Random Nerdness

Sunday, February 16, 2020

More Random Astronomy

I keep finding these gems on Pinterest

To quote the great Mister Spock:

“Fascinating”

A new feature I’m going to do for the blog is ‘Random Astronomy Lessons’. I’ve recently joined Pinterest and there are tons of awesome astronomy pics and facts on there. So when I see those nuggets of astronomy gold I’ll be sharing them here. Pinterest is a great app with a lot of amazing things on there.

Saturday, February 15, 2020

More of This & That

Remember these books?

Apparently McDonalds Canada will be giving these books with Happy Meals.

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Remember these toys?

I had a few from this toy line. I wish I had had more but in those days I was into ‘Masters of the Universe’. I did have a few of the Super Powers: Superman, Penguin, Lex Luthor, Aquaman, Darkseid, and Hawkman (guess I actually had a few of them...)

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New episode of the podcast will be uploaded soon!

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Friday, February 14, 2020

This & That

A little bit of this and that...

We have recently recorded an episode of ‘The Pop Culture Pub Podcast’. I am joined on the show with Kevin Decent and MissM. Our topic is: Top Positive OMG! Moments in Pop Culture

Example:

Finn fighting Kylo Ren with Luke’s lightsaber

Then we end the episode with a current pop culture news topics segment we call ‘Enders’:

we’ll be discussing episode 2&3 of ST:Picard
I’ll be giving a mini review and rating of ‘Jay & Silent Bob Reboot’

Coming soon!!!

Thursday, February 6, 2020

Confessions of a Trekkie

For as long as I remember I have been a ‘Star Trek’ fan. It all goes back to the original series and the first few movies they did in the 80’s. My Mom told me my love for space science fiction actually began when my parents took me to the drive in to watch ‘ET’ in 1982 when I was 2. Apparently I stayed up for the entire movie glued to the screen the entire time, shortly thereafter was when I probably discovered ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Star Wars’.

Although I am a ‘Trekkie’ I have from time to time stopped watching Star Trek shows due to issues I had with them. Back in 1997 I stopped watching ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ halfway through season 3. At that time I had issues with some of the logic associated with the premise of the series. How can Voyager sustain extreme damage from the Kazon in one episode then in the next episode it is clean and pristine? Voyager is literally 70+ years away from the nearest Federation space dock, cut off from the engineers and materials required to repair the ship… Then in season 4 it became the ‘Borg Babe and funny hologram Doctor Show’. I’ve gone back and watched some of the episodes I missed but I’ve never watched the entire series, yet I consider myself a Trekkie. Just because you are a fan of a franchise doesn’t mean you have to accept mediocre storytelling. I knew before ‘Voyager’ even launched that the premise of a Starfleet vessel being lost in space 75 years from the Federation was a doomed concept. To their credit they played out the premise for the entire 7 year run but I think it would have been better to see this show take place in Federation space. There are always plenty of stories to tell in the Alpha quadrant.

‘Enterprise’ (later wisely renamed ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’) was another example of me dropping off of a Trek series. In season 3 they started a ‘Xindi’ war story arc which I did not care for so I stopped watching. If Earth had been attacked by this unknown ‘Xindi’ race and they intended to use their version of the ‘Death Star’ on Earth why was this never refereed to or mentioned before in the original series, TNG, DS9 or Voyager? Enterprise is after all a prequel series and that is the root of what makes it a flawed series. If the NX-01 Enterprise really is the first Federation ship again why was this not ever mentioned in the previous Trek series or movies?

Prequels; when not executed with continuity in mind are doomed to suck. Enterprise at times ignored established Trek continuity and suffered as a result; likewise with ‘Star Trek: Discovery’. Say what you will about the ‘Star Wars’ prequels at least creator George Lucas had it (for the most part) planned out to work with the continuity he had already established with the original trilogy. Discovery, more so than Enterprise, completely ignores continuity and relies on special effects, lens flares, macguffins, and lazy writing to tell their stories while at the same time completely ignoring established continuity. So far ‘Star Trek: Picard’ is doing a better job at working with established continuity and doing a better job weaving the story they are telling.

Bottom line I wish ‘Star Trek’ would simply return to their roots. And no I do not mean they should reboot Captain Kirk or Captain Pike yet again (sorry Anson Mount, love you as Captain Pike but I really don’t need a show with that character), but rather a new show with a new crew, new cast, new ship but same mission as the original series. A Starfleet ship in the 25^th century that goes on missions every week to “Seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before”.