Science Fiction & Open Thread & Television & Movies Posted by christian h., 25 May 2007 10:46 am

Open Thread (#10)

Harmonic Convergence of the Geeks - By Oaktown Girl

The Star Wars geeks are all a-twitter over some big 30 year anniversary celebration happening this weekend. It will be all Star Wars, all the time, all weekend.

So let’s talk about Star Trek instead. (Don’t worry, Lucas fans. The WAAGNFNP’s leading Star Wars geek, TC, will give us all a full report on Star Wars next week, including facts, memoirs, free appraisals of your Star Wars memorabilia, and Lord Astaroth knows what-all else).

WAAGNFNP MOOAD Tribunus Laticlavius christian h. has a good Open Thread idea: program 6-8 hours of Star Trek television, from any of the TV series. Tell us which episodes would you choose, in which order, and why. Remember, this is not merely a “favorites” list, so put on your “Spock’s Brain” helmet and get to thinkin’. Yes, you may post as you ruminate, so we can all do some thinking together.

But the MOJ is ever-merciful, and is willing to share this space with all sci-fi/fantasy fans seeking refuge from the Star Wars onslaught. You are welcome to discuss Babylon 5, Buffy, Lord of the Rings (movies), or whatever your little hearts desire - TV and movies only - any topic. Please visit the Readers Anonymous thread for book chat.

Mirror Universe Spock….mmmmm…sexy. DS9’s Captain Sisko once they let him drop the dweeb look and be his natural hot, hunky self…very sexy indeed. So here’s another idea: tell us your secret (or not so secret) Sci fi/Fantasy TV/movie crushes. Go ahead, ‘fess up. The truth will set you free.

Now please enjoy the following nifty edit of “Mirror Mirror”. Definitely worth a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcMCNucDzDQ

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Responses to “Open Thread (#10)”

  1. on 25 May 2007 at 6:51 pm 1. christian h. said …

    Crushes? Hmmm. There is an annoying lack of non-token female characters outside of Buffy. I liked Kaylee Frye (the mechanic on Firefly), for example (I’m still upset that show was canceled so quickly).

  2. on 25 May 2007 at 7:04 pm 2. christian h. said …

    Speaking of Firefly:

  3. on 25 May 2007 at 7:12 pm 3. James Killus said …

    A brief fanboy speculation:

    In the 1960s, when the ongoing cooling of the Earth caused everything on television to look black and white, there was a show starring Bob Cummings and Julie Newmar called “My Living Doll.” Not a good show, but I watched it because
    a) it was science fiction (of sorts)
    b) it had Bob Cummings in it, and for some reason I liked Bob Cummings and
    c) Julie Newmar (I’m reasonably sure I know why I liked Julie Newmar).

    Julie Newmar played an anthropoid robot (created as part of the space program). The first time you see her, she’s accidentally gotten out of the lab and is wandering the halls clothed only in what looked to be a towel, with her serial number on the back. She answers only to her serial number, which is 709.

    Much later, on Star Trek Voyager, there is a Bionic Borg Babe (as she was known in these here parts) named “Seven of Nine.” Or, as we say anytime near St. Patrick’s Day, Seven O’Nine.

    Coincidence? You be the judge…

  4. on 25 May 2007 at 7:32 pm 4. christian h. said …

    You are right. That has got to be shout-out.

  5. on 25 May 2007 at 7:35 pm 5. Oaktown Girl said …

    On the Star Trek “Mirror” YouTube I posted at the top, one can’t help but notice that the edits are not nearly as clean as we’d like them to be in the music track. But still, a good effort overall, and I think the choice of music complemented it very well. Even with the messy music edits in some places, in other places the music timing and rhythm hits the moment on the video just right - either by design or by luck, I guess it doesn’t really matter.

    But what I really like about this clip is that the video edit itself does such a good job capturing not just the plot, but the spirit of the episode, and the music selection helped to bring that out as well. And I’m all about heart and spirit. So nitpicking aside, I give it the 3Tops “3 Horns Up!”

    Back later with more.

  6. on 25 May 2007 at 7:47 pm 6. Kiera PSI said …

    I wonder how long it will take us to catch up with the rest of the classic Star Trek “technology”. Did anyone notice how closely the communications earpieces match the current “bluetooth” headsets?

    I always liked Spock. My friends oohed and ahhed over Kirk, but not me.

    My favorite classic character, though, was T’Pau. I always had the idea that when young she was a bit of a rebel and had settled into her matriarchal role after a lot of “wild oats sowing”. When the song by the group of the same name came out “Heart and Soul”, I could just picture it as being poetry written by that character with the spoken parts the actual words, and the sung refrain the emotions she would, of course, forever deny.

  7. on 25 May 2007 at 8:07 pm 7. James Killus said …

    You had strange friends, Kiera. Spock was the breakout star, Gary Cooper with pointy ears. And it was Nimoy who could never really break free, whereas for Shattner every roll of the dice comes up “job.” But he hasn’t been the romantic lead in decades.

  8. on 25 May 2007 at 8:28 pm 8. Kiera PSI said …

    Yeah, well, it was a very WASP-ish community. Come to think of it, my biggest crush in school was another Jewish boy who kind of had that Spock-like saturnine countenance going. Curlier hair, though. He was a bit short when my crush started…was one of those who bloomed late. I skipped my junior year so lost track of him. At the end of my senior year I went to a swim meet and heard all the girls going off about this totally hot hunk who was new to the diving team who just MUST be stuffing his trunks…and who had a sculpted chest and six-pack abs, and bedroom eyes, and so forth, and so on. I almost fell on the floor when someone squealed “There he is!” and pointed. It was my old crush Marc, standing on the diving board. Can I pick ‘em, or what?

  9. on 25 May 2007 at 10:37 pm 9. James Killus said …

    It was definitely the Vulcans who got the best press early on, though in later versions Klingons became cool.

    In checking out my own essays on the subject(s) I notice at least three on Star Trek and I think none so far on Star Wars. Part of that is that I just lost interest in Star Wars about halfway through Return of the Jedi, and maybe I’ll explain that sometime.

    But Star Trek was more important than Star Wars for several reasons, with the teen girl crushes on Spok being one of the big ones. That brought a wave of women into science fiction fandom, and frankly, without that, I’d have never bothered with sf conventions or clubs.

    I’d also argue that Trek was more important culturally than Wars, with the latter being quite retrograde and reactionary. Star Trek had, after all and god help us, the first interracial kiss on Television, whereas Star Wars was a honkey future from the get go. And Star Wars never instigated anything as radical as slash fiction.

    There was also the fact that guys who insisted on being called “Trekkers” made me look very good at parties, and for that I remain eternally grateful.

  10. on 26 May 2007 at 12:09 am 10. Oaktown Girl said …

    I was so disappointed with what the Vulcans became after the first Star Trek series. Instead of being multi-dimensional like Spock and his dad Sarek, they were all played/written as repressed, uptight stiffs. That pretty much killed my affection for the Vulcans, which made me sad.

    Hardcore Trek fans often dismiss my criticism of the post-Original Series Vulcans by saying, “Well, Spock was half human”, but they have nothing to say when I mention the other Vulcans like Sarek, T’Pau, or Spock’s “wife” and his rival in “Amok Time”. Those were some full-blooded Vulcans, and they were just as cool (as in “hip”, not “cold”) without being stiff as Spock was.

    My theory (and aren’t you just dying to hear my theory?) is that in the interim between TOS and Next Generation, the whole non-emotional aspect of Vulcan culture became so grandly mythologized, by the time TNG came out, the TV directors forgot to tell the actors that Vulcans were so beloved because they are cool, not robotic.

    There’s also clearly a generation gap with regards to one’s perspective of things. People who grew up with Next Generation and later tend to be defensive when I complanin about post-Original Series Vulcans. People older than that tend to agree with me. There are exceptions of course, but it’s usually a safe bet to place your money along age lines on this one.

  11. on 26 May 2007 at 5:33 am 11. christian h. said …

    It’s too bad Bob Herbert is behind a pay-wall, because he has an important piece in the Times today (Arrested while grieving) about a group of NY teenagers - black and Latino - arrested while on the way to a funeral of a friend, for no apparent reason:

    Last Monday in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, about three dozen grieving young people on their way to a wake for a teenage friend who had been murdered were surrounded by the police, cursed at, handcuffed and ordered into paddy wagons. They were taken to the 83rd precinct stationhouse, where several were thrown into jail.

    The police claim they suspected gang membership:

    Capt. Scott Henderson of the 83rd Precinct told me that the police had developed a “plan” to deal with youngsters going to the wake because they suspected that the murder was gang-related and there had already been some retaliation. He said he had personally witnessed the youngsters in Bushwick behaving badly and gave the order to arrest them.

    Many of the kids were wearing white T-shirts with a picture of the dead teenager and the letters “R.I.P.” on them. The cops cited the T-shirts as evidence of gang membership.

    Racism - alive and well.

  12. on 26 May 2007 at 5:36 am 12. christian h. said …

    Oh, I forgot to say that the only ones claiming “bad behavior” are the police who arrested them. Everyone else describes a large group of youngsters, very sad and downcast about the loss of their friend, walking peacefully.

  13. on 26 May 2007 at 9:04 am 13. Kiera PSI said …

    Sounds like a lawsuit to me. The ACLU is going to LOVE this one.

  14. on 26 May 2007 at 11:35 am 14. spyder said …

    I knew that harmonic convergence thang had a familiar ring to it. To i got out my T-shirt from 20 years ago, checked the dates, examined the eight calendars on it, and had a great flashback. That was a great August tour; after three huge Dylan/Dead shows in July, there were nine shows across the great west in 15 days. The convergence was celebrated at the Telluride shows, sandwiched between Red Rocks and Compton Terrace (damn it was freakishly hot there–108º at sunset show time). One of the coolest aspects of that tour was the convoys between shows, hundreds of vehicles moving the circus from town to town. Not necessarily strangers, but if you were on tour, and had some vehicle issue, dozens would stop to help.

    And now for the left-handed monkey wrench toss into the ring. I happened to be one of the few people to like the Earth Final Conflict series. While that may have been due to a friend who worked as a writer on the project, i still enjoyed the various dust-ups about: cloning, genetic engineering, medical advancements in exchange for more security state apparatus, a serious liberation movement revolution, some wacky churches, and so forth. And the androgynous Talon’s, well, hell yeah.

  15. on 26 May 2007 at 12:01 pm 15. The Constructivist said …

    Hey, Trekkies! Here’s a link to Edward Copeland’s 30th Anniversary Blog-a-thon (for Star Wars, that is). I don’t plan to read all the posts in it–by Gojira’s fiery breath, I’m not that much of a SW fan!–but I have taken up Oaktown Girl’s challenge and will make my best effort to transcend all the bloggy genres represented in the mix there in my post here.

  16. on 26 May 2007 at 12:11 pm 16. The Constructivist said …

    Whoops, forgot to mention that I’m interested in science fiction and race (representations of and interactions with aliens, analogues for and allegories of real life, etc.), so if I had actually watched enough Star Trek to follow through on the plan, I’d program an evolution of the way the series has dealt with race, from the Cold War liberalism of the original (not just The Kiss or the best of Shatner’s many, er, conquests, but I think the nonintervention policy itself and under what conditions it’s broken can relate to U.S./Third World relations during the Cold War) up to the latest series (the Janeway one, right? I stopped watching when I got the same feeling I did in the early ’90s when Marvel started scattering storylines for the same superhero over five comics per month — overload). Cisco’s (am I even spelling his name right?) time in the segregation-era U.S. as a sf writer would be a big part of it of course. And other good episodes set on Deep Space Nine (my favorite series, BTW) would probably take up 5 of my 8 hours. But I need you all’s help — on this theme, what episodes would you pick?

  17. on 26 May 2007 at 1:08 pm 17. James Killus said …

    It was always obvious that the Vulcans were “repressed, uptight stiffs.” The problem came when they tried to be truly unemotional.

    My favorite example of the basic contradictions was in Star Trek: the Motion Picture, when Spock went through his “purification ritual” to leave all emotion behind and is then given a medal for it. The response should have been “eh, who cares?”

    Still, I’ll not disrespect T’Pol, who gave us a new subtext to “decontamination chamber.” In her backstory, she even lived in San Francisco for a while, and liked to party, er, I mean “experiment.”

    Otherwise, the only good thing about “Enterprise” was the two part “mirror universe” story.

  18. on 26 May 2007 at 3:59 pm 18. spyder said …

    Maybe it is probably fitting that i am listening to some live Blind Faith at the moment, but now that i am stuck in the video confessional i shall come clean.
    Yes it is true that i have “observed” every single episode of every single Star Trek series, including most of the originals when they were first broadcast. The athletic dorm at UCLA in the sixties sponsored the Star Trek nights, while other dorms covered I-Spy and other (perhaps better) things–can you say the Prisoner??

    Therefore i have had to conduct numerous neural network cleaning to rid myself of so much useless arcana and trivialities. DS9 or Next Generation Cardasians?? Original Romulan or NG’s more erudite Klingon??? See it just gets weirder and weirder.

    As for my ST babe of choice: Major Kira just seemed so perfect. But then Kwai Ling Hong and Renee Palmer, from Earth Final Conflict were quite interesting characters and worthy of no less than honorable mention.

    and now for some other news. Just completed yet another conference call, and it seems that our tech gurus are building me (and a yet unnamed partner) a blogsphere for the tour. Thus i will be blogging live four or five of the big festival events. This should be fun, and i can drop some cross posts over here. Anyway, back to the frantic panic widespread craziness that is deadlines approacheth too soon.

  19. on 26 May 2007 at 5:13 pm 19. James Killus said …

    Rather than just leave a trail of breadcrumbs, I give specific links to my few ST reuminations, including one that uses The Kiss as a springboard to more general thoughts on SF and race.

    There is also one on the pop cultural meaning of Spock and the Vulcans

    And finally a serious attempt to make some cash that turned out to be merely fan-fic.

    I myself stopped watching ST near the beginning of Voyager, with only the occasional oggling of the Borg Babe (we do, after all have much to thank Jery Ryan for), with similar motives for the occasional run at Enterprise.

    As noted above, I’ve never written anything on Star Wars, but given the anniversary and the discussion here, I can hear the ax grinding in the background, and suspect that it’s only a Matter of Time.

  20. on 26 May 2007 at 6:18 pm 20. Oaktown Girl said …

    It was always obvious that the Vulcans were “repressed, uptight stiffs.” The problem came when they tried to be truly unemotional.

    Well yes, of course. Perhaps I did not explain my point very well. What I was trying to convey was my dislike for how the actors played it, (or how they were directed to play it, whatever), as you say, “truly unemotional”. Trying to force that much distance between a character and humans leaves nothing to grab on to, and very little to care about or to be interested in as far as I’m concerned.

  21. on 26 May 2007 at 6:30 pm 21. Oaktown Girl said …

    TC - I forgot to say I love DS9 too. I’ll be happy to help you with some DS9 programming per christian’s suggestion at the top. I’ll get on that later this weekend.

    And christian - I never watched Firefly on TV, but I heard it getting so many good props, and so many folks were sad it was cancelled that I did rent the Firefly movie, which I enjoyed. There’s also a place near me that has all the DVD’s from the TV series available to rent, which is on my to-do list…along with the new Battlestar Gallatica TV series DVD’s, another show that’s gotten great reviews I haven’t seen.

    Sweet Lord Astaroth - the A’s are losing to Baltimore 8-1 in the 6th.

  22. on 26 May 2007 at 9:00 pm 22. Kiera PSI said …

    Sorry, didn’t get that emergency call for help until it was far too late to do much. Nickie’s pop out in the 9th was a killer.

    I’m sitting here enjoying a half glass of Ficklin Vineyards Chocolate Port along with a few little Dove Chocolates. Much numminess. If we’re lucky I’ll be able to finish this post before I fall over (I have a supreme intolerance for red wine products - but love them too much to totally forego them. I heartily recommend a visit to Madera Vintner’s Association Wine Trail event to anyone who cares to visit that backwards little dot on the map in November. Some few of the wines are quite excellent and a grand time can be had by all.

  23. on 27 May 2007 at 2:21 pm 23. spyder said …

    Something about this reminds me of the episode in ST:NG where Picard ends up as a plantation farmer. From a Professor Quiroz from the College of Fine Arts at University of Arizona (and no, this has nothing to do with chocolates):

    http://www.davisdominguez.com/artistpages/quiroz2.htm

  24. on 27 May 2007 at 2:40 pm 24. Oaktown Girl said …

    Thanks for that pic, spyder.

    Kiera - how long did it take you to get out of bed today after a night of Port and Dove chocolates? (Hint: rhetorical question - do not answer. Because if you’re going to say something really irritating like it didn’t affect you at all, or you got up at 6am and then went for a 5 mile run, I’d have to find someone from MOOAD to re-trunk the woman in charge of re-trunking).

    Movie question for the few of you who happen to still be around and checking in this holiday weekend - does anyone know if I’d be missing much to see Pirates III without having seen Pirates II?

  25. on 27 May 2007 at 2:50 pm 25. Col K L said …

    Well, not just to be different, actually just to be different, I offer up my newly rediscovered childhood fav…………..The Prisoner.
    I found all but one of the eps on Veoh.com and I am happily going through them.
    Plus UFO (oh so cheesy!) is on there. Giggling my way through them and dayum there is some eye candy.

  26. on 27 May 2007 at 2:53 pm 26. Col K L said …

    Lemme see, I also got B5’s pilot, all the four parts and Andromeda, BSG’s pilot, and ooh! Off topic, but superb eye candy…..The Shooter with Mark W. Yeah baybee!

  27. on 27 May 2007 at 3:01 pm 27. christian h. said …

    Oaktown Girl,
    I haven’t seen Pirates III, so I can’t be sure. I’d say (a) if you are interested in the story, it would likely be a bad idea but (b) it’s more about watching J. Depp, O. Bloom and K. Knightly anyway, right? I mean, the movie is of the “harmless fun” variety…

  28. on 27 May 2007 at 3:04 pm 28. Oaktown Girl said …

    Col KL -
    I remember that The Prisoner made a comeback in the mid-late 80’s after the episodes became widely available on VHS and the show got discovered by a whole new generation. This was of course back in the days before there were all the cable TV channels we have now. A friend of mine was fascinated by that show and talked about it all the time. (I’ve only seen a few episodes myself). I’m pretty sure there was some sex-ified eye-candy in there she fancied as well to sweeten the deal! (It must have been the Prisoner Man himself).

  29. on 27 May 2007 at 3:22 pm 29. The Constructivist said …

    Hey all, just a quick note to let you know that I’ve done my best to live up to MOJ’s kind plug for my upcoming (and now no longer forthcoming) Star Wars geekery. I’m pretty sure Butt-head wouldn’t say “Stop in the Name of All That Which Does Not Suck!” to it, but I answer to Higher Authorities. I’m up for more fantastic editing suggestions after I take onechan to yochien and get some sleep! I’m celebrating the actual accuracy of the Mostly Harmless 100-Yen Nishijin Crystal Ball on just about all of my LPGA calls this weekend–work can wait.

  30. on 27 May 2007 at 4:03 pm 30. Col K L said …

    Re: Pirates III, my scouts say that II was much better. They consider the franchise as exhausted as 24 did at times this year.

  31. on 27 May 2007 at 4:33 pm 31. Kiera PSI said …

    If you’re following the plot (such as it is) at all, then you’ll be totally confused if you see 3 without seeing 2. But, as noted by Christian H, if you’re more interested in the hot bods and foolery of the stars, no biggie.

    As for the rhetorical question, it was ONLY a half glass, but I still woke up disoriented at 9:15am and had to guzzle a coke zero to feel remotely human again. Then I compounded my error by eating a bowl of cereal for breakfast instead of something with protein, so when the D-Man got up at 10, I was still woozy. Sigh. You’d think I’d learn…but no.

    Speaking of the D-Man, it’s his birthday tomorrow and I have nothing to give him but a cake and a card (and me, but he gets that even when it’s NOT his birthday, so we really can’t count that). A present is on order for him, but has yet to arrive (grrr). And he’s been (suprise) so uncommunicative as to what he’d like for his birthday that I have no freaking clue what to give him in the meantime. Sigh. It’s his own fault, but I still feel a little bad.

  32. on 27 May 2007 at 5:01 pm 32. James Killus said …

    I will note without further comment that our household’s decision to purchase a VCR in the early 1980s (or at least the timing thereof) was proximally caused by the broadcast of episodes of The Prisoner on PBS.

  33. on 27 May 2007 at 5:45 pm 33. Oaktown Girl said …

    I will note without further comment…

    So your wife was hot for “The Prisoner” too, James? :)

    Thanks for the Pirates III feedback. Of course I realized a little later that I could just go on the Internets and find the complete Pirates II storyline and pretty much go into Pirates III all caught up, with the probable exception of a few jokes that would no doubt be references to events in Pirates II. But if Col KL has heard that III is worse than II, and II was, by most accounts, not so good, I’m leaning toward not going, especially since I’m not going to make a matinee (today or tomorrow). And that’s kind of a bummer because I really like Johnny Depp in that Capt. Jack Sparrow character. But even that has its limits.

    Happy Birthday in advance to Kiera’s hubby the D-Man. Me, I have little patience for hard-to-shop-for people who won’t tell me what they want for a present. In those cases, I usually fantasize about giving them a good swift kick in the ass, or cracking them upside the head with a blunt object for their damn present.

  34. on 27 May 2007 at 5:50 pm 34. The Constructivist said …

    Ah, this weekend was my birthday? I’m a little woozy; I always thought it was in October, but if the MOJ says it was a birthday present then by Gojira it was a birthday present!

  35. on 27 May 2007 at 5:53 pm 35. Col K L said …

    Re: the hard to buy for because ‘you are supposed to know what they want/need’ I always considered that to be passive aggressive stuff. Suggest what cured it for someone I know. Find a ‘naval wool collection kit’. VEG

  36. on 27 May 2007 at 5:56 pm 36. Col K L said …

    Regarding Star Trek, ad infinitum, I liked Voyager at first. Cap. Janeway was cool. Then they made her into some sort of nunlike marionette figure with no visible soul. Had the hots for Beltrane until I found out he was the incarnation of southbound end of northbound donkey.

    My fav ST movie was First Contact. It was a kick butt adventure and the Borg, IMHO is the ultimate nightmarish adversary. Rape of body and mind.

  37. on 27 May 2007 at 6:08 pm 37. Oaktown Girl said …

    TC - No, it’s not your birthday this weekend… unless it is.

    I’ve just been just cracking you upside the head to get you to do the MOJ’s bidding, to the MOJ’s high standards, which is always in service to the greater good of the WAAGNFNP, of course.

    Does everyone know what Col KL’s “VEG” means? If not, feel free to make something up.

  38. on 27 May 2007 at 6:15 pm 38. Col K L said …

    >> sometimes accompanied by > but frequently accompanied by > and always meaning, Be Afraid. Be V E R Y afrain. LOL Oh and it took me years to determine that BRB did not mean bathroom break. D’uh!

  39. on 27 May 2007 at 6:54 pm 39. Kiera PSI said …

    Yes, be afraid of her Very Evil Grin. You do not want to see it unless it is a suggestion of yours that caused it…and you are not on the receiving end of the action of said suggestion.

    As far as passive aggressive, I agree, and I’m not letting him get away with it. I told him “Fine, then you aren’t getting anything you want and you’d better not complain or you’re going to be in the deepest pile of doggie doo doo you can even HOPE to imagine.” He explained that there are things in life he wants, but that he knows I can’t afford them so he didn’t want to tell me about them and make me feel bad because I couldn’t afford them. Then I got a hug and a “I’ve got everything I really want, I’ve got you.”. We’ll see how that holds up when he only gets his cake, his card, and me tomorrow. If it doesn’t hold…Colonel KL, I’ll have some “work” for you.

  40. on 27 May 2007 at 7:27 pm 40. Col K L said …

    > > She really does love me!
    BTW I bought my first VCR thingie to record Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy. Don’t Panic!

  41. on 27 May 2007 at 8:11 pm 41. Kiera PSI said …

    I didn’t buy the first VCR thingee of the family, but I have a cute story (kind of) for why the family got its first color TV in the mid-sixties.

    My family had gone to Sears to look at a new washing machine. Back in those days, people could leave their kids somewhere in the store without fear that they’d be snatched, abused, or otherwise bothered. My parents left me in front of the bank of television sets. When they’d finally chosen their new washer they came to get me, and found me avidly watching Batman in its full glorius primary colors. Apparently I did not want to leave. It took the ultimate threat (you move your ass or I’ll put my foot up it) from my mother to get me out of there. My father decided that this was a good excuse to get the color TV along with the washer. Since my mother had been looking for an excuse as well, everyone was happy and we had color from then on.

  42. on 27 May 2007 at 8:59 pm 42. Col K L said …

    Star Trek was the ‘excuse’ my Daddy used to get our family its first color tv in the States. We came back from elsewhere and he and I saw the show when it was firt on. Of course, we had to see it in color! Mom objected but Daddy said it was educational. It was fun tuning the color with Spock part of the deal, but between Uhuru and Kirk we got it more or less right. I remember meeting Nichelle and saying “You are the most beautiful, rich color! Your skin is beautiful!” At first she was taken back, but seeing my smile and sincerity she warmed right up and we gossiped like old buddies. Under-utilized character and much under rated actress.
    BTW, Kiera that was such a lovely story. Glad you have that good memory.
    Memorial Day comes and goes and all we have left of many of the best and brightest is a memory.
    I am a good one to say that I wish that the nuclear (not nukyouler, Shrub!) genie was never let out of the bottle, in spte of the fact that I would never had been born if the US had invaded Japan in WWII. Good night, John Boy!

  43. on 28 May 2007 at 1:59 am 43. Oaktown Girl said …

    Angry Black Woman is a Sci Fi fan doing a lot of good work addressing the chronic lack of people of color in Sci Fi shows, or their relegation to being from warrior-centered cultures as opposed to cerebral ones. This is something that has and continues to drive me mad. For years I’ve had an essay bottled up inside me called “Fear of a Black Future” that hasn’t been written because I’m not a writer and I hate writing. But one of these days I’ll force myself to do it.

    Please check out her post Why is the Universe so full of White people?, as well as this one with links to other articles on this subject as well other information about how to increase diversity in the Sci Fi universe.

    And now for your viewing pleasure (or for the viewing pleasure of at least some of you) please enjoy this gratuitous picture of Avery Brooks/Capt. Sisko in keeping with our
    Sci Fi/fantasy secret or not-so-secret crush theme:

    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us
    Mmmm…deelicious!

  44. on 28 May 2007 at 8:05 am 44. christian h. said …

    Oaktown Girl, the lack of people of color on SciFi shows is indeed maddening. This is a problem with TV - and culture - in general, of course. I hate to admit it, but Buffy is my favorite show eva - and it just couldn’t get any whiter if they tried. It somehow seems particularly grating when you have a show like Star Trek supposedly depicting a future egalitarian (my PhD advisor, who grew up in the Soviet Union, said he only had ever seen a communist society in two places: Soviet children’s books, and Star Trek) society. I also wonder what you all think of the racialisation of culture and behavior in SciFi in general (there is the smart, good people - let’s collect them in an alien race called “Vulcans”; the smart bad people - “Romulans”; the people who just love to fight - “Klingons”)? This ties in with everybody’s beef about the way Vulcans are played out in Star Trek after the original show, being so much reduced to their supposed alien racial attributes, instead of being, you know, individuals.

  45. on 28 May 2007 at 8:59 am 45. Col K L said …

    I have had a crush on Avery Brooks since Spencer. That voice! >
    It would be nice to see Vulcans lose their famous ‘cool’ and show what they are really thinking, wouldnt it?
    We only got glimpses followed by tons of angst.
    Speaking of angst, in S:AAB the invitro characters were the Angstmeisters for sure. Conspiracy theory lovers have to name that show as a Conspiracy fest. Like we don’t have fodder for them right now ITRW? (in the real world)? Can you say Halliburton and $3 + fuel prices?
    In many ways, Scifi has always been a means to introduce, explore and foster forbidden and unspoken subject matter.

  46. on 28 May 2007 at 9:07 am 46. Col K L said …

    Regarding Star Wars, I fell in thrall with Dart Vader’s voice. Oh yeah, baybee. Then they revealed the face beneath the awesome breathing mask thingie. Yuck. My fantasy came crashing down to earth.
    Always had a thing for deep, Orson Wellsie voices. Kiera knows way too much about why! OOOH.
    She won’t tell unless bribed with Fluffernutter and Peanut Butter along with the finest chocolates.
    Hmmm, background music here is Magic Carpet Ride and Gordon Lightfoot.

  47. on 28 May 2007 at 2:18 pm 47. Kiera PSI said …

    Halliburton = Aerotech (from S:AaB). No question, no excuses, it just IS. If you’ve never watched S:AaB, you should. The DVD of the full one season run is available at major retailers (Target, Best Buy, etc.). Quite the ethnic diversity there, no lack of representation at the highest levels. Glen Morgan and James Wong went Above and Beyond in their portrayals in comparison to both their contemporaries and their successors.

  48. on 30 May 2007 at 10:28 am 48. James Killus said …

    So your wife was hot for “The Prisoner” too, James?

    I haven’t asked her, though it’s quite probable. I’ll add that she was married to someone else at the time and lived on a different Coast, etc.

    Concerning “Buffy” and whiteness, it’s worth noting that the show began on the WB (The WhiteBread Network featuring “pretty white kids with problems”). It got a bit more color in it when it moved to UPN. And even on the WB, one should not forget the first “second slayer,” Kendra and bad ol’ Mr. Trick.

  49. on 30 May 2007 at 11:03 am 49. Col K L said …

    Good Buffy comments!
    I have always considered Buffy to be a wimpy knockoff of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series.
    Ms. Hamilton has convinced me that her writing is not Xenophobic or Melanophobic. The Blake character even seems to be working on overcoming her Homophobia as well.
    I found the Angel series to be so bad in plots, writing and acting that after I gave it a good try, I bailed on watching it.

  50. on 30 May 2007 at 11:40 am 50. christian h. said …

    I want to repeat that I actually love Buffy - I think it has some of the best writing on I’ve seen on television - and also much of Angel. I also don’t have a beef with the main character being a blond white girl, as that’s pretty much predetermined by the riff on the role blond white girls play in teen horror movies. But particularly because I admire Joss Whedon, it seems to me that the show is a very good example of the way networks perceive economic pressure to make most characters, and especially leads, white.
    This makes the arguments dismissing concerns about the lack of characters of color in SciFi put forward in letters to SciFi Weekly referenced in the Angry Black Woman post Oaktown Girl linked to - namely, that complaining about a lack of characters of color is itself racist b/c it proves an inability to identify with characters who aren’t like you are - all the more absurd. In fact, this is exactly the reason there are so few characters of color on TV: the advertisers sell to white (middle class) people, mostly (we have the money), so the shows better be peopled with characters this target audience can identify with. To turn the linked letter right-side-up, Marx-style, it’s the white people who do the “bean counting” - or at least, networks think we do.

    (I enter the preceding sentence in the “worst-way-too-complicated-sentence-ever” competition…)

  51. on 04 Jun 2007 at 2:18 pm 51. Charles said …

    OK, this is late, but I just saw this thread. I’ve been reading a biography of Captain James Cook. It includes a quote from him about the importance of going places, and lots of stories about Cook’s ships encountering various cultures. And then I began to wonder: Is Captain James T. Kirk somehow modeled after Captain James Cook?

    Of course, Kirk never turned down a possibility for a sexual encounters with alien babes; Cook apparently refused several such chances (or, at least, said so in his diary).

    The other interesting similarity is that Cook started off with orders to develop relations with the peoples he met but, of course, ended up causing all kinds of havoc, death and destruction. And of course the Federation’s Prime Directive was honored mainly in the breach.

    Well, anyway, I don’t have enough erudition to explore this very far, just some thoughts about Cook vs Kirk.

  52. on 04 Jun 2007 at 2:34 pm 52. Charles said …

    Well, a little googling shows that I was not remotely the first to think about similarities between Cook and Kirk.

    http://www.winthrop.dk/cooktrek.html

    There were some other links, as well.

  53. on 04 Jun 2007 at 6:17 pm 53. Oaktown Girl said …

    Charles, interesting stuff about Kirk and Cook. Kiera and I can tell you that there’s quite a bit of history regarding Capt. Cook and the Hawaiian Islands, esp. on the Big Island. I personally have a deep loathing for all things colonialistic (word?), so I can’t recount the historic details from memory. But here’s a wiki snippet:

    The villagers, angered by his strict insistence on getting back a pair of tongs, and hearing that another British search party had killed one of their chiefs, began to attack with spears and stones. In the ensuing skirmish, shots were fired at the Hawaiians but their woven war shields protected them, and Cook’s men had to retreat to the beach. As Cook turned his back to help launch the boats, he was struck on the head by the villagers and then stabbed to death as he fell on his face in the surf. The Hawaiians dragged his body away.

    As awful as it may seem, that kind of puts a smile on my face, having seen first hand the results of colonialism on Hawaii.

    The WAAGNFNP/Hawaii/Star Trek connection is that I didn’t have a TV, so when we were in Hawaii, I used to go to Kiera’s place all the time to watch Deep Space 9 (and football on Sundays). But that was Capt. Sisko, not Kirk. But in the DS9 storyline, Sisko was a great explorer as well. That link is to one of the earliest episodes where Brooks was allowed to grow back his goatee and start looking sexy instead of nerdy - corresponding to the exact time I got interested in the show again after being so disappointed by the Sisko character in the pilot.

  54. on 04 Jun 2007 at 6:39 pm 54. JP Stormcrow said …

    Capt. Cook and the Hawaiian Islands

    Hunter S. Thompson’s Curse of Lono comes in way below his best, but it is an amusing read for some Big island/Cap’t Cook screeds.

    And although it is only directly featured in one of the segments, of the multi-segment book, The Cloud Atlas that I recommended in the reading thread, aficionados of The Big Island should really try to look it up.

    The Kirk/Cook connection does make some sense.

  55. on 05 Jun 2007 at 5:44 am 55. Charles said …

    OG, thanks for the response comment. The word “colonialistic” works for me.

    I was a huge TNG fan but never got into DS9 very much. For me, the station was just inconsistent with the whole Trek concept of exploring. Then I tried hard to become a Voyager fan but that whiney morale officer guy alternately creeped me out or irritated me nearly every single episode.

  56. on 05 Jun 2007 at 1:06 pm 56. Oaktown Girl said …

    Charles - I can understand why you did not get into DS9, especially since it started out so lame. But I highly recommend going back and checking it out from Season 3 onward (or perhaps the last episode of Season 2). Not only do the episodes overall get a heck of a lot better, the whole “exploring” angle really kicks into gear with the Gamma Quadrant. I believe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

  57. on 06 Jun 2007 at 10:36 am 57. The Constructivist said …

    boing boing joins our conversation belatedly.

  58. on 06 Jun 2007 at 10:58 am 58. Oaktown Girl said …

    TC - How is boing boing “joining our conversation”?
    There’s no comment here, nor is there a link to us from that site. As far as I can see, it’s just a link to Star Trek stuff, which is fine, but not even remotely “joining our conversation”.

    I’m being pissy about this because you’ve done this before, and it just gets my hopes up that some site has linked to us, or some bloggy big wig has commented on our site, only to see that nothing of the sort has happened at all. Interesting or related links are great, but I ask that you please label them as such. Thanks.