Persistent, Niggling Questions

[Nate the Great]

Courtesy of Facebook...


PNQ: Which actor did the best portrayal of Sherlock Holmes?


I'm not the best judge, as I've never seen a traditional Holmes portrayal. I did enjoy the Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century cartoon and Great Mouse Detective.



I did watch the pilot of the Benedict Cumberbatch version. It was okay, but I wasn't hooked enough to watch any more.


So what do you guys think? I daresay John Barrymore and Basil Rathbone did okay, they're good actors. Did Ian McKellan do a good job in Mr. Holmes?

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

The cure for cancer will be found in this century according to "Fury."

Could happen at the rate we're going.

"The Slaver Weapons" indicate that the Kzinti wars will also occur in this century, but one has to wonder how a planet that has just invented warp drive can effectively wage an interplanetary war.

I bet the Ferengi could collapse your economy at a distance and win the war that way.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Did Ian McKellan do a good job in Mr. Holmes?

He did a very good job.

[Nate the Great]

I want to keep the Trek retrospectives on the 30th anniversary cycle, but I want to do another show during the summer.


PNQ: Opinions?


I know that I'll have to do Babylon 5 eventually, but I'm not ready for a project of that depth yet. Maybe next year I'll do the pilot movie for the 30th anniversary.


I also plan to eventually do all of Stargate, but that's a big project. Like, REALLY big.



So by process of elimination I'm down to Andromeda, Farscape, and Battlestar Galactica. Of the three I'm most familiar with Andromeda, I watched the first few seasons. I've seen bits and pieces of Farscape, but none of Battlestar Galactica. Which is weird, as my mother enjoyed them a lot (she was the one that introduced me to Trek in the first place).

[NAHTMMM]

I haven't watched any of those shows beyond a few minutes here and there, so I don't have any opinions.

(I've been very slowly covering nu Doctor Who on my blog, but with so little time and with other creative projects sucking up what little time I have, and having misplaced the current DVD, I'm treading water in S2.)

[Zeke]

I vote BSG. Your threads come from a perspective of knowing a lot about the show in question -- it would be interesting to see how the exact opposite scenario turns out.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

PNQ: Which actor did the best portrayal of Sherlock Holmes?

Oo, how'd I miss this one? I never shut up on this subject. The answer is Jeremy Brett in the Granada TV series. He was born to play Holmes, and he put himself into the role so completely it basically killed him. Amazingly, the whole series is on YouTube, so check it out!

(I do like Cumberbatch, and Downey Jr. for that matter, but they're not really playing the Conan Doyle character.)

[Nate the Great]

On notalwaysright.com someone mentioned that Bones had almost as many relationships as Kirk...


PNQ: Am I forgetting a lot of his girlfriends?


I can remember Nancy Crater, the one played by Julie Newmar, he tried hitting on Shaw, the one from the amusement park planet, the one from the asteroid ship, that's about it.

[Nate the Great]

PNQ: Do you think that the Progenitors are the same as the Preservers?


Quick recap. The Progenitors are the aliens from "The Chase", the first sentient race to evolve in the galaxy (or at least the Alpha Quadrant). The Preservers are the aliens from "The Paradise Syndrome", the ones that transplant populations of primitive cultures to other planets to give them a chance to evolve.



A few sources consider them to be the same thing, but I have doubts. The Progenitors were active billions of years ago, and the Preservers were active thousands of years ago.



A few expanded universe sources make them the same thing. My biggest problem is that the Progenitor message clearly indicated that they thought that their race was dying out, hence the need to plant DNA in primordial worlds.



A few people also connect them to the changelings, basically based on the same actress playing the Progenitor hologram and the Female Changeling. What idiots. Trek recycles actors all the time, it doesn't mean anything. Do we have to assume that Pulaski is a descendant of Miranda Jones solely because they share an actress?

[Nate the Great]

I gave the Jeremy Brett series two episodes to suck me in, and it didn't. Good acting all round, of course, but the problem is that I just don't find Sherlock Holmes particularly interesting. He's stiff, he's smug, he's cold, he's arrogant. And you just can't alter that personality all that much without ceasing to be an authentic Sherlock Holmes.

[Nate the Great]

So I'm running through a playlist of TNG clips, and I get to the one where Picard owns the Sheliak. I had to wonder...


PNQ: We know the ship is self-cleaning, but how does it actually work?


It's one thing to say that overnight a swarm of robots pop out of a console and clean everything, but there is no "overnight" on a starship. Someone is always on the Bridge, in Engineering, in Ten Forward, etc. Robots would become safety hazards.


Do the transporters routinely sweep these areas and beam away everything that isn't supposed to be there? That seems like a very resource-intensive process, both in terms of energy and computing power.

[Nate the Great]

A Not Always Right story leads to comments regarding ways to call someone stupid or crazy...


PNQ: What's your favorite version of "a few X short of a Y"?


I'll always remember Stargate's "three fries short of a Happy Meal."