StillPaisleyCat

joined 1 year ago
[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The colours are unrepentantly psychedelic 70s fashionable and so are a few of the plots.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 6 points 2 months ago (4 children)

It’s always a good time to do a watch through of TAS.

The thing is that while the technobabble is just that, the process represents how engineering gets done better than most other ‘serious’ SF, albeit at compressed speed.

Voyager did a better job than any at showing how the thinking and problem-solving work gets done - which to me is more the point.

All this criticism seems to come from folks who’ve never seen nerds working in teams being nerds. They seem to want science FICTION to be locked down to concepts that someone with a mid 20th bachelor’s degree in science would know.

Whereas the real life scientists and engineers in my circle react more like Erin Macdonald did when she was working on her physics PhD and saw Voyager. She recognized the process and thought it was cool that some of the newer concepts in gravimetrics were referenced but didn’t sweat the small stuff.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Glad to have you mention that here.

So many fans of the older shows assume that Lower Decks isn’t accessible to new viewers who don’t get the references, but it’s quite the opposite. Gen Z and younger viewers are into animated comedies and it’s a successful entry point. And with the number of middle schoolers who got into manga and anime during the pandemic, the portion of the audience that prefers animation as a medium is only going to grow.

Our teens were fans of the Voyager when they were in middle school, and sampled the rest of the classic shows. Despite that they seem to be split on the animated vs live action new shows, and none of them would watch Picard.

It’s a real shame that there won’t be any new animated Star Trek after this season of Lower Decks.

Star Trek Prodigy is the true sequel to Voyager. It’s all ages / family rather than the ‘kids show’ many fans take it for. I would watch that with your GF next.

Because Prodigy is designed to be an entry point for new viewers, it introduces many of the key legacy characters and much of the lore. It has a Star Wars vibe in the pilot, mainly to draw in viewers from other franchises, but it settles into being some of the Trekiest content ever by the 6th short episode of season one.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Dave Blass said much of it was packed up in crates and shipped.

To where is the question.

Tawny is already in the writers room for Starfleet Academy as well as working as a cocreator of a new live action Star Trek comedy series in development.

It seems that she’s another alum who will be mostly behind the camera but will show up as a legacy character in other shows.

TOS ‘The Devil in the Dark’ in first run.

I was barely in school, but my slightly older neighbour who’d hooked me on Time Tunnel and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, convinced me that Star Trek must be seen.

I quickly caught up during the hiatus reruns, and have seen absolutely all of it in first run since.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

As someone who sees MS Word forms regularly force Canadians to use Month/Day/Year formats which were never native to Canada and don’t meet the ISO standard either, I am inferring the impetus transition.

But truly, I old enough to recall many standards being harmonized in the early 90s in the wake of the North American free trade agreement.

Whether or not a digital archive document demonstrates that Canada Post intentionally harmonized to match the US is TBC.

But it is a verifiable fact that the two-letter standard for provinces and territories has not been commonly established in all federal regulations or data standards or in provincial and territorial data systems standards.

That is to say, it has not been formally adopted as by Canada or as the ‘Canadian data standard.’

I hadn’t been aware that he’d also been a director for television. Truly a wide-ranging career.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 0 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The two-letter system was already in place in the United States mail system before the 80s.

It wouldn’t be the first time Canada adopted a US data standard to ease utilization of US made or standardized equipment.

 

Simon & Schuster had a larger than usual array of ebook deals for September 2023.

October 1st is the last day for this group, a new set (likely fewer books) will come on line Sunday the 2nd.

If you haven’t given Treklit a try, these ebook deals are a great low cost way to get into it.

 

Missed this report from earlier in the week…Paramount+ will be joining major streamer J:COM with a launch date for Japan of December 1, 2023.

For the many fans who’ve been waiting for a legal way to get new Trek in Japan, this is hopefully great news.

 

This ScienceOf.org interview with Professor of Genetics/Evolution (& Star Trek biological science advisor) Mohammed Noor on the biology, especially the r-selection reproduction, of the Gorn in SNW is marvellous.

Just the kind of uncomfortable but great biological thinking I was hoping we’d get into here at Daystrom Institute.

e.g. Can we think of the Gorn in viral terms?

Treating Gorn like this, each infected person could infect four more people, so the R0 for Gorn would be 4. Not wildly big, but large enough to do the job. Of course, the hatchlings would also be going after one another, so the analogy’s not perfect.

But if you want to think of the Gorn as intelligent, viral space dinosaurs, that does get the idea across.

 

It seems that with long hiatuses in new onscreen Trek ahead, genre coverage is starting to profile Trek novels again.

This set of ten weird but readable books isn’t necessarily the trippiest, but it does put the first of the Shatnerverse books at the top.

(Perhaps @ValueSubtracted@startrek.website there’s yet hope for Shatner’s wild imaginings to make it into S&S monthly Star Trek ebook deals promotional rotation.)

 

Bleeding Cool previews behind the scenes commentary from Hageman Brothers from prerelease of DVD-BlueRay bonus content.

CBS Entertainment is keeping the profile up on Prodigy merchandising. A bright spot amidst Paramount’s erasure of Prodigy in Star Trek Day content.

 

/ Film is continuing to report and opine on key points in the oral history book "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams," edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross.

For those of us who haven’t (yet) invested in the book, these extracts and reflections can prompt some interesting discussion.

In this case, it sounds like Nimoy’s hesitation led to a much less action-oriented integration of Spock’s presence. An interesting thought experiment.

Also, it sounds like tapping nostalgia and interlinking shows has been a constant pressure from senior executives at the IP holder. It’s well known that Roddenberry resisted close callbacks to TOS, and was determined for TNG to stand on its own in its own era. Even five seasons into TNG, Paramount senior executives though still weren’t convinced it didn’t need a TOS-connection boost.

Considering the amount of callback mining and IP nostalgia mining in the current era shows, it seems as though Kurtzman’s got a hard road to convince Paramount to give new characters and eras a chance to stand on their own.

 

This was included in the Star Trek Day content, but released separately a couple of days ago.

It’s nice to see Discovery getting a lot of love in this. It also really shows how great so many of Discovery’s vfx heavy scenes have been.

 

Because it’s the weekend and Star Trek’s new Moopsy is possibly the most frighteningly inspired adaptation/extrapolation of Pokémons to hit the screen.

 

It appears that this is a promotional feature in Smithsonian Magazine for a a new book Reality Ahead of Schedule: how science fiction inspires science fact.

This seems a good fit for Daystrom Institute, but happy to relocate if it’s a better fit for another community.

 

As previously advertised.

 

The rebranded Star Trek magazine Explorer, published by Titan, is including original fiction.

For those who are fans of @DavidMack@davidmack@wandering.shop, this month’s issue may be one to add to your purchases if you’re not planning to already.

 

In honour of Star Trek day, this month Simon & Schuster is offering 23 ebooks at discount prices.

Books from every era are represented. (A special shout out from me for the Diane Duane one.)

As usual, look for the discounts in the US, Canada and UK through the major ebook platforms.

Enjoy!

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