TrekFest 38 will tap Deep Space Nine theme

RIVERSIDE — The last full weekend in June will once again turn Riverside into a hot spot for sci-fi enthusiasts this weekend during the 38th TrekFest, the town’s annual festival celebrating its claim to fame as the future birthplace of Star Trek’s Capt. James T. Kirk.

While the town’s Trek culture disproportionately focuses on that character’s three-season original series, TrekFest 38 Chair Travis Riggan said organizers were just as enthusiastic about this year’s attention to the later franchise series: Deep Space Nine.

“The issue with the original series, the TOS, is that it’s not gaining as much momentum as the newer series,” he said. “For our town festival to be successful in all aspects, we can’t keep on having the original series cast members coming to our events. (And) they are getting up there in age, so we have to get younger, we have to go in and look for younger celebrities to come into our event. So, a newer series allows us to do that, as well as to target a younger demographic that may have tuned in at a later stage of the Star Trek timeline.”

The parade theme this year is “Quark’s Bar,” based on the heavily used DS9 set, and tied together by headliner guest star Chase Masterson, the actress who played Leeta, one of the show’s recurring characters.

“We were reaching out … probably in, I would say, October, November,” Riggan said. “She was definitely a fan favorite that we’ve been listening to for a few years, asking if she would ever be available to come to TrekFest.”

Other stars in the guest lineup include Lolita Fatjo, a script and preproduction coordinator for several Star Trek series and a production associate for the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact; as well as makeup artist John Paladin and a host of the Star Trek fan-made Computer Resume Podcast.

Riggan said a lot of the events would otherwise look the same as last year. There’s a long lineup of live music, a free inflatable area for kids, a model-building competition, local restaurant collaborations, a T-ball tournament, the Riverside Shipyard beer tent and celebrity Q&As.

A complete schedule for Thursday, Friday and Saturday can be found on the TrekFest 38 website.

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