Star Trekking for July 7, 2020

Mind Meld with Sue London

Jul 07, 2020

Welcome to Star Trekking, my weekly attempt to share points of interest and random intersections in the final frontier.

Here in the colonies we celebrated a long weekend in honor of our independence and my family and I spent much of it watching Hamilton over and over.

My son and I did manage to squeeze in a viewing of Yesterday’s Enterprise. It’s not about independence but it did occur to me upon watching that amid our current larger cultural discussion about statues, that the one Trek figure who deserves a statue perhaps more than any other is Captain Rachel Garrett.

After announcing this on Twitter, Dayton Ward reminded me that there is a statue of her on Narendra III. As noted in the Hidden Universe Travel Guide to the Klingon Empire. Curated by Dayton Ward…

In other book recommendation news, Return to Tomorrow, the indispensable comprehensive oral history of Star Trek—The Motion Picture by Preston Neal Jones, is now available for the first time as an ebook.

Return to Tomorrow: The Filming of Star Trek - The Motion Picture by [Preston Neal Jones]

Amazing document, filled with interviews conducted at the time of the production, so all memories are fresh and unfiltered.

Esports Cheerleader!!! 📣 #BLM @TarmoKat

Yowch. Star Trek still hitting those nerves 😭

THIS WEEK’S RANDOM TREK REFERENCE

The basic premise of this newsletter is that I stumble across Star Trek references everywhere without even trying.

And this week I heard references on a couple of podcasts I listen to.

But you know what? It was a holiday weekend and a long week beforehand and, well, I failed to jot down or take any notes. I am a fallible human.

But I will recommend this podcast to you because Trek has come up a couple of times in conversation and also I just love it.

The Omnibus Project features Jeopardy Greatest Of All Time champion Ken Jennings and indie rocker/raconteur/polymath John Roderick discussing little known history and esoterica. The premise is that they’re recording a time capsule for future civilizations and it’s mostly just a platform for the two friends to ramble and joke and inform and entertain. New episodes come out Tuesdays and Thursdays and I find them utterly delightful. Recent entries include Deborah Sampson (“in which a patriotic young colonist serves bravely in the American Revolution without anyone realizing she's secretly a woman”), Thomas the Tank Engine, and Le Petomane (yes, the famous French farter).

Just remembered that I’ve recommended this podcast before. Oh well.

Holiday weekend. This unit is malfunctioning. I shall analyze error.

nomad thinks your thoughts are non-sequitur and your facts are ...

Faulty! Faulty! Must sterilize. Sterilize.

Food for thought.

Marcie @MarcieStarfleet

Since Starfleet uniforms have combadges, officers don’t need phones. So how do they know what time it is?

ART TREK TUESDAY

By Lee Sargent

Each week, one of my favorite artists, Lee Sargent, draws a random Trek-related scene.

This week’s random episode is from VOY - “Time and Again.”

I was excited when this one came up because I just listened to the Delta Flyers podcast about this episode!

It’s a solid early episode of Voyager and I really wanted to capture the shift into the past so I could do both colour schemes.

“The chain reaction has shattered subspace, Captain.”

Check out more of Lee’s art at LeeDrawsStuff.com. Support his work at Patreon.com

I do not own this. At this moment in time.

STAR TREK Enterprise Bridge Restoration @thenewstarship

Does anyone actually own this 1970's patch?

MIND MELD

With Sue London.

In which we get to know a Trek fan just a little bit better.

Hey Neil! Thanks for letting me drop by! This is exciting. Do I get to play with the ukelele? Are we going to dress up in our favorite Star Trek outfits?? Do you wanna compare tricorders? Surprise! This one is my purse. Sis and I have matching ones. Wait, you have some questions don't you. Sorry, let me get serious.

Please tell us a little about yourself

My name is Sue London and I am a geek. In fact, I remember using the #iamanerd tag a lot in conversation with you! I know it is one of your favorite hashtags. My background is that I grew up on Star Trek, Star Wars, and classic SFF (shoutout to the Stainless Steel Rat!). Always wanted to be a writer, but obvi that meant I went into accounting instead. Since 2013 I've been published in Regency romance (bysuelondon.com), which kinda shocked everybody because prior to that I was known as a SFF person and I still have a STACK of unfinished sci-fi and fantasy books. My hobbies are mostly set aside, but back in the day I was artistic (drawing, painting, etc.). We are also huge animal people in this house. Back when hubs worked at the SPCA we had 4 dogs, 3 cats, 3 tanks of fish, and a lizard all at one time (and had birds at various times). Our fur, feather, and scale babies were able to live out their lives and retirements in ease, and now we are down to 3 dogs. We used to volunteer with the Wildlife Center of Virginia and the Coast Guard Auxiliary. We also used to be quite outdoorsy (hiking, caving, kayaking, etc.) but now we are old and tired and just stare out the window to get our green fix.

What’s your first Star Trek memory?
What's weird is that since I was the youngest in our family Star Trek was just always there. (I'm talking the Original Series, people. TNG didn't come out until I was 17.) One of my earliest memories, in fact, isn't watching the show or reading the books - it's playing "Star Trek" using those little plastic dinosaurs that came in red, green, and yellow (if only the green ones had been blue!!). So by the age of five I knew the series well enough to 'play' it with my brother. This was back when you had to wait for the TV to decide to play a show because we didn't even have a vcr version. So we kept it alive between viewings by playing our own stories out.

Favorite main character from any series (and why)?
Spock from the original series! I still have the green plastic dinosaur that was designated as Spock (believe it or not). Back in the day used to think that I loved Spock because we were alike, but it turns out that I'm more of a Kirk (oops). But that also completely explains why I liked him so much. Meanwhile, in our early teens sis and I used to role play Spock and McCoy for hours at a time. Spock and McCoy order lunch at McDonalds. Spock and McCoy go to the water park. Spock and McCoy go to the library. As a consequence my eyebrow game is ON POINT.

What's your favorite Star Trek romance (and why)?
Keiko and Miles O'Brien. It just seemed so REAL, and that is one thing I love about the ever-expanding Star Trek universe - being able to ask "what happens if we put people in this situation?" Generally, though, Star Trek has been better at "bromance" and "sismance" than romance.

How has Star Trek made a difference in your life?

Clearly just from the stories above (mere scratch on the surface), I have Trekked SO MUCH. My childhood was full of reading all the original series books by Blish and animated series books by Foster, and pretty much memorizing the original Compendium. Drawing Sehlats and Spock, Spock, so much Spock. But even more importantly, I love the impact that Star Trek had on me and my worldview that values diversity, expects gender equality, and recognizes the importance of friendship. One of my favorite parts of Star Trek was the camaraderie.

Tell us about a StarTrek-related rabbit hole you fell deep into.

Probably the deepest Star Trek-related rabbit hole I've ever fallen into (other than constantly re-reading the books in the 80s) was writing Star Trek stories. Sis and I spent years working on a book about a Klingon and Romulan marooned on the same planet. Then there was the time we wrote up a proposal for an entire series (and sent it to Paramount, but they wouldn't read it). And for most of the 80s and into the 90s I was writing a series of short stories starring my friends on our own Constitution-class ship (and so popular that two crew members wrote a story for the series).

Thanks again for letting me drop by and talk about Star Trek! Anyone who wants to chat with me online can find me on Twitter at @cmdrsue (yes, that is Commander Sue, a Star Trek reference) or on Facebook as Sue London. Live long and prosper!

Yeah, this is all of us, I think,