star trek

BookBin2015: Redshirts

~ LobaBlanca ~ 2 Comments

redshirts
What to do on a cold, rainy Saturday? Read a little, drink a little coffee (or a lot of coffee), work out while watching part of a documentary on Harlan Ellison, and then write some book reviews. Finally. Why? What do you do on a cold, rainy Saturday?

I read John Scalzi’s Redshirts back in January of this year, yet it has stuck with me as one of those delightful surprises that I need to add to my sci-fi collection at some point in the future (look at that, already giving you the final verdict).

First off, if you are not a fan of the original Star Trek series, then the term “Redshirt” might not mean anything to you (of course, with the proliferation of geekery in the mainstream pop culture lexicon now, it’s kind of hard not to know the term, but I digress as usual). Quick summation: The term refers to the fact that the unknown, usually unnamed extra thrown into the landing party with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy always wore the security officer’s tunic, which was red on the original show (it later changed to gold on TNG, but the term remained). That officer rarely made it back to the ship, thus equating the red tunic with the survival short straw on any away mission. Because, really, did you think one of the Trek Triumvirate was going to bite it on that planet, Ensign Ricky?

Therefore, naming your novel after the unluckiest crew members of the original Enterprise guarantees you geek points right out of the gate. Of course, I instantly thought that it was going to be a Galaxy Quest-esque parody full of yucks and insider haha moments penned specifically to appeal to thoroughbred nerds.

I was not expecting it to take a wonderfully surprising sharp turn that would steer us all, character and reader alike, into a fantastical meta mixing of fantasy and reality that never once felt anything less than sincere to me as I went along willingly and happily for the ride.

Scalzi takes something so well-known among genre fans and twists it by giving it far more plausibility than the original show could ever afford it (why did the Redshirts always die on the original show? Because they weren’t Shatner, Nimoy, or Kelley…now stop asking stupid questions!) Instead, Scalzi takes the question seriously, examines it from more than the patently obvious answer, and provides a patently wonderful alternative response.

I could say more, but I don’t want to spoil this for anyone. It’s fun, it’s funny, it’s intriguing, and it’s far more than the parody I was expecting. It’s still whimsical and at times flat-out ridiculous, but Scalzi sells it in such a way that you willingly buy even the weirdest of the story’s elements.

Final Verdict: Seriously, were you not paying attention? I already told you, I’m adding the book to my collection…and you should add it to your reading list. If you love science fiction and Star Trek, then you, too, may love this book.

Flashback Friday: Adolescent Ephemera

~ lobablanca

I swear this isn’t a cop-out, denizens.

Okay, it sort of is a co-pout. I’m still working on that solution for how to either cram more hours into one day or more work into the time that I have. I’m not quite there yet. I’ve got a few other posts that I’m working on (including one that I’ve been working on since…around Mayish of this year o_O). But in the interim, I thought you might enjoy this random photo that I discovered earlier this week while going through some digital photo archives:

100_2975

This is just a sampling of the weirdness from my adolescence that I deemed important enough for my parents to have to transport to another state and into another attic in another house from the one in which I lived. Totally understandable, though, right? I mean who wouldn’t want a bajillion different stuffed Scooby Doos (and a mini pillow!!) and mini posters of Data and Dr. Crusher.

[Loba Tangent: As much as I love both of these characters, these poses have always bothered me, especially for Dr. Crusher. Why is the doctor seen getting ready to shoot someone? Couldn’t they have taken a picture of her with a medical tricorder? A hypospray? Either one of those would have been more appropriate than this Hippocratic anathema…]

Also, check the basketball on the bottom shelf. I bought that at a Hardee’s somewhere along the I-95 corridor, during the first part of our senior class trip. Ah, our class trips. Now those are stories I should tell sometime. When the therapy is finished. And the PTSD and nightmares have finally stopped.

See you soon, denizens. I hope…

BookBin2013: A Hard Rain

~ lobablanca

ahardrain

I always view long flights as the perfect excuse to tune out the entirety of existence for a nice dive into a book or two…or more, depending on just how far I happen to be flying. Recently, I flew to Hawaii. Lots of time for lots of reading (and sleeping, but mostly reading).

I didn’t want to take a lot of thick, heavy books (I wanted to save ample space for important things like all the booze and coffee that I may or may not have bought while there), but I also wanted to take enough books to cover my bases and provide a nice variety of choices.

Thank goodness for Kindle! I loaded mine up with lots of selections, including several TNG books that I have had on my reading list for quite a while. Top choice was Dean Wesley Smith’s “Dixon Hill” novel A Hard Rain. I actually referenced this book in a Doctober post as one of the few TNG novels to actually feature Dr. Crusher on the cover. It was also the only book from this admittedly short list that I had not yet read.

I wish I had left it as unread.

I’ve never read anything else by Smith, but he wrote the novel adaptation of The Core. Do with that what you will (and I already suspect what many of my nerdier denizens will do with it). I got the impression from this story (and its blatantly open ending) that perhaps Pocket Books had planned on making Dixon Hill novels a spinoff to the mainstream TNG novels. I think A Hard Rain was the only one actually written, and I can understand why the idea was abandoned (if it ever existed).

With A Hard Rain, Smith has written a rather chaotic and muddled…tribute? parody?…to the detective novel, using the world of Dixon Hill as his foundation. Perhaps it’s a great novel to detective fans. It’s not a great TNG novel, I can attest to that.

Then again, it’s been years since I last read my TNG novels. Perhaps I have simply outgrown the storytelling parameters of Trek literature? I feel once again that I need to revisit these books, if only to finally put this question to rest. However, I fear that what I will find is that all the books I once loved will now just make me sad. And slightly appalled.

Anyway, I’m still not wild about detective novels, so that aspect didn’t really appeal to me. I’m also not a fan of Smith’s writing style for this particular book (again, I’m assuming that he doesn’t typically write like this and was probably striving to mimic popular detective novel styles). Additionally, I wasn’t all that crazy about the way the Dixon Hill story overlapped the TNG storyline in a rather non-linear and subsequently nonsensical way. Actually, the “real” storyline was more absurd than the Dixon Hill one…although the denouement was ridiculous for both stories. I didn’t like other things about this novel, but at this point I feel like I’m unnecessarily phasering a dead targh. I will say this, however: I never again want to read the phrase “Luscious Bev.”

Final Verdict: I have deleted A Hard Rain from my Kindle. I still have the master file saved elsewhere, but I doubt I will ever revisit it.

Photo Fun Friday: Prophets’ Pogue

~ lobablanca

A little known fact about the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine two-part episode “Past Tense” is how much it was altered between first draft and final product. While the storyline about Commander Sisko and Dr. Bashir becoming involved in the “Bell Riots” was always there, what wasn’t was the subplot about Jadzia ending up in the past with them and her quasi-romantic interaction with Christopher Brynner. In fact, there was a completely different subplot that involved Major Kira and Chief O’Brien getting lost even further back in the past during their trip through the timelines in search of Sisko and Bashir.

Jadzia (who stayed on the Defiant when Sisko and Bashir attempted their ill-fated beamdown to their present-day San Francisco) ended up losing Kira and O’Brien as they materialized in 1960s Haight-Ashbury San Francisco. The episode then alternated between Jadzia and Odo working to rescue all four lost officers, Sisko and Bashir in the Bell Riot timeline, and Kira and O’Brien in their own hippy love-in timeline. This subplot was meant to provide the humorous juxtaposition to Sisko and Bashir’s story and showed Kira and O’Brien forming a band as a means of making enough money to get a place to live and food to eat while they tried to figure out how to contact Dax and Odo. Their band, Prophets’ Pogue, was a BajoraCeltic folk fusion that almost instantly caught on because of the familiarity of the Celtic sound mixed with the exotic alien stylings brought in by Kira’s Bajoran roots. Soon, they found themselves with a recording contract, mingling with the likes of Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, the Doors…all wanting to know more about that groovy, trippy sound and the weird lead singer who always wore a band-aid over her nose.

There were even hints at a developing romance between Kira and O’Brien when they began to lose hope that they would ever get back to their time and their respective partners. Though lost to this two-part episode, this concept would later appear during the Season 5 storyline in which Major Kira plays surrogate for the O’Briens after Keiko is injured and Dr. Bashir is forced to perform an emergency transfer of the fetus into Major Kira in order to save it.

Unfortunately, the cost of the royalties and the CGI to add the likenesses of all these famous 60s rock musicians became too prohibitive to completing the subplot as originally envisioned (it wouldn’t be until the fifth season episode “Trial and Tribble-ations” that they would finally get the opportunity to mix the DS9 cast with CGI characters from the past, only this time it would be Captain Kirk and his crew). Also, the writers realized that they needed a subplot that worked more in tandem with the primary storyline rather than detracting from it the way they ultimately felt this subplot did. The script was reworked, that subplot was traded in for the Jadzia subplot, but in deference to the idea, the writers left in Kira and O’Brien’s brief moment in the “peace and love” era.

One of the recently discovered props that was prepared for the original script was this cover for the Prophets’ Pogue debut album, p

Poster Picks (and Bonus Movie Review): Cloverfield

~ LobaBlanca

I haven’t done a two-fer like this since my Runaways review, but I was inspired by my recent re-viewing of Cloverfield as part of my month-long Halloween movie marathon.

So, first, the poster. I’ve decided to go with the initial teaser poster, which had no text on it beyond the movie release date. That’s right, it didn’t even have the movie title on it at first. But, honestly, when you use imagery like this poster uses? You’re just going to attract even more attention by the fact that all you’ve included is the release date. Brilliant bit of marketing, no?

So, no text, no name, no tagline. Only a minimally written date in a nice white font, with dots as separators. Obviously, we’ve got to figure some things out based on what we do have. Let’s start with the primary focus of the poster: a headless Statue of Liberty. Not just headless though. From the exposed, jagged remains of the support frame, the torn copper, and the plume of debris and smoke, it’s obvious that Lady Liberty’s head was removed rather violently. By something very large.

And that very large something has headed into Manhattan. See the wave pattern in the water, leading from the Statue of Liberty toward the destruction within the city? Something has moved from the harbor into the streets…and it is hell-bent on taking down Manhattan. Look at the wreckage of the buildings that were in its way when it came ashore. Look at the plumes of smoke rising from the heart of the city. Look at the helicopters hovering overhead, so incredibly tiny in comparison with the surrounding damage.

Whatever has done all this is large enough that those dinky little choppers aren’t going to do much else besides probably annoy the hell out of it.

Not much else there though, eh?

Not so fast. There are conspiracy theories about “hidden images” in the Cloverfield posters. First, there’s the attacking sea turtle head:

See it? It’s the cloud shape to the right of Lady Liberty’s torch. It seriously looks either like an angry sea turtle…or a peener monster. Personally, I don’t want to think about either attacking the Statue of Liberty…

Next on the list? The smoke cloud monster:

Now, this one is a little more convincing and impressive if it’s true. Take the original poster, duplicate it, flip it horizontally and line up the edges…and voila! See the face? It actually kind of does look like what’s ultimately revealed as the Cloverfield monster. Or any other monster from any other J.J. Abrams movie. The man’s about as original as a Xerox machine.

Which brings me to…

Bonus Movie Review

I hadn’t seen Cloverfield since I went to see it in the theater. I did remember liking it enough that when I saw a used copy for sale for a couple bucks, I went ahead and picked it up (looking back, however, I was probably remembering the fun I had with the friends I went with rather than the actual movie). However, even more vivid was my memory of nearly hurling from the unrelenting shaky cam action. Not even The Blair Witch Project made me feel quite as queasy as Cloverfield did. Every time I thought about watching the DVD, that memory would drown out all others and I would simply put it back on my shelf.

I am pleased to report that the shaky cam was almost unnoticeable to me on the small screen.

More noticeable to me on this second viewing, however, is how truly unoriginal and lazy J.J. Abrams is as a filmmaker. Admittedly, my opinion of him is forever tarnished by the hot mess he ladled into my lap in 2009 with his Trek abomination. That was when I first decided that he was lazy. He could have made an original science fiction film. Instead, he usurped the name of a globally revered science fiction franchise, had some hack writers throw together a script that isn’t even worthy of being pulped into Communist-grade toilet paper, and smeared his Star Wars-loving paws all over a legacy that is so beyond his reach, it’s pathetic.

Why people wouldn’t let me space him for his crimes, I still don’t understand.

But I digress.

Back to Cloverfield. Most people have probably heard it described by genre fans as “Blair Witch Meets Godzilla.” That’s pretty accurate as descriptions go. Although I think a real match-up of the Blair Witch versus Godzilla would not only be awesome, it would be far more original than this movie. It’s fairly derivative as “monster attacking the city” movies go. The only “inventive” addition made here is the Barf-O-Rama shaky cam “found footage” aspect, which wasn’t really all that new by this point anyway.

What’s most troubling, however, and what makes me label Abrams as lazy, is the fact that there are several scenes in this movie that tap directly into a pre-programmed societal fear that was developed on September 11, 2001. New York under attack. Buildings toppled in the middle of the City That Never Sleeps. Plumes of smoke and debris roaring through the heart of Manhattan. Survivors trying to escape by foot on bridges leading off the island.

Some of the scenes from Cloverfield are almost frame-for-frame images that we witnessed on auto-repeat on all the 24-hour news channels that were covering that awful day in 2001. For Abrams and his band of filmmakers to tap into the still raw emotions of that day for what otherwise would have been just another cheesy monster movie (with CGI that has not aged well at all in some areas) feels cheap…and lazy.

I know that great horror often taps into our darkest fears and exploits them. This, however…I don’t know. Maybe I’m being too critical because I hate Abrams so very much. Although I do remember feeling displeased by these scenes the first time I saw the movie as well. Back in the halcyon days in which I still had hope that Abrams wouldn’t punch Trek fans in the collective naughty bits with a power converter from Tosche station while blaring Beastie Boys the whole time.

Douchey hipster tool.

All that aside, though, is this a good monster movie? Meh. There are far better ones. Far more original ones. At best, it’s brainless background fodder for when you want to watch something that’s not going to require any form of activity from you beyond blinking occasionally. I know that there were a bunch of Web sites out there, giving clues about what the monster was…tapping into the new way of presenting a movie as a holistic “new media” experience. Something that Abrams would try again with his Trek movie…only this time it wasn’t for free. “Hey, fans, does none of this make any sense to you? Well, that’s because you have to go buy the accompanying comic book! Then it probably still won’t make sense…but we’ll be that much richer!”

Okay, now I’m just making myself angry…

Photo Fun Friday: CSI: Bajor

~ lobablanca

Crossing streams again, denizens. This one started about a month ago with a conversation I had online regarding which Star Trek alien Jorja Fox would look best as (yes, my world really is this geeky…and, consequently, this fabulous). I contend it’s Bajoran all the way. Then again, I think nose ridges make anyone look smexy.

I love Bajorans.

Then, yesterday, I may or may not have received several CSI graphic novels in the mail, as I mentioned in my BookBin review of my first CSI comic series. As I casually flipped through said novels to check out the artwork, I started once again to think about how similar in marketing approaches CSI is to Trek. Which got me thinking again about a CSI/Trek crossover (what, you thought I’d forgotten about that request?).

Since I’ve already set a precedent regarding dragging my favorite CSI into other geeky forays, I figured why not? If she can be a vampire investigator, why can’t she be a Bajoran investigator next?

And so I give you…

Buckle up, denizens. It’s bound to get geekier from here…

BookBin2011: Seven of Nine

~ lobablanca

“Best laid plans” entry here. While perusing Trek books on Amazon.com a while ago, I discovered that there was a Voyager book, written by Christie Golden, all about Seven of Nine. It was called…Seven of Nine. Based on the creative title alone, who wouldn’t want to buy a copy of this book, right?

Yeah, okay, I’m being unduly snarky and I’m barely into this review. Bet you can tell how this is going to turn out, right?

Anyway, I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have a Seven of Nine book on my shelf, right next to that novel all about Captain Janeway? Janeway and Seven, together again.

It would be nice. But it ain’t happening with this book.

I’m beginning to get a little bit frustrated with Trek novels in general. Minus the joy that the DS9 Season 8 books have brought me, I haven’t really loved any of the Trek books I’ve read in a long time. Even Mosaic was barely a notch above meh, which either means that my tolerance for Trek cheese is diminishing or the books are declining in quality (I suspect it’s a little bit of both, with possibly a smidgen more of the latter…I still loves me some cheese).

I’d say this particular novel is noteworthy only for the fact that it’s a discordant amalgamation of several different Trek plot lines, stuck together with duct tape, chewed gum, and kite string. Just off the top of my head, I’d say that this had aspects of “Violations,” “The Raven,” “Infinite Regress,” “Hard Time,” “Ex Post Facto,” “Phantasms,” and “The Survivors.” Plus, bits and bobs from pretty much every major Seven of Nine-specific Voyager episode made up to the point of this book’s writing.

Additionally, I’ve read so much Voyager fanfiction (there’s a confession for you all) that most of the time I was reading this book I was thinking: A) Most of the fanfic I’ve read was better written; and B) Why aren’t the characters in this story behaving the way they do in the fanfic I like? Because, honestly? I think most of the fanfic writers have a better understanding of the Voyager crew than Golden seems to have.

But maybe that’s just me.

Whatever the reasons, I simply didn’t like this book. Didn’t like the plot. Didn’t like the character depictions. Didn’t like. Period.

Final Verdict: Alas, poor Captain Janeway will have to remain by herself on my virtually Voyager-free bookshelf for a bit longer. This book shall not pass.