What it comes down to is this:
With very few changes, “The Orville” could easily be “Star Trek.”
By contrast, with very few changes, “Star Trek: Discovery” could easily not be “Star Trek.”
My full Cowboy Pete review is over on my Patreon page if you want to hear my full thoughts on ST:D, along with “Gotham,” “Kingsman,” and “The Orville.” You can find it here.
PAD
He’s going to get us into World War III. The reality of that assessment is becoming more and more certain with every passing week.
1) First off, I actually know what a “dotard” is. I knew the word long before Kim Jong-un labeled Trump as such. And frankly, I hate to say it, but that’s pretty much a fair assessment. If Trump doesn’t have syphilis, then he is definitely skidding into mental degradation attached to age. Indeed, it actually has the merit of being an insult. Nicknaming Kim Jong-un “Rocketman” is not an insult. Derived from an Elton John song, that’s the kind of name one tags to a baseball hitter. “And that’s gone, a bomb into the upper decks off the bat of Rocketman!” “Strike three, an absolute meteor blows right past the batter and it’s game over, a one hitter for the Rocketman!” . While Trump makes Kim sound way cooler than he is, he busily terrifies the world with his rhetoric, such as…
2). Serial Killer.. This was a no brainer speech. Trump just had to get up before the United Nations, speak about efforts to attain world peace, and not get up there and sound like a thumping lunatic. Instead he did the exact opposite. There are approximately 25 million people residing in North Korea, and Trump stood in front of the United Nations and swore that he was going to destroy them all. One assumes that he means he is going to launch nuclear missiles and blow the entire country to hëll. Twenty five million people, dead, because Trump is engaged in a dìçk measuring contest with the country’s leader. Perhaps he believes that his comments are going to convince Kim Jong-un’s own people to execute him and throw him out of power. I very much doubt that’s going to happen. Instead Kim Jong-un is going to use Trump’s speech in front of an organization that’s dedicated to world peace as proof that the only thing which will keep his country safe is having its own nuclear arsenal. I very much doubt Kim Jong-un will launch the first missiles at us because I frankly don’t think he’s that insane. But I totally believe Trump is that insane. I could very easily see him giving Kim Jong-un some sort of deadline to stand down that Kim will fail to meet, assuming that Trump would never take the first strike, and then Trump orders it done. At which point we are then counting on the military to stand up to the president and effectively perform a coup d’etat. Is it possible? Very much so. Because if it isn’t, we’re going to be at war with what’s left of North Korea. So for all you idiots who saw no difference between Hillary and Trump, do a single one of you think that she would have done that? Of course not. No sane person would have.
3). Hail Mary. For some reason that I am still rather fuzzy on, the GOP must pass a health bill before the end of September. It has something to do with only requiring fifty votes; as of October 1, they would need sixty votes, which means that they would actually have to get help from the Democrats. Because they are SO desperate to avoid having to actually reach across the aisle and work with the opposing party, they are slamming forward at top speed the Graham-Cassidy bill, which seems to exist mainly to make all their previous undertakings regarding health care look even better. This one is apparently the worst of all. Various large states such as New York will see cuts in Federal support of tens of billions of dollars. Care for pre-existing conditions would go out the window, particularly in states that voted for Trump. Poor children and non-disabled adults would get hit hardest with massive Medicaid cuts. Every medical organization you can name plus most health insurers have come out against it.
And what did Trump say? He said it was a great bill. Of course he did.
Because he’s a dotard.
Did he do anything right this week? No.
PAD
So BBC America was running a selection of popular ST:TOS episodes, and I was watching “Friday’s Child.” That’s the one where a pregnant Julie Newmar is Eleen, the wife of a tribal chieftain who gets overthrown and slain, and by their law they are about to kill her as well. And she is willing to die, accepting of their law.
And Kirk decks the executioners.
Now this is beyond question a violation of the Prime Directive. Starfleet officers cannot interfere with the social development of a planet, period. In this case the social development called for Eleen to be executed. Kirk not only interferes, but he jeopardizes their mission because they are in competition with a Klingon who is standing right there and was perfectly willing to led Eleen be killed. The Klingon obeys their laws while Kirk does whatever the hëll he wants.
The point is, Picard was much more faithful to the Prime Directive. He quoted it constantly and it impacted on all his decisions. So if Picard had been standing there and they were about to execute Eleen, would he have allowed it to happen?
PAD
Trump hasn’t done much that a president would actually do to help people this week, but he has been running off at the mouth big time.
1). Make a mountain out of a hill. ESPN anchor Jemele Hill stated on her private twitter feed that she believed Trump was a white supremacist. You know, the way millions of people have been saying and which his own repeated actions would tend to make any reasonable observer believe. Certainly his tendency to give white supremacists and Nazis every ounce of consideration and slack, and his knack for being endorsed by David Duke and white supremacists, would make any reasonable observer make that supposition. And as noted, it wasn’t as if Hill said that on the air. Nevertheless the White House is in full attack mode, and Trump tweeted that she should “Apologize for Untruth.”
Really? Seriously? The guy who claimed that Ted Cruz’s father was involved with JFK’s murder is complaining about untruths? The guy who stated for years that Obama wasn’t born in the US, or that Obama had him wire tapped, is complaining about untruths? The guy whose track record of lies is unprecedented among politicians in the modern era is suddenly concerned about truth?
No, Donald. No. You don’t get to lie about everything under the sun and claim that both the white supremacists and their opposition were equally involved and then demand apologizes for speculation that your own actions launched. The fact that ESPN is “distancing” themselves from Hill is saddening and I hope that they allow her to weather out the storm rather than sacrificing her on the altar of adherence to truth that this president consistently refuses to follow.
2). And he did it again. Trump was asked on Air Force One about his meeting with Senator Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate. It was obviously a softball question. All he had to say was that it went fine and they discussed finding ways to…I dunno…solve racial tension or something. Instead out of nowhere he started defending again his idiotic assertions about Charlottesville, claiming that many people said “Trump might have a point.” The obvious response is that yes, people did say that. They were white supremacists and Nazis. Trump is so obsessed with being right even though he’s invariably wrong that he had to come back and say, “See? See? Told you so.” The obvious assertion is to claim that Trump has doubled down. But since he already did that, we’d have to say he…what? Tripled down? Quadrupled down?
Here’s a thought, Mr. President: if you’re so concerned about being called a white supremacist, how about you analyze the behavior that you are employing that is prompting people to speculate about it.
3). Waiting for the facts. Remember how a few weeks ago, Trump was standing there telling the world that he didn’t want to issue condemnations of white supremacists because he wanted to wait for all the facts? Yeah, that lasted just long enough for the explosion in London, about which Trump claimed that the identities of the people who set it were known to London authorities and he claimed simply validated his travel plan. Because let us remember this about the man who, on 9/11, boasted that he now had the tallest building in New York: There is no subject on Earth that Trump cannot make it be about himself.
Did he do anything right? Well, that kind of depends who you talk to and when. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer dined with him on Wednesday and stated that they had come away from it having “agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides.” Except Paul Ryan quickly claimed there was no deal in place, and Thursday morning Trump likewise asserted that no deal had been made. Pelosi and Schumer later “clarified” their statement that Trump was going to support congressional endeavors to put DACA into law. But even that was enough to infuriate millions of Trump supporters, including Ann Coulter who wrote a “Why I Love Trump” book last year and now hates his guts.
So Trump has now managed to pìšš øff both conservatives (with his alleged support for DACA) and liberals (with his continued apparent sympathy for white supremacists.) Gee. Maybe he really did manage to unite everybody.
PAD
I have seen any number of ads for “Star Trek: Discovery” and here’s my problem with it.
I have no idea what any of it looks like.
Every single scene was apparently filmed in a power outage. The sets are dark, the costumes are dark, everything is so dámņëd dark. I mean, yes, people said that the new Enterprise in the Abrams film looked like an Apple store, but at least you could see it. I can’t see crap in ST:D.
Wait.
ST:D? The abbreviation for the new show is STD? I admit I haven’t been active on Trek boards, but has anyone else commented on that? TOS, TNG, that’s fine. But STD? Jesus Christ, was anyone thinking about that?
Okay, anyway: “The Orville” is at least lit like the original series. Everything is bright. Everything is open. The bridge, while having some commonality with the TNG bridge, is sufficiently different. It’s certainly larger. They have a panoramic array of windows rather than just staring at a viewscreen.
The whole place is colorful and cheerful and old-style pleasant. People are crying it’s a rip off of “Star Trek.” Okay, here’s a news flash: I LIKE “Star Trek.” It seems to me that MacFarlane is trying to do something that evokes all the best things about “Trek” and leaving out all the stuff we hate. And I’m fine with that. The same people who are harshly judging it after one episode gave STTNG three freaking YEARS to find its footing.
So I’m aboard for “The Orville.”
I’ve also posted a Cowboy Pete review over on my Patreon account.
PAD
Dammit. As if there isn’t already enough stuff to be depressed about this time of year. I realized yesterday that today was September 11, and once again we as a nation would collectively open the wounds of the Twin Towers, of the thousands of people who died that day.
But then yesterday I was driving and Kath was on the Internet, and she suddenly said, “Shìŧ. RIP Len Wein.” I immediately pulled over as she ran quick verifications to make sure it wasn’t somebody’s sick idea of a joke. It wasn’t.
Unbelievable. First Jerry Pournelle, whom I saw just a few days ago at Dragon*Con, and now Len. I still remember when we were out at dinner at San Diego during the con, and he was telling me with great enthusiasm about this new television program called “Pushing Daisies.” I knew from his description that the show wouldn’t last, but it sounded great. And I also recall when Hugh Jackman thanked him on the SDCC stage for giving him a career. His health was obviously deteriorating but I thought he would outlast us all.
Shìŧ.
PAD
When right wing evangelicals declare that LGBTQ are responsible for Hurricane Harvey rather than, y’know, climate change…when even Ann Coulter declares, “I don’t believe Hurricane Harvey is God’s punishment for Houston electing a lesbian mayor. But that is more credible than ‘climate change,” that’s just standard issue and can be ignored.
When Rush Limbaugh states that Hurricane Irma is actually being amplified out of all reason by the news media, well, he’s just talking like a wrong headed righty.
When Pat Robertson says Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for abortion, well, that’s just Pat Robertson being an idiot.
But Jennifer Lawrence does an interview in which she comments about how hurricanes are representative of nature’s wrath (poetic but okay), that climate change is due to human activity (it is), and that the only voice we really have to try and do something is through voting (that’s right.). She said that Trump’s election was startling (it was; Hillary Clinton wrote a whole book about it) and that was pretty much it.
And insanely, news coverage is declaring that she’s blaming Trump for the hurricanes. And naturally Twitter idiots who aren’t bothering to actually READ the articles and realize that she’s saying no such thing have erupted and declared that she’s an idiot and should be boycotted.
Basically, this is genuinely fake news, but the idiot Trump supporters aren’t capable of realizing it as such and are fully embracing it.
Me, all I can notice is that Mar-a-Lago is right in Irma’s path and might be obliterated. I would find that further proof of Voltaire’s statement that God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
PAD
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