Trek Website Review: Star Trek: Intrepid (Scottish).

This website is part of a collection of websites whose productions interact and address one another. Here is a chronology:

http://en.hiddenfrontier.com/index.php/FAQ:_Chronology

I will review the Hidden Frontier website and its offerings under a separate blog heading. However, the chronology is very welcome.

http://www.starshipintrepid.net/
This website offers it's own set of Trek TV shows with a unique crew and cast. They are not produced or released in the order they should be watched, but the reviews, below, will guide you about what order to watch the shows in. Non-costumed Trekkies like me can be grateful for costumed Trekkies like these who feed our habit with grace and creativity.

Release 1 : Heavy Lies the Crown
(47 Minutes)
FIND DOWNLOAD LINKS HERE: http://www.starshipintrepid.net/downloads.htm

This is a great introduction to a new Trek crew set late in the TNG/Voyager Timeline/Universe. The entire cast is from the UK, and most are Scottish. It took a bit of getting used to, for those of us used to space aliens speaking California English. But then, if you can buy a Brit playing a Frenchman, and a Canadian playing a Scottsman, why not a Scottsman playing a guy who is half Romulan?

The ship is the same class/type as Voyager, but it's not on the other side of the galaxy, it's on the edge of Federation Space trying to protect a collection of colonists who don't want Starfleet there at all, and who have crazy conspiracy theories ready to accuse the Federation of multiple crimes. As an American, it occurred to me that this may have been exactly how we sounded to the Brits from the early 1600s through the 1770s. Nutty Americans, religious fanatics, exiled criminals, foreigners from all across Europe, accusing the UK of taxation without representation and plans to enslave us while we join in triangular trade which gets slaves to North America, and British troops, including aliens (Germans, not space aliens) are paid by the crown to protect the trouble-making colonials... who, oh yeah, STARTED the war (with the French in the 1760s) the colonies then didn't want to pay for... I rather liked this Trek take on it. Next, they are attacked by red swarms.. not Native Americans, red spaceships. The Scottish Trekkies may have had no such thing in mind, but it worked for me, big time. I loved this show. It has the morals of TOS, the fun of NextGen, the intrigue and complexity of DS9, ... I don't want to say too much and ruin it for you. Take the 45 minutes and WATCH IT YOURSELF. I enjoyed this webcast more than the US$140 million Star Trek Movie just released.

It ruins nothing to say that there is no 'crown' or royalty of any kind here, just leadership. The dialogue is fully English and the expressions are familiar, but not how Trek usually uses the language. The away team is on a planet which is the beautiful Scottish countryside, and is very easy on the eyes. There was a dark, undergroundish Federation group of MI-5/CIA type enforcers they call Charybdis who act outside Federation laws who showed up for very briefly on the TV show, I think on TNG. Well, two of them are aboard this ship. They have secret orders even the acting captain isn't privy to.

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The next show one should watch in this sequence is actually the one they just completed, which is the forth one they completed. They are not shooting the shows in sequence. It is only the only other show which is not a short show. This show is about 30 minutes.

Release 4 - Transitions and Lamentations
FIND DOWNLOAD LINKS HERE: http://www.starshipintrepid.net/dl_episode4.htm

We get to know this crew better. Most Federation member worlds seem to have somebody on board this small ship. Most speak with a Scottish accent, which is easier for a non-Brit to follow than if they had mixed it up. (There are a few English folk involved but they are minor, and everyone throughout the world easily follows London English). We are again treated to both crew tensions and space battles. We already feel like we know the captain, and are starting to know his bridge crew.

The red spaceships are very uneven in size, some bigger than the Intrepid, some the size of a duck. In addition, we see the jellyfish-like flying critters who built and fly them. The Betazoid crew member can't read them because thinking is so different than that of humanoids.

Lots of space battles, too. The small red spaceships can operate in the planetary atmosphere, and the battle includes the away team which finds 2000 year old Romulan artifacts. Beautiful graphics, beautiful countryside.

The Intrepid crew is trying to ward off expansive invaders. We hear the MI5-CIA type talking about their role in a sequence of flashbacks to a meeting in a bar... with an electronic cone of silence which made me keep thinking more about Get Smart and CONTROL than James Bond and MI5 or TNG. But aside from the uncertain privacy, we soon find out even the MI5-CIA guy doesn't really know the whole story. Maybe those colonists and their conspiracy theories weren't so nutty after all.

Captain Hunter recruits the Lt. Commander who was captain of the small Federation vessel wreaked in the course of this story as his No. 1. We are warned there is going to be a contrast of command styles, with Capt. Hunter more likely to consult his crew, (think Obama) while the new No. 1 is more likely to give orders and expect them to be obeyed quickly and without question.
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Release 2 : Where There's a Sea
This is actualy the THIRD video in terms of the story's chronology. 11 minutes.

Captain Hunter is none too happy to get secret orders from Charybdis in this short story.

Orion traders are attacking Federation vessels. There's a war on crime here, and they want to take down the century old Orion Syndicate. I hope they have better luck than the Italian state.

An ending twist makes the merchant space crew who are part of the settlement even more unhappy with Star Fleet.
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Release 3 : Turning Point
(7 Minutes)
This is the forth video for the story's chronology.

In the course of being questioned, the captured Orion trader claims to be responsible for the death of the wife of Lieutenant Matthew Cole.

****
There are references to two stories on the website scheduled for release this year (2009). One of them, the Stone Unturned, includes Jean Luc Picard, but played by a different actor. Run time will be 30 minutes. Another, Machinations, will be just 10 minutes, and apparently follows Transitions and Lamentations. Both are expected to be released this year. I will keep checking back to the website and review them here when they are released.

Further down the road, they are working on scripts for Bit Patterns, The Convictions of Demons, Unnecessary Evils and Out of the Darkness. I can hardly wait!

I hope there is some way these people can make a few bucks off of this so they can produce more. What fun they are to watch!

Angels and Demons.

First, a confession. I never read the book, and I'm not a big fan. So I'm a lot less fussy about what is likely to be at most one of three or four movies than I am about Star Trek. Damn it Jim, I'm a Trekkie, not a symbolist!

I enjoyed Angels and Demons a lot. Happily, I never saw the plot twist coming, in spite of thinking it odd that people just shot the head of the Swiss Guards without giving him a chance to drop his weapon. I thought the critics were wrong in most of what they said. For example, I heard and read that the physics was idiotic. This only showed that the critics are unfamiliar with The Standard Model, which has formed the basics of particle physics since the 1970s. The great search for the god particle is real... it' the Higgs boson. It's not "Angels and Demons" that has particle physics wrong, it's the movie critics.

That said, Angels and Demons, while head and shoulders above The DaVinci Code in it's understanding of the Roman Catholic Church, is still infested by misguided notions about the relationship between the Church and scientific truth. the Roman Catholic Church is not against science, it just thinks that fertilized eggs are people, and you shouldn't kill people. Even 400 years ago Galileo didn't really get into trouble until he published a popular pamphlet in which the guy who stated the Pope's position was called "The Idiot." The insistence by atheists that since the Church punished Galileo 400 years ago (and more for insulting the Church than for disagreeing with it), the Church opposes science is, to paraphrase Galileo, idiotic.

And before you conclude I'm blogging for the Church, I'm not even a Christian. I just don't feel the need to insult Christians without cause or basis. I don't believe a fertilized egg has a soul. The traditional time a soul enters the body, for most of the last 2000 years, was at quickening. I see no reason to change that belief. However, that disagreement does not blind me to the fact that the Church believes it is saving lives, not stopping science. In Angels and Demons, cardinals and bishops that support science are identified as 'liberal'. In fact, this is not a matter of dispute in the Church. At least those in the Church that supported truth was shown to win in this film.

In sum, Movie good, critics bad.

Star Trek Movie (Star Trek XI)

This is not your Grandfather's Star Trek (TOS) (Or you Grandmother's). It's not your father's Star Trek (TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise). Nope. This is your Grandfather's Star Wars with Trek characters.

Doubt it? Check this out:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1910892

Any similarity with the Physics of the real universe or the Star Trek universe is purely coincidental. May the force be with you, Captain James T. Skywalker. Oh, and I guess those star ships came from the Babylon 5 set.

The best thing about the film was the casting. It was really, really good. Having a real Russian, Anton Yelchin play Pavel Chekov made that character bloom. If they had let him have a real Russian accent, though, it would have been an improvement. The actor himself, however, apparently had no problem doing the fake accent even though he is Moscow born and speaks Russian fluently. In fact, I believe he switched to real Russian at one point in the movie. Having Chris Pine, a real WASP, play Kirk didn't hurt, either. Shatner's Kirk combined midwestern bravado with the broad physical gestures of Yiddish theater, (think early silent movies), while Pine's Kirk is far more refined, and easier to believe. Nor can I say having a Brit, comic Simon Pegg, play Scotty, who is supposed to be a Brit, is a problem. Quinto and Pine are both fine actors, and they showed it here. I wonder if Quinto's pay scale may rise above the charts for future Trek's though. Sulu? John Cho? Harold and Kumar go to Vulcan...? OK, that didn't turn out to be bad, either. After all, if Kumar can work for Barack Obama, who is himself accused of being a Vulcan, (Tuvok?) why can't Harold?

I did not need Uhura to be channeling Nurse Chapel... but I could get used to that. It didn't violate the laws of Physics. It worked for me. It explained why she was the only female crew member who never got into bed with Kirk. Speaking of the laws of Physics, the cartoonish treatment of them and human physiology left Dr. McCoy with nothing to do in this movie. Karl Urban had little to work with, but did a wonderful imitation of DeForrest Kelly, the only original show cast member not cast against type. Having a green Rigelian Animal woman be a Star Fleet Student was nothing short of brilliant.

The flick was fun, but I'd have preferred it be an alternative universe, not an alternative timeline. The Superman Cannon reinvents itself about every 20 or 25 years, but it adds a new alternative earth and alternative universes (and we don't have Supes, we're on Earth Naught... Earth Prime has the Superman of the 1960s, Earth 2 the World War II Superman, Earth 3 has the 1980s Superman. At some point it will become formal that Smallville's Superman is on Earth 4. Alternative universes deal with such ongoing franchise issues as changes in the understanding of science, and actually reaching the years in which a future story is set.

This works way better for me than an alternate timeline that wipes out the entire history of the franchise, except Enterprise, which so far appears to be what they did here. Also, an alternate universe has the benefit of not being stuck with such old timeline problems like the Clone Wars of the 1990s... which didn't happen in OUR universe. Perhaps we will find out, in a future film, it didn't happen in the Chris Pine Kirk/Zachary Quinto Spock universe, either.

I'm a science fiction geek/fanatic, but I'm picky about my fantasy. Science fiction is a discussion in the form of fiction of real scientific issues, ideally looking at how it would effect human interactions and society, while good fantasy fiction looks at how people would act in fantasy situations. Star Trek has traditionally been science fiction, while Star Wars was fantasy. For an unrelated example, the idea of emergent intelligence in machines is a real issue being discussed in the Scientific community (e.g. "The Ghost in the Machine."... nonfiction). However unlikely the stories in I, Robot or Terminator may be, (or TNG's episode, "Emergence") they are science fiction. On the other hand, however amusing Buffy the Vampire Slayer may be, it's fantasy. The current TV show on Fox, Lie to Me, which uses the emerging science of microexpressions is also science fiction (no real connection between reading microexpressions and being able to tell truth from lies has yet been established).

So, understanding that I value Star Trek Television shows for their Science Fiction nature, I would have chosen more realistic fight scenes, a better explanation of the creation of black holes, (punching a time space hole into a universe which has not yet experienced it's big bang would do it, 'red matter' does not) ... The fact that Scotty went through an ordeal that should have left him physically shattered without so much as a bruise was very Star Wars (or even Roger Rabbit or Road Runner) and, for me, the most unacceptable part of the movie. It also made Dr. McCoy unnecessary. The red beast chasing Kirk and leaving him without a scratch wasn't much better. Star Trek(TOS) might have been cheaply made, and it's 'rule of parallel development' might have been a weak excuse to use old movie and TV sets, but it was never a cartoon. This Star Trek movie was a cartoon.

The Red Matter thing aside, if you tried to drill a hole into earth, the planet is molten, and the hole just wouldn't happen. Vulcan, likewise, is volcanic (DUH). What more, if a tiny black hole did suddenly appear at the center of a planet, the planet would collapse much more slowly than in the new Trek movie, and it would spin faster and faster. From the outside, the event would take many years, even many centuries, not minutes. If the black hole were big, it would happen faster, but it also would capture that nearby small planet on which Nimoy Spock and Pine Kirk were sitting. Due to the time warp factor (yes, traditionally, Trek used real science constructs) the collapse of the planet Vulcan would appear to happen much faster if you were ON the planet than if you were outside. However, even there, the event would take much longer.

And even today we would be able to forecast a star going supernova centuries in advance, there's no way a little debate in the Vulcan High Council 375 years from now could slow Spock down enough to stop him from saving Romulus. Not that putting a black hole in the middle of the star would stop it from going Supernova. Some Supernovas actually end in black holes... they CREATE black holes.

So, this is why I say that Star Trek XI is really Star Wars disguised by better character development. After all, what made Star Wars great? Beautiful special effects. Lots of fight scenes and explosions. Good guys and bad guys. No science issues, no hard human issues, no nontrivial interpersonal issues. I liked Star Trek XI a lot more than Star Wars. I wouldn't take my money back if it meant I had to erase the experience from my mind. But, as a fan of Star Trek as real Science Fiction, I was disappointed.

Just an addition, there are fan websites producing their own shows. I've seen is this: :http://www.starshipintrepid.net and enjoyed it a lot. I'll be doing blogs on each website and reviewing what they have to offer. The production here is not in sequence, and watching the shows in chronological order by the story is much better than watching them in the order they were produced.
Late Next Gen/Voyager Timeline (Scottish Trekkies) :http://www.starshipintrepid.net/

I'm going to check these out, and review them in the future:
:
TOS Timeline:http://www.starshipexeter.com/ (Texas USA Trekkies)
TOS Timeline: http://www.starshipfarragut.com/ (Washington, DC USA Trekkies)
TNG Timeline:http://www.hiddenfrontier.com/ (Southern California USA Trekkies)
TOS, continued with the same crew and characters, different actors: http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/ (Upstate New York USA Trekkies)
Post-TNG: It's a joint SeattleUSA/London, UK production:http://www.st-t.co.uk/about.php
Late Next Gen/Voyager Timeline:http://www.stphoenix.com/ (Nothing completed yet, same Seattle/UK venture as above)
Late Next Gen/Voyager Timeline::http://www.stosiris.com/ (Detroit, Mich. USA Trekkies)
Late TOS/pre TNG(Audio and Novel only): http://www.startrekgrissom.com/

Video reviews: I just had to add this treasure: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1913307