They did only have her on screen for one job and not one second more. That scene happens near the end of the movie, it's less than 10 seconds and nothing more than a brief cameo, which that movie had plenty of.

Scene for scene, Cushing was done a lot better, and I do agree that they should have spent some more time on Fisher. However, if ILM is to be believed, Fisher liked it. Can't exactly ask her directly now, can we?

I think I figured they had a near-enough lookalike for Tarkin and CGI'ed/makeupped him the rest of the way, and CGI'ed Leia. She did look a little off to me.

For complicated reasons the following questions occurred to me...

PNQ1: If the creators had wanted the Bajoran and Starfleet crews on DS9 to be more balanced, which main character could've been made Bajoran?
PNQ2: If the creators had wanted the Maquis and Starfleet crews on VOY to be more balanced, which main charater could've been made Maquis?

Okay, DS9 first. Looking over the main cast, I'm led to believe that Bashir could've been made a Bajoran with minimal tweaks. Let's say that his grandparents fled Bajoran space when the Cardassians invaded at the start of the Occupation. His family has enjoyed the prosperity of the Federation for decades, but Kira thinks his family are traitors for not staying behind and fighting in the Occupation. Keep the genetic modifications, Kukalaka, and so forth. His relationship with Garak would also have new dimensions.

Now VOY. This one's more of a toughie. I get it that between them Tuvok and Paris sort of had the "third Maquis" quota met, and Seska had that role early on, but still...

That does raise the question....

PNQ: They couldn't find a suitable Princess Leia cosplayer that could be tweaked with CGI without making a complete virtual actor?
PNQ: For that matter, I'm reminded of her first confrontation with Vader. Pull her out away from the background, mirror image it, and tweak the lip movements a bit. Wouldn't that avoid most of the Uncanny Valley?

So today I was reminded of an odd tradition...

PNQ: Do you dip your french fries in your milkshake?

It should be noted that I'm not really a milkshake guy, unlike the rest of my family. I lean more toward root beer floats, and you'd never dip a french fry in one of those, would you?

I would have liked to have seen the original plan for the series come to fruition, with Lieutenant Ro being in the Major Kira role. Would have really thrown the Emissary in with not one but two Starfleet officers struggling with the concet.

Besides that, Bashir was a good candidate, but Dax would be my pick. Granted, the Trill did bring in some good stories, but the whole change the entire species thing to suit the one actress with a skin condition? Also, with the personal connection with Sisko could have made the decision in the pilot a whole lot more complicated.

None. It struck a good balance in between the different factions.

That was a Leia cosplayer (of sorts).

I think they were trying to show off a little too much. After the success with Cushing (despite the problems noted above), I think they just went for a double down.

Only if it's a Wendy's Frosty, and that's not even a milkshake per se. Any other one is disrespecting the fry... and the milkshake.

PNQ: Are there any Francophones out there that could tell me how the humor translates in the French versions of these web animations?

Poor Monkey: English and French
Naughty Heffalump: English and French

So I'm watching the SFDebris review of "And The Children Shall Lead" again, and I notice the early Federation flag.

Thirteen stars. We know that the four founding members were Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, and Tellar Prime, so what could the other nine be?

PNQ: Speculations?

Memory Alpha posits Alpha Centauri as a fifth founding member. "Journey to Babel" features six other races that could plausibly be founding members, with Alpha Centauri possibly being among their number.

Memory Beta places Alpha Centauri as fifth and Rigel as sixth.

Other planets from the Memory Beta page that seem likely as old members include Benzar, the Medusans, and Regulus.

But that's just a theory, a...oh, wait, that's another show.

I would absolutely agree Alpha Centauri is a founding member. There might be a few independent Vulcan colonies as well -- I don't think we hear much about Vulcan's colonization efforts in canon, but they've been exploring space longer than Earth has.

Likely in addition to the ones cited some other independent Earth colony worlds. I know you don't like discussing ENT, but the best one I can think of is Terra Nova. Mars might actually be that way too, which is terraformed by the 24th century and seen in the 22nd in the early phases.

Rigel is also very likely... and the planet Babel.

Regarding this strip of Irregular Webcomic...

PNQ: That's a Hitchhiker's Guide joke, not The Far Side, right?

So the Switch is getting a version of Street Fighter II.

Depending on how you want to count them, that makes this around the seventh version of Street Fighter II.

PNQ: Considering that Street Fighter V came out last year, why can't this be Street Fighter VI?

Look, my experience with 2D brawlers basically starts and stops with Smash Brothers. However, I never got the impression that things like "plot" or "continuity" were important in these things. So why can't the entries just be numbered sequentially?

PNQ2: Was Street Fighter II just that legendary that it will sell the game sight unseen, hopefully selling a few more Switches in the process?

The Irish folks over at Tested trying ice cream floats.

PNQ: What's your favorite float?

And I mean a float as in "a scoop of ice cream in soda pop."

Before this all I'd heard of is either root beer or coke in vanilla ice cream. I love root beer floats.

Strawberry ice cream in lemonade sounds kinda interesting.

Chocolate ice cream in cream soda...NO. That's just wrong. Then again, I don't really like cream soda by itself anyway...

Wikipedia has a whole page on the subject.

A "purple cow" (i.e. vanilla ice cream in grape pop) sounds interesting.

On a related subject, I'm also a fan of the wedding reception staple: rainbow sherbet in ginger ale. Whether or not that still counts as a "float" if the sherbet is half-melted is up for debate as well.

PNQ: If you could see any five movies from the past on a theater screen again, what five?

This question is inspired by a fan commentary of Singin' in the Rain, where they recommend watching the movie on a big screen if possible.

The thing is, I have seen movies on a big screen that get a lot of their value from the "wow factor" I'm talking about. The Hitchhiker's Guide and Speed Racer movies come to mind immediately. I believe I also saw The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on a big screen as well.

However, in the name of more interesting answers I'll lay down a few ground rules...
1. No Star Wars.
2. Pre-2000 only.
3. Live action only.

Would I want to see Singin' in the Rain on the big screen? Of course, but does it reach the top five? I'm not sure. I think the Sound of Music could make better use of the wow factor. Going a bit more obscure, I could only imagine how good Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines would look. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, just think of it!

No fair on the Star Wars thing, by the way.

2001: A Space Odyssey
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
The Matrix
The Fifth Element
The King and I

1. Close Encounters is the easy pick.
2. Wrath of Khan
3. The Last Starfighter while we're at it.
4. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
5. The Wizard of Oz

You did mean WILLY WONKA and the Chocolate Factory, right?

Of course, the Wizard of Oz!

The Ten Commandments springs to mind once I start to think about it.

I most certainly did.

I hope so. Have a nice piano cover of "Pure Imagination" someone made last year to commemorate Wilder's death.

PNQ: If you could take any five side characters from TOS or TNG and promote them to regulars in other (imaginary) spinoffs like O'Brien, which ones?

Note One: No DS9 because all of the characters got the exposure they needed, there really weren't any who were so shortchanged that there were tons of unexplored possible storylines.
Note Two: No VOY because there really aren't any such candidates. Half of the main characters were shortchanged, so what's left? Samantha Wildman, Carey, and Hogan?
Note Three: No ENT because I don't know enough about the subtleties of the characters as written to speculate. The only one that even vaguely springs to mind is that MACO that had tension with Trip, who I had to look up-->Amanda Cole.

My list:
1. Ro Laren: Even putting aside the Kira role drama, she had the backstory and personality to carry a show week to week. Especially if you built in a long-term romantic subplot (and I mean way longer than Torres and Paris) and a position where she had to be a leader and teacher. While Security Chief seems like an obvious position, Command would be a bigger challenge. Could you mold her to be a good first officer?
2. Kevin Riley: His conduct under polywater intoxication shouldn't be held against him. Certainly he couldn't be the captain, but he could provide a new spin on a Tom Paris-like character, as Security Chief or something.
3. Peter Kirk: What would life be like as the nephew of a living legend? What if he chose to avoid Starfleet, joining a crew as a civilian advisor?
4. James Moriarty: Now that Voyager has returned and the specs for the mobile emitter are available, he and the Countess Regina can be retrieved from their holocube. What if there was a newly-encountered species that was much like Victorian Europe, where a specialist would be necessary to understand them? How would he interact with the Ferengi?
5. Sela: A series based around a joint Romulan/Federation mission in deep space. Perhaps there's a newly-discovered area in Romulan space that only a Federation starship can reach, and Sela believes that she can manipulate said starship into finding new resources and subjects for the Empire. She comes into conflict with the Starfleet crew who seek friendship with new species.

Wandering around TVTropes again...

"Plenty of people who have never watched Star Trek still assume the ship's name is the Star Trek. Casual fans who only watched the original series or perhaps TNG believe that the Defiant (from Deep Space Nine) and Voyager are called Enterprise. After all, aren't all the ships on Star Trek called that?"

PNQ: Have you ever known anyone to make either of these mistakes?

PNQ1: Would anyone be interested in a "Nate watches Babylon 5 for the first time in 20 years, seeing if it's really as good as everyone says" thread?

I would set a strict limit on the amount of complaining that I can do, but I would be allowed to ask questions to see how long it takes for them to be answered.

Yes, this is inspired by SFDebris' reviews of the show. He does his best, but it still seems like "the viewer is held responsible for every word said in every episode since the beginning." I want to be proven wrong, I really do.

PNQ2: How do the B5 fans out there feel about the essential episode lists on this page?

There's the minimum list of two movies and 60 episodes, with 17 more recommended. Should I do 60+2M, 77+2M, or just give up and do all 110+6M? I don't care about Crusade in the slightest.

Every so often I do a Gotham Girls marathon. (If you watch the playlist, take note that Season 2, Episode 1 is out of order).

The reactions seem to fall along generational lines. Older people toward the top, younger people toward the bottom:

1. Oh, this is so great, I remember when they were made fifteen years ago!
2. I love the DCAU voices, but the animation could be better.
3. Ugh! Ugly Flash animation! How can anyone enjoy this?

PNQ: Why do some people apply modern technological standards to older products that didn't have said technology available?

You know what I mean. Silent movies gave way to sound, some people thought that all silent movies were worthless and boring. Black and white gave way to color, some people thought all black and white movies were worthless and boring. SD gives way to HD, some people thought all SD movies were worthless and boring. It'll happen again when glasses-free 3D is perfected, count on it.

Gotham Girls was made in 2000-2002, of course the animation looks bad. It was the age of dialup, anything better would've taken forever to download. Heck, one of the first episodes had to be split into two files because it committed the unforgivable sin of being more than three minutes long!

This is the abridged version of the lecture that I had typed up. I was clearly veering off into "young whippersnappers these days" territory.

Oh yes. I mostly pity those people that make mistakes of that calibre.

I would, on one condition: relinquish one of the other review things for someone else to do. I would gladly take on TOS or TNG if you wanted to.

The avalanche has already started; it is too late for the pebbles to vote.

There is always that general group that says "newer is better", with varying rates of truth to the matter.

When I was interviewing for one place to be a network admin, one of the things the interviewer told me was that there was this particular person whom thought all backups should be done on CDs or DVDs because they were newer than all other backup media at the time. If you know anything about server data storage, you'll know how false this is: tape backups are still the way to go in any data center environment, as they can withstand a lot more punishment than any other media plus have the advantage of using less room for more storage and being rewriteable.

Technically I never called dibs on the TOS episodes, it's just that no one else seemed like they were going to do them on the anniversary dates. No one even said "Nate, give me half a day to do it first." If you want to cover a TOS or TNG episode, be my guest.

I take it you're of the mindset that I should just do all B5 episodes.

As I seem to be the only one responding, my statement was more pointing out that you seem to have made up your mind on the subject and it seems to be too late to give us (or me in this case, unless people are feeding you opinions in another way) the choice in the matter.

A Kosh quote that actually works for the context in which it was intended. What are the odds.

I'm not sure where the miscommunication was. 110 episodes and six movies is quite the commitment. If enough people think that all of them are essential, so be it, but the shorter lists were made for a reason.

I specifically looked up a list of what people thought were the essential episodes. A lot of shows, even the continuity-heavy ones, have episodes that are essentially meaningless when it comes to the overarching plot. For example, "Move Along Home" might be a bit of fun, but it hardly ties into any of DS9's big plots (Dominion, Cardassia, Bajor, etc.) It could be skipped and not be missed since nothing from it will be referenced later.

So I really am asking for opinions vis-a-vis the three possible lists.

All right, then. IMHO, all or nothing, for three reasons - two personal, one more logical.

First, I'm a little bit of a completionist, which is actually part of the reason why I asked Zeke for a VOY episode to Five first. If you're going to do something, might as well get it all in, right?

Second, B5 is a second love of mine; I preferred B5 more than DS9 when it first aired in the 90s, and I would love to see if it stands up to the test of time. It's not on any streaming service in Canada that I have access to right now, so this would be the second best thing for me.

Third, I know B5 has a list of "essential episodes", but ignoring those "non-essential episodes" is ignoring character development. In those, you see great moral dilemmas, inner workings of the station proper, and character development. Using the first season as an example, the Doctor Franklin vehicle "Believers" comes to light, as that doesn't really contribute to the arc, but is an incredibly good episode... that now that I think of it, was ripped off wholly by one of my favorite Trek novel writers. DAMN YOU PETER DAVID!

So I'm thinking about Voyager's variable geometry pylons again...

PNQ: What's the purpose of these things again?

I mean, it's not like the angle gradually increases or decreases as warp speed increases (angle X for Warp 1, angle Y for Warp 2, etc.), it's just zero degrees for impulse speeds (i.e. no warp field present) and thirty degrees or so for warp speeds (i.e. a warp field is present).

Furthermore, why is there a specific angle for impulse speeds anyway? It's not like you really need to worry about the coefficient of drag in space after all.

And while we're at it, supposedly these things were in response to the events of "Force of Nature" and the subsequent warp speed limit. My response to the response is...so what? We are consistently shown that the Delta Quadrant is sparser in terms of populated planets, interplanetary governments, and warp-capable ships in general than the Alpha Quadrant. Less warp traffic means Voyager will hardly be the domino that sets off a chain reaction of rifts and destroy subspace.

The treknobabble argument is that a combination of re-engineered warp coils and an elongated Z-axis either reduced or completely eliminated the environmental damage that was taking place. The Intrepid class' variable geometry is the design's way of achieving this as one of the first classes that had this fix implemented in this small of a package. Also, the impulse engines are on the nacelle pylons, so returning them to the 0 degree angle is most likely for efficient impulse flight and maneuverability. This is also why you see only elongated saucer sections from Starfleet from that point forward, none of that round business on-screen from newer ship designs. (At least, I think that's how the thing worked. Been a while since I was immersed in Trek-engineering.)

The real reason is probably Rule of Cool.

I never did understand the impulse engines on the pylons. At sublight speeds standard Newtonian physics apply, right? Therefore you want the engines as close to the center of mass of the ship (or rather, the horizontal plane running through said center of mass) as possible, right? That's what the Enterprise-D did.

But Voyager? If you want the impulse engines to be centrally located, you'd want the pylons up at an angle!

Furthermore, when the impulse engines are on the pylons all of the stresses from the engines are going through the hinges!

So I'm in the "Han Shot First" camp, or more precisely, the "Han Was the Only One Who Shot" camp.

PNQ: Opinions?

What annoys me is George Lucas' recent assertion that...

The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn't. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.

How is Solo shooting Greedo a cold-blooded kill? He says that he has the money that he owes Jabba. Greedo says that he doesn't care; he'd rather kill Han. I call that a death threat, therefore even if he's the only one who shot this is still self-defense.

The Legal Geeks weigh in on the matter.

"a little wider shot" = Greedo shot originally, too, honest, you just didn't see it. :rolleyes:

We have ears, George. We can tell the difference between one blaster shot and two.

I seem to have missed this one:
1. Harry Mudd
2. Sela
3. A tribble is a tribble, of course, of course . . .
4. Amanda (probably a prequel of her adapting to Vulcan society)
5. Pike (prequels ahoy)

Over at the Straight Dope forum the following question is being debated quite fiercely:

PNQ: Are Reese's Peanut Butter Cups a candy bar?

Full disclosure, I love just about anything with "Reese's" on it.

Wikipedia doesn't use the term "candy bar" anywhere in the article to refer to the original cups. Futhermore their article on candy bars specifies a bar shape.

Me? No, it's not. "Bar" has a quite specific definition in this case: a roughly prismatic piece of candy in a wrapper. Usually covered in chocolate, not always. Just because things like peanut butter cups, Starburst, Rolos, Necca Wafers, and such are sold in wrappers next to the candy bars doesn't make them candy bars, just another sort of candy.

I don't care, peanut butter is gross.

(I am the one person on this planet that cannot stand the taste of peanuts.)

Get out the giant scales and a duck!

So MovieBob made a video recently where he poked fun at all of the different pronounciations Mr. Mxyzptlk has gotten over the years...

PNQ: How do you pronounce it? (YouTube compilation of various versions here)

I tend toward the shorter "mix-il-plik", even though I know that's not canon unless you're talking Superfriends (and I never even watched that show until I was an adult!). It's just easier for me to say. Alternatives like "mix-il-pittle-ik", "mix-is-pittle-ik", "mix-yes-pit-lick", "mix-yes-pittle-ik", "mix-yez-spit-lick", "mix-yell-pit-lick", and so forth get tiring even when you're not getting stuck in the tongue-twister.

PNQ: Can anyone recommend a good starter RPG?

Criteria:

1. Free and single-player.
2. My Windows 10 computer is fairly up to date, but I don't want or need anything too resources-intensive.
3. Preferably compatible with a simple USB controller (this one, to be precise), but at minimum primarily controlled by mouse with keyboard only for healing item hotkeys (closer to King's Quest Mask of Eternity than Dragon Age, please).
4. Simple plot, simple language. I'm here to play a game, not watch Lord of the Rings. And as Yahtzee put it, I shouldn't have to learn a second language to play a game.

I'll probably think of more later, but lets get the ball rolling. Thanks in advance.