Star Trekking for October 20, 2020
Welcome to Star Trekking, my weekly attempt to share points of interest and random intersections in the final frontier.
The ongoing thesis of this newsletter is that, whether you’re actively looking for it or not, Star Trek is everywhere.
This week it arrived in my inbox, in the form of an entry in the NextDraft newsletter.
WARP SPEED BROWSING
From Discover: The Quantum Internet Will Blow Your Mind. Here's What It Will Look Like. "Capable of sending enormous amounts of data over vast distances, it would work not just faster than the current internet but faster than the speed of light — instantaneously, in fact, like the teleportation of Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk in Star Trek." (I know Spock would be disappointed in me, but internet speeds this fast get me emotional...)
Meanwhile, my son just ran into the room to tell me a story.
His fellow eight grader took a science test on forces this week. And the teacher added a slide that said “May The Force Be With You.” Over a picture of Spock.
Be careful when you google, teachers.
HAIL JERRY
Love this behind the scenes piece I came across this week.
And here’s a Jerry Goldsmith quote I wrote down a while back:
“I think the interesting problem in Star Trek is that you’re dealing with space, which is infinite and immense, and yet within that the characters maintain an intimacy.”
From Captain’s Log: The Making of Star Trek V
Jerry famously never understood Star Trek. But I’d say that musically, he understood it better than just about anyone. For instance, in that exact movie.
You know I can’t resist Star Trek cakes.
See, I’m not the only one who thinks this.
47.
Art!
ART TREK TUESDAY
by Lee Sargent
A random Trek-related scene by one of my favorite artists, Lee Sargent.
This week’s random episode is from Voyager - “Paradise Lost.”
A couple of weeks ago, after watching the Voyager Random Trek episode of the week I let Netflix take me to the next episode and one thing led to another and I found myself in the middle of a mini-rewatch of Voyager.
I was happily going about my day with Voyager playing in the background and then I realised we’d hit a holodeck episode.
For the most part I really dislike holodeck episodes.
But I let it keep playing because it was only background noise.
Flash forward a few weeks and of course, THAT episode comes up as this week’s Random Trek instalment. Fair Haven is a season 6 Voyager episode that has the crew spending a lot of time in Tom Paris’ latest holodeck creation.
As mentioned I’m not a fan of holodeck episodes at all, but I have a special disinterest in Voyager holodeck episodes LOL. Janeway’s haunted governess stuff and the pool hall and finally Fair Haven, I just super dislike the stories and was dreading watching the episode again, properly this time of course.
Upon rewatching it I feel vindicated in my disdain, I get what they’re trying to do but I don’t want to watch Janeway creating sex dolls in the holodeck, I don’t want to hear Chakotay does it too. I just would rather imagine them all not using the holodeck like that LOL.
Or maybe in fairness I just feel this episode is a bit cringy and clumsy. I mean it’s no Sub Rosa but it’s not far off.
Or maybe I’m being unfair I don’t know what everyone else thinks of it.
Because all of this I’ve opted for a shot from the episode featuring the ship caught in the story device storm. It stuck out to me as a visually cool look at the ship and I am honestly so loathed to draw a Fair Haven scene that I’m willing to push through drawing the spaceship which I still don’t especially enjoy. Though it did give me a chance to open and use my Voyager reference book.
“All hands, this is the Captain. Secure your stations and brace for impact
Check out more of Lee’s art at LeeDrawsStuff.com. Support his work at Patreon.com.
A+ dog. Make sure you watch to the end.
Cats represent.
DIRECTIVES
Speaking of cats, here’s Ryan Britt’s appreciation of Book and Grudge.
Love this article from Laurie Ulster about a beautiful friendship.
Star Trek will never be perfect. And that’s okay.
Disco is the first show to do all their post-production from home.
And in our final cat related entry, TrekMovie has some speculation about Grudge.
That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading. Please share with other Trek folks and let me know what random Trek references you come across during your week. I’d love to share them here.
Grok you later.
LLAP,