There must be something said about gathering at a convention with thousands of your closest friends. It feels as if you’re at a family reunion with people you really enjoy seeing. This was the atmosphere at Fan Expo held at the Ernest Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana. The convention boosted a lineup of celebrities such Star Trek’s Anson Mount, Voice Actor Charles Martinet (Super Mario), and Giancarlo Esposito who has been on everything great; that is if you count Breaking Bad.
Since the inception of the convention, once referred to as Wizard World New Orleans, we have been hosting programming. From Star Trek, to Doctor Who, and even Sci-Fi Jeopardy there has been some great content produced for this convention. This year Eric LeBlanc and I held two separate panels with the first being A Star Trek Retrospective and the second “Is the Orville the Greatest Sci-Fi Show on Television?”. In the Star Trek panel, we discussed the legacy that the show has brought with exclusive video of Majel Barrett Roddenberry the First Lady of Star Trek. She recounted her thoughts about what Gene’s opinion might have been on Star Trek returning in 2009. For The Orville panel we were joined by Owen Cotter, owner and editor of www.scifiction.com. The Orville, once referred to as a comedy in space, has matured throughout its 3 years on the air from a humble start at FOX to a move to Hulu. It has been interesting to see how much the show has grown and how it tackles themes of varying nature.
Like other Fan Expo events, the main programming stage was placed near the show floor. We had an opportunity to see a panel discussion from Star Wars Clone Wars stars Ashley Eckstein, Matt Lanter, and James Arnold Taylor. Following their appearance was Star Wars Strange New Worlds stars Anson Mount and Ethan Peck. This was the only panel in which I mustered up the courage to ask a question concerning the 2nd Season crossover episode with Lower Decks.
“First time I heard the Idea I thought it was a terrible one, I will be honest. And then when he explained to me how they want to do it, oh that’s brilliant.”
Anson Mount – Fan Expo New Orleans 2023
Mount went on to explain that “Comedy has to happen in the moment” and it appears that this along with the direction of Jonathan Frakes, episode Director, will make for an exciting episode. Star Trek Strange New Worlds returns to Paramount+ in mid-2023.
Overall, the convention looked to be a great success with a great amount of people in attendance. However, I don’t believe that the convention fully met its attendance expectations most likely with fallout from both Covid-19 and the current financial recession. The convention did have a great showcase of artists throughout the show floor, but it lacked in some area of having vendors with general or hard to find fandom collectibles. It did do a great job of balancing to ensure it wasn’t too much like a flea market in terms of those odd booths selling insurance or something of that nature.
We will have a full review of this convention plus our thoughts for 2023 on the next episode of The Weekend Geeks. I’ll post a link on the website when the next episode is released. Fan Expo will return to New Orleans January 5-7, 2024.
