Categories
Gaming

The mad dash to the finish line

I’m in the middle of my mad preparation action:
PREPARATION A:
OVGE preparations
Boxed stuff is good. This box has balls. Trackballs, that is.
PREPARATION B:
More OVGE preparations
Coleco mini-arcade goodness awaits transport.
PREPARATION C:
Even more OVGE preparations
How rare is the stuff you’ll be seeing at OVGE this year, you ask? Is this rare enough for ya?
PREPARATION D:
Wow, even MORE OVGE preparations!
Due to some technical difficulties with my Magnavox Odyssey, it won’t be coming to the show this year – it may be old hat to everyone else, but I always enjoy seeing it get so much playtime. Instead, my modded PS1 will appear, with the World’s Greatest PS1 Joystick, and retro arcade compilations aplenty, including many imports. Qix? Crazy Climber? 10 Yard Fight? Yeah, we got dat. The CDs on the right are imported game soundtracks – that’s what’ll be playing along with some music from the one and only Mr. Tony Fox.
By the way, I’ll have some Tony Fox CDs to sell at the show, but hit me up early – supplies are limited!
Olivia watches me pack for OVGE
This stuff is so cool, Olivia wishes she could come too.… Read more

Categories
Home Base Television & Movies

In print.

You know, seeing my name printed, in someone else’s ink, on someone else’s dime, simply does not get old*.
Boarding The Enterprise
It’s a pretty good book overall – expect a full review soon in the book review section. Hopefully that’s not too much of a conflict of interests – I was asked to be a “fact checker” on the book earlier this year, making sure that there weren’t any glaring Star Trek mythology/historical errors that would make the essayists look like they didn’t know what they were talking about. (I found the idea that I was going to be fact-checking David Gerrold, D.C. Fontana, Eric Greene and Norman Spinrad enormously amusing.) I generally like the SmartPop books, and I think this one, personal bias aside, is my favorite to date. And of course – tell me you didn’t see this one coming – you can pick it up in theLogBook.com Store.
* = unless it’s the police reports or obits in the paper.… Read more

Categories
Television & Movies

The other movie Enterprise.

I haven’t done one of my “famous film spaceship” things in a while, so here’s one that I’ve had the pictures sitting around for for ages and just haven’t gotten around to organizing and writing.
Though it seems like the buzz about a J.J. Abrams-produced Star Trek movie is going to put off the inevitable retrospectives of the later movies in the series, I still have to stick with my assessment that, at some point in the future, 1994’s Star Trek: Generations is going to be looked upon as the conceptual jewel in the crown of the TNG movies. It seems like it’s really the only one of the four TNG films to even attempt the exploration of a science fiction idea (in this case the Nexus), even if its treatment of that concept suddenly takes a weird right turn in the last 20 minutes that’s never fully explained (the whole bit with Picard and Kirk apparently simply choosing to leave the Nexus and go back just a li’l bit in time). Malcolm McDowell is certainly the TNG movie villain with the most staying power (but I’m biased, as he’s a favorite actor of mine), and Generations also edges out Nemesis (for killing off Data) and First Contact (for re-inventing the Borg) for having the most lasting impact on Trek fiction as a whole (for killing off Kirk). (I also think a reassessment of the movie’s music is long overdue – as much as I love Jerry Goldsmith’s work, it all started to sound similar toward the end of his Trek tenure, and Generations represents, hands-down, some of the best music Dennis McCarthy ever put in front of an orchestra.)
But Generations is also fascinating for what it shows us. Without revamping the exterior of the Enterprise-D for her final voyage, it presents us with significant changes to the well-worn interior sets. What do all these new additions do, and why? Read on, true believers.
Star Trek: Generations - Enterprise bridgeRead more

Categories
Television & Movies

On Deck 78

Having plumbed the depths of the Discovery from 2001, I’m setting my sights this time around on a more mainstream target. In the intro to the 2001 set design piece, I mentioned that the net is oversaturated with photos of nearly everything Star Wars, Doctor Who and Star Trek related. And while I still think this is true, one has to remember that Trek fandom has a somewhat selective memory. For me, the best-looking ship interiors ever to grace the screen in the Trek franchise were seen in what was, for many years, the lowest ebb of the franchise.
One of the things I loved about TNG was the look of the Enterprise. I loved how Herman Zimmerman designed the sets for the ship’s central locale (and thus setting the template for future production designer Richard James to follow after his departure), and I adored those touch-screen computer interface graphics designed by Michael Okuda – “Okudagrams,” as they quickly became known in the Trek art department (and later to fandom). But it wasn’t until 1989 that I saw those two elements married to the more functional, less-living-room-esque design of the original Enterprise bridge as laid out by Matt Jeffries, with the console silhouettes developed for the movie era by the late Mike Miner. While it’s impossible to deny that this was the darkest hour of the original crew since the final scene of Turnabout Intruder, I must admit to absolutely loving one thing about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier…and that is the Enterprise herself.
Star Trek V Enterprise shuttle bayRead more

Categories
Music Television & Movies

Whither Star Trek…soundtracks?

The Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next GenerationI had the occasion to respond to an e-mail from a reader of the site this week who was inquiring about any possible news of new Star Trek TV soundtrack releases, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a really good idea. The worst we can get is a “no, not gonna happen.” Feel free to pass the URL for this entry along to your Trek-music-hungry friends. Here’s an excerpt from my reply to the e-mail.

To make matters even more complicated, there’s the current status of Trek (not exactly the most favorite Paramount property ever under the current regime at Paramount/Viacom/CBS) and the status of the label that used to do virtually all of the Trek TV soundtrack releases. Quite a few of the staff at GNP Crescendo seem to have defected in the past few years to a newer indie label, La La Land Records, which does not have the Star Trek license; Crescendo no longer has the license to pursue new soundtrack releases, from what I understand, so we’re stuck between a studio that doesn’t give even the tiniest fraction of a flip about Star Trek right now, and no label in place to release stuff even if they could license it.
My best advice for right now is to write a nice e-mail or letter to La La Land Records and try to stir up some interest in a possible series of Star Trek episode score CDs, very much like their current “Farscape Classics” series, which gather every cue from two individual episodes on a single CD. (I’ve gotten the first one of those Farscape CDs, and I have to say, they’re really nice.) With the 20th anniversary of TNG coming next year, I’d like to think that maybe we could put a bug in their ear about this idea and start getting some TNG episode scores released – I’d personally love to have Q Who, Skin Of Evil, The Child, Peak Performance, 11001001, Datalore, and The Emissary on CD…and that’s just from a cursory glance of the first two seasons.
Give ’em a shout at www.lalalandrecords.com – the worst they can do is say no.

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