I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

PIERRE BERNARD GOES TO A STARGATE CONVENTION...

(originally entitled "IN CASE ANYONE'S WONDERING...")

Yes, I did see the Late Night with Conan O'Brien video segment last night with Pierre Bernard as a featured guest at a Stargate SG-1 convention, but I didn't immediately talk about it as it wasn't a "Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage" segment per se and I'm waiting for the video of it to appear at Gateworld as I didn't tape it.

EDIT: Oh, geez, some Stargate fans in the Gateworld forum are actually complaining about the comedy bit. Not because it was particularly mean, mind you. This bit was most certainly NOT a Stargate-themed version of the most famous Triumph the Insult Comic Dog comedy bit of all, Triumph making fun of Star Wars fans waiting in line to see Attack of the Clones, since Pierre Bernard is a real person who is a real fan of the series and not a sarcastic puppet, and Stargate fandom doesn't seem to be quite as into "cosplay" as, say, Star Wars fans, Star Trek fans, or, of course, anime fans, meaning that, while their interest in a lesser-known sci-fi franchise is still geeky to the core, there was little of the excesses of other fandoms on display at the Creation Entertainment official Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis convention in Secaucus, New Jersey last weekend. The most eccentric guy shown in the piece was this one very nervous guy who was wearing a Tom Baker-era Doctor Who scarf his friend made and who had a rather humiliating time trying to repeat the joke he always tells about why he wears the scarf at conventions. (He thinks it will be cold because of all the fans in the room, get it?) I suppose his awkwardness in telling a joke is funny in a The Office sort of way, but, for eccentricity, he's no Blackwolf the Dragonmaster.

Nah, they're complaining because they didn't show enough of the stars or of the convention itself, like they were expecting a comedy piece to be a documentary. Uhh... the piece wasn't really about Stargate or Stargate fans, it was about Pierre Bernard himself, not quite capitalizing on but certainly reveling in his newfound Über-fan status within a fandom that is, in many ways, very similar to anime fandom. (The two fandoms aren't quite comparable, since anime fandom encompasses fans of a whole spectrum of shows in wildly different genres within a medium, whilst Stargate is just two intertwined TV series and a Roland Emmerich movie¹. But I can easily lump Stargate fandom and anime fandom together because, while they both have large niche followings (with the Stargate TV shows getting about three or four times the ratings of the best-rated Adult Swim anime), the characters and situations of the shows are virtually unknown to people who aren't fans.) Unlike Star Wars or Star Trek, there is little mainstream public awareness of who the major players in the Stargate universe are, so showing most of the stars, at least of those at the events, would be pretty pointless (especially now that MacGyver's Richard Dean Anderson has left the show). And, like I said, convention-going Stargate fans seem, by and large, to be more low-key than people in some other fandoms, so a room of guys in normal clothing or the military-ish uniforms that most of the Stargate characters wear simply does not have the same entertainment value for non-fans as a room of Darth Vaders and Stormtroopers and Wookies and Klingons (if the Klingons somehow ended up in the Star Wars convention room by mistake).

Not that Pierre didn't try and capitalize on his fame at all; he was trying to pawn off a photo of him with both the Stargate SG-1 and "Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage" logos to a autographed photo dealer.

The segment wasn't "Ha-ha funny" like the Triumph Star Wars bit, but that's not to say that it was humourless, it's just that the humour is dry and a lot more subdued since Pierre doesn't exactly have the most "electric" personality in the world. In other words, it is the King of the Hill to the Triumph Star Wars bit's Family Guy.

Stargate fans should just be happy that the show got some kind of mainstream exposure, and Pierre's small-scale promotion of the show does help bring in new viewers, since I do find myself tuning in occasionally now, not that I'd exactly call myself a huge fan or attempt to answer anything but the most basic of Stargate trivia questions, but, as someone who never really watched the show before Pierre Bernard visited the set, it did at least pique my interest a bit.

I still haven't found a video of the segment, but This page has a first hand account from an audience member of Pierre Bernard's appearance at the convention, and this page has video of both Pierre Bernard's original anti-Daniel Jackson rant and the segment where Pierre visited the set of the show.

¹ The Roland Emmerich Stargate film is roughly to the Stargate TV shows what the original 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie is to the TV series of the same name, an earlier treatment of the same general premise that lacks the depth of the later TV series incarnation since it had to tell a self-contained story in just two hours or so.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 4:33 PM