Hard Sell

2007.01.17 - Wednesday

'Star Trek XI' May Feature Both Old Kirk and Young Pike

Every time a new piece of news or new rumour comes out about the next Trek film, it makes it sound worse and worse. If this is really the direction J.J. Abrams is headed with this film, he's going to have one hell of a hard sell on his hands. While there are still some fans out there who long for the days of Kirk and Spock, their numbers aren't what they used to be, are dwindling quickly, and quite frankly, I refuse to believe that the only future for Star Trek lies in reliving its past glory.

I'll still see the movie, but Abrams seems to be making the hard job of revitalizing Star Trek even harder by going down this road.

The List

2007.01.12 - Friday

The Sci-Fi cliche list is underway. It will have a permanent link in the main content menu on the left. Let me know what you think so far, and enjoy.

Sci-fi Cliche

2007.01.03 - Wednesday

I think I'm going to start a sci-fi cliche list. I know my friend Chris had one going a while ago, but I want to try and throw one together that keeps getting added to. I thought of this yesterday when I realized another sci-fi cliche that I'm sick and tired of seeing in TV shows. The line usually goes something like this: "No, Sir. They're communicating in the only true Universal language, Mathematics."

Yeah, I suppose that's true, if you're talking to other Humans who don't speak English, or an alien race that just happens to also use base 10 math. What if all of their math is base 8, or 3, or 27? You're stuck. Even prime numbers aren't the same at that point. I suppose you could argue that maybe only in Star Trek, is the computer detecting the alien math patterns and converting them on the fly to our familiar, base 10 system, but doesn't that also suppose a distinctly human pattern recognition is being used? Star Trek already gets around too many issues with the ridiculous "Universal Translator", so I can't give it a pass on this one. Most other sci-fi can't even use the same excuse.

The truth is that math is no more universal than language, in that you need to understand the basic structure before you can make any progress. If an alien species were operating on a totally different structure than us, especially one which doesn't even look like a pattern to our way of thinking, how are we going to communicate?

Obviously we need to be able to talk to the aliens at some point in a sci-fi show, but does it really have to be through base 10 prime numbers every single time? Think of something new guys, it's 2007!