Sunday, January 27, 2008

geekery and more geekery

The new teaser for the upcoming Star Trek movie is out. Hard to tell what's up (it's a teaser, so there's no hint about the plot), though I've heard it'll be at least partly about the past. Leonard Nimoy (whose dusky voice greets us toward the end of the trailer in a ghostly echo of his "Star Trek II" closing narration) is in the film... but the credits show no sign of Shatner. Will the Shat be a surprise guest? Nimoy himself went uncredited as an actor in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock" (Nimoy did get credit as director), so it's at least possible that Shatner might go the same route.

Ah: an entire Wikipedia entry on the film is here.

For a more refined level of geekery, be sure to read Charles's commentary on the third season of "Lost," a show I'll get around to watching someday. I noted that Charles's attitude toward the series, as it stands, isn't far removed from my own attitude toward "Battlestar Galactica." Both of us are pissed off and wondering what the hell the writers are up to (well, striking, obviously!). This excerpt was especially interesting:

What I really want to comment on is the string of mysteries we are faced with on the island. I enjoy these mysteries, and I enjoy the tension they create, but the problem with dramatic tension is that it only works if we eventually experience some sort of release or resolution of that tension. You can only string people along so far before the tension becomes too much or before it becomes apparent that no possible pay-off could be worth it. The writers try to work around this by giving partial resolution and introducing new mysteries and new tension, but after a while it all seems to run together.

That's exactly how I feel about what's happened to the storyline for BSG. I now find myself in an adversarial relationship with the writers, thinking that they'd better bring this off properly-- or else.


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got involved in a bit of a geek war on a forum I frequent about that Star Trek teaser. The geek war revolved around the idea of building the Enterprise on earth (as it seems they are doing). Yet the canon says that the Enterprise was build in space.

But we're not complete geeks, so we tackled the issue of whether or not it would really be feasible or most efficient to build the Enterprise on earth. The Enterprise was not designed for atmospheric flight, and I have never seen it land on or take off from a planet. I eventually proposed the idea of a space elevator: parts would be built on Earth and then shipped into space to be assembled, bringing together the best of both worlds. This seemed to quell the nerdfury.

Stafford said...

Yes the trailer for the new Star Trek movie is most interesting, notwithstanding the chap working on the saucer section of The Enterprise is using a stick welder. (No one uses stick welding anymore and it's 2007! - must have been bring ancient technologies to work that day in the Starfleet Dry dock!)

Lost Starts again on Thursday - Woot!

And yes, if Ron Moore F%$#s it up there will be hell to pay!