is going to be huge. Event organisers announced that Amanda Tapping has been signed up to appear at next year’s event, an announcement that brought huge cheers from the crowd. In 2009, the event is planned for October 17-18, this will be the week BEFORE the New Zealand event.

Keep an eye on this website for details next year.

Don’t forget to check out our interviews with Stargate guests Andee Frizzell, Gary Jones & Kavan Smith.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Other Posts of Interest

• November 29, 2008 -- Report: Creation Burbank Nov 08
• November 7, 2008 -- Report: Armageddon Au 08
• December 3, 2008 -- What’s Coming Up
• December 1, 2008 -- Creation Con Stargate Q&As
• June 2, 2009 -- What’s Coming Up #5