“The Mangerie,” and My Manifesto on Digital Tinkering

A couple weeks ago, The Girlfriend and I, along with several of our friends from the subgroup I like to think of as “The Usual Suspects,”*attended something rather unusual: a one-time-only theatrical screening of “The Menagerie,” an episode of the original Star Trek television series. The screening was essentially a promotional gimmick for the release of the series on the HD-DVD format, so naturally what we were seeing was the “remastered” version of the episode — that is, the one with all the new digital “enhancements.” Not that anyone except me seemed to mind. We shared a sold-out house with several hundred enthusiastic members of the uniform-wearing faithful (there was even a guy there in full-blown Andorian make-up, complete with antennae!), and there was much ooh-ing and aah-ing over the digital recreations of scenes we’ve all seen a thousand times. Even I have to grudgingly admit that whoever is behind the CG tinkering is doing a very nice job of it. The new footage is very faithful to the look of the original series — the Enterprise isn’t suddenly an unnaturally manuverable cartoon — and there has been no “Greedo shoots first” revisionism to any of the stories that I have seen. I will even concede that some of what’s been done is an improvement. (Click here for a gallery of screencaps and judge for yourselves; my thanks to Mike G for sending me the link.) Nevertheless, as my Three Loyal Readers can probably predict, I remain opposed to the updates on basic principle.

My stubbornness on this point led to a pretty interesting conversation following the screening, which in turn led me to a whole new understanding of my own thoughts on this matter of updating old movies and TV properties, and which types of changes bother me and which types don’t.

Nov252007

Eight Things

I really need to stop promising to write long, insightful entries. I’ve been very busy and, even more importantly, productive this weekend, but those entries still haven’t happened, have they? Well, there’s still tomorrow…

In the meantime, let’s do a meme keyed around the number eight, as seen on Byzantium’s Shores:

Nov232007

I’m William Shatner, and I’m a Shaman

…and we’re back. Hope everyone had a successful Mass Consumption Day (which, if you consider the “Black Friday” retail madness and multiple meanings of the verb “to consume,” could probably be extended into “Mass Consumption Weekend”). I had a pretty nice day myself, managing to eat just enough but not too much of the traditional bird and pumpkin pie so that I managed to remain reasonably comfortable and functional instead of collapsing into a bloated stupor.
I’m hoping to produce some of those longer entries I keep promising sometime before I have to go back to work, but in the meantime, let’s amuse ourselves with the following:

Now, I don’t play computer games myself — I have nothing against them, I simply lost interest back when the Atari 2600 was still technologically competitive — and I wouldn’t know World of Warcraft from a construction trade show, but I’m always amused by the antics of the one-and-only William Shatner. Especially William Shatner in a kimono. Personally, I’ve always suspected that he could hurl bolts of lightning. How did I know that, when he’s always been so careful to conceal his god-like capabilities? Because he’s The Shat, of course! Duh…

Nov212007

Crazy at the Bookstore

I got out of work early today for the long holiday weekend, and found myself a little taken aback by the unaccustomed pleasure of seeing an entire afternoon stretched out before me with nothing on the agenda. I considered a number of options for what I could do with my free time. I ended up taking the light rail up to the U of U campus and meeting a buddy of mine for lunch, with a detour along the way to the U Bookstore.

I haven’t set foot in the Bookstore in years, possibly not since I graduated a decade and a half ago. The whole experience filled me with deja vu — it’s not much different now than in my own student days, aside from the flat-screen TVs and life-size Master Chief statue in the lobby — but the most evocative aspect of the scene was the music playing on the PA system, a song I remember very well, “Crazy” by Icehouse. Here’s the video:

Two thoughts occurred to me as I wandered among racks of familiar-looking red t-shirts while listening to a band whose name I had to really work to retrieve from the memory banks: can I really have been out of school long enough for the music that was popular when I was in school to become “golden oldies retail ambiance”? And if so, is the Bookstore’s manager simply playing the same damn tapes he had way back then?

On any other day, this epiphany would’ve made me feel positively ancient. Today, though, I was walking around free during my normal working hours, feeling vaguely like a kid playing hooky. And it was just plain good to hear this song again… and on that note, Happy Thanksgiving everyone…

Nov202007

Major Stem Cell Breakthrough!

I just came across some very exciting science news: two separate research teams have announced that they’ve found a way to turn ordinary adult skin cells into stem cells, those amazing little shapeshifters that can become any of the 200 types of cells found throughout the human body and which hold the potential of solving any number of illnesses. Not only is this an impressive technical achievement, but it offers a way out of the pesky ethical debate that surrounds the use of embryonic stem cells for research or therapy.

(For the record, I personally have no problem with using embryonic stem cells for research or therapy. Fertility clinics all over the country dispose of thousands of embryos every day. What’s more immoral: chucking them in the dumpster with last night’s Chinese take-out, or repurposing them to ease human suffering? Pretty simple equation in my view.)

This new breakthrough isn’t without its own problems, of course:

Their enthusiasm notwithstanding, scientists warned that medical treatments are not immediately at hand. The new method uses genetically engineered viruses to transform adult cells into embryo-like ones, and those viruses can trigger tumors.But the cells will be instantly useful for research — “to move a patient’s disease into a petri dish,” as Daley put it. And some scientists predicted that, with the basic secret now in hand, it could be a mere matter of months before virus-free methods for making the versatile cells are found.

Nevertheless, it feels like we’re really, really close to something truly wonderful. Close enough that I can’t help but feel impatient for its arrival. How long before anyone who needs a new heart or liver can get one, a perfect genetic match grown from a simple arm scrape in a matter of days or weeks instead of forcing them to wait for years for a suitable donor to die? How long before men and women like the late Chris Reeve can get up out of their chairs and walk again, thanks to a regenerated spinal cord? How long before the dreaded words “Lou Gehrig’s Disease” cease to have any meaning? The end of all that “vale of tears” shit can’t come soon enough for me.

In a lot of ways, I despise living at this moment in history. The future we’ve been given, full of political turmoil, economic uncertainty, and plain old fear, isn’t the one we were promised by popular culture. But there are compensations for all that, aren’t there? A few, anyway…

Nov202007

Who’s on Force?

Courtesy of Cranky Robert, here’s a clip I can’t begin to do justice with mere words. Just watch it:

That’s some brilliant editing, IMHO. Perfect casting, too…

Nov162007

Dispatch from the Front Lines of the Holy War

For the record, I am one of those rare mutant individuals who couldn’t possibly care less about sports.
I know it plants me in a very small minority to admit this, but I honestly don’t like any sports. Not professional, collegiate, amateur, major league, minor league, varsity, JV, Little League, or pick-up in the alleyway behind the office. Not ball-centered sports, not motorsports, and certainly not — ugh — extreme sports.

So what’s my problem? Why don’t I care about the games that probably the majority of everybody else out there find so endlessly rewarding? Well, let’s see… the so-called “action” of team sports bores me. The roar of the crowd sets my nerves on edge. The physical outbursts — like throwing stuff at the TV — that often accompany wins and losses strike me as distasteful. And the obsessive knowledge of obscure statistics that is commanded by many fans simply baffles me. (I’m fully aware of the self-inflicted irony there, and that somebody who spouts sports trivia is fundamentally no different from me knowing everything I know about Star Wars. But the way I see it, Star Wars is cool, and sports are, well, just sports.)
Hell, I don’t even like board games.

That said, however, I always look forward to the annual football rivalry between Utah’s largest institutions of higher learning, the University of Utah and Brigham Young University. Not because I care about the football, you understand. The game itself is of no more interest to me than any other sporting event. No, it’s the culture of the rivalry that I find interesting.
Or perhaps I should say the clash of cultures that surround the rivalry, which is known in these parts as “The Holy War.”

Nov162007

Simple Tricks: Fit for a Twelve-Year-Old!

Chris Roberson clued me into the Blog Readability Test, which has determined the following:

So, this means either my writing is so clean and to the point that even an adolescent can follow along… or my writing is adolescent. Hmm… not sure I really want to know the answer to the implied question here…

Nov152007

I’m Catwoman… Meow.

Here’s an interesting variant on the “Which [blank] are you?” quiz genre… it seems that if I were a woman with superpowers, I’d be Michelle Pfeiffer:

What female superhero are you???Catwoman

You are the anti-hero. Not quite a hero but prone to heroic actions and a protector of abused women. Dark, sleek and full of feminine wiles, you steal your way into people’s hearts. Meow!