Persistent, Niggling Questions

[Nate the Great]

Betty white died today at 99.

PNQ: favorite White role?

My parents were huge Golden Girls fan, so I probably saw more of her in that than anyone else.

[Nate the Great]

A commenter on a YouTube NextGen clip dismissed the first two seasons as "boring"...


PNQ: Opinions?


I don't think the two seasons were "boring", I think that they were poorly written and directed. That's not the same thing.

[Nate the Great]

Inspired by Facebook...


PNQ: What Star Trek characters do you think would be worthy of holding Mjolnir?


Needlemouse uses the nine virtues of Odinism as a guideline: Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity (not just to a romantic partner, but to an ideal or mission), Discipline, Hospitality, Self-Reliance, Industriousness, and Perseverence.


In a general sense I think most Starfleet officers would qualify, but if you increase the level of virtue required you get some interesting thought experiments.



Obvious people who wouldn't qualify:


Any Ferengi. Duh.
A lot of Vulcans, they'd have trouble with Fidelity and Hospitality. And Courage in its truest sense.
Most Romulans and Cardassians. They put too much faith in the state, I think Truth and Honor would be big problems.

[Nate the Great]

I'm pondering the use of "fidelity" as a quality of a hero or noble warrior.



It derives from the Latin "fidelis", which indicates faithfulness or loyalty.


The Wikipedia page also introduces an approach that I hadn't considered, epitomized by the music industries use of "fidelity": "how close does the recording match the original?" That is, "how much do my actions match the intents of the institutions that I believe in?"



It's here that I think we run into a big problem with the concept of Batman handing Mjolnir. His actions may be in the name of the rule of law, but in his heart he acts in the name of what he thinks should be legal or not.



This is something mirrored by Thor at the start of his movie: might makes right, and he has might, so he must be right. A fallacy. This is one of the reasons Captain America can wield the hammer and Iron Man never had a chance.



So Starfleet officers would have to believe in the "gospel" of Starfleet to be worthy of the hammer.

[DrWho42]

Why won't IKEA ship me the blahaj shark?

[Nate the Great]

So I'm watching a review of "The Pegasus" again and the following occurs to me...


PNQ: Even if the Federation doesn't believe in cloaking devices, what about all the other galactic powers?


I mean, surely the Ferengi could've bought or stole cloaking tech by now. The Obsidian Order could've stolen cloaking tech by now (they had an embassy on Romulus, after all). The Breen, the Orion Syndicate, the list goes on and on.


Gene's admonition that Starfleet doesn't sneak around is idealistic but not realistic.



I wish that they had introduced more restrictions on cloaking devices than just "no shields or weapons". The most obvious one that I can think of is "no cloaks while at warp."



Second is "cloaks are so energy-intensive that you can only use it for X minutes." Or to follow up on STVI, say that ships under cloak must be specifically modified to contain all impulse and thruster exhaust until the ship drops cloak. After X minutes the tanks are full and you need to decloak to vent before you can cloak again.


Third is some sort of technobabble to say that cloaking devices put out some form of radiation that Klingons and Romulans can handle just fine, but is cumulatively toxic for all other races. Perhaps when the Romulans gave the tech to the Klingons in the first place they also shared the needed genetic modifications. This would be a good place to explain the Romulan forehead ridges.

[Nate the Great]

PNQ: What TV show have you seen all (or at least the vast majority of), but now regret wasting your time with?

Every so often I regret watching Love Hina. There are only like three jokes in that show that are repeated over and over.

I know that a lot of early dubbed anime have that problem, but still…

I don’t know how many of you have heard of Kimagure Orange Road. It also had a rather limited premise, but at least it had heart and made you feel for the characters.

[Nate the Great]

A comment on a YouTube video of Janeway's cameo in Nemesis...


"I don't want her as guest character-I WANTED A VOYAGER MOVIE."


PNQ: What could've been the plot of a Voyager movie?


Or a DS9 movie, while we're talking about it. Obviously an ENT movie would be our heroes preventing the Klingons or Romulans from interfering with the creation of the Federation, but what about the other two?


I mean, you couldn't have saved arriving home for a Voyager movie, it would've short-changed the TV viewers. And a key problem with Voyager is that there really isn't a reason for the crew to remain together after they get back.



An interesting TV movie would be Voyager returning to the Delta Quadrant ten years later with some sort of Federation-built equivalent to the Borg transwarp conduits and revisit some old friends like Neelix, but you couldn't put that in theaters.



Obviously a DS9 movie would be Sisko returning in time for Bajor to join the Federation. The enemy wouldn't be the Cardassians, it would be the Maquis (I refuse to believe that the Maquis could ever be completely eradicated, they have enough sense to remain decentralized enough to allow for a comeback). But again, TV movie, not theaters.

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

PNQ: What TV show have you seen all (or at least the vast majority of), but now regret wasting your time with?

Every so often I regret watching Love Hina. There are only like three jokes in that show that are repeated over and over.

I know that a lot of early dubbed anime have that problem, but still…

I don’t know how many of you have heard of Kimagure Orange Road. It also had a rather limited premise, but at least it had heart and made you feel for the characters.

Aside from sitting through Disney Afternoon day after day despite not being too fond of several of its cartoons? Nothing really. Slayers was mostly a disappointment, but even it had three or four good episodes in that first season and, like, I get the references in fanworks better now.

[Nate the Great]

A Reddit post brings up an interesting question: Is it really okay to superglue your LEGO sets together, especially if they're fragile?


I'm conflicted. LEGO is a construction toy, not a model set. The idea of paying that much money only to build a very specific thing and then putting it on a shelf seems...unnatural to me. That's what plastic models are for.



Then again, maybe I'm just an old fogey. I remember when LEGO was the following and nothing else: Castle, Town, Pirate, Space, DUPLO, Technic. That was it. No licensed nonsense, no set-specific pieces. You build, you take it apart, you build again.



Then again, the Reddit post was about LEGO flowers, which are more fragile than the usual creation. As long as you're not filling whole shelves, is it okay to superglue once in awhile?

[Nate the Great]

We're now two years away from the Bell Riots, and it's sad how close we are to Sanctuary Districts actually happening.


PNQ: What near-future event in Trek are you most scared of and most looking forward to?


Not counting World War III and the first warp flight, of course. I want to stay away from that stuff.



The cure for cancer will be found in this century according to "Fury."
According to "Where No Man..." the genetic potential for ESP will first be quantified.


The ozone layer is said to fail in this century, luckily this seems to have been averted.


"The Slaver Weapons" indicate that the Kzinti wars will also occur in this century, but one has to wonder how a planet that has just invented warp drive can effectively wage an interplanetary war.

[Nate the Great]

It's been a long-standing question, and today I saw that another YouTube video had been made on the subject:


PNQ: Why didn't Voyager set course for the Gamma Quadrant end of the Bajoran Wormhole? Wouldn't it be a shorter trip?


Well, I have another question...


PNQ: How did they know that they were in the Delta Quadrant in the first place?


Okay, let's handwave that one away, even if it implies that the locations and movements of all major stars in the galaxy have been charted (a dubious claim if you ask me). Voyager disappeared Stardate 48317. While the DS9 crew had heard rumblings of the Dominion, First Contact wasn't really had until "The Jem'Hadar", Stardate 48212. It had only been a month or so! The full picture of the Dominion couldn't have been known, especially the extents of "Dominion Space".



On the other hand, Janeway seemed to know that Borg space was on their present course at one point or another. Did she pick the lesser of two evils? Did she think that it would be easier for Voyager to slip past the Borg unnoticed than to go through the Dominion?

[Nate the Great]

Courtesy of Facebook...


PNQ: Which actor did the best portrayal of Sherlock Holmes?


I'm not the best judge, as I've never seen a traditional Holmes portrayal. I did enjoy the Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century cartoon and Great Mouse Detective.



I did watch the pilot of the Benedict Cumberbatch version. It was okay, but I wasn't hooked enough to watch any more.


So what do you guys think? I daresay John Barrymore and Basil Rathbone did okay, they're good actors. Did Ian McKellan do a good job in Mr. Holmes?

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

The cure for cancer will be found in this century according to "Fury."

Could happen at the rate we're going.

"The Slaver Weapons" indicate that the Kzinti wars will also occur in this century, but one has to wonder how a planet that has just invented warp drive can effectively wage an interplanetary war.

I bet the Ferengi could collapse your economy at a distance and win the war that way.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Did Ian McKellan do a good job in Mr. Holmes?

He did a very good job.

[Nate the Great]

I want to keep the Trek retrospectives on the 30th anniversary cycle, but I want to do another show during the summer.


PNQ: Opinions?


I know that I'll have to do Babylon 5 eventually, but I'm not ready for a project of that depth yet. Maybe next year I'll do the pilot movie for the 30th anniversary.


I also plan to eventually do all of Stargate, but that's a big project. Like, REALLY big.



So by process of elimination I'm down to Andromeda, Farscape, and Battlestar Galactica. Of the three I'm most familiar with Andromeda, I watched the first few seasons. I've seen bits and pieces of Farscape, but none of Battlestar Galactica. Which is weird, as my mother enjoyed them a lot (she was the one that introduced me to Trek in the first place).

[NAHTMMM]

I haven't watched any of those shows beyond a few minutes here and there, so I don't have any opinions.

(I've been very slowly covering nu Doctor Who on my blog, but with so little time and with other creative projects sucking up what little time I have, and having misplaced the current DVD, I'm treading water in S2.)

[Zeke]

I vote BSG. Your threads come from a perspective of knowing a lot about the show in question -- it would be interesting to see how the exact opposite scenario turns out.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

PNQ: Which actor did the best portrayal of Sherlock Holmes?

Oo, how'd I miss this one? I never shut up on this subject. The answer is Jeremy Brett in the Granada TV series. He was born to play Holmes, and he put himself into the role so completely it basically killed him. Amazingly, the whole series is on YouTube, so check it out!

(I do like Cumberbatch, and Downey Jr. for that matter, but they're not really playing the Conan Doyle character.)

[Nate the Great]

On notalwaysright.com someone mentioned that Bones had almost as many relationships as Kirk...


PNQ: Am I forgetting a lot of his girlfriends?


I can remember Nancy Crater, the one played by Julie Newmar, he tried hitting on Shaw, the one from the amusement park planet, the one from the asteroid ship, that's about it.

[Nate the Great]

PNQ: Do you think that the Progenitors are the same as the Preservers?


Quick recap. The Progenitors are the aliens from "The Chase", the first sentient race to evolve in the galaxy (or at least the Alpha Quadrant). The Preservers are the aliens from "The Paradise Syndrome", the ones that transplant populations of primitive cultures to other planets to give them a chance to evolve.



A few sources consider them to be the same thing, but I have doubts. The Progenitors were active billions of years ago, and the Preservers were active thousands of years ago.



A few expanded universe sources make them the same thing. My biggest problem is that the Progenitor message clearly indicated that they thought that their race was dying out, hence the need to plant DNA in primordial worlds.



A few people also connect them to the changelings, basically based on the same actress playing the Progenitor hologram and the Female Changeling. What idiots. Trek recycles actors all the time, it doesn't mean anything. Do we have to assume that Pulaski is a descendant of Miranda Jones solely because they share an actress?

[Nate the Great]

I gave the Jeremy Brett series two episodes to suck me in, and it didn't. Good acting all round, of course, but the problem is that I just don't find Sherlock Holmes particularly interesting. He's stiff, he's smug, he's cold, he's arrogant. And you just can't alter that personality all that much without ceasing to be an authentic Sherlock Holmes.