Last week’s Blog For a Brass Button, asked:
What do you hate — as well as love — about steampunk?” What are the books that should or shouldn’t be included in the genre, and what is it with all the clockwork gears, after all? Do we need steampunk laptops? Conferences? Fashion shows? Who’s doing it right and most importantly, who’s doing it wrong? What do you think of remakes of classics in steampunk – such as this steampunk Star Trek episode?
And the winner, hands down, was Chuck with his scene from an unwritten, truly steampunk, novel:
I was only a half block from my apartment. I turned the corner and…
Damn! Should have known — cold day like it was, lots of heat running through the pipes under the streets. That’s when they always show up.
I ducked back behind the corner, hoping they hadn’t seen me. But I’d gotten a decent look at them. There had to be four, maybe five of the hoodlums, or maybe more — hard to count, considering their wispy transparency and how they tend to merge into one another. They were all leaning — cool, tough, watchful — against a parked car, looking for the next opportunity to impose their brand of trouble on decent, innocent people like me. (And did the car even belong to one of them? Can people made out of steam even drive?)
I’d seen them gang up on people before, heard their taunts…
“Got asthma, huh? I hear humidity’s bad for that.”
“Stop saturatin’ yerself! Stop saturatin’ yerself!”
“Too hot, ya say? Well I hear it ain’t the heat, it’s the humidity. HAW HAW HAW!”
“Nice book store. It’d be a shame if your stock got wet.”
“Oh, hey, just went to the hair salon, didja?”
“What ya gettin’ all steamed for, huh? HAW HAW!”
…or even something simple as…
“Nice glasses.”
Where were the damn police? It almost seemed like the city had given up on what used to be a decent neighborhood. There was some ridiculous talk of whether the police had jurisdiction and so forth.
And what about the place these thugs came from — the pipes? Was this the best kind of people the pipes had to offer? Maybe the pipes had their own criminal element for a time, and whatever government existed down there managed to achieve some illusion of success by chasing these thugs up here. But dropping your problems in somebody else’s lap is no solution, and certainly no good for my neighborhood. I made a mental note to find out who I could call to complain.
It was obvious nobody was going to do anything about these guys any time soon. I was on my own, but I wasn’t going to be the next victim — no sir, not me. I decided to take the long way home — detour a few blocks, cross a distant part of the street where they wouldn’t notice me, and make my way to the alley behind my apartment.
I started walking.
Was that a hissing sound I heard? No, I was just paranoid.
Mail us to collect your moist winnings, Chuck.
This week, how could we talk about anything but Star Trek? With the movie opening this week, we’re wondering what are people’s favorite and least favorite episodes of the past. We’ve run our picks from the original series, and we’ve got more lists for ST: Next Generation, Deepspace Nine, Voyager, and whatever the one is that I’m missing coming up, along with other interesting Star Trek content, including a column about slash that should stir some controversy. Let the Trekkian revels begin!
I’ve been trying to think of a favorite episode for the last half hour and I keep changing my mind. Since I can barely decide on which incarnation is my favorite, let alone my favorite episode, I decided to go with trying to decide my favorite Star Trek series.
First off, the original series it out. I’m sorry, but I’m in my twenties and wasn’t even born yet when it was on the air. I’ve seen only a handful of the original episodes and the only one I can remember is the tribles. So, due to an unfamiliarity and complete lack of nostalgia the original series is out of contention.
Star Trek: The Next Generation. This was is my original series. It’s the one grew up watching and introduced me to the Star Trek universe. Captain Picard is the first person I think of when you say Star Trek. So this series gets major nostalgia and familiarity points.
Deep Space Nine. This had the best plots and story arcs, and the teens in it were way less annoying than Wesley Crusher (even if I did have a small crush on him). DS 9 also has the most comprehensive and well-formulated alien cultures. Plus I just love Doctor Bashir.
Voyager was fun and had some good episodes, but never got as complex and interesting as DS 9.
Hmm…I think the winner for my favorite is going to have to be DS 9. While I have seen more of TNG thanks to syndication, now that you can find so many episode online I’ll have to back and rewatch DS 9, or track down the DVDs at the library. Yeah for the new movie inspiring me to go back to old favorites!
TNG was my first Star Trek as well. I never could get into the original.
As for episodes: anything with Q (the original). Despite all the extra suspension of disbelief he required (and that’s on top of what’s needed for the rest of the show) he was always so much fun. An excellent counter-balance to Picard’s seriousness. And he set off the whole Borg fiasco.
Oh my goodness, how could I have forgotten about Q? Wow, that really brought back a flood of memories. Picard on trial for all the crimes of humanity. The Borg. Q freaking about about Guinan. Qs ridiculous outfits. The time he wanted Capt. Janeway to have his kid…and for some reason thoughts of Q segued into the memory of Data as Sherlock Holmes battling the holo deck version of Moriarty. My mind is such a strange place.
It has been announced – future Star Trek reboots will go Western Steampunk! You heard it here first.
I was always a bigger Star Wars fan, but Star Trek had a couple of things Star Wars didn’t?
* Tolerance amongst species, you say? Nope, you don’t get much more diverse than the Mos Eisley Cantina, plus, Star Wars had interpreter droids, and many characters actually learned other people’s languages, rather than rely on handwavium tech that seamlessly translates everything to English. I can’t think of anything more tolerant and accepting than actually learning somebody else’s language.
* Snazzy uniforms? Nope, cause if by snazzy, you mean spandex unitards and foam vests, that’s a big No.
* Cool space ships? Though the Enterprise itself was pretty neat, it can’t beat TIE Fighters, X-Wings, Star Destroyers, or the coveted Millennium Falcon. Not even the Romulan Warbird or the Klingon Bird of Prey is that cool. Certainly not the BORG ships, which were about as imaginative as turning a pair of your sneakers into a spaceship when Christmas came and went and Luke and Han still didn’t get that snowspeeder to fly around in when you were 9. Dude, it’s a Rubic’s Cube. Get over yourselves, Star Trek SFX dept.
*Cloaking devices? We’re getting warmer, but still no. Big deal, you still have to show up when you shoot at somebody. In the vastness of infinite space, how easy is it really to spot a spaceship the size of an aircraft carrier amongst stars, planets, nubulae, and stars. That’s like looking for a particular tuna at the bottom of the ocean.
* Betazoids? Other than the untamed libido of Deanna Troi’s mom, they aren’t nearly as cool as Jedi that can frak with your mind.
* Slave Girls of Perseid Omicron IV? You know, the green chicks. I see your Terran dancers and raise you Twileks at Jabba’s palace.
* Government based on knowledge, enlightenment, furthering the advancement of multi-world species, and intergalactic fraternity? Naw, the universe is much more interesting when it’s run by slug-like gangsters, cyborg Force-wielding Dark Lords of the Sith, and rag-tag freedom fighters.
* The Prime Directive. Seriously? That’s like the WORST part of Star Trek. “Don’t mess with other cultures on other worlds! I mean it!” Well then, you’d just better avoid going to those planets in the first place. Thus ends the Federation and the whole point of Roddenberry’s one government world. The only time it is interesting is when the captains violate this premise.
So, what is better about Star Trek? The TRANSPORTER. This thing is frakkin’ awesome! Not only can you “beam” (excellent word by the way) to other places, but you can avoid that whole thing with making planetfall or taking off again. BAM! You are just there! Total instant gratification. Plus there is the risk of being lost in transporter subspace and getting turned into a gigantic Lt. Barkely-devouring/loving worm! Excellent! Or else, you can wind up in that sucker long past your expiration date, such as the whole Kirk incident with Generations. Why J.T. wasn’t a worm is anybody’s guess, but that’s what rocks about the transporter! It’s the proverbial box of chocolates with high amounts of energy and arrays and blasting your atoms across space. It even cures venereal disease, hence Riker and Kirk’s continued existence without mega-doses of antibiotics after their “first contact” with aliens they encountered. I love the transporter device!
Even the panel to operate it was bitchin’! It was like O’Brien or Mr. Scott were the sound-mixin’est DJ’s of the Federation, running that high-tech sound board with mad skillz. Sure, they just pushed the bar up or down, but I had the feeling that unless they did it right, it would have the same effect as trying to zero in on a radio station on your clock radio. Either wake up to your favorite tunes, or some creepy religious station that immediately ruins your day at 6:59 a.m. Or worse yet, empty space. Which is often where the baddies got projected in the grittier episodes/movies.
So, why didn’t Star Wars have an equivalent? Cause they knew Star Trek had them beat with this one awesome creation. Anything else would be a pale immitation, and forever be compared with Star Trek. There is no getting around this one. I love the transporter.
While not my favorite episode, the Star Trek TNG where Q abducts the Enterprise crew in order to play Robin Hood led to my all time favorite Star Trek moment:
Worf: “I am NOT a merry man!”
I gotta sit this one out…when I first became a Star Wars freak in 4th grade I used to get offended to an innappropriate degree if someone insinuated that I liked Star TREK and not Star WARS. It just never hooked me the way SW IV – VI did. Anyway, I have no doubt that the new Star Trek will blow Star Wars I – III out of deep space, but that kinda goes without saying :0P
Any suggestions for awesome ST episodes that might change my mind about ST?
I don’t even have to think about this one.
For Next Gen, it was the episode where Piccard is kidnapped and left on a planet with an alien captain from a species that communicates in stories.
How do you communicate if you don’t know another person’s cultural references?
And ST answered the question. Learn the other person’s cultural references, because when you do, you can understand them. When you do, you can talk to them, and they can talk to you. Communication can happen.
And communication is, to mix my show metaphors, a sonic spanner that can fix anything.
I still tear up when I watch Patrick Stewart telling the story of Gilgamesh, and when I watch him tell the alien captain’s number one what happened on the planet. To me that one show embodies all the best of Trek philosophy.
“For Next Gen, it was the episode where Piccard is kidnapped and left on a planet with an alien captain from a species that communicates in stories.”
Yes, yes, and YES. Love that episode. I used to use it in a creative writing class in order to talk about metaphor.
Wasn’t there one in the original series when they went to earth in the present, and Kirk explains Spock’s ears by saying that he got his head stuck in a ricepicker?
I haven’t seen it personally, but I have heard the worst episode is Spock’s Brain.
Wow interesting question. I love the original series even though I never saw them ‘live’. I do, however, believe the original series still catches what Star Trek was meant to be. I’d say that from a series perspective though I dig the movies the most. They’re edgier than any of the series and there is more money for special effects. The writing was great and for me they are the ‘episodes’ I remember most. Who can watch ST II and not get choked up at the ending? How many great ST quotes came out of ST:II and ST:VI? Just those two movies alone really show Kirk, Spock and McCoy at their mother-loving best.
Kirk shouting, “Khan!!”
McCoy yelling, “Lock and Load!”
and who can forget, “I have been and always shall be your friend.” (which happens to be repeated in the newest Star Trek movie)
So for me the movies are my favorite ‘series’ with II, V, VI, and VIII being my favorite. The newest ‘episode’ is going to rank right up amongst those as well. Long Live Star Trek.
Testing something: