Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Yay it works.
Trying again....
Testing blogger by phone.

Monday, October 25, 2010

And here we go again

Now that they're writing again, the game is afoot and the guessing begins. Literally, the first actual plot rumor - not just, hey we're gonna have a plot someday but an actual rumor about something that is actually going to happen was posted at Trekmovie today. There's spoilers if you click the link.

Personally, I hope Gary Mitchell isn't bad in this incarnation, not just in the next movie, but at all. It would be nice to see something good come out of this, but the stuff we wished hadn't happened to Kirk - Gary and David dying, for example - maybe this time around he gets to have those things?

Just a thought.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

The point needed to be made

I'm posting this here because of the Trek ref, but the point needed to be made.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Just wanted you to know:

Star Trek 2 has a story. Not Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, mind you, although that was a good movie. I mean the Star Trek 2, the one that will be keeping me up nights soon.

Finally, a Kirk who doesn't think we need to get a life.

Chris Pine's career is really taking off. I bet Shatner's jealous. I mean, he lived in a car after Trek, and here's the guy who replaced him about to be the next Jack Ryan! Bill Shatner never got  to be Jack Ryan!

It's not Chris's fault - he's just a guy. A guy who could stand to do some damn conventions, but a guy nonetheless. I"m not sure what he's trying to prove by wearing leather pants, though.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Stupid stasis episodes!

A few thoughts about "One"

Calling it a mutara-class nebula does not a good episdoe make.

I miss Jeri Taylor.

Seven of Nine is fun. More fun than we give her credit for.

I'm sure Matt Jeffries loved having shafts named after him?

It's amazing the computer worked at all by the time they got home.

David Wu's Klingons

I was time travelling this morning, and I rewatched David Wu's infamous "Klingons in the white house" speech.

Wow, just wow.

"They're Vulcans, but not really Vulcans, they're really Klingons, but not really Klingons because they've never been in battle."

Oh dear Lord, he makes us look like nutsy people.



I was also re-reading the stuff from 2006, rumoring a new Star Trek movie maybe produced by J.J. Abrams. We sure have come a long way since then, haven't we? Let's recap:

Someone else was president.

Enterprise had just been cancelled.

Nemesis was the last Star Trek movie.

The Countdown comic hadn't come out yet.

No one had heard of Star Trek Online.

Majel Barrett and Bob Justman were alive.

Bruce Greenwood was cool for being JFK, not Pike.

Pike was someone we didn't care about that much.

They hadn't tried to launch Doohan's ashes yet.

There was only one X-Files movie.

Just to name a few.

Finally, some SANITY

How many people did a cute little "What the hell?" when Uhura started kissing Spock in the turbolift last year? Only the ones who didn't know their Classic Trek! Let me let you people in on a little secret, again, because I'm sick of explaining this every month - she is all over him in the first, say, eight episodes.

But you don't have to take my word for it.

Now will everyone please believe me?

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Warning: Cursing.

Enterprise Sucks! More Specifically, "The Council"

Nothing but love for Manny Coto. Talk about making the best of a bad situation.

Now for the death of a series: Season 3, the cancer that ate our show alive. Or something like that.

Don't get me wrong: I love my show. I love it a lot. But the fact remains, that the whole Xindi arc is Star Trek in a peripheral sort of way, but most of the individual episodes don't count. Roddenberry was very clear: There are four types of Star Trek episodes.

1. Police Action - the whole Xindi arc qualifies, but individual episodes often don't. Police action is when the ship is assigned to go somewhere and it encounters a planet that needs help in some way, like a cop on patrol finds a problem. They fix the problem. The end. Only in "The Council", they're not on routine patrol, they don't fix anything, and they don't find a problem either.

2. Character with a problem - more specifically defined as a one-time seen crew member on the ship, expanded to include semi-regular characters (Barclay) who may or may not be assigned to the ship (Lwaxana Troi). Yeah, in "The Council", Trip has a problem but he's part of the regualar cast - this doesn't qualify.

3. Copying Earth's history - expanded to include future history (things that happened for Star Trek but not for us, yet) even if you count Time Travel, "The Council" still doesn't count.

4. Alien Aliens - pretty self explanatory. Aliens that are so weird they defy our sense of normality. Includes gas creatures, different moralities, and Ian Troi. Does not include the Xindi council, since none of them are that strange to us. I suppose they could include the Sphere builders though - except they don't really let us see enough of them to tell.

Friday, October 8, 2010

How to be Mean: A Deep Space Nine Story

My favorite thing about "Progress" is not just what it shows us about ourselves, but all the ways in which it heralds things to come - in DS9, there are no easy answers.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Emergence: AKA "Oh, crap, we have to write a whole 'nother ep to fill the last season?!?!?!"

Data is continuing his study of Shakespeare.

He's gotten good.

Again, I say, Season 7 is all about reminding us of all the things we're gonna miss. Picard is coaching him, too, which is extra awesome since Patrick got Knighted earlier this year. That was cool. He explains how Shakespeare enjoyed mixing opposites.

And that's when the steam engine comes through.

And they're on the tracks and have to jump into the ditch, because, once again, the command "Computer, End Program" does not work.

Yeah.

I will say this: so far, the train is new. That Holodeck's a frigging deathtrap.

Credits.

When they leave the holodeck, Picard is injured and the train was the Orient Express. Picard gets to ask the very interesting question: "I know about the Orient Express, but what was it doing on Prospero's Island?"

Good question. Technobabble ensues and they shut down the holodecks while Picard goes to Sickbay to get patched up and flirt with Beverly. We're gonna miss their flirting, right? I know I do.

They're looking for colony sites after weathering a Technobabble storm. I have a feeling the Technobabble storm is going to be important someday. Someday is today, when the ship randomly moves into warp. Warp 7.3, and no one knows why. They're polluting subspace! Suddenly they drop out of warp, right when they were about to shut down the core. Again, no one knows why.

Geordi and Data look into it, and we're gonna miss their crazy theories. They find that the ship was about to be randomly destroyed by some Technobabble they can't detect when they went to warp for no reason. Now, wait a minute. If it's deadly and they can detect it, why aren't the sensors set up to-

Never mind. Series is almost over, you know.

Anyway, none of the crew saw it, but it's in the sensor log, and if they had stayed where they were for another two seconds, they would have blown up.

Commercial.

Georid and Data crawl into a Jeffires Tube. *sob*, last Jeffries Tube! (I think. I don't remember them in Preemptive Strike or All Good Things) Anyway, Data says maybe the sensors triggered a safety device, and then the ship moved, but wouldn't the Chief Engineer and Science Officer know about that? Whatever. Geordi says there's no direct link between the two systems. They open a panel and there's a direct link between the systems that shouldn't be there, and it's protecting itself with a forcefield.

They find a lot more of the "nodes". It turns out the Technobabble storm made them somehow and that they can't really control the ship very well with them in there. They can't get rid of them easily. They intersect in the holodeck, so they decide to go into the holodeck and look around.

The holodeck is on, and several programs are on at once. Data, Will, and Worf wind up on the Orient Express with a knight making paper dolls, a couple of cowboys, and a bunch of people doing a puzzle - a puzzle that looks like the nodes.

The conductor comes in and asks for tickets, which of course they don't have. When they go to turn off the power he gets... snippy. The engineer comes in and tells him to leave them alone, then gets shot by a gangster from Chicago.

At the same time, Geordi's console blows out.

The conductor pulls a bell rope....

And then they go to warp again, and they can't get out of warp this time.

The gangster takes a golden brick from the body of the engineer, and the conductor insists they leave. Data realizes the safeties are off, so they leave.

For now.

Data has realized the ship is alive. Sigh. Riker pretends he's shocked, but for all of us who saw "Conspiracy," we know that the computer is not only intelligent, it can get bored.

Commercial.

Data calls it a "neural matrix", and says it is an "emergent property". Basically the computer woke up. He also recognized this with the "exocomps" for the record. The holodeck is the computer's imagination. Troi wants to go have a look.

Worf and Data go with her. Now a flapper is trying to give the knight something to drink. Deanna has a poke around, with Worf trying to help her. The gangster is playing cards with someone who's tied up. He tells Troi he's taking the brick to "Keystone city". "It's where everything begins." They follow him through the city when he gets off, and Data tries to get at the Holodeck's power grid. Troi follows the gangster and Worf follows her, because they were dating then. A car tries to run Data down, but he ducks, then goes back to work in the middle of the street.

The gangster goes to a wall with an empty space. "What are you doing here?" asks Troi. "Laying the foundation." Yeah, whatever the hell that means. He puts the brick in the wall and now it looks like any other brick.

Suddenly the cargo bay depressurized, and the transporter is running in there.

Something on the floor is glowing that looks a lot like the nodes. Geordi gets a rare close-up with dramatic music.

Commercial.

Data, meanwhile, encountered a minor difficulty and is currently holding the car that's trying to run him down by the fender. LOL. I don't think we even knew what LOL meant when this came out. LOL. He depolarizes the power grid...

The replicator and transporters are making the thing in the cargo bay, and then there's a slight incident where the ship starts shaking like there's no tomorrow, they almost lose structural integrity, and Troi gets clobbered by falling bricks. Worf gets to be protective.

Geordi and Data decide to get together and compare notes.

Deanna thinks the computer is building something - the something in the cargo bay, perchance? The characters represent systems in the ship, and they can't reason with a weapons system. And it's like a baby. She wants to try some more, despite getting clobbered by bricks. Picard tells her not to hinder.

This time they bring tickets. The conductor says the engine is running out and Worf gets to shovel coal. One of the characters says there is a resturant where they're going (Vertiform City) where you can eat all you want anytime. Huh.

Worf starts shoveling coal, and warp power gets back to normal. They're heading to a white dwarf star. The ship uses a tractor beam to collect vertion particles from the star, and send them into cargo bay 5. It makes the object grow faster, and it starts generating it's own energy. Then it stops absorbing, because the star has run out of particles.

The conductor slams on the brakes.

Commercial.

The ship is mostly offline. The object was about to become it's own lifeform when they ran out of vertion particles. Systems are back online and they start moving again.

The train is now going to New Vertiform City.

They head for another white dwarf, but at the cost of life support. They have to find a new source of particles and Data has to get control of the train. The characters on the train don't like it.

Geordi has a plan to make the particles, that's fine, but the train people are not having it. They finally let Data back to the engine room, and he tells them he knows a shorter route. Lol, Data negotiating with the computer's subconcious. He slows the train to impulse and they blow up a modified torpedo which creates the particles they need. The cargo bay thing grows up, the nodes deactivate, and they realize the whole point of the nodes was to reproduce in the cargo bay.

The thing grows up and flies away.

The train people celebrate, then vanish.

Data invites Picard to watch him play in The Tempest - Miranda's first encounter with humans. And then he asks Picard why he let the object form, and Picard says it came from them, the crew, and that if they've been honorable then the sum of those experiences would be honorable as well.

In closing I have to say that this is one of Season 7's few episodes that does not wrap up the last six years, and as such is one of my faves. It also would have been neat had they found this instead of B4, not that I really mind.

And one other thing - How often have we thought some day that computer would wake up? Really? And then it does. Good job.

A friend forwarded this to me and I just had to send it on.

WHY PARENTS DRINK



A father passing by his son's bedroom was astonished

to see that his bed was nicely made and everything was picked up. Then he

saw an envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow that was addressed to

"Dad."With the worst premonition, he opened the envelope with trembling

hands and read the letter.



Dear Dad:



It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm writing you. I had to elope

with my new girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with Mom and you.

I have been finding real passion with Stacy and she is so nice. But I knew

you would not approve of her because of all her piercing, tattoos, tight

motorcycle clothes and the fact that she is 25 years older than I am.

But it's not only the passion... Dad, she's pregnant. Stacy said that we

will be very happy. She owns a traile r in the woods and has a stack of

firewood for the whole winter! We share a dream of having many more

children. Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn't

really

hurt anyone. We'll be growing it for ourselves and trading it with the other people that live

nearby for cocaine and ecstasy. In the meantime we will pray that science

will find a cure for AIDS so Stacy can get better. She deserves it.

Don't worry, Dad. I'm 15 and I know how to take care of myself. Someday I'm

sure that we will be back to visit so that you can get to know your grandchildren.





Love, Your son Jeff

P.S. Dad, none of the above is true. I'm over at
Tommy's house. Just wanted to remind you that there
are worse things in life than a report card. That is
in my center desk drawer.
> Call me when it's safe to come home.