5. Avery Brooks
Anyone who has seen William Shatner's documentary 'The Captains' will know that Avery Brooks came across as a man who might not be all there. Shatner himself described Avery Brooks as ''out there'' and seeing him talk on stage, it was clear why he might be called that. Famous for playing Captain Sisko in Deep Space Nine, Brooks came on stage to a surprisingly energetic and pumped-up crowd considering it was 10am in the morning. 5 minutes into his talk, I knew this was going to be a bit strange. Rarely answering a question directly, Brooks would go on tandems about music and loose philosophy. The man is clearly an intellect, and it is obvious he has had an interesting life and I've got no problem with a bit of high-brow culture at 10am on a Saturday morning, but it got to a point where you wanted to hear less about his favorite author and more about Deep Space Nine. During his answers, he kept asking ''you understand?'' or ''you get what I'm sayin?'' and I know I can't have been the only one who was thinking ''no....not really.'' When he did talk about Star Trek, he spoke a lot about Cirroc Lofton who played his son Jake in the series. Lofton joined him on stage as a surprise guest and Brooks sat down and let Lofton do the talking. That's fine but you paid to see Avery Brooks. And as great as it was to see his TV son on stage with him, no one really cared or wanted to hear Lofton talk about his art work. The love between the two actors was there for everyone to see and Lofton told the audience that Brooks was like a second father because he was 13 when he was cast as Jake Sisko and grew up with Avery Brooks. If someone asked Brooks about character development, storylines etc, his answer was a simple one, ''Ask Ira Behr.'' Ira Behr was the producer on Deep Space Nine and also a guest at the event. I'm not expecting Brooks to be an uber fan of Star Trek and have thoughts on everything from bulk heads to which button raised the station's shields, but you would expect him to know a bit about the development of the show and in any case, if an audience member has spent money to ask you a question, you want a better answer than ''Ask Ira Behr'' I got very little from the talk by Brooks and it was disappointing. His manner suggested that he was either tired, couldn't be bothered or both. His mannerism promoted an audience member to ask him if he was stoned, but Brooks refused to answer and didn't look very happy.