Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Dec 5, 2016 8:49:33 GMT -6
Star Trek used to get criticized a lot for "lack of imagination" when it came to portrayals of aliens. Especially TNG, the way their makeup people would slap on a weird nose or a tattoo and call it an "alien". But when you think about the great job they did with prosthetics on Worf and Quark, not to mention the aliens on episodes like "Allegiance", that can't be the whole story. I wonder if the main reason wasn't quite simply that most actors insist upon being recognized! I mean, it's obvious. If you're only a guest star and not a regular member of the cast, each appearance on television is part of your resume, a showcase of your ability as an actor. If you can't even be recognized, it kind of defeats the purpose.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jan 3, 2017 8:34:22 GMT -6
This past New Years weekend, BBC America was running a Voyager marathon, and I managed to watch a dozen or so episodes. With due respect to any fans of that series who might be reading this, the impression I received only confirmed my previous impression, that the writers of Voyager wrote stories with little regard for whether they made sense or not.
One prime example is one alien species which supposedly aged "backwards". Apparently they are "born" as full grown adults and then grow steadily younger. When they get to about nine (although really in their nineties), apparently their bodies just turn into energy and vanish! Several of the episodes I saw kept with that theme -- that when you die, the "energy" of your body somehow continues in some kind of afterlife. In another episode, I think it was Harry Kim who said something along the lines of, "Our science can't tell us anything about what happens after death." This is not what I expect from a science-oriented science fiction series.
It's not just the paranormal either. In one episode they encounter a species who have the technology to "fold space" and travel up to 40,000 light-years, without a starship! They just had this platform evidently run by this little box. But while Janeway was negotiating with the alien's leader to let them use it, some members of the crew managed to get hold of one of these boxes and hook it up to the Voyager's warp engines. Then they found out that it wouldn't work with their engines because only the unique composition of the planet allowed it to work. Which raises the obvious question (obvious to me anyway) -- when the aliens take a trip to 40,000 light-years away, how do they come back?
Anyway that's my impression of Voyager, that they treat science like magic. Every time they talk "science", it sounds like gibberish.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jan 17, 2017 8:52:51 GMT -6
Here's something interesting. I was reading some of my old Isaac Asimov books and came across an essay he wrote in 1964, speculating about what we might see at the 2014 World's Fair. I'm not going to quote the whole thing, just the highlights. But it is fascinating to see the things he got right on the button, and the things that he just missed.
"By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly and in a variety of colors... Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and when present would be polarized to block out harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity might even be made to alter automatically. This will still be a luxury development and most mortals would not have them in their own homes." It seems to me I have seen such things demonstrated, but they are certainly not common.
"Gadgets will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs, and the final third of the 20th century should see the arrival of the household robot. Robots will be neither common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence." If you count the Roomba, this seems to be spot on. Most of our appliances today have microprocessors enabling them to be programmed, even operated from cell phones. Asimov would most probably count those micro-computers as robots.
"By 2014, much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with robot-brains -- vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and will proceed there without interference of a human driver." Check. There are practical models of driverless cars, though not in production as far as I know.
"Communications will also be advanced and synchronous satellites will have made it possible to call anyone anywhere on Earth." Check.
"As for television, wall screens will have replaced the ordinary set by 2014." Check.
"By 2014, large solar-power stations will be in operation in a number of deserts and semi-desert areas... where sunlight is reliable and steady." The only thing he missed is that we don't necessarily build them in deserts, but practically anywhere. He also didn't mention wind farms, but the technology for that was pretty primitive in his day.
But what he missed! He assumed that we'd have a couple of experimental fusion power plants already in operation. Still working on that one. He also assumed we'd be on the verge of setting up orbital solar-power stations. He took it for granted that we'd have a permanent colony on the Moon by now, too. On the ground, he thought that moving sidewalks would be making their appearance.
In another article, he predicted that private helicopters or ground effect vehicles would be all the rage by the 1990s, so much as to require "drastic changes in traffic regulations. One of the growing irritations of 1990 will be be the disregard of such drivers for private property rights." If you think about drones, he nearly got this one right.
The big thing he missed was the Internet. But then, nobody back then predicted the Internet. He did predict: "The telephone itself will become almost an item of entertainment. The 1990 telephone will be routinely equipped with a television attachment so that one can see as well as hear the person at the other end... Such a telephone may also revolutionize library work. The large libraries may well be organized to allow telephonic viewing of their microfilms. It will then be possible to check references and obtain information without leaving the home or office."
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Apr 1, 2017 8:12:30 GMT -6
I wonder if anyone else is as disappointed as I am by the current spate of superhero movies. Marvel studios at least makes more effort to make the characters true to the way they were depicted in the comics than DC does. I was especially disappointed by what they seem to be doing to Wonder Woman. I saw her at the tail end of "Batman versus Superman" and thought -- "This isn't even Wonder Woman. This is Xena."
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Post by Atoz 77 on Mar 12, 2018 7:55:31 GMT -6
I recently got the 50th anniversary set of dvd's of the four Next Generation movies and watched them all in four nights. (I don't binge-watch Star Trek because I like to savor them and think about what I've just watched.)
As part of the collection, the dvd's had round table discussions with four "experts" on movies. Their consensus seemed to be that "First Contact" was the best of the four. The main reasons they gave were (1) making Earth the focus made it more immediate for the audience, (2) it portrayed the Star Trek people as "flawed", especially the scene were Troi gets drunk, and (3), the Borg were the best villains in Star Trek history.
Well, I can't argue with the first reason. But personally I LIKED the idea that people in the future will be more mindful and self-disciplined. That was one of the best things about Star Trek imho. Did you ever notice on TNG that whenever someone needed to use the holodeck, it was available? There were no long lines with drunken rowdies fighting for their turn? To me the scene where Troi gets drunk is a flaw that tend to ignore.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Mar 19, 2018 7:51:48 GMT -6
And all three of them agreed that their least favorite of the four was "Insurrection", the reason they gave being that it felt like a two hour episode of the television series. Well duh. For that same reason "Insurrection" was my favorite of the four. Here was me, thinking that we all LIKED the television series. This is something of an epiphany. You see, that's probably the main reason I don't like the Abrams movies, because they feel like just the usual easily forgettable summer blockbusters which just happen to have characters who have the same names as characters in the Original Series. If you see what I mean.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 22, 2018 10:52:12 GMT -6
Here's a question -- I was thinking about writing a story that takes place in the Briar Patch. I looked it up at Memory Alpha and was surprised to find that "Briar Patch" is the region's official name. That doesn't sound right to me. It sounds more like a colloquial, unofficial name. I'm open to suggestions for what the region would officially called on star charts.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 25, 2018 8:29:57 GMT -6
Superficially the Briar Patch just looks like a regular emission nebula, and goodness knows there are nebulae all over the place. What would be so unique about this one that it gets the name "Briar Patch"?
Nebulae are expanses of interstellar dust and gas. When there are stars close by to illuminate them, they are called emission nebulae. The radiation from the stars not only provides light but ionizes the gases in the cloud so that they light up literally like neon signs. They also radiate in radio frequencies and interfere with communications. There are basically two kinds of emission nebulae -- those associated with stellar nurseries where new stars are born (like the Orion nebula) and those associated with supernova remnants (such as the Crab Nebula). The Briar Patch looks much more like the latter. In fact, Picard mentions "supernova remnants" all through the Briar Patch. But supernovae usually leave behind pulsars, which generate enormous amounts of dangerous radiation, and no mention was made of any pulsars. We certainly didn't see any on screen.
So apparently we're talking about burned-out pulsars, or neutron stars. The Briar Patch must be a whole string of stars that all went supernova at roughly the same time a long, long time ago. That would certainly be unique. The region must be ancient, which makes me wonder what the heck a terrestrial planet is doing here? It must have condensed from the interstellar medium centuries after the region cooled down. I have to wonder if the Baku didn't have to indulge in a little terraforming before they dismantled their starships.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 28, 2018 7:52:06 GMT -6
Just wanted to add on this same topic -- On average, there is one supernova per galaxy per CENTURY, which is why we saw one supernova in the entire run of TOS ("All Our Yesterdays") and one in TNG ("Tin Man"). Even that's pushing it.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Dec 21, 2018 9:03:42 GMT -6
Not long ago, I got the chance to watch the "Wonder Woman" movie. My opinion is that it's not as bad as feared it would be, but still not as good as I wanted it to be.
One of the most intriguing characters was Dr. Maru, the German scientist who experimented with poison gases. (I liked her partly because she's like a dark and twisted version of a character, Alchema, that I created for my Fuchsia Fox stories.) But that leads up to the most depressing aspect of the movie. When Steve Trevor steals her notebook and takes it back to England (in the process crashing on Themyscira, which is apparently in the North Sea rather than the Atlantic), right then I sort of went cold. What did he think they were going to do -- use her formulas to create antidotes or something? No way. In World War I, they didn't have the resources for that. They didn't even have enough gas masks for all the soldiers on the front. In World War I, their mindset was to fight fire with fire. They would have just used her formulas to make poison gas of their own. That thought alone almost ruined the movie for me.
There was one nice scene while they were traveling to England, when Diana tells Steve that she read all twelve volumes of Clio's Treatise on Physical Pleasure, and came to the conclusion that men were unnecessary. That was cute. It confirms my instinct that Amazons would certainly NOT be naive or repressed when it comes to sex. They probably know more about lesbian sex than we could ever imagine in our wildest dreams. That kind of makes your mouth water, doesn't it?
I don't think they ever bothered to explain how her armor could conveniently disappear and reappear when she needed it. She certainly wasn't wearing it under her clothes when she was passing as Diana Prince, and most definitely not while in that slinky gown she had stolen from that other woman at the castle. On the one hand most of the movie is trying to be relentlessly, depressingly realistic, and then they pull something like this where we're obviously just supposed to smile and say, "comic books"! It just grates. It reminds you that you're just watching a STORY that somebody made up.
And the climax of the movie when she fought Ares was just another CGI nightmare where my attention wandered. So she can be slammed into the concrete and dragged twenty feet without a scratch on her? Far out. If her skin is that tough, why does she bother to dodge bullets? In the comics, Wonder Woman did heal extraordinarily fast, but her skin nevertheless got injured when she was being mauled by demons and things. I suppose the actress just wouldn't have looked as good all beaten and bloody.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jan 9, 2019 9:14:49 GMT -6
Out of curiosity I watched the premiere of "Project Blue Book" on the History channel last night. Be warned that this is a fictionalized series, rather like the X-files, full of government cover ups. If you like that kind of thing, fine. Just don't expect much in the way of real history. This episode for example, the Fuller dogfight, is based on the actual case known as the Gorman Dogfight, which you can look up on Wikipedia for comparison. In the real case there is no mention of the pilot shooting at the object, or his plane being damaged by it, or anything about any mysterious music.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Feb 9, 2019 8:34:01 GMT -6
It was the same with the next episode, "The Flatwoods Monster". It looks as if the writers took the bare facts of the case -- basically that a woman and several teen-agers witnessed a meteorite which they took to be an aircraft, and when they went to look for it, in the woods they ran into something which they took to be a ten-foot tall "monster" -- and then the writers made up the rest of the story from their imagination. J. Allen Hynek didn't even investigate that case. I haven't watched any other episodes since then.
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