Posts Tagged ‘Star Trek’
who writes 1900 words about a handful of Deep Space Nine episodes? That would be me.
if you’re wondering where I’m getting these images and some trivia, most of the pictures and all of the trivia comes from Memory Alpha Wiki.
Looking for my previous Season 3 SD9 posts?
I think we’re now at the halfway point of this season! These next few episodes balanced humor with seriousness, satisfied my need to hear Wallace Shawn’s voice, gave me a 21 Pilots earworm, and made me gasp outloud “hey, she looks just like Lisa!”
This post is picture and link heavy.
She looks just like Lisa!
Life Support (ep 13) – See, I KNEW Kira had a boyfriend! What was up with her getting all blushy over creeper not-that-Riker? A Bajoran shuttle was on it’s way to the station for peace talks with the Cardassians, and there was an accident. A semi-conscience Vedek Bareil is taken straight to the infirmary. Kira and Bareil are a casual item – they spent romantic time (aka sexy times) together when they’re in the same place at the same time, but Kira has never admitted her serious feelings for him. But the way she looks at him? The way her face lights up when he enters a room? It’s obvious to Odo that she’s smitten, even if Kira won’t admit it to herself.
The Kai needs Bareil awake and alive, she’s dependent on him to assist with the peace talks. No matter his injuries, she insists that Bashir do everything possible to keep Bareil awake, even as the long-term side effects of the treatments threaten long term damage.
Meanwhile, the fun part of the episode – Jake and Nog go on a double date, and it’s a hilarious disaster. Jake is a perfect (and adorable) gentleman to his date Leanne (holy shit, is that Lisa from Saved by the Bell? Omg, it is! Wait, were other Saved by the Bell actors on Star Trek too?), and he tries his best to make sure Leanne’s friend has a good time too. Nog on the other hand. . . . we don’t have much experience with Ferengi romance and courting rituals, do we? Well, I don’t, and Jake didn’t. Nog gets offended when Jake treats the ladies “like equals”. Nog tells his date to sit there and shut up, and to cut his meat for him. The girls storm off in anger, and Nog can’t understand why Jake is mad at him. The whole scene is hilarious! Nog was just treating the girls the same way he’d treat any Ferengi female, what’s the problem?
Back in the infirmary, Bareil’s condition is worsening, and the Kai keeps pushing for riskier treatments to keep him alive. He experiences irreversible brain damage, and Bashir gives him a sort-of positronic implant to help that part of his brain that’s no longer worker. (I work in a health-care-adjacent industry, where is the next of kin? WHY is the Kai, who is effectively Bareil’s boss, allowed to make medical decisions for him? Does Bashir not understand how medical power of attorney works and doesn’t work?? Unless the Kai is Bareil’s mom, none of this is ok!!)
#HaveRead #AmReading
Posted on: June 20, 2020
the familiar blogger refrain:
I’m not in the mood to write this book review. I know, I’ll read another book . . . falling even further behind on reviews I had planned to write.
I haven’t written a review in a while, but I’ve been reading a ton, and I’ve got plenty of review notes written down in my head.
Some books I’ve read recently:
sorry for the crap blurry photo!
Star Trek: Collateral Damage, by David Mack. I’ve read some TOS Trek novels, but never read a TNG novel. I had no idea what to expect. I certainly didn’t expect to love this book so much. Great characters, Worf rolling his eyes, Laforge saving the day, Picard being Picard, excellent banter and even more excellent side characters. I worry that I’ve now been spoiled, that no other TNG novel will entertain me as much as this book entertained me.
Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett – 2nd book in his new trilogy. Certainly doesn’t suffer from “middle book syndrome”. NONSTOP action. I love the magic system in this world, but I’m struggling to care about the main characters. My fave characters were a side character who is super close to his trauma, and the bad guy, because he’s pretty cray-cray. Buckets more on this later, but i think the reasons I’m struggling to connect with the main character is because SO MUCH ACTION is getting in the way for me, and she’s like 19 years old, so she relates to the world in a different way than 40 year old me relates to the world.
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson – while stuck at home during a pandemic, why not read a book about a pandemic that ravages earth? Loved how the story opens, super loved the end, the middle was a little draggy for me. I feel like The Girl With All The Gifts is sort of a modern take on I Am Legend? I haven’t seen the movie of this, by the way. Also, didn’t realize I Am Legend is a novella? the paperback is jam packed with a ton of Matheson short stories, mostly quick sharp horror stories, lots of which take place in funeral homes. they are deliciously creepy.
If you love gorgeous artwork and Central Asia, Bride’s Story is for you. I basically shop for dresses out of the pages of this manga. So much gorgeous embroidery! the dresses! the shoes! the head dresses! the jewelry!!! the plot jumps around between a bunch of different families, and in volume 11 we are with Mr. Smith and Talas. Their story is super heartbreaking, and I want them to find happiness, and I don’t know if they will. Smith is such an adorable doofus. There’s a great side story in this volume about what happened to his pocket watch, and the “legends” that sprang up around the watch. I feel like that lady who wanted to buy Talas’s embroidered clothing – I suck at embroidery, but i love it and I’m happy to pay a pretty penny for it.
Memories of Emanon by Shinji Kajio and Kenji Tsurata – totally different art style than Bride’s Story, but I love, LOVE the art style of Memories of Emanon! The story takes place in the late 1960s, a young man is traveling home on a ferry in Japan. The ferry is going up the coast, it’s going to take him 17 hours to get home (sorta like a really, REALLY long train ride in the US). He meets a young woman on the ferry, and she tells him the wildest story. What she’s saying can’t possibly be true, can it? Great story, fantastic artwork.
I haven’t finished reading Hexarchate Stories by Yoon Ha Lee yet, but I’m near the end. I bought this collection last year, and was “saving it for a special occasion”. If you read my last blog post and the comments, being on the upswing from whatever-that-was seemed to be a special occassion, so I picked up Hexarchate Stories. Young Jedao! and his siblings! and his mom! and calendars and birthdays and servitors and omg I love this book so much! there is a ton of flash fiction in here, and it’s been fun to analyze the flash fiction, see how to tell a story in just a few pages. truly, reading this book has been heavenly. as soon as I finish it I’m going to read it again (I feel like I did that with one of the Machineries of Empire books too?). Confession – some of my super fave stores have been the sexy/smutty ones.
some e-books i’ve read/am reading:
The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson – holy shit damn. this book is everything! I have handwritten notes for a review and still there is just SO MUCH. (also, for reasons that i’ll tell you later, finishing this book and then immediately picking up the Star Trek book had me laughing my head off). This book doesn’t come out till later this summer, so I need to figure out when i can post a review and how much I can talk about, because I don’t want to spoil anything.
I just started reading Machine’s Last Testament by Benjanun Sriduangkaew this morning, and I’m loving it. An AI controlled sanctuary city, where if you can get in, you’ll be happy and safe (for AI definitions of happy and safe). It’s a sort of prequel to And Machines Shall Surrender, which I loved. Basically, if you’re trying to figure out what kind of stories and prose styles I love, read anything by Sriduangkaew, and you’ll know.
What have you been reading lately?
and if you like short fiction, and want your TBR to explode, check out this series of interviews I’m doing at Nerds of a Feather, with staff members at Hugo nominated semiprozines! When this series ends, I’ll be doing an interview series with the nominees for best fan artist. Huh, i guess that explains why i haven’t been writing a ton of reviews lately. . .
One non-sequitur after another.
Posted on: March 21, 2020
I finished Kage Baker’s Sky Coyote yesterday, and immediately started reading Mendoza in Hollywood. I’ve been reading a ton in the mornings. And at lunchtime. And at night. At this rate, I’m going to be done with this series in two weeks. I’m thinking of rereading Kaoru Mori’s Bride’s Story next, we recently got volume eleven. Each volume of that takes me about two hours to read, so I can draw it out to . . . eleven days? Eleven days of gorgeous artwork, I think I can handle that.
How are your bookshelves organized? Mine are by “height”. All the mass market paperbacks together, so I can stack more MMPs on top of them. All the hardbacks together, all the “tall” books together. My Baker’s are a mish-mash of every type of format – hard back, mass market paper back “tall” paperback, an odd-size ARC from Tachyon, I even have one or two hard back special editions from Sub Press. What I’m getting at is that they’re all different sizes, so are somehow scattered throughout this house. Nothing is more entertaining that watching me tear bookshelves apart looking for specific books!
Ok, so here we go, with random thoughts on Sky Coyote:
Sky Coyote is feel-good humor, feel-good pop culture references, it’s got characters I want to hang out with all day long. This book feels like I’m watching Back to the Future. it feels really low stakes. I may just come back and reread this, when later books in the series get super heavy.
I love Joseph. This isn’t his first rodeo, which is good thing, but he’s also compartmentalized everything in his mind to justify his actions, which is not a good thing. Being around people who remind him of home, he needed that. I’m happy he got that, I wish he’d had more time with the Chumash. Everytime I read this book again, that’s more time he gets to spend with them, right?
I was howling with laughter at Puluy and Awhay’s dialog, they talk like Valley Girls!
I love living mythology, and that’s what this book is. You can read Sky Coyote as a stand alone, so if you like mythology, if you like humor, get this book. Everyone knows it’s ok for mythology stories to be made up, and everyone knows it’s ok to feel like those stories aren’t made up.
Do we get more of Joseph thinking about Budu? I hope so. I think so? Budu and his kind were designed to kill humans who were killing other humans. But what happens when soldiers like Budu aren’t needed anymore. Hmmm . . . . suddenly seeing Will McIntosh’s Defenders as a companion book to The Company.
The performance the Kantap puts on! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, oh are you in for a treat! When they do the “comedy act” of Sky Coyote and his, well, um, I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe!
Omg, the scene with the Looney Tunes cartoons! I was crying-laughing! Actually, because me, I was crying-laughing for like the last 50 pages of this book. They were happy tears.
The year 2355. You can’t outrun it, you can’t avoid it. You are rushing towards it, inevitably, relentlessly, and one day per day.
Because I have vague memories of what’s coming in books 3 – 6, I can’t stop thinking about Mendoza and Nicholas.
We watched the movie Rocketman, the other day. Freakin’ excellent movie! It’s very Baz Luhrmann! I lost track of all the costume changes and started getting a kick out of the dozens and dozens of glasses. If you like musical biopics, this is well worth your two hours.
And I swear I saw Nicholas Harpole in Rocketman. You can’t tell from this picture, but he is tall and very lanky, and usually wears severe dark suits. and that voice! and those eyes! No wonder Elton thought this guy loved him, how could anyone think otherwise?
I spent the afternoon today binge watching Star Trek: Discovery season 2.
I freakin’ love Tilly. You’re either going to love her or hate her, and it took me a few episodes in season one to warm up to her, but I wish they would just call Discovery the Tilly & Stamets show.
isn’t she adorable?
More non-sequiturs in a few days, ok?
- In: Star Trek | TV & Movies
- 4 Comments
I’m late to Discovery, and I’m fine with that. After watching the first season, i have a lot (holy shit a lot!) of thoughts. I wasn’t sure how to get them all down, so I cheated, and interviewed myself about my experience. This is not a review or a critique, it is a ramble. Cuz I got thoughts, and what is the internet good for, if not rambling?
Yeah, so this blog post is less about ST: Discovery and more about how I react to things. But I finally watched the first season, and I Have Thoughts.
Very minor spoilers ahead.
This showed on CBS All Access like a year ago. Why did it take you this long to finally watch it?
Biggest reason: I don’t find CBS All Access to be worth what they are charging for it. There isn’t enough there there. I love subscription streaming services, when those services offer a lot of stuff I’m interested in watching. Netflix could double what they charge and I’d still be ripping them off. CBS All Access was asking me to pay however much a month for one show. I still find that idea laughable. Discovery looked interesting, but this was a simple value equation: was the cost of CBS All Access a value match for what I was buying? Nope.
A friend bought the 1st season on Blu-ray and offered to let me borrow it. So that’s how I ended up finally watching Discovery.
What did you think of the overall design of the show?
I love the artwork of the opening credits. I’m a sucker for anything architecture-y. I liked the interiors of the Klingon ships. The color schemes for the Discovery sere darker than I’m used to for a Star Trek story, it was more Deep Space Nine (a station that wasn’t designed by the Federation), everything was more Battlestar Galactica than I was expecting.
Battlestar Galactica? What makes you compare this show to BSG?
Design. Color scheme. Dark plot elements. Tension. The focus on non-verbal communication and body language. Even how it was filmed.
I’m used to Star Trek sets being of neutral color schemes, I’m used to the camera angles being more “old school”, so that one set, one hallway, could be made to look like many. The set designs, camera angles, and filming style felt more Battlestar Galactica or even Firefly to me. Grungier sets, more sharp edges and fewer softened edges, more hallways that looked like actual hallways. I grew up on Next Gen and Voyager. Those scripts were written almost “cozy mystery” style, where you knew from the first minute of the episode that everything would be neatly wrapped up and sanitized in 42 minutes with minimal tension, no anger or arguments, no issues with integrity, plenty of diplomacy, and that in a few weeks the characters would forget everything that happened in this episode. Deep Space Nine left that episodic-ness behind somewhat, which was nice.
Discovery didn’t feel sanitized. It didn’t feel like anything was going to be wrapped up in one or two episodes. The character’s non-verbal communication added a ton of tension and suspicion. I didn’t feel like the characters would forget what happened in a few episodes. It felt like a scifi soap opera. It felt like Battlestar Galactica. I mean that as a compliment to both shows.
You posted on twitter that you’re afraid of Jason Isaacs. What the hell?
He’s a really great actor. Has a metric fuckton of presence. He walks into the room and your eyes are on him (ok, maybe that’s just me?). I saw him in a Netflix original tv show called The O.A., which I highly recommend if you haven’t seen it. Isaacs plays the villain, and boy is he sociopathically villainous. I left the first season of The O.A. scared shitless of him. The 2nd season of The O.A. comes out soon, and in the promo, it looks like the characters are now friends with him? What the fuck! Why aren’t you running away from him as fast as your legs will take you? He’s the bad guy!!!
So when he showed up on Discovery, a loud voice in the back of my head was screaming “RUN”. It wasn’t the words that were coming out of his mouth that made me nervous, it was all his non-verbal mannerisms, that he looked away from people while talking, the angle of his shoulders, his not quite smile when things were going the way he wanted. Watching him on screen was like noticing a big spider crawling down behind the sofa. I know it’s there, i just don’t know exactly where, or when it’s going to crawl out, or if it’s two centimeters from my shoulder, right this second. Oh, hai anxiety!
I was so freaked out by him that I had a tough time paying attention to what was happening on the TV screen. It made me feel a little better when some stuff is revealed about his character, i felt justified in my anxiety and unrelenting fear.
What about other actors and characters? Who did you like? Who didn’t you like?
I love Michelle Yeoh. She makes everything better. Every scene with her is my favorite scene. She looked like she had a TON of fun filming her scenes, and I just love everything about her and her character.
June reading
Posted on: July 1, 2017
June, where did you go? Last I checked it was June 2nd, how is it already July?? I didn’t post many reviews in June, but I did get a lot of reading done. Some of these I’ll write reviews for, some of them will get a capsule review in this post. Here’s what I was up to this month:
I finished this fun little gem:
Spock Must Die is the famous novel where thanks to a transporter malfunction, the Enterprise now has two Spocks. Which one is the “real” one? What will they do with the other one? When war breaks out at the Klingon border, the importance of solving the mystery ratchets up. Even when Kirk is sure which Spock is the true, original Spock, he insists on calling his friend “Spock Two”. When questioned why, Kirk responds that by saying “two” every time he says his friend’s name, it forces him to remember how important it is to solve the problem at hand. Fun little book, right around 200 pages. Great beginning, satisfying end, a little slow in the middle.
then there was this other little gem:
Mightier than the Sword is the new novella out from K.J. Parker. I’m not going to say much because I do plan to write a review, but it was fun, smart, snarky, and a joy to read. I’ve read it at least twice now, maybe three times? I read these quick little novellas, and then I get ready to write a review, realize I don’t remember the details, so I read the whole thing again. If you like Parker, you will love Mightier than the Sword.
Star Trek Vol 2, by James Blish
published in 1968
where I got it: purchased used
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Don’t let the title of this book fool you, this is not a novelization of the second Star Trek movie. . . although this little volume is tangentially related to that movie.
I better start from the beginning. Starting in 1967, James Blish started adapting the Star Trek teleplays into short stories, printed as volumes that covered seven or eight tv episodes. He’d adapt the teleplay before it was edited for television, before it was ever filmed. So the short stories do differ from the tv episode scripts a bit. Also? The short story adaptations skip all the filler junk, you get just the straight up story with none of the stuff needed to fill out a 48 minute tv show. Sometimes that means a tighter story, sometimes it means the story feels very rushed.
This second volume of teleplay adaptations contains adaptations of the following season one episodes:
Arena
A Taste of Armageddon
Tomorrow is Yesterday
Errand of Mercy
Court Martial
Operation – Annihilate!
The City of the Edge of Forever
Space Seed
Some of you are saying “hey, those two are the famous episodes!” and to that, I respond “yes, they are!”
My favorite thing about these short stories is that they are short. In 13 to 15 pages I get a complete Star Trek adventure. Sure, the long novels are fun and in depth, but these were fun little Star Trek capsules. I should talk about the famous ones first, shouldn’t I?
Willful Child, by Steven Erickson
published in 2014
where I got it: purchased new
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Are you a fan of the movie Galaxy Quest? Do you enjoy quoting Zapp Brannigan and quoting things he might say? Are you a Star Trek fan who makes fun of the show in good fun and out of love? If you answered Yes to any of those questions, Steven Erickson’s Willful Child is for you.
Like many original Star Trek episode scripts, Willfull Child is not as a whole what I would describe as a good book. The pacing is off, the characters are pretty flat, the dialog is stilted. And all of that is part of the joke. Erikson is playing around with Star Trek tropes, science fiction tropes, humor tropes, and human exploration tropes and having buckets of fun with along the way. Captain Hardrian Sawback is the bastard child of Zapp Brannigan and Eric Cartman, the Terran Space Fleet’s mission is to subjugate or maybe obliterate as many life forms as possible, and the further you get into this book, the more you’ll be laughing. The country music programming joke is still my favorite.
And Yes, this is the same Steven Erickson who is famous for his Malazan Book of the Fallen series. After writing that many heavy fantasy novels, I’d say he more than deserves a humorous palette cleanser of a novel.
Ishmael by Barbara Hambly
Posted on: October 5, 2016
So, apparently I’m on a Star Trek kick?
Ishmael by Barbara Hambly
published in 1985
where I got it: purchased used
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When I saw this book at a used bookstore a while back, I couldn’t say no. I mean come on – Spock playing what looks like chess in what looks like it could be the wild west? Also? Any Spock story is a good story. And Barbara Hambly? Shut up and take my two bucks.
At Starbase 12, Kirk and Spock observe a Klingon transport ship behaving rather oddly. Spock manages to get aboard, and the next thing everyone knows, the ship has entered the mysterious storms of the nearby Tau Eridani Cloud and disappeared. Kirk blames himself for Spock’s disappearance and fears the worst.
Suffering from amnesia, Spock wakes up in the woods under the blue sky of a planet. The year is 1867 and he’s in Seattle, which is a muddy logging town on the frontier. Injured and weak, Spock is taken in and nursed back to health by Aaron Stemple. Nicknamed Ishmael, and introduced around as Stemple’s nephew, Spock’s memories very slowly return to him. He knows his homeworld is elsewhere, he has bits and pieces of memories of technology. Meanwhile, Stemple give Ishmael a job at his mill, and helps him learn about the politics of the Seattle community. The story rambles a bit, with Ishmael sharing his contemporary and progressive worldview, and inadvertently widening the worldview of those he befriends in Seattle. It doesn’t matter what Spock is doing, it’s always fun to watch him interact with humans who act impulsively and irrationally. And of course, I heard every line in my head in Leonard Nimoy’s voice.
Every Star Trek fan worth their weight in Romulan Ale remembers Voyager. So many firsts in this show – first female captain, first ST adventures solidly outside the Federation, first crew that wasn’t solid star fleet (or even academy graduates!), and I’d tell you about some other firsts, but they are late season spoilers so I ain’t telling. After a wide ranging Star Trek chat with a friend recently, I decided to give the series another go.
Voyager originally aired from 1995 until 2001. I was in high school in 1995 which means I watched the first three seasons religiously, and then who knows after that, because college. I vaguely know what happens at the end of the series, or at least I think I do, but once I get to the last season I’ll be coming across episodes I’ve never seen before.
Like all Star Trek shows, Voyager has great episodes, good episodes, and downright boring episodes. I’m using the Watch/Skip guide over at Liz Tells Frank so I can skip the boring episodes. In her spoiler-free rundown of each season, Liz lets you know which episodes are must watch for the over arching story line, and which can be skipped. Netflix numbers the 2-part pilot as 1 full episode, and Liz numbers the pilot as 2 episodes, so the numbering is off if you watch on Netflix, but the episode titles are correct. Here are my thoughts on the Season 1 episodes I’ve watched so far.
Chatting about Star Trek
Posted on: July 22, 2016
on Friday July 22nd, if you live in Southwestern Michigan, you can hear an edited version of our Star Trek chat on 102.1FM at 7:50am, 11:50am and 4:20pm. Or just click here to listen to us talk on and on and on and on.
http://wmuk.org/post/why-star-trek-endures
the Little Red Reviewer 
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