Having nearly completed running through my new Farscape complete series box set (I purchased it from Best Buy, as they had the limited edition with The Peacekeeper Wars included), I’ve been a bit inspired to find some of my favorite scenes from the show.

However, I was sidetracked. Somehow, my brain made the connection that Farscape was briefly parodied in Stargate SG-1‘s 200th episode, entitled (and this is a stellar episode title, by the way) “200.”

That clip is below. (It helps that by the 10th season, the series’ two leads were Ben Browder and Claudia Black.)

And here is another clip as well from that same episode, this time parodying Star Trek. The commentary that happens after this interlude, and is included in the video below, breaks the fourth wall… even if Ben Browder’s delivery is a bit iffy and the dialogue is stilted. (Basically, I feel that the writer of the episode is using his character, Cameron Mitchell, as a puppet… but you are free to disagree.)

I figure that I’m posting this as an insight to how the fandoms that I am a part of (or apart from, as I’m not really into any fandom, even Battlestar‘s) tend to form a type of network, connected by the most interesting of connections.

That, and the above clips convey so many different ideas that I can use as inspirations for other blog entries… And so can you, if you start your own blog, where I can read your rambling.

If only because I need something to do before the singularity explodes.

Upon returning to Florida in the spring, I visited the Indian River Mall to find that the Starbucks—itself having been, in a previous life, a Barnie’s Coffee and Tea—near the food court was closed down. The signs on the outside had been removed, and you could tell it had been a Starbuck’s by the configuration of the holes and subtle lines that the signs left behind. Even through the dark windows, you could see the empty room and the naked counter. That was a bit sad, although there was a Starbuck’s right on the road in front of the Indian River Plaza, which was a good 10 minute or so walk from the mall. Not a total loss. Not as much as the next store I noticed.

In December (and into January), I saw these depressing signs that were inside the Vero Beach Waldenbooks:

Sunuvabitch...

This does hurt me a bit on a personal level because of my love of the printed word. I grew up on having a Waldenbooks in the mall I could go to.

While it wasn’t this specific one, I grew up with the one in my hometown of Manchester, Connecticut. I went there a few times a month as a tyke, brought there by my mother and grandmother. I would always walk into that store with some of my chore money (my father paid me a “wage” of $1/hr), pick up a science fiction book I wanted to add to my collection (either Star Trek, Star Wars or a comic) and walk out with a small, plastic white bag with “Waldenbooks” on each side.

I also met a few authors at my Manchester Waldenbooks—yes, I used that possessive adjective, deal with it. I remember getting my copy of Robert Greenberger‘s book, The Romulan Strategem, signed by Mr. Greenberger all those years ago.

It’s not that I’m not able to get my books elsewhere. I can. There’s a Books-A-Million in the small plaza to the east of the Indian River Plaza, next to the Publix. It has a bigger selection of books. It has its own little Joe’s Coffee shop. (Yes, it’s named Joe’s Coffee. Clearly, no relation.)

I could also go to the library, which I have thus far neglected doing since my return to Florida, but there’s something about owning a good book and having it on your bookshelf that is immensely satisfying. More than some trophy or worthless paper award to be placed on some wall.

And if I wanted to go the online route, I can go to Amazon and buy it there without paying sales taxes. But there’s something to be said about seeing a book on the shelf with portals to all those worlds. Worlds that groups of people took the time and energy under the exacting toll of immeasurable frustration to create and get published. There’s a process there that most people don’t realize. I’m all too familiar with getting something published, as I’ve been responsible for the creation of two books. All that pain and suffering that went into it, all the long hours of writing and revising… Most people give up.

However, I’m flying off on another tangent there, so let me regain some semblance of control.

You can buy your stuff online, and I’ve done that with DVD and CDs, as well as the occasional book. With books, I find that I enjoy the tactile sensation, to feel the weight of the book, to feel the edges of the pages as I flip through them. Then there’s the rich aroma of the paper that wafts from the pages and fills your nostrils, if you let it. It’s a wonderful smell and while the new books have that “book aroma,” I find that older books that are well kept have a richer smell… like aged wine tastes versus newer vintages.

There’s also the fact that you get to physically meet people in a bookstore and, perhaps, strike up a conversation with them. We can say that we have message boards, blogs, and other “social media” outlets, but there’s nothing that can replace our need for physical contact, even if it is a chat. You can’t mirror truthful facial expressions in emoticons, or hear someone’s laugh, or hear someone sigh over troubling content in a book… You just can’t.

And so I find myself melancholy at the prospect of a bookstore closing down, even if it is part of a chain. It saddens me because it reflects the economic woes of our times, as well as the inevitable change where more and more people flock to the internet for whatever tickles their fancy. It is yet another reminder that our technology and our lust for better/faster/stronger change has outpaced our hearts and the potential worthwhile abilities of the human race.

And what prompted this blog was the following:

O'rly?

And with the line about Ashley Judd, I have resumed my hatred for Wesley Crusher. The damn bastard kissed Ashley Judd. I can forgive him saving the ship when trained Starfleet monkeys or the freaking Tin Man couldn’t do it, I can forgive him for wreaking havoc with his pet science projects, but the bastard swapped spit with Ashley Judd. Frakker.

And could we have possibly procured a more goofier picture of Wes Crusher in the striped sweater? Thank the Gods he didn’t have a scarf to go with that ensemble.

For those of us that (maybe sadly) are familiar with Trek in all its various incarnations, time travel is easily one of the most over-used and abused plot devices ever used in the 40+ year history of the franchise. It is easily the second worst plot device in the history of science fiction, if used incorrectly—as is the case, most of the time. I’m not big on time travel itself, unless there are strictures on how it can be used.

For instance, the short-lived series Odyssey 5 (created by Manny Coto) that aired a few years ago employed time travel. However, physical time travel was noted as not being possible, but the transference of memories was possible. As such, the five survivors of the space shuttle Odyssey (who had witnessed the destruction of Earth by an enemy of a technological nature, known only as the “Synthetics”) were sent back in time five years into the past. They only had the memories, which were essentially downloaded into their bodies as they were five years before.

Another notable instance is in the show Quantum Leap, when Sam Beckett jumps randomly throughout time. However, the time travel is related to fixing what once went wrong in people’s lives, and was otherwise uncontrollable. Further, the time jumps only occurred during Beckett’s lifetime, with maybe one notable exception if memory serves (Beckett jumps into his great grandfather, who served in the Civil War).

And to go back to an Irwin Allen production of the 60s, the short-lived series Time Tunnel focused on two people lost in a swirl of “past and future ages,” but their travels were erratic as the U.S. hasn’t a clue on how to return the two travelers to their own time.

What I am getting at is this: when you travel in time and fubar something, you can go back and prevent an event from occurring, assuming the following two conditions.

1. You have the means available at your disposal.
2. There are no rules or strictures to time travel that prohibit it.

Sadly, the universe of Star Trek has already established that both of the above are true: timelines can be restored, whether it is some random quantum anomaly of the week, the Guardian of Forever, or simply doing a “time warp” around the sun. And “Spock Prime” knows how to do two of the three! Why bother to restore Vulcan the hard way when you can restore it with a quick hop and skip into the good ole Guardian? Eh?

If you don’t think about time travel all that much, aren’t much into the Trek canon (either on a limited or expert, die-hard Trekkie basis), and if you don’t think that deeply about the movie long after you’ve seen it, then you’re in for a treat—ignorance is truly bliss. The movie is a good popcorn flick. The movie is well cast, although I will say that Chris Pine reminds me of a younger Ben Browder, and may have watched a lot of Ben Browder’s performance on Farscape in preparation of the movie (so as to differentiate himself from WIlliam Fucking Shatner).

There are a few issues I have with the movie. One is the engineering room, which looks like a contemporary processing plant for biochemicals, nuclear reactors, or something along those lines. This is something you’d expect to see on Battlestar Galactica, not Star Trek—particularly in stark contrast to the Apple-inspired interiors of the bridge and other areas of the good ole Enterprise.

The second is the design of the ship, which doesn’t turn me on at all. There was very little wrong with the Enterprise-A version of the ship that was seen in the movies! That ship was beautiful. You could smooth a few lines out here and there, sure, and add the rotating phaser cannons but… never mind. Not worth going into, since I’m entering the anal Trekkie zone, and that’s not where I want to head. It’s done. Ain’t gonna change a thing.

Despite the above logic problem and the two issues I’ve mentioned with aesthetics, I’m very happy that J.J. Abrams and his cohorts were able to reboot the dying Trek franchise from the pathetic Rick Berman and Brannon Braga years. Overall, the film looks great, is cast very well, had a coherent plot, and it reminds me about the best parts of Star Trek—which have nothing to do with technobabble, talking heads, or political correctness. I do understand why they used the time travel shtick here with old Spock, and that was in an attempt to get most who knew of the old Star Trek shows into the movie theater seats… and that’s fine, I understand that, still I wish they threw in some indication that time travel to fix the timeline was impossible. That was not done here, and would have greatly aided the story from the logic standpoint for those who mulled over the aforementioned shtick.