In The Palm Of Your Hand

When Star Trek originally premiered in 1966, voice controlled, pocket sized super computers were wild fantasy for the far distant future. 

Even in 1987, with the arrival of The Next Generation, handheld touch interface tablets were seen as science fiction, belonging in the 24th century. 

Yet right now I'm writing this very post on my phone, a tiny super computer that lives within my arms reach at all times. This device has access to the entire knowledge of humanity, and has over 100,000 times the processing power of the computer that landed the first men on the moon (and over a million times the RAM, for that matter). 

My phone has a camera capable of recording HD video at 60 frames per second, or snapping photos in almost any lighting condition in the time it takes to get it out of my pocket, and can send them to anyone on the entire planet I have contact with at the speed of light. 

And what do I use all this astonishing power for most of the time? Photographing my kids a dozen times a day, doomscrolling on Twitter and texting my wife. Occasionally, I'll set an alarm by shouting a command at it, which is supposed to feel like Michael Knight talking to his wrist watch, but never manages to feel as elegant. 

Recently, I've been wearing down my battery playing a mobile card game, and I've been known to hunt imaginary pocket monsters on this wondrous device too, but I overall, I think I'm vastly underutilizing this incredible package of microprocessors that just 40 years ago was unimaginable in our lifetime. 

What is to come 40 years from now? 

To The Stars!

Whether it’s Trek or Wars, there’s never been a better time to be a fan of Star stuff. 

I grew up enjoying both, but partly because Star Trek was a weekly show, I think I had a special fondness for The Next Generation series. Also, Star Wars was on hiatus during my formative nerd building years. I didn’t even see Return of the Jedi in theatres, but I distinctly recall being in the theatre with my brother and a friend at a matinee screening of Star Trek: The Undiscovered Journey. 

But tonight I watched the latest episode of The Mandalorian, followed by the second episode of the latest season of Discovery. In case you don’t know, The Mandalorian is a series based in the Star Wars universe, following the exploits and adventures of a lone bounty hunter, while Discovery is based in the Star Trek universe, following the exploits and adventures of the crew of a federation starship.

Both shows are drastically different, and this happy sci-fi fan has room in his heart for both. 

The Mandalorian is a western that happens to be set in space, leaning heavily into tropes defined by the golden age of westerns in cinema and TV. This includes dusty bars, lawless border towns, backstabbing former friends, running jobs to earn pay and delaing with unexpected hiccups to seemingly straightforward tasks, all while riding mostly alone across baren emptiness between episodes, picking up allies along the journey. 

Discovery is bombastic space science fiction, with huge battles, gibberish technobabble, shiny technology, epic, galaxy spanning life-or-death, end-of-the-known-worlds plots, starring a massive ensemble cast of colourful characters and adding to that by picking up new allies along the way.

Mostly though, I chose to write all this to bring up that I just want to see a crossover special where The Mandalorian’s Amy Sedaris and Discovery’s Tig Notaro characters get to meet up and hang out together. I don’t care how. I just want to see these two characters together! They’re hilarious. I feel like they’d be the best of friends if ever they got to meet. 

Expect my next dozen or so posts to be fanfic of just that!

Bridge To Shuttle Bay One

After being told one of us would be the ancestor of one of the Federations greatest captains[1], we were lead into a turbolift and brought to a different floor to be put on board an escape shuttle.

An easy illusion, using sequenced lights to give the impression we were travelling a great distance within the ship, while only moving a single floor.

Except not quiet. We actually never travelled vertically at all. Another clever illusion to avoid the expense of a purpose built elevator.

Inside the turbolift there were indeed pulsing lights to give the impression of vertical movement, just like in the series. Combined with a slight shaking, it felt very real. When the Enterprise took a few blasts from the Klingon Bird of Prey, the turbolift rocked, again, just like in the show, except we didn't have to fake it, the hydraulics did it for us. The shaking concealed the next slight-of-hand as they slowly and imperceptibly turned the entire lift about 180 degrees so that, when the door reopened we were looking at a new location, without ever knowing that the bridge set was just behind the wall.

After that it was just the simulator ride, which was great, but nothing compared to what we had just experienced. One neat touch was that the footage was projected on a curved, dome-like screen, so not only could we look out the forward windows, but also up through some skylights in the shuttle. That really helped sell the illusion nicely.

[1] It was me, obviously. Riker looked right at me.

Related Posts:
Welcome Aboard
Two To Beam Up

Two To Beam Up

Being teleported was, frankly, a mind blowing experience. Every rational part of my brain told me it was impossible, a clever trick and illusion, while every emotional part of my heart was crying with joy after decades of dreaming about living this moment.

Of course, it was a clever trick, an illusion. But even knowing how they did it doesn't take from the magic.

The first part was obvious. Told to watch a safety video, all our gazes were focused on the TV screens, and so too the strobe flash hidden beside them, blowing out our night vision when the lights went out.

The next five or so seconds was when the real magic happened.

The ceiling above us slid smoothly to one side, leaving a multistory opening above our heads. The four walls, including the one with the TVs and fake doors we were facing, shot upwards 60 feet at incredible speeds, uncovering the transporter panelling around us and the transporter control room with crew members in front. Then, as quietly as the first was removed, a new ceiling slid into place above us, enclosing the transporter bay.

What little noise the mechanisms did make were masked by the transporter sound effects.

At this point, a mere five seconds after we had been plunged into darkness, the lights came back up and all was revealed. The floor we were standing on had a property such that, when lit from above, appeared to have one design and a different one when lit from below. Tricking us into believing we had moved floors was as simple as turning on a light switch.

All of that was breathtaking, but it leaves one, final mystery.

Experiencing the whoosh of air in the darkness was amazing, because it totally contributed to the sensation of being moved by some means. The designer who thought to included that was a genius, right? Not quite.

When the whole mechanism was first being tested with actual people in it, it seemed only right that it would be the engineers themselves to risk life and limb before anyone else. Nothing should go wrong. It had been dry tested dozens of times. The mechanisms were precisely engineered to a ridiculous level and the timing was tuned to perfection.

This is how what happened next was told to me.

Standing in the drab grey false room, the strobe went off, the lights went out and more than one engineer screamed.

You see, when you pull four walls straight up 60 feet at high speed you create a suction effect as air rushes in to fill the space the walls occupied. That suction is experienced by anyone in the room as a whoosh of air, coming from around your feet and flowing upwards.

When the lights came up the engineers, frozen in their spots, silently looked around before one of them spoke up.

"We're keeping that in."

Related Posts:
Welcome Aboard
Bridge To Shuttle Bay One

Welcome Aboard

Claire and I stood in the queue for the Star Trek Experience simulator ride based on the Next Generation era. We were both excited. We hadn't any idea what to expect, having read nothing about it in advance. We'd been on these kinds of rides before, where you and a bunch of others sit into a box on top of an enormous computer controlled hydraulic system and get thrown around in sync with footage to give the illusion of actually being on a rollercoaster, or flying in a helicopter.

But this was Star Trek, we were going to be flying through simulated space, buckled safely into our seats, safely located in a hotel very definitely safely on good old Mother Earth.

We lined up outside the simulator in a nondescript room, and were asked to first observe a safety video on a few screens above the ride access doors. The usual stuff. Claire and I were standing side by side.

Suddenly a bright flash blinded us all, and the room was plunged into darkness for less than five seconds. We heard a strangely familiar sound, felt a rush of air travel from our feet upwards and then the lights came up.

We were standing in an entirely different location than the room we had been in moments before. Let me emphasis that. An entirely different location. An officer in Starfleet uniform stood looking at us behind a console I had seen hundreds of times on TV where the doors we were supposed to go through had been. The ceiling and walls surrounding us, previously grey and drab, were now the familiar futuristic panelling of the transporter bay.

And, looking down, Claire and I both came to the same shocking realisation at the same time. The freaking floor was not the same one we were on moments before either, but the glowing discs of light we so knew and loved.

It was all I could do to just hold her hand and not cry. In that moment my heart was beating a thousand beats a minute.

I'm not crazy. I didn't for a moment think I had actually been teleported to a Federation starship, but every sense I had was telling me otherwise. My brain was firing off, trying to explain the sensory imputs my body was sending it that conflicted with all rational thought. Trying, and utterly, completely, failing.

"Are you all okay?" My attention snapped back to the ensign before me. "I'm sorry, but we had to emergency beam you out of there. If you follow this officer, everything will be explained."

We were lead down a familiar corridor, inset with the same familiar lighting, past familiar doors and then through a sliding door with the familiar whoosh sound and my heart went from beating like a drum in my chest to stopping dead.

At that moment I was standing on the bridge of the USS Enterprise, NCC 1701-D. Before me, on the big viewscreen, stars drifted past. This was a set, obviously, but once again, my brain was having a hard time explaining that to the rest of my body.

It all felt so real.

One of the two officers on the bridge welcomed us on board and told us she had someone that wanted to talk to us.

The stars on the screen were replaced with the much larger than life face of Commander William Riker, who informed us that the Klingons had found a way to travel back in time to our century. Their plan was to kill the ancestor of Captain Jean Luc Picard, erasing him from history. One of us was the target, but without knowing which one, they rescued us all. Now, he told us, we were to follow the ensign to a shuttle where we would be whisked to safety.

With one last, quick look around the bridge, we were all bundled into a turbolift, which, once the doors closed, started to move, the lights flashing by as we changed floor. The lights flickered and the lift shook as we were hit by the attacking Klingon vessel and alarms started to blare.

The same doors we had entered through opened and we were in a completely new hallway, rushed down to the awaiting shuttle, where we were strapped into our seats and blasted out into open space, high above the earth, as the Enterprise fought off the Bird of Prey. Our shuttle ducked and dodged, avoiding lazer blasts and zooming through the atmosphere. We flew down over the crowded lights of the Vegas Strip at night, banked around and landed on the roof of the Hilton. The seatbelts clicked open and we were lead out into an ordinary looking hallway. On a wall-mounted TV a news anchor was reporting on unusual lights in the skies above Nevada, but a stern looking government official was assuring the viewers that it was just a weather balloon.

And suddenly we were back in the public area, standing in the middle of the shop filled with magnets and posters bearing the likeness of various actors.

We were back on earth, safe and sound from our adventure, and neither Claire nor I had any idea how any of it had happened. We talked about all the theories we had, but when, a few days later, we went on the Behind The Scenes tour, the truth turned out to be far better than either of us dared imagine.

Related Posts:
Two To Beam Up
Bridge To Shuttle Bay One

Beaming From Ear To Ear

In August 2008, Claire and I travelled the West Coast of the US on what we called The Epic Holiday. Along the way we stopped into a small desert town called Las Vegas in Nevada. Mostly this was to get married, but we also bookedd our stay at the Las Vegas Hilton which, at the time, was host to the long running Star Trek Experience.

We were lucky enough to have our holiday when we did too. In September of 2008, one short month after our visit, the Star Trek Experience shut down for good. Remember, this was before the JJ Abrahms 2009 reboot. There was no new series on TV and the last attempt at something was the generally disliked Enterprise. The whole exhibit was torn down and because it had been built in partnership with the Hilton and Paramount, neither could come to an agreement on how the sets would be handled, as they had both paid for the contruction costs. In the end, as far as I'm aware, everything was destroyed, a fact that breaks my heart every time I remember it.

The Experience had a bar modeled after Quark's Bar on board Deep Space 9[1], a gift shop filled with merchandise and memorabilia, a museum packed with screen used props and costumes and, the highlight, two rides to enjoy. The newer of the two was based on Voyager and involved the Borg and some 4D stuff, but the one that had been there since the start was based on The Next Generation, and involved the Klingons. It was much older and didn't have the 4D technology, so of course it would be the lesser of the two.

Nope.

Nope, nope, nope, nope!!

The Borg attack was a fun ride, and the first time Claire and I experienced "4D", much to both of our terror. It was cool, and hopefully I'll get to describe it some day, but the undeniable magic, the one that took both our breaths away was, without question, the Klingon attack.

I'm going to break what I have to say about the Klingon attack into seperate posts for clarity. One will be a straight description of the ride, which I can still vividly recall nine years later, and linked to that will be posts describing how each amazing element was done, which we learned thanks to going on the behind-the-scenes tour after. If I was posting this back in 2008, or even 2009 I might consider not revealing the magic, but it's been nine years, and how they achieved what they achieved should be documented and applauded.

I experienced something I never dreamed would be possible in my life up to that point, and have never experienced again in almost a decade since.

I'll finish this by saying that The Next Generation is the era Claire and I both loved and grew up with. It heavily influenced the person I am today, and the experience in the posts that follow will be treasured memories for as long as I live and prosper.

[1] Claire and I got married in Vegas, and wihle we didn't get married on the bridge of the Enterprise, we did have our wedding day meal in Quark's Bar. It was delicious.

Related Posts:
Welcome Aboard
Two To Beam Up
Bridge To Shuttle Bay One

The Best Of Both Worlds

I recently restarted my Netflix subscription, giving me access to a huge library of content on my Xbox 360, and now, also, my iPad. The last time I had access to the instant streaming service, I watched the entire six seasons of News Radio within three weeks. Admittedly, I was off work at the time and had little else to do. It would appear that, since then, Netflix has become a treasure trove of my childhood, playing host to classics such as Knight Rider, Sliders, The A-Team, and Quantum Leap. I immediately ran into the same problem that so many others have had on starting a Netflix subscription. With so much to watch, where should one begin?

After some consideration, I decided to begin at the start.

Star Trek was my first experience with science-fiction. I watched the movies with my dad, over and over as they were aired on terrestrial television. I soaked them in, losing myself on board the Enterprise. So when Star Trek: The Next Generation began, I relished it. I watched every episode, made easier as they were aired in a prime time slot on the Irish station. I have many happy memories, and one particularly vivid nightmarish one.

So when I started watching TNG on Netflix on Saturday, I feared that my happy nostalgia would be ruined by the cold reality of film.

But it wasn't. I was back on the bridge of the USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain Picard and his excellant crew. The effects were low-tech by todays standards, but just as I remembered them, and the ship was fibreglass and fibre optics, a physical prop rich in detail and design. Tasha Yar was still alive, and all was right with the world.

Almost.

Star Trek, like any series, was not without it's dud episodes, and with seven seasons containing 178 episodes, there were quiet a few duds in The Next Generations catalogue, epecially in the first two seasons, while it was still trying to find it's feet. So how do you keep the wonder of childhood alive in the face of 25 years of life?

Thankfully, this isn't the primitive 20th Century any more! We are of the Internet age!

I turned to TV.com. Thanks to its ratings system, I could pick and choose the episodes I wanted to see. For the ones that fell below my assigned cut-off point, I could read the plot synopsis and decide if I remembered it, or felt like it deserved a chance. In this way, I watched Season 1 as I remembered, if not entirely as it was. It was dramatic and exciting, funny and action packed, and entirely entertaining. Every episode was fantastic, and, exactly as my memory assured me, there were no let-downs. Once more, I saw Tasha die, and got to watch in amazement as the brain-worm-host-queen-thing gets phasered by Picard and Riker until his head explodes and his body is set alight. It was exactly how I remember the scene from the first time I saw it, one of the lasting images I always retained of The Next Generation.

We're in to Season 2 now. Riker has his beard, Wesley is at the helm, Geordie is in Engineering, an Irishman is at the transporter console, and according to TV.com, there's a lot more to skip this season. Thankfully, I still have a lot to look forward to, as the ones that hold up get higher average scores than Season 1's best. At least we get to Season 3 faster, when the show really hit it's stride.

So I only rewatch the best. Many episodes are those that, as I watch them now, I realize I still remember the plots to, the ones that stayed with me, and possibly influenced me in becoming the man I am today. Star Trek: The Next Generation showed me a future where anything was possible, and "no being is so important that he can usurp the rights of another" [Captain Picard, S02E06].

It may be a cheat, but it's the best kind of cheat.

Publicity Stunt, Or Real Deal?

This is just a bit too close to fiction to be fact, but you never know:

Warp Drive Engine Would Travel Faster Than Light

It is possible to travel faster than light. You just wouldn't travel faster than light.

Seems strange, but by manipulating extra dimensions with astronomical amounts of energy, two Baylor University physicists have outlined how a faster-than-light engine, or warp drive, could be created that would bend but not break the laws of physics.

"We think we can create an effective warp drive, based on general relatively and string theory," said Gerald Cleaver, coauthor of the paper that recently appeared on the preprint server ArXiv.org

The warp engine is based on a design first proposed in1994 by Michael Alcubierre. The Alcubierre drive, as it's known, involves expanding the fabric of space behind a ship into a bubble and shrinking space-time in front of the ship. The ship would rest in between the expanding and shrinking space-time, essentially surfing down the side of the bubble.

The tricky part is that the ship wouldn't actually move; space itself would move underneath the stationary spacecraft. A beam of light next to the ship would still zoom away, same as it always does, but a beam of light far from the ship would be left behind.

That means that the ship would arrive at its destination faster than a beam of light traveling the same distance, but without violating Einstein's relativity, which says that it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light, since the ship itself isn't actually moving.

Read more at the Discovery Channel new site:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/07/28/warp-speed-engine.html

Turning Death Into A Fighting Chance To Live

On the cover, it looks as though Star Trek has, after 42 years, five live-action series, one animated offering, making up an astounding 726 episodes over 29 separate seasons of television, ten movies in the bag, countless fan productions, computer games, a library worth of novels, comics, action figures and merchandising of all shapes and sizes, finally run it's course. Thank you Wikipedia for the informative facts there!

Of course, as on a book, covers are often deceiving, and Star Trek is currently attempting to rejuvenate itself with a new movie, based in the golden era of the franchise. Yes, Kirk, Spock and company are coming back. Younger, slimmer, and sexier fitter than ever before!

Let me say, straight up, that I am not a Trekkie. The only series I've ever enjoyed was Next Gen, and that was because, at the time, it was the only thing remotely like it RTE aired. I didn't have very much to compare it against, but for better or worse, it still holds a place in my heart. Plus, unlike later incarnations, RTE managed to show all of Next Gen at a reasonable hour! The Original Series was too old for me. RTE inexcusably stopped showing DS9 right before it got, according to those that know, good. Voyager was only ever shown at some ridiculous hour like 11pm, or later! And I don't think we ever saw Enterprise here. From what little I saw of Voyager, I liked it. It had the "boldly going where no one had gone before" vibe I enjoyed from Next Gen, and two of the handful of episodes I caught featured Q (they were a two parter I saw together), my favourite recurring "villain" from Next Gen.

I did, however, enjoy the movies. The classic ones, starring Shatner and Nimoy are still great fun to watch. Yes, even the whale one... maybe not the one with God, though. I love First Contact. But after that... I had to look up what Insurrection was about, and even after skimming the Wikipedia article for it, I just can't remember much about it at all. I seem to recall Data going berserk at the start, and then... nothing. That's it. Even after reading the plot synopsis. I still have yet to see Nemesis, and am in no hurry, really.

So that puts what I am about to say in perspective. Ahem.

Damn!! I am starting to look forward to Star Trek 2009 (formerly 2008. Accursed delays!). The cast sounds really strong, and when J.J. Abrams is reigned in and forced to do a movie-length plot, it can turn out great, unlike when he's let loose with a multi-season series (I would link to the official home-page but, "Yo! ABC dudes!! Spoilerific homepage!!")! Plus, I love their idea of minimalism in web design! Awesome! So, when Abrams stated upfront that there would be no big news for San Diego Comic Con (Have I mentioned yet that we'll be there?!? I have? Oh... well... we will), I was momentarily disappointed. Only slightly. But then, Paramount went and released these to brighten up all our days! Click to embiggen.






















They'll be available at the Paramount booth at San Diego Comic Con.
Which I'll be at.