Toronto Trek 17 took place July 11-13, 2003 at the Regal Constellation Hotel. By coincidence, this was the same weekend that Space began rerunning Farscape from the Season 1 Premiere. It was, in other words, an ideal weekend to educate science fiction fans about Farscape and the Save Farscape campaign. A small but dedicated band of Scapers, some from as far afield as Montreal and Alexandria, ON, descended on the hotel…

Preparation:
Suse and I arrived at the Regal Constellation Hotel to a scene of complete chaos. This, I gather, is fairly standard. We thought it would be best to find our table first rather than tracking down Crankygrrl (who was on the con organizing committee, and therefore a basket case for pretty much the entire weekend) and trying to get into our room. Accordingly, Suse and I unpacked the car and were setting up the table when TBZF, BandanaGirl and Davia arrived with lots and lots of Stuff.

I had a Bag of Writey Things and a Bag of Attachy Things to go with my box of flyers, my binder of attempted organization (schedule, mailing labels, petitions, posters and more), and my laptop. Crankygrrl, when tracked down, had brought many many postcards, plus two clipboards, a bunch of pens, CDs of Farscape episodes to play on the laptop, and the Convention Swag Kit from Save Farscape. BandanaGirl brought a lot of Ratscape posters, which she made into a collage, and more postcards; Davia had made 143 buttons (originally 150, but 7 came apart, so we were left with 143). TBZF brought the gorgeous big poster her son made for ConCept, plus a slightly smaller version to be raffled off, a dozen small placemat-sized posters, her 28 Days Later prize pack, a D'Argo action figure and, of course, lots of cookies!

Table:
When we were done, the table looked fantastic. It was about 8 feet wide and located on the wall between the entrances to the main room and the autograph room, therefore nicely visible! We had the Dr. Who Information Network on our left and a fanfic zine group on our right; everyone was very tolerant of our madness and even helped with the prize draws.

We quickly realized that we had far too much stuff to put it all on the table at the same time. Once we had sorted out what to put where, however, the laptop, with episodes playing, was dead centre, just behind a clipboard with the petition on it. On one side of the table we had TBZF's cookies, the bowl of Starburst, the donation jar, and our copies of the cookbook, with flyers for Volume II of the cookbook. On the other side of the table were the postcards and the basket of buttons. There were flyers and business cards and pens all over the table. We also put the small Save Farscape Canada sign, with small Starburst candy stuck to it, towards the front of the table, along with a poster advertising the time and location of the next Farscape panel. We hung the big poster behind us, with some smaller posters stuck on either side of it. We stacked the prizes for the various draws on the ledge behind the table, and put our boxes under the table. The setup process was painfully slow and complicated on Friday, better on Saturday, and down to a science on Sunday, and now we never have to do it again. Such is life.

We tried to set up by 10 each morning and have 2 people on the table at all times, with plenty of time for breaks and panels. The ConCept experience was exhausting and we had no wish to repeat the 6-hour stretches with no breaks. This worked out pretty well. We didn't keep the table open too long, usually shutting down around dinner time (depending how many people were around) - about 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and when the closing ceremonies started Sunday.

Table staffers worked incredibly hard answering questions, explaining the prize draw, selling buttons ($1 each), encouraging people to sign posters and petitions, and most of all telling people about the cancellation, the campaign and the prospects for the future. Several people came by and said, in effect, "but what's the point of trying to save the show? It's not going to work, is it?" I think we convinced at least a few of them otherwise!

TBZF also took a number of pictures of people with "I Am Farscape" signs for the photomosaic.

Prize Draws:
We had a lot of swag to give away, and eventually decided (since our goal was to get lots of postcards) to give out 1 raffle ticket for each postcard written, with several draws a day and the proviso that people must be present at the draw to win a prize. This worked very well indeed - we drew a lot of traffic to the table and ended up with 147 signed postcards! TBZF ran a couple of supplementary draws: one for the big poster, at $1 per entry, and one for the smaller posters (to enter, people had to know what TBZF stands for). The draw for the big poster was especially popular.

Prizes (from the Save Farscape convention swag kit, except where noted) were as follows. We included a button of the winner's choice with each prize.

Friday draw:

• Best of Season 1 DVD box set

Saturday 2:30 draw:

• Premiere/I, ET DVD
• Aeryn action figure
• Farscape magazine (donated by Crankygrrl)
• Bandana with Farscape logo (handmade by BandanaGirl)

Saturday 6:00 draw:

• Best of Season 1 DVD box set
• Nerve/The Hidden Memory VHS
• 28 Days Later prize pack (donated by TBZF)
• Small laminated poster (donated by TBZF)
• Bandana with Farscape logo (handmade by BandanaGirl)

Sunday 1:30 draw:

• D'Argo action figure (donated by TBZF)
• Premiere/I, ET VHS tape
• TV Zone magazine (Farscape special, donated by Crankygrrl)
• Uncharted Territory guide to Farscape
• Bandana with Farscape logo (handmade by BandanaGirl)
• Small laminated poster (donated by TBZF)

Sunday 4:00 draw:

• Best of Season 1 DVD box set
• D'Argo action figure (donated by Gary, who moderates the Farscape Canada group on Yahoo)
• Crichton action figure (also donated by Gary)
• Small laminated poster (donated by TBZF)
• And the grand prize poster.

The must-be-present-to-win requirement did mean that we usually had to go through a lot of losing tickets to get to the winners, but on the whole it made for many fewer headaches.

Promotion:
We tried to have flyers and business cards to give out at each of the Farscape panels (Suse and BandanaGirl were on all of them and Crankygrrl and Electric Landlady were on a couple, which made it simpler). We also left a pile of flyers on the flyer table near the dealers' room, and made sure it was kept replenished through the weekend. Aside from that, our biggest assets were the big poster hanging behind the table, our efforts with the autograph line, and the fact that we had a kick-ass table with lots of stuff to give away or sell - several people remarked on this!

Panels:
Toronto Trek was very kind to us and programmed no less than four Farscape-specific panels, all of which went well.

I was only on one (Save Farscape, on Saturday afternoon). It was well-attended and lively - we were able to give a good account of the cancellation and the campaign history, as well as current efforts being made. As at the table, we got a lot of questions about whether there was any hope for the show.

Memorable Moments:
We met quite a few people from this and other sites.

MeezKitty from Spacecast was a huge help folding flyers and sticking mailing labels on postcards.

Jonathan took a clipboard with the petition up and down the autograph line several times and is largely responsible for the 255 signatures we collected!

Anthony Stewart Head looked over at the table, saw the poster, smiled, and waved at Suse and TBZF sitting under it.

Lar deSouza of In Other News came and chatted for quite a while, and wrote a postcard to Bonnie Hammer that included the most adorable Rygel cartoon EVER.

The Bitter Guy took a bunch of blank postcards and brought them back signed.

Carol and Marcy came by in costume as Zhaan and Aeryn with a fine-looking Crais in tow. They didn't enter the masquerade, but another Zhaan did, and won a prize!

BandanaGirl left her camera at the Save Star Trek table. Much dismay, but she has it back now.

In Summary:
We came, we gave away stuff, we got 147 postcards signed and 255 signatures for the petition, we made $220 ($180 net after paying for the buttons), we gave out a ton of information, we persuaded a lot of people to watch a few episodes of Farscape, we got many compliments on our table, we stayed up way too late and got up cruelly early, we had a fantastic time and we didn't go crazy.

We're getting our show back for sure!