Greetings and salutations, gentle readers!

Not all that much to update this morning and I've been both battling a bit of an infection (it's not COVID, dammit) as well as taking time off to help the wifey celebrate her birthday.  So this week I've had very limited time to get online and do much of anything.  Hopefully things will be back to normal next week, and I can get the occasional think piece in line for those who read that sort of -- ahem -- journalism these days.

Still, I've put up some tidbits on the MainPage area of SciFiHistory.Net, and I'll list them below for interested parties to check them out today, tomorrow, or at your leisure:

Doctor Who's Scariest Villain Ever!
That's right!  One of SciFi and Fantasy's richest properties has definitely served up plenty of scares throughout the decades ... but which one has viewers found scariest?  The answer might surprise you, though it didn't me.

Superheroes Wear Masks ... But For Different Reasons
No, no, no.  I'm not anti-Science, though I'll easily admit I don't 'get' all of the science involving mankind's most recent pandemic.  In any event, I don't like fictional characters giving me advice for real-world problems.  So there.

What Might Our First E.T. Look Like?
I think that's a question for the ages, though I have done some reading that suggests we might be our galaxy's original E.T.  Still, it's always interesting when science-y types sound off on what other alien species could look like.

There's More Galactica In Our Future
Though there's no word on if and/or when, NBC Universal is definitely interested in returning to the 'Saga Of A Star World,' and the truth is that we may be getting both new versions for the silver screen and the small one.  Frakkin' cool, no?

George Clooney Is Watching 'The Midnight Sky'
An adaptation of a popular SciFi/Apocalypse novel, 'The Midnight Sky' is coming to show us the end of the world as we know it this December.  Looks like it'll be in (select) theatres as well as on the popular streaming service.

Amazon Continues Growing 'The Expanse'
I've struggled with this show.  It's meaty -- meaning a bit heavy on the brain -- and arguably one of the smartest SciFi's to come along in years.  Thankfully, Amazon salvaged it once it was cancelled by Syfy, and there's more on tap very soon.

Click on any of the links above, and you'll be directed to the respective posts on our MainPage.  There are other links within a few of them back to the source material for those of you who'd like to know more.

As always, thanks for reading ... and live long and prosper!

-- EZ 

Argh.  The wifey and I spent the weekend unfortunately watching a spate of sub-par movies off of the DVR (thanks, COVID, for killing the movie theatre business).  A few of them weren’t half-bad; they had solid premises, but some last-minute improbable plot shenanigans left us wondering if they’d lost their shooting scripts well into the productions.  And a few of them showcased some very big name stars in their rosters; one would think such known commodities would think twice about attaching themselves to such curious oddities.  Still, sitting through a bad movie has a universal way of making even the most uninformed viewer ask, “How did this get made?”
 
In short, how did a movie as derailed as Ad Astra get off the drawing board?
 
For the record, I’ve never been a big fan of films written and directed by the same person.  (I’m even less of a fan of stars writing, directing, and acting in vanity projects.)  While I respect auteurs, I think practically all stories have weaknesses; and the closer one is to preserving the story the less likely they are to seeing any shortcomings.  Mostly, I say this because I consider myself, at first, a writer; and I’ve experienced firsthand the phenomenon of someone I’ve asked to proofread my story uncovering something – a narrative blip that troubles the plot, if even a small way – that requires further attention.  As much as any author might hate to admit it, constructive criticism is a necessary part of the creative process; divorcing one’s ego in order to improve the piece gets harder and harder the more committed the auteur remains to ‘preserving the story.’
 
Ad Astra’s writer/director James Gray certainly isn’t a household name.  (I realize he co-wrote the script, but my criticism regarding writing/directing remains the same.)  A review of his record via IMDB.com shows that he strongly favors such a role; indeed, of the six feature-length productions to his name prior to Ad Astra, Gray had been heavily involved in writing all of them (one was adapted from a novel).  All of these motion pictures seem to have solid critical reception, but dare I suggest that there’s no blockbuster nor awards-burning-sensation in the mix?  While box office returns and statues do not necessarily underscore ‘quality,’ they do speak to how well audiences embraced a film … and I’m not seeing any hugs one way or the other.
 
Perhaps even a bit stranger (at least to this old dog), of these six productions before Ad Astra there’s nothing even remotely like Science Fiction in the mix.  As a storyteller, Gray clearly had mapped out a career in character/crime dramas – one even with a distinct period setting – so one might wonder how a studio head decided it was time to send this director into outer space?  Forgive me for pointing out that there’s a demonstrated need for directors to stick to their strengths.  After all, Marvel didn’t hire Woody Allen to write and direct Iron Man (2008), did they?  It would’ve been a markedly different film, and it probably wouldn’t have made Phase I possible.
 
However, when you look at Ad Astra’s story a bit more closely, it does make sense why Gray told the tale he did: it’s a very non-traditional Science Fiction film – one that relies less on the typical SciFi visuals and more on the human interest side of storytelling.
 
World-renowned astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is sent by SPACECOM into the Final Frontier when it appears that his astronaut father H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) not only survived what was believed to have disastrous space mission but also now threatens the survival of mankind.  Essentially, this pits son against the father in more ways than one as Roy realizes he’s lived his life under a dark shadow perhaps from the beginning.
 
Personal dramas and Science Fiction can be a difficult mix, mainly because audiences can be already taxed with comprehending future technology and world building when presented with the potentially burdensome psychology of family dynamics.  While I’m not arguing that Ad Astra bit off more than it could chew (though it did), the film’s script could’ve benefitted from paring down Jones’ mythic backstory as well as the younger McBride’s: stories that focus on singular greatness have to invest more time in how said greatness was achieved only then to fall apart – a fall so great here that the entire universe is at stake – and writer/director Gray may’ve benefitted from having an average father/son pairing instead of the God/GodPlus presented here.  There’s just too much at stake psychologically, and the film’s 120-minute run time requires Roy’s omnipresent narration to fill in far too much weight.
 
Take away Clifford’s vaunted reputation.  Make him more of a commoner who happened upon an incredible career.  As a consequence, SPACECOM could be expecting great things from Roy, and perhaps he’s fallen short.  Instead of living a life trying to surpass dear ol’ dad’s stellar reputation (which happened far too easily anyway), Roy could be a commoner just trying to be his own person under the weight of what Cliff luckily stumbled into.  Then when confronted with the truth of his father’s massive failure, his hero’s journey could one to redeem the family name instead of securing its rank of godhood amongst the star-faring elite (as gets presented here).
 
As screenwriter Gray’s story is crafted, Ad Astra has no villain, giving Pitt and Jones very little to do visually as their respective conflicts are entirely internal, leaving director Gray with not all that much interesting to put up on the silver screen.  As a consequence, the feature felt padded with action sequences here and there that have little to do with the central struggle – pirates on the moon, the conspiracy surrounding Clifford’s LIMA Project, Roy’s memories of a failed marriage, etc. – and the audience is never really given any reason to care about dad and son’s reconciliation whether it’s bound to happen or not.  They’re already legends, and despite what you may think about Earthlings as a species I only see the already-disenfranchised, self-destructive loons truly interested in tearing apart their legends.  Regular folks?  We just wanna live.  And we’ve long ago made peace with the idea that nobody’s perfect.
 
As a consequence of the disconnection from Gray’s characters as designed, I found myself instead being sidelined by questions that really distracted me from the central threads.  If space exploration is so commercial and widespread, why haven’t we made any other attempt to find out what happened with the LIMA Project?  Why would we have so cavalierly equipped it with a power source capable of destroying life as we know it?  Why was there a dog running around the subterranean levels of our Mars installation?  Was that a dream sequence?  And why was there a dream sequence with a dog running around our Mars installation?  Who in the name of Sam Hill could relax in a room where flowers were projected as big as elephants?  Why is Brad Pitt only whispering?  Did he strain his voice?  Does space travel make you whisper constantly?  And how did not one but two members of the McBride family with deep, deep, deep nihilistic tendencies slip through SPACECOM’s pre-employment hiring process?
 
Naturally, this led me to question how a film as misguided and poorly conceived as Ad Astra ever got made in the first place.
 
When one asks a question like this, readers love to point out that there is a vast number of films – especially Science Fiction films – that have been made; but Ad Astra was never meant to be Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space.  To the contrary, Ad Astra stars Brad Pitt, arguably one of Hollywood’s best know faces.  IMDB.com reports the film had a budget near $100 million.  And the feature is peppered with a host of familiar faces (Donald Sutherland, Liv Tyler, Natasha Lyonne in a bizarrely useless cameo-style role), all of whose participation underscores the reality that somebody somewhere had big plans and no doubt big rewards expected.
 
Still, it’s impossible to escape that, in the end, it’s a lifeless vehicle, one that drearily explores Pitt’s ill-founded daddy issues and moseys from plot point to plot point with no sense of urgency despite the scripted presentation of impending doom.  It’s painfully dry and impressively empty … and I have to wonder how this debacle ever got greenlit in the first place.


​-- EZ

​Does Star Trek matter any more?

The short answer is: No.

If you want to know more, then read on.

I can remember as a very, very, very little boy being plunked down on the floor in front of the television set at a family friend’s house.  If I recall correctly, my parents were there to play cards with another couple.  My slightly older sister had some dolls and whatnot: as she had reached the age where she could speak and grasp conversation, she was elsewhere in the room, occupied by her own interests.  I was of that age wherein TV held more fascination; and while I can't remember what episode it was that played on the network, I do distinctly remember being fascinated by a certain Vulcan’s ears.  His name was Spock, and my young mind just couldn’t figure out those ears.

As many of us know, the original Star Trek inspired a generation of television viewers (in more ways than one!) to eventually get up off the couch and do great things for their fellow man.  In fact, there was a time when many card-carrying scientists proudly confessed that their whole reason for pursuing such a career was because they saw science being suitably explored on the Gene Roddenberry program.  Trek fueled the interests of military men and women, of astronauts, and even budding storytellers who wanted to capture their own ‘wagon train to the stars’ if and when given the chance.

But the space show’s influence didn’t stop there.  All one need do is look around at the various inventions now a reality that began (in one way, shape, or form) as little more than a prop or plot device in Star Trek.  Today’s tablets are clearly derived from those shown on the original Trek and The Next Generation.  In case you missed it, Lieutenant Uhura certainly sported the very first Bluetooth earpiece.  Automatic doors and giant panels television screens are everywhere, both in the home and beyond.  Things like GPS, portable memory drives, and the flip-phone began with the inspiration of storytellers; and now you could very well be reading this think piece on a smartphone yourself.  It’s true that we’re still waiting on holodecks and warp drive but rest assured that the tech is on someone’s drawing board as you finish this very sentence.

Though I’ve always argued that Star Trek is one of television’s only programs that is truly timeless (some of that’s owed to being set in an era a few hundred centuries away) as well as universal, I’ve never insisted that it would always ‘matter.’  In fact, I’d strongly suggest that today’s Treks – those airing almost exclusively behind CBS’s pay wall – might be best forgotten when compared with what’s come before.  That’s not a reflection on quality because these ventures are arguably well-made, well-produced, and well-acted.  Simply put, I simply I find them hollow by comparison to what I grew up with.

That’s why when I woke up this morning I asked myself, “Does Star Trek matter any more?”

*****

I come from the generation of kids that built things.  We built forts.  If we wanted to play superhero, then we had to cull together our own suits, our own capes, our own weapons.  If it were the winter, we’d go out in the snow in our gloves and our boots, and we’d spend the better part of a day building this expansive fort to house our adventures; we didn’t care that Mother Nature would have most of it thawed out by tomorrow or the next day, if not certainly by the weekend.  To us, a half-melted fort only meant that the alien invasion had arrived sooner than we’d planned, and we’d soldier on.

Infamously, we cut our knees.  We scraped our elbows.  If we weren’t careful, then we broke a few bones.  We’d get back up, dust ourselves off, and try again.  We knocked the wind out of one another.  When we rode bikes, we’d build ramps, and we’d soar through the air even though we knew we were about to suffer the worst pain imaginable when we hit the ground again and our testicles were suitably mashed.  (Boys, that is … and maybe even the girls amongst us who imagined themselves as boys, but that’s an argument for another day.)  Our parents may have invented Bandaids, Mercurochrome, and Bactine, but we were the generation that forced them to put it to good use.  They paid for our wounds, sometimes handsomely.

Today’s children?

Well, it would seem that they do the bulk of their living virtually.  (No, no, and no: I am not putting down gamers and/or gaming.  This is a cultural reflection about why Trek mattered then and how that’s evolved.)  And, indeed, carpal tunnel can be a harsh mistress, but that’s a far cry from falling face-first from your treehouse from twenty feet up.  One generally leaves a mark; the other is treated with anti-inflammatory drugs.  While it’s true that both require a bit of imagination – a requisite part of any good childhood – there’s still something intangible about getting your hands dirty: it just feels good.

Because much of the child’s experience has transformed from the real world to the virtual one, dare I suggest that we, as a society, have lost some of our ability to dream?

Think of it this way: one generation put a man on the moon, while the next one put a robot on Mars.  One generation sent a man thousands of miles away from Earth at the risk of life and limb while the other sat at a receiving console safely watching a video stream play out.  One man planted a flag somewhere that the wind never blows, and another punches buttons, releasing the footage to the world so that everyone gets a participation trophy for this trip to the red planet.  Both events have significance.  Both events require an incredibly amount of technical expertise to make them happen.  Still, one of them seems fairly hands-off.

*****

Storytelling interests people, and good storytelling inspires them.

Star Trek’s morality tales were clearly grounded in the popular mythmaking of television’s Golden Era.  Don’t get me wrong: I’ve never believed – unlike others – that Trek’s ability to spin good yarn had all that much to do with catapulting mankind into some new age of modern thinking and holistic living.  At the end of the day, a character whose face was painted half black and half white was only just an actor in make-up; a good story that made me think about the wider world outside was honestly little more than that … a mirror held up for my own reflection.  After all, here was a show that purported to whisk us culturally to a time when mankind had apparently done away with all vices; and still each villain-of-the-week required audiences to undergo yet one more rectal exam of said defeated vices?  Erm … if the future was so perfect, clearly not everyone was getting the memo!

Like all good morality tales, Star Trek needed heroes, and the crew performed admirably whenever given the chance.  Each of them had a purpose, a function on this ship, and it was their particular skill sets that more often than not helped save the day, be it more fast flying by Sulu at the helm, Dr. McCoy handling a particularly difficult surgery in Sickbay, or Scotty squeezing one last bit of power out of the warp core.  They proved themselves the best at their respective positions, and rarely were they required to be as exceptional outside of that requisite box.  (See where I might be going with this?)  In other words, Uhura was a master at communications: never did she pull a second shift in, say, Medical.  Her role was on the Bridge, supporting command in any related capacities, and in that respect she served wonderfully.

When you have a purpose – a driving inspiration – you can be the best.

When you’re all over map or taxed with being an expert on everything within your reach, the best is rarely – if ever – achieved.  Any professional athlete will tell you that excellence is ninety percent repetition.  An excellent pitcher pitches, all the time, every game, every chance he gets.  It’s that repetition that turns into muscle memory; and when the muscles are trained to do something over and over and over again they naturally get very adept at performing under all kinds of circumstances and stresses.  While you can’t win every game based on solely on pitching, there’s no doubt that quality pitching will have occurred in every game that’s won.

That same analogy can be made of every starship crewmember: even the best navigator known to man will have a tough time surviving when the captain keeps requiring you to steer through Hell.

*****

Today’s Star Trek, from what I’ve seen, doesn’t appear to be crafted as morality plays.

Instead, they’re gripes about what the scriptwriting staff just plain doesn’t like about the world around them.  More specifically, they’re slightly veiled attacks on political policies they personally abhor.  These screenwriters are using these characters – many of them beloved – to deliver not so much messages of unity as they are clarion cries of revolution for things that might not be in the best interest of humanity but rather for their personal wish list.  Instead of championing ideals that we, as a culture, have already come together against, these storytellers appear more interested in tearing things apart than in putting things right.

This, by itself, is not without inspiration.

The casual Trek enthusiast need only peruse the Information Superhighway for mentions of – ahem – “We Are Starfleet,” a phrase downright majestic if it weren’t for its own ambiguity.  Instead of focusing on the action phrases of seeking out and exploring strange new worlds (much like the children of a certain generation who rode bikes, climbed trees, and broke bones), this next generation has taken to rallying its youth and young-at-heart with politically-sounding catch phrases that have no doubt been test-marketed and focused grouped for maximum malleability.  “We Are Starfleet!”  What does it mean?  Well, it can mean anything you want it to!

Perhaps I’m reading more into it than I need, but I’m older than most and tend to do that on every occasion.  Perhaps I’m seeing seeds planted in this new cavalry of viewers meant to inspire them to run out, burn down cities, and tear down statues if for no other reason than to avoid being offended.  Perhaps a franchise once meant to unite the species around one central path forward is being used to divide us, to categorize as ‘for Starfleet’ or ‘against Starfleet’ at a time when unity has been found out-of-step with the contemporary intelligentsia.  Perhaps I find it painful to see one of televisions most beloved franchises – something that’s brought joy and personal inspiration to countless millions – being refashioned into something meant to be a vehicle of change for only a fateful few. 

Or perhaps I’m wrong … as usual.

*****

I’ve always said that – first and foremost – Star Trek is a business, and throughout much of the late 1990’s when Trek’s motion picture films went through some curious highs and lows as ‘the next generation’ separated itself from its parents, labeling it as a commercial property was controversial.  I can’t tell you the number of times I was berated for doing such a simple thing – something honestly fairly benign given what creates debate online today.  I was threatened with being banned from message boards (ask your parents).  I was warned I wasn’t getting Trek’s central message.  I was even branded ‘not a true Trekkie’ by some who claimed to know better.

For those who don’t know their history, Gene Roddenberry left the original show in its third season; and one of the first things he did was to expand on the marketing possibilities surrounding his show.  Like George Lucas saw with the potential for growing an empire around Star Wars about a decade later, Roddenberry saw it with Trek, and he turned his eyes toward capitalist ventures that could possibly grant him the income required to continue seeking out and exploring other possibilities.  Go figure.  He treated Trek like a business.

Granted, he still made the rounds speaking at colleges and universities and conventions.  He met with anyone willing to host him for the purposes of, once again, keeping alive his vision of mankind’s future – that very enterprise, itself – and he did so with the hope that Star Trek would live long and – dare I say? – prosper.  He never wanted it to end; and thankfully he didn’t let it, nor did Paramount.  They persevered – the way good businessmen and women do – and it’s still around today.  It’ll likely grow and change into something else for that next generation – those who were born today while I’ve been writing this piece and have obviously yet to discover it.

While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, I’m still convinced that what Trek is today bares so little resemblance from where it’s come that it needn’t even have the ‘Trek’ name attached to it.  It does solely because it’s good business sense (there’s that whole business thing again).

But does it – Star Trek – matter?

Well, the long answer is above, and I gave you my short one at the outset, so you’ve no one to blame at this point but yourself.  I suppose it’s safe to suggest that it only matters so much as you want it to matter – art is, after all, entirely subjective, so it only matters so much as any one of us wants to give it meaning.  I think not – that it doesn’t matter – but, as I’ve said, I’ve been wrong before.

​So was Kirk.

Last night, I was treated to a special advance sneak preview of a motion picture that's due to be released next summer.

This isn't the first one of these such events I've had the good fortune to attend, but -- for the record -- I do believe this is the first Science Fiction release I've been able to see in this format.  I've seen comedies and dramas -- usually the big tent-pole-style ones which studios want to promote come Academy Awards seasons -- so even though this wasn't "a first" per se I can happily say it was "a first" for SciFi and Fantasy.  And because I'm bound to the obligatory confidentiality clause, I won't be able to enlighten you as to any of the particulars of the film, but I can assure you that the flick is everything mainstream audiences have come to expect from a potential summer blockbuster: it has a big star at the center, it filled with mostly non-stop action from start-to-finish, and it sports some memorable one-liners and comic relief to help make it all both go-down-easy and also promote repeat business.

However -- without getting into any of the particulars -- one of the things that bothered me about the story is something that I do believe has plagued Science Fiction films for quite some time; and I thought I'd spout off just a little about that this morning in this space.

Namely, true originality is long dead.

I don't say that to insult any motion picture, screenwriter, or director.  After all, a wise man once postulated that in all of storytelling there are only -- what was it? -- seven plots.  Everything that we're presented ends up being some combination of said plots, and the main premise ends up being tweaked in any number of little ways.  A + B + C has always been on the drawing board; but how about we make A a female instead of the traditional male, swap out B for comic relief; and voila!  A whole new world!  If nothing else, producers hope viewers aren't watching closely enough to understand that you've seen it all before, and imitation is the greatest form of flattery.  Blah blah blah.  And blah.

Again, I don't mean this as a gripe.  It's only an observation.

When Star Wars came out in 1977 and in so, so, so many ways revolutionized the way Hollywood thought about the summer movie season, every other studio under the sun raced to tap into that magic.  For roughly the next five years, audiences were treated to SciFi release after SciFi release; and as much as I may've wanted to find fault with that trend (critics lamented it occasionally) I didn't -- as a viewer -- because each successive release changed up the formula enough that the flicks seemed fresh.  True, there were knock-offs, but serious SciFi enthusiasts could see fairly significant narrative differences between Star Wars and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.  Buck Rogers In The 25th Century shared a bit in common with Flash Gordon but not so much that audiences tuned them out.  Battlestar Galactica staked out its own territory in the distant stars; The Black Hole took us to the edge of the event horizon; and even The Last Starfighter dished up some hometown charm by way of its tiny star saga.

These films -- while obviously derivative of a single source -- tried only to emulate the basic formula.  They didn't simply repackage one central theme around a new hero; instead, they took the central figure (or figures) in different directions.  Sure, the end result may be that a whole lot of Death Stars were blown up, but that hero's journey was respected, given ample exploration, and provided a destination worth the ninety-minute-plus engagement.

These days?

Meh.

I hate sounding like a disenfranchised viewer because that's far from the case.  I truly love Science Fiction: the good, the bad, and the ugly.  This doesn't mean that I embrace every single program that comes out of the replicators -- I'm arguably more discriminating than most I read on the Information Superhighway.  I can appreciate big films, and -- far more than most -- I appreciate small films, so much so that I'm far more prone to recommend them (at a risk) because they tend to be chocked full of little surprises that pay off in bigger ways than the traditional blockbusters.  I accept that there's good and bad in every film -- they're all far from perfect -- and I try to celebrate what I find of merit, be it performances, effects, dialogue, or even quality production value.

Still, too many releases suffer from what I saw on the screen last night.  Typically, this phenomenon is that it's easy to see what inspirations a screenwriter has drawn from for the purposes of crafting his or her own vision.  (Again, this doesn't mean it's bad; it's just so obvious it distracts from the total experience.)  We're given a leading man who's doing what he's done before.  He's being set out on a mission audiences have already seen him embark upon and succeed with (maybe even multiple times).  And then we're delivered a script which draws heavily upon previous Science Fiction and Fantasy releases -- some of them even being fairly current -- and they're mixed in the scriptwriting blender loosely ... so loosely that we can see whole chunks of ideas from these other films merely being inserted in a new production.

Sure, I love Jurassic Park.  Sure, I love Aliens.  Sure, I love Edge Of Tomorrow.  Sure, I love Battle Los Angeles.  Sure, I love Back To The Future.  Sure, I love Starship Troopers.  Sure, I love Blade Runner.  Sure, I love Escape From New York.  Sure, I love The Matrix.  And, sure, I love The Thing.  (I could go on and on, but I'm sure you get the point.)

But I don't love them so much that I want to see every single film evolve from them.

1988's Die Hard spawned such a trend in filmdom, and I'm sure those of you old enough will appreciate this.  Die Hard -- an unquestioned action classic -- ended up being so powerful that studios quickly sought to copy the formula; and for the next twenty years audiences were treated to Die-Hard-On-A-Plane, Die-Hard-On-A-Train, Die-Hard-On-A-Bus, etc.  Some of them were good, some of them were bad, but they were all still essentially Die Hard, dependent upon the formula, making the formula the story and not the actual people, places, and events within the film.

Science Fiction, by contrast, has always been best at exploring ideas.  Time travel can be good, or it can be bad.  Space exploration brings risk, or it can be universally rewarding.  What if we're all living inside some simulation?  Some may choose the red pill; some will happily take the blue.  While there's nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from what's come before, that inspiration shouldn't be so omniscient and omnipresent that it overwhelms the story.  Have an idea.  Create a conflict around that idea.  Send a hero in to explore the idea while resolving the conflict.  But without an idea at the center of the house of cards it's all bound to fall apart upon closer inspection or, at the very least, before the credits roll.

Did I see a good film last night?

Oh, yes.  It was perfectly entertaining.

But ... with a little extra polish ...it -- like all of Science Fiction -- could be so much more.

ar be it from me to offer advice to -- ahem -- professionals, but isn't this Tweet from Star Trek: The Next Generation actress Marina Sirtis to Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan actress Kirstie Alley more than a bit unnecessary and over-the-top?

Now, I don't want to wade into something that'll get me on more people's Crap List than I need to be.  For starters, I had begun putting together my thoughts on 'toxic fandom' yesterday for a short piece in this space this morning when I stumbled across this virtual smackdown (of a sort) between these two ladies.  This toxicity caught my eye for a number of reasons, but perhaps the single greatest one is the epic irony on Sirtis's part (respectfully) ... but I'll get to that in a minute.

What clearly started out as a simple explanation on Alley's part quickly descended into a bit of name-calling by the -- ahem -- 'We Are Starfleet' crowd, a self-elected contingent of Trekkies, Trekkers, and general Trek enthusiasts who claim they're 'Starfleet' of tomorrow but are acting like the Browncoats of yesterday.  (For those who are unaware, Browncoats are occasionally called 'the Whedonistas,' ardent fans of Joss Whedon's Firefly/Serenity property who deluged the web back in that show's heyday and took over every possible message board for the purposes of promoting the collected works of Whedon.  Sadly, their activity ended up driving fans of legitimate franchises away from these websites because, well, who wants to go on a Star Trek BBS and be innundated with questions about captain Malcolm Reynolds in every thread?  Once their property dried up, I'm assuming their propaganda did as well.)  These self-appointed arbitors of the future then took to blasting Alley's opinion, maligning her work and appearances in Trekdom, and generally making asses of themselves at every opportunity.

I'll say it here as I tried to say it politely in a few Tweets yesterday, but don't folks claiming to represent Starfleet understand the irony of their actions?  Starfleet -- at its core -- is about the inclusion of ALL RACES for the betterment of peoples everywhere; and, yes, that would include folks who don't perhaps share the same opinion of life, liberty, and freedom.  Blasting Alley for her politics is about as anti-Starfleet if not downright bigoted as you can get.  Sure, Kirk hated the Klingons, but even he was able to forgive them for what happened to his son; that's always been Star Trek's central message -- that we as a species keep striving to overcome the things which tie us down personally and psychologically -- but I'm "sensing" the 'We Are Starfleet' group perhaps kinda/sorta missed that lesson from the beloved Roddenberry franchise.

Now, some of this might be owed to the latest incarnations of Star Trek -- namely Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek: Picard -- being so overtly involved in exploring a future wherein Starfleet more often than not has been crafted by showrunner Alex Kurtzman to be more 'the enemy of the people' than anything else.  (Yes, I said it; and I stand by it based on what I've seen of it.)  When you filled viewers' heads with stories about how ill-founded and poorly run your space government is, then you've pulled on the tapestry that was intended to bind these people -- fictional or not -- together, as a unit, as 'Starfleet' and not 'Starpersons.'  Teach your viewers to hate Starfleet, and what you end up creating is something a wise-minded person might dub 'Occupy Federation.'  It certainly doesn't present a driving mythology to bind soldiers and scientists together for the purposes of seeking out and exploring strange new worlds ... unless you want those worlds to end up being governed by hate, snark, and toxicity.

Wishing someone dead?  That's the Starfleet way?  Removing someone from the timeline?  Do all of you seriously think that's something Roddenberry would've wanted much less encouraged?

Even Roddenberry's Star Trek found a place for Khan in that fictional tomorrow.  Realizing the man deserved the right to seek out and explore his own place in the universe, Kirk and company gave him Ceti Alpha Five (not withstanding what eventually happened to the place).  Instead of pronouncing sentence over the strongman, Kirk and Starfleet gave him a chance at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in such a way that would've kept the greater galaxy safe while leaving the door open for him and his people to rejoin the world outside perhaps once they'd learned a better way.

Sure, it's fiction, but so is all of Trekdom, peeps.

Alley is entitled to her opinion of the greater world at large.  She has the freedom to express herself and her beliefs in whatever means she feels fit.  Likewise, you're entitled to blast her from your laptops or your gaming towers or your smartphones all you like ... but to claim you're doing it out of reverence to the -- ahem -- Starfleet legacy?  That's a level of toxicity you're layering onto the arguments falsely ... FALSELY ... like so many news organizations and political pundits of this era do day in and day out.

Like the Browncoats, you'll be gone when your show dries up.  History has a way of grounding those who wear brown into oblivion.  Do yourself a little research -- just a wee bit -- and you'd know that.

I don't offer this reflection on toxicity to offend anyone.  Honestly.  Yes, I tend to lean more Conservative than I do anything else, but anyone who knows me knows that I've always said and maintained "I hate ALL politicians."  The reason I do that is that I believe the institution has far too many flaws -- most of them built on money (something Roddenberry preached against) -- to be truly effective for everyone.  Government, by definition, has to take from us in order to give to others; and there's very little if anything required of those on the receiving end to earn their way in life.  When you come to that understanding, trust me when I say it's easy to lean more Conservative than Progressive.  Why?  Well, because not everything can be free in life.  In fact, a thinking person might argue that anything free isn't worth the price paid ... and toxicity?  Well, that's the ultimate freebie.  It costs you nothing.  It usually gets you nothing.

Things like kindness, goodness, and mercy?  Those things take effort.  They take time.  They may even take money.  But I personally feel a lot better about spreading those things than I do about spreading hate.

I'm sure I've changed no one's mind.  The truth is I didn't write this to change anyone's mind.  I wrote it because I needed to get it out of my mind.  Now that I've done that I can get back to other things.  So if you've read it, thank you (as always) for taking the time to share in my thoughts.  Whether you disagree or agree with me, I truly and fundamentally appreciate your taking the time ... because at the end of this thing called life all we've had is the time we've spent.

Even with as much work as I've put regularly into SciFiHistory.Net, I've never really blogged.

Essentially I started this whole endeavor under the pretense of celebrating the good, the bad, and (yes) even the ugly about Science Fiction and Fantasy in a daily format.  I'd been around the web a bit myself and noticed that many of the major franchises have their own daily celebrations page, but what I wanted was something that would pull all of these various tidbits together under one roof -- one I could manage as best as my time constraints would allow.  The hope?  Well, the goal was to provide fans with one centralized location that would promote everything about a particular day they'd want to know ... and I think -- with some caveats -- I've achieved that.  I've built a site worthy of celebrating, and I can only hope those of you who've joined me on this journey appreciate where we are.

Don't get me wrong: I have every intention of building more and more and more to each day's citations.  I kid you not: I probably have in my digital folders anywhere from twenty to fifty additional items I need to eventually get around to adding.  Whenever I find something I'm missing, I add it to my reserves.  Whenever I'm contacted by a reader about something I've missed or a show I've never heard of (rest assured there are plenty of them), I tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree to remind me -- to goad me -- to update the requisite page by the time it rolls around next year.  So as long as the ticker keeps ticking, I'll do my part and add info to every corner of the site.

Also, I've started to receive notices from talent agencies and/or publicity managers requesting that I include a certain artist, a certain program, a certain movie in my citations.  That didn't used to happen: in fact, the only time I can recall receiving anything previously was actually from the legal representative of a certain actress who asked that I change one picture of that actress to a differing one.  (Without divulging too many details that I think are best kept private, this actress once appeared in a film with an actor who -- ahem -- was caught up in some legal drama which prompted some very negative publicity ... so the actress sought to distance herself from said actor.  I was happy to oblige.)

Other times?  Well, I once received a nasty email from the spouse of a novelist who didn't appreciate the fact that I didn't like her husband's work.  Basically, she hurled a number of complaints, to which I responded that the goal of SciFiHistory.Net has never been to promote any single artist, author, mover, or shaker: in life, there's good and there's bad ... and if your husband shills a bunch of sub-par novels then it isn't my job nor my site's responsibility to give him a pass much less a hand-up or hand-out in free advertising.  As a consumer, I'm entitled to my opinion.  I'll express it when I feel the need.  And I won't sacrifice my own integrity in exchange for a bitter email.  Plus, I'd dealt with her hubby in online forums, knew he wasn't exactly a guy who treats fandom well, and I left it at that.

Still, I've always wanted to find a way to showcase more within the confines of SciFiHistory.Net.

Those of you who've been around here for some time know that I use what I've dubbed my 'MainPage' area for various product reviews, film announcements, SciFi-ShoutOuts, and more.  The vast majority of what's appeared in that space has been my own writing: I love reviewing flicks and even occasionally sounding off on SciFi novels and even toys (from time-to-time).  When I've received press releases from parties who find this corner AND I've found them relevant to our beloved genres, I've included those for readers and even Tweeted about them.

However, I've never had a space to just kinda/sorta spout off about just whatever ... until now.

Today, I've placed the Daily Launch into orbit.  It's my hope that I can use this space for any number of purposes, that being to sound off more generically on the nature of Science Fiction and Fantasy as well as cross-promote some of what I'm penning in other corners of the site.  As it evolves, I'll definitely house more of my own thoughts, trying to give credence to the opinions I wish to share on particular shows or properties.  These won't be so much 'reviews' as they are 'stream of consciousness' reflections upon an episode or series or movie or anything else related to this field.  My goal is to eventually pen a few more opinion pieces exploring why a particular character has left a lasting impact or why a certain show continues to inspire me (or others) so many years after the last original hour aired; and maybe even I'll try to hammer out some prose exploring the shape of things to come for SciFiHistory.Net.  I've always wanted to have folks contribute articles, columns, or think pieces for consideration: though I've no means to pay anyone for their submissions, I'd be thrilled to share fandom for those hoping to see their words in this space.

In short, it's just one more avenue to 'Celebrate SciFi' as I feel I've always done in this space, and I hope all of you will continue to enjoy where no one has gone before even if we're not quite certain where we're headed.

God bless, May the Force Be With Us, So Say We All, and live long and prosper!

​-- EZ