Hello World!

Monday night I noticed that Serenity was on cable and decided it was time to give it a chance. I've been apathetic about Firefly, which I sort of liked with some notable exceptions. I find Whedon's aren't-I-clever dialogue rather cloying. I didn't particularly love any of the characters and I had trouble warming up to the women, particularly Inara, both the concept of her (phoniest prostitute in the entire sci-fi hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold genre and that's saying something after the Bajoran "comfort women" on Deep Space Nine) and the casting (played by an actress with no chemistry with the man who supposedly would cross a galaxy for her). But I'd heard that her role had been minimized in the movie and even non-Firefly fan friends who are as bored by new Battlestar Galactica as I am liked Serenity, so I figured I owed it to myself to watch it.

The whole family ended up in the room, and although for the first 3/4 of an hour or so I remained unimpressed -- same issues with the sledgehammer dialogue and still hiding my eyes from all the women but Gina Torres -- but then the storyline really got going and the movie moved away from reintroducing all the characters' carefully constructed quirks, and the film absolutely rocked! I was pretty spoiled, but even knowing what was eating River and what lay behind the Alliance's tyrannical brutality, I was riveted by how everything played out. Nathan Fillion and Summer Glau in particular gave much stronger performances than I ever saw from them on Firefly. So that was totally enjoyable, and everyone who told me to watch it was right, thank you, and we will all definitely watch that one again.

Trek BBS Today

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

-Do you want to see Sci-Fi's commentaries from the special edition of the original series on the remastered DVDs?

-Is anyone else cringing at the idea of seeing all those OS sets and sound effects in Trek XI?

-Will a major character ever be killed off in the novels?

More topics can be found at the Trek BBS!

Trek Two Years Ago

These were some of the major news items from July 2004:

• Blalock Confirms Big Changes for T'Pol
  Jolene Blalock confirmed an earlier statement that her character, T'Pol, would get married in the third episode of Star Trek: Enterprise's fourth season and said of the Tucker-T'Pol romance, "I think it's absolutely ridiculous that some catfish-eating honky-tonk guy would be appealing to this serene character, personally, but, you know, maybe there's something in the difference."

• Trinneer On T'Pol Romance: Make It Grow Or Drop It
  And Blalock's fellow actor Connor Trinneer agreed, saying, "If they're going to do [the relationship] again, I sure hope they make it evolve." He disagreed, however, with the idea of Tucker as a honky-tonk guy, explaining, "I think Trip's full of dark, ambiguous stuff...I don't think that was anything new in terms of my own process about playing him."

• Stars Gamble On Vegas Con
  As many members of the cast and crew of various Star Trek series appeared at an official convention in Las Vegas, Kate Mulgrew (Janeway) voiced her support for presidential candidate John Kerry and her castmate on Voyager Ethan Phillips estimated that he had spent 3,200 hours in the makeup chair to play Neelix.

More news can be found in the archives.

Poll Results

Below are the results of the most recent TrekToday poll:

Which summer franchise sequel delivers the goods best? Superman Returns 33.9% - (286 Votes) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest 32.1% - (271 Votes) X-Men: The Last Stand 23.3% - (197 Votes) Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties 5.5% - (47 Votes) Mission: Impossible III 4.3% - (37 Votes) Total Votes: 843

Please vote in our new poll on how you've contributed to Paramount's Star Trek cash cow!

Happy Birthday!

Saturday, July 29th is the birthday of both Wil Wheaton, The Next Generation's Wesley Crusher, and David Warner, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country's Chancellor Gorkon.

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!