Because it had to pop up at some point. 32 hours of de Lancie loveliness; something for trekkers, bronies and general geeks. I spent about five hours setting this up. Hoovering is a waste of time, anyway.

Labels: john de lancie, star trek

Funny, isn't it, how the last post I published on here happened to be about Star Trek: The Next Generation, and half a year later I get this urge to post about that show again. Why? Just my latest obsession. Q, of course. I believe I mentioned him last time. I finished ST: TNG last week and I found the ending to be a good wrap-up (at least it got a proper ending, as opposed to so many US shows). What I found the most surprising about the whole series was that the writing was very good throughout, and the series improved a lot once the second series was under way and the characters had been established. Imagine if it hadn't been in first-run syndication; the network would probably have cancelled the series halfway through the first series.

The show was made even better by the inclusion of Q, though.

I enjoy the notion of John de Lancie doing what he can with the material given to him by the writers (without feeling the wrath of the censors/producers), and 3-4 days into production being told by the producers that they would like to have him back later in the series. Q appeared in no fewer than eight ST: TNG episodes, then moved on to both ST: Deep Space Nine and ST: Voyager, plus the ST: Borg "game". Good going by someone who was only ever supposed to appear in one episode. Remind me* to cast John de Lancie in my next stage production (if he's not too busy being a Brony on a sail boat somewhere).

Slightly misleading photo no. 1

The problem with getting so obsessed with a series which ended almost 20 years ago, is that my enthusiastic tweets are met with exactly no responses from fans (they've kind of been there, done that a while ago), and if I look for articles, most of them are from the mid-90s at the latest. However, the cast have been popping up at conventions for a few decades now and there are plenty of videos from Q&A sessions etc. Phew! I was getting a bit disorientated by reading articles in the .txt format posted on alt.scifi.q forums and Compuserve and AOL and whatnot. At one point I actually had to look up and check the date. It was still Stardate -310355.02.

And then there's the fan fiction... I sincerely hope no actors or writers EVER read ANY fan fiction. It'll screw up their minds, easily. But for a show in the Star Trek universe you basically have to go the route of fanfic if you want to read the real stories. The producers frequently put their collective foot down, but the writers and certainly the cast managed to wrangle their own sub-text into the scenes and dialogues. And then the fanfic writers saw, took and ran away with it, to do with it as they (and we) pleased. I didn't exactly need to read fanfic to discover the HoYay between Picard and Q, and I was very happy to hear both actors and at least one writer were totally on board with that. Not entirely sure they would have appreciated the two fanfic novels His Beloved Pet and Love Reign Over Me, but I spent a whole day reading those two. Minding One's P's and Q's is also a very interesting interpretation of the interactions in that vast universe (actually the whole Genders OnLine site has fascinating and though-provoking papers).

Slightly misleading photo no. 2

I was kind of thinking "imagine if the series had been produced only ten years later; we would have seen The Puppy Episode in Ellen and had the world of television changed for the better overnight (give or take a decade or so...)", but considering the Star Trek series following The Next Generation (perhaps with the exception of Enterprise), it wouldn't have made the slightest difference. Oh well, thankfully there are actors daring to do something about it (notice how they often have theatre backgrounds? Hmm...)

*) I don't really need reminding.

Labels: john de lancie, star trek, TV

I have been completely hooked on space and sci-fi lately. It began with XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and then I finally returned to Star Trek: The Next Generation a couple of weeks ago. XCOM is brilliant. Played the original and first sequel a lot about a decade ago (and intermittently ever since), and I really like the new version. I decided to name all of my soldiers after musicians and actors I quite like, and my crack team of all colonels have done very well indeed. I must admit it came as a shock to me that Andy Bell (of Erasure) would turn out to be the biggest bad-ass in the squad, followed by his band mate Vince Clarke as the toughest Heavy out there.

It took me seven months to watch through the first series of ST:TNG, but so far only two weeks for series two, and I started series three earlier today. I also watched all four ST:TNG-era films across two nights (tip: don't watch Star Trek: Nemesis before you've actually watched the whole series; you'll thank me--or maybe that is just the way to watch the whole thing. Start with the first series, then the four films, then go back to series 2-7). Anyway, Q FTW! I'm also of the opinion that Brent Spiner should appear in everything on telly. He was excellent in Warehouse 13.

Oh, actually, that reminds me; this probably started a bit earlier. After all, I watched series 4.5 of Eureka, two series of Warehouse 13, then the fourth series of Fringe, before going back to ST:TNG. I have been sci-fi'd for about two months now. I'm also looking forward to the rest of the "new" Star Trek shows, starting with DS9. I just have to watch the whole of Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate Universe, Battlestar Galactica.

I've been missing out on a lot of sci-fi stuff, can you tell? I blame not having all the right TV channels.

And then, while watching all this and beamed down photos from the Curiosity Rover, I find myself thinking this enormous universe we're part of is absolutely mind-blowing. It's ridiculous that some people think we're alone out here, but we will probably not find any real proof within my lifetime, which is annoying, to say the least.

So I guess I'll just keep dreaming, together with Cpt. Picard, Maj. Carter, Cmdr Shepard, Adm. Adama and the rest.

Labels: erasure, science, star trek, TV