Maybe Star Trek isn't for Ted Cruz?

Not to be a fandom gatekeeper or anything, but maybe Star Trek isn't for Ted Cruz. I mention this because he had this to tweet in response to a story about the staff at Politico signing a letter voicing their objections to right-wing commentator and big fan of mass shootings, Ben Shapiro, writing for the site:

That's uh...that's not how Borg work...

I guess it's like calling someone you
disagree with a Nazi, which coming from
a Republican is kind of, you know...

The funny, funny joke here is that people taking issue with the editor giving a platform to Ben Shapiro, are like the Borg. For those who may be unfamiliar, first of all, what brings you here? Second of all, I'll explain: the Borg are the cybernetic hive mind antagonists of Star Treks The Next Generation and Voyager. They fly around the galaxy conquering other planets, and turning the inhabitants into more Borg. They are patently apolitical and only care about absorbing technology, but whatever.

You mess with the Borg, you
get the assimilation tubules.

Anyway, Cruz was quickly taken to task by Star Trek actor Jonathan Del Arco, who played the Borg Hugh on TNG and Picard:

"Actually I AM the Borg and our goal is to seek out higher civilizations and incorporate their knowledge. Rest safe @tedcruz, I can assure you there is nothing that we want to assimilate from the likes of you."

-Jonathan Del Arco, out

 nerding Ted Cruz on Twitter 

But you know, I have some issues with Cruz making Star Trek references. For one, he's a piece of shit who not three weeks ago was perpetuating the nonsense assertion that the election was rigged. He fanned the flames conspiracy theories and the result was rioters storming of the Capitol. He is, perhaps almost as much as Trump himself, to blame. 

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, those weren't rioters, those were patriots who
love America so much, the had to try and violently overturn the
 election because they didn't like the outcome. Let's be fair here."

-Ted Cruz, on how it's only 

treason when liberals do it

Pictured: Doctor Crusher handing out
free healthcare...like a goddamn socialist.

For another thing, why is he even making a Star Trek reference? Is he a fan? And if so, why? There are certainly politically conservative Star Trek fans, in fact, I think there's a lot of them. But I've never really understood how that came to be. Like, it's a show set in a progressive, humanist utopia in which the people of Earth have come together in the common goal of building a better future. Men and women are equal, racism and homophobia are things of the past and capitalism has been tossed on the trash heap of history. It's basically a sci-fi repudiation of everything the GOP stands for. So what's even the appeal?

Are they just there for the space battles? Or do they read the show as a dystopia? Is Star Trek the right-wing equivalent of watching something like Children of Men? Or wait, you don't suppose--does Ted Cruz think Quark is the hero?

The Ferengi love money and think women are property. 
Their civilization is basically the Republican platform, so maybe? 

Today in real vision:

They know who J. K. Rowling is, right? I ask because-huh? Who? Why the people who run HBO, I suppose. I ask because they're apparently developing a Harry Potter TV show. 

It takes some real vision to look at the $25 billion 
that Harry Potter has made and see potential. 

Pictured: industry.

Maybe developing isn't the word, I don't know, I'm not like an industry insider or anything. In fact, I probably shouldn't use the word "industry" without prefacing it with "film and television." But I do read Variety. Well, ok, I read Variety if an interesting article on some other site links to it and you know what? Doesn't matter. The point is that they're not filming yet, they're just at the "talking about it stage" of The Chronicles of The Rise of Harry Potter: The Series. Which isn't even a working title, because no one is working yet.

There's nothing. No cast, no scripts, and no sense of when and where in the Harry Potter cinematic universe the series is set, or even if it relates to the films at all.

Incredibly, several other TV productions have managed
 to find success without being connected to Harry Potter.

It's like they say, strike while the iron
is cooled off, back in the cupboard and
has a 36% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

But what I want to know is why is this even a thing that they're talking about? Ten years after the last Harry Potter movie (last successful one anyway) and just a year after the author decided to air her, what's the word? Odious? Yeah, that works. Her odious views on trans people? I know that there's an argument to be made that one can and should separate the artist from the art, and that's super. But if said artist is using that art and the resulting fame to attack trans women, then maybe don't give her more money? Especially now. 

Yeah, I can't think of any either, but
surely someone, somewhere must 
 have written an original script.

Remember when that last President we had, I forget his name, just out of nowhere banned trans people from serving in the military? Out of, I don't know, spite and some pathological need to please the barking dumbs who put him in office. That's the kind of people she's standing with, and maybe handing her another revenue stream isn't the best. Besides, I've heard that there are other books one can adapt for television, and not only that, but sometimes, sometimes, people write new things. Like, that's what I've heard. 

Anyway, President Biden, who's the President now, and not whatisface, President Biden reversed that ban on trans people serving in the military today. So, you know, good news: the transphobes don't always win. 

That's refreshing right? A President not using the power
 of the office to make people's lives more miserable? 

So long Mira Furlan

Sad news space fans, Mira Furlan died yesterday. If you don' know who she was, she was on Lost, but I know her mainly from Babylon 5. The series, which went off the air in 1998, has lost seven of its cast members over the years. Seven, can you believe it? 

That's seriously like half the cast. Half.
Furlan is front row, second from the left.

The effects were on par with say,
clearance bin PlayStation 2 games.

Which, if you're not a fan, but are a huge nerd you should go watch it. In many ways it was ahead of its time, telling a long form, sophisticated story over five seasons. And in many other ways it was very much a product of its time, with so-so acting, wobbly sets, and CGI that's about as good as you'd expect on a syndicated television budget in the mid 90's. Which is to say not great, but it was sort of a soap opera for sci-fi fans and it was nice to dip into some off-brand Star Trek space malarky. 

"Was it though? Waaas iiiiiit?"

-J. Micheal Straczynski

Speaking of, the show was up against Star Trek: TNG and Deep Space Nine and had many, many surface similarities to the latter: namely a space captain who is put in charge of a numbered space station whose position at the mouth of a blue swirly portal makes it a galactic travel hub. The plots of both series revolve around shifting alliances between alien civilizations and space politics. And the series' leads are both humans who become major figures in an alien religion. Coincidence? Eh, maybe?

Babylon 5's aliens and space politics made
for an infinitely more plausible premise then
David Caradine as Chinese Kung-Fu master.

The story was that series creator J. Micheal Straczynski pitched his show to Paramount Studios in the late 80's only to have them turn him down and then produce Star Trek: Deep Space Nine a few years later. So yeah...ultimately, DS9 was great and holds up much better, but Babylon 5 was a scrappy underdog and I watched the shit out of it. More TV space opera was more TV space opera. Like, it was the 90's, what else was I going to do? Watch Kung-Fu: The Legend Continues? (pro tip: don't)

Wise and soft-spoken, but also badass,
which Furlan could seriously pull off.

Anyway, Furlan was always fantastic on the show as Delenn, a wise, soft-spoken alien from the Mimbari Federation whose light and not easily identifiable accent (ok, Yugoslavian, but unidentifiable to teenaged me) made her seem, you know, slightly not of this world. Her character was the moral center of the show and I get the sense that she played a similar role among her fellow actors. In convention appearances (around the 1h20m mark) and interviews, she was always gracious and a delight. 

Whoever's handling Mira Furlan's social media account posted something she said a few days before her death and it will wreck you:

Joe (Straczynski) was borrowing from Carl Sagan's line about
how the carbon in our bodies was once part of ancient stars and
that it will be again. See what I mean? Wreck you. 

Riddance, just riddance...

Well, any day that begins with Donald Trump boarding Air Force One and leaving is off to a good start.

Pictured: Donald Trump applauding for himself.

Which, yeah, I think that was probably
the most accurate thing I've heard him say
in four years of incoherent nonsense.

Before getting on the plane, he spoke at Andrews Airbase before a maskless crowd of tens of supporters where he took credit not only for the shining utopia of joblessness and pandemic he leaves behind, but also for any accomplishments the Biden administration might achieve: 

"We put it (the country) in a position like it's never been before."

-Soon-to-be former President Trump

without the hint of a whiff of irony

Pictured: Don Jr, seen here with
a single tear running down
his smug, reptilian face.

It was uh...what's the word? Shameless? Yeah, shameless. I mean, was he even watching the same previous four years we all barely survived? Speaking of shameless, did you see Don Jr.'s simulation of human emotion? Yeah, a tear rolling down his cheek, it was...unsettling. I imagine he was probably thinking about how his father may never again get the chance to separate immigrant children from their parents again. And was that The Village People's YMCA playing? What is even happening?

Passengers are only allowed to carry two grudges,
grievances can be gate checked free of charge.

Later as the plane took off with the Frank Sinatra's My Way playing (almost certainly without the permission of the Sinatra estate), someone on CNN said--and I'm not sure who it was--but he described the scene as:

"A planeload of grievances and grudges heading to off Florida."

-some CNN reporter

All this was intercut with shots of President-elect Biden heading to a church service with Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell which, fun fact, required zero people to be clubbed or tear-gassed.

Zero. Not even a tasing, so already things are looking up.

It's only treason when Democrats do it...

I don't know about you, but I've been feeling a lot of feelings about the storming of the Capitol earlier this month. Horror, outrage, existential dread. I mean, obviously it's been a challenge to distinguish these from the background horror, outrage, and existential dread I've been feeling constantly for the past four years, but they're there. Oh, also anxiety. But there's one feeling that far eclipses all the others: shame. 

Well, obviously shame. A big part of being an American right now
is about feeling shame, but I'm referring to something more specific.

"C'mon everybody, let's use force to
overturn the popular will and keep a 
billionaire in power because democracy!"

-The Rioters, evidently

Shame at how inadequately patriotic I am when compared to the rabid-foam, right-wing psychopaths who spent that fateful Wednesday figuratively and literally shitting on the U.S. Capitol to show us how American they are. They were (and are) willing to burn American democracy to the ground because several states rejected efforts to throw out Black people's votes. Because seven million Americans rejected their petty strongman. Because they've convinced themselves that they're somehow the victim here. Their's is the kind of love that compels stalkers to murder the object of their obsession. 

I guess I'm just not as American as they are. Well, I'm definitely not as American as they are. As you know, I'm a quarter Canadian, but beyond that, it's never occurred to me to break in to the Capitol and say, steal Nancy Pelosi's laptop.

Whose side am I even on?

Above: Riley, seen here in footage from
the Capitol, not wearing a mask properly.
Oh, and also committing treason. 

Nor would I then think to try and sell it to Russian intelligence. But that's what a real patriot would do and that's exactly what Capitol rioter Riley June Williams of Harrisburg Pennsylvania was planning to do, at least according to her ex. Now, I know what you're thinking, why should we trust the word of an ex? Maybe they just reported her to the FBI out of spite or revenge or something? Like swatting but with treason. And that's true. This is an alleged crime. Although Williams has been identified on video by her own mother, and in that video from the riot is seen telling her fellow goons where to go.

So it's not like they're going on the ex's word alone. Anyway, Williams has fled and apparently taken the laptop with her, which is weird, because the FBI probably just wants to present her with some kind of award for being like, super patriotic. 

Pictured: a photo of Williams obtained by the British in which
she looks super patriotic, and not say, like a terrorist.

Yup, I have opinions about this too.

Also, I don't think we need a Venn
 diagram to show the overlap between
flat-Earth and stop the steal people.

Oh, and another thing, what's up with-huh? Yeah, I'm going to talk more about the Discovery season three finale. You knew what kind of blog this was going in, and I don't feel the least bit sorry for you. And besides, we're basically in a horrific holding pattern of perpetual anxiety until Inauguration Day when we find out whether or not there's going to be another coup led by the political spectrum's equivalent of flat-Earthers, so it's not like we've got much else to talk about.  

The internet is 78% fans voicing 
opinions about TV. The rest is racists
making up shit about election fraud.

No where was I? Right, more unsolicited opinions about Star Trek blown into the internet like so much dandelion fluff. But first, if you haven't seen season 3 of Discovery, go watch it. I'm going to spoil things, and I want to hear about it, ok? Back? Super. Again, overall loved Disco season 3, it had a cool new setting and the central mystery was intesting. Characters like Owosekun and Detmer got more to do, and the new characters, Book and Vance are were great additions. I'm looking forward to the new status quo with Micheal Burnham as the captain setting out to bring the Federation back together. 

But can we talk about the costumes? I kind of don't love the new uniforms. Not flying elevator fight scene hate, but just, I mean:

"Oooff...yikes, I mean...wow..."

-me

Maybe in the future, humans will have
evolved beyond the need to look good?

Look, I respect the skill that goes into design but, just no. It can't be easy, I mean, it's the future so you can't just put everyone in t-shirts and jeans, and it's not a period piece, so you can't just recreate historical fashion. It's got to be an incredibly daunting task coming up with what clothes and uniforms would look like in a thousand years. And I'm sorry to even rag on this point. It's a great show and has otherwise had some great costumes. I mean, holograms with bow ties? I goddamn love that. The new uniforms though? Not my taste. They're just...bleh.

Again, love the show, just not sure I'd
join a Federation that wears dove grey.
I mean, it's going to show stains.

Truth be told, I'm a little embarrassed to even voice an opinion about this kind of thing, and I hope you can still respect me. That is, if you ever did before. Anyway, I just can't get behind the bland grey tunics with equally bland grey slacks tucked into jackboots. Oh, and those weird little plates at their necks that display their ranks, just makes the whole thing come off a little too Starship Troopers and feels a little generic sci-fi to me. I guess if I were to glibly sum up the look, I would locate it somewhere at the intersection of UFO cult and fascist pajamas. 

I don't know, I mean, Starfleet uniforms have never been great. I guess we should be thankful they're not lycra one-piece jumpsuits. And I suppose they're not the worst uniforms the cast of a Star Trek production have ever had to endure. 

Above: the worst uniforms the cast of a Star
Trek production has ever had to endure.

Today in getting shafted:

In my defense, there was an attempted coup.

Can you believe it's been almost a week since the Star Trek: Discovery season finale and we haven't even talked about it? I feel like I've let you down...anyway, I liked the finale. The entire season in fact, but well, they did it again. Did what you might reasonably ask? They did the thing. The thing that just drives me up the wall and they should know better and at this point I'm beginning to wonder if maybe they're just trolling the fans. 

Now you have that piece
of information. You're welcome.

You might remember awhile back, my complaining about the turbolift on Discovery? Huh? Well I did, and if you're wondering what a turbolift is, you might want to sit down for this, I'm about to nerd you up. So a turbolift is like a futuristic elevator on a starship that goes up and down, but can also move horizontally because ships are big and sometimes you need to get somewhere fast. Turbo-fast, I guess. Anyway, the turbolifts on every other Star Trek show are just shown as moving through a shaft, you know, like an elevator. The special effects people didn't over think it, and I appreciate that.

Yes, obviously there are bigger problems in
the world, but my capacity for anxiety allows me
to worry about more than one thing at a time.

But for some reason, the production team on Discovery likes to show the lifts moving through the interior of the ship which is inexplicably large and full of little craft and robots floating around inside. It's...dumb. And I thought they finally got just how dumb it is, but then the season finale had this big, protracted fight scene on a turbo lift as it flew, flew, through the hull. The hull which now contains a vast city scape. In fact, one of the combatants is knocked from the lift and falls hundreds of feet to his death. It was preposterous.

Oh right, so they can have big
protracted fight scenes on them.

Even more preposterous are these glowing square frame things that materialize in front of the lift as it moves through the ship. I guess they're like a sort of future elevator shaft or a track or something. But it seems like if they can just beam the track ahead of the car wouldn't it just be easier to beam the whole car? Or I don't know, the passengers? A new element added this season is that the communicator badges now have built in transporters, so the crew just just beam anywhere on the ship at will, so why do they even still have the turbolifts? 

And yes, I realize I'm talking about a TV show about people in the future who don't believe in money and have sex with aliens. But in sci-fi it's almost more important to make the setting as believable as possible, and these ludicrous shots just take you right out of it. And now, instead of telling you what I thought of the Discovery season finale--which again, was great--I'm complaining about the goddamn Willy Wonka elevator fight scene.

"Stop. Just stop doing this. It sucks."

-everyone

Well, I mean, obviously it's a scam...

Uh-huh, I'm making it about this. 
Everything is about this right now.

If the events of the past week have taught us anything, it's that we need to stand up to those who use violence and threats of violence to get what they want. It's time for all of us to say in one clear voice that we will not be bullied. We will not go quietly. We will not-huh? No, I'm talking about the PlayStation 5's that company was painting black and selling at a hundred dollars over retail, what were you-oh, right the coup attempt. Well, I can see where we may have got crossed wires. 

Yes, everything. And hey, do they know
convicted felons lose the right to posses guns?

Unlike the rabid-foam, red-faced shrieking of right-wing extremists who think that their love of guns and misogyny constitutes a superior patriotism and entitles them to overturn election results because they don't like the outcome, the bullies in this drama are Youtubers. And instead of baseless accusations designed to undermine the legitimacy of American democracy so they can keep a deranged gameshow host who's now lost the popular vote twice in power, these YouTubers might actually have a point.

But what even am I talking about? I'm glad you asked...or rather, I assume your indifferent shrug at my rhetorical questions implies that you want to know. Anyway, a company unpronounceably called SUP3R5 announced preorders for their custom painted PS5's. The console, as you may or not be aware, is, in its natural state, a garbage fire of poor design:

"Ugh, really? I mean, was this on purpose? Did someone actually
approve this design? Anyway, here's my $500, can I have one?"

-everyone

See? Marginally better,
right? That'll be $750.

Sup-three-arr-five somehow-well, I say somehow, but bots. They somehow got their hands on about three hundred PS5's, and have repainted them a slimming black to reduce the sheer eye-punching, squashed sandwich down to something slightly less hideous to keep in one's entertainment cabinet. That is if you have a shelf that can accommodate the console's absurd size and support its incredible weight. Oh, and you also would have needed $650 to $750, which is a $150 over the retail price.

Pictured: SUP3R5's garage.

Unsurprisingly to us, but somehow a totally surprise to SUP3R5, their servers exploded or something with customers getting charged and not receiving confirmations and then being unable to delete their credit card info. SUP3R5 says that their marked up, re-painted, overpriced consoles were just so popular that the website was overwhelmed. Which is weird, right? That the company that helped create the artificial scarcity upon which their entire business model relies on would be surprised by it? 

But here we are. It sucks, but I mean what are you going to do? What's that? Threaten their lives? No...God, no, why do you immediately jump to...?

America: 
We literally don't know the meaning
of the phrase "measured response."

"Depends on how much money you have."

-some judge

The company says they're the victims of "scam panic;" a phenomenon they just coined a term for. It's when a business--usually a start-up that operates entirely online--comes out of no where offering something shady, and then the internet piles on, making videos explaining why said company is a scam, and then come the Tweets and the bad press and then, according to SUP3R5, the threats. And obviously, no one should be threatening anyone. In fact, there should be a law against that--wait is there? I'm honestly asking at this point.

So like I was saying, no one should be allowed to threaten anyone (or say, democracy as an institution--see? Everything), but this is a scam, right? Like, the very act of using bots to scoop up something that everyone else would have been happy to pay for, and inserting themselves into the supply chain like some kind of economic version of a tape worm, is itself a scam. Not saying it makes it ok to threaten them, just, call a scam a scam. 

Instead of threatening them, maybe just don't buy one?

Today in features nobody asked for:

What even is this? What do you mean what? This. It's a transparent TV and-ok, well, I suppose I answered my own question, but what I mean to say is why is this?

Did this person buy a transparent TV so they could watch
the TV on the wall behind it at the same time?

"Finally, a footboard that reads 19th century
Regency-era romance novels without
blocking my view of the bedroom wall."

-someone with niche interests

Well in a sense it's not. A thing that is, that is. It's a concept for a transparent TV, and not a commercial product. Not yet anyway. South Korean manufacturer LG demonstrated it as a part of this year's Consumer Electronics Show, an event which also wasn't thanks to COVID. Anyway, the minute long video shows the TV as positioned at the foot of a bed where it can wake you up, and then rise from its base to display the time and weather so you don't even have to look out of the floor to ceiling windows of your luxury apartment. Oh, and it's also reading Pride and Prejudice for some reason.

Which, I'm not sure I get the point of this. Do you remember a few months ago when we talked about that other TV, the one that rolled down into its base when not in use? The one that was also made by LG and costs eighty-thousand dollars? Of money? I mean, is this a thing people want and will pay eighty grand for?

"Shit, I hope so. If not, we're in trouble..."

-This LG spokesperson

This Plexiglas sneeze guard is 100%
transparent and costs just $50.
Ball's in your court, LG.

Because I kind of have a similar problem with this transparent screen. Do people want transparent screens? And if so, why? Most of us put our televisions on the wall right? Do we need to see what's on the other side? And from the video, this thing looks, like really hard to see. This latest version of the screen can get up to 40% transparent, up from 10% over a previous iteration of the technology and that's great I guess, but is there some transparency arms race I'm unaware of? Because it just seems like that would be super-impractical. 

I suppose it's more about the look than anything. If sci-fi has taught us anything it's that the future is all clear displays and holograms projected in the air in front of our faces. Impossible to read and eye-strain inducing? Sure, but that's just the price we'll pay for looking awesome.

Although I hope there isn't important, mission-critical information on that screen...