Saturday, March 31, 2012

A is for Ardra

A is for Ardra but who is she? Ardra is a mysterious Star Trek character from The Next Generation's episode 'Devils Due.' Over a thousand years ago the planet Ventax II was rocked with civil unrest, pollution, murder and mayhem. We know from Captain Picard's chat with Leader Jared that Ardra delivered the population peace and prosperity except theres a catch.

Ventaxians sign a legally binding contract surrendering their planet to the devil affording citizens a peaceful millennium of prosperity. The deal is struck with the devil except time passes and Ardra returns. Earthquakes rock the planet striking fear into Ventaxian hearts. Apparently the mythical figure Ardra is the real deal but why is Captain Picard suspicious of her powers?

Is Ardra really the devil?

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Six Surprising Klingon Moments In Real Life

Starfleet's Commodores usually rally the troops in Star Trek TOS. By the time Star Trek The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise hit our tv sets, the term Commodore had fallen into disuse. I can't help but wonder why? The Captain is always the last man to leave a starship in crisis but which Star Trek commodore makes a lasting impression? Which of these Commodore names was a pseudonym that Gene Roddenberry used when he wrote for 'Have Gun' 'Will Travel' while working as a LAPD police officer?

I'm guest posting for Maurice Mitchel at the Geek Twins today so beam on over to find out!

I have a special guest today, Maurice Mitchel from GeekTwins has written about Six Surprising Klingon Moments In Real Life. Its great to have you here, take it away Maurice..



Klingon
I'm Maurice, one of The Geek Twins. SpacerGuy has given us the opportunity to post on his blog!



The most popular Star Trek villains are the militaristic Klingons. Surprisingly enough, the Klingons have left the movies and television screen and found their way into reality. Read on for six examples of the Klingons in real life.



1. Klingon Cures Dyslexia

When 50-year old British man, Jonathon Brown, started working
for the global "Klingon Language Institute" he found a way to work
through his Dyslexia.

The learning disability can make reading difficult and give the person
a hard time recognizing names. "Dyslexia is not something you get over,
you live with it. It's not necessarily a hindrance, you just learn
different ways to pick things up." Jonathon said.

"Working on the translation has helped me understand where
I've been having problems all my life with languages, I realised I'd
been trying to remember the words in the name part of my brain and
because I can't remember names, I can't remember the words.

"With the Klingon language games used on the CD, I tended to
put words into a different place and it went into my long term memory.

"I've still got a long way to go to speak it fluently, but
there are many people who do."



2. Father Raises
Son As A Klingon


One man took language therapy a little too far. d'Armond Speers spoke
only Klingon to his child for the first three years of its life.

"I was interested in the question of whether my son, going
through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like
any human language," Speers told the Minnesota Daily. "He was
definitely starting to learn it."

Speers isn't a Star Trek fan. He has a doctorate in
computational linguistics and this was an experiment for his company,
Ultralingua, which develops language and translation software. In the
end, thankfully, the child learned English and promptly forgot the
Klingon when he started school.



3. Klingon
Beauty Pageant


While most people don't call Klingon women hot, every year there's a
beauty pageant called Miss Klingon Empire. Created by Eric L. Watts in
1999 and presented at Dragon*Con, the Miss Klingon Empire Beauty
Pageant judges the contestants on beauty, talent and personality.
Here's an example of the talent portion as one of them sings "One Way
or Another."



4. Klingon
Wedding


In 1997 a couple had a Klingon themed wedding. Besides the great
costumes, they also had a Klingon battle of honor between rival
families.







5. Rosario Dawson Speaks
Klingon

One of the most surprising examples of Klingon geekery comes
from closet geek Rosario Dawson. The beautiful
Rosario broke out as a huge fan Star Trek fan on Conan O'Brian. It
turns out she can speak a few words and uses them with her brother.









6. The 1979 Klingon Happy
Meal

Back in 1979 McDonald's had a Star Trek Happy Meal to coincide
with the release of Star trek: The Motion Picture. This was actually
the companies first use of the Happy Meal as a movie tie-in. The
commercial featured a "Klingon" talking about how his sons enjoy their
Happy Meals in Klingonese with a helpful interpreter. I'm no Klingese
expert, but I'm pretty sure he's just shouting garbage at the screen.






From curing diabetes to inspiring weddings, the Klingons have
left a permanent mark on our culture. As Worf says, "Perhaps today is a
good day to die!" That, or just have a Happy Meal.



Thanks again to Spacerguy for the chance to visit his blog. If you'd like to visit our site we feature Star Trek on a weekly basis. Not as deeply as Spacerguy, but it's always fun. Head over to The Geek Twins today!

Monday, March 26, 2012

Happy Birthday Leonard Nimoy

Spock is Star Trek's logical creature of reasoning and our pointy eared friend.




Heres hoping his birthday
Is second to none-
because right now our hero
has reached eighty-one!




Happy Birthday Leonard Nimoy.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Technobabble











I've done a little digging and found some "Technobabble" for you to have a listen to. If you thought Star Trek's Treknobabble, alien docking procedures, isophasic signatures and quantum singularities was complicated and confusing then try ASSIMILATING THIS.



Enjoy your Star Trekking.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Yesterday's Enterprise

Yesterdays Enterprise is Star Trek TNG 15th episode in season 3 which gives me goosebumps. A ship from the past emerges 22 years into the future from a mysterious swirling cloud. In the blink of an eye, the united Federation of planets turns into a warzone when this battered starship leaps into the Enterprise-D's timeline.

Vulcan's and Romulans are now the cruel masters of the universe and Worf is gone from the bridge of captain Picard's Flagship. Klingons are at war with the Federation which is on the brink of surrender! On closer scrutiny the USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D is a warship with Tasha Yar back at her old post as security chief. Just what exactly is going on? Data as usual explains. Apparently 'the cloud' is a temporal rift opening doorways in time allowing timetravelers to effect change in alternate universes.

At first glance all is not what it seems. Guinan's El Aurian intution senses whats wrong. The weird thing is the Enterprise-D isn't supposed to be a ship of WAR but of PEACE! She fills in the gaps for Picard who has a tough time buying her story, especially the bit about FAMLIES living on the Enterprise, LOL.


Billions of lives have been lost in a war that could have been avoided if one ship, the USS Enterprise-C had stayed where she really belonged.

Captain Garret's ship has to go back to 2344 and save Klingons in THE PAST because its the right thing to do. Its a suicide mission dooming the Enterprise-C to certain death but the Picard is desperate and Guinan is probably right.

One more Federation starship in the here and now hardly matters, but 22 years ago, a lone Federation starship rescuing Klingons at Narendra III would be considered 'a meaningful act of honor' by the Klingon Empire.

In the end Tasha Yar, Castillo and the Enterprise-C crew heroically race to their deaths giving Picard's alternate universe a fighting chance to survive but what would you do? Stay on Picard's ship or die heroically fighting Romulans?



Monday, March 12, 2012

Blog Award

It is my honor to announce that Bernd Schneider from Ex Astris Scientia has chosen Star Trek - Sci Fi Blog for a 2012 EAE Star Trek award.

Bernd's trek analysis identifies my weakness for Star Trek which took hold at an early age. You see I was powerless to resist scores of invading pesky space bugs assimilating me into their trektastic collective! Resistance was definitely futile and I was absorbed.

Now I must confess, I felt a warm surge of emotion when I got word of our EAE award over the weekend. Thanks Bernd, you've made my day.

Thursday, March 08, 2012

One Giant Leap for Hamkind.

Girls are Geeks too and heres the proof! Its sound hilarious but in 1961 NASA launched a successful astronaut 150 miles into the heavens and he was a monkey! Apparently Ham was smart enough to test out the original Mecury craft launched into earth's sub orbital atmosphere helping us humans discover whether living creatures could survive the rigours of interstellar flight. LOL, okay so I'm exaggerating a little bit but Ham was congratulated by NASA after his successful flight on January 31st 1961.



Two years later thirteen female pilots sign up for Astronaut training with high hopes of entering NASA's Mecury Program. The female geeks are put through NASA's hoops and pass the same demanding physical, intellectual and psychological tests as Mecury's seven male astronauts and trailblazer Ham. The kicker for the Mecury 13 is the year, 1963. Gender discrimination probably prevented female acceptance into NASA's space flight program but who knows why America just wasn't really ready?

How times have changed! On 18th June 1983 Sally Ride became the first American woman to enter space except Russia's was way ahead of us at warp factor 9. Isn't it interesting Mother Russia had enough faith in their girl geeks to become the first country launching the first woman into space with Valentina Tereshkova in 1963!

Live Long and Prosper, Trekkies and Trekkers.

Monday, March 05, 2012

Ralph McQuarrie

Oscar legend Ralph McQuarrie died over the weekend at the grand age of 82. Ralph was the brains and artistic inspiration responsible for propelling Star Wars trilogy of characters onto the silver screen. His creative visuals won him an Academy Award in 1986 and contributed to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the lost Ark, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home!

His striking Star Wars characters have unquestionably won over the hearts and minds of fans who will forever immortalize Ralph's iconic creations Darth Vader, Bobba Fett, R2-D2, Chewbacca and C-3PO hyperspacing across the galaxy.

Thankyou Ralph McQuarrie for infecting our galaxy.



































Thursday, March 01, 2012

The Evil Captain Kirk

Heres a couple that looks real sweet but I wonder what have these two been up to? Kirk looks like the cat that got the cream hugged by friendly Janice Rand from Star Trek's 'The Enemy Within.'

What happens when a transporter malfunction goes beserk and splits Captain Kirk into two beings, one indecisive and the other a violent hell-bent lunatic with inappropriate desires for the lovely yeoman here played by Grace Lee Whitney?

The dark side of Captain Kirk runs amok aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701 and creates havoc for Sulu who is stuck with the landing party freezing on the planet surface. The Enemy Within does a brilliant science fiction twist on Robert Louis Stevenson's 'the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' which is pure awesome.

Spock figures out that the 'Captain' requires both aspects of the 'Kirk personality' to function as a complete whole. Its really neat watching the good Kirk procrastinating over whether to allow Scotty and Spock use the transporter to restore him with his 'evil' twin.

Would you want to mind meld permanently with the EVIL Captain Kirk?




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