A meeting of the minds occurred at the “Infinite Riker Games” on Sunday at 4PM in the Hilton Grand East ballroom. Ten lucky contestants competed in a series of challenges to prove their worthiness as Will Riker cosplayers. Jonathan Frakes has lit up our TV screens for years as Star Trek’s Will Riker, a charismatic Starfleet officer known for his tactical skill and innovative leadership. Originating on 1987’s Star Trek: The Next Generation, Will Riker quickly stole viewers’ hearts. Having appeared in several Star Trek series such as Voyager and Picard, decades after his introduction Riker lives on in fans’ minds.
In TNG, Riker was known to sit down by swinging his leg over the chair back in a maneuver now known among fans as “The Riker.” The competition began with contestants showing off their best Rikerian chair mounts. Contestants made the most of their brief displays. A panel of Deanna Troi cosplayers watched on, diligently judging the Rikers’ efforts.
The competition continued with the charisma category, in which contestants were made to act out words in character as Will Riker. The Deannas pulled slips out of a bag, calling out emotions such as “perplexed” and “jazzed” as well as more Star Trek-specific terms like “red alert” and “first contact.” The Rikers hammed it up for the audience, doing their best impressions.
For the next category, panel host Jess Eppstein urged contestants to show off their literal and metaphorical beards with acts of strength. Highlights included hypergravity push-ups, board-breaking, and an attempted judge bribe with Risian horga’hn fertility totems. One Riker warded off a Gorn attack to the audience’s delight.
In the next set of trials, contestants acted out how they would react if their starship was under attack. Some contestants coolly reclined in their captain’s chairs, while others visibly panicked and fell out of their seats. These varying reactions reflected Frakes’s nuanced and dynamic performance of Riker in the source material. For the final category, contestants were instructed to “trombone.” Tromboning was defined by one contestant as “performing marginal tasks mostly to impress women.” Contestants engaged in a wide variety of tromboning activities, including reading encyclopedia entries, performing dramatic monologues, and cooking moopsy. Contestant Alpha won these 5th Annual Infinite Riker Games, ensuring her victory by folding a fitted sheet to thunderous applause. In an effusive victory speech, the contestant credited her win to a commitment to embodying the high standard for Riker set by Frakes.
