Becca Jane St Clair

I feel like the luckiest girl right now. Not only did I get to go down to London to watch the red carpet for the Star Trek Picard premiere, but I was handed tickets to the actual premiere!!!

So, let me backtrack. BTW, this post will contain NO SPOILERS for Episode 1, but will mention things like cast (which has been announced for ages). I won’t be offended if you click out and come back on Friday after you watch the first episode.

When I first heard about the premiere happening in London, I immediately checked trains and sighed. The first train of the day wouldn’t have arrived early enough for the 8AM wrist band distribution, and I couldn’t get anyone to pick one up for me, so I was pretty sure I was out of luck. Until I decided to go down the night before on Tuesday.

I arrived to the theatre around 0645 in the morning after a not so great night of sleep. My friend John had been there since 6, and there was about 6-8 people standing around. Weirdly, the majority were actually autograph hounders/dealers…and it had never crossed my mind to bring something to get signed!(oh well). John and I recieved our wristbands and I was #4!

We were told to come back around three to be let into the viewing pens, but John and I decided we didn’t want to stray too far. Of course, it was now just past eight in the morning, so we headed to a Costa for a coffee and wound up hanging around chatting for about an hour, maybe two. John was told they might be giving out tickets to the event, too, so we became hopeful.

After our coffee, we headed back towards the cinema and watched set up for a while until we decided we were getting cold and decided to have an early lunch.

After lunch, we headed back to the park and basically just hung around some more until around 2 in the afternoon, when John suggested we get another hot drink and utilize toilets (it wasn’t his first premiere!). Naturally, we drank Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. By this time, the wind had really picked up and where we were told to wait for our escort was basically in a wind tunnel. BRR. We hoped we would feel warmer once we were in the viewing pen with the others, but they had only given out about 60 out of the 400 wristbands so far.

They put us in the pen around three, with guests set to arrive around five, so we basically spent the two hours standing up against the fence watching set-up finish.

The evening finally got underway with a bit of entertainment for the crowd, and a giveaway of the new comm badge we see in Picard made by Fan Sets. As they were going down the line, I held up Mini Picard because, I mean, I had a Mini Picard on me. I got the Emcee’s attention and he came over and we had some interaction and he gave me a pin and asked me to take a picture with the minis and post it to instagram.

He then started doing an easy quiz to pick people to win tickets into the actual premiere. I wasn’t super hopeful that we would get in because he wasn’t over in our direction, but then there were two guys – one dressed in a TOS uniform and on in a TNG uniform who were duking it out for “best Trek series” and I was heckling the TOS Guy (“Why did you come to a Picard premiere then?” etc) and the Emcee came back to us because he forgot to give John a badge. And then….the best thing…he handed us tickets into the premiere! I hugged him.

Then, the red carpet got underway!

My only complaint about the red carpet walk was that they decided to bring the ticket holders through on the same side we were standing on, so we sometimes had to stretch and crane our heads to watch the arrivals. A better plan would have been to have the ticket holders go in on the other side, especially as it seemed that was where they were directing people to watch the red carpet arrivals. But oh well. So my pictures didn’t come out as great as I would have hoped, but I grabbed a few.

The first arrival was Michelle Hurd, who immediately came through on our side to do signings and selfies.

Jeri Ryan also arrived, and I got to tell her I thought her dress was gorgeous. A few more arrivals from the cast arrived (my photos turned out terrible) and then the man himself arrived!

I also was excited to see Sir Ian arrive to support his friend and I got to witness their reunion, but again, my photos turned out pretty bad. (but there are plenty online!)

…and then my phone battery completely died! Fortunately, I had my battery box along and I quickly plugged in and turned back on my phone.

I won’t go into the bad experience I had just after Patrick Stewart walked past me, that will be in a separate post. But shortly after, an obnoxious man started shouting “Jason, Jason, Jason” over and over at Jason Isaacs, who was in the middle of giving an interview. He walked over and said “WHAT?” to the man, followed by “I heard you shouting my name for ten minutes.” and then he promptly ignored the guy and I got to say hello to him and tell him that #TeamBasement (his unofficial fan club he knows about) said hello, and he told me to tell them hello back, and did I want a selfie to share with them?

…Uhm, YES.

The red carpet (Well, white and silver!) portion ended, and most of the people left, except for those of us who were given tickets to go inside. They let us in and John and I climbed…and climbed…and climbed. Row Q was at the very top of the balcony level…but it didn’t matter, we were IN!

Patrick Stewart and Alex Kurtzman took to the stage and welcomed us, and Patrick asked us not to spoil anything we saw that night, and Alex added that we could after Thursday (US release date), so I will not be adding any spoilers for the first episode other than to say that it was amazing and I’m really excited for the series. The show was dramatic and it had it’s funny moments and at one point we heard Ian loudly exclaiming in surprise!

After the episode, we go to have a Q&A with the cast who was present, although that did contain spoilers as well.

And then, the evening was over, and I found my friend Duncan, who said he wanted to talk to me for his podcast. You can hear me in The Line, available on Trek.fm!

I made a quick detour to check out Picardilly Circus before heading to King’s Cross and my train back home.

I managed to catch the Portal 47 folks briefly on our monthly Euro call to tell them about the evening, and then I napped the whole way home.

What a night!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission.

Tickets to the premiere of Star Trek Picard and the Fan Set’s delta badge provided by Amazon Prime UK.

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