Star Trek Las Vegas | 2026
Journey into Sin City with me as I recount my tale of attending my first ever Star Trek Las Vegas convention put on by Creation Entertainment. This event is held every year at the Rio Convention Center. The convention runs from Wednesday through Sunday, however, I only attended Wednesday through Friday. There, my goal was to nerd out with fellow trekkies and meet some of the actors from some of the shows. I was also there to film stuff for my fan convention documentary.
I’m fairly certain fan conventions would not exist without Star Trek fans, so I figured this would not only be good research for my film, but I also wanted to show my adoration for those who started fan culture and who attend and put on these types of events all over the country. I remember watching the original series in 2020 during lockdown and had seen all of the newer Trek films with Chris Pine. I wasn’t blown away by them. I think my takeaway was that I liked Trek more than Star Wars because the tone was darker and the stories were more complex. It’s kind of why I like DC more than Marvel, but honestly I like both so it really depends on the mood I’m in. It wasn’t until this past year I decided to give Trek another go but this time start with The Next Generation. I ended up really enjoying this series and I’m still in the process of finishing all 7 seasons. I told myself before I went to STLV that I needed to have at least consumed enough Trek to be able to hold a conversation with people about 1 of the shows. TNG has become my show. I fell in love with the characters.
Now that I had some experience knowing the difference between a Klingon and Ramulan, it was time to board my 38 minute Southwest Enterprise flight to Vegas. I wasn’t able to score a room at the Rio, but I stayed next door at the Gold Coast Hotel and Casino. I highly recommend it for $60 a night. It sounds old and gross, but it was very clean and the people working there were super nice. I’m a picky hotel person and I approve of this hotel. It’s not a massive hotel either so you don’t get lost which is nice. I get overstimulated in casinos with all the sounds and flashing lights. They are my backrooms. I feel like I can never get out. Whatever sense of direction I had is gone. Having said that, after I checked into my room I was trying to find the elevators to get to the rooms and was having a hard time. This man (another Trek fan) looked like he was also trying to find them so we clocked each other and met up and I was like, “Hey, do you know where the elevators are?” and he was like, “No, they always make it so difficult in these places.” Eventually we asked someone. We walked down the hall together and he introduced himself. We talked about the con and how it was my first time there. He was excited to hear that. I told him I’d probably see him around.
DAY 1
When I first arrived at the convention center and saw the giant letters STLV I immediately got excited. My first Star Trek convention was happening! Looking around, there were people in cosplay and so many people in uniforms from all of the different shows. I went into the vendor hall and began looking at all the booths selling Star Trek merchandise from action figures to t-shirts to pet tribbles. Aether Objects had a booth there. They sell high end dice for Dungeons and Dragons. I went over there and was like, “I’m a dice goblin so the fact that you guys are here is entrapment.” They then offered me a free D6 from their mystery bag. I fell in love with their cathedral dice, however, there was a chonk D20 made specifically for the show 12 Monkeys that caught my eye. I kept picking it up and putting it back down. I left their table and came back like 2 days later before finally purchasing it. I was like, this guy needs a home. He’s out of place at this Trek convention.
Todd Stashwick
The celebrity autograph area had a lot of great actors from shows ranging from TNG, Lower Decks, and Deep Space Nine. I have not gotten far enough in my Trek binge to know who most of these characters or shows were. Funny enough, I knew who a lot of the actors were because they had played in Todd Stashwick’s charity D&D games. My main focus was to meet people from the Next Gen cast. Before that though, I needed to go say hi to my pal Todd Stashwick. I got him to sign a photo of him and Riker from Picard. Todd wrote “It’s my ship!” and told me to go have Frakes sign it. I got in Jonathan Frakes’s line which wasn’t too bad of a wait, maybe like 10-15 minutes. There was a woman in front of me who started chatting me up and I complimented her photo she was going to get signed. It was a cartoon image of Frakes and Brent Spiner from their podcast, Dropping Names with Brent and Johnny. She already had Spiner’s signature on it, so she was getting Frakes on it. I told her I had just come from seeing Todd and showed her what I was getting signed. She goes, “Oh I love Todd. I love his podcast” which I think she meant to say his coffee chats he does on Instagram live. The coffee chats have become a Saturday morning ritual. I love them. When I approached Jonathan Frakes I told him I loved his work as an actor but also as a director. I gave him the photo to sign and he’s smiling as he’s writing on it. I laughed, “Todd said you would have something to say about that” His response he wrote was “Bullshit!” When we went to take our photo I was wearing my camera backpack and had my tote bag and he goes, “Take all that stuff off. Make yourself comfortable.” I threw everything off to the side. I was talking to a friend about this which was, the “Jonathan Frakes Effect”. Doesn’t matter who you are, he’s so charming you get flustered and don’t know what to do. It’s kind of hilarious. I felt a little too enthusiastic when he asked, “Can I put my hand on your shoulder?” and I said “Oh yes! Of course!” What a gentleman.
I also had the pleasure of meeting John de Lancie who played “Q” in Next Gen and made appearances in Picard. He’s an iconic character so I was excited to meet him. I didn’t really say much to him aside from it’s so nice to meet you. I think at this point I was starting to fade. I didn’t have to travel far to get there, but I had been up since 4am and it was now like 5pm. I also had a photo op with Todd at like 2:40pm between meeting people. It was a busy first day. I put a hold on meeting anyone else and decided to wait until tomorrow when I’m more fresh and awake. That night, I went back to my hotel, ordered pizza to-go and ate it in my room while laying on the bed looking at my Star Trek Magic the Gathering cards they handed out to people at registration. The perfect quiet nerd night in.
DAY 2
The next morning, I ate a big breakfast at the hotel restaurant and headed back to the Rio to continue my adventures. I spent most of the morning filming Todd Stashwick meeting and interacting with his fans. In my convention documentary, I have footage of Dee Wallace meeting fans so I wanted to make sure everyone had equal screen time. Also, not a lot of footage like this exists out there of them at conventions. I feel like people should see just how lovely these guys are at cons. Especially since a lot of us are socially awkward and don’t know if an actor is going to be nice to talk to or not. If people only knew how kind Todd is then his line would also be 5 hours long like Matthew Lillard’s. It was fun seeing fans nerd out with him.
Terry Matalas
After that, I went over to Jenny Johnson’s booth. She is the “Artist” fan in my documentary. She does a lot of cool paintings of scenes from various film and tv shows. This week she was doing a live painting, so I filmed a bunch of stuff with her. I underestimated her fan base because WOW, the amount of visitors she had at her booth was pretty crazy. So many people came up to talk to her. She might as well have been one of the celebrity guests. She’s such a pro. It was fun to be there with her and her friend Matt as her emotional support people while she hurried away on a commission piece that had a very short time frame to be completed in. After filming with her I decided to get in Brent Spiner’s line and met him. Super nice guy. He asked me what I do for a living. I said I worked in tech. He asked me what part of tech and I said the creative marketing side. And then I threw in that I was a filmmaker because I’m trying to get better at not being afraid to say that to people. He wished me luck on my project. I also met Michael Dorn. I’m at the point in my TNG journey that I’m getting to know his character Worf more and he’s becoming one of my new favorite characters, so it was cool to meet him. I was also so excited to meet Terry Matalas. He had a bunch of fun items on his table like props from shows and tv scripts. I bought a Picard script that he signed. I told him congrats on Vision Quest and said that this script will go well with my Jones record from 12 Monkeys that he had messaged me about like a week prior. He remembered and was like “Oh yeah!” I was like, yeah my office space is turning into a Terry Matalas corner. I love that he’s just as much into movie/tv props and memorabilia as I am. Nerd recognizes nerd. I respect that. I also threw in there that I’m sorry his D&D character in Todd’s game got stomped out by a unicorn and he goes, “That’s always happening to me.”
Speaking of D&D, I met a man with a “Service Tribble” he was walking and we were talking about convention families. I told him I started out with horror conventions and became a part of some horror families through those. I started learning D&D and TTRPGs and attended Gary Con, made a little family out of that community and then that eventually led me to Star Trek. He was like, “Oh you’re sucked in now. You can’t get out.” I will join any family/community, apparently. Sign me up for the Trek Mafia.
DAY 3
I had no plans for my last day other than to enjoy the con and hang out with my new friends. Michelle Hurd got there Friday so she was my #1 priority that morning in terms of autographs. I got in her line like 1 hr early, maybe more. I’m glad I did because her line ended up being huge! I was happy to see that kind of turnout for her. She was delightful. I told her I loved her in Picard and then told her I had seen her play in Todd’s D&D game. She was like, he’s such a great storyteller. I told her I probably gave her some re-rolls to which she said thank you! It was a fun interaction. She’s so talented.
I went back to Jenny’s booth and at one point, Jay came over and met all of us. For context, Todd Stashwick does these D&D charity games (in case you didn’t know from all of my previous references to it) and people can bid on seats to play. Jay has won those seats a few times. He and I were in a bidding war with Andy and it was this whole thing. We were laughing about it. He came and hung out with us. We knew of each other from the coffee chats but had never met before. He, Jenny and I had a long talk about how Todd manages to always bring people together and create these cool little friendships and collaborations. He’s always doing things behind the scenes to make things happen for other people and it’s really sweet to hear other people’s stories because we all share similar experiences. We sort of bonded over that.
Also, super random but John Rhys-Davies was there signing. I guess he was in Star Trek. I haven’t gotten that far. His agent came by Jenny’s booth and I was like, “We’ve met before. I just saw you in Anaheim” and he was like “Oh yeah! You’re making the documentary.” Super nice guy. We talked for a bit about business stuff. He told me to stop by later to say hi to John which I did. I also happened to catch his panel which was fun. He’s so sharp and witty.
Galaxy Quest Live Reading
As the convention started winding down, I stayed at Jenny’s booth and helped her tear everything down to take back up to her room. Because it was already 6pm and we had a live reading of Galaxy Quest to get to at 7:30pm, we didn’t have time to eat and hadn’t eaten anything since this morning. Jay volunteered to go run and grab us food. For whatever reason Jenny and I were craving curly fries so Jay went and picked up 6 orders of curly fries (2 each) and met up with us in the hallway to distribute them. Once we came back down from the room, we took the fries with us to eat in line before the show. I got to see some Galaxy Quest cosplayers which was the highlight of my week. I love that movie so much. The show was so fun. It’s kind of embarrassing that I knew the entire dialogue. Some things were improvised/changed, but for the most part it was like I was watching the movie. All of the actors were great in it. When it got over, we headed back and while we were walking down the hall, the same 3 Galaxy Quest cosplayers were in front of us still in character rolling the beryllium sphere and Jay and I couldn’t stop laughing. The guy on the left was walking in-character. The woman in the middle rolling the ball. The guy on the right was not in character and he kept looking back at us giggling at them like WE were the crazy ones. I think he was over it and just wanted to go back to his room. I was like, this is amazing. I couldn’t think of a better way to end my first STLV.
Jay, Jenny, and Myself
One major thing I took away from my first Trek convention was just how nice everyone was. It didn’t matter how much Trek you’ve seen or haven’t seen. Fans are just excited that you’re into it. I was at one of those standing tables in the lounge and a couple asked if they could stand there too so I said yes. The man opened his Reeses Cups candy and offered me one of them which was nice. One of the times I got into the elevator, 3 more Trek people came in (all in cosplay) and 1 non-Trek person and the non-Trek person goes, “Are you Trek fans?” and we all looked at each other and laughed, “No.” Wholesome interactions like those give me the warm fuzzies. Leaving STLV made me a little sad and I hope this becomes an annual thing for me because I liked the size of this convention, liked the turnout of guests and I had a pretty good time.
