My first convention was Star Trek in Milwaukee by the airport, in 1993. I mentioned that William Shatner was the main guest (and truthfully, I think the only guest) and he made a man cry.
I went with two friends of mine. We were there the entire day because Shatner's talk was the last thing happening that day. It was a Creation con, which means that the talks are just fan Q&A sessions. The reason I have stopped going to panels at the cons I attend is because fan Q&A sessions are the worst thing I can imagine. The questions are almost always incredibly stupid and it's torturous to listen to. I didn't know this then, and so we all gathered by the stage waiting for Shatner to show.
He showed up, and started taking questions. Most of them were the standard stuff like what is your favorite episode? and which guest stars did you like the most?, but then it happened. Up comes a guy wearing Kirk's Admiral uniform from Wrath of Khan. He was a thin guy with a thin mustache, and he strolled up and said 'Mr. Shatner, I would like you to know that I am the Star Trek trivia champion of southeastern Wisconsin --' [this meant something then, I guess, since you had to track down the trivia and the random info by reading books and old issues of the Star Trek Communicator Magazine] '-- and I would like to know how you felt about doing an episode of The Outer Limits with Leonard Nimoy before doing Star Trek?' Obviously the question was meant to show his Trek knowledge. If it wasn't, he could have phrased it differently like 'when you did that episode of The Outer Limits, did you ever think you would work together again?' It would have given Shatner a chance to say some random platitudes about how much he and Nimoy are great friends. Instead, Shatner glanced away dismissively and said 'Well, I did it, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.'
That would have been bad enough for the trivia champ. The problem though, was that there were 45 minutes left in the talk and every time someone would come up and ask a question about Trek (and not all the questions were -- there were some Tek War and TJ Hooker questions, too) Shatner would yell out 'HEY MR. STAR TREK MAN, do you know the answer to this one?' We would all laugh, he would answer the question and then move on.
I thought he was great. He is a great storyteller and he really knew how to work the audience. As we were walking out to the car, though, we see Mr. Star Trek Man sitting in the open back of a mini van, a gaggle of Star Fleet officers surrounding him, bawling into his hands while they tried to comfort him. I laughed a little then, but years later I feel for the guy. Sure, he was smarmy and wanted to prove he was the smartest person in the room which led to Shatner taking him down a peg. But, Captain Kirk (and by extension, William Shatner) was my childhood idol and the idea of him doing that to me is terrifying. Years later when I did meet the guy, he could not have been more awesome, but until the second I got up there I was worried it would all go south.
