At sea north of Moa, Cuba

By 13:00 we made had made another tough decision: to attend the Discovery panel, rather than Gate’s McFadden’s choreography session. At the panel Ethan Peck, Anson Mount, Wilson Cruz, Mary Chieffo and Kenneth Mitchel discussed the continuing voyages of the United Starship Discovery. They were all full of praise for Sonequa Martin-Green who plays Burnham and for the quality of the sets, which it seems are much more complete and immersive than on previous series.

From Discovery, at Dan’s request we headed to the diversity panel, hosted by Gaaaays in Space; the discussion with Wilson Cruz, Johnathan Del Arco and Robb Pearlman had a particular focus on queer representation in Star Trek. The Gaaaays in Space representation in the audience was strong and the whole session had a strong sense of gay/queer identity; Dan admitted to feeling a little out of place at times, then guiltily wondering if this is how gay friends feel almost all of the time in a world that is often heteronormative. From the panel, we headed to The Second Coming, a play starring Denise Crosby and John Delancy; it was a fun play but much shorter than the 1 hour running time that was billed.

We were feeling hungry by this time and headed to the dining room for dinner; we were seated with Kimberly, a passenger from Charleston (the one in South Carolina, not the one in Cornwall). Kim had studied at the London School of Economics, and Dan was amazed to find someone who leaned in rather than glazed over at the mention of the grey economy - in fact it turned out it had played a major role in her dissertation at LSE. Kim and Alex were kindred spirits in their mutual love of board games. The food was good and we all chatted away for some time, before agreeing to go to the evening show together.Read more