Interlude

I saw this charming video a couple of weeks ago, and thought it was definitely worth sharing. Just keep your harpoons and tow-cables stowed away.

An Absolutely Terrible Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode

I thought I had seen every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation over the course of my childhood. Apparently, that is not true. Over the past little while I have been slowly re-watching the series, and I am on the final stretch with the seventh season. Tonight I watched the episode entitled Sub Rosa. It was kind of like watching what I imagine would happen if television writers routinely trolled the internet looking for creepy fan-fiction rather than writing the episodes themselves. Not that I think anyone will mind, but spoilers are ahead.

Apparently, Dr. Crusher's grandmother lives on a weird colony that tries its best to emulate Scotland in the 1800s. While I figured that is what the holodeck is for, I guess it is the future when people can do all sorts of frivolously ridiculous things, including making an entire planet into a Scotland emulation, so perhaps we can forgive the setting. The episode doesn't really have much to do with any of the characters beyond Crusher, with Data, Riker, and Geordi providing minor plot bits. Picard and Troi have slightly larger roles, but their roles are unfortunately mainly served as foils for Crusher's weird and creepy trans-generational ghostly love affair. You see, Crusher's grandmother had a secret lover named Ronin who was actually an "aniphasic" alien who lived in a candle (a regular candle, but somehow it turns out to actually be a plasma candle). Now that Crusher's grandmother is dead, he seduces her. If the story of someone's grandmother's lover seducing them is not awkward enough, he repeatedly tells her how much he loves her within the context of loving her just like he loved her grandmother, and her great grandmother before that, all the way back through the generations.

I not only have no idea who pitched this storyline in the writing room, but I cannot imagine how anyone who heard it thought, "Grandmother's ghost lover seducing Dr. Crusher - how is that not television gold?" Apparently there is another episode that I also have not seen (or at least have no memory of seeing) coming up that is even worse than this one, but I have a hard time imagining that. Also, I realise that this post in no way holds any sort of worthwhile news or interesting bits about science, but I felt the need to share my pain.

Picking on Mr. Crusher

I have mentioned the short Star Trek: The Next Generation videos that are available on youtube as new stories cobbled together by clever editing before, and whenever one that I think was particularly well done comes along I point it out. Well, since that time many more have been released, and another one has struck my fancy. I thought the random pieces of storyline were knit together rather well, and it succeeded without even having to resort to awkward sexual tension between the crew members.

Badlands and Geek-towns

As I have mentioned, I am currently in my hometown of Creston, British Columbia, visiting my family. The last couple days, however, were spent traveling into Alberta to pick up my girlfriend, who is coming out for a week to visit my family as well, from Calgary. Despite the fact that it is a fairly extensive six hour drive from Creston to Calgary, many of my childhood memories center around some of the attractions in the area, and going there to pick up my girlfriend therefore provided a nice opportunity to show them off to her. It also gave me an opportunity to visit my good friend Cornucrapia (obviously not his real name, but since he maintains loose anonymity on the internet, I shall respect his wishes), who lives in Calgary.

First off, my mom and I drove to Calgary Saturday night (I don't drive in Toronto, so having someone else along to share in the driving was a big help). I spent the night on Cornucrapia's couch, and then we headed out to the airport the next morning to collect my girlfriend. Despite her jet-lag, we set off for Drumheller, Alberta, straight from the airport. If you have not heard of Drumheller (which, if you are not a western Canadian or die-hard dinosaur fan, is most likely), it is situated in the Alberta badlands and is home to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology. If you have never been to a region of badlands terrain, they are quite fascinating and I recommend going. I have included a picture (which I recommend clicking on to see at full size), but even that fails to fully capture the entire vista which surrounds you.
For those who do not remember, I have mentioned before that I spent most of my early childhood obsessed with dinosaurs. Thus, the Tyrrell Museum was one of my favourite places to go, and, despite it being an additional two hours north of Calgary (and thus just shy of an eight hour drive from my hometown), between grandparents, parents, and family friends I had managed to finagle five visits to the place before the age of ten. Shortly thereafter, however, my family moved to Pennsylvania, and I have not had an opportunity to return prior to this past weekend. I was thus a little giddy about the trip. I think my expectations were therefore a little out of proportion (it wasn't quite the magical land of endless dinosaur displays that I had remembered), but it is still a fantastic museum devoted to paleontology, and the surrounding backdrop of the badlands makes it well worth a trip if you are ever in the Calgary area. In addition to the Tyrrell Museum, Drumheller also includes attractions like Reptile World, where you can see a wide variety of reptiles and amphibians on display, as well as get an opportunity to hold a friendly boa constrictor.

While Drumheller can perhaps be considered a geeky place to have been a childhood dream destination, it cannot hold a candle to the geekiness which was our detour on the drive back to Creston after spending Sunday night in Calgary. Unfortunately, Cornucrapia was unable to come on this exciting detour, as we dropped him off Sunday evening. However, my mom, girlfriend, and I all got to experience the extraordinary geekiness which is Vulcan, Alberta.
Rather than simply smile at the fact that their town shares a name with Spock's father's race, residents of Vulcan have gone above and beyond in capitalizing upon the name to create a wholly bizarre tourist experience. Driving across endless fields of Albertan prairie, what at first appears to be a typical prairie town pops into existence. Once the buildings emerge from behind the heat waves and coalesce into a focused image, however, one is able to spot the giant Enterprise statue standing in front of the likewise named Enterprise Family Restaurant, which itself sits in front of a space-bubble style building that serves as both the Vulcan and District Chamber of Commerce as well as the Vulcan Association for Science and Trek.
Inside the Vulcan Association for Science and Trek building, you are greeted by a friendly staff, an astonishing array of Star Trek themed merchandise, and a $10 per use virtual reality game (we opted not to try the game, though if any of my readers do try it, you will have to let me know if we were missing out or not). Perhaps more impressive than the virtual reality game and the merchandise, however, was the room full of Star Trek memorabilia gifted to the town by a Calgarian collector. With a wall of Star Trek action figures (all in their original packaging!), a large number of full-sized cardboard cutouts, a fairly extensive uniform wardrobe (which were free to try on and take pictures - you better believe we did that!), and so many other items it is hard to remember them all, it was overwhelming, impressive, and a little bit creepy all at the same time. If you are a huge Star Trek fan, a trip to Vulcan might be a fascinating vacation destination. While I don't think I am a big enough Star Trek fan to have made the trip if it had not been merely a small detour on our way back to Creston, I still find it charming that such a place exists.

Going on a trip

I'm going to Munich this weekend, so I won't get a chance to work on refining my thoughts from the last post or put up the answers to the most recent puzzle (which no one has sent me solutions for yet... get those in soon!) until Monday. Since I seem to have been overly hitting the philosophy and public policy theme recently, I thought I would lighten the mood with a funny video from youtube. I've pointed out the Star Trek: The Next Generation video edits before, and since then quite a few more have been released. I thought the 21st one was particularly well done, so I've embedded it here. Enjoy!

Solution to Puzzle Number Six

Here are the solutions to Puzzle Number 6: Star Media Quotations. For those who have forgotten, the puzzle involved a set of ten quotations from various television shows and movies with 'star' in the title. The puzzle was to come up with what show or movie it was from, who said the quotation, to whom, and what the context was. I received partial solutions from Sarah, Robert, and Scott.

1.) "I'll make it up to him next year; I promise."
From Star Wars: A New Hope, this was said by Uncle Owen to Aunt Beru after Uncle Owen tells Luke he has to stick around for the harvest rather than go to the academy.

Sarah and Robert both correctly identified this quotation, although neither managed to name Aunt Beru.

2.) "There are four lights!"
From Star Trek: The Next Generation, this was said by Captain Jean-Luc Picard to his Cardassian torturer. Picard had been captured by the Cardassians after being lured into a trap, and his torturer began to mess with his head by insisting that he was being shown five lights when in fact there were only four. He would then ask Picard how many lights there were, and cause him immense pain if Picard answered "Four". When Picard was finally released, he took a moment to bellow that sentence at his torturer, thereby reminding viewers that Picard is awesome, defiant, and all around the coolest captain.

Sarah, Robert, and Scott all successfully managed to identify this quotation. Oddly enough, though, both Sarah and Robert thought that the Cardassian was demanding he say there were three lights, and Scott couldn't remember the number of lights (the reason I say that was odd is because, to me, the number of lights is a very distinct part of the scenario).

3.) "He is as clumsy as he is stupid. General, prepare your troops for a ground assault."
From Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, this is Darth Vader letting General Veers know that he has very little esteem for a certain Admiral Ozzle, and more than likely Admiral Ozzle is about to die a rather unpleasant death by asphyxiation. The Imperial fleet was at that moment preparing to attack the Rebel base in the Hoth System, and they came out of light speed too close to the planet (thus letting the rebels detect them and activate their energy shield).

Sarah had the most complete answer on this one, although she was unable to name General Veers (that, after all, would be an immense display of geekdom). Scott knew it was Vader, but he couldn't place the scene.

4.) "Welcome home, Mr. President."
From Battlestar Galactica, this was said by Chief Tyrol to Gaius Baltar as Tyrol brought Baltar out of a trance by placing a pistol against his head. The remark was followed by Tyrol pistol whipping Baltar into unconsciousness. Baltar had been under the care of the cylons following the retreat from New Caprica, and in this way he was brought into custody by the colonial forces.

No one managed to get this one. I was actually worried it would be too vague, but at the same time I figured any line with "Frak" in it would be too obvious.

5.) "Yub yub."
From Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, this was said on a number of occasions by several small furry critters called Ewoks native to the forest moon of Endor. As it was said several times, whom it was being said to and the context have multiple answers. Probably the one that stands out the most is when Leia first meets her Ewok friend and he is beckoning her to follow him back to his home.

Sarah is the only one who got this one (I think a large part of that is due to her predilection for small furry critters, but she is also clearly a competent Star Wars authority as well).

6.) "your basic hedonistic predilection for a rhythmic stroking of your fur, to demonstrate affection,"
From Star Trek: The Next Generation, this is an excerpt from Lt. Commander Data performing his Ode to Spot. As this was a performance, I was less concerned about who the audience was, although it did include Geordi, Worf, Picard, Riker, Troi, and some unnamed people who suffered from hairstyles transplanted out of the 80s.

Scott did an amazing job on this one, going into remarkable detail on the context and audience. He remembered that Worf, Picard, Riker, and Troi were all there, and that the point of the scene (other than showcasing Data's socially awkward awsomeness) was that Riker was unusually sleepy. He nods off during the poem, Troi pokes him awake, and, thinking the poem is over, he starts clapping in the middle.

7.) "I've lost the fellatus to speak properly."
From Stargate: SG1, this was said by Colonel Jack O'Niell to the other members of his team in the briefing room (and, presumably, to the General, although I cannot remember exactly... nor can I find it on the internet just now).

Sarah and Scott both got this one, although, like me, both of them were not entirely sure who he said it to. Also, both Sarah and Scott specified that it was O'Niell with two l's, cementing their claim to geekdom in the Stargate universe as well.

8.) "sometimes a cake is just a cake."
From Star Trek: The Next Generation, this was said by Counsellor Deanna Troi to Lt. Commander Data as the two of them contemplated cutting into a Data shaped cake that Troi had brought. The reason for the cake was that Data had been experimenting with dreaming and, after having a nightmare that featured Troi's head on a cake shaped like her body that people were eating, Data ended up stabbing her in the shoulder trying to attack an alien he was only vaguely aware of.

Scott and Sarah both got this one.

9.) "Hey, look! I'm an engineer! I can do math!"
From Stargate: Atlantis, this was said by Bill Nye the Science Guy to Dr. Rodney MacKay as Bill Nye and MacKay were trying to come up with a way to shut down an interdimensional rift that was threatening to freeze everyone to death.

No one managed to get this one, which I'm not entirely surprised at... I just thought it was funny that Bill Nye played himself in an episode of Stargate: Atlantis. Plus, as a former engineer-in-training turned scientist, I chuckled at the scientist/engineer squabble over whether engineers could do math.

10.) "I can arrange that. You could use a good kiss!"
From Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, this was said by Han Solo to Princess Leia Organa after she told him, "I'd sooner kiss a wookie." This was before the Imperial Forces attacked Hoth when Han was planning to take his leave to pay off Jabba the Hutt, and Leia was mad at him for leaving.

Sarah managed to get this one, while Robert successfully got the characters but wasn't able to place the context.

So, a trio of readers have displayed their science fiction biases (among my own biased selection... you will notice that all Star Wars quotations were from the original movies (as the dialogue from the new movies really isn't much worth quoting) and all the Star Trek quotations were from the Next Generation). As I said when I posted the puzzle, this was done predominantly from my own (possibly flawed) memory, so if you notice any mistakes please let me know and I will post corrections.

Puzzle Number 6: Star Media Quotations

This is a light-hearted weekend puzzle based on a game my research partner and I played last summer while performing the tedious task of mixing electrode paste for our EEG cap. The game my friend and I played was to take turns saying a line from one of the original Star Wars movies (I limited it to those because I had only seen the new ones once each), and then the other person had to try and name who said it, to whom, and what the context was. For this puzzle, I have extended it to include television shows with star in the name. This should increase the difficulty somewhat, although I have tried to pick at least somewhat memorable lines. So, to be clear, the task for each quotation is to name the movie or television show it is from, who is saying it, to whom it is being said, and the general context of the scene. Occasionally, there is more than one context or listener, but those should hopefully be fairly obvious. Also, I came up with most of these by memory, so if I've made any errors, please be sure to let me know. Also, as usual, partial solutions are also welcome.

1.) "I'll make it up to him next year; I promise."

2.) "There are four lights!"

3.) "He is as clumsy as he is stupid. General, prepare your troops for a ground assault."

4.) "Welcome home, Mr. President."

5.) "Yub yub."

6.) "your basic hedonistic predilection for rhythmic stroking of your fur, to demonstrate affection."

7.) "I've lost the fellatus to speak properly."

8.) "sometimes a cake is just a cake."

9.) "Hey, look! I'm an engineer! I can do math!"

10.) "I can arrange that. You could use a good kiss!"

Note: Solutions can be found here.

Hometown Blues

I may sometimes decry the fact that, aside from beer, the only thing that puts my hometown on the map is its proximity to fundamentalist polygamist religious groups. Still, it could be worse... my hometown could be this one. While I have a much deeper philosophical divide with fundamental Mormons than I do with Trekkies (after all, I am a fan of Star Trek. I just don't understand the hardcore Trekkies' desire to base so much of real life around an acknowledged fictional universe... that and the popularity of Klingons continues to baffle me), I think it would be rather hard to live in a place so completely consumed by a single franchise. The Bountiful community, in contrast, tends to spend all of their efforts in shielding their children from our community (aside from baby-sitting jobs, which are seen as valuable sources of income and training...). Of course, I am not advocating that Vulcan should not be capitalizing on their name, as it seems like Star Trek has financially saved the town from oblivion. I just feel badly for any residents who could never stand the show.

Introductions

It has been a fairly exhausting last few days. Travelling can really take it out of you, especially if one is travelling alone to a place without previous acquaintances. However, I don't want to take my time this evening to write the long, reflective piece on travel and German culture that has been fomenting in my head for the last few days. So, in my attempt to relax but still get out some thoughts in unrepentent English, I will wax philosophical for a few minutes about telivision. Specifically, I would like to talk about the introductions of television shows.

Introductions at first glance do not really seem that important. After all, if one power watches television shows like a lot of young people do these days (wait for a good portion of the show to have already aired and then download and watch the show in large chunks of several episodes one after the other), often the introduction ends up just being skipped anyway to save those precious few minutes. However, a good introduction can do a lot for a show. Take, for an idle example, the introductions to Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Collectively, they are all really just a bunch of shots of planets and other spacey things interspliced with spaceships making fancy noises before leaping off into the distance with a flash of light and credits with an overlay of some sort of musical score. However, what Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation have is that epicly cheesy voice-over of their respective captains declaring space as the final frontier, and those opening words have been burned into the collective conscience of popular culture almost as deeply as the words, "Luke, I am your father". While I do not necessarily understand the entrenched effect of the original series (after all, there really wasn't a lot that was epic about that series... it was all just Kirk hooking up with alien women in between scenes of fisticuffs and torn shirts in random alien gladiatorial rings), the cheesy seriousness of the voice-over fit the cheesy philosophy for the laymen that was Star Trek: The Next Generation. The show aspired to make people think, and, even if it often did so in obvious, elementary, and predictable ways, the soothingly authoritative voice of Patrick Stewart helps to set the contemplative mood in a monumental way.

I was going to go on to pass a few words of judgement on Star Trek: Enterprise, but I seem to have gone for a good deal longer with the subject of science fiction shows than I originally intended. What originally inspired me to write this post was to point out some of the very best examples of introductory television sequences I have seen in the last few years. Like with most television in general, the best examples come from Showtime and HBO. In the runner-up position is Showtime's Dexter. For those who have not seen it, give it a gander:



For those who have not seen or heard of the show, it is about a sociopath named Dexter Morgan who has the uncontrollable urge to kill people. Raised as an orphan by a police officer, his stepfather recognized the early warning signs and molded his psyche into a strict code of ethics such that he would only murder murderers who had somehow cheated the legal system. While the premise is a little creepy, the show is quite well done with a lot of interesting psychological development (at least for the first two seasons, I stopped watching after that because it was simply too stressful). The reason why I like the introduction so much is because it is so exceedingly fitting to the mood of the show... it is all about ridiculously careful precision with every last detail of even the most mundane of tasks (starting the morning), all the while carrying with it the foreboding visceral imagery of sizzling flesh, drops of blood, a grinder, and squirting juice from a blood orange.

Still, I think the introduction to HBO's True Blood may be even more well done than the introduction to Dexter. Briefly, the show is set in a world where vampires have recently 'come out of the coffin' following the invention of synthetic blood by Japanese researchers. There is still a lot of tension between vampires and people, and the main character, a waitress at a bar in a small southern town who can read minds, finds herself drawn into those tensions when she becomes involved with the a vampire intent on 'going mainstream' who moves into the town. Watch the introduction here:



The disturbing montage of erotica, religious imagery, Americana, racism, and wildlife, all set to a threateningly forward country song, seems to perfectly encapsulate the desired ambience of the American south. This is done with enough rawness to help drive back one's cognitive faculties and make the show more about turgid emotional reactions than logical thought (which is a good state of mind for a show about vampires). Also, the amazing pun of "God Hates Fangs" is highly enjoyable.

Anyway, this has been a longer ramble about exceedingly trivial matters than I had originally intended it to be, so I'm going to end my discourse here. As always, feel free to leave a comment or two with your own opinion on the matter.

Note: I am exhausted and I cannot seem to get my spellchecker to switch to English (it is currently stuck on German... damn IP address), so please forgive what I expect is an unusually high concentration of errors in this post.

Battlestar Galactica, You've Fallen So Far

Warning: Possible Spoiler Alert.

It's been a while since this little video came out:

When it did, I remember Battlestar Galactica had gone through a couple rough patches but it was still an amazing show. The miniseries and the first season were exceedingly enjoyable, and the start of the second was good too. All that has changed, now. The show is over, and all I can think is, "What the hell?" Sure, the assault on the enemy cylons' base to rescue Hera was full of action and some exciting minor character death, but then there was almost an hour of pedantic, anti-science, pseudo-religious melodrama. I was really hoping the last episode would save my thoughts of the show, but instead it went the other direction. Am I alone in my disappointment?

A Stupid Cold

I apologize for the lack of substantive posts lately. I have been working on the third part of my series on top-down visual processing and planned to post it yesterday, but instead I was in bed most of the day feeling sorry for myself with a headache and sore throat. More unfortunate (for me at least) than its interference with blog posting is the fact that being sick right now also interferes with the fact that our college formal is tonight (which is an awkward thing to attend while sick) and I have two midterms next week which I really need to study for (something made difficult by a throbbing head). Therefore, I just wanted to point out that things might be a bit slow around here until after this coming Wednesday (then again, my well-honed procrastination skills might kick in and produce a flurry of posts). One thing that I thought I would link to in the interim is a collection of Star Trek: The Next Generation edited videos my girlfriend told me about this morning. Apparently some of her friends from school showed them to her the other day (being in a physics specialist tends to have all sorts of geeky benefits) and so she relayed their existence to me. They are pretty weird and somewhat inappropriate, but whoever put them together has rather remarkable video editing skills and the occasional moment of comedic gold. Anyway, enough of my rambling, here is a link to the first one. It is rather uneventful, the second one is disturbing, but by the sixth one there have been some clever bits. As they go on the editing improves, and by far my favourite is the most recent fifteenth episode.

Lack of Consistency Annoys Me

A rather bad habit I have picked up over the years of my undergraduate studies is procrastination through the use of television. Part of that stems from the ubiquity of shared media while living in residence, while another part comes from my attempts to limit by game playing (and thereby hopefully promote more work) by supplanting computer games with a less open-ended and somewhat easier to control habit (watching television). While the efficacy of my methods might be somewhat in question, the end result is I have watched a fair bit of television over the past few years, and part of that has involved watching a great deal of the various Star Trek series.

The thing is, calling Star Trek science fiction is a bit of a misnomer, as it is more of a fantasy that just happens to be set in a future which purports to share our history. It includes magic (like telepathy) and technology at best only tenuously connected with our actual understanding of science. Accepting, then, that Star Trek can be given the same leeway one gives to other tales like The Lord of The Rings in that it exists in a universe apart from our own and thus can be accepted as functioning on its own system of rules, it should at least be consistent with itself. When I was younger and contemplated pursuing a career as an author (I know, I'm a tremendous dork. While normal adolescent boys dreamt of becoming rock stars like Kurt Cobain I dreamt of becoming an author like Isaac Asimov), one of the things that was appealing about writing fantasy novels was the idea that I was in control of everything. However, given my brain's propensity for over-obsessing over small little details, there always had to be an underlying system to the way things functioned in my world, and therefore I would make up elaborate rules for the applications of things like magic such that I would always be consistent without the arduous task of rechecking all my previous work (I'd just have to follow my own rules). The way I viewed it, when you get to make stuff up, you should at least make every possible attempt to stay consistent, at least as a courtesy to your readers (or viewers, in the case of Star Trek).

While I recognize that there are certain things that are going to be overlooked across several seasons and several different spin-offs, there are certain things which I think at least someone should have thought of at some point. To avoid ranting for too long on the subject, I am going to bring up perhaps one of the most obvious ones: the Universal Translator. This handy little device (which it is unclear where it exists, just that it seems to always be available to the characters, with the notable exception for a trio of Ferengi who accidentally went back in time to the 1950s) allows everyone to speak the same language. Accepting that it works and not worrying too greatly about the details, how then do Klingons somehow still purposefully revert back to speaking their own language in particular and well-chosen circumstances (almost always just for short little things like "Kapla" instead of "Goodbye")? Why isn't that getting translated by the handy little device? Most offensive are the scenes where there are only Klingons present and they spend the majority of the scene speaking English, but then, often for dramatic purpose, one will say something in Klingon (this seems to happen a lot when Worf is hanging out fighting some sort of war on Klingon ships).

Anyway, I propose the following: if ever any reader of mine is in charge of the production of a science fiction show with a widespread and ludicrously dedicated fan base like that available to Star Trek, create a position on your writing staff for one or two of those insane fans to proof read your scripts and look for internal inconsistencies. You could probably even convince them to do it for free (maybe they get a souvenir from the set or something like that).

Humorous Interlude

Seeing the popularity of my last Sci-Fi oriented post, here is a ridiculous video my girlfriend showed me the other day. I didn't realise people did this sort of thing... The main thing I find confusing about the video is how remarkably good the costumes are. They are almost too good to just be random fan costumes... but I'm not sure even George Lucas would sponsor something this ludicrous.

"That's why I never kiss 'em on the mouth."

In keeping with my status as a dork, geek, and nerd, I watch a lot of science fiction. I'm not particularly sure why, as the acting is often very bad and the plots not much better. Maybe I just like all the shiny lights. I also often find the "science" on the shows painfully bad, but, like with almost all television, I mostly watch it to turn that part of my brain off and relax. In a similar way to which Isaac Asimov recommends watching mindless action films in his essay The Eureka Phenomenon, Sci Fi television to me is a way to relax the brain and recharge.

For all my disparagement, however, there are some parts that I really do like. For example, despite having some truly abysmal actors in its ranks, Star Trek does have some good ones too. I will never figure out how Star Trek managed to snag Patrick Stewart, one of the premiere Shakespearean actors of his day. Brent Spiner is also highly enjoyable, as well as many of the supporting characters from Deep Space Nine. The one thing I will never understand, though, is how some shows make it and others do not.

Take, for example, Stargate: SG-1. How is that the longest running continuous science fiction series in history (technically, that is a claim disputed by Dr. Who, so it is more correct to say it is the longest running North American science fiction series)? Yes, there were some funny bits and even some clever bits, but for the most part that show was background noise. I never really cared about the characters in it to any excessive degree, nor was I ever wildly worried about what the future of the show might hold. Yet somehow the show lasted 10 seasons and so far has had two movies (I believe both went straight to television).

Contrast SG-1 with a show like Firefly. It only lasted a season, but its fourteen episodes make up some of the most enjoyable science fiction I've ever seen. The characters are witty, well-acted, and engaging. The story is continuous and interwoven without making it absolutely necessary to have seen preceeding episodes or have long recaps at the beginning of each new episode. Also, they don't have sound effects in space! That one little bit of realism is enough for me to forgive all the terrible neuroscience espoused by Simon Tam when he scans his sister's brain to figure out what the government did to her. The fact that it only lasted a single season just never seemed quite fair to me.

I know they made a movie, but, like all things Joss Whedon does, he decided it was best to destroy his creation in his way than let it fade away. Between the rewriting of the series' history, random character death, and virtual lack of certain characters from the movie's storyline, I was not a fan.

Anyway, I am procrastinating right now by rambling about science fiction, so I should probably stop it and get back to work.