{"id":784,"date":"2006-12-15T13:57:09","date_gmt":"2006-12-15T13:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=784"},"modified":"2006-12-15T13:57:09","modified_gmt":"2006-12-15T13:57:09","slug":"geek_wars_the_twelve_colonies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2006\/12\/15\/geek_wars_the_twelve_colonies\/","title":{"rendered":"Geek Wars: The Twelve Colonies vs. The Empire Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You know, when <i>I<\/i> was a kid and my friends and I would debate over which side would win in a cross-universe match-up of apocalyptic proportions &#8212; the most common of which was, of course, the <a title=\"Let the Hostilities Commence\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/2006\/05\/let_the_hostilities_commence\/\">Starship <i>Enterprise<\/i> against an Imperial Star Destroyer<\/a> &#8212; we had to <i>imagine<\/i> what it would look like. Maybe we were lucky enough to know a kid with some drawing skills who would doodle something in the margins of his Mead spiral-bound that he felt worthy of sharing with us, but mostly it all happened in our heads.<\/p>\n<p>Not these days. Now the wonders of CGI and YouTube enable us to actually <i>see<\/i> all the action. Curiously, I don&#8217;t find it nearly as satisfying as seeing it all in my mind&#8217;s eye, but then I&#8217;m old fashioned that way. Your mileage may vary, of course. And on that note, here&#8217;s the latest example of the genre, in which a fleet of Colonial battlestars goes up against a fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<object width=\"425\" height=\"350\" classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/zxX0DKE3oqw\" \/><embed width=\"425\" height=\"350\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/zxX0DKE3oqw\" wmode=\"transparent\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n<p>A couple of observations, which should reveal once and for all the true depths of my geekiness, just in case you had any lingering doubts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The battlestars and Colonial Vipers appear to be the old-school models from my beloved 1978 version of <i>Galactica<\/i>, but the overall look and feel of this piece &#8212; the herky-jerky, handheld, try-and-keep-it-in-focus camera style &#8212; is straight out of the new <i>Galactica<\/i>. (The camera work is probably the thing I hate most about Neo-G, incidentally; I hate it even more than Starbuck&#8217;s sex change or all the people wearing contemporary 20th Century Earth business suits. What, do they have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.menswearhouse.com\/\">Men&#8217;s Wearhouse<\/a> on Caprica?)<\/li>\n<li>Similarly, the apparent capabilities of the Colonial ships is more in keeping with the new show than the original &#8212; the way the Vipers manuver, the battlestar &#8220;leap&#8221; effect at the end, and especially the missiles streaking through the shots, leaving their long vapor-trails (in space?) behind, all belong to Ron Moore&#8217;s <i>Galactica<\/i>, not Glen Larson&#8217;s. If I had been in charge of this thing, I would&#8217;ve aped the style of the &#8217;70s-vintage effects more. I certainly wouldn&#8217;t have used <i>missiles<\/i> &#8212; if you&#8217;re pitting old-school battlestars against Destroyers, then I want to see a crossfire of old-school Colonial mega-pulsars and Imperial turbo-lasers!<\/li>\n<li>The familiar TIE fighter sound effects are there, but not Viper-laser sounds.<\/li>\n<li>In the positive column, kudos to whoever made this for including a Nebulon-B frigate among the Imperial ships. Casual <i>Star Wars<\/i> fans are no doubt confused about why the Rebel medical ship from the end of <i>Empire<\/i> is flying with the Destroyers, but <i>true<\/i> fanboys know that the Nebulons are Imperial escort ships, and that the Rebel Alliance managed to liberate a few for their own uses.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Um, okay, I&#8217;m going to stop now. That last factoid frightened even me&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know, when I was a kid and my friends and I would debate over which side would win in a cross-universe match-up of apocalyptic proportions &#8212; the most common of which was, of course, the Starship Enterprise against an Imperial Star Destroyer &#8212; we had to imagine what it would look like. Maybe we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-star-wars","category-the-glass-teat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}