So on Sunday, Annie and I took two guys that she works with to Niagara Falls ComicCon and had a great day of it. I don’t want to really go into detail about the event itself, but more just focusing on the Tim Russ Q&A session we went to first thing in the morning.

Once arriving, Annie and I almost immediately went to sit in line for the session to make sure we were able to secure decent seats, and we were around two or three rows from the front of the small room. By the time Tim came in to talk, a few minutes late, the room was only half full and considering it could hold probably less than two hundred people, I was shocked by the lack of attendance.

Tim Russ was Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager, and will reprise that character in Star Trek Renegades, an independent movie shooting this fall. I was going to ask him about Renegades, but he jumped in and discussed it before I could.

Annie and I are currently working through watching Star Trek Voyager, so while Tuvok wasn’t my favourite characters from Voyager, the session was the best of the day.

We were able to hear about his opinions on a variety of subjects including his involvement with Renegades, working as a director versus an actor, and his thoughts on the upcoming Star Wars movies. His insights on Disney being a corporate octopus were amusing to say the least, and his humour had the room completely energized by the end.

He took the mandatory Star Trek questions in good stride, and really seemed to feel comfortable in showing how opinionated he is about the current state of science fiction television. After talking about how there have been dozens of pitches for new Star Trek shows, and how they aren’t currently planning to make one due to the cost per episode being too high, I got the opportunity to ask him why then they were taking the gamble on Star Trek Renegades, which they plan to shop to CBS Paramount. His response was that they know they’ll have to remain off-lot, and potentially film more content in Canada if they want to make the series work, as filming in California is just too expensive. They also hope to prove that a high quality Star Trek story can be done for a limited budget, but he also sighed in frustration acknowledging the fact that if it works, they’ll have to continue to produce content with a tight budget, saying something along the lines of, “if this is a success, they’ll want us to make more at the same low price.”

Unfortunately, he ran out of time before being able to promote the band he is the front-runner for, but I am planning on checking out the music he creates, which apparently can be found on iTunes under his name.

In seeing this session alone, I was happy to have been in the car for nearly an hour and a half, after waking up before seven in the morning to see him speak.

Want to see more pictures from Niagara Falls ComicCon 2013? Check out my Flickr.