No BS Podcast #106: The 'What the Heck is a Retcon' Edition
Posted 05/22/09 at 05:26:51 PM by The Maximum PC Staff
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The entire staff is back in the office this week, eager to grill Gordon about his thoughts on the new Star Trek movie. Was there enough intersteller diplomacy for him? Did he find its message heavy handed enough? Will caps the Star Trek chat to 5 minutes, after which we jump into recent tech news. Apparently, the US military is going to adopt Windows Vista, Intel announces a new anti-Ion netbook platform, and we uncover the real size of the internet. After numerous debates and tangents, we eventually tackle a few listener questions, and Gordon unleashes his rant of the week. All that and more on this week's Memorial Day weekend podcast!
Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.
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Vista is perfect for military security, flash drives don't work
Submitted by CyyberSpaceCowboy on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 2:24pm
And you can't print data out and carry it out because USB printers never work. Seriously, I've been working with Vista at a school now for a year and only recently realized what a crap shoot it is getting USB printers and thumb drives to work (the school printers are all networked).
Even if Spock could repair the timeline (why not swing around a star and get there in time to save Romulus in the first place? "Suddenly, the unthinkable happened" - What, Spock got the calculations wrong? There are no pilots other than the oldest living Vulcan? Did he get sleepy and have to pull over for a nap?), the 6 billion dead Vulcans time line would still exist, all he would succeed in doing is moving himself back to the classic timeline, where he's old and all his friends are already dead anyway.
I was going to say it was silly that that whole original crew is is the academy at the same time, but I just looked it up and Shattner is only five years older than Koenig, one for Abrams.
After a sudden attack and loss of personel you would probably see the entire upper class commissioned (didn't that happen after Pearl Harbor), but they would go in as Ensigns with a fast track to Liutenant JG, but not promoted over line officers. They tried that in DS9, and the cadet in charge was depicted as delusional.
What the heck is Red Matter? It only takes a drop to destroy a planet or stop a super Nova, but Spock fills up a beach ball with the stuff (maybe it he made less he would have saved Romulus). And detonating the whole thing a few minutes warp away from Earth sounds like a good idea?
Submitted by PhelanPKell on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 9:15pm
That's a good point about fixing the timeline.
We can only theorize, but i would gander a guess that slingshotting around the sun would keep him within that universe, and with all the Red Matter gone, he's S.O.L. in mastering the time travel/inter-universe travel to get back to his timeline.
And the whole 28 total years that the Romulans spent in the new timeline would make Spock's calculations a bugger to do. I'd personally be too damn lazy at that point. oO
Submitted by CyyberSpaceCowboy on Mon, 05/25/2009 - 12:25pm
Actually, I meant he should have travelled back in time in his own universe and fixed the nova before it reached Romulus and whatever else it got (wasn't supposed to originate in another solar system, and if so it is moving faster than C?). If you accept New Voyages as cannon :), he could also fly through the ship sized portal on the keeper planet.
Submitted by JDorfler on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 10:31am
SeaMonkey is a branch project from Mozilla that is almost the continuation of Netscape Communicator. Where both your browser and email client were in the same package, instead of seperate packages like FireFox and ThunderBird.
http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
Sager NP5797 (Clevo)
nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX/Intel QX9300/4GB DDR3 1066
Vista/Ubuntu/Fedora OSes
Submitted by JDK on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 7:02am
You know how I can tell you are all nerds?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1IQGMODcis&feature=related
Submitted by deathdefier on Fri, 05/22/2009 - 8:43pm
2 weeks in a row i waited for the vid podcast and have yet to see it live :(
Submitted by PhelanPKell on Fri, 05/22/2009 - 6:21pm
Ok, ok,
I love you guys to death. You're awesome, but we need to clarify something with timelines and Star Trek, etc.
The Star Trek universe survives on the MULTIVERSE theory.
In the multiverse theory, every single event (from a presidential election, to the squishing of a fly) can happen differently, and directly effect the future of each individual universe/timeline. We see this in multiple Star Trek series' (Closest analogy=Sliders).
The original Star Trek introduced the Mirror Universe. TNG most notably had the massive number of Enterprise's in All Good Things Part II. DS9 touched on the Mirror Universe. Enterprise (god help my soul for enjoying some episodes of that show...AFTER it went off air) touched on the Mirror Universe. Obviously, the Mirror Universe, and subsequent universes "hinted" at with TNG's All Good Things do not simply stop existing just because there isn't an episode about it at that time. :P
Honestly, I went to the movie seriously questioning the validity of it as a Star Trek movie. I left very entertained, and pleased that JJ Abrams found an effective balance between the "New-Trek" concepts attempted in Enterprise, and the classic cliché's and idea's of old Star Trek (Kirk+Green Alien Chick = Best Cliché EVER! Add in some time travel, an entire race [What was left of them. :P] for Kirk to start a war with, some Vulcan insults, and cool technology). As much as I expected to hate the movie with the same fervor I gathered up for Enterprise when it was on the air, I have to say that this movie really pulled off a great mix of old and new.
Well, that's my rant/explination.
PS: Wormholes are legitimate time travel mechanisms due to the proven real-world effect of gravity on time. ^^...oh, and The Voyage Home pre-dates the Star Trek introduction of a multiverse theory, so they're excused from that "franchise-sized" hole.
Submitted by Oedipus_Rex on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 1:29am
Regardless of the explanations about alternate time lines/realities given, the new movie effectively kills the old Star Trek continuity. There will be no more movies or TV shows that will revisit the old time line. All future productions will move forward from the story established in the new time line.
Somebody tell me how this makes sense. Kirk goes from a cadet to starship Captain in one fell swoop. He has no practical experience to fall back on in new situations. His crew are also all cadets suddenly thrust into active duty with no real world experience. How the hell does that work? Chekov is freakin' 17years old! I think maybe 2 more movies before they realize they can't really go anywhere with this.
Argh!
Submitted by Cache on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 6:42am
You know what really bothered me about this? In EVERY episode of the original series, Next Generation, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise--EVERY single time when the timeline was not 'right' they worked to fix it. Every single time. In the movie, Spock--the Leonard Nimoy Spock--basically said "Eh, why bother." this time around.
??????
Come on, man! Spock used a Klingon Bird of Prey to travel though time--twice! Surely the 'most modern ship Vulcan had ever devised' could have done it, fixed the problem at the source, and restored the timeline. Heck, I would have even bought some weird reason why the younger Kirk/Spock might retain full memories over what happened. But to just walk away from 6 billion dead Vulcans? No, I couldn't buy that. I also couldn't buy Scotty as some slacker wasting away on a frozen outpost world--he was just too diligent for that.
However, I did laugh at Captain Pike in a wheelchair at the end of the movie. It was almost like, "Man, no matter what reality you're in, you'd STILL stuck in a wheelchair!" At least this one didn't go 'boop'.
Submitted by PhelanPKell on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 4:06am
Ever heard of a battlefield commission?
Now, I hardly see demoting someone who performed above and beyond in a real world opportunity as a logical way to control a military.
Oh, and the entire damn ship was cadets. Well, except for Spock, who was UNFIT for duty. :P
As for the continuity of further movies, you don't really think they had any intentions of making a movie about DS9, Voyager, or Enterprise, did you? They've done the original series. They've done TNG. They've had extremely mixed results with the previous way of doing things (every other movie sucked or atleast did in the eyes of the people counting monetary gains from the box office), and they need something fresh and new for the new generation of fans, whilst also drawing in a decent amount of older fans.
It's all perspective and opinion-based, but really, I've been a fan since TNG, I've watched all of the series', and I've been true to the principals that have held Star Trek up as an everlasting brain child of Gene Roddenberry, and in that "experience" and "loyalty" I find that this movie effectively helps carry that torch without losing the "colour" of the flame.
But the fact of the matter is, ya can't please everyone, so I'm sorry for those who can't take the good with the bad and enjoy the basic fundaments of Star Trek that were in this movie.
Submitted by Oedipus_Rex on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 10:18am
Tell me how many battle field commisions skip 5 pay grades and retain that rank when the war is over? I think I can count the number on no hands. The older I get the more I realize there are people who have served in the military and those who don't understand it at all.
My point is, You can only suspend your disbelief so much before you call bullshit. The end of this movie pretty much did it for me.
Submitted by PhelanPKell on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 4:23pm
The older I get, the more I realize there are people who have a grip on reality, and those who don't.
It's a movie. Things get embellished. Next you're going to tell me that there can't possibly be Warp-capable vessels in the movie, because Einstein says so.
It can happen. Ya know why? 'Cause it's in the script. Those powerful characters on 8.5x11 printed medium that details the events of a story that someone thought up in their head. It isn't real, and therefore ANYTHING can happen.
Now go take your golden ticket, and watch Last Action Hero, click your heals three times, and maybe he'll come out of the screen.
Submitted by Oedipus_Rex on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 5:07pm
I guess that last paragraph I wrote went over your head.
Submitted by PhelanPKell on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 9:01pm
Not really.
I just see someone who is trying to apply real-world logic and policy to a movie that takes place a couple centuries ahead of our time.
If that's what you're looking for, than Star Trek isn't your ticket. There's really good documentaries on the History Channel though.
Submitted by Oedipus_Rex on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 11:10pm
Yep. Over your head.
Submitted by PhelanPKell on Sun, 05/24/2009 - 3:02pm
Ok, when you're done scrubbing the ceiling with your nose, come talk to me.
Until then, I'm done wasting time explaining why movies don't have to follow your rules of logic.
Submitted by PhelanPKell on Sun, 05/24/2009 - 1:07pm
Ok, when you're done scrubbing the ceiling with your nose, come talk to me.
Until then, I'm done wasting time explaining why movies don't have to follow your rules of logic.
Submitted by PhelanPKell on Sun, 05/24/2009 - 1:07pm
Ok, when you're done scrubbing the ceiling with your nose, come talk to me.
Until then, I'm done wasting time explaining why movies don't have to follow your rules of logic.
Submitted by Oedipus_Rex on Mon, 05/25/2009 - 3:18am
Over your head. o_O
Let's try this again.
"My point is, You can only suspend your disbelief so much before you
call bullshit. The end of this movie pretty much did it for me."That means, they failed to suspend my sense of disbelief at the end of this movie. Essentially, I did not say that they have to adhere to "my" sense of reality to make a great movie but that they did not do so. As such, "I" was disappointed in the path they decided to take and so "I" did not think it succeded in extending the legacy of "Star Trek".
I fully realize that anything can happen in the movies because it's in the script. Why should that make me think that makes a successful movie?
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