Armageddon Expo From A Fan’s Perspective – Melbourne 2010 (Part 4)
A huge part of the Expo is the panel’s, which usually run all day and a number of them are actually exclusive to VIP ticket holders. There are a fair number of seats for the panel’s and they usually only feature one or two guests at a time. The guests get a nice couch to sit on, and if they wish to have a general chat to the crowd they do, otherwise they get stuck into a crowd Q&A. Because of how busy things were for me at this Expo, I only managed to sit through two panel’s which were for Ben Browder (from Farscape and Stargate) and Michael Shanks (from Stargate). These two were without a doubt the stars of the Expo, their lines for autographs and photos were never ending! A great number of people were there to see them, and I knew if I wanted to see any Panel I’d have to sit in on one I didn’t want to see in order to get a seat for the big ones.
First up was Ben Browder, he was a few minutes late and the host of the panel’s local actor Jay Laga’aia was on hand. He got the crowd worked up until Ben hit the stage. A lot of the early talk was about Farscape and how he lived in Australia for a number of years while he did the show. He mentioned about how at the time sci-fi wasn’t the ideal programming for the network it was showing on here and they got the dead time slot. He praised the show though, and clearly it still means a lot to him.
After that he got stuck into the Q&A portion of the panel. Well he tried to, this man loves to talk and at one point he was so into his talk he almost walked off the stage. The 
questions were typical fan questions and most people wanted to ask him about Stargate, and there was a lot of teasing going on about if he thought he was better than Richard Dean Anderson, if he replaced him and so forth. Even with the dumbest of questions Ben added so much humor to it all, he was really fun to watch and listen to. At one point he even got off the stage to someone in the crowd because he couldn’t hear the question they were asking. The funniest point was when someone asked him “Was it your idea or the writers for you to always be taking your pants off?” the crowd erupted with laughter over the question that prompted a guy in the crowd to shout “Take them off now!” to which he responded with “No” and laughed. He eventually managed to answer the question “The first time that happened it was actually my idea, as I thought it was needed for the scene. But all the other time’s it was the writers idea, and I didn’t actually tell them the reason for why I did it the first time.” And again an audience member shouted “We thank you for that” to which he responded, “You’re welcome!” It didn’t take long for the panel to be over and in a timely fashion Michael Shanks got on stage for his 
panel. The crowd went crazy when the two of them were on stage, they shared a few jokes, it was crazy!
So Ben left and the stage was all Michael’s, however it was at this point that the live wrestling from across the hall was starting and unfortunately the screaming and the loud noises kept interrupting Michael. He did joke that Ben was probably in the middle of the scuffle! Michael wanted to get right into the Q&A and some questions were actually a bit on the … let’s say silly side. A few of the better ones were “Was playing Hawkman on Smallville your ideal superhero to play?” to which Michael responded with “No actually, while he was a great character I found that costume to actually be quite painful. I liked the changes they made from the original costume, but having those wings on wasn’t pleasant. In episode 11 I believe it is, entitled Icarus I figured I’d be wearing those things again. I did enjoy the most recent episode as I didn’t have to worry about that and there was no costume.”
Another really good one was someone asked Michael about his inspirations and influences growing up. He said in terms of his work ethic, his inspirations were his parents. And as far as influences he said as a child he watched a lot of TV shows and films, which definitely fuelled his imagination, however didn’t state which ones. The last of the good questions was “Which actor would you most like to work with?” and Michael responded right off the bat with Gary Oldman. He stated he was one of his favourites and having seen him recently he really wanted to work with him, he got the idea that Gary was a good man. He mentioned Daniel Day Lewis being a favourite actor of his but he wasn’t sure if he could handle working with him on something. By this time in the panel the wrestling had gotten so loud it was getting so hard to hear anything. Which is a shame because both men were entertaining and the crowd loved them. They seemed like great guys and I am sure they made a lot of fans very happy!
Join Us On Facebook
Advertisement
