Star Trek: The Next Generation -- 20 Years

Today's date is generally acknowledged as the airdate of "Encounter at Farpoint", the first episode of The Next Generation. It's hard to believe that it has been 20 years. Besides being a continuation of the franchise, it started the boom in syndicated programming that continues on today (although not like the heyday of the '90s).

Trekmovie.com put up a link to the first TNG preview from 1987, and they will be posting more tributes over the next few days.

There's a very insightful post on that preview page linked above that says TNG is still too close in time to judge properly -- not "period" like the Original Series, but recent enough that the flaws are too apparent and it looked "dated". I'd have to agree, and further state that after the first two seasons the effects got much better and hold up to today's standards. The third season is probably the sweet spot, especially what is still the best TV cliffhanger to date, "The Best of Both Worlds, part I".

"Mr. Worf....fire!"

Trek Remastered -- "The Man Trap"

This weekend's episode is "The Man Trap", the one with the salt vampire. This has always been a favorite of mine. Little bit of trivia: although it was sixth episode filmed, it was the very first one aired. Take a look at the 30 second preview at trekmovie.com.

Another game blog

You may remember a great gaming blog I mentioned here before titled Deep in the Game. The author took down the site. Now he's back with Deeper in the Game.

Many of the posts on the new blog are about the design and playtest of a game he's working on, but there are also some posts with the same clever creativity as the old site.

3 new gaming blogs

Over the past few months three new gaming blogs popped up and became very popular. My own guess is that their respective authors were inspired by two other popular sites, Treasure Tables and Jeff's Gameblog. I haven't read a lot on any of these new blogs but what I've seen and read about elsewhere has been pretty good. They are generally about D&D but the ideas presented can be used in any RPG. Check them out:

• Stupid Ranger
• Dungeon Mastering
• Musings of the chatty DM

Latitude Zero on DVD in December!

In a previous DVD update, I mentioned that Media Blasters was working on this title for eventual release. Sci-fi Japan recently posted an update on MB's upcoming Japanese titles including LZ. They are going all out by releasing a two-disc set on December 11th.

The Japanese version is about 15 minutes shorter than the English international release, which seems unusual. It will be interesting to see what they cut. The English-speaking actors spoke their lines in English, of course, so I wonder if their voices were dubbed into Japanese or if subtitles were used.

A minor film in the Japanese monster/sci-fi genre, Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds, is out from Media Blasters the following week. I'm curious about it since I've never seen it -- not even the MST3K version.

Trek Remastered -- I missed it

I tried to stay up and watch the 1am showing of "The Galileo Seven". I fell asleep. I woke up, saw about 40 seconds of it before a commercial break, then fell asleep again during the commercial. I guess I'll have to record it.

Click on that link above for video of the new FX shots.

Trek Remastered -- A new season starts

This weekend is the start of the new season for The Original Series Remastered, and the kick-off episode is a great one -- "The Galileo Seven". The shots of the new effects are just astounding and I can't wait to see it.

Now here's the problem. No, not really a problem but an annoyance. The local Fox station aired the first season and did a nice job with it. Lots of commercials (at the beginning) and two airtimes, once on Saturday evening and a rerun of last week's ep late Sunday night/Monday morning at 1am. The Saturday slot would move to 2pm during baseball season, but still they made an effort to run it in a decent time slot.

This season it appears that the local affiliate is now the CW station, and from what I can discover the only time Trek airs is the late Sunday/early Monday slot. Most of the weekend lineup consists of sci-fi and horror movies, which could be good. I admit I got spoiled with two chances to watch Trek each weekend, but come on... are three hours a day of court shows necessary?

Too many movies

It has been a long time since there were so many movies out in the theater that I wanted to see at one time: The Simpsons Movie, Stardust, 3:10 to Yuma, Shoot 'Em Up, Balls of Fury, War, and Superbad. I guess I'll be renting a bunch of DVDs in about 6 months or so when they are released...