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ljpliceaseI had this dream that Worf was going through one of his funny rituals, only this time the funny ritual had to do with the Baha'i faith, so I guess he had converted. They went to this planet which was about the size of a house and converted its rings into a transparent walkway. There were many guest stars, from all of the star trek series: Captain Sisko, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy. Then I thought to myself wait a minute, how can McCoy guest star in new Star Trek? He died sometime back.
I used to be a huge Star Trek fan. If you find yourself a copy of the second or third edition Star Trek Encyclopedia you will find my name in the acknowledgements because I geekily pointed out an error in the first edition to the authors in a letter. They were asking for fans to send in corrections, so please forgive my dorkiness. I stopped watching Star Trek shortly after Enterprise came out for a number of reasons (ordered from least to most important):
I always felt there were problems with the post-original series shows, but I kept watching just in case something cool would happen. On a few rare occasions it did, but I am pretty sure it didn’t make up for the boredom and stupidity which made up the bulk of the stories. About a year after I stopped watching Star Trek I stopped watching TV all together.
In general, the really big science fiction franchises are really poor story writing money making enterprises. Star Trek is no exception; it is like the McDonalds of Sci-Fi. To me, Star Wars always seemed to be the elitist battle between “good” and “evil” Jedi knights which mostly ignored the sacrifice of the grunts fighting in the trenches (this is hardly unusual). The saber duels between Luke and his dad seem an odd focus for a war of galactic consequences. Nearly all of the scenes from the Star Wars movies were huge rip offs of other movies. There are lines in the trench scene which are copied verbatim (dude) from The Damn Busters. I’m not even going to touch the new prequels which have been awful... even my friend Tyler, who is a fan thought they were bad. I guess the third one comes out this year. It will make lots of money, regardless of how badly written or executed it is.
I realize that I am reading too much into something which is supposed to be fun – as Kevin Smith did in his pseudo-intellectual film Clerks – but I believe there are real world implications to a society which is bombarded by simplistic cowboy and indian western style story lines in which “good” and “evil” are reduced to black and white hats.
I’m seeing Transformers going into the same direction of intellectual mediocrity. I always thought it would be cool to analyze the series with a pro-Decepticon bias. The Movie which starts with the narration: “The Year is 2005. The Treacherous Decepticons have conquered the Autobot’s home planet of Cybertron.” What they don’t tell you is that it is also the Decepticon’s home planet too. It would be like if you said: “It is the year 2005. The Treacherous Arabs have conquered the oil reserves on the American home planet of Earth.” Oops. Too political.
Also, it isn’t highlighted at all that although the Decepticons spend most of their time stealing energy from the Earthlings, the Earthlings are providing energy free of charge to the Autobots, thus providing material support for the Decepticon’s enemies. Either you are with the Decpeticons or you are against them, I believe was one of Megatron’s tenants. It’s cool that they are going to make a live action movie to be released in 2006... but I have a feeling that it will be visually stimulating and start and end there.
</TIRADE>
Interestingly, my two closest friends from college both describe themselves as Taoists. Tyler was describing to me some of what that meant when I was visiting him. One of the things he told me (please forgive if I am misrepresenting what you said Tyler, and do correct me) was that there isn’t “good” or “evil” and that what was “supposed to be” is what is. Like everyone, I am still in the process of figuring out what it is that I believe in, but the one axiom that I hold on to is that “good” and “evil” are unreal. From that I have derived that they are used as simplistic banners used to justify a lot of pain and suffering.
I used to be a huge Star Trek fan. If you find yourself a copy of the second or third edition Star Trek Encyclopedia you will find my name in the acknowledgements because I geekily pointed out an error in the first edition to the authors in a letter. They were asking for fans to send in corrections, so please forgive my dorkiness. I stopped watching Star Trek shortly after Enterprise came out for a number of reasons (ordered from least to most important):
- For one thing I didn’t think it was cannon. I can think of many inconsistencies, but the big one I spotted was that when Earth and Romulan forces originally met they were both using sub-light vessels and did not have sophisticated ship to ship communication according to the original series.
- For another, the writing had seriously deteriorated since the original series, and even since TNG (The Next Generation). It was no longer this edgy counter cultural anti-war phenomenon. The end of DS9 had been essentially a war story, which was sort of fun, but never felt like Star Trek to me. The original series had these cool covert anti-Vietnam War stories embedded in them. They had to be covert to get by the censors.
- Finally, I simply grew out of it. To me Star Trek had been like great literature, sort of like the Shakespeare of our time. I’ve changed my mind since middle school. Instead, I have come to feel that Star Trek was a fad which has been allowed to go on too long. The money makers at Paramount had gone back to the well far too many times.
I always felt there were problems with the post-original series shows, but I kept watching just in case something cool would happen. On a few rare occasions it did, but I am pretty sure it didn’t make up for the boredom and stupidity which made up the bulk of the stories. About a year after I stopped watching Star Trek I stopped watching TV all together.
In general, the really big science fiction franchises are really poor story writing money making enterprises. Star Trek is no exception; it is like the McDonalds of Sci-Fi. To me, Star Wars always seemed to be the elitist battle between “good” and “evil” Jedi knights which mostly ignored the sacrifice of the grunts fighting in the trenches (this is hardly unusual). The saber duels between Luke and his dad seem an odd focus for a war of galactic consequences. Nearly all of the scenes from the Star Wars movies were huge rip offs of other movies. There are lines in the trench scene which are copied verbatim (dude) from The Damn Busters. I’m not even going to touch the new prequels which have been awful... even my friend Tyler, who is a fan thought they were bad. I guess the third one comes out this year. It will make lots of money, regardless of how badly written or executed it is.
I realize that I am reading too much into something which is supposed to be fun – as Kevin Smith did in his pseudo-intellectual film Clerks – but I believe there are real world implications to a society which is bombarded by simplistic cowboy and indian western style story lines in which “good” and “evil” are reduced to black and white hats.
I’m seeing Transformers going into the same direction of intellectual mediocrity. I always thought it would be cool to analyze the series with a pro-Decepticon bias. The Movie which starts with the narration: “The Year is 2005. The Treacherous Decepticons have conquered the Autobot’s home planet of Cybertron.” What they don’t tell you is that it is also the Decepticon’s home planet too. It would be like if you said: “It is the year 2005. The Treacherous Arabs have conquered the oil reserves on the American home planet of Earth.” Oops. Too political.
Also, it isn’t highlighted at all that although the Decepticons spend most of their time stealing energy from the Earthlings, the Earthlings are providing energy free of charge to the Autobots, thus providing material support for the Decepticon’s enemies. Either you are with the Decpeticons or you are against them, I believe was one of Megatron’s tenants. It’s cool that they are going to make a live action movie to be released in 2006... but I have a feeling that it will be visually stimulating and start and end there.
</TIRADE>
Interestingly, my two closest friends from college both describe themselves as Taoists. Tyler was describing to me some of what that meant when I was visiting him. One of the things he told me (please forgive if I am misrepresenting what you said Tyler, and do correct me) was that there isn’t “good” or “evil” and that what was “supposed to be” is what is. Like everyone, I am still in the process of figuring out what it is that I believe in, but the one axiom that I hold on to is that “good” and “evil” are unreal. From that I have derived that they are used as simplistic banners used to justify a lot of pain and suffering.
