Friday, August 7, 2009

The Voyager Game 8: TNG Edition: Bloodlines

Bloodlines: TNG

Two things we've learned:

1. Unmanned probes are bad.

2. Picard being hailed by name is bad

So when DaiMon Bok sends a probe that hails Picard by name?
Bad. So bad, in fact, that we learn that Bok's new plan to avenge himself on Picard is to kill Jason Vigo, who we can assume by Bok's saying "You thought you could hide him from me," is Picard's son.

Dramatic music.

Credits.

Lol. Picard has a kid. I can see it now.

Picard starts searching for Jason, and certainly seems to know a Miranda Vigo. He also starts searching for Bok (good rule of thumb: always keep track of the people you know want you dead). Picard tells Riker that it's possible Jason is his son - his twenty-three year old son. Well, this happens you know... to Kirk! Jeez.

Sigh. Bald sexy. I know.

Data manages to find Jason Vigo in a cave about to collapse so they beam him up, which pisses him off since obviously he wasn't hiding, he was spelunking or however you spell it. Picard tells him about Bok, and that he might be Jason's father. Miranda is dead, so they do a DNA test.

Jason is Picard's son.

I see masculine bonding coming.

Which is exactly what happens in the next act where Picard is showing off his ancient artifacts. He gives up quickly and orders himself some tea. Jason is all hostile and Picard is frustrated.

Geordi and Data have been given the dubious honor of trying to track the probe to it's origin. The Ferengi finally call and admit that Bok bought himself out of prison and is now in some star cluster with more than twenty systems in it. Data and Geordi are genuises, though, and actually manage to use that to track Bok down.

Picard comes to Beverly next for help with Jason. He's decided not to force himself on Jason - leave him alone and let Jason come to him. Beverly gets one of her few good lines in: "Are you doing the best thing for Jason or what's easiest for you?"

Deanna decides to lend a hand with the situation so Jason hits on her which is kind of amusing, I have to admit.

Bok's hologram comes into Picard's quarters to threaten Bok again - "I will kill him, Picard, and there's nothing you can do about it."

It wasn't a hologram, though, and it wasn't a hallucination, and the shields were up, so what exactly was it that Picard saw? Dramatic music does not swell, which is too bad. They assign security to Jason just as Data comes along and announces that Jason has a criminal record with his typical lack of tact.

Jason's hand is shaking in Ten-Forward, cue dramatic music. Picard comes to him and explains the guards and that Bok appeared in his quarters. He tries to bond with Jason but Jason won't have it.

Another probe shows up and explodes, displaying something that might just be Ferengi morse code, taunting them. "He's proved that he can get to us whenever he wants," mutters Picard. "Why doesn't he do something?" No kidding. I'm bored watching this. It's a mass of cliches.

Anyway, Bok appears in Picard's ready room and starts spouting the same old schtick as he did seven years ago. Snore.

And then there's some kind of medical emergency where Jason has a seizure or something. Because it's no good without someone getting sick.

Beverly diagnoses some rare neurological disorder that is supposed to be inherited but neither of his parents had it, so maybe it's a mutation. She runs some extra scans. Boring. Picard has made some evaluations of himself and his parenting ability. Dude, the kid's twenty-three. He doesn't need a father, you dolt. He's twenty-three. He did okay without you, except for the petty theft and tresspassing. Which, wait a minute, isn't he from some planet where everyone's short on food. Why would one possibly steal on a planet where the economy's collapsed? And wasn't the tresspassing something to do with rock climbing? Why are we so concerned about how "troubled" he is, exactly?

And why do I care at this point?

Data and Geordi have discovered that *gasp* Bok was in Picard's ready room! They spout some technobabble about subspace transporters and how they can beam through shields at a distance of several light years but they're totally impractical, then spout some more technobabble about protecting Jason.

Jason and his neurological disorder have decided to rock climb in the holodeck. Picard climbs up with him and they finally bond over hair, which is about the only cute father/son moment I've seen so far. Actually, to be fair, Jason confesses his criminal record, and then discovers that Picard already knew, and he still wants to hang. Huh. We all learned a valuable lesson.

Beverly summons Picard to tell him some bad news but we don't see what, because this is season seven where they tried twisting the endings. Bok tries to beam Jason away right after, and Geordi can't get him back, despite Picard trying to run up to the transporter pad and do - what exactly?

Another probe appears, with a transmission from Bok, so Picard technobabbles himself back over to Bok's ship to rescue Jason, and spills the bombshell: Jason isn't his son after all, Bok altered his DNA to screw with Picard's head, which gave him the neurological disorder. Bok goes back to prison. Maybe this time Picard needs to make sure he STAYS THERE.

They take Jason home, and leave him there to fix his life. He and Picard are all male bonded and Picard even gave him a "worthless" archeological relic.

So now it's time to play... The Voyager Game!

The whole Kirk/David plot in Star Trek II and also the Riker/Riker plot in "The Icarus Factor" spring to mind. And "New Ground", too. "The Offspring". And just because I can, "Joanna", the TOS ep that could have been. For TNG, that's a pretty poor showing, really. It makes me sad.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Goddamn Linux Crap of Wonderfulness

My DVD player doesn't work, my CD burner doesn't work, and I keep forgetting how to use the command line to do the things I want to do. Flash won't install and no one wants to help me and I tried to download a new RPG with my boyfriend but it won't run in Wine.

But the cool thing is I get to try to fix these things myself. I feel powerful. This is wonderful.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The Lost World

There were a lot of things that went wrong with Voyager and I'm not even bringing Genvieve What's-her-face into it. This makes it tough. On one hand, I love Star Trek. On the other hand, sometimes you just look at the TV and go, "Really????"

I think Wil Wheaton must do that a lot.

But I digress.

My three year old cousin once said to me, "Auntie, do you still love me when I'm being bad?" She was intent on testing the limits of my love that day, running in circles and screaming when we were trying to eat and sticking nails in power outlets.

"I love you good and I love you bad," I told her. She frowned. "But how can you love something that's bad?"

Out of the mouths of babes.

Remember The Lost World? What a big fat annoying donut hole that was for our troubles? How disappointing and frustrating and sad that movie was (and Sam Neil hadn't even sold out yet).

Remember the Voyager that came with it?

The worst part is that I can't even play The Voyager Game with this one, which is the only props I can give them. It's bad, but at least it's original. Sort of. Except they were clearly trying to do a piece on Evolution vs. Creationism.

Now I'm not gonna touch that one, probably mostly because I don't actually care. I figure we're here, and since no one could write when we were being created I doubt either record is entirely accurate. If you need a description of how accurate paleontology can be, look at this episode. They make some interesting observations about the crew from the scientific standpoint.

Two things bug me. First, since when do we let the computer do our thinking for us (*cough* Janeway *cough*) and second, what happened to the line? You know the one. The one that kept Shatner's monster at the end of 5 from being Satan? (You know it would have been better if it was.) That line. The one where we don't talk about religion in the future, unless you count McCoy's "Goddammit, Jim!" Or we're on DS9, but that's another story. For a show that didn't take risks, they sure tried to here.

And failed because they fought the wrong battle. This isn't an evolution story at all, I realized. It's Galileo. The establishment censoring the man who uses science to find his answers because they don't want to lose their control.

From that standpoint, and without the dinosaurs, we might have an episode.

Snerkles Snerkles! Look out Wesley!

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Brannon Braga Confesses

There it is in black and white. During a 24 panel, Brannon confessed to killing Star Trek.

Maybe now some of the people who haven't healed yet can begin to.

WHY????

Why does it bother me when people recognize my Trekkieness? I got this tattoo for a reason after all. This morning when I was waiting for the bus, a woman approached me. "Oh, you like Star Track," she said. "That's so cool. I love Star Track."

Somehow, I wasn't convinced, and I hate it when people over the age of ten say Star Track. Until then I figure it's forgiveable.

She continued trying to make small talk. The bus was late and I hadn't had my coffee. My grim outlook on life in general from my lack of caffeine did not deter her in the slightest. I wanted to be really nasty and tell her to shut the bleep up, but I see this woman waiting for the bus every day and somehow that didn't seem conducive to good neighbor relations. So instead I just stared in a direction that was not hers and grunted occasionally, playing up the no-caffeine thing, which did not take much work. She prattled on about the weather and Star Track and how they made a new movie, or maybe a TV show, she wasn't sure.

The bus arrived and I let her get on first so I wouldn't have to sit by her.

I transferred to the MAX and while I was sitting there with my computer, playing NetHack like a nerd should, I notice this guy trying to maneuver into my line of sight. Trying really hard. He gets to where he knows I can see him and flashes me a Live Long and Prosper! I kid you not!

Now what this says to me is that this stranger has been staring at my boobs.

Which is stupid, I mean I got this tattoo where I got it for a reason. It's where it would be were I wearing a uniform, which I'm not. I'm not that chick on Trekkies whose boss lets her wear her uniform to work. That's just nuts. You have to live in the real world sometimes, sorry. So anyway, that's when it hits me why this annoys me so much. I do live in the real world. I work hard to stay here. I play normal sometimes and I have a job where people come to me for my expertise on something normal and not Star Trek. I fit in with my friends, most of whom aren't Trekkies (although some are nerds) I have a boyfriend (who is a nerd, but has also learned to live in the rest of the world too) and I like it here. It's a delicate balance between compromising who you are and coexisting with the rest of the planet.

So when someone pulls me apart from them, comments on my obvious Trekkieness, suddenly I know that they see me as other, unique. I don't have any identity here. At work, I am Gillian the Bra Knowledge Person, and my tattoo shows but that's okay because it helps to demonstrate the uses of lingere tape. At home, I am just Gillian and I don't have to be anyone else so who cares about my tattoo. No one even mentions it, although they do mention Star Trek. So what? I take notes on Star Trek for fun, for crying out loud. It's allowed there.

But here, I'm just the chick with the tattoo on her boob, being noticed for my association with a TV show. The worst part is that these people are trying to be nice, trying to include me, but they just point out my obvious isolation without meaning to. If John Travolta hijacked this train today, I wouldn't be the passenger in the background, I'd be the one that stands out. My function in the plot is to give the crowd a face with my quirkiness.

And now I just realized that I never should have seen Pelham 123.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

TodayTonight (Spoliers)

Australia's Today Tonight has indicated there is a love interest between Spock and Uhura in Star Trek.

The fans may be confused.

Let me explain.

No, let me sum up.

Watch "The Man Trap".

Now tell me you don't see it.

So now it's the last four weeks

Hard to imagine it was all just rumors once, and we were huddled around our computers going, "Is it true? Is it true?" And people said it was dead, and people said, "You know what would be cool? The Borg." And some of us were scared and some of us were happy and some of us believe Star Trek died in the seventies.

In four weeks all that can change will change should change.

Four little weeks.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

So it's been a while...

Sorry it's been so long.

Got a boyfriend.

It's a funny thing about geeks and relationships. You lose the time you used to spend downloading everything you can find about the Star Trek movie, blogging becomes a chore, and generally life gets more complicated - you lose some of the ability to spend time doing what most would consider nothing.

So what? I ask myself. I like having a boyfriend. And he's losing his geek time too. He's not complaining. And neither am I, really. After all, he is pretty damn cute.

And it's about time we got past the honeymoon stage and started getting out lives back - so I'm back to my blogging, back to checking trekmovie, and still having three-hour text conversations about Warhammer (his obsession, not mine).

I have to say, I love this.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

I love some things I find

I love this story. My only question: Why wouldn't they let him use a BlackBerry for crying out loud?

On a more serious note, President (God, I love saying that) Obama decided to close Guantanamo today. For further information, see the TNG episode "The Drumhead". I'll leave you with this quote:



"You know, there are some words I've known since I was a
schoolboy: ' With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech
censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains
us all irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie as wisdom and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on we’re all damaged. I fear that today...
"

-Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

I come back from my crazy life and this is what I find

Ricardo Montalban is dead.

You heard me.

The immortal Kahn, the genetic superman, the legend himself.

"To the last, I will grapple with thee. From hell's heart, I spit my last breath at thee."

A good line. And his last on Star Trek.


The first encounter between Kirk and Kahn in Star Trek II.


Star Trek 1x22 Space Seed Remastered Trailer

WWKD?

Manny Coto just said something (okay, last August said something) about how they did the third season of Enterprise that makes a lot of sense to me. Essentially, that if you do a big story, you put it  in a three-parter. Oh, if Brannon had only thought of that when he made "Macrocosm".

Anyway, it's kind of exciting to hear that someone had it figured out, at least for the one year.

In other news, I saw Frost/Nixon last night, and it really touched a chord with me especially in regard to my own first encounter with Brannon Braga and people's reaction to my question and my take on his answer. It was important to many that someone in power acknowledge their responsibility for what happened, and I think that Brannon has done that. Too late in the game to change what's happened, but at least he did it. I've managed to switch from intense anger to a grudging admiration for the man, and that's in large part due to his repeated appearances at conventions, allowing us to rake him over the coals. As he deserved at one point, although I'm not sure he does now. At some point, doesn't he get to be absolved of that guilt? Star Trek has an overall message of forgiveness, after all. What would Kirk do?