5MV Update History

maintained by Zeke

SEPTEMBER 2003

September 1

Frammit frammit frammit... I've got a TJI alllllllmost done here but my time just ran out. It'll have to wait for tomorrow. Sorry about that.

September 2

And here's that TJI. But first, IJD GAF has a new Classic Trek fiver for us: "The Man Trap." Those who know a little original-series trivia will recall that this was actually the first episode aired, making it one of the three episodes with a claim on the title of TOS pilot. IJD has a little fun with that in the fiver.

The aforementioned TJI is a new one by me, "New Line announces endless LotR marathons." It turns out I'm really lucky to be a day late with this one, because today marks the 30th anniversary of J. R. R. Tolkien's death. Let's see how fast we can make him spin in his grave to honour the occasion....

Incidentally, the result of the TJI poll was a tie between the current look and one with a brighter background. (All contestants got respectable totals, including the original format.) I personally am very happy with the new look, and I've decided to keep it, at least for now -- we'll see how it ages.

[Comments]

September 2 Supplemental

I forgot to mention -- in fact, I've been forgetting to mention this for three fivers -- that 5MST recently reached the significant milestone of 50% coverage. There are 104 hours of original material in TOS and TAS, and that section now hosts 54 of them. Congratulations, IJD!

September 3

Note about email, as advertised on the front page: My address, zeke@sci-fivers.com.ar, redirects to my Lycos account -- which is unfortunately down for maintenance for the next two days. If you'd like to contact me before then, the best way is via my old address, quixotically@excite.com. (I'll do today's real update later as a Supplemental.)

September 3 Supplemental

And here's today's real update: three more Enterprise fivers now have Czech translations. The links are on the main 5ME page. (I'm aware that this just barely qualifies as a real update for 99.9% of my audience....)

September 4

Kira here with the real real update from yesterday: Five-Minute "A Night in Sickbay." This is one of those times where the fiver is way better than the episode... I know that's not saying much, given the source material, but still.

As if a new Enterprise fiver wasn't enough of a treat, there will be a fiver event starting tomorrow... in theory, at least. I must've looked cross-eyed at my wireless internet card today because it's slipped into a coma. It's working, somehow, but there's no sign of life. One way or another, though, there should be an update sometime tomorrow leading into a week of many fivers.

[Comments]

Zeke here with some very cool news: today is the second birthday of 5MV's first official subsite, Marc Richard's Five-Minute Next Generation. That means 5MV has now been around longer with it than without it, a fact I'm still trying to process. I don't need to tell you all what a contribution Marc's made to the site, in content and pretty much everything else. Suffice it to say I couldn't be prouder to see 5MNG hit the two-year mark.

And as we always do at 5MV when something big comes up, we're gonna have some fun with this. Welcome to Next Generation Week: The Next Generation! (The first Next Gen Week was back in February/March 2002, and longtime readers will remember that it concluded with Derek Dean's first fiver.) For the next seven update days, we'll have at least one new fiver for you every day. Most are by the master (Marcster?) himself, but you'll see a couple of cameo appearances too. To start things off, here's Five-Minute "Too Short a Season," by Marc.

[Comments]

(PS: Two quick notes. One, my email is still down, thank you very much Lycos. Two, as a result, the next update letter will be delayed until it's back up. I could mail from another address, but I don't have my mailing list....)

September 6

Zeke here. For the second day of Next Gen Week, we have a Season 2 double bill: Marc's "Loud As a Whisper," and "The Measure of a Man" by yours truly. This makes my ninth hour of Next Gen as compared with five of the original series and only three of DS9. So nobody can tell me I didn't honour the results of the what-show-should-I-do-next poll. <g>

[Comments]

(PS: My email is finally back now, as is my update mailing list. A cumulative letter will be out later today.)

September 7

Zeke again with the third day of Next Generation Week: TNG. Here's Five-Minute "Hollow Pursuits," by Marc. (Hands up all who haven't noticed the pattern yet... yeah, that's what I thought.)

[Edit] Well, well! Looks like there's more to say today than I thought. I just recounted the Fiver By Author pages in About (the Stats links) and noticed that Marc now has 41 fivers -- which pulls him out in front of both IJD and Derek, who are tied at 40. Given the friendly rivalry the staff have had going for a while, this may not last long....

[Comments]

September 8

And for day four of NGW:TNG, here's Marc's "The Drumhead" -- which, I just discovered, beat me to the term "Litigious Speed." Oops.

[Comments]

September 9

Day five is a big day for Next Gen Week: TNG. Not only do we have another great fiver by Marc -- "Conundrum" -- but I've done my fourth Next Gen two-parter, "Redemption," for the occasion. This is my surprise for Marc this year, as he knew I was doing "Measure of a Man" but not this one. Of course, after last year he probably expected a surprise, but the one he expected was probably "Descent" since I did the other Borg two-parter last y-- oh, forget it. Hope you enjoy both.

[Comments]

September 10

Day six features yet another Marc fiver, this time for one of my favourite episodes, "Rightful Heir." Read and enjoy, and come back Friday (the site is silent tomorrow) for the conclusion of NGW:TNG.

[Comments]

September 12

Welcome back for the seventh and final day of Next Generation Week: The Next Generation. Today's fiver is "Force of Nature" by, once again, Marc. You must read this one if only for the absolutely BRUTAL punnery in a certain Geordi/Data scene.

With that, after one week and ten hours' worth of fivers, NGW:TNG is done. The frustrating part is that 5MNG is very, very close to 50% series coverage (which 5MST achieved recently), but didn't quite get there in time for the wrap-up. I'll mention that on this page when it happens, though. A few quick acknowledgements: biggest thanks to Marc, of course, for writing seven great fivers and being the reason for all this; Kira, for doing the HTML on Marc's stuff; Tim Lynch for including good synopses with his TNG reviews, such as "Redemption"; and Readers Like You, for reading, commenting at the forums, and helping us get some awesome hitcounts this week. Here's to plenty more 5MNG anniversaries to come.

[Comments]

September 13

Surprise! After a week of Next Gen material, here's the latest section relaunch: Five-Minute Videogames.

This subsite is overdue for an overhaul. I've had quite a number of video-game fivers waiting to be published, and the front page was probably the worst-organized page anywhere at 5MV. So, after working on this behind the scenes throughout NGW:TNG, I'm now ready to make it public. The subsite has been reorganized into four series pages (for Mega Man, Tomb Raider, Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy, the four most-covered game series so far) and a front page listing the other fivers outside those series. You'll find the following new material:

• First and foremost, IJD GAF has completely knocked himself out with Tomb Raider. He's got the first five games done for your reading pleasure, and the third is something we've never done before at 5MV: a multifiver. You'll see what that means when you read it. IJD's Tomb Raider project has been in the planning longer than you'd believe, and I guarantee you'll love what he came up with.
• My contribution to the event is, at long last, Mega Man 7. I haven't fived a Mega Man game since the first six way back around Christmas 2001; I'll have to come back sooner this time, because I had great fun with MM7.
• I've kept Derek Dean waiting far, far too long to see his parodies of Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda published. Here they are at last, and if you'd known you were waiting, you'd still have found them worth the wait.
• Tate, a guest writer whose fiver for TOS's "Operation: Annihilate" you may recall, has done his sophomore parody: Chex Quest. You know the cereal Chex? They once made a game, based on the Doom engine, where you're a piece of Chex running around shooting soggy monsters called Flemoids. I'm not making this up. The game was included as a premium in certain Chex cereal boxes, making it the only first-person shooter you had to buy cereal to get... and now it's yours in fiver form. Bon appetit.
• Finally, first-time guest writer Dekar brings us House of the Dead. That's a two-player arcader where you make your way through a house shooting zombies, and it's the only arcade game I've played much -- I got to the final boss once but didn't have enough quarters to beat him. There's a movie coming out, so Dekar figured now was a good time to do the game. Makes sense to me. (Except the part about making a movie of House of the Dead, but that's Hollywood's fault.)

[Comments]

September 14

No new content today, but I've kept pretty busy fixing errors in the old content. Such are the wages of a huge subsite update.

September 15

I'm about half done the fiver of Enterprise's season premiere, but I want to take the time to get it right, so I'm aiming for early tomorrow afternoon. (I want to get back to early-in-the-day updates anyway.) Check back then.

September 16

Annnnnnd here's "The Xindi."

[Comments]

September 17

It turns out I wasn't the only one to think of putting Phlox in a pimp hat. Over at the Trek BBS, there was a thread about that just recently, and one member even Photoshopped an image which was later posted in the "Xindi" fiver comment thread. This is just wrong....

September 18

(Ahem) "Something."

Kira here... sorry about that, but Zeke's FTP is down and he requested that I "say something" in his stead and I couldn't resist.

It's been a while since I've updated the news page... I'm up to my ears in eight- and ten-hour days in the lab, but thanks to long incubations I'm still finding some time to work on some Top Secret fiver projects. I'm also planning to make up the slack in the fiver counts once I get some free time on my own computer. There's also a few guest fivers waiting to be published, so there should be material before the weekend is out.

September 19

Zeke again (thanks, Ki). The "Anomaly" fiver's now in progress: I hope to get it done tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm going to borrow Phlox's pimp hat and link you to Working Title, where Nan has a new strip posted. Check it out.

Early updates, Hayman. People don't come here on September 20 to see the September 19 update.

September 20 and 21

It's two new fivers! One for today, one for tomorrow, to get me back onto an early-in-the-day schedule. Here's "Equilibrium" by Derek and "Night Terrors" by Standback.

[Comments]

September 22

A little earlier this week, here's "Anomaly." You'll also find links to two new Czech translations in the Enterprise section. I know the audience is pretty limited, but I really dig those Os with slashes in them. Hee hee. Os with slashes.

[Comments]

September 23 and 24

Kira here... looks like Zeke's "earlier in the day" updates theory only lasted a day, so this might as well cover tomorrow as well. I haven't actually got anything to say, but at least this will prevent certain people from freaking out about missing a day.

September 25

Kira again. Once more, I haven't much of substance to say, so I'll take this opportunity to tell all Lord of the Rings fanatics who haven't already heard that the trailer for Return of the King will be debuting online this coming Monday. Let's hear it for Peter Jackson and TheOneRing.Net, the source of all LotR news. Woo!

September 26

Zeke here. There's a lot of new content just around the corner, but you'll have to wait just a little bit longer. Meanwhile, I'll distract you with a not-really-necessary site maintenance comment. Noticed the front page looking a bit better lately? That's because, until recently, several of the subsite logos had not-quite-black backgrounds -- just far enough off to be annoying, but not noticeable. (These are the "image-related kinks" I mentioned back in the v3.1 article.) Anyway, they're fixed now. So go look. Pretttttty.

September 27

Here's a new fiver: Star Trek: Armada, by newcomer Wowbagger (the Infinitely Prolonged).

[Comments]

September 28

This'll be a quiet Sunday for 5MV -- I don't have "Extinction" done yet and the event for early this coming week is still in progress. Come back tomorrow for a new fiver, and for now, just relax and enjoy what's left of the weekend.

Oh, and go buy stuff from Nan.

September 29

Today we have 5MV's second Angel parody: Five-Minute "Lonely Hearts," by Jade. This is not the last you'll see of either Sci-Fivers or Jade in the near future.

[Comments]

September 30

Today, no new content; tomorrow, "Extinction"; Thursday, the event I keep blabbing about. Blab blab blab. (I'm a blabbermouth.)

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