Hello World!

In the interest of being ready for Serenity, I've been watching Firefly on DVD. I missed it when it was on television - I can't even remember which night it was on, but it wasn't a good one for me - and I'd been told that I was better off seeing the pilot that was never broadcast rather than trying to keep up with the airing order, so now I've seen that two-hour episode as well as a couple of the others.

I'm trying to feel more than ambivalent. I mean, I've enjoyed the show while watching. As usual, Joss Whedon draws pretty sharp characters with just a handful of strong lines and scenes, but I've sometimes felt that that was a trap as well as a strength of Buffy, where snappy remarks and witticisms sometimes substituted for what should have been much deeper conversations. I like that the war seems so horrible and senseless but I really wish I had some clue what it was about: certainly there are wars that begin for no good reason and go on for years over absolutely nothing, but it's hard for me to understand what a lot of these characters thought they were fighting for, why they were so devoted then and why they are so embittered now. And I know it's a staple of Westerns whether they're set in the West or in space, but the hooker with a heart of gold really gets on my nerves. She's too pretty, too clean, to completely phony, and therefore I can't feel anything about her interactions with the girlie engineer or the captain who's probably in love with her in spite of himself.

I made the mistake of reading a major spoiler for the film on the TrekBBS...not anyone's fault really, I was looking for items to post in the part of the column that appears below and picked up a hot Serenity thread. But it makes me think of a typical thing that Whedon has done too often on his shows before, and while I'm sort of sorry I know because it makes me not want to see the film, I'm also sort of glad, because this is a summer that's very crowded with films I want to see (Cinderella Man, The Island, Layer Cake, Batman Begins, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Ladies in Lavender), so missing Serenity wouldn't be any real loss to me. I just can't decide whether it's likely to be groundbreaking and trendsetting science fiction, or more of the same.

Trek BBS Today

Below are some of the topics currently being discussed at the Trek BBS:

-Whose ending was worse, Enterprise's or Xena's?

-Does Star Trek kill off more women than men?

-2005's best season finales!

More topics can be found at the Trek BBS!

Trek Two Years Ago

These were some of the major news items from May 2003:

• 'Nemesis' Makes Waves On DVD
  Star Trek Nemesis blasted onto the DVD scene at warp speed, taking the top position on Nielsen VideoScan's First Alert DVD sales chart for its first week of release. More than 1.3 million copies of the DVD were estimated to have been sold.

• 'The Expanse' Reflects Contracting Ratings
  The final ratings for "The Expanse" and the rest of Enterprise's May sweeps episodes showed that the decline in viewership which began early in 2003 continued through the end of the season. The total number of viewers for "The Expanse" was below those for "Cogenitor" and "Regeneration", estimated to be 4.1 million viewers each, with total viewers for "The Expanse" placed at 3.9 million viewers. These numbers were down significantly from the 4.8 million viewers who watched "Cease Fire" during February sweeps and from the 5.3 million who watched "Shockwave" at the end of the first season. Enterprise finished its run as the fourth-highest rated series on UPN.

• Takei Thinks Trek Fans Are Activists
  The social interests and involvement of fans was praised by George Takei (Sulu), who cited senators and space scientists as well as political protestors and artists. "I've had astronauts tell me their first interest in aeronautics was as kids watching Star Trek...not all Trekkies have antennae coming out of their hats," he said. "The whole Star Trek philosophy is to take charge...our fans take it as stimulus to act on in organizing conventions, art and other issues related to society."

More news can be found in the archives.

Poll Results

Below are the results of the most recent TrekToday poll:

Belatedly, how would you rate 'Terra Prime'? 9-10 52.8% - (686 Votes) 7-8 22.7% - (295 Votes) 5-6 8.7% - (113 Votes) 1-2 5.2% - (68 Votes) Wasn't able to see it 4% - (53 Votes) Didn't want to see it 3.7% - (49 Votes) 3-4 2.6% - (34 Votes) Total Votes: 1298

Please vote in our new poll on which of the Star Wars movies made you feel the Force was with you!

Happy Birthday!

Monday, May 30th is the birthday of Colm Meaney, The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine's Miles O'Brien. Two days later, Tuesday, June 1st, is the birthday of Meaney's DS9 co-stars Rene Auberjonis (Odo) and Nicole deBoer (Ezri).

Today's Television Listings

Tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, UPN will rerun the Star Trek: Enterprise series finale, "These Are the Voyages...". Here is a synopsis of the episode:

Six years in the future, an emotional Archer and the crew return to Earth to face the decommission of Enterprise and signing of the Federation charter, ratifying the newly-formed alliance of planets they helped forge, but first the officers must mount a daring, dangerous rescue to save Andorian Commander Sharan's kidnapped daughter. Meanwhile, far in the future, Troi suggests that Riker use a Holodeck recreation of this moment in 'Star Trek' history to search for some command insights.

Then at 9 p.m., UPN will rerun the episode "Daedalus". Here is a synopsis of that episode:

The inventor of the transporter, Emory Erickson, comes aboard Enterprise for a risky experiment.

Discuss this news item at Trek BBS!
 Add TrekToday RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fan? Then visit CSIFiles.com!