Your guide to Starfest this weekend: Ten events not to miss

​StarFest is kicking off this weekend, and packed into the three day event are five different festivals, hundreds of activities and enough dork-power to raise Firefly from the ashes. You can pick up a full schedule here, but if it's a bit overwhelming, we've broken it down to ten events you won't want to miss under any circumstance. One quick note: In the original article we printed that Jonathan Frakes (Commander William T. Riker, beard enthusiast) will be attending, but he had to cancel. Fortunately, the completely awesome LeVar Burton (Lieutenant Geordi La Forge, hero to Jef Otte) will be coming in his place, so Trek nerds need not worry.

​10. RoboFest
(All weekend)
While it'll probably be difficult to miss, you should make sure you have time set aside to check out RoboFest this year. You'll be able to scope plenty of life-size robots from the movies, but there will also be a few robots from the R2 and B9 Robot clubs that you won't want to overlook.

​9. Pirate Galaxy
(Weekend-long game)
When you walk into StarFest, you'll be given a map. Clues will be given throughout the weekend that will lead you to different panels and events where you'll be given a stamp on your map to show you solved the clue, at the end you'll have a chance to win some prizes -- if you're smart enough to solve the clues and finish the map.

​8. Teaching Comics
(Friday, 4-7 p.m.)
This looks incredibly long, but the panels are broken up across age-range, so at 4 p.m. is the Teach Comics to Elementary/Middle School panel, at 5 p.m. is the High School portion and 6 p.m. marks the college section. Teaching comics isn't easy for a number of reasons, namely that it's hard to get approval from button-down administrators, but these panels should help with that, as well as in collecting together source texts (one of which is bound to be the unbelievably helpful comic bible Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud).

​7. Comic Journalism Panel
(Saturday, 10 a.m.)
Speaking of comics, why not start your Saturday morning with the Comic Journalism panel? Comic journalism has been alive and well in some of the best works in the history of the medium, and as the industry progresses, it's expanding and becoming completely new things. Even the most literary among us should find something respectable and interesting in this panel.

​6. Klingon Warrior's Tournament
(Saturday, 4:30 p.m.)
Uh, do we really need to say anything else here? IT'S A KLINGON TOURNAMENT.