The Power of Christ Compels You!

The Power of Christ Compels You!

Now that I have evicted the demon that was obviously controlling ER, I just
want to add another old cultural faux pas I forgot to mention before:

Remember in the episode "The Changeling" (the one with Nomad) when the
mixed-up probe was analyzing Uhura and asked Kirk what "it" was ("A woman"
Kirk replied knowingly). Nomad's response was "A mass of conflicting impulses."

Now having been married for almost 15 years, I would generally concur with
Nomad - but I'd also like to stay in one piece, so I won't.

As an aside: In that same episode, Nomad removes all of Uhura's knowledge
and memories from her mind while analyzing her and later tells Kirk that he
cannot restore them. Yet somehow McCoy and Chapel are able to restore
everything on their own in a couple of weeks, apparently.

But are we going to let them "fix" such glaring inconsistencies? Heck no.

If you really want to "update" the original Star Trek, then get rid of all the
carbon units on the starships and reduce their size. Artilects will do the
job just as well and better and more efficiently, M-5 aside. An unstable
human programmed that Artilect anyway - well before the 23rd Century,
Artilects will be building and programming each other, as humans won't be
able to comprehend how to do it, if they even still exist as biologicals at all.

"Updating" old SF series and films to "appeal" to today's CGI-sodden masses
is just wrong from aesthetic point of view, to say nothing of just another
ploy to squeeze even more money from the overused Star Trek franchise.
Enterprise should have taught them to quit.

In addition to my earlier comment on how colorizing old B&W films did nothing
to improve them, did you see what they did to Carl Sagan's Cosmos series?
It too was "updated" with "modern" FX, but they mostly came across as
rather cheesy and jarring compared to the original FX they had in the series.
They did nothing to add to the info and in many cases took away from the
more appealing original artwork the series had. I also noted they quickened
the pace of Cosmos, especially in the first episode.

Cosmos was a work of art as well as triumph of science popularization. They
should have just left it alone. If anyone needed to be "updated" on the latest
in astronomy, they could just hop on the Web. Most of what Cosmos presented
was still accurate anyway.

And maybe this is just paranoia, but updating ST and all these other old films
and series also smacks to me of rewriting history ala 1984. So some of today's
runts can't handle old FX - so what? I can remember when going to the movies
to see the latest SF was a thrill in part to see what they could do with FX
technology. Now thanks to CGI and absurb budgets (remember when they
whined that Waterworld cost $100 million in 1995?), that thrill has been
diminished and will likely disappear, especially when VR tech really advances.
Then sitting in a dark theater watching a film on a flat screen will also go
the way of the dinosaur and Hollywood will be converting old films into VR.
There will probably be just a few old film houses left hidden in cities showing
bootleg copies of Casablanca as the film was originally seen back in 1941.

I'm waiting for the BBC to start "updating" Doctor Who's cheesy effects.