Link Thread

[Nate the Great]

A clip from Relics has a comment referencing a clip from Thor Ragnarok. I LOLed.



There's a joke based on First Avenger, too, but I prefer the Ragnarok joke.

[Nate the Great]

So Alex Trebek died today. Bummer. Granted, I haven't been a regular Jeopardy viewer for years, but I'm sure on some level it contributed to my continued interest in trivia. Plus I was on the College Bowl team for years....

[Nate the Great]

Lately I've been going through my collection of Trek non-fiction, mostly from the '80s and '90s. Among these are Star Trek Phase II: The Lost Series. I thought I might quote a few sections from the writing guide with my comments. As usual the italics are from the book (copyright Pocket Books 1997, etc.)....


What is a Star Trek Story?

Our stories are about people (who act believably). Star Trek is not about science and gadgetry. All good stories are about people and science fiction is no exception. The more believable the people, the better the story.


This is where Enterprise failed, in my opinion. The people just aren't believable in the roles they hold.



Our regulars are heroes. They believe that their word and their oath is their bond. They believe that there are principles worth a life of discomfort and danger and even carry the "old fashioned" belief that there are things even worth dying for if necessary.

Oh, the Janeway jokes we could compile on this subject.



The Teaser. We open with action, always establishing a strong jeopardy, need, or other "hook".


Even TNG failed with this one a few times. Worf's Klingon measles come to mind immediately.



The U.S.S. Enterprise is a spaceship, official designation "starship class".


Ugh. Maybe in the TOS era you could justify "starship=Constitution Class", however tenuously. By the era of the movies this is patently ridiculous.



Warp factor one is the speed of light...warp factor two is actually eight times the speed of light, warp factor three is twenty-four times the speed of light, warp factor four is sixty-four times the speed of light, and so on.


This is basically the TOS warp scale, except warp three is actually supposed to be twenty-seven times the speed of light. I hope this was just a typo.


Phaser fire can also be set for proximity explosion and act somewhat like "depth charges."


I'm scratching my head on this one. Torpedoes are firmly established in the canon by now, and the differences were a plot point in STTMP.


The entry on Xon tried to differ him from Spock by stating that instead of suppressing his emotions he'll try to find his emotions to better relate to the crew. An interesting twist on Data, if you ask me.



Kirk sometimes refers to [Decker] as "First", which is naval parlance for ship's "First Lieutenant," which would have been Decker's title in the days of sailing ships.


I've discussed army vs. naval ranks before, and this is another holdover of army ranks. Insert rants on Number One, UESPA, etc. here. You do have to admit that "First" makes a bit more sense than "Number One."


McCoy's entry uses "Senior Ship's Surgeon" for his official title. I've remarked on the difference between "ship's surgeon" and "Chief Medical Officer" before. It turns out that the ship's surgeon title has closer ties to the history of navys, as opposed to chief medical officers and the army.



Uhura's entry mentions the African Confederacy, which is weird because the TOS series bible specifically mentions the United States of Africa. You'd think a Phase II series bible would copy-paste the Phase I bible and then make the needed changes. By the time of TNG it's mentioned that Geordi was born in the African Confederation.



Sulu's entry still uses Oriental and Occidental. Insert collar-tugging here. Ahem.



The transporter range is mentioned as still being the TOS-era 16,000 miles. Hmm. A big deal in STTMP was that every system onboard had had a huge upgrade, wasn't it?


It's mentioned that there are seventeen Starbases/Starfleet Command Centers, each with a Commodore. Given the preponderance of Starbases in later eras, it's amazing to think of how much smaller the 23rd-century Federation was.



Starfleet Command isn't mentioned to be in any particular location. It won't be placed in San Francisco until Star Trek IV.


Stardates are established at one unit=one day, except for external factors, of course.



One thing that's interesting is that Enterprise's second five-year mission is specified as being in one sector. The size of a sector was never pinned down (the Writer's Didn't Care), but I think we can all agree that "sector" is the wrong term here. Probably they confused "sector" with the larger "quadrant" (not the one-fourth of a galaxy version, FYI) used in TOS.


We are not aware of "officers" and "enlisted men" categories.

Weird. "Crewman" existed in TOS, we saw them.


We avoid saluting and other annoying medieval leftovers.

Really?


U.S.S. still means "United Space Ship" in the bible.

[NAHTMMM]

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/11/08/u...rnd/index.html

A microscopic Voyager created to microswim through hydrogen peroxide. I like how the article specifies Intrepid-class, as if anyone who doesn't know what Voyager is will know what the Intrepid class is.

[DrWho42]

Last Dangerous Visions Will Be Submitted to Publishers in 2021

[Nate the Great]

So apparently yesterday was National Pickle Day. In honor of this I'll post the "No Dancing Pickles" story. Just read it, and maybe the rest of the site. I think the last time I shilled Cockeyed/How Much Is Inside was two years ago.

[NeoMatrix]

Hey, i’m back. How are things?

[Nate the Great]

Today is Mickey Mouse's birthday! He's 92 today.



I'm not really a fan of the new series, but there are plenty of his old shorts that I love.


The Brave Little Tailor


Thru The Mirror


Mickey's Trailer


Clock Cleaners


The Prince and the Pauper

[Nate the Great]

Today I discovered that there are a few people on YouTube making CG animations of the Power Rangers Megazords. This is my favorite.


I'm pretty sure I've covered my history with Power Rangers elsewhere, so I won't duplicate it here. Suffice to say, if a remastered version of Power Rangers had to happen I wish they could've replaced the Megazord battles with something more dynamic than just guys covered in boxes and rubber suits duking it out.

[DrWho42]

"rubber hose"-cartoon style worker and parasite

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by NeoMatrix

Hey, i’m back. How are things?

Hi there! How ya doing?

KJ and I married and we're in Wisconsin with a toddler, a baby, and two dogs.

[Nate the Great]

h2g2.com's entry on DS9.


A rather thorough rundown of the series. Some highlights (as usual, italic text is from the page)...


Space - the final frontier. These are the non-voyages of the Space Station Deep Space Nine. Its continuing mission: to explore no strange new worlds, to seek out the same old life and the same old civilisations, to boldly stay in the same spot every week.
- The reason Deep Space Nine didn't have an introductory speech.

I think this is a bit harsh. They do go exploring a bit. But not much.

The Federation can't accept the Bajorans until they are deemed ready to join, and it's the job of Commander Benjamin Sisko, who runs Deep Space Nine, to make sure that the Bajorans meet the requirements for membership. This isn't easy as many Bajorans, including his Bajoran first officer Kira Nerys, don't believe that the Federation has any business being on Bajor.


It's an interesting question: what would make Bajor finally ready for Federation membership? I would certainly argue that there are still numerous intergroup conflicts on Bajor: the church, the Provisional Government, the DMZ residents, the marginalized freedom fighters, etc. Not to mention all of the Bajorans who abandoned the whole area and joined Starfleet. This is a key reason why I think Ro should've at least had a two-part episode devoted to her.


After the destruction of the Enterprise-D in Star Trek Generations, Worf fell into a depression, and considered leaving Starfleet in order for him to return to the Klingon home world.



I'm not sure if I would call it a "depression", to be honest. Worf seemed more lost, someone who's life has been turned completely upside down. He wasn't expecting to rebuild it into something completely different so soon. Although of the classic TNG seven, I would pin down Worf as the one who would've left for a higher post on a different ship first.

O'Brien is the show's everyman. Around once a season the writers would write an episode where he's emotionally tortured in some way, seemingly without realising that they were doing it.

I'm pretty sure the writers deliberately put O'Brien through the wringer once a season to allow Colm Meaney to act out of the usual range.



Initially [Bashir's] eagerness annoys many people on the station, especially O'Brien, but the two eventually form what's perhaps the greatest friendship in Star Trek.


Very debatable. I'd put the interactions of the TOS trinity above Bashir and O'Brien anyday.



To sum up Garak in one paragraph, no matter how long it is, is an impossibility.



An exaggeration. SF Debris did it just fine.



[Garak is] the master of a witty one-liner, but he can turn sinister at a moment's notice.


Whether or not you can characterize Garak as "sinister" is another whole discussion.


The reason the station looks so bizarre is because the designers had three months to design it, and they went a little bit mad.


As I've stated before, the pylons make sense for Cardassian ships, they're just inefficient for any other race.


The Bajorans look like humans in every way, but they have a wrinkled nose (that's what passes for an alien on Star Trek).


Well, duh! What were you expecting? I really hate it when people trash the minimal nose-and-ear makeup thing. It was required to make the show economical, plus more makeup means less emoting. At least this isn't TOS when most aliens were exact copies of humans.

They are ruled by a provisional Government, which never actually seems to become an actual government.



He's got a point. The whole "Provisional Government" thing should've been over after a few years. Actually, Shakaar should've instituted a proper constitution and ditched the "Provisional" thing in the fourth season. (Meaningless aside, but did you know that Shakaar was only in three episodes? I was shocked to find that out today.)

[Nate the Great]

A rather unusual Trek crossover...with Winnie the Pooh.

[Nate the Great]

TV Tunes Acapella does the Quantum Leap theme.


I was a little too young to appreciate Quantum Leap when it was on, but my parents enjoyed it. I'm still a little irked that they never got a proper series finale, though.

[Nate the Great]

So Ashens' channel is fifteen years old now and his second movie came out. Well, his YouTube channel is fourteen and a half years old, but he had some of his early videos on other sites (like Newgrounds) before that.



Going through nine hundred videos to pick out my favorites sounds like an absolute nightmare, so here's just a couple of playlists from his main page:


Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of


Growing up British in the '80s means he didn't really experience the third and fourth generation of consoles like Americans did. As he said in one of his videos, why would you buy a cartridge-based system when you can just pirate the cassette-based games and play them on your Amiga? Eventually he stopped making videos in this series and started writing books about them instead.


The Popstation Saga


Cheap LCD game knockoffs housed in plastic shells that look like PSPs and Gameboys is hardly a new phenomenon. The fun comes when you see how technology advances for the knockoffs (still five-ten years behind the rest of the world, but still). Stick around for the hilarious Engrish titles!


Poundland Specials


Dollar stores and pound stores will always be with us. What kind of things can you find within? Are the toys any good? Is the food any good? Probably not.

[DrWho42]

rip

ben bova (1932-2020)

[Nate the Great]

Radio Disney is shutting down next year.


I'm saddened by this. Sure, I don't actually listen to it anymore (it stopped airing in my current city years ago), but I have fond memories of it, especially from my college days commuting to and from school. I own most of the Radio Disney Jams albums and still listen to them.

[Nate the Great]

Willy McBean and His Magic Machine


I'm a big Rankin-Bass fan, but this one slipped by me until now. Stay tuned for the James Doohan-voiced character (or just skip to 42:30 or so). Remember that Scottish is just one accent that he can do.

[Nate the Great]

Little Debbie Christmas Tree Dip


Grinding up snack cakes into a paste just seems...unnatural. Unholy, even. For that matter, Cool Whip and cream cheese in the same recipe...no. Just no.



Have I shilled emmymadeinjapan yet? I don't think so. Watch her other stuff, she has some good videos.

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Radio Disney is shutting down next year.

The children's radio station we had in St. Louis was better before Radio Disney took over. Also obviously I was older by that point.