Star Trek

Trek has been part of my life since I was an infant. I have bookcases full of Trek books. One of my tattoos is the Vulcan calligraphy for “kol-ut-shan” (IDIC). This is my home fandom.

Pop Culture Disconnect

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This week in my History 101 class (covering everything up to 1500), we’re looking at Ghengis Khan, Kublai Khan, and the Mongols. The professor spent a few minutes talking about the Mongol’s invasion techniques, which were simple but could be fairly ruthless: if armies surrendered they’d be treated fairly well; if they fought, they’d often be razed to the ground and completely destroyed. After summarizing this, he commented, “really, they were pretty close to the Borg.”

I chuckled, and there was a moment of quiet while he took a sip of his tea. Then one of the girls in the class slightly timidly asked, “…what’s ‘the borg’?”

Sigh. I’m getting old.

Vegas: Friday

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Finally…another entry in the Vegas weekend! I just keep getting further behind…

Update: Xebeth reminded me that I’d forgotten a key part of the evening — Bite, the topless vampire show! The end of the post has been updated to correct this grievous oversight. Believe me, the erotic rock angels should not be forgotten!

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Trekommendations?

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Yes. Horrible title. Bad blogger. No donut.

Still.

As much as I enjoy Trek, I’ve never really explored the literary Trek work terribly much over the years. As it stands, my entire Trek book collection spans all of twenty volumes, only a few of which are novels.

So — any recommendations from others out there who might have explored more of the printed Trek universe? I’m always up for more additions to my “to read” stack….

Retkhan

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Khan Noonien Singh, long one of the most famous and most loved villains in the Star Trek universe, has over time presented some (extraordinarily geeky) issues to fans who know his story.

Namely, the Eugenics Wars of the 1990’s. According to Star Trek canon as established in the original series episode ‘Space Seed‘…

From 1992 to 1996, Khan was absolute ruler of more than one-quarter of Earth’s population, including regions of Asia the Middle East.

In the mid 1990s, [Khan and other genetically engineered] Augment tyrants began warring amongst themselves. Other nations joined to force them from power in a series of struggles that became known as the Eugenics Wars. Eventually, most of the tyrants were defeated and their territory re-captured, but up to 90 “supermen” were never accounted for.

Khan escaped the wars and their consequences along with 84 followers who swore to live and die at his command. He saw his best option in a risky, self-imposed exile. In 1996, he took control of a DY-100-class interplanetary sleeper ship he christened SS Botany Bay, named for the site of the Australian penal colony. Set on a course outbound from the solar system, but with no apparent destination in mind, Khan and his people remained in suspended animation for Botany Bay’s (nearly) 300-year sublight journey.

Of course, when this was all dreamed up in the 1960’s, no-one knew that Trek would survive until the mid-’90’s, let alone grow into the phenomenon that it did. Once the ’90’s rolled around, though…well, yes, as fans, we are perfectly aware that Trek is fiction. It’s just more fun when we can find ways to make the Trek universe and our universe overlap. When Trek takes place tens or hundreds of years in the future, that’s easy. Once we get to a point where we’ve moved solidly into the decades referenced in Trek with no sign of genetically engineered supermen or Eugenics Wars…well, that’s when things start to get creative.

A couple of years ago, I picked up two Trek novels by Greg Cox: The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume I and Volume II. Cox does an incredible job of retconning (that is, ‘retroactive continuity‘: “…the adding of new information to ‘historical’ material, or deliberately changing previously established facts in a work of serial fiction. The change itself is referred to as a ‘retcon’, and the act of writing and publishing a retcon is called ‘retconning’.”) as he merges the established Trek universe with the known recent history of the real world.

In Cox’s version of history, many of the perceived minor skirmishes and events around the world during the ’90’s, from middle-eastern conflicts to terrorist incidents were actually the public result of conflicts between the supermen as they battled with each other behind the scenes. It’s done quite well, and nicely filled in the details of Khan’s life on Earth up to his exile on the Botany Bay.

Hundreds of years later, of course, the Enterprise discovers the Botany Bay drifting in space and has their first encounter with Khan, culminating with Khan and his crew being marooned on Ceti Alpha V. Then, eighteen years later, Khan is rediscovered and eventually killed during the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

While long recognized as one of the best (if not the single best) Trek film, Khan left a number of unanswered questions regarding Trek continuity:

  1. Why did the Reliant not recognize that Ceti Alpha VI had exploded and that they were actually orbiting Ceti Alpha V?
  2. Why did nobody realize they were in the same system that Khan had been marooned in?
  3. Why had Khan never been checked up on, as Kirk had promised to do at the end of ‘Space Seed’?
  4. How could Khan recognize Chekov (and vice versa) when Koenig wasn’t on the show until the season after ‘Space Seed’ was filmed?
  5. What happened during Khan’s years on Ceti Alpha V?

Yesterday while on lunch and browsing the bookstore shelves, I noticed that Cox had a new Khan book out, To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh, in which he explores the eighteen years between ‘Space Seed’ and The Wrath of Khan. I’ve only read the first chapter so far, but Cox is continuing to display his ability to construct believable retcons. The majority of the book is concerned with the last of the above posed questions, telling the story of Khan’s years in exile. The first chapter, though, in addition to setting up the framing story of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Sulu returning to Ceti Alpha V to investigate and assuage Kirk’s guilt over the deaths of his crewmen, family, and ship during the events of the second, third, and fourth Trek films, also quickly and concisely answers the first three questions.

Cox even comes up with an explanation for the fourth — though he did fail to use Koenig’s “Chekov kept Khan waiting in the restroom” idea.

Khan’s long been Trek’s best villain, and Greg Cox is doing a bang-up job of filling in the holes outside of established canon. It’s well worth picking up his books if you’re in the mood for a little Trek-based fun.

(Incidentally, consider ‘retkahn’ or ‘retkahnning’ to be my proposal for Greg Cox’s ability to flesh out Khan’s story. The word amuses me, and neither seems to show up in Google yet [retkhan, retkhanning], which actually surprised me a bit.)

The Sesame Street Theme…in Klingon

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Original:

Sunny day
Sweepin’ the clouds away
On my way
to where the air is sweet.
Can you tell me how to get,
how to get to Sesame Street?

Klingon:

pem Hov jaj.
Haw’choHnIS ‘eng ‘ej Haj.
ghoch vIghaj;
‘ej pa’ muDmo’ jIbel.
chay’ Sesame He vIghoS?
SIbI’ jIHvaD ‘e’ yIDel.

Translation of the Klingon:

A day of the daytime star.
The clouds are compelled to commence fleeing, and are filled with dread.
I have a destination;
and there, because of the atmosphere, I am pleased.
Describe to me immediately
how to go to Sesame Street.

And there’s two more verses at the original location. This is so wonderful!

(via MeFi)

Pledge of Allegiance

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A young kid was suspended from school for one day when, while everyone else in the classroom was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, he recited his own pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Federation of Planets, and to the galaxy for which it stands, one universe, under everybody, with liberty and justice for all species.

Good for him, I say — and good for his mom for laughing in the principal’s face when she was told what her boy had done.

(via Boing Boing)

Top 12 Things A Klingon Programmer Would Say

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  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

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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.

Best. April. Fools. Story. EVAR!!!1!!11!

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Courtesy of StarTrek.com:

With Star Trek: Enterprise hanging by a veritable thread the last two years, a new direction for the show has recently been unveiled that is being hailed both as a triumph of corporate synergy for the Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures, and a way to keep the show on the air.

[…]

Enter the darlings of Viacom-owned Comedy Central, Star Trek fans Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park. Parker and Stone, you may recall, also made Paramount’s “Team America: World Police,” which ran in theaters last year and comes out on DVD in May. The movie grossed only $50 million worldwide, but it turned a profit for the studio due to its low production budget.

“The pieces fall together brilliantly,” said a top Viacom spokesperson. “Matt and Trey take over Enterprise, and it’s all done with marionettes! It’s like Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet all over. Gerry Anderson, watch out.”

[…]

Parker and Stone have already started making a shooting model of the Enterprise NX-01, thus reviving an old Star Trek tradition. “We prefer the look of physical, tangible models over CGI ships any day,” Parker said. “Of course, we have no visual effects budget whatsoever, so we won’t be painting out the strings. You’ll get used to it. Still trying to figure out where to put the propeller.”

“We’re also gonna re-do the opening title sequence,” Stone revealed. “Record a new theme — something bombastic, action-oriented. Y’know, something that isn’t, like, totally gay.”

Trek in the 2100’s?

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Yesterday I pointed to this article about Star Trek XI. According to the article, this will be a prequel movie not directly associated with any of the existing shows, story lines — or casts.

What we know so far you could pretty much write on the back of a comm badge but it breaks down to this: Picard and the gang will not be involved, it’s going to be a prequel film set before Kirk, the Enterprise TV crew will (thankfully) not be involved.

[…]

“We’re going 160-odd years before Kirk is born. It’s an earlier time, and I think it would be really refreshing to feel something in the course of telling this tale, instead of being wowed by special effects, or presenting another crew in jeopardy where, in the end, the captain does something brilliant, and all’s right with the world. By the end of this story, everyone isn’t fine. I can safely say as a storyteller with certain standards… my intention is literally as a writer, as a storyteller, as a filmmaker, to go boldly where no one has gone before.”

This got me thinking about the timeline of the Trek universe. I remembered that Enterprise was set roughly 80 or so years before classic Trek — so this new movie will be going another 80 years before that? Considering that Enterprise is set in the era immediately preceding the formation of the Federation of Planets, what was going on in the Trek universe during the time period of this new movie?

According to Memory Alpha’s timeline, Classic Trek is set in the 23rd century, between 2264 and 2269.

Enterprise takes place in the 22nd Century, between 2151 and roughly 2155 (I’m assuming that last date, given the four-year run of Enterprise).

This actually puts Enterprise roughly 110 years before Classic Trek, not 80 — so the new film should take place roughly fifty years prior to that, right around the early 2100s.

So what do we have in the established Trek universe in the 2100s that might factor in to the new movie?

I haven’t snagged character births or contact between races that Earth wouldn’t have come into contact with yet in what I’ve listed above. Of those listed events, the only one that seems even remotely important enough that it might make an appearance in the new film is the establishment of the Martian colonies, but I don’t really expect that to show up.

First Contact with the Vulcans was in 2063, so having the Vulcans involved is a possibility — unfortunately, if they keep continuity with Enterprise, they’ll be the uppity, meddling Vulcans of Enterprise rather than the stoic, respectable members of the Federation that we’re more familiar with.

Neither the Klingons nor the Romulans had been encountered yet, so unless there’s some even more serious meddling with the established universe coming up, we shouldn’t be seeing either of them in the film.

Essentially, it appears that we have a fairly open slate for this one. I just hope that writer Erik Jendresen isn’t just mouthing empty platitudes when he says this…

“I can certainly say that the story concept, the basic idea of this thing, is pretty damn big,” says Jendresen. “It’s a noble enterprise, pun intended. When I heard the notion, I realized that the people I was talking to were serious, and genuinely dedicated. I started to really think about it, and, ultimately to develop a story. And it’s a pretty good one.

Rumor mills — warp seven — engage!

Update: On a second reading — because sometimes I’m dumb, and one reading isn’t enough — I realized that I may have goofed up the dates by about three decades. I’d thought that the article said that they were going “160 years before Kirk’s time”, so I counted backwards from the beginning of the original series. However, I just realized that the article actually says “160-odd years before Kirk is born“.

Kirk was born in 2233, so that puts the approximate time period of the new film at around 2073 or so — not even 70 years from the present day. This still puts it post-First Contact with the Vulcans, but now we’re a good thirty years away from colonizing Mars.

Again looking at the timeline, events in the 2070’s that might (but might not) factor into the film:

Again, just because these events have been established as part of the Trek universe, there’s no guarantee that they will be seen or referenced in the upcoming film — and, as noted above in regards to the Post-atomic horror seeming to be inconsistent with the TNG and ENT versions of Trek history, it’s entirely possible that some events may be flat-out contradicted once the film comes out.

Still, it’s fun to look at what’s “known” at this point, and to try to put some context to the time period the next film is likely to be in.

Update: Neuvo pointed out that there’s been an update to the original article about the film, and the writer has stated that he goofed when he gave the ~160 year date.

Erik Jendresen contacted SyFy Portal after the story published to say that he misspoke when giving the 160-year figure in the above story. He said that was not an accurate number.

Now the article gives a rough date of ~80 years before Kirk — which puts it right around the early 2150’s, or right about the same time as the first season of Enterprise. This opens up possibilities for Klingons, Andorians, and (though I hope not) Suliban and other species encountered during Enterprise’s first year(s).

That’s far too many potential options for me to do another little timeline-rundown, so I’ll just go back to keeping my fingers crossed that a new writer not previously affiliated with the Trek franchise can breathe some new life into the series.