Leonard Nimoy hospitalized with severe chest pains

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

He also has COPD, so double FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

I didn't get into Star Trek through The Original Series like a lot of Trekkies; TNG was my gateway drug, but I LOVE the movies with the TOS cast way more than the TNG ones. I think The Motion Picture is under-appreciated and still get hit hard when Spock dies in The Wrath of Khan. His acting in The Voyage Home is one of the best things about that movie. Really, Leonard Nimoy defined what a Vulcan is and set the standard that pretty much every actor who has ever donned the pointy ears has to try and emulate to some degree.

This really just drives home hard the reality that the original cast is growing older and that their time on this Earth is coming to a close a lot sooner than anybody wants. I'm hoping against hope that this isn't anything super serious and he makes a speedy recovery, but man, it is going to be a cold harsh day when we finally lose Leonard Nimoy.

Man, Syfy is really going full bore on the science fiction

I've already mentioned that they're doing adaptions of 12 Monkeys, The Expanse, and more, but now they're going even further by adding two more series: an adaption of Robert Charles Wilson's novel, Spin, and a show called Krypton. You can guess what the latter is about.

I read Spin back in the summer of 2011, during my fantasy reading binge (it and a few other scifi novels got sucked in there) and I really enjoyed it. Couldn't get into the sequel, Vortex, but that happens. Here's the blurb for the novel:

One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.

The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk—a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, a space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside—more than a hundred million years per year on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future.

Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who's forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses.

Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans…and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth's probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun—and report back on what they find.

Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.

Spin seems more suited for television than a movie. The latter would just condense the plot too much and cut character development or other important things for the sake of running time. I can't wait to watch this once production gets underway.

Krypton is equally, if not more interesting. As you can guess by the name, it's Superman-related, but is a prequel focused on the planet before it exploded and Earth ended up with a Man of Steel, with Kal-El's grandfather as the main character. On one hand, I'm jived for this, since Kryptonian society has always been depicted as being highly advanced and I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of tech the writers will conjure up. On the other hand, there's another prequel series based on an equally popular DC Comics character already on TV and that one didn't particularly connect to me. Of course, that's because Gotham felt too Batman-centric, even though it was supposed to be about Jim Gordon and Gotham City before the Dark Knight. Hopefully, the folks behind Krypton won't try and shoehorn Superman or his entire rogue's gallery into the show.

Overall, it's nice to see Syfy return to its roots and move away from it's previous trend of shitty paranormal crap shows. I think all these shows will go a long, long way towards reconciling with scifi fans.

Tip of the hat to Aidan Moher's A Dribble of Ink for posting about these two shows first.

The Vaadwaur from Star Trek: Voyager look like Cardassians

(via Memory Beta)

The Vaadwaur's first and only appearance in VOY episode "Dragon's Teeth", where the crew of  Voyager stumbles across a bunch of them in hibernation while hiding out on their ruined homeworld. Voyager managed to stumble across a new form of faster-than-light travel called Underspace that allows the ship to travel two hundred light years in the span of five minutes. Unfortunately, the alien ship that helps them exist the Underspace are a bit...snippy about unauthorized use of their corridors and when Janeway refuses to let them board the ship and erase all related info from the computers, they attack and Voyager hides out on an irradiated planet with a thoroughly devastated city. Then they find all these Vaadwaur in stasis pods and naturally, they wake them up. To make a long story short, the Vaadwaur play themselves as victims of a war nine hundred years ago, but thanks to Neelix, the truth is uncovered: the Vaadwaur were an aggressive race akin to the Klingons, who used the Underspace corridors to build an empire. Their empire and most of their race were destroyed by their enemies, who then seized control of the Underspace. At the end of the episode, fifty-three Vaadwaur fighters escaped, but they were never used in the series again.

I was farting around Memory Beta, like I usually do, when I saw a picture of a Vaadwaur. It's been well over a decade since I've seen Dragon's Teeth, so I forgot what they look like and then it hit me that they look like Cardassians.

(via Memory Alpha)

I think it's the necks.

The Expanse looks nice.

I can't wait until this thing gets an air date.

Goddamn, I haven't posted in a long time

Since November 16th, yikes! I haven't been doing much blogging lately, for some reason. I do have stuff in mind, I just have to get motivated to post it.

How have you been?

A whole lotta scifi coming to TV soon

First of all, most of this news comes from Adam Whitehead's most excellent The Wertzone, so big tip of the hat to him.

Let's do a run down:

• Spike just announced that they're going to turn Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy into a series. Reminder that Spike is the channel with the MMA, wrestling (not for long), and a plethora of reality shows. Hopefully they won't fuck it up.
• Syfy is doing a ton. They're adapting Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End into a miniseries, as well as turning James S. A. Corey's Expanse and John Scalzi's Old Man's War into TV series. Finally, they have a show based on the movie 12 Monkeys set to premiere this January. Interesting stuff, but then again, this is the network that brought us such turds as Children of Dune, Riverworld, and Earthsea, to say nothing of all of their ghost hunting shows.
• FX is doing a limited series based on Scalzi's Redshirts.
• HBO, meanwhile, is stepping into the science fiction arena by optioning The Foundation series. Given the size and scope that Game of Thrones has, this could be interesting. I don't doubt for a minute that what ends up on TV will differ greatly from the source material, but that's probably not a big deal. I mean, even Isaac Asimov couldn't figure out why the Foundation Trilogy was so popular. At the very least, we're getting boobs and sex and more boobs. Probably full frontal too.

I'm being somewhat flippant towards Spike and Syfy because the former has never done a scifi series (to my knowledge) and the latter has a bad track record when it comes to adapting written scifi to television. On the other hand, Syfy seems to be at least making an effort to live up to their name, which is more than can be said for other niche channels.

Never mind the Trek blog

Ran out of steam and ideas, even though I planned to write quite a few posts. Oh well, I've imported the few posts that I did make, so let's pretend it never happened. :P

On a list of reasons to join Starfleet, I didn't think a swimming pool would even rate

(via Memory Beta)

Look at this gem from the Memory Beta page for the Northampton-class:

These vessels were designed for deep-space stationing in all sensitive areas, to prevent alien aggression. The Northampton vessels were sought after assignments by crews and troops due to numerous recreation decks and spacious quarters for the crewmembers and marines. Swimming pools, gravball courts, and gymnasiums were all located in the lower hull adjacent to the shuttlebay and near the engineering section. Although the hull design incorporated the single-engine lock often found in Andorian designs, the Northampton was a Martian design.

The bit about the ships being sought after because of swimming pools and other amenities caught me as funny. I can just imagine a cadet about to graduate from Starfleet Academy, getting ready to go out and exploring the galaxy, discovering new life and all that jazz, then ditching that in favor of a swimming pool.

Human Resource Officer from Starfleet: "So, I see you went the Sciences route in Starfleet. We always need more science officers, what was your specilization?"
Cadet: "Exo-botany. I wrote dissertation on the Xindi tulip."
HRO: "Interesting, interesting. Well, we do have an opening on an Oberth science vessel, the USS Sheldon Cooper and they do a lot of research on planet life, including flora, so you'd fit right in."
Cadet: "Great!"
HRO: "Now, I should tell you that an Oberth is a pretty small ship, so it doesn't have all the amenities of larger ships."
Cadet: "That's fine. Sacrifice is expected in the name of science, after all."
HRO: "Good to know, because you certainly won't find a swimming pool on an Oberth like the Northampton's have."
Cadet: "Well that's fine with--I'm sorry, but did you say 'swimming pool'?"
HRO: "Hmm? Oh yeah, the Northampton-class starships all have pools, gyms, grav courts, etc. Big quarters too, even for the most junior officers. Now, let's get the paperwork started so we can move you on out to the Sheldon Cooper."
Cadet: "Uh, actually, I think I've changed my mind. Is there an opening on any Northamptons?"
HRO: "Yeah, a couple, but they don't really need an exo-botanist."
Cadet: "Well, I mean why should have matter? I don't think one should necessarily be limited by their degrees. A person can grow in other directions and my direction is clearly toward a Northampton!"
HRO: "But they're warships - all they do is patrol and guard sectors of space! There's no science or exploration involved!"
Cadet: "Look, I know how to fire a phaser and I've got fists perfect for punching aliens in their faces, so what more do I need?!"
HRO: *facepalming* "Goddammit..."

So apparently the NX-Enterprise was powered by Mac OS X

Was derping around on Memory Alpha and found this picture:

(via Memory Alpha)

According to this article on Trek Today, something like 16 of Apple's Mac G4 Cubes were used to handle the computer displays on the set. Mike Okuda and others would man these computers and monitor everything that goes up on the displays in the set. Whenever the Enterprise went to red alert, ran a diagnostic, or blipped off and on when the ship took damage, it was done from there. Neat.

The Loknar-class is a sweet starship

(via Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator On-Line Database & Archive)

The Loknar was one of the myriad of starships that appeared in FASA's Star Trek RPG back in the 1980s. Here's some info from Memory Beta:

The five series of Loknar vessels were built at the beginning of a period of Federation expansion known to historians as "The Great Awakening". Although the era was defined by scientific research and exploratory ventures, numerous small warship classes were built, including the Loknar. These vessels were primarily designed by Andorians, who favored a doctrine of border protection for the young Federation.

Note: The Loknar-class does actually have a deflector dish
in other pictures I've seen,
no idea why it doesn't have it in this one.
(via Memory Beta)

When authorized by the Federation Appropriations Committee, the Loknars were constructed by Andorian shipbuilders in large numbers in shipyards at Mars and Salazaar, and introduced to service on reference stardate 1/9010 with the commissioning of the USS Loknar. All Loknar vessels were named for Federation colony provinces and cities, and many are crewed exclusively by Andorians, as part of the "Blue Fleet".

Over the course of the Four Years War, the Loknar became a staple of fleet action, and was upgraded several times from its original design. The first series weapon complement of heavy lasers and accelerator cannons were replaced by phasers and photon torpedoes, the standard starship weapons of the mid-23rd century era and beyond.

The Loknar remained in production until the late 23rd century, with older vessels continuously refit to newer standards.

Interesting sidenote: The same article points out that the NX-class from Enterprise looks an awful lot like the Loknar.

(via Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator On-Line Database & Archive)

I can see the similarities, but I'd say it was probably more of a coincidence than anything else, unless Doug Drexler has said otherwise. I like the overall design of the Loknar, especially in all of the fan art I've seen of it.

Credit: davemetlesits.

Credit: XenoMAX.

 A shout-out to the BARKING ALIEN for reminding me that the Loknar existed.