50 years of Star Trek

It's 1991, and I'm sitting in the crowded Shrine Auditorium in LA. My parents scheduled a trip to visit my aunt and uncle so that we'd be there for the 25th Anniversary Creation Star Trek Celebration. The only part of the con I attended was the main event -- a showing of the teaser trailer for ST VI: The Undiscovered Country, followed by the Original Series main cast members and Gene Roddenberry on stage together. It would be the last time they would all appear together in one place.

The Undiscovered Country was billed as the farewell to the original cast, one last send-off before turning the future of the franchise over to The Next Generation. If you haven't seen it or don't remember, the teaser was a series of scenes from the Original Series as if they were projected on the surface of the Enterprise. It was a powerful and special moment seeing those scenes together in the loud appreciative audience of fellow Trekkies.

Star Trek had an enormous impact on me. I literally grew up watching these characters every week, and traveled the galaxy on adventures along with them. I watched the movies, collected starship blueprints, read articles in Starlog, and made up my own fan theories. Seeing that teaser was the highlight of the trip. I thought maybe someday it might be available on VHS to watch again. I couldn't have guessed then that "in the future" it would be available anytime on YouTube on a networked pocket computer more powerful than a Starfleet communicator.

What I find most compelling about the Original Series besides the great storytelling and action, even more so than the later series, is a vision that the future can be better. We can work together to make it so, like the crew of the Enterprise -- not in spite of our differences, but because of them.

Happy 50th to Star Trek, and to all of us who kept it alive. Live Long and Prosper.

Neil Armstrong, RIP

43 years ago, humans first set foot on the Moon. Even though we haven't been back in 40 years, the dream of walking on another world still lives on -- most recently with Curiosity, the latest Mars rover.

Today is the official day of mourning for Neil Armstrong, with flags flown at half-staff until sunset, and also the day of the private memorial service. This article has a great image gallery of his career, and details on tributes. As the article suggests,

...the family has made one other suggestion for honoring Armstrong. Remember? "Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."

Friday's moon is a good one to wink at: It's the second full moon in a calendar month, which is known as a "blue moon." The moon won't actually be blue, but if the skies are clear, it should be big and bright and shining all night.

If it's cloudy where you are on the planet, you can click over to the online viewing party where remote-controlled telescopes worldwide will be focused on Tranquility Base and beyond.

Links of the Week

Some links that I found interesting in the past two weeks:

Dungeons & Dragons alignments in the Doctor Who universe.

Dungeons & Dragons alignments in the Batman universe.

An Apple engineer recreates the functions of the Antikythera Mechanism... out of Lego.

The best tic-tac-toe moves for any situation.

The evolution of human flight in film.

21 scandalous secrets revealed on WookieLeaks.

Equation: Formula for Calculating a Skycraper’s Sway (and the pendulum that keeps it in place).

Cheap DIY Camera Systems Perform Amazing Photographic Feats.

Coding for the masses.

The flight manual for the Harrier Jump Jet.

The 1982 Tron Holiday Special.

Night-time photos of Earth from the International Space Station.

More incredible photos from the ISS, including some of the most inspiring... and most creepy.

So long, Starlog, and thanks for all the fish

Another item from the Drafts bin. When Starlog ceased publication in April 2009, I had intended to write a short retrospective about it. I started writing this draft posting and gave it a suitably geeky cliche title (see above). I did not get around to finishing it.

I only needed to wait 17 months and, look, today James Maliszewski posted his own retrospective article on Grognardia, written more eloquently than I would have. Maliszewski's opinions match my own, more or less, although I do miss the magazine more than he does. Rather, I miss the idea of Starlog more than the print magazine, at least the way it was in the 70s/80s. I haven't picked one up since the very early 90s. By then there were more outlets for fandom information, and Starlog became more slick and glossy but with less substance -- much in the same way that Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood used to report on film production news.

I liked the homegrown fanzine feel of the early issues. A large percentage of pages were given over to classic Golden Age sci-fi and fantasy then, with the sort of articles that you now only see in Filmfax. I remember the multi-issue serialization of "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr. and part of David Gerrold's first Chtorr book.

Another important aspect of Starlog was its use as a source for new sci-fi and fantasy movie news. An issue might have one or two still photos and a short article on the making of a new movie, and then we would have to wait another month for more news, another still or some production art. Quite a contrast from today, when any leaked movie news is blogged, Flickr'd or Tweeted around the world almost instantly. It's great having more and more fan news available, but I believe we may have lost something special in the process.

As noted in the comments for that story on Grognardia, blogger John Z. has been reviewing every issue of Starlog -- take a look at the archive for The Starlog Project.

The more things change...

Trek Remastered -- "Dagger of the Mind"

This weekend's episode is "Dagger of the Mind", the one where the Enterprise visits the Tantalus Penal Colony. Of course, trouble ensues.

There aren't many special effect shots in this episode to update, but the CBS Digital team corrected a big problem with the original. The matte painting used for the elevator entrance to the facility was reused from the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". CBS-D has taken this opportunity to change this by creating the outstanding digital matte seen above. It's very much in the mold of the best 50s/60s sci-fi art. Excellent work!

The 30-second preview is here.

Alien foliage could be yellow or red

So it seems that all the gamers who used fluorescent aquarium plants for terrain in 40K were not so far off the mark, after all.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/04/12/alienfoliage_spa.html

Mars Caves Revealed in Images

This might be where the spiders from Mars are hiding.