By Shadia Nasralla and Clare Hutchison
LONDON, Oct 20 (Reuters) – Star Trek fans made history on
Saturday by breaking the record for the largest gathering of
people dressed as characters from the TV series at the
“Destination Star Trek London” convention.
An estimated 1,083 costume-clad “trekkies” assembled at the
event at London’s ExCel centre, narrowly beating the previous
record of 1,040 characters, which was set at the bigger, annual
Star Trek convention in Las Vegas in August.
The achievement will be officially verified by Guinness
World Records within a few days, but organisers were confident
they had topped the Las Vegas record.
The majority of record-breakers dressed in the
colour-blocked uniforms of the Starfleet, with Vulcans, Klingons
and Romulans peppering the crowd.
Trekkie Mark Whitfield went to extreme lengths to
participate, wearing a full-body suit to emulate a mugato, a
beast from “Star Trek: the Original Series”.
“It looks silly, it’s just a gorilla suit painted white with
horns on it. It’s very, very hot. In fact, I was on the verge of
collapse when a very kind person gave me a bottle of water
because I dehydrated quite badly,” he said.
“Destination Star Trek London” is the first live Star Trek
event in Britain for over a decade. Around 17,000 fans came to
London to celebrate the 46-year-old TV and film franchise, which
has spawned six television series and 11 feature films.
“NERDS”
Dawn Harris, 26, who had created an Orion slave girl costume
and painted herself metallic green, said there was great
enthusiasm for the world record attempt.
“There just hasn’t been a convention in the UK for so long.
So I think everyone wants to be involved in everything as much
as they can. Everybody saw that guy jump out of a plane in space
so people are drawn to things like that,” she said, referring to
Felix Baumgartner’s record-breaking jump from a balloon near the
edge of space last Sunday.
“Nerds like achieving missions. We’ve been set a quest and
it must be achieved,” Harris’s fianc (c), Ryan Croft, added.
Outlandish costumes were ubiquitous at the event, which saw
Britain’s first Klingon wedding on Friday. Swedish couple Jossie
Sockertopp and Sonnie Gustavsson tied the knot in full Klingon
attire and exchanged vows in the fictional and guttural-sounding
language of the Star Trek characters.
The three-day convention also saw all five captains from the
TV series appear on stage together for the first time.
The captains played by actors William Shatner (Captain
Kirk), Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard), Avery Brooks (Captain
Sisko), Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway) and Scott Bakula (Captain
Archer) joined forces to officially open the convention on
Friday night.
Speaking ahead of the opening ceremony, 81-year-old Shatner
appeared moved when discussing the show’s loyal and sometimes
obsessive fans in an interview with Reuters.
“It’s an accumulation of a lot of work and a lot of people
travelling from all over the world here. It’s sort of monumental
in its worth,” Shatner said.
The veteran actor turned filmmaker has released the
documentary “Get a Life!”, which examines why fans attend
conventions.
“The conclusion that I come to is that it’s (Star Trek)
mythological,” Shatner told Reuters. “It’s a desire for
mythology that we don’t have in this age.”
(Editing by Paul Casciato)
