Thursday sorta Downer

Holy effing Gout.  Last night the inside of our knee felt like it was being scraped with sandpaper. That's AFTER we went to the doctor. Another scrap of evidence supporting our growing suspicion that doctors make things worse. 

[He never really thinks strait when he has gout, Yanks-Ed]

Look at Fauci. The knee only stops hurting if the leg is perfectly still and level with the joint locked. 

We're making up Soviet silo nuclear procedure. WTF, why not? As long as it seems right. It's not like the Russians are going to open up about it. 'Hello Ivan. I'm a talkative and inquisitive Americanski...' Russians are paranoid as it is...'Security threat, comrade? Activate Operation Smirt Spionen.Why take chances.?'*

Speaking of [Week segway-Ed], our KGB handler was giving us grief for only writing two articles in September. With the flood we were a little busy. He was also asking about today. We just didn't want to write about Sinema, Manchin and reconciliation again. And the whole Lets Go Brandon thing would take too much time to explain and make no sense and leave Russian readers asking, 'Who is Brandon?'* Sorry, Ivan, I got nothing. 

Reading through The Great Salvation of 1976, we're finding the same problems, the same issues we have with 75. Something seems off about these one off scenes. A Coast Guard cutter cruises down the Mississippi and shows us what's happening on the banks and is never heard from again. Maybe it's not even a problem. Maybe we're just overthinking. 

[Overthinking has never been an issue for you before, knobhead-Ed]

So they sent William Shatner into space. The jokes can and do write themselves. Make no mistake, Star Trek is the single most important and influential television show of the 20th century and this blog doubts there's even a close second. Name one. Hill Street Blues? Thirty Something? Please. In a century nobody will have heard of Tony Soprano, but hold up a hologram of Captain Kirk, and everyone will recognize him. 

*Read that with your fake Russian accent. 

What Will's Watching

The Critical Drinker: A Scottish movie reviewer who loves movies and hates Social Justice Warriors who ruin the movies he loves. The man's been extremely unkind to the new Star Trek franchises, and he's right. We'd like to pick up where The Drinker left off. 

Discovery and Picard are cynical and dark and jaded....oh my....
Some Kathleen Kennedy acolyte (the SJW who wrecked Star Wars) decided they needed to break with Star Trek's glorious past and make a dark Star Trek. Seriously this is how Goth/Emo teenagers see the world, it's also how CBS see's Star Trek.

Star Trek is supposed to be a future utopia. That's the whole point. Picard says it again and again in TNG. Man has evolved. We've put aside our petty differences, our envy, our glut. Star Trek was escapist. Set aside your worries for an hour, viewer, look at what we could be. Star Trek was aspirational.

As hard to watch as some of those original Trek episodes are now, they were trying to advance the cause of equality.  Nichelle Nichols was going to leave Star Trek, but you know who asked her to stay? Martin Luther King. It was important, he said, for the nation to see a black woman on TV equal to the white (and alien) characters. She and Kirk had the first interracial TV kiss. That was a big deal in the mid-60s.

So now they've crapped all over Star Trek too.

Go watch The Drinker. Go watch The Drinker and get mad. We know we are.

Battle Extraordinaire

Now this is how you do a Star Trek battle:

Not too much, not overdone, just Enterprise vs three Klingon battle cruisers.

We love how Picard fights on as the bridge burns down around him.

Star Trek: Galaxy

Captain Picard is back!

CBS is producing a new series involving legendary Captain Jean Luc Picard.

Over at Red Letter Media a very interesting discussion on the project, and Mike Stoklasa's proposal for the series:

We watched half an episode of Discovery and came away unimpressed. The last movie we saw was First Contact. 

[You're just cynical and jaded-Ed]

True enough.

Star Trek is a huge franchise of course and it has a lot of influence. There are thousands of people in NASA, the navy, JPL, and university physics departments becuase of Kirk and Picard. In a hundred years people who will never hear of Tom Cruise will know Spock. For 25 years if you liked sci-fi Star Trek was all there was.

But we think Star Trek's time has passed.