TV And Films

The shows and movies I like (or don’t).

Top 12 Things A Klingon Programmer Would Say

by
  1. Specifications are for the weak and timid!
  2. This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual processors if I am to do battle with this code!
  3. You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you’ve read it in the original Klingon.
  4. Indentation?! — I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
  5. What is this talk of ‘release’? Klingons do not make software ‘releases’. Our software ‘escapes’ leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.
  6. Klingon function calls do not have ‘parameters’ — they have ‘arguments’ — and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
  7. Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
  8. I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest. They will not concern us again.
  9. A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!
  10. By filing this SCR you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!
  11. You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
  12. Our users will know fear and cower before our software. Ship it! Ship it, and let them flee like the dogs they are!

Seeing as how old school programmers think like Klingon programmers, I believe that it can be reasonably assumed that all old programmers are Klingon.

(Found on /.)

Enterprise No More

by

It’s sad, really — for a show meant to continue the fine tradition of boldly going where no man has gone before (or no one, in the more politically-correct TNG era), all Enterprise managed to do was boldly go where no Trek series had gone before.

Straight into the tank.

I started watching Enterprise when it debuted, gave up midway through the first season (when I discovered that first-season TNG was a far better show), then ignored it until I started hearing rumors that this last season was actually watchable. I’ve been using bittorrent to watch season four, and while it’s admittedly better than the first season…well, really, it doesn’t take much to be better than the first season.

Tonight I finished things off, watching the end of the two-part arc following the derailment of the first effort at laying the foundation for the future United Federation of Planets, then following that up with the final episode of Enterprise.

(SPOILERS follow, if you care.)

First things first: while the two episodes immediately preceding the finale were decent — though I’d hesitate to collectively rate them any better than that (individually, the first half was definitely the better of the two) — the single biggest thing that stuck in my mind after watching them?

It’s really hard to take the leader of Earth’s government seriously when you’re expecting him to at any moment suddenly morph into a giant demon snake and start munching delegates right and left.

Samuels

Nothing against actor Harry Groener, of course, but his role as Sunnydale’s Mayor Wilkins in Buffy has been so indelibly burned into my brain that it was all I could do to keep from giggling when he first appeared on screen.

As for Enterprise’s finale episode…meh. I’d say a big “meh,” except that “meh” is such an apathetic term of disgust that give it any sort of emphasis is rather oxymoronic.

First off, it wasn’t really an Enterprise episode, but rather a TNG episode with a lot of Holodeck re-enactments of events set at the end of Enterprise’s 10-year mission (six years after the last actual episodes we saw) and around the signing of the accord that forms the alliance that would eventually grow into the UFP. While it’s kind of nice to see Riker and Troi walking the corridors of NCC-1701-D again…it just doesn’t feel right as an end to this series. Rather, it comes off as last, final, desperate ploy by the Powers that Be to do anything possible to drag a few more viewers to the show.

Secondly, the TNG-era framing story for this episode is set during the events of the seventh season TNG epsiode The Pegasus. Without meaning any disrespect to either Marina Sirtis or Jonathan Frakes, it’s been around eleven years since The Pegasus was filmed, and while they’re both aging well, they’re not exactly identical to their appearance a decade ago. I could even have forgiven that for the sake of the story (though it would have been easier if the overall story was better), but apparently the makeup artists didn’t even bother to reference The Pegasus for this Enterprise episode.

Here we have a screencap (actually a composite of two screencaps) from The Pegasus:

TNG Troi and Riker

And here we have a screencap from These are the Voyages…:

ENT Troi and Riker

Minor things like the ten years of aging aren’t really terribly obvious. Marina’s face has thinned out a bit, and they’re both slightly heavier than they were during TNG’s run, but that’s not really that big of a deal. Amusingly, though, it means that Troi is actually curvier now than she was at the time (compare the shadows underneath her bust, for example), and I remember how much grumbling there was about her being little more than Trek’s version of T&A (that being Tits and an Accent). Of course, 7 of 9 and T’Pol were far more blatant about appealing to the teenage male demographic that way, but back in the TNG days, poor Troi got a lot of ribbing about being little more than eye candy.

More blatantly, though, is that the hairstyle is just wrong for both of them. Apparently when they’re not busy dealing with intragalactic incidents, the crew of NCC-1701-D spent all their free time in the hair salon. Troi is sporting a straighter, more natural hairstyle far closer to what she had in the movies than the heavily permed style of the original show, while Riker’s hair is less slicked back and comes complete with a Superman-style forelock falling across his forehead.

Nitpicking? Sure, and I’ll freely admit it. But if they’re going to not just pander to the old TNG fans by bringing back Troi and Riker, but actually place their framing story within an already existing episode, you’d think they could take a few minutes to pop the DVD in and do their best to match the actors appearances.

But then, given Enterprise’s notorious disregard for Trek canon, I suppose that this wasn’t really that much of a surprise.

Anyway. Continuing on.

Bringing Shran back for the rescue of his daughter seemed to serve two purposes only: to bring back one of the few interesting characters Enterprise has produced (and to give Jeffrey Combs — a fan favorite, and quite deservedly so, in my opinion, I’ve enjoyed all of the characters he’s played — one last star turn); and to come up with an excuse to waste half the hour on pointless “action”.

Oh, and to set up Trip’s demise…which, amazingly enough, actually comes across as even more pointless than Kirk’s death in ‘Generations’. At least when Kirk died he was trying to save his career the galaxy from a madman. Trip died so that Archer wouldn’t miss a speech. Oooh. Quite the noble sacrifice, that.

And speaking of the speech — we don’t even see it! We finally get to the historic moment when the charter establishing the alliance between Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, and Tellar Prime, Archer strides to the stage to make what we’re told is a historic speech…and Riker tells the Holodeck to “end program” and he and Troi stride out onto the corridors of the Enterprise D.

Meh.

Other random observations before I end this little rant…

  1. I’m sorry, Quantum Leap fans, but Bakula has never impressed me. Truth to tell, his intentional overacting and chewing of the scenery in the Mirror Universe episodes of a few weeks ago doesn’t really seem that different to me than his normal portrayal of Captain Archer. Plus, considering that he just senselessly lost one of his closest friends, his face never lost the bemused little “I can’t believe I’m getting paid for this tripe” smirk after Trip’s death. Does he have other expressions?

  2. What was T’Pol doing after Archer hugged her? I could understand her being a little uncomfortable with this sudden show of affection, but…she just kind of wobbles. She holds her right hand out at an odd angle, and gives a slight, unsteady sway from the hips up. It’s really, really odd.

  3. Did nobody on the NX-01 ever get promoted or change their jobs in the slightest over the ten years that the ship was in service? When the show opened Mayweather was at the helm, Sato was at the communications station, Reed was doing whatever he does…and ten years later, they’re all in exactly the same place (well, okay, Trip moved to Engineering…then died). No advancement? No promotions? How incredibly boring. The crew of the Enterprise-D at least showed a little motivation, changed things up, and actually grew over time. As far as this last episode shows, the crew of the NX-01 was depressingly static.

  4. Wasn’t anyone curious or concerned about how the bad guys who everyone thought were limited to Warp 2 — Shran even mentions that his shuttle should be able to easily outrun them at Warp 4 — were somehow able to catch up to a top-of-the-line Starfleet ship running at Warp 7, engage it in battle, and board it without any real trouble at all?

Meh.

I wish the head of Earth’s government had turned into a giant demon snake and started munching on people. Right during the signing ceremony. Start with Archer, then finish off the rest of the Enterprise crew (except for Sato, who’s more than welcome to run around in her skimpy lingerie from the Mirror Universe episode as much as she likes…especially in my apartment) before Buffy magically transports a few hundred years into the future thanks to the help of Willow and a mysterious amulet that Giles found hidden underneath the school’s library, slays the demon, and tosses a few bad puns over her shoulder on her way back to Sunnydale.

At least that would have been a finale worth watching.

Star Wars Tech Geeking

by

In all my years of being a Star Trek fan, it’s often not been the weekly soap opera in space that interested me as much as the universe constructed around the stories. Quite a few of the various tech manuals grace my library, and I’m often fascinated by the ingenious (and often quite convoluted) explanations and rationalizations concocted to explain various inconsistencies among the shows and movies.

It’s no great surprise, then, that I’ve just managed to loose three hours of my evening immersed in the Star Wars Technical Commentaries, a site devoted to extrapolating rather amazing amounts of data out of the Star Wars universe (incorporating not just the films, but also the books and comics).

Three sections took up most of my reading time tonight:

  1. Injuries of Darth Vader. Some slight spoilers for Episode III in here, unfortunately, but mostly information extracted from the other five films in determining just how much of Vader is human and how much is cybernetic.

    I’ve known for years that the majority of Vader’s injuries were sustained during a final climactic battle with Obi-Wan in or near a volcano that culminated in Vader falling into a lava pit (which has since been confirmed in shots from the trailer for Episode III). I’ve never known just where I picked up that information, though, and that’s always been a bit of a mystery for me. This section of the site contains two quotes that support that premise, dating from as far back as 1980.

    In an interview in Starlog in 1980, Mark Hamill recounts a background story which he had been told:

    “I remember very early on asking who my parents were and being told that my father and Obi Wan met Vader on the edge of a volcano and they had a duel. My father and Darth Vader fell into the crater and my father was instantly killed. Vader crawled out horribly scarred, and at that point the Emperor landed and Obi Wan ran into the forest, never to be seen again.”

    Aspects of the tale of the molten pit resurfaced more officially in 1983, in the novelisation of Return of the Jedi. The ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi told Luke Skywalker:

    “We fought…your father fell into a molten pit. When your father clawed his way out of that fiery pool, the change had been burned into him forever —- he was Darth Vader, without a trace of Anakin Skywalker. Irredeemably dark. Scarred. Kept alive only by machinery and his own black will….”

  2. The Phantom Menace Continuity: Droids. One of the things that really bothered me about Episode I was the apparent error in C-3P0 and R2-D2 not being familiar with Tatooine and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Episode IV, when Episode I establishes that Annakin constructed Threepio and Obi-Wan met Artoo on Tatooine. The author of the site puts forward a rather convincing argument that not only is this not necessarily a mistake, but there’s no need to assume that the droids had their memories wiped at some point.

    C-3PO is a protocol droid, a sort of valet, and is programmed for keeping confidential information. In his early conversations with Luke Skywalker, he evaded discussion of Princess Leia until late after key facts were told in Kenobi’s presence. When Obi-Wan began to tell Luke a tale about Anakin and the Jedi, Threepio requested to be shut down, likely to avoid discussion and facing awkward memories about his Maker’s tragic fate. Nevertheless the supposedly inert droid was only pretending unconsciousness; as he eavesdropped on the conversation he swayed slightly but visibly. This evasive behaviour was prompted by Threepio’s recognition of Anakin’s lightsabre. [ITW:SWT, ANH]. At the time of the Battle of Hoth [TESB Radio Drama, p.103], Princess Leia observed that the droids regarded her and Luke protectively, but she did not guess the actual relationship. Ultimately on Endor [Return of the Jedi: Radio Drama, p.181-182], C-3PO joined Luke Skywalker at his father’s funeral pyre, and there he openly acknowledged Luke’s father.

    It should be unsurprising that neither of the droids recognised Kenobi when they met in A New Hope. C-3PO rarely met Kenobi before: never at all before Attack of the Clones; only (apparently) briefly during the Clone Wars [Labyrinth of Evil]. They probably didn’t meet again until Tatooine [ANH]. As a young man, Kenobi generally overlooked R2-D2, and they were only present together during a few brief scenes when other people or crises were the focus of attention. For their part, neither droid could be expected to recognise Kenobi (or Owen Lars) in the Tatooine desert after 19 years of aging. Kenobi may have eventually recognised Artoo, but astromech droids of every colour combination are common. His remark about never “owning a droid” could be wry misdirection, since his Order forbade knights from accumulating individual possessions*. Artoo’s recollection of the younger Kenobi may have added to his zeal to find the desert hermit, though this may never be provable.

    […]

    C-3PO is tactful and secretive, and a bit self-centred. R2-D2 is unintelligible to almost everyone except C-3PO. Both droids are common models, and the human characters they dealt with in the prequel era had been wounded or aged beyond recognition by the time Luke Skywalker’s adventures began. These two facts explain all of the would-be discontinuities. There is no need to suppose that either droid has ever suffered a memory-wipe anytime within the span of the movies, as some of the most naïve commentators suggested. Conversely, there is sufficient evidence that C-3PO (at least) retained his mental integrity since the Clone Wars. If any malicious faction (e.g. the threat by Alderaanians [ROTS novel p.415]) did attempt to mind-wipe Threepio — effectively murdering him as a continuous person — then the post-Endor evidence shows that this attempt failed or the droid escaped before the dirty deed.

  3. Endor Holocaust, an exploration of the aftereffects of the Death Star’s destruction while in close proximity to the forest moon home of the Ewoks.

    The circumstances at the end of Return of the Jedi lead inevitably to an environmental disaster on the Endor moon. The explosion of a small artificial moon in low orbit sends a meteoric rain onto the ewok sanctuary, on a scale unmatched since Endor formed. Through either direct atmospheric injection of small particles, or showers of ejecta from large impacts, the atmosphere will be filled with smoke and fallout causing a gargantuan nuclear-winter effect.

    Unless the rebel commandoes on Endor were executing a suicide mission, the rebel fleet was evidently able to intervene to protect their immediate vicinity: probably an area comparable to Luxembourg. Debris fragments amounting to the mass of the rebel fleet might conceivably have been diverted from that particular locality (by the exertion of the fleet’s tractor beams) and onto adjacent areas of the Endorian globe. However this is only a tiny fraction of the total mass incident on the moon during an event lasting mere minutes. The mass of the entire debris cloud and fireball is incomparably (inexorably) greater than the combined mass of both fleets over Endor.

    A general climatological catastrophe was unavoidable. Averting the disaster would have required physical action on a scale greater than the construction of a Death Star, within minutes of the battle station’s explosion.

And, of course, there’s a lot more on the site. Fascinating stuff, if you’re into this kind of thing. :)

QuickTime 7 HD

by

Oh. My. God.

I installed QuickTime 7 the other day, and found Apple’s HD Gallery page where they’re showcasing a few HD trailers and video clips. The trailer for Serenity is available in both 720p and 1080p formats, and even though my system (a dual 2.0Ghz G5 with a 64Mb Radeon 9600 video card) technically doesn’t meet the requirements to playback 1080p, I downloaded both to see how they behaved.

Beautiful. Not a stutter on either one, and the video quality is amazing. What amused me, though, is that my screen (which I run at a slightly non-standard 1152×870) isn’t big enough to display them at full size! The 720p trailer just loses a little bit off of either side, but the 1080p trailer? I can only fit about half of it on my screen at once. Wow.

Quicktime 7 rocks!Just for grins and giggles, I decided to download all the different Serenity trailers available to compare them. I grabbed all four “normal” versions from the Serenity trailer page (small, medium, large, and full screen), the two HD versions from the Serenity HD page, opened them all up at once, and paused each one at 1:02.

(While I was doing this, I started them all playing at once just to see what would happen. Even with all the other versions playing at the same time, the gargantuan 1080i trailer still kept up a very watchable 18fps average framerate!)

Here’s the end result:

version size (MB) fps size (pixels) data rate (kbits/sec)
small 4.8 8 240×104 288.78
medium 8.45 12 320×136 505.18
large 20.98 24 480×208 1259.23
fullscreen 40.4 24 640×272 2363.67
720p 108.33 24 1280×544 6406.26
1080p 138.36 24 1920×816 8182.54

Pretty damn impressive.

iTunes “Tell Me Why” by :Wumpscut: from the album Bunker Gate Seven (1995, 4:11).

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

by

Prairie and I went to see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy last weekend, on opening night at the Cinerama. The perfect time to go, as far as I’m concerned. A gorgeous theatre, and lots of excited fans looking forward to seeing the show — including a few who showed up dressed for the occasion in bathrobe and with towel slung over their shoulder.

I’ve been perusing various reviews since then, and it’s been interesting to see the reactions. I haven’t seen many people who were entirely disappointed, but I haven’t seen many people head-over-heels in love with it, either. Most of the consensus seems to be that they did an acceptable job in translating the book to film.

For my part, I had a blast. It wasn’t perfect, but I thought it was quite enjoyable, and a reasonably good attempt at putting Douglas Adams‘ particular brand of absurdity on screen.

While I could point out a few things that bothered me a bit (Sam Rockwell as Zaphod, for instance, came across more as annoyingly-annoying rather than insanely-egotistically-cool-annoying-but-still-a-hoopy-frood) and a whole list of things that I was thrilled to see (the BBC TV series Marvin in line on Vogosphere, or the entrance to the Magraethea factory floor), there was one particular standout point for me.

In a movie that was cast fairly well overall — Mos Def as Ford and Martin Freeman Arthur were both good, Zooey Deschanel as Trillian is really cute, and I loved Alan Rickman as Marvin’s voice — far and away the single best piece of casting was Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast. He was, to my mind, jaw-droppingly perfect. While I don’t think any of the other actors will replace the mental images I’ve had in my head for years from reading the books, as far as I’m concerned, this was as if Slartibartfast was plucked whole from the pages and put on screen. Absolutely brilliant.

Even better, Royce called me on Tuesday to wish me a happy birthday and chat for a while, and as we were discussing the film, he said nearly exactly the same thing — good movie, pretty well done, Slartibartfast was perfect. It appears that great minds think alike…and so do ours!

iTunes “So Long & Thanks for All the Fish” by Hilary Summers, Kemi Ominiyi & The R’SVP Voices from the album The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005, 2:26).

Serenity

by

Okay, okay, okay already. When no less than four people on my reading list mention the trailer for Serenity — the upcoming movie from Joss Whedon‘s Firefly show — and I’ve barely started going through my feeds for the day, I figure I should probably check it out.

Dori:

You’ve heard us rave about Firefly and how much we’re looking forward to Serenity, but now, you can go see why for youself: the first trailer was just released. Oh. My.

Shelley:

Thanks to you all I have become addicted to this show and have now watched the entire series three times in a very short period of time. Wonderful show, and the movie looks to be as good.

Tvindy:

Today they released the trailer for Joss Whedon’s new Firefly movie. It looks pretty good. Who knows? Maybe they’ll even base a series on it.

Jacqueline:

Scot got it right when he called it “distilled awesome”.

Admittedly, I’m intrigued. I can’t quite match the level of excitement that other people are, though that may be because I’ve yet to watch Firefly (I just finished Buffy a few months ago, and finally wrapped up Angel last week), so I think I need to pop that onto the top of my Netflix queue. But I know that I generally like Joss Whedon’s work, I’ve heard nothing but good things about Firefly so far, the effects look nice, and there’s some fun dialogue in the trailer.

We’ll see how amped up I get after I know a little more about this thing…

This could get pretty interesting.

Define ‘interesting’.

…’Oh God, oh God, we’re all gonna die?’

iTunes “It Can’t Rain All the Time” by Siberry, Jane from the album Crow, The (1994, 5:35).

There is hope…

by

I refused to read any further than the first two sentences, but towards the end of his latest post, Kevin Smith has this to say about Revenge of the Sith:

“Revenge of the Sith” is, quite simply, fucking awesome. This is the “Star Wars” prequel the haters have been bitching for since “Menace” came out, and if they don’t cop to that when they finally see it, they’re lying.