What does My Little Pony have in common with Star Trek? Let me share with you this most interesting moment during Sir Patrick Stewart and John de Lancie’s Q&A panel at Dallas Comic Con this past weekend. John de Lancie spoke about how Gene Roddenberry’s notion for a better future for mankind in Star Trek loosely related to 2011’s My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, where he voiced the antagonist, Discord.

“I ended up doing a cartoon show called My Little Pony. (crowd cheers) Didn’t know anything about it. I looked at the material. It was really good. I went there and knocked off a couple of [lines]. Completely forgot about it. (pauses) And then all of the sudden about four months later, I’m inundated about My Little Pony.

I go, ‘What?’ DISCORD! ‘What?’ and I turned to my wife and asked her what they were talking about. She said, “Well, you did a My Little Pony thing.’ And this was my first step into a world that I have become quite fascinated with.

And the reason why I’ve become quite fascinated with it is this: It’s not My Little Pony, it is Friendship Is Magic and it purports interesting enough, a better future. And I went ‘Oh, very interesting!’ It has a fan base which are the ages of my sons [in their 20s]. And as I’m going further into it, I feel like I’m at the beginning of a really important fan base made up of people who are interested in music, who are interested in art, who are interested in doing good, and being good in a world which seems to, I don’t know about you people but as far as I’m concerned, has sort of gone crazy in terms of how mean people have gotten. So I am delighted.

When I came into Star Trek with Patrick, the Star Trek fan base had already been established. I feel like I’m at the beginning and watching of a new fan base and I want to invite you who are Trek fans to embrace Friendship Is Magic fans because I discovered that we all have a lot in common.”

Here is an excerpt of de Lancie’s performance as Discord in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw1OBzWGorI[/youtube]

Consequently, de Lancie has been fascinated by the fan response to his appearance on My Little Pony and particularly by “Bronies” (pronounced Bro-nies) or My Little Pony fans. Along with Michael Brockhoff, director Laurent Malaquais and consulting producer Andrew Brockert, de Lancie has launched a campaign to fund a documentary on Bronies, titled Bronycon: The Documentary, via Kickstarter .com. With a closing date of June 10, 2012, the project has already received pledges exceeding its goal of $60,000.

Keep it here on SciFi Mafia for more coverage of Dallas Comic Con.