Thursday, February 20, 2014

Klutz Plague

I recently watched the second season episode "Rivals," in which a gaming device shifts probability all over the station (remnants of Hitchhiker's Guide) and causes some people to have incredible luck and other people to make a lot of silly mistakes.  This episode falls into the "something medical and strange is happening to everyone on the ship" category, minus the medical part (and also minus the "ship" part, I keep forgetting we're on a space station).  Also, this paragraph could be considered a spoiler if the cause of the station's woes weren't obvious from the moment the device was introduced.  I would have been pleased if, instead, they received word from StarFleet Command that Mercury was in retrograde.

I'd forgotten about this episode until just now when I tried to take a piece of candy out of a jar and sent it skittering across the floor (after which, of course, I blew on it and ate it), and then tried to put the lid back on and watched it clank and woogity woogity on my desk before falling off the edge.  Fortunately for me, I know the reason for my klutziness is indeed the cosmos and not a silly blinking spherical toy.

Before I forget, I want to register my satisfaction that two cast members from The Princess Bride have made appearances on DS9.  Chris Sarandon (Prince Humperdinck) appears in the above-described episode as the Harold Hill-like character who popularizes the gaming device and hence spreads the klutz plague.  In a truly inspired casting choice, Wallace Shawn (Vizzini) guest stars as the recurring character Grand Nagus Zek.  You'd never recognize him under all that Ferengi makeup, but once he opens his mouth you just want to hear him scream, "Inconceivable!"

Please note tiny Ferengi head cane-topper

Monday, February 17, 2014

Deep Space to the Nines

Let's pretend this isn't the first post in a new blog, and I've been posting here for years.

Reading Fashion It So from beginning to end whetted my appetite for Star Trek: TNG, but not so much that I wanted to actually watch the show.  It did, however, spark an interest in watching Deep Space Nine from the beginning, which in my experience is the least-liked series in the Star Trek canon.  A college roommate once criticized, "The ship doesn't move!"  All other opinions on it have boiled down to: meh.  I enjoyed what little I've seen of it, though, so I'm going to give it a watch, and blog about it here.

Oh, and though I imply in the title of this post that I'll be covering fashion like Charlie and Anna do in Fashion It So, I really won't be.  I defer to the experts on that one, and I do hope they'll take on DS9 when they finish TNG.

I've already binge-watched the first season, which I acknowledge is 20 hours that could have been better spent.  I won't lie though; I enjoyed myself.  In the future I'll try to cover smaller amounts per post, but for now let's get this out of the way.

Thoughts:

  • Bars of Gold-Pressed Latinum: I am so sick of hearing this term.  Even if the writers thought this would be a feasible currency 400 years in the future, I can't believe they wouldn't have abbreviated it to "Bars" or "Latinum" or something by now.  It's such a mouthful, especially when someone has to act their way through it.  "I'll give it to you for SEVEN no EIGHT BARS of GOLD-pressed LATINUM."  If I were an actor on the show, this would definitely drive me bonkers.  God bless Armin Shimerman.
  • Speaking of bonkers, the first episode was a two-hour acid trip.
  • And speaking of acting, Dr. Bashir, Jesus Christ.  I have no business critiquing acting, so Jesus Christ is all I'll say.  Watching this from the beginning fills in some details on Bashir's character that I missed, such as he's a lothario and, if it's not redundant to say so, a douchebag.
  • Apparently they could only get Rosalind Chao for a few episodes, so a lot of the cold opens feature the "Where's Keiko?" game.  Keiko's down on Bajor.  Keiko went home to Earth for her grandmother's birthday.  I love Keiko, but they don't really have to justify it every time she's not in an episode.
  • Common theme: Something medical and strange is happening to everyone on the ship!
I could go on, but there's more internet for you to read.