trek-ease

Jackie Cooper: 1922 - 2011

2011-05-05T07:33:00.000-07:00

Another sad passing to report. Jackie Cooper, a child actor in the "Our Gang" comedies back in the '30s, but who also transitioned successfully into an adult acting career, died Tuesday at the age of 88. He was probably best known to genre fans and moviegoers of the last 30 years as Daily Planet editor Perry White in the Christopher Reeve era Superman movies.

Cooper also had a varied behind-the-scenes career, serving as director on a multitude of TV series in the '70s and '80s, and even a five-year stint in an executive position for Columbia Pictures' TV division. But to me, he will forever be remembered (as will most of the cast members of the '80s Superman movies) as the definitive silver-screen incarnation of his role, the cantankerous Perry White.

May The Stores Be With You

2011-05-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

I went out shopping last weekend, mostly for the usual kind of stuff ... and for no apparent reason, it ended up being a Star Wars kind of day. I unexpectedly found a few decent bargains, and they all happened to be of a Star Wars nature. Here's what I got:

The Star Wars Poster Book (by Stephen Sansweet and Peter Vilmur, published by Chronicle Books) -- This isn't a collection of posters that you can hang on your wall, as the title might imply. Instead, it's a lush, illustrated history of Star Wars poster art, carrying the reader through all six movies, and the plethora of promotional tie-in art in between. Quite a few of the posters we've all seen before, but there are many rare, weird, and wonderful oddities to be found as well. This one, a big, hardcover, "coffee-table" book, was in the bargain bin for an unbelievable $5.99 (publisher's price: $50.00)! At first glance it didn't have any damage other than a slightly tattered dust jacket, but after I got it home and looked more closely, I could see the reason for its rock-bottom price: some asshole Sith apprentice had gone and torn three pages out of it in various locations. I'm not complaining -- for six bucks, how can you -- but at some point I'll definitely go seek out a higher-quality specimen, 'cause I can picture myself browsing this one again and again.

Star Wars Omnibus: A Long Time Ago... Volume One (published by Dark Horse Comics) -- This is a trade paperback collecting the first 27 issues of the original Marvel Comic book series, which launched with a six-issue adaptation of the first movie back in 1977. I'd had my eye on this one for quite awhile, and when I found the one and only copy on the shelf, in excellent condition, for 20% off at the Waldenbooks store-closing sale in the local mall, I decided it was time to pick it up. I'd never bought or collected that comic series when it was being published, so I'm going to enjoy reading this.

Star Wars: Infinities - A New Hope (published by Dark Horse Comics) -- This is another one that had caught my eye when it was published several years ago. I've always liked "what if" stories, and this is one that suggests what might have happened if Luke's proton torpedo run at the first Death Star hadn't succeeded. This was probably the sweetest deal of the day ... its original price was $12.95, and I got it for just $3.99! It'll be quite fun to read this one too.

So, as you can see, The Force was definitely with me during my shopping rounds last weekend ... and now I've got plenty of reading material to tide me over for quite awhile ... if I can ever remember to read during my idle time, that is.

The Adventures of Captain Tight-Pants

2011-03-31T19:58:00.000-07:00

"A priest, a hooker, and a mental patient are hiding out on a spaceship that's run by a cowboy." Let's face it, nobody other than Joss Whedon, the mastermind behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, could make a thoroughly cool, enjoyable, and smart -- and, consequently, short-lived -- TV series whose premise sounds like a crappy, off-color joke. A friend of mine had convinced me to start watching Buffy on DVD several years ago (awhile after the show had ended), and I made it through three seasons plus the first season of Angel before I lost interest, and that had been the extent of my exposure to Whedon's work; I wasn't sufficiently intrigued by the premise of Dollhouse to even try it out.

What took me so long to give Firefly a spin, you ask? It certainly wasn't an aversion to Joss Whedon -- anyone who can keep a guy, who's not a fan of vampire stories, watching vampire stories for three-and-a-half seasons deserves major kudos. It has mostly to do with the fact that I like my sci-fi shows set in an idealistic future: the all-humankind-living-in-peace, I'd-like-to-teach-the-world-to-sing optimism of the Star Trek Universe speaks to me in a way that the downbeat, war-torn dystopia of Battlestar Galactica and Stargate just don't. But the few bits of buzz on the web that I didn't ignore, the rave reviews from a pair of co-workers (who, aware of my geekdom, were visibly shocked at hearing I'd never seen it), and finally an unbeatable sale price of $20 for the DVD set, convinced me that I'd put it off long enough.

When I'd first heard that Firefly was in essence a sci-fi crossed with a western, I was understandably intrigued; the one thing that kept me from laughing at the concept was knowing that the only person who could pull it off was Joss Whedon ... and pull it off he did. An intricately steampunk-styled, warts-and-all cosmos, populated with a motley assemblage of all-too-human characters whose quick and acerbic wit, punctuated by "Mandarenglish" phrases borne of an imperialistic American-Chinese alliance, and their plucky attitude makes them difficult not to root for ... what's not to like? And leave it to Whedon to dare show the outer-space POV shots with no sound effects, as scientific accuracy would demand.

The things that make this show awesome don't end there. How about the presence of Ron Glass (yeah, the guy from Barney Miller!) in the cast, and the fact that it's got a country song, complete with a banjo, as its theme? For some reason, it's taken me until disc 3 to really get into the show, but now I can hardly wait to watch the rest of it (followed of course with the Serenity feature film) ... and probably re-watch the whole thing again. Mind you, I'm not nearly as in love with it as my beloved Star Trek, and probably never will be, but at this rate it's got a real shot at becoming a favorite.

Greetings, Programs!

2011-01-18T16:51:00.000-08:00

When the movie Tron hit theaters back in 1982, my twelve-year-old self was totally obsessed with it. I glommed onto the soundtrack album, the storybook, the action figures and toys ... if it had the Tron logo on it, I begged my parents to buy it for me. I even made myself a "computer world" outfit out of white (actually I think it was a light heather-grey) fleece, using a blue Marks-a-Lot marker to draw the circuits all over it ... even topped it with a makeshift helmet that I fashioned from something I now can't remember ... and of course, I had to have an "identity disk" (frisbee) to complete the ensemble. It was crap compared to the work of art that The Tron Guy came up with, but for me it was just perfect.

So, considering I was so in love with Tron as a kid, you'd think that I'd have been first in line (camped out for days before, even) to see the long-awaited and recently-released sequel, Tron: Legacy -- especially since I'd been wondering for years before it was announced what mind-blowing things they could do with Tron if it were remade nowadays ... but no, I didn't see it until this past weekend, a month into its run. Hey, an adult does have more going on in his life than a 12-year-old does, making "getting around to" things take a little longer, but still, shouldn't I have been chomping at the bit more than I was? I usually only see one movie, maybe two, per year on the big screen, so by that measure I did go out of my way to see Tron: Legacy as soon as I could.

I guess what it comes down to is that I was afraid I'd be disappointed. So many movies nowadays sacrifice the substance of a story for the style of eye-popping digital effects, assuming that the audience won't notice (and, as far as the roughly under-20 demographic is concerned, their assumption would be correct). But it turns out that the writers of Tron: Legacy took the care to provide enough of a story to satisfy those of us who get bored with too much visual razzle-dazzle, and to give it enough continuity with the original film to satisfy those of us who have been waiting 28 years to see whatever became of Kevin Flynn and company.

Now, I knew before I even set out for the movie theater that I wasn't going to be blown away by the visuals in Tron: Legacy nearly as much as I was by those in the original film. After all, digital effects were in their infancy back then, and no movie audience had ever seen anything like Tron before. By contrast, digital imagery has not only grown by leaps and bounds -- if it can be conceived, it can be put to film -- but is also so ubiquitous that it's got to be seriously impressive to make a lasting impression on the audience. But the makers of Tron: Legacy were smart ... they knew that, as far as the visuals are concerned, less is more. Case in point: arguably the biggest light-show of the original film, the main character's transition from meatspace into cyberspace, was understated here -- shortened from over 60 seconds down to about 2, and consisting only of a comparatively colorless but still kind-of trippy 3-D pixelation sort of thing.

Whereas the live-action elements of the computer-world scenes in the original film were photographed on a "blank" stage àla green-screen, with all the digital scenery inserted photographically in post-production (remember: there was no digital film editing back then!), the actor-centric scenes in the virtual world of Tron: Legacy were filmed on actual sets, with only the finishing touches (the glowing trim of the costumes, the digital landscapes, etc.) added in later. That adds a certain "realness" to the scenes that no amount of digital trickery can replicate. The same is true of the digitally de-aged face of Jeff Bridges, used quite necessarily for the Kevin Flynn flashbacks and the central presence of his program, Clu -- impressive and splendidly done, but there's something about the human face that will never be convincingly faked by computers.

All in all, I rather enjoyed Tron: Legacy, and I considered it a perfectly fine payoff for the 28-year wait. It had a sufficiently substantial story, impressive visuals (up to and including the studly Garrett Hedlund himself), and enough nostalgia thrown in to make us '80s kids happy. There was a Journey song playing on the arcade's jukebox (Journey recorded a song especially for the first movie), lines of dialogue from the original film were uttered on a few occasions, and seeing good ol' Bruce Boxleitner reprising his role of Alan Bradley was like seeing a favorite uncle I hadn't seen in 20 years. Sure, it wasn't a perfect movie, but Kevin Flynn wouldn't have it any other way (you've gotta see the movie to get that reference).

End of line.

Irvin Kershner: 1923 - 2010

2010-11-29T16:57:00.000-08:00

Sad news: Irvin Kershner, most famous to us as the director of The Empire Strikes Back and RoboCop 2, has passed away at the age of 87. He was also an instructor at the USC film school, and none other than George Lucas was amongst his students. May the Force be with you, Mr. Kershner.

(Photo found by way of BrickTuts.)

Welcome To The 24th Century

2010-11-17T10:20:00.000-08:00

Holy crap! Holy crap! Did you know about this? I didn't until yesterday! Holy crap!! If I'd known about this earlier, I wouldn't have bought the last dozen or so CDs I did buy (well, not necessarily the last consecutive dozen, but a dozen) and would have saved up for this instead! But I still bought it anyway, 'cause I just gotta have it. Seriously, I honestly don't know how I would be able to go on living without having this in my possession as soon as humanly possible. Want to know what it is? Maybe you'd better sit down, 'cause I myself had a geek-out on a transphasic level when I found out about this.

It's a limited-edition box set of not four, not six ... no, not even eight ... no, keep going ... would you believe a whopping 14 -- yes -- FOURTEEN CDs jam-packed with never-before-released music from dozens of episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation! Devoted solely to the work of Ron Jones, who traded off scoring duties with Dennis McCarthy through the first four seasons of TNG, "Star Trek: The Next Generation -- The Ron Jones Project" includes nearly every note written and recorded for 42 of the series' first 94 episodes (the score for "The Best of Both Worlds" two-parter is already available on the GNP Crescendo label, so just some bonus tracks from it are included here) plus numerous outtakes, as well as a disc devoted to his work for a pair of Trek video games released later.

The panicked evacuation of the Enterprise in "11001001" ... the tearful farewell of Tasha Yar in "Skin of Evil" ... the appearance of the Romulans in "The Neutral Zone" ... Riker's escape from the Mintakans in "Who Watches The Watchers" ... the terrorist attack on the ship in "The High Ground" ... Lal's tragic demise in "The Offspring" ... the perilous journey across the arid wasteland in "Final Mission" ... they're all cues that I've been waiting 20 years to hear unobscured by dialogue and sound effects, and now's my chance! With this doozy of a package being limited to a production run of just 5,000, I couldn't waste any time in seizing the opportunity to add it to my collection, since the price is certain to only start going up on the aftermarket.

Widely regarded as the best composer that Star Trek: The Next Generation ever had, Ron Jones was known for delivering sweeping, attention-grabbing, feature-film-worthy scores for countless episodes. The problem was that TNG's producers didn't want attention-grabbing music; they wanted the episodes' scores to lay quietly in the background. So after almost four full years of flying in the face of the producers' demands, Jones was fired and replaced by Jay Chattaway (quite a dandy composer in his own right, to give credit where it's due). But I always thought the Trek producers were not only making their episodes just a bit less memorable by taming down the music, but they were also forsaking a perfectly good merchandising outlet. Fans have been clamoring for Ron Jones' scores to be commercially available for years, and I have to wonder how many CD sales they missed out on by missing that opportunity and never licensing retail releases until all these years later.

If you can't live without it, like I couldn't, this incomparably amazing Trek-a-thon of music will set you back a healthy $150 (plus shipping), but at 14 CDs that ends up coming out to less than $11 per disc, which is a great price, especially for something that's a limited-edition collectible like this. It's available for purchase now at SAE and at Intrada, and further information is available from the Film Score Monthly website (and thanks to them for the links to the audio clips!). A friend of mine has all but challenged me to bundle it up in giftwrap when it arrives and not open it until Christmas morning ... but that's gonna be a really tough test of my will.

Your Friend In Time...

2010-11-14T16:58:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe that it's been a quarter-century since Marty McFly hit 88 miles per hour and flux-capacitored his way into movie history with Back To The Future. I can remember when I was a teenager -- much more of a geek than I am now, come to think of it -- and my family and I took a seven-week vacation to Europe. What was one of the few things I can remember taking along with me to keep me company? It was a Walkman cassette player and (along with other tapes, at least I hope) two cassettes onto which I had recorded the audio portion of the entire Back To The Future movie. I must have listened to those a half-dozen times over the course of that vacation, I was so bored otherwise.

Needless to say, I couldn't go without picking up the brand new 25th-Anniversary edition of the Back To The Future trilogy on DVD. I can't wait to see all the deleted scenes and new bonus features they've packed into this set, not the least of which is, finally, long-rumored actual footage of Eric Stoltz in the role of Marty. And of course there's the neatest extra of all -- here's my geekiness shining through again -- digital copies of all three movies, which I can load onto my iPod if I want to! It's full circle in a way ... I have to wonder what my younger self, armed with mere cassettes of only the movie's sound, would think if he could have in the palm of his hand full-color video and stereo sound of not just the first movie, but of many others, not to mention hundreds of albums of music!?!

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. This was a groundbreaking movie series in a number of ways, one of which being that it was the first one for which more than one sequel was filmed back-to-back (The Matrix is the most noteworthy other example), and it was also one of the first -- and certainly the first with such broad appeal -- to successfully integrate science-fiction with comedy to such an extent that the movie can fit neatly into either genre; Ghostbusters, Innerspace, and Men In Black picked up on the idea and ran with it. Part II definitely laid on the sci-fi a bit more strongly, what with its frequent and potentially confusing references to paradoxes and hopscotching between time periods, and Part III was an almost completely different movie altogether, with a decidedly Western feel and an almost fully self-contained story (not to mention a supporting role by the always enjoyable Mary Steenburgen).

But then, I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know about the best time-travel movie ever made. Suffice to say I love each and every chapter of the adventures of Marty and Doc, I'll probably sit down and watch the first of the three tonight ... and I'm very soon going to secure my digital copies, too!

The Whole Planet Houston?

2010-10-17T22:25:00.000-07:00

If you're well-versed in the behind-the-scenes saga of the Christopher Reeve-era Superman films, then you know that the producers, Alexander and Ilya Salkind, had hired Richard Donner to film the first and second Superman movies simultaneously -- and that, when budget and schedule overruns got out of control, put the kibosh on the sequel in the middle of its principal photography and had Donner finish only the first film. And you probably also know that said time and money troubles got Donner fired before he could finish Superman II, whereupon the Salkinds brought Richard Lester in as his replacement. Well, ever since then, some fans have been crying out to see Richard Donner's original vision of the movie, and in 2006 they got their chance when Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut was released on DVD.

Well, Superman movie fan that I am, I can't quite say I was one of the "crying out" sort, as evidenced by the fact that I just got around to picking up this DVD a few weeks ago ... used ... for six bucks. It was interesting to watch, and, well ... I don't know if it's just because I'm used to the original Richard Lester version, or maybe it's the fact that Donner, according to his introduction on the DVD, never got around to filming everything he wanted to film back in the day, and thus had to reassemble his vision of the picture as best he could from the available footage (and had to use some footage from that other guy, much as he didn't want to). But, even though I'm quite certainly a big fan of the first film and would even go so far as to call it a masterpiece, I've gotta say that I think Lester's version of Superman II is actually better.

First of all, the editing was somewhat choppier in the Donner cut, particularly the way they kept going back and forth between Clark and Lois at the Fortress of Solitude, and the supervillains' conquest of Earth -- in the Lester version, the sequences were kept in bigger blocks and thus seemed to be more coherent. And then there was the subplot about Lois scheming to "out" Clark as Superman ... the fact that she was smart enough to do so notwithstanding. Lester is supposedly known to have more a sense of comedic directing than Donner, which is all too evident here in that Donner's efforts in this regard come off as a bit more clumsy and forced, while Lester's are more naturally flowing. We can forgive the redundant climax, just because Donner obviously wouldn't have used it for the first movie had he seen the second one through to the end, but it's quite odd that he kept the epilogue in since the climax canceled out the scene it relates to ... don't worry, I'm trying to avoid a spoiler, so if you go and watch it, what I'm saying will make sense, I promise.

I'm still glad that Richard Donner went to what I'm sure was a lot of trouble to re-assemble his version of the film -- as closely as possible, of course -- and I'm glad I picked it up. It's a unique glimpse into a somewhat "lost chapter" of the Superman saga, and has a wealth of what one could call "deleted scenes" from Superman II. Imperfect though it may be (in my opinion, anyway), I'll always consider him a master for the wonderful story he told in the original Superman movie. I do think the Salkinds were wrong to fire him from Superman II prematurely, because I'm quite positive that Superman: The Movie wouldn't have been the blockbuster it was if someone else had directed it.

It's Been a Long Road, Getting From There To Here

2010-10-10T17:05:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in a previous entry, by the time Star Trek: Voyager went off the air in 2001 I'd had my fill of the Trek Universe for awhile ... something that just a few years earlier was inconceivable. So when Paramount chose to crank out yet another series so closely on the heels of Voyager, I was understandably unenthused ... kind-of like being asked to walk another mile after I'd already walked two (even if there were a record store when I got there). Indeed, if Enterprise hadn't starred Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap is one of my all-time favorite shows), I probably wouldn't have even given it a try. But try I did, and boy did I ever try. The pilot episode was entertaining enough, but all too soon boredom set in, and I mustered all the interest I could until I gave up about two-thirds of the way through the first season.

Fast-forward eight and a half years, and I'm on vacation in California. Several times over the previous few months, I'd started to feel tempted to give Enterprise another chance (apparently unconvinced deep down that I could get bored with a Trek show), and had been checking out the prices of the used DVD season box-sets. By the time I'd arrived at Amoeba Records in L.A., I'd decided to go ahead and pick up season 1 if I saw it at a decent price. I still kind-of balked at $35, but took the plunge anyway. (Good move, 'cause the disc trays inside were still shrink-wrapped and ended up being brand new!) I've now re-watched the first nine episodes so far, and must have been really bored back in the day 'cause I didn't remember jack about most of them.

What a difference eight years makes! There I was, putting the blame on what I saw as imperfections in the show -- the way the crew seemed to fall too soon into treating the supposedly new experience of space exploration with an everyday nonchalance ... the writers sneaking in what were essentially phasers by jury-rigging the established continuity and calling them "phase pistols" ... the confusing concept of the "Temporal Cold War", which to this day even a time-travel geek like me doesn't quite get -- when it really was mostly my boredom after all. Don't get me wrong, I'm quite a ways from being "in love" with Enterprise just yet, but it turns out not to have been the dog (sorry, Porthos) I'd written it off as back in '01.

Prequel shows can be a very tricky endeavour, of course. How do you put a fresh spin on a "been-there done-that" concept that we've already seen? Not to mention that audiences today want faster-paced shows, which means you can't slow things down with all the exposition that, with the unfamiliar environment the characters are in, probably ought to be taking place. So in a way we really can't blame the creators and writers for all their sneaky retconning. I mean, having plain old laser pistols, which we now know aren't very powerful, would be kind-of boring, right? And we all know about Captain Pike and the first Federation Starship Enterprise -- not to mention the furor that can boil up amongst fans with the mere mention of the notion that their cherished characters might be re-cast -- and besides, who says there wasn't a Starship Enterprise before the Federation actually came along? I'm hoping that they let up a bit on the use of the transporter, though, 'cause I don't want things to get too convenient for "ye olde tyme crewe" ... besides, shuttlepods are a kind of cool all their own.

Well, anyway, suffice to say that I'm enjoying Enterprise significantly more the second time around, and I might even think about picking up the subsequent seasons when the time comes. I always enjoy watching Scott Bakula, Porthos is just cute as all-get-out, Anthony Montgomery ain't all that bad-lookin' either, and I'm enjoying watching the budding friendships between T'Pol and Tucker, and between Phlox and Sato. And Heaven help me, I'm even pretty-much okay with the schmaltzy theme song. It makes me wonder how many other fans out there just needed a bit of a break from Star Trek, and if it might have run longer than the abbreviated four years it did, had Paramount simply put off its launch for a few years.

Kevin McCarthy: 1914 - 2010

2010-09-13T07:41:00.000-07:00

A sad day ... actor Kevin McCarthy, who is perhaps best known to genre fans for his role in the 1978 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but is beloved to me for his delightfully over-the-top bad-guy roles in Innerspace and UHF, passed away over the weekend of natural causes at the age of 96. His resumé according to IMDB stretches all the way back to the dawn of television, with over 200 credits between his film and TV roles. I admittedly haven't seen a whole lot of what he was in, but it's still kind-of like losing an extended relative.

Starcruiser, WHOOSH!! Starcruiser, CRASH!!

2010-08-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else fondly remember that pair of Ewoks TV-movies that aired on ABC back in the mid '80s? For some reason, silly as they were (but not nearly as painful to watch as the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special), I videotaped them when they aired and watched them repeatedly over the ensuing years ... and yes, I even bought the double-feature DVD -- containing the original 1984 movie Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, and its 1985 sequel Ewoks: The Battle For Endor -- after it was finally released in 2004.

For the unfamiliar, the first movie involves a family whose spaceship has crash-landed on Endor. The parents are abducted by a five-storey-tall baboon, and it's up to the kids -- teenage boy Mace (not Windu, rather a white one with hair) and his little sister Cindel -- to rescue them ... with the help of their new friends the Ewoks, natch. Fionnula Flanagan (How the West Was Won, Lost, and an occasional Star Trek guest) and Guy Boyd (Black Scorpion, Hyperion Bay ... aw hell, just look him up) play the hapless parents, and Mr. "Holly Jolly Christmas" himself, Burl Ives, is there to narrate the story and drive home the obligatory moral lesson in courage, perseverence, and the power of a loving family ... eesh. But at least Eric Walker was there for me to crush on ... not that I knew it was a crush at the time, mind you.

But wait, the sequel is even better! Presumably in a move to counterbalance the revolting cuddliness of the first movie, this one turns way darker. A gang of oafish, quasi-frat-guy lizard-dudes invades the Ewok village, taking all the Ewoks prisoner and flat-out killing off Mace and his parents -- so much for that "power of a loving family" crap. Anyway, Wicket and Cindel narrowly escape their vicious captors and soon happen upon an old curmudgeon (played by Wilford Brimley -- what a stretch for him) named Noa, a space pilot marooned on Endor many years ago. After Cindel is kidnapped by the lizard-dudes' inexplicably non-lizard-looking sorceress (played by Siân Phillips) -- hey, they couldn't be allowed to whack a little moppet like her, it's a broadcast network for cripe's sake -- Noa, Wicket, and Noa's pet whatever-it-is Teek, set out to open up a can of Quaker Oats and whoop-ass -- and Noa's fresh out of Quaker Oats! -- on the castle full of lizard-dudes. Hey, he's got a harpoon gun, so I sure wouldn't mess with him.

Despite how nauseatingly cloying little Cindel was -- can you picture an '80s effort at reincarnating a young Shirley Temple? -- the movies had their moments. The music, by Peter Bernstein, was particularly memorable, and I even have the soundtrack album (I think it was only ever issued on vinyl). The stories were okay -- in the second movie, the power source for the family's spaceship kind-of ties the plot together, in case you might have been wondering (since I left it out of the last paragraph). As much as he has become a kind of caricature of himself, I've always liked Wilford Brimley, so the interest in the second movie I might have lost with the early offing of Eric Walker's character was made up for by the entertaining presence of "grandpa Witherspoon" (and no, I've most definitely never crushed on him, so don't worry). But by far the most unintentionally funny moment was during the buildup to the jailbreak in the lizard-dudes' castle, when two of the guards were playing cards. I swear to you, if you listen closely, you can hear one of them say "chicken shit" ... in a family movie!!

Sure those movies were silly, the general disdain for the Ewoks notwithstanding ... but then, they were made for the kids out there rather than the teens and twenty-somethings who dug the Classic Trilogy during its theatrical run. And there are the obvious questions that these movies bring up -- What happened to the lizard-dudes between that movie and Return of the Jedi? Wouldn't the Empire or the Rebels have at least stumbled upon them or their remains? To say nothing of Teek's race, who could have joined the Ewoks in the Rebels' fight against the Empire... -- but of course we're not supposed to think about that ... although you'd have thought that with all the screwing around Lucas did with the Classic Trilogy, the whim would have struck him to insert a new scene or two to retcon all that junk. Oh well ... at least I'm not disturbingly preoccupied by the whole Endor thing like this guy....

So anyway, if you're a Star Wars completist, or even if you're not so much and just want some silly entertainment, you might want to pick it up -- oh, that is, if you can. (It's out-of-print? Oh, the humanity!!!) And while you're scooting about on the web, I just found out that Eric Walker is all grown up and has his own website. Go, Mace!

A Fan By Any Other Name

2010-08-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

Yup, here it comes, like a Romulan interceptor on an attack trajectory ... the ages-old question: "Trekkie" or "Trekker"? The way the question is handled in the two Trekkies documentary films is amusing and (as much as it can be) enlightening. The vastly differing opinions on the applicability and meaning of the two terms all seem logical (pun intended) ... that it's a generational thing, with the older ones labeling themselves as "Trekkies" and the younger as "Trekkers"; that "Trekkies" are the get-a-lifers while "Trekkers" know it's just a TV show; and, funny as it seems, the opposite -- that "Trekkies" are the casually fanatic viewers while "Trekkers" are the snobs who take it seriously.

Which am I? Well, I'm something of an "agnostic" in that regard ... I've never felt the need to pigeonhole myself into either category, even though I've fit nearly every criteria described in the paragraph above at some point in my history of Trek fandom. Nowadays I fancy myself somewhere in the middle: I'm enough of a Trekkie that it feels like I have a lump in my sock whenever there's a stardate out of whack, but I'm also level-headed enough that I can just roll my eyes and laugh about it. I take my Trek fandom seriously ... but at the same time, I don't take myself terribly seriously.

So, rather than a "Trekkie" or a "Trekker" (or a "Trekken", whatever the hell that is ... don't even get me started on how nerdy that sounds), I like to think of myself as a "Trekkah" ... mostly 'cause the "ah" comes close to the multi-lingual interjection of ambivalence, "ehh". I think that's a tag that fits my fandom quotient perfectly.

Beaming Back from Southern California

2010-08-10T16:31:00.000-07:00

Here's one of many reasons why I love my sister ... she totally sprang this on me by surprise! While I was on vacation down in Southern California, she informed me that a museum within driving distance was running a Star Trek exhibition, with actual costumes and props and stuff from the TV series and movies! It might not have been the most impressive exhibit -- no interactive kinds of displays or presentations, no guided tours, and it was kind-of small in size -- but I had a whole lot of fun anyway. I got to see the gorgeously elaborate dress that Whoopi Goldberg wore in "Time's Arrow", Ricardo Montalban's outfit from The Wrath of Khan, the costume some lady wore in "Spock's Brain", as well as the uniforms of Janeway, Picard, and Data, and Kirk's uniform from the later films! There were also bunches of props -- some original and some recreations -- from the various shows and movies ... oh, would I have loved to take home the bat'leth they had on display!

A bit disappointing was the souvenir shop they had in the back ... sure, they had an assortment of the long-ago-deleted Playmates figures on sale, but otherwise it was the stuff you'd find in most catalogs and toy/hobby stores -- model kits, keychains, etc. I couldn't leave without buying something, so I picked up a T-shirt styled after the gold command tunics from The Original Series ... maybe I'll wear it for Halloween. They did have a room where customers could get their pictures taken in the captain's chair and whatnot, but that didn't seem to interest me. All in all, though, it was a fun way to spend the afternoon, and I'm glad I spent the $15 price for admission! It might have been nice to come away with a DVD of the program they had playing on the monitors, though....

Thankyouverymuch, Little Paperboy...

2010-07-25T14:29:00.000-07:00

What sort of TV show would you get if you were to cross Leave It To Beaver with The Twilight Zone? Probably something like Eerie, Indiana. Omri Katz (best known as J.R.'s son on Dallas) stars as Marshall Teller, who has recently moved with his family to the small town of Eerie, Indiana (not to be confused with Erie, Pennsylvania). While the rest of his family sees nothing strange about their outwardly idyllic surroundings, Marshall and his new best friend, Simon (played by Picket Fences' Justin Shenkarow), know better as soon as Marshall spots a suspiciously Elvis-like gentleman on his morning paper route.

Through nineteen thrilling, sort-of chilling, but endlessly entertaining episodes, Marshall and Simon experience the bizarre goings-on in Eerie, everything from parents who seal their children in Tupperware-type containers to keep them from aging, to a secret underground world where all the socks go that disappear from the dryer, to what really happens to that hour when we switch to (or is it from?) Daylight Saving Time. Even Marshall's first love doesn't go normally -- he's haunted by the heart (literally) of a romantic rival from beyond the grave. All the while Marshall and Simon accumulate, in the Teller family attic, a library of evidence of the strange goings-on in town.

If you've never watched this show, you've really been missing out. The characters are endearing, the stories are whimsically weird and wondrous, and the scripts are clever, witty, and inventive. As soon as this criminally short-lived series came out on DVD I eagerly bought a set, and have watched it all the way through more than once. Check it out, and you too will become a loyal customer at World o' Stuff!

A Long Time Ago, In a CD Box Set Far, Far Away...

2010-07-13T22:00:00.000-07:00

Well, here I go again ... nothing reeks of laziness more than writing one post that will update two blogs at the same time. Well, maybe waiting a freakin' month to make said post is just as lazy. But I warned you not too long ago that this blog was probably going to get quiet. I honestly haven't been in a blogging mood much lately. But with any luck that'll turn around after my vacation at the end of this month (during which, yes, it'll be really quiet ... but not like that's a big change, right?). Anyway, I hope you enjoy my latest topic, as it's close to my heart....

Before Greedo shot first ... before Han stepped on Jabba's tail ... before the digitally-botoxed "Special Editions" turned them into Episodes IV, V, and VI -- in other words, before George Lucas got all full of himself -- they were just Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. As relatively recently as those days were, it's already getting hard for me to remember them. It's also hard to believe that, until the 1993 box-set release of "The Star Wars Trilogy: The Original Soundtrack Anthology", most of the music from this phenomenally successful movie saga had never been available on CD before.

The original CD issue of the Star Wars soundtrack was a generous, two-disc, track-for-track replication of the vinyl release, but the Empire double-LP's run time was chopped nearly in half when squeezed onto a single CD, and Jedi only ever saw a skimpy one-disc release on any format. And those were the only compact disc releases that these awesome scores saw for nearly ten years, until this lush cornucopia of audio bliss came along. Sure, there had been a few other albums featuring music from all three films, but those were re-recordings by other orchestras ... and as any film music buff or Star Wars fan -- both categories in which I freely admit that I belong (albeit to different degrees now than I did back then) -- could tell you, they just don't hold a candle to the actual soundtrack recordings.

Not only did this release give us the second Cantina Band song in its entirety for the first time, as well as the haunting male chorus during Luke's final furious duel with Vader under the catwalk in the Emperor's throne room, but it's noteworthy for other reasons too. It was the last release of the original soundtrack recordings before the "Special Edition" revamping of the movies in 1997, which means that the Jabba jam "Lapti Nek" and the original tribal-drum vocal version of the Ewok Celebration got their final album appearances here before being usurped by the silly "Jedi Rocks!" and the tepid instrumental "Victory Celebration" (sorry, John Williams, I love your stuff, but the original source music was better).

But there's a more subtle aspect to this release that makes it a bittersweet one. Since 1997, the Star Wars soundtrack releases seem to have been preoccupied with delivering the music in an "as heard in the film" fashion, which to my ear makes the compositions flow much less gracefully. I don't know if it's the obsessive film music snobs out there who are to blame or if it's Lucas, but I find so much more beauty in the thematic structure of the pieces on these earlier discs. Who cares if they're arranged more for a concert hall performance than for accompaniment of the visuals in the movies? That's kind-of what I buy soundtracks for in the first place: to hear the music in a way I didn't hear it in the film ... after all, it'll still remind me of the fun I had watching the movies, which is the real point in a soundtrack release.

For a while, I did own the two-disc releases of the Star Wars Trilogy: "Special Edition" soundtracks, but I found them far inferior to the music on this collection and I ended up trading them in. For those of you who don't have the "Star Wars Trilogy: The Original Soundtrack Anthology" box set, believe me that you'd be doing yourselves a favor picking it up ... it's out of print, but still reasonably available from third-party sellers on Amazon and eBay. After all, nobody doesn't like Star Wars, and anybody who doesn't like the music of Star Wars -- well, they just shouldn't be taken seriously about anything, now should they?

The Boy Who Would Be Swarley

2010-05-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

Considering his recent career resurgence thanks to How I Met Your Mother, his talk show, American Idol, and awards show appearances, and most recently his guest shot on Glee -- not to mention the popularity of this show back in its original run -- discussing Neil Patrick Harris' first TV series, the legen-- wait for it --dary (sorry, couldn't help it) Doogie Howser, M.D., isn't exactly an esoteric subject ... although it does fit this blog, since Doogie was one of the first geeks, especially lead-character geeks, to be embraced by pop culture.

Created by not one, but two powerhouse TV producers, David E. Kelley and Steven Bochco (that'd be kind-of like Joss Whedon and J.J. Abrams teaming up for a TV series -- awesome idea, eh?), Doogie Howser, M.D., showed us the implausible but all-too-human life of a 16-year-old boy who happened to be a child prodigy and a practicing physician at a Los Angeles hospital. It ran for four seasons, over the entire course of which Doogie would chronicle his life's lessons learned in a journal on his computer every night before he went to bed. I liked Doogie so much that, for awhile, even I kept a journal just like that. (Unfortunately it's long since gone ... would have been fun to look back on it all these years later.)

Not only was the rest of the regular cast enjoyable to watch -- particularly Max Casella (later of The Sopranos) as Doogie's best friend, the perpetually girl-obsessed Vinnie Delpino, and James B. Sikking as Doogie's down-to-earth, family-doctor father -- but plenty of interesting guest stars also popped up on occasion, such as Nana Visitor, René Auberjonois, Robyn Lively, Jeffrey Tambor, Jennifer Gatti, David Graf, David James Elliott, Tracy Scoggins, and a very young Shiri Appleby.

I picked up the first season on DVD as soon as it was released, because I knew I'd have some fun watching Doogie again after all those years ... but I never imagined I'd enjoy the show enough to buy all the other seasons and watch every single episode! The series may have begun to show its age a couple of years in -- always a danger with shows starring kids -- but it was watchable through its entire run. Curiously, though, the manufacturers have allowed the DVD releases to go out-of-print ... very strange, considering Neil Patrick Harris' return to fame.

Green Light, Kid -- We Did It!

2010-04-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago I shared with you one of my favorite sci-fi series from my youth (that's a bit redundant I suppose ... back when I was a kid, nearly all my favorite TV series were sci-fi), and today I'm going to share another one with you. I rather suspect that it's this series that triggered my (thusfar) lifelong fascination with the time-travel subgenre of science-fiction.

This show was called Voyagers!, and it starred the late Jon-Erik Hexum as a former pirate named Phineas Bogg, who had been recruited as one of a band of time-hopping foot-soldiers charged with making sure that the history of the world stays on the right track. The tools of the trade: a hand-held, brass-clad time machine called an Omni, just a little larger than the average pocketwatch, as well as a handsomely leather-bound historical reference known as the Voyager Guidebook. Unfortunately, the less-than-competent Bogg lost his Guidebook when his Omni accidentally bounced out of his time-zone "jurisdiction" into the 1982 bedroom of 12-year-old Jeffrey Jones (played by Meeno Peluce), who just happened to be a history prodigy.

Neither were crazy about being stuck with each other at first, but with no way to get Jeffrey home, Bogg enlisted his help in lieu of the missing Guidebook. Together they would help the Wright Brothers invent the flying machine, set Spartacus on his quest to lead his famous slave revolt, thwart a Confederate plot to kindap President Lincoln, prevent Teddy Roosevelt from being killed by Billy The Kid, guide Marco Polo and his party safely toward their first meeting with Kublai Khan, and even pluck the stolen Mona Lisa off the doomed ocean liner Titanic.

There simply aren't enough good things to say about this series. Not only was it endlessly entertaining, but it was also worthwhile from an educational angle -- informative and historically accurate to a far greater degree than any other time-travel show before or since -- and it was masterfully designed. The best sci-fi shows seem to be the ones that make the future seem timeless. The most obvious example is the Omni ... rather than a wrist-worn device with digital controls (which, I read in one magazine, was one design that was considered), it was made to look on the outside like an heirloom from a century ago. And in the sole episode which actually visited the Voyagers' never-specified "home time", we saw elegantly crafted wood decor instead of sleek metal or plastic, and classy traditional fashion instead of form-fitting polyester jumpsuits.

It completely amazed me when Universal actually put the complete 20-episode series on DVD shelves back in 2007. It was such an obscure and little-known show (or so I thought), having basically been consigned to an early death from day one, running against ratings juggernaut 60 Minutes. Plus, both of its stars have been long gone from TV -- Peluce all but retired from acting in 1985 (I hear he's now a teacher in the Los Angeles school district), and Hexum died from a tragic on-set accident at around the same time, shortly after beginning his next series, "Cover Up". But, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I put in a pre-order on Amazon as soon as it was listed, price be damned (and it turns out it was pretty reasonable after all)! Needless to say, I've enjoyed it thoroughly from start to finish once, and I'm about to do so again ... particularly all those scenes that I haven't seen since their original airings (which were, to make room for more advertisements, cut out of the Sci-Fi Channel rebroadcasts from what must have been the mid '90s).

State of Flux

2010-04-08T13:57:00.001-07:00

No, I'm not dead (yet). Sorry for the inactivity on this blog, but I'd been having an extremely aggravating internet access issue, and hadn't been in much of a blogging mood lately. I'm still not quite there yet, and might never be, in all honesty ... the internet has lost a bit of its allure. Plus, I've been getting the jones lately to start some "real" writing (fiction), and may see fit to free up some time by shutting down one or more of my blogs.

So, what am I trying to say here? This blog might be going away ... and I stress the word "might". As long as it's still here, there's always the chance that you'll see updates; they just won't be as frequent as they used to be, unless I have a change of heart. But all the same, I really do appreciate anyone and everyone who stops by to read my ramblings. So ... watch this space!

Talkin' 'Bout Trek Generations

2010-03-23T11:14:00.000-07:00

In the midst of my "ongoing mission" to watch all of my Star Trek DVDs in order of production, I had finished off The Next Generation, was in the third season of Deep Space Nine, and was apparently so focused on gearing up to start in on Voyager (yes, I've been interspersing them just like the series had originally overlapped), that I almost completely forgot about the 1994 feature film, Star Trek Generations. That surprised me, since I've always loved that movie, despite the fact that it served as a further reminder that my beloved crew's TV voyages were a thing of the past. I'll admit that my attachment to it may partly stem from the fact that there was nothing else to do in the podunk town I was living in at the time than to go see it at the theatre each weekend ... plus you might recall that I have something of a soft spot for movies that are not highly thought of by anyone else. Hey, Generations may not be a perfect movie, but it's a sentimental favorite of mine.

Why is Generations looked down upon so harshly? Okay, maybe it doesn't have as strong or choesive a story as most other Trek features, but it's not completely devoid of plot like some amateur critics (including the loudly opinionated woman at the Trek convention I went to shortly afterward) claim it to be. And perhaps the destruction of the Enterprise-D was none-too-gracefully shoved into the story, but in a way it did go along with the overall "love, loss, and mortality" theme of the film. But by far the biggest gripe about the movie, at least from old-school Trek fans, had to do with the way that Kirk died (or, depending on who you ask, the mere fact that he even died at all). They say he was treated shabbily and that his death wasn't heroic. "The man who beat the Kobayashi Maru and defeated the Gorn on Cestus III got killed by falling off a rickety old bridge!?!?!"

Maybe it's just the fact that I'm more a fan of TNG than TOS, but to me that sounds like plain old whining. First of all, forget the circumstance of a busted bridge being his undoing; the simple fact is that not everyone can have a graceful death. Secondly, anyone who says his death wasn't heroic obviously wasn't paying attention. Besides, in a way, Kirk "died" twice in the movie, each time heroic: at the beginning, he marched down into the bowels of the ship and put himself in harm's way to save the Enterprise-B and everyone on board; and at the end he gave his all to save not just the crew of the Enterprise-D, but all the 230 million inhabitants of a neighboring planet!! Not only that, but in between he opened up a can of whoop-ass on Soran in one of those good old-fashioned fistfights of his.

I could keep going on and on in defense of Star Trek Generations -- I also liked the humor in it, and the music was pretty good, too -- but I'll have mercy on you and stop here. But in "commemoration" of this movie, I thought I'd share with you one of the most curious pieces of Trek memorabilia in my collection, which just so happens to have been released in conjunction with that very movie. It was a promotional CD-single of a cute little techno-esque tune entitled "Make It So". A pen-pal from Central America sent me the music video on a VHS tape back in the day, and it was kind-of cool (how I wish it'd been included on this disc!), so I know it was popular down there, as well as in Europe, where the CD was produced. Its connection to Generations is questionable -- the music is a remix of the TNG theme rather than Dennis McCarthy's music from the movie, and the sample of Patrick Stewart saying "Make It So" isn't from the movie either -- but, nevertheless, it's a fun little ditty. Enjoy! (Click here for the song, and click the cover image below to enlarge it.)

These Are the Voyages of the Starship Endocrine...

2010-03-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else remember the Star Wreck books, written by Leah Rewolinski? It was a series of seven parody novels, published by St. Martin's Press in the early '90s, based on both The Original Star Trek Series and The Next Generation, and later incorporating the Deep Space Nine characters. (The series ended shortly before Voyager came into being.)

Sure, the name Star Wreck has been used countless times as a Trek parody title, but otherwise this series was quite funny and entertaining. The author had fun with the names of the characters (my favorites being "Jean-Lucy Ricardo", "Georgie LaForgery", "Julio Brassiere" [Julian Bashir], and "Guano" [Guinan]), as well as with the stories of course. Chief Engineer Snot, for instance, coached Georgie on the use of technobabble, leading Georgie to become an expert with lines like, "the fratzenjammer molecules in this quadrant are making the sprucer inducer run really hard!" In this twisted universe, the transporter was called the UltraFax, and the Klingons were known as the Kringles.

If you've never picked up any of these books, and you take the Trek universe lightly enough to enjoy a totally zany parody that ignores the obvious incongruities like Kirk's crew being alive and well during the time of Picard's crew, then I urge you to seek them out and give them a read. They're not very long, they're pretty easy reads, and they'll tickle your funny bone. I'm sure Doc McCaw, Dr. Cape Pragmatski, and Dr. Beverage Flusher, would all agree that laughter really is the best medicine.

Here are Amazon links to each title in the series:

Jesse Mach, You Speed Demon

2010-03-09T16:14:00.000-08:00

Wow! They're just putting all kinds of crap on DVD now, aren't they? I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way, mind you. I was rather surprised, though, when TV Shows on DVD said that "Since the beginning of the TV-on-DVD era, fans have eagerly wanted this show to come out on disc!" And I'd be flat-out lying if I said I wasn't quite curious to see Street Hawk again, since it's been aeons since I have. I am rather concerned, though, that it might not live up to my fond childhood memories, as has happened with two other sci-fi shows from my youth that I've watched in recent years.

I loved the TV adaptation of Blue Thunder when I was a kid, so I picked up the DVD set shortly after it came out ... but I hadn't realized until adulthood how bad it was, so I ended up trading the thing in before I'd even watched half the set. And several years ago the Sci-Fi Channel aired the very-short-lived, Tron-in-reverse show Automan, and that too ended up crushing the nostalgia bubble that had merrily floated around in my head for oh-so-long. The plots were clumsy and preposterous in the former, and the acting was amateurish and uncomfortable in the latter.

What concerns me most is that Rex Smith was a singer-turned-actor ... and we all know how not well that bodes for a TV series, especially one from early-1980s science-fiction -- a subgenre known for its impaired realism and fleeting shelf-life (two characteristics that are not necessarily mutually exclusive). Nevertheless, its resilience could end up surprising me. Here's the cover art, courtesy of TVshowsonDVD.com ... bitchin', huh?

Deep Submergence Vehicle

2010-03-04T15:33:00.000-08:00

Just the other day I finished watching the DVD set of the first -- and, in my opinion, the only real -- season of the 1993 NBC sci-fi drama series SeaQuest DSV. I remember fondly when it debuted on TV. Quantum Leap was all too soon ending its run, and Star Trek: The Next Generation was heading into its final season (though I don't recall now whether or not we all knew at the time that it was their final season), so my appetite for good science-fiction was at one of its all-time peaks for me. And SeaQuest was a lot like an undersea version of Star Trek: TNG ... up to and including a way-cool main title theme, voiced over with a neat-o introduction by its captain!

I liked SeaQuest for the same reasons I liked Star Trek: TNG -- the smart way that they would integrate real-world science, and believably extrapolate on speculative science, in each episode. I also loved the first-season family of characters ... they were all real and likeable, and they all seemed to actually have a place in the crew. I loved the late Roy Scheider as the stoic captain ... Royce D. Applegate was endlessly likeable as the crusty old security chief with a heart of gold ... Stephanie Beacham lit up the screen as Dr. Kristin Westphalen ... I'm not sure if I had the bigger crush on Tim O'Neill (Ted Raimi) or Miguel Ortiz (Marco Sanchez) ... and who can forget the impish Ben Krieg, charmingly portrayed by John D'Aquino?

I was positively overjoyed when I heard that it was being released on DVD since, during the year it aired, we lived in a podunk town in the middle of nowhere, where the cable reception was about as good as bad TV aerial antenna reception. As a result of all the ghosting and static, we could barely see anything in the typically dark underwater CG optical shots, some of the most thrilling of the show. And what was beautiful about how the first season played out was that, since the producers weren't sure the show would be renewed, its "saga" was closed out nicely with no loose ends left untied, and no sort of a cliffhanger ending. So people like me feel no need or compulsion to buy the second season if we don't want to.

And boy, did I not want to. I don't know why the producers (or, more likely, the network) felt they needed to completely upend the show, throw out two-thirds of the cast, and replace them with some of the most bland and derivative characters ever to grace a sci-fi show -- and, most unnerving, they were all so uniformly young and attractive that it threw what credibility the show might have otherwise had left right out the window. I watched it on TV back then, but I don't even remember if I made it all the way through the season ... I don't think I did. The other thing that more-or-less ruined the show for me was how they veered into the more outlandish "fantasy" elements of sci-fi instead of staying grounded more in reality, which was half of the charm of the show (the original cast being the other half).

Fortunately the DVDs retained one of the best elements of the show's first season: the closing-credits segments in which oceanographer Robert Ballard explained some of the real-world science that inspired each episode. But unfortunately, they missed the boat (no pun intended) on including some good extras: most notably remembrances for deceased cast members Jonathan Brandis and Royce Applegate (Roy Scheider hadn't yet passed away when the set was released). Might I buy the second season out of curiosity, to see if I may have too hastily passed judgment on it back when it aired? Maybe ... if I find a low-enough price tag on it.

Andrew Koenig: 1968 - 2010

2010-02-25T21:55:00.000-08:00

Well, I just found out that my suspicion has come true: actor and activist Andrew Koenig, son of Star Trek's Walter ("Chekov") Koenig, has died of an apparent suicide. He had been missing for over a week while visiting friends in Vancouver, and had written a "despondent"-sounding letter home to his parents just days ago.

He was most remembered as Richard "Boner" Stabone, Mike Seaver's best friend on the '80s sitcom Growing Pains, but also had numerous guest-starring roles in shows ranging from My Two Dads to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Seeing a friend or loved one die from a sucide is never easy. I myself have lost a couple of people I know this way, and I would hate to see it happen to anyone else. Just please remember that, as lonely as you feel, there is someone -- probably more people than you think -- who love and care about you. Suicide is never, ever the only way out. Life isn't easy, but it's easier to get through when you have a friend to turn to. If you've been thinking about taking such drastic action, I urge you to consult the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Hot Tub Time Machine!

2010-02-24T09:29:00.000-08:00

It's important to note that I don't usually fall for movies that look this stupid. But this is one of those movies that knows full well just how stupid it looks, and actually seems to be proud of it. I mean, how ridiculous is the concept of a "Hot Tub Time Machine" ... and furthermore, how downright goofy is it to make that the actual title of the movie? In a way, I actually have to commend the makers of this movie on their boldness, even going so far as to name-check a lame-ass movie like Wild Hogs in the dialogue. Not since Dumb & Dumber has a screwball comedy so proudly worn the word "screwball" as a badge of honor. Obviously, I'm simply going to have to see this movie, and the fact that I'm a casual John Cusack fan is just a small part of why.

Andrew Koenig Missing

2010-02-22T09:36:00.000-08:00

Some worrisome news I've just run across ... it appears that actor Andrew Koenig has been missing for several days. He lives in Venice, California, but had been visiting friends in Vancouver, Canada. He was set to return home on February 16, but never boarded his flight. He was last seen at a bakery in the Stanley Park area of Vancouver on Valentine's Day, February 14.

The 41-year-old son of Walter ("Chekov") Koenig, he is best known for playing Mike Seaver's friend "Boner" on the '80s sitcom Growing Pains, but has made numerous guest appearances in other shows, notably the second-season DS9 episode "Sanctuary" as one of the Skrreean refugees.

Koenig had reportedly been despondent lately, so his family and friends are especially worried for his well-being. If you should happen to see Andrew Koenig, you are urged to call Detective Raymond Payette of the Vancouver PD at 604-717-2534. More information is available from Walter Koenig's website.

Why Am I Jonesin' For McDonald's...?

2010-02-21T16:33:00.000-08:00

This time I'm sharing a very obscure, but nonetheless very fondly remembered, bit of science-fiction with you. There are two television series that were favorites of my childhood, that I never in a million years would dare have dreamed would ever see the light of day on DVD, they were so off the beaten path. But I must be doing something to make someone up there happy, because a few years back they were both given DVD releases! The other one I'll discuss sometime soon, but the one I'm talking about today is Benji, Zax and the Alien Prince.

This admittedly silly little show aired exactly where you might have expected it did if you've ever seen an episode: on Saturday mornings, for a fleeting thirteen weeks in the fall of 1983. It told the story of young Prince Yubi (Christopher Burton), who escaped his home planet of Antareus when the evil tyrant, Zanu, overthrew the king, Yubi's father. A droid named Zax (which kind-of looked like a giant hamburger with a neck and head resembling a cartoon version of E.T.'s) was sent along to protect Yubi, and upon their arrival on Earth they were both befriended by that loveable pooch, Benji. But Yubi wasn't out of the woods, because Zanu himself deployed two ruthless soldiers to capture Yubi and bring him back to Antareus for imprisonment.

The acting wasn't impressive, the premise was very simple, and so were the special effects, but the early '80s Saturday morning audience wasn't exactly a demanding one. You'd certainly never hear me complain, as I was glued to the TV every week waiting for Yubi's newest adventure. In fact, if I may get a little personal with you, one reason this show holds such a special significance with me is because it was responsible for the first true inkling of my adolescence: in an episode in which Yubi was robbed of his precious bracelet (which Antareans needed in order to survive in Earth's atmosphere), and began to get ill and weak, I found myself wanting to climb through the TV and do everything I could to care for him, for reasons I wouldn't yet understand for another few years. (And the jewelry connection might have had something to do with my fascination, too ... just kidding!)

The set is a bit of a shelf-hog, I have to say ... four regular-sized single-disc cases housed in a slipcover, taking up the width of two VHS tapes. So I decided to conserve a bit of shelf space by replacing them with one slim 4-disc case, even re-designing a new insert card with all the info tidily packed onto the back panel. When it comes to the DVDs themselves, don't expect a crystal-clear, high-definition transfer ... it looks like the folks assembling this package had nothing better than analog videotape masters to work with -- well preserved considering their age, though there are still the occasional crawling lines of distortion from "wrinkles" in the tape, and maybe a few other artifacts. (Hey, it was well before the digital age, after all ... and I have to wonder if they'd ever imagined they'd have reason to pull them out of the archives!) Again, I'm not complaining ... I'm happy to have these old relics on DVD in any way, to relive those fond childhood memories again.

Pilot Errors

2010-02-17T11:20:00.000-08:00

While poking aimlessly through my bookshelves the other day, I leafed through an unassuming title I've had for many years now, "Unsold Television Pilots: 1955 through 1989" by Lee Goldberg. As the title implies, this is an exhaustive reference book of all those pilot projects that are written, cast, filmed, offered to the networks, and sometimes shown on the air, but that the networks ultimately decided to turn down. How many of you out there are old and/or geeky enough to remember I-Man, the sci-fi special (aired as an installment of The Disney Sunday Movie) from 1986 featuring Scott Bakula as a cab driver turned indestructible secret agent after he's exposed to a strange vapor while rescuing a man from a truck crash (and John Anderson -- Kevin Uxbridge from the Star Trek: TNG episode "The Survivors" and Abraham Lincoln from the Voyagers! episode "The Day The Rebs Took Lincoln" -- as the evil madman whose plans he's tasked with foiling)?

Anyway, I happened upon a very interesting coincidence, just a couple of pages past the I-Man entry. There were two sitcom pilots made for CBS during the 1986-87 season, whose entries appear back-to-back in this book (on page 450 for those of you who just might happen to have this tome yourselves) ... and whose casts have not one, but two Trek connections each:

The Family Martinez (airdate 08/02/86) -- Robert Beltran (Star Trek: Voyager's Chakotay) portrays a former gang member who becomes a lawyer and returns to his East L.A. home to live with his wacky artist mother and his 16-year-old sister. Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar from ST:TNG) also starred as a character named Rachael McCann, though it doesn't say how she was involved in the story. If all that weren't enough, this show was created by Tommy Chong (of the comedy duo Cheech & Chong ... and, of course, Leo from That '70s Show).

Home Improvements (never aired) -- Not to be confused with the similarly-titled classic Tim Allen/Patricia Richardson sitcom, this one starred Tony LoBianco as a widower with three kids who marries a divorcée (Tricia O'Neil, the Enterprise-C's Captain Garrett from the ST:TNG episode "Yesterday's Enterprise") with one. Also in the cast, as the widower's eldest daughter who's married and lives next door, was ST:TNG's second-season bright-spot, ensign Sonya Gomez herself, Lycia Naff!

Imagine that ... four actors, all of whom would become involved in Trek, working on sitcom pilots in the same year for the same network! Quite a co-inky-dink, eh? One has to wonder -- especially if The Family Martinez had taken off -- who might have ended up playing Tasha Yar...!

Star Trek: The Lost Missions - Episode 11

2010-02-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a wonderfully fun journey, taking you through all the Peter Pan/Power Records Star Trek audio adventures ... and, sadly, we've reached the last one. Fortunately, though, the series goes out on a relatively high note with "The Human Factor" (author unknown). In this episode, a new species, who appear genial and harmless on the outside, shock the Enterprise crew by abducting Lieutenant Uhura for some strange, sinister purpose. What could it be? Listen and find out!

If you really want me to, I'll post the cover art for the two-disc CD collection I made of these adventures soon...!

Weird Gets Raw

2010-02-11T13:25:00.000-08:00

For a short while now, William Shatner has been doing this one-on-one talk show called Shatner's Raw Nerve. It airs on the Biography channel, and is also sold on the U.S. iTunes store. The setting is almost artful in its simplicity: just Shatner and one guest -- in his 26 episodes (and counting), he's had people ranging from Scott Baio to Judge Judy to porn star Jenna Jameson to Meat Loaf to Whoopi Goldberg to, inevitably, his Star Trek compatriot Leonard Nimoy -- having an intimate chat with no studio audience.

Recently, his guest of honor was "Weird Al" Yankovic. As you might imagine, a conflux of two of my favorite pop-culture personalities in one place was too much of a temptation to resist. Knowing most of what there is to know about Al, I expected a rather uninformative, somewhat superficial half-hour of little interest. But you can imagine my surprise when I found myself watching something entirely different ... and unexpectedly riveting. I realized that while I know nearly all the facts, of any significance, about Al's life, he's never dropped his Weirdness long enough to let the world in for a real look, not that he's ever "owed" us one (after all, being Weird is his job!).

Shatner isn't afraid to use the title of his show quite literally and broach the touchy subjects -- and with Al it's no exception. He's begun to mellow with fatherhood and with age (though he can still tuck his ankle behind his neck!), and he rarely if ever sheds his "Weird" persona before the press or the cameras, so this is a rare glimpse into the real Al. Whether you have just a passing interest in Al, or have been a lifelong fan as I have, I can guarantee that you've never seen Al as truly human before as he is here, and it's really quite moving. You can buy this episode (and the whole series) on the U.S. iTunes store.

Mail It So

2010-02-10T12:40:00.000-08:00

Wandering through the local bookstore a few weeks ago, I found an entire caddy of this "Fold-and-Mail" stationery. A very clever idea, I thought ... one side of the page is a ruled sheet with ample space for a letter, and the other side is formatted with room for an address on one half, and one of five beautiful, full-color Star Trek pictures on the other. Just write your letter, fold it in half, fold over the edges so it forms an envelope, seal it together (with its handy-dandy pre-licky-glued edges), and it's ready to be stamped and mailed! What will they think of next?

Nestled in the assortment of cartoon characters and whatnot (Superman, Wonder Woman, Pixar, Bewitched, Wallace & Gromit) was, of course, a Star Trek version which, of course, I simply had to buy. I certainly won't use them at all, not only because of the collectible potential of the item, but also because I lean toward using the more practical and conventional sort of stationery. If I'd had my wits about me (well, that, and a bit more cash), I probably would have picked up all three or four Star Trek pads I'd seen there, in anticipation of waiting patiently to place them on eBay once their value had begun to rise. But as it was, I only bought one for my own collection.

Fortunately, though, they still appear to be manufacturing this neat-o little bauble, which you can order yourself here. Not only is it an unconventional sort of memorabilia item, but it's handsomely designed ... and the sheer nature of the concept would make any "Treknologist" proud that such innovation came from the early 21st Century!

My Digital Companions

2010-02-04T14:16:00.000-08:00

Since Memory Alpha didn't exist ten years ago -- and neither, for that matter, did its "father", Wikipedia -- this pair of digital volumes were quite a nifty and useful resource for us Trek geeks when they were released in 1999. The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion and The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion CD-Roms contain roughly the same episode summaries, guest cast lists, and season overview essays that their trade paperback book counterparts do (which I have and also highly recommend), but these discs take things to a whole new level.

Not only do they have an assortment of color images as well as every episode's original shooting script (which, it should be noted, don't take into account the on-the-fly dialogue changes made by the director during filming -- but can include scenes that were never filmed, or filmed but cut from the final edit of the episode), but also QuickTime movies of the trailers from every episode! As a special treat, here are the trailers from the TNG episode and the DS9 episode I watched just last night.

As fun as they are, though, these pieces of software are showing their age ten years later ... a rarity amongst Star Trek products, but probably inevitable when it comes to the sort used with a computer. The fixed-size interface was made for smaller displays with a lower resolution, so on my 21" LCD it takes up the space of about a 7" diagonal display, and might make you lean in and/or squint in order to read the text. Also, the scrolling is very mouse-sensitive, so even a quick click can scroll five or six lines, they scroll at such a fast rate (apparently, the standard Windows mouse settings don't apply within the program).

Most inconveniently, the document files containing the scripts, although they seem to display like plain text files, are actually saved on the CD-Rom as "*.cxt" files -- and more aggravatingly, Windows doesn't know how to open the files, and neither do I. (Any ideas out there?) Curiously, though, the video files are in the conventional "*.mov" QuickTime format (as evidenced by the links above), and can be viewed outside of the interface. Granted, they're in an early QuickTime codec and as such don't have the smoothness or resolution that more recent codecs provide, but they're fun to watch regardless.

All that leads me to think about how amazing they could do this same sort of software program if they rewrote it for today's computers. Think about it: a single DVD-Rom disc could probably carry a similar program, but encompassing all five Star Trek television series ... greater screen resolutions would provide for easier-to-read text, and dynamic programming language would allow for resizing the interface to fit one's screen ... newer QuickTime codecs would give sharper, bigger pictures, and probably in even smaller file sizes than are on these discs ... not to mention the multitude of other advances in programming that would make for a smoother interactive experience overall.

And why not take it a step further? They could do the same thing with the Star Trek Omnipedia (the software inspired by the Star Trek Encyclopedia), which I now regret having gotten rid of. How about it, Simon & Schuster? What better time to cash in on the fresh wave of Star Trek nostalgia? You'd have one guaranteed sale right here.

Star Trek: The Lost Missions - Episode 10

2010-01-31T13:57:00.000-08:00

Whew ... I almost thought I wasn't going to get an entry to you this weekend, since our broadband internet was out for two days and finally came back up just a few hours ago. Better late than never, eh?

Did I say that the previous Peter Pan/Power Records Star Trek audio adventure was the dopiest? Sorry, I meant this one. Not only does it boast (and I use that word lightly) a security officer who sounds like he's doing a crappy James Cagney impression, but the rest of the story ain't much better, as might seem to be indicated by its title, "Dinosaur Planet" (no writer credits again, and as was the case last time, it's probably for the best). Here goes nothin'...!

Happy Birthday, Voyager!

2010-01-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

Are you ready to feel old? I sure wasn't, particularly when such a jarring realization came exploding out of the warm-and-fuzzy tidbit of nostalgia that it did, like some macabre jack-in-the-box from the nightmarish Mirror Universe. What am I talking about, specifically? Okay, I might as well at least try to get used to saying it: Today marks the 15th anniversary of the premiere of Star Trek: Voyager. Believe it or not, it's true ... January 16, 1995 saw the auspicious debut of the UPN television network, with its very first program being "Caretaker", the epic two-hour pilot episode of Voyager.

But I really have to stop making this sound like an occasion to mourn ... on the contrary, it's well worth celebrating! I can remember the setting vividly: we were staying in a hotel during our first visit to the Pacific Northwest to find ourselves a new home. My brother and I shared a room, and I had to plead with him to let me watch it since he wasn't, still isn't, and probably never will be, the least bit of a sci-fi or Star Trek fan. Out of the goodness of his heart (two nouns that I had never thought were applicable to him), he allowed me to be part of that landmark occasion in television history.

I can also remember how entertained I was. This was by far the best Star Trek pilot episode ever! It had an interesting premise, a compelling story, and likeable characters. And you know how The Next Generation finally seemed to find its groove in the third season, and Deep Space Nine also took about three years to get its mojo working? Well I felt, right from the beginning, that Voyager had hit the ground running. The cast seemed to fit together and be comfortable with their characters right from the start, and in retrospect that probably had quite a bit to do with how enjoyable the pilot episode was.

It wasn't perfect, of course -- the interpersonal conflict kind-of flew in the face of Gene Roddenberry's "everybody-gets-along-in-the-future" ideal; I wasn't totally keen on the whole sequence of events that brought about the Maquis in the first place; and then there was the biggest plot hole of them all, the idea that people believed a Vulcan (Tuvok) would forsake logic and join the Maquis -- but the greater overall dramatic potential of the show made those nits much less worth picking.

I'm really, really tempted to watch "Caretaker" this very evening, in a true anniversary celebration of its premiere, but I can't bring myself to do it. You see, I've been watching the Star Trek series DVDs in order for several months now, even going to the point of interspersing DS9 episodes at the same point where it originally began running concurrently with TNG, and I'm intent on doing the same with Voyager at the appropriate time. I've only gotten to TNG's early seventh season (DS9's early second season) at this point, so I still have roughly 30 episodes to get through (all the way up to DS9's "Past Tense" two-parter) before I can "legally" start watching Voyager. I want to re-experience the introduction of the Cardassian treaty, the creation of the Demilitarized Zone, and the introduction of the Maquis in the intended order ... it'll help me appreciate it more, as I've appreciated several other firsts in the TNG-era shows that I'd forgotten about in recent years.

As a special bonus on this oh-so-special day, here's a bonus feature from the Voyager Season One DVD set, which shines the spotlight on the unfortunate miscasting of Genevieve Bujold as Captain Janeway, including a real treat -- actual footage from the first two days of shooting, giving us a peek at the captain that almost was. Happy Voyager Day, one and all!

Late Night Double Feature Picture Show

2010-01-11T21:32:00.000-08:00

While taking advantage of the previously mentioned store-closing sale at our local Suncoast, I decided it was as good a time as any to pick up a pair of titles that I had been considering checking out lately. I don't often buy movies sight unseen, mind you (though I probably do so more often than the average person), but at rock-bottom prices (50% off regular price), I figured why not? Besides, if I really don't like them, I can always trade them in at the local CD store.

The first of them is Timeline, adapted from a Michael Crichton novel. It tells the story of a group of college students whose archaeology professor vanishes on a dig, apparently ending up in the 14th Century. After confirming with a technology firm that's experimenting with teleportation that the professor was indeed whisked back to the past by accident, the prof's son is compelled to jump back to rescue him. Of course, it may have something to do with the fact that he's got the hots for one of his dad's students. Anyway, the group has a scant six hours to find and rescue the professor -- on the eve of an historically pivotal battle, no less -- and complications of course ensue, on both sides of the timeline.

It's an interesting story, and fairly well executed, though it's not particularly remarkable. The fact that it stars the studly Paul Walker I'd consider a plus, though he ain't gonna win any best actor Oscars anytime soon. I'd forgotten that Neal McDonough (the ill-fated Lt. Hawk in Star Trek: First Contact) was in it, and I always enjoy seeing him ... and thankfully we didn't see a whole lot of Billy Connolly. It's not that I don't like him, mind you ... it's just that the last thing of consequence that I saw him in was the sitcom Head Of The Class, in which he less-than-adequately took the place of Howard Hesseman, so I'm just not used to seeing him in any kind of dramatic role just yet. But anyway, bottom line: it was a reasonably entertaining movie, but I'm glad I didn't spend any more for it than I did.

The second of these two films is the one I was far more eager to see: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I had bought the comic book miniseries back when it was published, but I still have yet to read it (sad as it sounds, that's the case with most of my comic collection), although the concept has always intrigued me: a group of 19th-Century literary characters cobbled together as an ad-hoc superhero team to go after a madman bent on world domination. Imagine: Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, a now adult Tom Sawyer, Dr. Jekyll, the Invisible Man, Dorian Gray, and Mina Harker (from Dracula fame), all together in one story, and going after a villain whose startling true identity is not revealed until the climax.

It was certainly an entertaining movie, though there was something keeping me from calling it "great" ... perhaps the plot meandered a bit and could have been a bit tighter. What wouldn't have kept me from calling it great was the always delightful Sean Connery as Quatermain, nor was the intriguing notion of a grown-up Tom Sawyer ... made all the more watchable by the extremely easy-on-the-eyes Shane West. I'm not sure why this movie was somewhat of a disappointment, because I enjoyed it quite a bit, and I don't regret buying it at all. In fact, I'm actually a bit disappointed that there in all likelihood will never be a sequel.

I also picked up one or two other sci-fi-related releases, which I'm sure I'll get around to discussing eventually. Too bad that Suncoast wasn't really worth shopping at until its going-out-of-business sale....

Star Trek: The Lost Missions - Episode 9

2010-01-02T11:18:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! And what better way to kick off the new year than with the next quasi-exciting Peter Pan/Power Records Star Trek audio adventure!?! It's probably the dopiest of all of them, but that actually makes it bizarrely entertaining in its own special way. In "The Robot Masters" (author unknown, and I think it's best that he/she stay that way), the Romulans plot to overthrow the Federation with their own enormous robot army. Can Kirk and his crew thwart their dastardly plan? Well, duh.

Happy In Paraguay

2009-12-25T16:53:00.000-08:00

Okay, if this doesn't give you an insight into my warped sense of humor, I don't know what will. I just found this YouTube channel this afternoon, and laughed myself silly watching these re-dubbed Star Trek: The Next Generation clips. I laughed so hard I started crying. I laughed so hard my face hurt. I laughed so hard that I came close to passing out. You get the point by now.

This is what I was laughing at. What's so hilarious about these clips is that they don't digitally alter the actors' mouth movements, so it looks like they're actually saying the ridiculous dialogue that's being voiced over the visuals! See for yourself ... and make sure you've peed first, otherwise you could be sorry. (WARNING: contains naughty language.)

I may end up posting more of their clips soon, or you can check out their YouTube channel for yourself. I hope you're all having a happy holiday. Live long and prosper (or, as they say in these clips, "f**k a fruit basket")!

Tumblin' With Tony and Doug

2009-12-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

Given how much I love the sci-fi subgenre of time travel, it's pretty incredible that I've barely (if even at all) mentioned it thusfar in this blog. For the same reason, it's also pretty unbelievable that, until now, I had only seen snippets from the classic Irwin Allen TV series The Time Tunnel. I had of course been aware that the series came out on DVD some time ago, but since it was doubly expensive (having been released in two 15-episode volumes) I kept putting it off. But a couple of weeks ago, I heard that our nearby Suncoast video store is one of the 125 nationwide that are closing up, and fortunately for me, they had both volumes in stock and, like every other DVD in the store, on sale for 25% off, and that made them well worth picking up. (Hey, how often am I likely to actually spend less for something at a mall chain store than at Amazon?!?)

Last night I finally popped in the pilot episode, "Rendezvous With Yesterday". Being a show from the '60s, I was expecting a program rife with hammy acting, historical inaccuracies, and scientific implausibility. But seeing as how this is an Irwin Allen series, I should have known to expect better. This show has aged far more gracefully than one might think, and its '60s vintage only adds to its appeal. Sure, the computers used by the lab personnel are dinosaurs, but the show's writers drew so little attention to them, using them matter-of-factly like any mundane scientific tool that their contemporaries used, that their obsolescence is almost unnoticed. The attention to historical detail may have been lacking (the name of the Titanic's first officer didn't jibe with history, and far as I know there were no shuffleboard courts on the liner's decks), but one can hardly expect a '60s TV show to do the kind of exhaustive homework that James Cameron did for a major motion picture.

The fast-and-loose explanation of how the headquarters scientists can see and hear Tony and Doug across time just like on a TV set comes off as a bit silly, but then you just have to chalk that up to the aforementioned scientific implausibility ... and besides, how else are they supposed to take part in the action, and pluck the two intrepid adventurers out of danger when they need to? And if there's one thing that is a little hard to get past, it's the vastness of the Project Tic Toc underground complex, both in its size (descending some 800 stories below ground) and its body of personnel (a staggering twelve thousand) ... obviously nowadays, knowing more about how the government and the scientific community operate -- and probably just the way the world is now in general -- those kinds of statistics would make us viewers roll our eyes and/or snicker out loud. But this is a TV show, after all, and we're just not supposed to dwell on such minutiae.

One can plainly see the influence that The Time Tunnel had on future time travel shows, particularly Quantum Leap, which carried on the semi-cliffhanger-style endings that TT pioneered: much the same way that Sam leaped into a new and often awkward situation whereupon he would utter his famous "Oh, boy!", viewers would catch a glimpse of the following week's adventure into which Doug and Tony found themselves arriving. I must say I'm looking forward more eagerly to watching this show than I have any other for quite awhile ... I imagine it'll be fun to see the dynamic take shape between the young, impulsive Tony and the more mature, thoughtful Doug, and I'm also curious to find out how much we'll see of the scientists back at Tic Toc headquarters.

And, of course, the Trek geek in me simply can't close this post without pointing out the more obvious Trek connection -- the lead role of DS9's "Vic Fontaine" himself, the dashing James Darren -- as well as the less obvious one -- the fact that The Time Tunnel premiered on September 9, 1966 ... just one day after Star Trek did. Now I have to think about my biggest dilemma: Can I wait until after I watch all 30 episodes before my curiosity overwhelms me and I have to watch the most drool-inducing extra of them all -- the never-aired 2002 pilot episode of a Time Tunnel reboot that never became a series...? Okay, now I know I'm a geek.

Star Trek: The Lost Missions - Episode 8

2009-12-13T22:54:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've let this blog linger for three weeks without any updates, but I've been consumed with a flurry of activity on my other blog lately, and that's probably going to continue at least through January. And then there's the whole getting Christmas presents ready to send thing, too. But I'll try my hardest to make my updates here more frequent. But for now....

Well, folks, we move from one of the best Peter Pan/Power Records Star Trek stories to one of the silliest. These last four are rather unimpressive entries (at least in any good ways), but they deserve to be heard as much as the others. This week we have "The Man Who Trained Meteors" (written by Alan Dean Foster, astonishingly enough), about a megalomaniacal alien who intends to rule the entire galaxy, or leave destruction in his wake. Here goes nothing...!

Star Trek: The Lost Missions - Episode 7

2009-11-22T11:42:00.000-08:00

Here comes episode 7 in the series of Star Trek audio adventures produced by Peter Pan/Power Records. This is perhaps my favorite of the series, mainly because it's just not the kind of story that one would normally associate with the sort of stuff that regularly appears on story records made for children. There aren't any adult themes like sex or alcohol in it ... it's just that it's more drama than adventure. But, most importantly, it's a good story. "The Logistics of Stampede" (written by Alan Dean Foster) sees the Enterprise come to the aid of a Federation colony facing a natural disaster. Listen long and prosper!

Us versus Them

2009-11-13T15:44:00.000-08:00

So, a friend and co-worker decided a couple of weeks ago to whimsically put on her computer, as her wallpaper, the picture shown here. Now, normally I would probably ignore the ages-old "Star Trek versus Star Wars" debate -- let's face it, we've all seen the "Why [this universe] is better than [that universe]" email lists circulating ad infinitum in all their various forms, and it really is an argument that has no definitive answer since it really can't be examined with complete objectiveness ... but my fingers have been itching ever since that image started taunting me. Sheesh, it's still taunting me even though she replaced it a week ago with a really cool American Revolution themed painting that's been altered to show both sides' soldiers armed with lightsabers, and even a half-finished Death Star in the sky above.

But anyway, back to the point. Here's my take on Star Trek versus Star Wars ... and I've deliberately tried to avoid looking at any of the existing lists so as to ensure as much as possible that I'm not re-hashing them. In other words: any similarity to any pre-existing lists is purely coincidental and unintentional. And I'll try to be as unbiased as I possibly can here ... but don't hold your breath.

Data vs. C-3PO -- Okay, sure, Threepio can interpret six million languages, but every comm-badge in Starfleet has a little chip in it that can do that instantaneously: it's called the Universal Translator. And maybe Data's components are a bit more fragile than Threepio's, but when the going gets tough, Data could dismantle Threepio and use half of him to power his phaser and the other half of him to enhance his tricorder's functionality, all without batting an eye. And just try and get Threepio to calculate the travel time to the nearest starbase at Warp 7. Advantage: Star Trek.

Chewbacca vs. Worf -- They're both big, hairy, and strong, no doubt about that. But if you gave me the option of going into battle alongside either a bat'leth-wielding Klingon or a Wookiee with a laser-crossbow, I wouldn't have to think twice. Wookiees are decent warriors, I'm sure, but I'd bet all the gold-pressed latinum, Republic credits, or wupiupi I had to my name on Kronos whipping ol' Kashyyyk's butt any day of the week. (And what's with all those friggin "y"s in the name of that planet, anyway?) Advantage: Star Trek.

Neelix vs. Jar-Jar Binks -- Okay, we've talked about some of the good parts of the two franchises, now let's take a look at one of the less flattering ones. Who would you rather be trapped in an elevator for three hours with? Tough call, I know. They can both be rather annoying little pricks, to be sure. But whereas Jar-Jar is by and large just a clumsy buffoon who speaks in irritating, probably-racially-offensive-but-nobody-knows-for-sure jabberwocky, Neelix is an optimistic, imaginative guy who honestly tries to make everyone feel better. Besides, that Talaxian can cook. Advantage: Star Trek.

Anakin Skywalker vs. Wesley Crusher -- I guess we could call this one "Battle of the Brats". Each one has been more annoying than the other at particular points, and when you think about it, they could both be dangerous if they threw enough of a hissy-fit: Anakin could seriously mess people up with The Force, and Wesley could get creative in Engineering and blow up the whole Enterprise. But really, folks, when it comes down to attitude, we really have to give this one to Anakin. And then there's the question of who I'd rather be trapped in an elevator for three hours with, but for an entirely different reason in this case. No contest: Anakin circa Attack of the Clones ... or, more to the point, Hayden Christensen ... oh yeah, baby. (But before he got the mechanical arm, 'cause that'd just be gross.) Advantage: Star Wars.

Khan vs. Darth Vader -- As much as I'd like to give this one to Khan, it just ain't that easy. Khan may have the charisma, but Vader has The Force. They've both mastered the art of their mere presence instilling fear in people, but Khan's exotic Latin accent is no match for that spooky mechanical breathing sound. Not to mention the fact that Vader can suffocate people just by thinking about it, but Khan can't be bothered to lift a finger to torture or kill his enemies and has to get one of his minions to do it. Khan gives great speeches (the "he tasks me" one from The Wrath of Khan is great), but that's his problem: he talks too much. And we all know what Vader would do to someone who talks too much ... it would probably involve his thumb and forefinger in a "pinching" motion. Advantage: Star Wars.

Star Destroyer vs. the Enterprise-D -- Of course, this is the one that's depicted in the picture that started this whole mess. My co-workers had their arguments (really, in a kamikaze run, enough damage is done to both ships that nobody wins), but here's mine: In The Empire Strikes Back, one puny asteroid lopped off the whole command tower section of the Star Destroyer (certainly crippling it), but the Enterprise's deflectors and shields could just bounce those meddlesome things out of its path. And what about the weapons? The Enterprise has both phasers and photon torpedoes, but the Star Destroyer only has "turbo-lasers". As has been established in Star Trek, lasers are a far inferior technology to phasers, and I rather suspect "turbo-lasers" are about as much of an improvement over the original technology as "light" cigarettes. Advantage: Star Trek.

Captain Kirk vs. Han Solo -- Far be it from me to reduce this to a contest of macho swagger (indeed, I've always found the scenario of men needing to behave "like men" quite amusing), but consider the following: Kirk "bagged a babe" (as Anthony Michael Hall's character in Sixteen Candles so poetically put it) nearly every week, but Han Solo pined away for nobody but Princess Leia halfway through the Classic Trilogy. Not only that, but while Solo was "captain" to a crew consisting of one solitary Wookiee, Kirk confidently commanded an unwavering crew of four hundred. Don't get me wrong, Harrison Ford is one of my all-time favorite actors, but Shatner minced no words in Free Enterprise, when told by a boy that his schoolyard tormentor said that Han Solo was cooler than Captain Kirk: "Kick that little f**ker's ass." That was all the motivation the little guy needed ... let's see Ford pull that off. Advantage: Star Trek.

Just to be a good sport here, I'm not even going to tally the scorecard in this post. Besides, I have the distinct impression that this topic will carry forward into a second post sometime in the near future, so I'll just say the race is too early to call. And anyway, though I am more of a Trek fan now, I've never stopped being a Star Wars fan, and probably never will. Each one has its advantages and its drawbacks, and is loved by different people (and in many cases the same people) for different reasons. But it's still fun to debate, though, isn't it?!

Star Trek: The Lost Missions - Episode 6

2009-11-08T15:59:00.000-08:00

Well, here we go (boldly) with the next exciting episode in the Peter Pan/Power Records Star Trek audio adventures. "A Mirror For Futility" (written by Alan Dean Foster) tells the story of an ancient and long-forgotten interstellar conflict -- so ancient that Spock has to do some of his famous digging through the library-computer -- that the Enterprise suddenly finds not only alive and well, but itself stumbling into the middle of. Unfortunately, the two combatants aren't about to listen to reason. Beam on board and enjoy!

This Little Piggy Stayed Home

2009-11-04T19:26:00.001-08:00

Well, folks, I'm sorry about the slowdown of posts here lately, but I was unexpectedly struck down by what I think is that dreaded H1N1 (a.k.a. "swine") flu several days ago. I'm feeling much better now, though I understandably haven't had a lot of energy to dream up a new topic lately, so here I go with my promise (or would that be threat?) that I was going to re-create an entry every now and then from the previous incarnation of this blog. I hope it entertains you....

This story is a study in contrasts, in just about every possible way, except when it comes to the nature of the subjects themselves: a pair of sci-fi movies and their television offspring. One of them I fell in love with as a kid, and the other I didn't happen upon until much later; I watched the movie version of one of them first, and the TV version of the other was the one I first found. And then there's the much more significant contrast, which I'll get to in due course. Just to make it fun, I'll address them in reverse chronological order.

A few years back, I had a pretty significant coupon (40 or 50 percent off, as I recall) for a nearby store, and I couldn't think of anything else I wanted that was in stock, so I decided to take the plunge on something I had been curious about for awhile: the DVD set of "Alien Nation: The Complete Series". I hadn't yet seen the movie, but I had seen bits and pieces of TV episodes, plus the show's premise -- half sci-fi, half cop show -- interested me. I ended up not regretting the purchase, as it took just a couple of months to work my way through all 22 episodes. It was a lot of fun to watch: a great cast, as well as entertaining and thought-provoking stories that have aged well. Although I wasn't quite eager enough to see the resolution to the freeze-frame cliffhanger final episode to convince me to buy the TV-movies box set, I did eventually pick up the original movie, starring James Caan and Mandy Patinkin, which inspired the series. I enjoyed it as well; I could definitely agree with whoever believed there was TV-series potential in the concept ... and the fact that I've always enjoyed Patinkin didn't hurt either. Despite the fact that the series lasted only one season, it was one of the better movie-to-TV adaptations I've come across.

Blue Thunder, however, is a different story. I saw the original movie, with Roy Scheider and Malcolm McDowell, as a kid and loved it. True, I was more into the gadgetry that made up Blue Thunder herself, but I later came to appreciate the story and the acting just as much. Well, when I found out that the very-short-lived TV series was being released on DVD, I was hit with a pang of nostalgia and eventually picked it up (on sale, 'cause I wasn't quite so nostalgic that I wanted to pay full-price for it), since I eagerly watched it week after week also. Well, how do I put this delicately? I hadn't realized how utterly crappy this show was until I started watching the DVDs. I wasn't even able to make it through all the episodes before I traded the thing in ... and to my surprise, I regret that far less than I thought I would. Maybe it's the casting -- a pre-"SNL" Dana Carvey as co-pilot to James Farentino (about the only watchable one here), and former NFL players Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith as Blue's ground support team and the show's comic relief ... and how can Sandy McPeak hold a candle to Warren Oates' portrayal of Captain Braddock? -- or maybe it's the slipshod scriptwriting, which may or may not seem far more so now than it did back then (the tightening of air safety, especially since 9/11, being just one thing that's changed quite a bit, and the extreme advances in computers being another). It can be funny how sci-fi shows can sometimes be the ones that age the least gracefully, can't it?

So, bottom line: If you haven't seen Blue Thunder, definitely check out the movie but skip the series (believe me, you'd be doing yourself a favor, even if you're a die-hard Butkus, Bubba, or Dana Carvey fan). If you haven't yet discovered Alien Nation, it doesn't matter whether you see the movie first or the TV show, but I recommend both. I am actually still toying with the idea of seeking out some of the comic-book miniseries that have come out over the years....

Star Trek: The Lost Missions - Episode 5

2009-10-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

Are you ready for another Peter Pan/Power Records Star Trek audio episode? Of course you are. Written by Alan Dean Foster, "To Starve a Fleaver" is the curious title of this one, in which the Enterprise plays host to a civilization seeking Federation membership. You know how sometimes you run into a person who's so pleasant to be around that their good mood is nearly contagious? Well, you don't know the half of it with this lot. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!

My Trekker Timeline - part 2 of 2

2009-10-16T07:01:00.000-07:00

You can find part 1 of this timeline here.

The year 1995 marked a new chapter of sorts in my Trek fandom. My father had just recently passed away, and we'd grown tired of the podunk town we were living in and were now browsing around a new part of the country (the Pacific Northwest) for a new place to live. It turned out to be prophetic, to a degree, that the new show would premiere the same week that we first set foot in the city that would, not long afterward, feel more like home than any other had before (even though we wouldn't end up actually residing in the city proper). Was it just a coincidence, or does the Trek connection have some deeper significance...?

1995 -- Yet another new Trek series debuts ... Star Trek: Voyager! I'm watching the pilot episode in a hotel room in a state I'd never been in before, but I like it. Echoing a sentiment heard from Rick Berman later on, I too felt like the show hit its stride right off the bat. Deep Space Nine, on the other hand, seems to be struggling, because they feel the need to bring in Worf to try and bolster the show's ratings. It looks like Paramount is about to stumble upon the answer to the question, "How much Trek is too much?" Fandom factor: accelerating to warp 9.

1996 -- Star Trek: First Contact ... sure, there was a TV episode with the same title, but this movie kicks ass! I love Robert Picardo's cameo, and I get a big hoot out of James Cromwell's all-too-human portrayal of the father of warp drive. It's pretty well-timed, too, 'cause the Borg were still pretty scary in this movie, but they'd soon fall victim to severe overuse on Voyager. Fandom factor: slight deceleration to warp 8.5.

1997 -- Presumably because Voyager is beginning to drop in the ratings, Kes is somewhat awkwardly written out of the show, and replaced by a blond Borg babe in a skin-tight catsuit with huge warheads (and no, I ain't talkin' photon torpedoes). With this shameless attempt by Paramount to lure in a less-enlightened 18- to 35-year-old male demographic, my suspicion of Trek's downhill slide is thus confirmed. Fandom factor: slowing to warp 8.

1998 -- An all-too-brief two years after the last movie comes the next, Star Trek: Insurrection. It'd be way cool, if it didn't seem so much like a glorified TV episode. Were the writers so much out-of-steam that they couldn't come up with a really slam-bang Q story for their next big-screen outing? In other news, Deep Space Nine comes perilously close to not being worth watching anymore when Terry Farrell decides to leave the show ... silly, when there's only one year of it left. Fandom factor: further deceleration to warp 6.5.

1999 -- Deep Space Nine goes out with a big, sweeping, serialized, pull-out-all-the-stops, ten-episode bang! If the build-up and payoff hadn't been this good, I wouldn't have been able to forgive Ms. Farrell for sticking us with the comparatively dull Nicole deBoer. As for Voyager ... thanks to the forementioned overuse, the Borg no longer scare the hell out of me, but Jeri Ryan's armor-plated hooters still do. Fandom factor: barely maintaining warp 6.

2001 -- Voyager ends with far less of a bang, in a rather dull and slightly clumsy episode, and not a moment too soon. But wait, still another Trek series is coming out ... Enterprise (sans the "Star Trek" in its title, at least at first). As much as I like Scott Bakula, the show fails to hold my interest through the end of its first season. I guess we should be thankful that they refrained from trotting out this series until after Voyager was finished. Fandom factor: momentarily accelerates from warp 4 to warp 5.

2002 -- We started thinking there wasn't going to be another movie, but after four years, here comes Star Trek: Nemesis. As a movie in general, it was decent, but as far as Trek movies go, it's no surprise it did in the franchise ... I had a headache after I left the theater, if that tells you anything. By this time, I'm just plain all Trekked out (as evidenced by the distinct lack of exclamation points in the last two paragraphs). Fandom factor: slowing from warp 3.5 to warp 2.5.

2005 -- Enterprise limps to an end, not that I care. It's the first Trek series since the original to be canceled due to low ratings. As it should have years before, Star Trek enters a period of dormancy. Fandom factor: antimatter supply depleted, but maintaining warp 2.5.

2007 -- Feeling nostalgic (wait a minute -- can you feel "nostalgic" about something you weren't around for the first time?), I buy all three seasons of The Original Series on DVD, and watch them all from beginning to end, many of the episodes for the very first time. Fandom factor: antimatter reserve allows slow acceleration to warp 3.

2008 -- After a couple years of whispered rumors, confirmed details begin to emerge about a new Star Trek movie, to feature the original crew played by -- gasp! -- new actors. Fandom factor: spontaneous recharge and acceleration from warp 3 to warp 5.

2009 -- At first only mildly interested in the impending big-screen reboot of Star Trek, I become more and more excited with every tidbit I hear and every image that I see, and when I finally see it, I've fallen in love with Star Trek all over again. Fandom factor: continuing buildup to warp 7.

So, as you can see from the chart, my history Trek of fandom has truly been a roller-coaster ride. I'm not much for real roller-coasters, but this one has been fun, and I wouldn't change any of it. Live long and prosper, indeed!

Carl's Jr.: "F**k You, I'm Eating."

2009-10-14T19:26:00.001-07:00

The movie I'm talking about here might not be quite in line with this blog's usual subject matter, but it's my blog and I can talk about whatever I want in it, so there. Besides, it does have a bit of a sci-fi element to it, so as far as I'm concerned it's close enough. I'd heard about Idiocracy several months ago, but didn't bother picking it up until I found it at a price equivalent to what I'd expect it to be worth -- in this case, about seven bucks. It turns out my "blind appraisal" was just about right: not great by any means, but not quite a waste of an hour and a half, either.

Idiocracy tells the story of a slightly-less-than-intelligent government lackey (played by Luke Wilson) who's easily duped, along with an equally lower-middle-intellect prostitute, into being the guinea pig in what's supposed to be a one-year-long cryogenics experiment run by the government. However, when the project's funding is yanked, they're both somehow forgotten (in a not-quite-plausible sequence of events, which is better left as glossed-over here as it was in the movie) and remain in deep-freeze for a staggering 500 years. Unfortunately, instead of awakening to a marvelously enlightened utopia, they find a woefully neglected and dumbed-down world of the future in which, to the audience's horror, they're by default the most intelligent humans on the planet.

You might be thinking that this is a bit thin of a premise to base a 90-minute movie on, and for the most part you'd be right. But writer-director Mike Judge and co-writer Etan Cohen make the most of it, peppering the movie with plenty of subtle and not-so-subtle visual and verbal jokes to keep it reasonably entertaining. A primary theme: the consumerism and product-placement that's already begun a steady increase in our present day has so saturated the future world as seen in Idiocracy that no one can really go -- or even simply look -- anywhere where they won't be bombarded by an advertisement of some sort -- even to the point that literally every piece of clothing that the characters wear is emblazoned with some corporate logo, and the people reflexively spout corporate slogans (routinely containing four-letter words, as in the example in this post's title) without thinking. The future state of health care and of Costco will also be sure to amuse, as will the most subtle sight gag in the movie -- I'll keep that one a secret and see if you pick up on it.

The more astute viewer will of course see the subtext of social commentary that's veiled in the movie's humor. Having worked around young adults for years now, I've been witnessing first-hand how the dereliction of the U.S. educational system and the technologically-induced shortening of the youth's attention spans have begun stripping today's kids of the ability to think for themselves, and chipping away at the IQ of the average American at an almost noticeable speed. (Indeed, I frankly don't know how many more years my patience for these youngsters is going to hold out.) It might sound like I'm exaggerating, but considering that the movie takes place 500 years in the future, I can actually envision a world as haplessly screwed-up as the one we see come to pass in Idiocracy ... especially taking into account the positively hilarious -- and frighteningly plausible -- theory for the nation's intellectual deterioration that's laid out in the movie's opening scenes.

While the students I'm exposed to here at my place of employment still seem to put more importance on socio-political affairs than entertainment (and can still tell the two apart), and the English language hasn't yet descended into an expletive-laden mess of barely-coherent mumble (though I can't stand these kids who say the word "like" 27 times in the average sentence), I do still fear the day when that balance will shift -- a day when "Ow! My Balls" will be TV's highest-rated show, a foul-mouthed pro-wrestler/porn-star (and not retired, either) will somehow be elected President, and Fuddrucker's has had its name unintentionally morphed into Buttf**ker's with the humor of it being totally lost on the uniformly dim-witted populace. For the moment, though, this movie is still more entertaining than it is frustrating. Its audience may be limited -- since I haven't traveled outside my home country in over twenty years and thus have no gauge of the level of commercialism elsewhere, I'm not sure how well the movie's social commentary will translate to overseas audiences -- and even in America, there are only so many people who would be able to appreciate it as anything more than a screwball comedy.

Star Trek: The Lost Missions - Episode 4

2009-10-11T22:58:00.000-07:00

Better late than never ... here we are with the next exciting episode in the nearly-forgotten audio adventures of Star Trek, as presented by Peter Pan/Power Records. In "The Time Stealer" (written by Cary Bates and Neal Adams), the Enterprise crew is caught in a fracas between a barbarian, his wizard-like companion, and a time-warping creature in space -- but you won't hear them quoting the Prime Directive, since it's in their best interest to join the fight. It's reminiscent in places of a few different Trek episodes, but it's entertaining nonetheless. I hope you enjoy it!

Stone Knives and Bearskins

2009-10-08T16:45:00.000-07:00

The lad in this picture is not actually me, but it might as well have been. Back when I was about his age, I got my very first computer: the Osborne 1, the same model you see in the picture. It may not look like much now, but back then the Osborne 1 was a groundbreaking machine -- the first totally self-contained portable computer for the retail market. Maybe it wasn't within everyone's financial reach, but $1,795.00 was actually a competitive price for a home computer at the time, especially considering that it included a well-rounded suite of home-office software (word processor, spreadsheet, and database programs) -- indeed, Osborne essentially started the trend of pre-bundling software with computers.

The Osborne 1 may have had its functional limitations -- it weighed a cumbersome 24 pounds, had a puny 5-inch display, and yielded about as much computing power as your average programmable universal remote control does now (a processor speed of 4 MHz and a whopping 64KB of RAM). And this was back in the day when the most popular computer storage medium was 5.25-inch floppy disks: thin, flexible and lightweight, but they each only held about 100KB of data. The Osborne 1 sported two such disk drives, labeled Drive A (from which the program disks were run) and Drive B (where the data files would be read and/or written). In case you younger computer users out there have ever wondered why the letters assigned to drives on modern computers start with C, this is why ... as one disk medium superseded the next, eventually being rendered obsolete altogether with the advent of plug-and-play USB-based flash drives, Drives A and B vanished with them.

And speaking of Drive C ... sorry to burst your bubble, but a built-in hard drive was a feature that was still years away. So was the mouse, but that was because Windows (or any other kind of graphical user interface, for that matter) also had yet to exist. Osborne computers used an operating system called CP/M ... not the most user-friendly in the world, but it did its job. (I have to wonder if CP/M was the inspiration for the writers of "Tron" to call their evil, tyrranical mainframe the "MCP".) I don't remember if I had the daisywheel printer (for letter-quality text printing) or the dot-matrix printer first, but they both used tractor-feed paper. To save me from eyestrain, my folks fixed me up with a larger external monitor (probably had a 10-inch picture tube, near as I can recall), which was a good thing, 'cause the built-in display died before the system was a year and a half old.

Anyway, I can still remember the somewhat limited fun I had with this machine for the few years I had it, and I was pretty-much never without a computer from then on. After the Osborne 1 outlived its usefulness, I was hooked up with a more advanced machine ... it still didn't have any of the fancy advances that we take for granted nowadays ("not even a mouse"), but it was capable of what I thought were pretty nifty graphics at the time ... I remember playing early versions of "Wheel of Fortune" and a couple of other games on it. And I think I had one other computer -- with a hard drive (something like 4MB), a mouse, Windows, and even a color monitor!! -- before I boldly stepped into the digital age in 1995 with an Acer, my first computer with a modem of any kind, internal or external, not to mention the first one with a CD drive.

Call me crazy, but despite the fact that today's notebook computers pack a thousand times the power and versatility into a package one-tenth the size and weight, I still look back on that old dinosaur called the Osborne 1 with nothing but fondness. It may have been a simple machine, but it's also true that the simpler the machine is, the fewer things can go wrong with it. I'd hate to have to choose between the limited-but-reliable technology of yesterday and the powerful-but-precarious possibilities of today. And I have to wonder about the future; advances in PC speed and capacity seem to be leveling off from their far quicker pace of ten years ago, but how powerful are computers going to be 30 years from now? Hmmm ... isn't it funny how we can hardly remember what the world was like before the Internet, let alone computers of any kind? How time flies.

My Trekker Timeline - part 1 of 2

2009-10-05T07:49:00.000-07:00

At the risk of revealing too much information (not of the grossly personal or stuff-only-a-doctor-should-hear variety, but just generally speaking) too early, I thought it would be fun to trot out my history of Star Trek fandom, sharing a list of bullet-points of interest along this particular 25-year stretch of the space-time continuum. The list ended up being longer than I thought, but it shouldn't bore you (too much) ... turns out something noteworthy about Trek happened almost every year. You're welcome to follow the handy-dandy chart included below. Enjoy!

circa 1984 -- Curious about Star Trek, more to contrast it with Star Wars than for any other reason, I acquire (can't remember how) a videocassette -- Betamax! -- of the Original Series episode "Shore Leave", and watch it a few times over the course of a year or so. I'm mildly fascinated by my first introduction to Star Trek, even though this was probably one of the worst episodes to be introduced to it with. Fandom factor: leaving spacedock on maneuvering thrusters.

1986 -- During a lull in the curriculum of a high-school science class, the teacher is playing Star Trek III: The Search For Spock on video. My fascination begins to grow at a steady pace; soon afterward I obtain the "Space Seed" episode on video so I can figure out who the hell this Khan guy is before watching Star Trek II. Fandom factor: half impulse.

1987 -- Not yet having enough interest in Star Trek to see the movies on the big screen, I wait to watch Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home until it hits video. Being a big fan of time-travel stories, it wins me over big-time, and I would soon regret not having seen it in the theater, or being ready for the arrival of the new Next Generation series. Fandom factor: warp 1.5.

1988 -- Somewhere between "11001001" and "The Neutral Zone", I become completely and totally enthralled with Star Trek: The Next Generation and begin waiting anxiously for each new episode, regrettably missing the repeat telecasts of the first several episodes. By now I have officially crossed over from the Star Wars camp and will never look back.* Fandom factor: warp 7.

1989 -- Due to my hyper-accelerated fandom, I develop a momentary warp-field imbalance (in contemporary parlance, a "geek-out") that causes me to phase into "get-a-life" territory, but it's counterbalanced by the eventual realization that Dr. Pulaski, although she had her moments, wasn't much more than a female Bones McCoy and never really gelled with the rest of the cast. Fandom factor: stabilizing at warp 9.

1990 -- "The Best of Both Worlds" arrives, and the Borg scare the hell out of us. Star Trek: TNG hits its stride, and it will stay there for years. I've been recording each and every episode on VHS tape -- finally catching those few unseen first-season episodes when the show goes into daily reruns -- to watch and re-watch and treasure "forever" (until the advent of the DVD season box set). But fortunately, I waited to see Star Trek V until it went to video. Fandom factor: warp 9.

1991 -- Star Trek hits its 25th Anniversary, and it's in the prime of its life. (Weren't we all when we were 25?) The occasion is bittersweet, with the loss of Gene Roddenberry and the original crew taking its final film voyage together, but I've never been prouder of being a Trek fan. I'm making audiotapes of selected episodes to listen to in the usually-quiet little bookstore where I worked at the time. Fandom factor: remaining constant at warp 9.

1992 -- Plans are announced for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A whole new Trek series ... with one of my favorite characters, Chief O'Brien, as a regular! Wahoo! Can life get any better? Fandom factor: maintaining warp 9.

1994 -- Another bittersweet moment, with the TV voyages of The Next Generation coming to an end (prematurely, in my opinion). I watch the Enterprise-D crew's feature-film debut, Star Trek: Generations, four times in the theatre, but partly because I'm living in a small town and there's really nothing else to do within a 40-mile radius. When I realize that this movie was primarily the studio's way of making room for the next TV series, I begin having my first inklings that Star Trek has begun a slow orbital decay. Fandom factor: drops slightly to warp 8.5.

In the interest of avoiding a ridiculously long blog entry, I felt this was a natural dividing line between parts one and two; I'll explain why in the second half, coming up soon. Stay tuned...!

*figure of speech ... hey, once a Star Wars fan, always a Star Wars fan.

Oh No They Di'int!! -- episode 2

2009-09-24T20:56:00.000-07:00

Why are they remaking Clash of the Titans? They don't need to ... it's just as uncalled-for as all the other remakes that are littering the landscape already. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm becoming older than I feel, but there should be a law out there that says a movie can't be remade if it's less than 50 years old, and a movie adaptation of a TV series can't be made if the TV series ended less than 30 years ago. It's not as if every original idea that could possibly exist has already been done, right? And doesn't the track record of so-called "reboots" of movie and TV series kind-of speak for itself? There have been far more misses of that sort lately than there have been hits ... and don't even get me started on the A-Team movie (Oh, heaven help us, Liam Neeson is going to play Hannibal Smith? What are they thinking?!?) and the Karate Kid rehash that are on their way ... I can already see the dismal box-office receipts for them. People say nostalgia sells nowadays, but I say if you want nostalgia, go out and buy the original series on DVD and watch that; 98 percent of all TV series worth any pop-culture value are out on DVD, and trust me, they were all done far better the first time around.

But, back to the topic at hand: Clash of the Titans. Not everyone will agree with me, but far as I'm concerned it was a classic. Sir Laurence Olivier as Zeus, king of the gods (hey, who else would he play?) ... the always delightful Maggie Smith as the goddess Thetis ... the late, great Burgess Meredith as Ammon ... and, last but certainly not least, Bubo the mechanical owl as himself!! Not to mention the formidable Kraken, the icky Stygian Witches, the creepy Styx ferrymen, and the scare-you-shitless Medusa. The folks over at The Sci-Fi Movie Page complain that the original was "slow and dull", but I never ever get bored watching it; in fact, I'd rather have a movie that's comfortably paced rather than the lightning-fast, flashy and noisy video-game-stylized movies that are all the rage now. They also whine about the special effects being poor, but I consider them an artform -- think of all the man-hours it took to produce those shots ... not the most realistic-looking scenes in the world, but I tend to appreciate effects that actually took a lot of effort. Toiling in front of cameras for endless hours to put together a ten-second scene shows a kind of care and character that sitting in front of a computer and sliding various light/shading/color/contrast tools back and forth never can and never will.

I'm just not impressed with anything I've seen or heard yet about the Clash of the Titans remake. Liam Neeson as Zeus? Sure, I like the guy fine (he was in Krull, after all, and of course he was Qui-Gon Jinn!), so he'll probably do nicely in the role. Sam Worthington? Okay, I can't comment on him one way or another since I don't think I've seen anything he's been in ... but I bet he won't have the charisma that Harry Hamlin had in the role. And what's Hades doing in this thing? He wasn't in the original ... I bet we'll see a flashy, effects-laden battle, ala Anakin versus Obi-Wan, between them ... whatever. I am mildly interested that Nicholas Hoult is going to be in it, 'cause I liked him in the British series Skins. And is Medusa going to be a strictly CG character? Oh ... actually she was entirely animated in the original, now that I think about it. And dollars to doughnuts, they won't even have a Bubo in this one at all. Well, that just tears it right there. Unless the trailers seriously blow me away, I won't be seeing this thing until it hits DVD.

Star Trek: The Lost Missions - Episode 3

2009-09-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

Okay, it's time once again to boldly go into the world of the Peter Pan/Power Records Star Trek stories. (Click on the 'Star Trek: The Lost Missions' label for others in the series, including an overview in the first post.) This one, "The Crier In Emptiness" (written by Alan Dean Foster), tells the tale of a very unusual kind of visitor that unintentionally wreaks havoc aboard the Enterprise. This is one of my favorites in the series, not only for the rather unique and innovative story, but also because the "visitor" happens to be one of my greatest loves. Listen long, and prosper.

Oh No They Di'int!! -- episode 1

2009-09-15T20:37:00.000-07:00

For quite a number of years now I've been a casual fan of the classic '60s animated adventure series Jonny Quest. I'm not nearly as into it as I am Star Trek, Quantum Leap, or other series, but I like it enough to have collected the excellently done '80s comic book series published by Comico, and to have bought the DVD set when it came out a few years back -- and the '90s TV retooling of it probably stoked my interest in it too. I'm also familiar enough with it to know that, for a good 20 years or so, there's been talk of a live-action feature film version being in the works. Indeed, in issue #1 of Starlog Press' "Comics Scene" magazine, published in 1987 and which I just consulted, there was a small sidebar article in which Fred Dekker, director of the then soon-to-be-released Monster Squad, was gearing up to go into pre-production on it. But now, after more false starts than Bandit can shake a stick at, Hollywood appears to have finally shifted into high gear on the project, thanks most likely to the list of high-profile retro animation reboots and comic book hero adaptations.

But, all is not quite rosy in Quest land, at least if you ask me. What's bothering me, specifically? The actor they've all but officially confirmed as being cast in the title role ... Zac Efron. (His IMDB page still says he's only "rumored" to be cast, so I'm still holding out hope.) Now, understand that I don't have anything against Mr. Efron personally, or even critically; he's a decent actor and a good-lookin' dude (whether he deserves all the adulation and adoration that's been heaped upon him is a debate for another time ... or not, since it's not a subject fit for this blog) ... I just think he's flat-out wrong for the part. He's too old to play the Jonny we know and love -- in the original series, he was 11 years old, and in the '90s update he was in his early teens -- and Efron basically looks his age, which is, as I said, too old. Are they wanting to cast a big name primarily to draw the crowds to the theaters? The Jonny Quest brand arguably carries enough of its own weight to bring in not only the people who grew up watching the show, but their grandkids and the nostalgia buffs, so the producers should feel reasonably free to seek out a lesser-known name, or even an unknown -- a younger (or at least younger-looking) actor, with a closer visual resemblance to Jonny, good acting chops, and a bit of an athletic inclination certainly wouldn't hurt (for the potentially demanding physicality that the role would implicitly demand). Surely, with the population of this country, a young man matching those criteria couldn't be too hard to find.

But then, the whole "pulling the crowds in with the Jonny Quest brand" thing might be moot, because the producers are -- get this -- considering not even calling the movie (or, presumably, the character) Jonny Quest at all! More absurdly, they're basing this thinking on the box-office failure of the recent live-action Speed Racer movie. Uh ... what?!? Not only were the original JQ and SR animated series not even produced in the same country, let alone by the same people, but as far as I know the Speed Racer movie wasn't written or directed by any of the same people who'll be involved in Jonny Quest. So why are they automatically presuming it'll be a failure? I can just hear the JQ writer and director, whoever they may be, now: Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence, studio mucky-mucks. But then, the Hollywood studios don't appear to have ever placed a whole lot of stock in outside-the-box thinking anyway. But, I digress. If they're going to make a Jonny Quest movie without calling it Jonny Quest, then what's the point? And what, exactly, is making the studio bigwigs assume that such a strategy won't backfire on them, and cause the movie to be an even bigger flop than it would have been if they'd kept the Jonny Quest title?!?

But, back to the question of who to cast in the role of Jonny. I'd have to think about already established names in that age group, but the one that comes to mind first is junior Gossip Girl cast member Connor Paolo. He looks like he's still firmly in his mid-teens (and I think a JQ movie would work better with Jonny at that age), and even has a bit of a Jonny Quest look to him. Sure, he's naturally dark-haired, but he looks pretty good with dyed hair and could always wear colored contacts. But then, does Jonny even really need to be a blond? (But, like the above question, that can wait till later.) He's a pretty good actor, to boot -- was kind-of creepy in his Law & Order: SVU appearance recently (not that JQ would demand creepy acting) -- and could probably hold his own with the physical stuff. So, how about it, Hollywood? Connor could use a big feature-film break, and I'd bet he could pull this one off with flying colors.

Short In Stature, Tall In Power

2009-09-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

Of all the "sword-and-sorcery" movies that came out in the early to mid 1980s, Krull is the only one I like. As I recall, it didn't get very good reviews when it was released, and it wasn't a box office success, so I can't help but feel that it's just never gotten the respect that I feel it's deserved. But then, it got a pretty decent special-edition DVD release (with commentaries, and a behind-the-scenes featurette -- narrated by Tom Bosley, no less!) a few years back, whereas Dragonslayer never has, so I could just be biased by my undying love for this movie. Sure, it has the oft-used scenario of the princess taken captive by the evil beast (quite literally Beast with a capital "B", in this case), and her lovelorn prince wrangling a scrappy band of outlaws and braving a series of hardships to come charging to her rescue, plus it was being released in the middle of a near glut of semi-sci-fi/medieval-fantasy movies (so much so that it had started becoming difficult to tell them apart), but to me this movie is like nothing else out there.

First of all, there was the toally bitchin' weapon-of-choice in the movie (this movie's Excalibur, if you will), the Glaive -- not your ordinary run-of-the-mill sword, but rather a five-armed flying blade, kind-of a cross between a starfish and a ninja throwing star. True, in real life it'd probably be about as aerodynamic as a pop-tart, but how über-cool would it be to actually have one of those? And then there was the character of Rell, the cyclops (played by the late Bernard Bresslaw), an imposing figure who could throw his trident weapon with deadly precision from yards away, but who was just a big teddy-bear on the inside. Heck, all the characters in the movie are enjoyable for one reason or another ... but then, as I said before, that just might be me gushing on about this movie as I am wont to do.

One of the neatest things about Krull, though, is the cast ... the Brits will be able to spot two EastEnders players in their much-younger days, Todd Carty and Graham McGrath, but more significantly, we get three early peeks at actors who are at least semi-notable genre personalities now. Two of Torquil's band of escaped criminals, who end up showing their hearts of gold in aiding the prince in the rescue of his lady, are played by Liam Neeson (who would, of course, go on to play Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace) and Robbie Coltrane (who is now loved the world over as the hulking but huggable Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter films). But take a close look at the lead character, Prince Colwyn himself -- if he looks familiar, that's because he's Ken Marshall, who went on to play the duplicitous Maquis operative Michael Eddington in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine).

But perhaps the most overlooked aspect of Krull, and also one of its most enthralling, is the magnificent score by James Horner. It has seen three different commercial releases over the years, in progressively more expansive forms leading up to a two-CD issue of the complete score, but none of them are in print or readily available any longer. And one of the most tragic things of all is that no pieces from this score ever seem to make an appearance on any compilation, whether it's a general film music recording, a genre-specific collection, or a James Horner anthology ... not even the wonderful and well-rounded releases by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra have ever played a Krull selection on any of their releases. I simply don't see how that can be, as I honestly feel it's one of Horner's top three works ever (behind Titanic and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan).

As if you couldn't tell by now, I love Krull immensely and strongly recommend it to anyone who's never seen it. Unless you simply don't like anything to do with medieval-themed sci-fi/fantasy or sword-and-sorcery movies, I just don't see how you wouldn't love it. And I didn't even mention Ergo or the firemares ... wait till you see them!

Star Trek: The Lost Missions - Episode 2

2009-09-06T16:07:00.000-07:00

Here we have the next episode in the Peter Pan/Power Records series of Star Trek stories, released back in the '70s. (See the first post in the series for background info.) In "In Vino Veritas" (written by Alan Dean Foster), Kirk and Spock serve as mediators in a territorial dispute between the Romulans and the Klingons, but the meeting is thrown into chaos by a man who appears to be a cross between Harry Mudd and Cyrano Jones (I'm guessing the producers of the story records didn't have permission to use either of those two characters, so they made up this guy instead). I hope it's just as entertaining for you as the last one. Enjoy!

Will It Be "Marvey" or "Dismal"?

2009-09-02T07:53:00.000-07:00

You know when you hear some news, and you feel like you should react about it in a certain way (or in some way, period), but it turns out you don't? Well, that's what happened when I read the recent news that Disney is buying out Marvel. I don't have any particularly strong opinions about Disney one way or another -- I'm a fan of a few of their movies, mostly from the late '70s to mid '80s, but that's about it. And I'm not all that emotionally invested in Marvel, either -- I totally dig the "Spider-Man" and "X-Men" movies, but am not much into super-hero comics otherwise. I venture to guess that we consumers will see little to no evidence of Disney's acquisition of Marvel, except that characters from the Marvel Universe will probably take up a fairly high-profile residence at the Disney theme parks ... and we might see the Disney production company "tag" (whatever the little five-second logo thingie is called in the industry) alongside the Marvel "tag" at the beginning of any future Marvel hero movies.

Frankly, they would be wise to keep the Marvel brand separate from the Disney brand, at least when it comes to the existing line of comic books; somehow I imagine the hardcore Marvel Universe readers would balk a bit at the thought of being seen buying Disney comics. But I doubt we'll need to worry in that regard; I'm sure Disney isn't all too eager to "sully" their family-friendly logo by slapping it on books featuring masked avengers brutalizing ruthless crime lords. And from there comes the one worry that's probably on a bunch of people's minds: Will Disney demand that the Marvel Universe clean itself up, and become less violent and more family-friendly? Somehow I doubt it -- the powers that be at Disney are smart enough not to dump four billion dollars into an acquisition, only to run the risk of watering it down and effectively flushing it straight down the crapper.

Hmm ... I guess I did have more to say than I expected to on this subject, despite having very little emotional investment in the scenario or its consequences ... at least, as it pertains to any particular companies. It does, however, bug me in the larger context of an ever-continuing series of corporate buyouts in the entertainment industry. The Disney/Marvel deal is the one I've had the most trepidations about since the Sony/BMG merger in 2004 -- but that one bothered me more, as I'm far more into music than any other facet of entertainment. (But then, record company mergers do have their advantages when it comes to being able to release comprehensive anthologies of artists who have a tendency to hop labels.) One would think that these buyouts and mergers would have to be stopped at some point to avoid concerns over ant-trust or monopolies in any given industry.

It makes me wonder if these corporate CEO's have ever seen that cartoon where the little fish gets eaten by a slightly bigger fish, and then that one gets eaten by a bigger fish, and so on. Such as it is with the entertainment world, where smaller companies progressively get absorbed into larger ones. Are they forgetting that this will eventually just leave one fish in the water? (And isn't it in that same cartoon where a character carrying dynamite is swallowed by that super-big fish and blown up? Okay, maybe that's carrying the analogy out on a limb.) They also need to be careful of the old adage, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall." If these mega-publishers end up collapsing under their own weight from a bad business decision of some sort, they'll take down all the smaller companies they bought out.

But then, as I said, Disney is pretty smart, so that probably won't happen. And even if it does, and Marvel somehow falls victim to corporate foibles, the comic book industry is one of those that seems (at least, at my level of scrutiny, which admittedly isn't intense) to do best at re-inventing and re-invigorating itself when it needs to. So, let's have positive thoughts about the Disney/Marvel merger ... we might as well, since we can't undo it.

You Better You Best

2009-08-27T20:52:00.000-07:00

While perusing TVshowsonDVD.com the other day, I ran across the press release for the upcoming second volume in the single-disc "The Best of Star Trek: The Next Generation" series-that-I-didn't-know-was-going-to-be-a-series. Now, I of course already own all seven of the full season DVD sets, so I don't have any vested interest in buying these budget releases, but having my feelers out for all things Star Trek (especially TNG) has become such a second nature to me that I just can't let this go by without spewing my thoughts out through my keyboard like so much hydrogen exhaust through the Enterprise's bussard collectors.

Specifically, my thoughts are on the selection of episodes (basically the only thing to gripe about with these releases, since they don't include any extras). The episodes chosen for the first volume more-or-less made sense: the two-part Borg blockbuster "The Best of Both Worlds", the masterpiece fan-favorite "Yesterday's Enterprise", and the most arguable of the bunch (but still excellent by any means), "The Measure of a Man".

As with any top-ten list, the further away from Number One you get, the more questionable the selections can become, so in that respect it's almost inevitable that the choices for volume two don't stand up quite as well to scrutiny. "The Inner Light", which probably should have usurped the spot taken by "The Measure of a Man" on volume one, is of course fully qualified to be there. Unfortunately, it goes downhill from there (although we are talking Star Trek: TNG, so it's all relative); they seem to have given more credence to the guest stars appearing in each given episode than to the actual quality of the stories. I don't have much problem with the choice of "Tapestry", because I like Q and it was one of the better Q outings, and I've always had a soft spot for good ol' Scotty, so you wouldn't get much complaint out of me for "Relics", but the fact of the matter is that there are plenty of episodes with more enthralling and well-written stories than these two.

The real capper, though, is that this disc's lineup of episodes is rounded out by "Cause and Effect". Are you kidding me? "Cause and Effect"?!? I mean, sure, it was an interesting premise with a decent story, but on my better days (today not being one of them, but that's off-topic) I can think of a good seven or eight episodes, off the top of my head, that would be more suited for a disc calling itself "The Best of Star Trek: The Next Generation" volume two ... or even volume three, for that matter. I have to wonder if the simple presence of Kelsey Grammer (who, by pure coincidence I'm sure, has a role in the moderately-anticipated remake of Fame that's about to hit theatres) is what bumped this episode into favor. We all loved Jimmy Doohan, so I'll let "Relics" off easy.

So, after looking at a list of episodes, here would be the lineup I'd have chosen for "The Best of Star Trek: The Next Generation" volume 2: "The Inner Light", "Darmok", and "Unification" parts 1 and 2. For volume 3, you ask? Let's see ... I think "Half a Life", "Loud as a Whisper", "Symbiosis", and "Hollow Pursuits". Of course, we could mix-and-match those, for anyone who might object to one whole volume being taken from a single season. And then there are some of my personal favorites, like "A Matter of Time", "Thine Own Self", "The Chase", and "Suddenly Human" ... that would be volume 4. I'd better stop here, 'cause I could go on for hours.

Star Trek: The Lost Missions - Episode 1

2009-08-16T18:51:00.000-07:00

I should have known better than to come up empty-handed when I searched for information on the eleven Star Trek audio adventure stories that were released on Peter Pan/Power Records back in the late '70s -- after all, they are Star Trek collectibles, and anything Trek that has ever existed has got to have decent coverage somewhere or other in cyberspace. Well, I would like to have known who the actors were that voiced the characters in these stories (some of them did pretty darn decent imitations of the original actors, I've gotta say), but at least I found out that most of the tales were written by veteran sci-fi writer Alan Dean Foster, with one other written by Cary Bates and Neal Adams. Unfortunately, the writers of three of the stories are unknown ... come to think of it, it's probably for the best, as two of them were kind-of sucky.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, Peter Pan Records was a label known for producing kid-friendly story and song records for many years, including stories based on comic book heroes such as Superman and Batman, and sci-fi/fantasy series like Space: 1999 and The Six Million Dollar Man. Back in the mid '70s they produced a series of seven original Star Trek stories and released them both individually on 7-inch records (usually accompanied by a read-along comic book) and in collected volumes on 12-inch LPs. The release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979 provided them with the opportunity to not only re-release the existing stories, but to add four new tales to the library. Unfortunately I have only the three ST:TMP re-release LPs (whose jackets are decorated simply with stills from the movie) rather than the original releases (which, aside from being more rare, have semi-cool original artwork on their jackets, from what I can tell on the web).

But anyway, these story records seem to have a bit of a following, so their existence might not be new to as many of you as I'd hoped ... but nevertheless I'm going to start posting them in MP3 format. I'll be posting them in what I believe is their original order of production (following their order of appearance on each LP, in the albums' order of release). A few years ago, I ripped them and burned them onto two CDs which I called "Star Trek: The Lost Missions" volumes 1 and 2, and that's what the MP3 tags will correspond to. (I had to shuffle them around in a rather specific order so that they would fit -- and they just barely did -- on two discs!) For your amusement, when I'm done uploading them all (about one every other week is the plan), I'll then follow up by uploading the artwork I created for the two CDs, should you decide to burn your own set.

I trust that these stories are old and obscure enough, not to mention completely out-of-print, that nobody will particularly care that I'm posting MP3s of them ... but, if the creators insist, for whatever bizarre reason, that I cease and desist, then I invite them to email me, stating their credentials, and politely ask me to do so. I hope not, 'cause they're a really neat little curiosity for Trek fans out there.

First up: "Passage To Moauv" (written by Alan Dean Foster), a cute story about a dignitary's pet that, when brought aboard the Enterprise for transport, causes chaos aboard the ship, but not quite in the way one might expect....

By the way, not only does Memory Alpha have an entry regarding these Trek story records, but here's a really cool web resource, from which I found quite a bit of info about them that I hadn't known before: Guide to the STAR TREK Story Records

Geek Pastry

2009-08-09T16:57:00.000-07:00

I must be in a River Phoenix mood lately ... after watching The Mosquito Coast last week, I found myself watching Explorers several days later. That has all but convinced me to start a series of posts about some of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy films from my childhood, and I thought this one was as good a place as any to start. Explorers was filmed in 1985, and starred a young River Phoenix and a young Ethan Hawke (both in their first feature film roles, according to IMDB) as two junior-high-school misfits -- one a science nerd and the other a comic-book/sci-fi geek -- who come up with a way to create a spherical force field which allows them to fly through the air, and ultimately into space. With their new friend (played by Jason Presson), just as much an outcast but for entirely different reasons, they set out on the journey of a lifetime, which goes even farther than they had ever imagined.

I think I've finally realized why I love this movie so much: it's full of childlike wonder, much like its protagonists, but it neither talks down to the teen and tween audience it was mostly made for, nor does it try to be more than it is with an overly dramatic storyline. And it's not just the kids who are the good guys of the story; there's also the character played by Dick Miller -- an air patrol officer who, upon finding out the kids' secret, doesn't expose or arrest them, but instead completely identifies with the boys and wishes he were in their shoes. I can't be sure, but I rather suspect that it was a person much like him that wrote the script for this movie. They just don't make 'em like this anymore, it seems -- when Disney or someone else makes a movie for kids nowadays, it ends up underestimating its audience's intelligence, almost to the point of being condescending.

Not only is it fun to see Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix at such young ages (though still, to this day, I can't look at River without a shadow of pain in my heart, thinking about his untimely and senseless death), but James Cromwell is a hoot as Wolfgang's father, and Robert Picardo plays no less than three roles (though in two of them you'd be hard-pressed to see his face through the heavy prosthetics). If you haven't seen Explorers yet, you owe it to your inner geek.

The Letter

2009-07-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, you remember the letter I was telling you about at the end of my previous post? It didn't take me long to find it after all (it just took me longer than I thought to actually get to looking for it). Here it is in the back of issue #8 of DC's second Star Trek series, which launched in 1989. Read it and weep -- weep for him and others like him, that is. I just hope that this Mr. Mason has come to his senses and seen the ridiculousness of his prejudices since this letter was printed.

(Click image to enlarge.)

The Trek Comics Motherlode

2009-07-23T20:04:00.000-07:00

My collection of Star Trek memorabilia is basically concentrated in three major categories, all of which I'll eventually reveal to you. The first of these is the comic books. Allow me to introduce you to what may very well be the bitchinest piece of Trek-related merchandise out there (click on the product's image to go to its Amazon listing) -- at least I've got the feeling that most of you missed it when it came out, seeing as even the proprietor of my local comic book store didn't even know about it until I clued him into its existence. I've never gone looking for such a statistic, but I have to wonder what percentage of Trekkers are or have been regular readers and/or collectors of the various Trek comics. If you've never read them, then you're definitely missing out on bunches of well-written and entertaining stories. And if you do read/collect them, then odds are there are probably some that you've never read or been able to add to your collection. Well, that's where this item comes in.

Imagine, if you will, every issue of every Star Trek comic book ever published (up until 2002, when Wildstorm stopped producing them), all packed onto one DVD disc. Yes, each and every page -- including the front and back covers, the letters pages (in which I was immortalized once in 1991), and even the vintage advertisements -- are all scanned into clearly readable PDF files and accessible by an easy-as-rokeg-blood-pie interface. And though you can't copy the files for use elsewhere, you can print them out in whole or in part (though an unobtrusive Starfleet arrowhead watermark will show on the printed page). These restrictions are a small price to pay for the convenience of having literally hundreds of comic books squeezed into the shelf space of a DVD case, not to mention being able to fill any of the gaps in your comic collection ... assuming you're not a hardcore comics collector and are concerned only with the content (I fall into that category, and don't own any of the vintage Gold Key issues or the initial 1980 Marvel series, so this DVD does nicely to take care of that.)

Best of all, this item is a pretty decent bargain even at full retail price, considering the funds it would take to accumulate the hard copies of all the comics in question. I read one review that says there are a few botched scans (mucked-up or cut-off images) in the mix, but I personally haven't found them yet. But even a Trek nut like yours truly finds it hard to complain about a relatively small shortcoming like that. Did I mention that the thing runs right from Adobe Reader, so that no software installation on your computer is even necessary (unless you have an outdated version of Adobe Reader)? You couldn't ask for more, could you? Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm gonna go now and see if I can find the issue where some horse's ass in the letters pages, who claimed to be a Trek fan, had a problem with Scotty and Uhura getting tender with each other (a continuation of sorts from their flirting in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier) 'cause he didn't believe in the "mixing of the races". (You think I'm making that up? Sadly, I'm not. Maybe I'll share it with you once I've found it....)

Live Long And Party

2009-07-12T16:52:00.000-07:00

Here's a movie with which I can identify a little bit more closely than I'm comfortable with ... although I do really enjoy watching it. It's called Free Enterprise, and without giving too much of it away, it stars Rafer Weigel and a pre-Will & Grace Eric McCormack as two best friends who are dealing with stalled love lives and stalled careers as they approach their 30th birthdays. Both avid Star Trek fans, they see a glimmer of hope for their respective futures when Mark (McCormack) gets the chance at collaborating with their childhood idol, William Shatner (in a brilliantly warped but thankfully minimally-hammed-up performance as a caricature of himself), and at the same time Robert (Weigel) meets the girl of his dreams.

I don't want to risk spoiling any more of the plot. Those of you who have watched the Trekkies 2 DVD will probably recognize the dramatization of a tale that Robert Meyer Burnett, Free Enterprise's co-writer and director, told of showing up at school in a Star Trek uniform -- indeed, the movie is based loosely on the lives of Burnett and Mark Altman, the film's other co-writer. The script is packed with pop-culture references, mostly Star Trek and sci-fi but some otherwise, so we geeks will have plenty to laugh at (assuming we don't take our lives or our fandoms too seriously). If you haven't seen this film yet, you must ... and if you're like me, you'll probably end up picking up the two-disc special edition ... and at only ten dollars, what have you got to lose?

The Sound and The Furie

2009-06-28T21:55:00.000-07:00

Wow ... I am simply in awe. Unfortunately, it's not in a good way. You see, several months ago I happened upon a boxed set of all four Christopher Reeve Superman films at Costco for a mere $18, which was a spectacular price, seeing as how all four were the special/deluxe editions (Superman: The Movie in this case being the 4-disc bonus-features-packed deluxe package). Until then I'd had just the bare-bones original DVD releaes of the films, except for Superman III whose deluxe edition I found on special one day, and Superman IV which I'd never felt the slightest compulsion to buy, even before I'd heard confirmation of how bad it was in the excellent documentary Look, Up In The Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman.

But I finally gave into the temptation this evening and put Superman IV: The Quest For Peace into my DVD player, expecting full well to have 90 minutes of my life completely wasted. I'm pleased to say that, in that capacity alone, the movie surpassed my expectations. Now, mind you, I have a personal history of liking -- even loving -- movies that were largely panned by critics (The Black Hole, Johnny Dangerously, Krull, and yes, even Superman III). But I'm afraid that even I couldn't find anything to love about this sorry-ass piece of ... filmmaking. What were they thinking? Did they not realize, even by the time they'd gotten to post-production, what a turkey they had on their hands?

Christopher Reeve, bless his soul, did what he could with the material ... but Margot Kidder, Jackie Cooper, and Gene Hackman all seemed to be going through the motions, almost as if they themselves couldn't wait for the movie to be over. Marc McClure was kind-of just there, because the script essentially gave Jimmy Olsen nothing at all to do but follow Superman around like a puppy. And poor Jon Cryer, trapped in the netherworld between his bygone John Hughes teen-comedy glory days and his current, very enjoyable stint in Two And a Half Men ... what do you wanna bet he wishes this movie had never happened at all, or at least had happened to someone else? Nah, I can't imagine there's anyone out there he'd hate that much.

I'll grant you that the Superman movies have never adhered rigidly to scientific credibility to begin with, but even this script's writing was nothing short of pathetic. I won't go into the details, except to say that Lex Luthor's sketchy "scientific" plan would have looked silly even in a 1940's sci-fi serial, and that Superman's eyes should never, at least in a live-action film, be given any powers beyond heat vision and X-ray vision (okay, to spare you the pain of watching the movie: he uses his eyes to magically re-assemble destroyed sections of the Great Wall of China out of thin air ... I shit you not).

Come to think of it, there was one shot that was quite priceless in the movie: possibly the best ever bit of physical shtick by Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent, in which he stumbles on a marble floor and narrowly avoids falling on his ass. But that sure doesn't make up for perhaps the most annoying part of the movie: Gene Hackman pronouncing the word "nuclear" like George W. Bush ("nucular") -- all the more painful because the script called for him to say the word at least a dozen times. I had respect for Mr. Hackman until this movie ... maybe Superman can use that memory-erasing trick on me for that hour-and-a-half like he did on Lois for discovering his secret identity...?

Update: If you're still jonesin' to get all four Superman movies for a good price, you can't get much better than this -- although this set is quite skimpy on the extras by comparison.

Hidden In The Stars

2009-06-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a little while since I've made a post, and I'm bound and determined, with the tenacity of an Obsidian Order operative, to not allow this blog to linger without activity. I've been working my way (much more quickly than expected, thanks to my newly rekindled addiction to it) through my Star Trek: The Next Generation DVDs ... have made it past the halfway point of season two in mere weeks. Anyway, the most recent episode I watched prompted me to crank out this little off-the-cuff post about some interesting and probably little-known casting tidbits about ST:TNG....

Did you know there was a semi-famous face hidden in the holodeck lineup of Klingon warriors in the rite of ascension anniversary program that Wesley and the crew assembled for Worf in the episode "The Icarus Factor"? It was none other than TV-personality-turned-new-age-musician (and, of course, Trek fan) John Tesh! His name never appeared in the credits, but the behind-the-scenes tale of his cameo appearance was mentioned in the wonderful Star Trek 25th Anniversary Special (absolutely not to be confused with the ridiculous 30th Anniversary not-so-Special hosted by Ted Danson). Say ... why did Kenny G get a spot in that 30th Anniversary thing? If they wanted cheesy instrumental music, why not somebody with an actual Trek connection like John Tesh?

But, I digress.... John Tesh certainly had the stature for a Klingon ... the guy is well over six feet tall, from what I understand. While we're on the subject of Klingons, another notable personality who appeared as a Klingon was basketball star James Worthy (in the episode "Gambit, part 2").

There are two other, more famous, faces who almost had guest roles on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Little person actor, David Rappaport (most remembered for his lead role in the Terry Gilliam fantasy comedy Time Bandits) was cast as trader/collector Kivas Fajo in the episode "The Most Toys", and had actually filmed a few scenes, before he tragically lost his battle with depression and committed suicide. If only he knew how many people enjoyed watching him in his various TV and film appearances, maybe that wouldn't have happened.

And did you know that the one and only Robin Williams was cast to portray time-travelling con-man Berlinghoff Rasmussen in "A Matter Of Time"? Unfortunately, the filming schedule for the episode conflicted with that of the Steven Spielberg movie Hook, forcing Williams to ultimately choose between the two. Hook, by the way, is a terribly underappreciated movie and one of my favorites, so if you've never seen it, you simply must.

I of course like these two episodes (in fact, "A Matter Of Time" is one of my favorites), and thought that the actors who ultimately played the roles, Saul Rubinek as Fajo and Matt Frewer as Rasmussen, were brilliant ... but I still have to wonder what those episodes would have been like with those never-cast actors in the roles.

Aha ... just found this neato resource, showing many more casting "near-misses" that I didn't know about!

David Carradine: 1936-2009

2009-06-04T10:42:00.000-07:00

It is with sadness that I pass on the news of the unfortunate and untimely death of a Hollywood icon: Kwai-Chang Kaine himself, David Carradine.

I admit I was never a true "fan" of his, and I haven't even seen much of his stuff (any, really) beyond Kung Fu and its sequel series Kung Fu: The Legend Continues ... but he was a favorite actor of an old friend of mine, who got me into watching KF:TLC almost religiously. I even had a truly cool idea about a crossover story between KF:TLC and Quantum Leap, though I never got very far in writing it.

Nevertheless, his death made me gasp when I read the headline just a short time ago, and he will be missed by many.

Star Trek: 30 Years - A Tribute

2009-05-28T21:23:00.000-07:00

Time for a little shameless cross-promotion here ... for those of you who are both Star Trek/sci-fi fans and music lovers, I've taken the liberty of putting this post on both of my blogs at the same time, since it firmly touches on both points of interest ("the best of both worlds", if I may toss in a Trek in-joke). So, by all means, check out my other blog if you're so inclined, as it's quite nifty-neato in its own right, if I do say so myself.

various artists
"STAR TREK: 30 YEARS - A TRIBUTE"
(BMG Ariola Germany, 1996)

"Unendliche Weiten" by Illegal 2001

The surrealistically anti-hip "special" Star Trek: 30 Years and Beyond (Ted Danson? Kenny G? WTF?!?) was forebodingly telling of how tired the once-venerable sci-fi franchise had become. But as terrible a train-wreck as that spectacle was, the occasion of Star Trek's pearl anniversary did produce a couple of unique and interesting pieces of memorabilia, even if they did come from outside of its home country of the United States. A prime example: this "curious" (as Spock himself might describe it) compilation of music, assembled in Germany, in honor of Star Trek's 30th Anniversary.

Given its origin, it stands to reason that the majority of this album's tracks are performed in German, but that's not nearly the deal-breaker in this case that it might normally be. In fact, a good part of the fun comes from listening for the recognizable Trek names that pop up regularly through the German language ("Kirk", "Picard", "Klingons", and I think I even heard "Tasha Yar" and "Cardassians" at least once each). Another thing that keeps this CD from becoming boring is the multitude of music genres represented: you'll find everything from jazz ("We've Lost The Captain", which employs a soundbite of that very quote from the original pilot "The Cage") to techno ("Die 4. Dimension") to pop ("Ich Bin Verknallt In Jean-Luc Picard", which sounds a little like something off a Dido album) to punk ("Ich Bin Knille, Pille") to hip-hop ("Reime, Räume Und Zeiten", full of the forementioned Trek shout-outs as well as a handful of authentic sound effects), resulting in a pretty safe chance that everyone will find something to like here.

I won't lie to you -- I was a bit disappointed when I first played this CD, as I was expecting more faithful interpretations, mostly instrumental, of the various Star Trek themes heard throughout the years; indeed, the first track, a cool synth-rock sort of take on the Star Trek: Voyager theme, got my hopes up a bit too much the first time around. But the dazzling cover design, and the fact that it was an official Paramount-licensed compilation from a major label, compelled me to more readily accept it. It's now safe to say that this album has come to hold a place of honor in my collection of Star Trek music CDs -- Worf himself would probably be proud.

Buy the CD (while you still can...!)

To Boldly Go Wild

2009-05-19T19:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, J. J. Abrams' Star Trek has been out for a week now (well, about a week and a half actually, but I wasn't able to get around to posting this last Friday like I wanted to), so anyone who has really wanted to see the movie has probably done so by now, which means I should feel free to post my thoughts about it without worry of ruining things with a ton of spoilers. To put it succinctly, I freakin' loved this movie!! At the risk of making it sound like I don't value the opinions of my friends and acquaintances, I tried to think as little as possible of the hype and the positive comments that I'd heard, so as not to get my expectations too high, but I needn't have worried. As I mentioned in a recent post, I went into the theatre hoping to be entertained, and boy, was I ever! The movie was two hours and six minutes long, but it flew by faster than any other movie has for me in quite a while. I'm not sure yet if I like this one better than Star Trek: First Contact, but if I did, that'll mean that it was the best Star Trek movie in eighteen years (since Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, if you have trouble doing the math).

This movie may not have been perfect, mind you, but I thought it was about as close as it could come. First of all, I'm still not quite sure how I feel about the way the elder Spock ("our" Spock, or "Spock Prime" as he's technically referred to) was involved in the story. It's not necessarily the fact that he was there, because obviously the story as it was couldn't have existed without his involvement; it's just the specific way he was injected into the chain of events. The image of a revered and aged ambassador and peacemaker flying off in a ship, completely on his own, to launch a probe into a star, is something I have a hard time wrapping my head around -- to me, that's something like watching Nelson Mandela, at the age he is now, charging off in an armored Humvee to pluck a combat soldier from certain death. But, as with every other imperfection in the story, I'm able to more-or-less "speculatively rationalize" it to the point that it doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of the film. (In this case, I'm assuming that Spock's relationship with the Romulan government vis-à-vis his reunification efforts between them and the Vulcans compelled him to personally involve himself in the matter in question as depicted in the movie.) I also thought that Kirk just happening to end up being dumped on the same ice planet as Spock, and Scotty just happening to be stationed there as well, was an awfully reachy coincidence, but then I just chalked it up to the written-between-the-lines suggestion that it was largely destiny that that classic family of characters would end up coming together. I am, however, still a bit flummoxed at how and why Spock would justify literally throwing Kirk off the ship like he did ... was the brig still being painted or something?!? Oh, and I thought that Scotty's little green sidekick was totally superfluous and kind-of cutesy ... could have easily done without it.

So, what did I love about the movie? Sure, let's pretend that I can narrow it down to some selective list. I really liked the casting ... my favorites are probably Karl Urban as Bones and Anton Yelchin as Chekov; I'd love to put Simon Pegg as Scotty and John Cho as Sulu in that list too, except that they didn't really get enough screen time. And, of course, Zachary Quinto was perfectly cast as Spock, and not just because of his uncanny resemblance to Leonard Nimoy. It was cool seeing ol' Christopher Pike in the story, and he was excellently played by Bruce Greenwood. The visual effects were way cool, particularly the images of the Enterprise at warp speed ... almost this half-windblown/half-distortion sort of effect wrapping around the ship. I really liked the design of the bridge (I read a review that likened it to the interior of an Apple Store, and that brought a funny scenario to mind: maybe its change in appearance is the result of someone coming back in time and convincing Starfleet to switch from PCs to Macs!), but I'm not sure about the engine room -- it seemed a bit too much of a contrast, I thought. Oh, and did you catch the phasers? Did you notice how the barrel is double-ended and spins around when the weapon is being switched from "stun" to "kill"? I really tripped out on that! Oh, and the music was fantastic, I thought ... particularly how Michael Giacchino cleverly took his own theme (for the Enterprise, or Kirk, or the crew, or whatever it was indended to represent) and layered it underneath the classic Alexander Courage theme as the end credits rolled ... created a completely natural-sounding counterpoint ... genius!

Overall, I'm more than satisfied with this movie (unlike that Confused Matthew guy, who simply doesn't seem able to just sit back and enjoy a movie every once in awhile ... ironic that he summed up his review of this movie with 15 seconds of exasperated groans, as that's precisely how I felt after listening to his review). I was worried when I first heard that it would involve time-travel, which may very well be the most over-used plot device in Star Trek history ... but in a refreshing twist, nobody hit the "reset button". Some big changes have been made to Trek continuity in this alternate timeline, some of them unsettling, but it opens up a multitude of new storytelling possibilities as a result. Not only will I definitely be scooping up the DVD release of this movie as soon as it hits, but I've even got the itch to go see it again on the big screen...!

Gotta Love This...

2009-05-12T15:08:00.001-07:00

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'

Subspace Noise

2009-05-11T21:19:00.000-07:00

You know what's pissing me off about this new Star Trek movie? It's nothing about the movie itself, 'cause with all the positive things I've heard about it from both professional critics/journalists as well as friends and acquaintances -- not to mention the totally bitchin' trailers I've been grooving on -- I'm maintaining a healthy (but cautious) optimism in preparation for seeing the film on Wednesday. No, what's pissing me off are all these Trekkies (not "Trekkers", and I'll proceed on the assumption that I don't need to explain the distinction I'm making) who chose to slam this movie, before they even saw it, based on only two post-production trailers and the small trickle of information that the official sources have released. I expected all the snarking and sniping from the revelation that the characters would be played by new actors, and I figured there'd be some noise because its nature as a "reboot" means that the original sequence of events would be tinkered with. But I finallly saw, just in the last few days, a couple of examples of how the "get-a-lifers" (as I quasi-affectionately refer to them) have gone a bit overboard.

I'll start out with Confused Matthew who, after seeing just a couple of his YouTube videos, I get the impression is extremely difficult to please about anything. Here he proceeds to assume that a two-minute trailer is completely representative of the other 118 (give-or-take) minutes of the movie's content, and whines (quite literally "whines" ... just listen to it) about how Star Trek isn't supposed to be an action movie. While it's true that this trailer is far more action-packed than any other Trek trailer of the past, it's also true that a trailer's job is to get people to see the movie, and what draws the most people in on a primarily visceral level these days is two minutes packed with as much rollicking, hold-onto-your-seat action as possible. If there's one thing that any of us who have been paying a decent amount of attention have learned in the last several years, it's that you can't judge a movie by its trailer. If they can pack all the funny scenes of a mediocre comedy into a 90-second trailer (and lord knows, they're absolute masters at doing that ... look no further than "Baby Mama" for proof), who's to say they haven't packed most every frame of action in an otherwise dramatic talky-talky-moral-implications-prime-directive-yadda-yadda movie into a two-minute ad? It might suck, but it's the nature of advertising. Oh, and besides, this guy hated First Contact, so how reliable can his opinion be anyway?

Going from there, we have some guy in a USA Today article who not only calls J. J. Abrams' movie a "travesty" sight unseen, but goes so far as to say that it has "gone back in time and wiped out 700 years of Trek history." (I could only count about 400 years by my math ... Trekkies aren't that bad with numbers, so he's probably just being a drama queen.) And then there's this blogger -- a nice enough guy in real-life, I'd assume -- who appears to have entered into a state of out-and-out mourning over the Shatner/Nimoy era of Star Trek and has remarked that the new film will "cannibalize" and even "destroy" the Trek we have known and loved up to this point. Uh ... am I missing something? Unless Paramount has demanded that all Trek fans out there either shred or return to the studio all copies of their Trek DVDs, books, and comics, the Star Trek of the past is not going anywhere. Those 600+ TV episodes and ten movies, from the sublime "Far Beyond The Stars" and The Wrath of Khan to the ridiculous "Sub Rosa" and The Final Frontier, exist forever as canon and won't be undone ... unless someone actually does figure out a way to come back into our real-life past and change our real-life timeline. And we all know that hasn't happened, because you're sitting here reading these words and you wouldn't be if they did. (Okay ... minor geek-out ... sorry.)

I'm starting to think that maybe the writers should have left Leonard Nimoy's Spock and his time-travel-induced (from what I understand) appearance out of the picture, which would have untethered this film from "our" Star Trek and thus (presumably) put a stop to all this alternate-timeline-destroying-everything-we-love-about-Star-Trek jabberwocky. My point is: this is only a movie. It's another person's vision of the Star Trek universe. Simply seeing different actors in the classic roles should have been enough to clue you in on that. I for one am going into this theatre with no expectations (or at least I'm trying to ... gotta dig those trailers!), no demands that it live up to a "Star Trek standard", because when this is, in a sense, the first Star Trek movie, there are no standards, or at least none that we can justifiably hold it up to. (Would we go into a Michael Bublé concert demanding that he be as entertaining and captivating as Frank Sinatra? No, and we shouldn't.) Abrams said somewhere that he just wants the movie to entertain us, and that's the one expectation I'm carrying with me into the auditorium. Hey, maybe Chekov's hair is a little goofy, and maybe Kirk ends up tapping Uhura for real instead of in the context of telepathic playthings for aliens' amusement, but we can't charge Abrams with destroying Star Trek ... the last few years of the Rick Berman regime did that just fine on its own (or have you not seen Star Trek: Nemesis?).

Engage.

2009-05-05T16:23:00.000-07:00

For those of you who missed the last incarnation of this blog of mine ... what exactly is "Trek-Ease"? I chose that title 'cause it seems to best reflect my current, more laid-back level of Trekkerdom in particular, as well as geekdom in general. I like to think I maintain a good balance between getting caught up in Star Trek's continuity ("Why did the writers have Tuvok pose as a Maquis? Wouldn't he believe their cause to be illogical?") and relenting to its artistic context ("Because he was really the only primary character who worked in that aspect of the plot."). Many moons ago, I was one of those who debated the implications of Dr. Crusher becoming head of Starfleet Medical and being replaced by Dr. Pulaski, as well as the credentials and qualifications of both, as though they were flesh-and-blood people, even though I never actually lost sight of the fact that they were not. I won't kid anyone here ... Star Trek: The Next Generation is in a perpetual tie with Quantum Leap as my favorite television show of all time, and I have this pathetic mental disorder whereby a person can describe to me the plot of any TNG episode and I can immediately respond with its title as well as approximately when in which season it aired, but my overall fandom nowadays is much more casual. It's still a pretty fair part of my life, and probably always will be, but I think I'm quite a ways from being approached by Roger Nygard and Denise Crosby for a chapter in the next Trekkies movie.

I started "Trek-Ease" a couple of years ago, and it sputtered out after a few months of extremely occasional posting. Then, about a year ago, I tried doing a blog (which I called "DVD-1701" ... I’m now declaring that title officially up-for-grabs if anyone wants it) intended to chronicle my episode-by-episode viewing of all four of the first Star Trek series, but although I'm still watching two episodes per week -- just finished off The Original Series and started in on The Next Generation, in fact -- it too peetered out midway through TOS's second season. For one thing, I found it more and more difficult to think of witty things to say for each and every episode. Plus, it was such a structured routine that, to paraphrase the late George Carlin regarding doing regular updates on his own website, "it started feeling like homework -- f**k that shit." I like to think of it this way: they never showed hide nor hair of Robert April's five-year mission, and Christopher Pike's command never got past the original pilot episode ... so maybe the third time will be the proverbial charm in the case of this blog, too. This time, I'm shooting for a more informal and off-the-cuff blog, in which I'll ramble on semi-aimlessly, and hopefully at some semblance of a regular interval, not only about my thoughts on various aspects of the Star Trek universe, the various knicks and knacks of my Trek collection, and so on, but also about whatever other sorts of geek-culture randomness tickle my fancy.