Books, movies, politics, and whatever I want

Archive for the ‘Star Trek’ Category

Sunday SciFi: Babylon 5

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

Very good, nay, excellent SciFi. Especially for TV.  This show wasn’t just SciFi, it was Space Opera in the best sense of the genre.

Grand sweeping story arcs over five seasons, great battles; personal, man to alien, and large fleets of space craft battling for control over this corner of the galaxy.

Much, much better than the Star Trek knock off of Babylon 5.  Yes, gentle readers, Star Trek: Deep Space 9 was a cheap knock off of Babylon 5.

The B5 pilot aired first, even though Paramount rushed ST:DS9 to the small screen before the B5 series was approved and made it to the airways.  The best ST:DS9 seasons were the ones where they did what B5 did the season before.  The ST:DS9 “creative” team even hired the same actor B5 used the season before in appear in what was essentially the same role.  The B5 team found this out when they tried to bring the actor back to reprise the role and found out he was over at Paramount filming a DS9 episode.  JMS responded by killing off the character and replacing him!

Five full seasons, plus a handful of made for TV movies.  Enough to keep you busy for a while if you enjoy really good SciFi.

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Sunday SciFi: Firefly Star Trek Crossover pick

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

Don’t get your hopes up.  I’m guessing this is just a bit of fan artwork.

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Sunday SciFi: Star Trek Phase II

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

I’ve mentioned this group of uber-fans before, but they deserve their own Sunday SciFi post.

Star Trek Phase II is an entirely fan produced continuation of the ST:TOS series.  It’s the brain child of James Cawley, who had a couple of bridge scene cameos in the latest Star Trek movie.

They have produced five (six if you count their first effort that they don’t list at their web site anymore, but I have on DVD) high quality episodes. Some of these episode have been written by ST:TOS writers, and/or have had ST:TOS actors in staring role, and one had a guest starring role by Denise Crosby.

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How Sir Patrick should have been knighted

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

Ok, it’s a “Photoshop” job, but I like it.

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Just in case your nerd cred is running low

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Not a problem for me, but just in case your friends are getting a bit geekier than thou, I have the solution.

A Star Trek:TOS communicator that is a functional USB Microphone/Speaker device.

I kid you not nerdlings. You can plug this thing into your computer and use it with Skype and other VoIP apps, if you dare…

Ok, it would be cooler if it had a USB port instead of an attached cable. Perhaps in rev 2.0.

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Star Trek Crossover

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

There was a really cool, in an uber-nerd Trekker kind of way, cross over in the latest big budget Star Trek movie.   In the middle of the bridge set, the one that looks like an Apple Computer threw up, not just once, but twice, you saw on of the biggest ST:TOS fans in existence, James Cawley.

James Cawley cameo

James Cawley cameo 2

Cawley is the man behind Star Trek: Phase II, some of the finest fan produced Star Trek episodes out there.

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Politics and Star Trek

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

The nice man over at AuricTech Musings noted that Bill Whittle has an excellent video explaining the reality of the comparison of our Dear Leader and Star Trek’s Mr. Spock and why Spock was never a good choice for that center command chair.

To keep in this meme, I present Leigh Scott’s theory that if Obama is Spock, Sarah Palin
is James T. Kirk
.

Sarah Palin is Captain Kirk. Why? Because she just passed the Kobayashi Maru.

Since Sarah Palin burst onto the national scene she has been savaged. The media, the Left, the Right, the Middle, you name it. People either love her or hate her. In the media it seems people love to hate her. The “elites” on both sides of the aisle hate the populism she represents. Traditional feminists hate the fact that she has both a family and a career; something that their paradigm teaches is impossible. Her future rivals hate her because she isn’t a typical politician. Her authenticity makes Mike Huckabee look about as real as the Guinea Pigs in “G-Force”.
Palin was faced with her own Kobayashi Maru. How could she effectively govern the state of Alaska while facing ridiculous ethics charges and the scrutiny of the national media? How could she increase her exposure in the lower 48 while staying true to the people in Alaska who elected her? Perhaps if the wingnuts in Alaska didn’t stalk her with silly lawsuits she would have simply put her larger ambitions on the back burner and continued to do her job as governor. But it wasn’t meant to be. She was perfectly set up to fail. Her popularity in Alaska would decline. The national media would point to it as an indicator of her overall effectiveness. The Klingons…I mean the left, would have won.
But Palin defied them. She changed not her strategy, but the very rules. She resigned her position, turning the state over to her loyal Lieutenant Governor to continue the plans and policies she put into motion. Like any good story, it was an unexpected twist, yet when viewed in retrospect it was the only way it could play out.
..
For all his talk of being different, representing “hope,” and bringing “change” Obama has turned out to be quite the bore. He is the consummate insider, a recycler of old ideas and failed policies. People wanted to beam up to the starship and explore strange new worlds. We wanted to boldly go where no man (or woman) has gone before. Obama is in the wrong franchise. He and crazy Doc Brown, I mean Joe Biden, gassed up the DeLorean and took us back in time. To 1976.
Palin passed the Kobayashi Maru. She is qualified to command the ship. She has all the qualities we want in a captain; valor, principals, vision and most of all, the ability to change the rules.

Go watch the video and read the article. Both Mr. Whittle and Mr. Scott make solid good points.

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Star Trek Nerd Punditry

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

I never was much of a Star Trek:Voyager fan.  Just didn’t like it.  Janeway was cool, because she was seriously hardcore, but the rest of cast/crew just never passed passed cardboard cutout stage.

I finally saw the final episode of ST:Voyager, it was in the “Best of Time Travel” set.   If that was the best they could do, then the entire series was set on Lame.  Except for Janeway, who was still hardcore.

The third season of Enterprise had better episodes, including several multiple episode arcs, that were much, much better than that epic fail of a series final episode the Voyager cast and crew foisted on their much abused fans.

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Friday B-Movie – Trekkies

Friday, June 26th, 2009

Trekkies

A way funny documentary of rabid Star Trek fans. I’m talking serious fans. Worse than me, and I own a Bat’leth. Great movie if you are into Star Trek.

Friday B-Movie Archive

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Kudos to the Cast & Crew of Star Trek!

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

The new Star Trek movie had an advance premiere, complete with the cast and director.
What is really cool, is where they held it. Camp Arijan, Kuwait. Yup, a sneak premiere for members of the US Military serving overseas.

Present were actors Zoe Saldana, Bryan Burk, Karl Urban, Zachary Quinto, Chris Pine, Eric Bana and director/producer J.J. Abrams.

Here are some quotes collected by Spc. Howard Ketter

“We feel priviledged to be here and to meet the people who are working hard on our behalf,” said John Cho, who starred as Hikaru Sulu in “Star Trek” the movie.

“It’s so easy for people to take for granted, the fact that [service members] are here doing work that makes this possible,” said Abrams.

“It struck us that there was an opportunity to not just have it be about the movie, but to have it be about something that’s more important than all that stuff,” Abrams commented.

Good on Abrams and the cast!

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