I got hit yesterday with a very time critical and large client project that will be taking up most all of my time over the next few weeks, so I may have to get in a lot of quick posts like this to keep up. :-\

A number of years ago I watched the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (2003) cartoon, and was shocked at how good it was. IMO there has been no other non-comedic American cartoon that has come out of its quality besides Avatar The Last Airbender (which is in its own league of quality for American cartoons). It was also saddening to me when watching the final (5th) season that a lot of those episodes hadn’t aired due to them being “too dark for kids” :-(. Also, for reference, I consider the show ended at 5 seasons. The “6th season” entitled “Fast Forward” is NOT the same show. I’d equate its quality to the Ninja Turtles cartoons of the 1980s, or perhaps worse.

Anywho, when I was giving the series’ DVDs to a friend, I felt the need to compile a list of the episodes, as they were made to be watched in a specific order, but were not aired or released (even remotely) in that proper order. There are some episodes repeated in the list as they were included on multiple DVDs. This information is probably much easier to find nowadays... but when I compiled it, it definitely wasn’t easy information to come by.

Ugh. It’s been a month today since I made my last post here. Things have just been way, way too busy! I’ll try to pick up on the content regularity, once again. I should be able to handle at least a few weeks worth of semi-regular updates ^_^;.

I’ll keep today’s post short and simple :-).

Chrono Trigger for the Nintendo DS was released a few weeks ago, which came relatively shortly after the release of Final Fantasy IV for the DS. I should mention Chrono Trigger is one of my all time favorite games. I’ve played it more time than I can count, and was very happy for a port to the DS. Yay :-).

It’s pretty much the exact same as the original, not like the 3D updates that were the Final Fantasy ports. It has all the typical “Extras” systems added on to game ports these days like keeping track of the monsters you’ve fought (bestiary) and items you’ve collected, game art, cutscene replaying, game music jukebox, maps of all the levels, etc. It also has a few GUI updates, 2 new areas, a pokemon type fight-your-friend-over-the-DS-with-a-monster type system, and last but definitely not least, a great new translation.

The new translation is probably the best thing about the port. Tom Slattery did a wonderful job on it, though to his credit (according to Wikipedia ^_^; ) Ted Woolsey was only given 30 days to do the original translation. The new levels are all pretty lame :-\ but oh well. I still haven’t finished going through most of them because they involve a lot of annoying back-and-forth between time periods, and bad level design.

The main thing I wanted to mention was a single line of translation that really made me smile. If you take Ayla to Robo’s extra side quest, at one point she says “What you say?” ... Any of you nerds out there should know what that references :-).

Anywho, yeah, Chrono trigger is awesome. And now back to your regularly scheduled mostly technical posts... ^_^;

Oh, the memories of the good old days of gaming! When video games were far and few between, and could be made by one to a handful of people. Yesterday’s post [Video Game Nostalgia] touched on some old games I played when I was but a lad. I decided for today I’d drag out a lot of the old stuff, see what I still had for curiosity sake, and take a picture :-).

All of the software packages are DOS applications (except the Windows upgrades, obviously, and Visual Basic), most everything says for the “IBM/TANDY” :-).

On a silly side note, I had the bad habit of calling PCs (Personal Computers) “IBM Compatibles” (as opposed to Apples) until like 1998, heh.

• My dad’s TRS-80 Model 100. The story goes that when he used to have to get up at night to take care of my older sister when she was a baby in ’82, he used it to instant message friends on CompuServe over its 300 baud modem while rocking her back to sleep or such. I also played with a TRS-80, which also belonged to my dad, at my grandfather’s house one summer, and did some programming on it in Basic when I was ~12 :-).
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989)
• Visual Basic 5.0. Info on a previous version I received here. :-)
• MS-DOS owners guide
• Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (1992)
• Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Pool of Radiance (1988): 3 books for the game plus rune wheel. My sister was the one that played this one IIRC.
• ZZT (1991): Getting started guide and 2 floppy disks
• Muppet Adventure: Chaos at the Carnival (1989): Floppy disk and getting started guide
• Ken’s Labyrinth (1993, Epic Megagames): 2 floppy disks
• Jazz Jackrabbit (1994, Epic Megagames) (can’t find my “Jill of the Jungle” though :-\)

• Bicycle Holiday Collection (1992)
• Cakewalk Home Studio v3.01
• Chutes and Ladders (1988, Milton Bradley Co.)
• Math Rabbit (1986, The Learning Company)
• Microsoft Paintbrush (1985-1986 - Yes, this was once a program you actually had to buy. The manual is a pretty and colorful little neatly bound ring-binder too ^_^).
• Monopoly Deluxe (1992, Virgin Games)
• The Electric Company - Picture Place (1988)
• Solitaire’s Journey (1992)
• Wheel of Fortune (1987)
• Where in the U.S.A. is Carmen Sandiego (1985-1986)
• Windows 95 & 98 Upgrades

And, Yes, I know I’m a packrat. I inherited it from my Dad :-).

So a comic [Gunnerkrigg Court] that I enjoy and read daily [updates MWF] recently referenced Metal Gear Solid, which finally made me decide to play through the series.

For reference, whenever I bring up games from here on out, it’s usually to talk about encountered problems, which I will usually provide fixes for, or technical aspects of the game. I’m not qualified, or funny enough, to want to review games; and that is not the purpose of my postings here.

The first thing I wanted to mention is a fix for a graphical problem. As the game is rather “old” (released in 2000 for Windows), it can be incompatible with modern systems. One of the options it uses in hardware mode is 8-bit textures, which is no longer supported, though for the life of me I can’t see why a hack could be made in the video card drivers for this problem. Because of this, the game only allows you to run in software mode. After a lot of digging and searching, in which every place said the same thing (it’s not fixable), I finally found a hacked executable [Metal Gear Solid v1.0 [ENGLISH] No-CD/WinXP+Vista+GeForce+ATi Fixed EXE] made by a kind sole to fix the problem.

Another problem which really frustrated me was a “puzzle” in the game referring to looking for information on the “back of the CD case”. I had just received an “optical disk” in the game, however, it appeared to be a floppy disk and no matter what I did I couldn’t find the required information with the item. I figured it must have been a bug and finally gave in and looked it up online. It turns out they meant the actual CD case the game came in had a number [radio frequency] written on the back of it - “140.15”. I can only assume they did this as a means of “copy protection” to frustrate anyone who didn’t actually buy the game. Unfortunately, I acquired the game without a CD case so I was frustrated by this myself.

This kind of system reminded me of the very old days of gaming in which some games asked you to input a certain word from a certain paragraph on a certain page of the manual to enter the game, or asked questions with answers found in the manual. One of the games I had that did the former was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [1989] for DOS. I have fond memories of playing this and a (monochrome? [green and black :-) ] IIRC?) version of Muppet Adventure: Chaos at the Carnival [1989] (Dear Thor! heh) [also a DOS game] as they were, IIRC, two of my first video games, though I got many others around that time. Both games had later released NES ports too.

My real favorite childhood games however, which are still both cult classics, were Doom, which got me into the design aspect of making games, and most importantly, ZZT, which is what really got me started on programming in 1991 at the age of 5. I still have the original floppy disks for ZZT too :-). ZZT was more scripting than programming though, and I didn’t start real programming until I got into QBasic in 1993. I might release some of my creations for these games one of these days for nostalgic sake ^_^;. I also remember thoroughly enjoying Star Trek: 25th Anniversary for DOS in 1992 :-). I was a nerd even as a kid! ^_^; This game also had copy protection I had forgotten about. As Wikipedia tells:

The game had a copy-protection system in that the player was forced to consult the game’s manual in order to find out which star system they were supposed to warp to on the navigation map. Warping to the wrong system would send them into either the Klingon or Romulan neutral zones, and initiate an extremely difficult battle that often ends with the destruction of the Enterprise.

I got back from a couple day trip to Dallas last night. Man do I hate that drive, especially when it’s raining so hard you can barely see 6 feet in front of you, which seems to happen almost every time any of my friends or family make that drive (from Dallas to Austin or vice versa).

I just now beat Final Fantasy 4 DS too, yay. I was thoroughly happy with the remake they did of the game this time around, of which it had only one or two trifle annoyances of no real consequence, which is surprising for me as I always seem to find heavy fault in everything remade that I held dear as a child. The new game plus feature, as far as I can see, is pretty worthless though, as all it leaves you with is the augments, which I didn’t even use anyways. The cut scenes were all excellent, especially the opening credits pre-rendered cinematics, which I have included below. Now all I really have to wait for is the Chrono Trigger remake they are doing for the DS!!! :-D

I also finished the Eragon books again over the weekend, so with all of that sidetracking stuff out of the way I will be getting back to regularly posting stuff here as promised.

Final Fantasy IV DS Opening High Quality
Stolen from YouTube, owned by SquareSoft


Final Fantasy IV DS Characters Art
Owned by SquareSoft, Image from GamesPress

I just now finished watching Disney’s “The Black Cauldron”. While a rather poor example of a Disney animated film, there is one element that really caught my surprise. One of the characters, Gurgi, acted, sounded, and moved just like Golem from Peter Jackson’s rendition of Lord of the Rings. The way Gurgi talked, his inflections, his character’s nature and actions were all pretty much exactly how Golem was portrayed. I’m not necessarily saying Gurgi was stolen from LoTR, or Jackson copied Gurgi alternately, but they are a bit too eerily similar for my speculations.

I am a big fan of many SquareSoft games, namely, Final Fantasy 4 (US2), Final Fantasy 6 (US3), and Chrono Trigger. I played all of these on the Super Nintendo many many years ago, and still replay them from time to time through emulator.

I recently recalled that re-releases of these games on the PlayStation consoles included cut scenes, so I decided to look them up. I figured these would be of use to anyone in my boat who is a fan of the old school games but never got to see these.

I included the original links to these videos, which contain author credits, in the title. All videos were found on YouTube, and of course, owned by SquareSoft.

• Getting non-modem LAN connections on the internet: Win98 expected people to connect to the internet via phone modems, as broadband was still unheard of then. The “Windows Connection Wizard” was a pain in the butt and you had to know just the right place to go to get it to recognize a NIC as a valid connection to the internet.
• Shutting down windows improperly: If you failed to turn off the computer through the proper “Shut Down” method, the FAT file systems did not have certain type of safe-guards that NTFS does, and the computer was be forced to do a ScanDisk on startup. A ScanDisk is also run the first time windows starts after install, and seeing this old piece of software really gave me a warm fuzzy feeling... or was it a feeling of utter nausea?
• RAM allocation: The DOS-line-kernel of windows never properly kept track of memory from applications, and memory leaks in applications STAYED memory leaks after the program shut down, so RAM could very quickly get eaten up. Programs called “RAM Scrubbers” were around to fix these detected memory leaks and free them.
• Themes: Most people don’t know that windows themes actually originated with Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 (I could have sworn it was originally called Windows Plus!... need to find my original CD) software package, which also first introduced the ever-popular and addicting Space Cadet Pinball (check the games folder that comes installed in XP). Most Plus! options were usually integrated straight into later Windows versions or updates. I have included below all the Themes that came with Windows 98 SE for nostalgic value :-). Enjoy!
  
  Speaking of games, it seems 98SE also included FreeCell... I wasn’t aware it was that old. I think the “Best of Windows Entertainment Pack” (with “Chips Challenge”, “Golf”, “Rodent’s Revenge”, “Tetris”, “SkiFree”, and some other fun games) also originally came on the Plus! CDs, but am not sure of this. I believe the Best Pack also came with the CD packs that came with new computer from Packard Bell and maybe some other manufacturer for like 2 or 3 years in the mid 90s that also included the first game of one of my most favorite game series ever, Journey Man, as well as Microsoft Encarta, Britannica, a Cook Book CD and a Do-It-Yourself Book CD. Good times!!!
• Calendar: The calendar only displayed 2 digits for the year instead of 4... does this mean Microsoft was expecting everyone to switch from 98 immediately when their next OS (Windows ME [heh] or 2K) came out? See “The Old New Thing” for another interesting problem of the windows calendar of old.

• The first question asked during install was “You have a drive over 512mb in size, would you like to enable large disk support?”
• All the 3d screensavers were OpenGL. Though DirectX was out at that point, it was still in a state of sheer-crappiness so Microsoft still used OpenGL, which it wouldn’t be caught dead using nowadays ^_^.
• During install, there were lots of messages touting the operating systems features, including “By converging real-time 2d and 3d graphics ... *MMX is a trademark of Intel Corporation”. It just made me smile knowing that MMX was once so new Microsoft had to put a trademark warning like that.
• Internet Explorer (5.0) started up at MSN.com already... which immediately crashed the browser! hehe
• The windows update website informed me as follows: “Important: End of Support for Windows 98 and Windows ME
  Effective July 11, 2006, support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows ME (and their related components) will end. Updates for Windows 98 and Windows ME will be limited to those updates that currently appear on the Windows Update website.”

• The emotion behind the OS. For some reason, Windows 98 and 95 always had... a warmness to them that 2K/XP never had. I’m not sure why... but the newer operating systems always had such a stiff and corporate feeling to them.
• Winipcfg! Now I am forced to go to the darn command prompt to do it via ipconfig (which was available then also), which is a pain when you have too many NICs and it scrolls the console window or when trying to help someone get their IP Address or MAC address.
• Restart in MS-DOS mode! Man do I ever miss that. Especially for playing original DOOM. Good ’ol 640k ^_^. The 3.x/95/98 kernels were really based upon DOS so it was valid to have a DOS only mode, but there’s nothing stopping them from including it on newer computers... well, except that DOS didn’t support NTFS, I guess... so it would be confusing. Ah well.
• FAST load time. If I recall, Win98 always loaded bounds faster than XP... probably has to do with drivers.

Baseball: Dangerous Creatures: Inside Your Computer: Jungle: Leonardo da Vinci: More Windows: Mystery: Nature: Science: Space: Sports: The 60’s USA: The Golden Era: Travel: Underwater: Windows 98: Windows Default:

OK, so I lied last time and am not doing the second half of my medical stuff post like planned, and will save that for later.  I should be posting happy stuff on a supposed-to-be-happy day like today anyways ^_^;.  Most of you out there who have heard of Gainax know of it due to Neon Genesis Evangelion (better known, and hereby referred to, as Eva), their “ground breaking” series released in ‘95-‘96.  I’d have to say this was, and may still be, the most well known good anime series, meaning not including such tripe as Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, Digimon, Sailor Moon (which isn’t THAT bad actually...), etc.  It always gave me a bad tremble whenever I mentioned anime to general people and they replied with “oh, you mean (like) Sailor Moon?” But anyways... I should let you know beforehand, most of this post is a history of anime and some interesting info on the anime Nadia.

The TV series Gainax did immediately before Eva, Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water, released in ‘89-‘91, is one of, if not my favorite anime series.  You can definitely see the influence it had on Eva too.  Before I talk about Nadia though, a little history about Gainax first.  If anyone is really interested, check out their OVA (Original Video Animation) “Otaku no Video” release in ’91, which is KIND OF an autobiographical parody.  I just picked up a copy for myself with some of the Chanukah/Xmas I received this year ^_^.  Basically, Gainax is made up of a bunch of otaku.  So these anime otaku in the mid ‘80s were of the mindset of “man, we can do better than all the shit that’s coming out”, so they started their own “amateur” company of fervent obsessed fans, and revolutionized the industry with their brilliance.  A good chunk of what they do is worth a watch, though I am not quite a fan of all their stuff, it all has its own fun nuances and radiance to it that can only be found by people that truly love what they are doing.

So, back to Nadia.  I’d rather not really go into the story because I don’t want to ruin anything for anyone that may choose to watch it, but it is heavily based around Jules Verne’s works, most specifically around Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and the exploits of Captain Nemo, though with the usual crazy Japanese anime twist.  It takes place in 1889-1890 and has a very steam punk feel to it.  Disney’s 2001 Atlantis: The Lost Empire is actually quite a blatant rip of Nadia too, and not even an iota as worth it, IMO.  I have also heard The Lion King was a pretty blatant rip of Kimba the White Lion, an anime from the mid 1960s.  I cannot personally confirm this however, and can’t complain much as The Lion King is one of my two favorite Disney movies, along with Aladdin.  But um... back to the topic on hand... darn tangents!!  Nadia weaves many different genres very excellently into its story including science fiction, adventure, mystery, comedy, and a hint of romance, but maintains its silly mood throughout, even when dealing with clichéd “difficult” topics like killing, death, and general genocide :-).  The main characters are Nadia and Jean, an engineering genius Frenchman, who are excellent foils for each other.  One example is how Nadia is one of those “dear god how can you possibly even think about eating a dead animal” vegetarians, which Jean just can’t comprehend “what are you talking about, it’s meat”.  And then you bring in the well-mannered 4 year old Marie who is always complaining about how immature/ill mannered the adults are... it’s just a very fun series with a lot of memorable and lovable characters.

So after finishing the ~40 episodes over a week, I went and checked the Wikipedia article on it and found some very fascinating facts, namely tying in Miyazaki with the series, which was a shocker too me.  Hayao Miyazaki is by far my most respected (anime?) director, I believe.  Most people would know of his works under the anime studio Studio Ghibli, though he doesn’t only do stuff for them, and they have other directors too, but Ghibli and Miyazaki are generally pretty synonymous.  I have multiple other topics written down on Miyazaki that I will talk about later, and will post a good list of Miyazaki/Ghibli titles I made a while ago as soon as I can find it.  Anyways, some of the more interesting trivia notes I stole from Wikipedia are as follows:

• This show’s origins date back to the mid-1970s when Hayao Miyazaki was hired by Japanese movie giant Toho to develop ideas for television series. One of these concepts was "Around the World Under the Sea", (adapted from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), in which two orphan children pursued by villains team up with Captain Nemo and the Nautilus. It was never produced, but Toho retained the rights for the story outline. This explains why Anime fans often liken Nadia to a Miyazaki production; the animator reused elements from his original concept in later projects of his, notably the Sci-Fi series Future Boy Conan and his action-adventure film Castle in the Sky.
• Approximately ten years later, Gainax was appointed by Toho in 1989 to produce a TV series which would be broadcast on the Japanese educational network NHK. Miyazaki’s outline for "Around the World Under the Sea" was the one which captivated Gainax the most. Under the direction of Hideaki Anno, the animation studio took the central story and setup Miyazaki had developed and touched it up with their own creativity. (incidentally, Anno had previously worked for Miyazaki as an animator on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.)
• Nadia showed up on the Japanese Animage polls as favorite Anime heroine, dethroning the then top champion, Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa.
• Nadia was originally intended to have an estimated 30 episodes. Since the show was so popular in Japan, however, NHK requested Gainax to produce more episodes, extending the episode count to 39. These episodes, dubbed as the "infamous island episodes" (which begin on Episode 23 and conclude on Episode 34), took hits for poor animation (since, as mentioned, other animation studios in Japan and Korea produced these episodes), ill-conceived plotting, and character stupidities; consequently, they drove many fans away. Only by Episodes 35-39 does the show return to its initial roots wherein lies its appeal. The setting of these episodes was suggested by Jules Verne’s other novel featuring Captain Nemo, Mysterious Island.
• According to the notes found in the DVD sleeve of the Italian edition, the true reason behind the difference between the "infamous island episodes" and the rest of the series, would be that production was late on schedule. Starting with episode 11, Anno was working up to 18 hours a day on the series, and yet he was unable to cope with the screenplay, which was then handed to the storyboard team. After episode 20 (aired September 21, 1990), NHK put Nadia on hold to make space for news coverage on the Gulf War: the series returned about a month later with episode 21 (aired on October 26th). Nonetheless production was still late, and Anno asked friend and Gainax co-founder Shinji Higuchi to take over the direction of the series, while he was going to focus on the ending. According to the same source, Anno would have stated that episodes 30 and 31 were the only he would have saved among the Island Chapter ones, while episode 34 was entirely scrapped and replaced by edited sequences of previous episodes.
• At the start of each episode, a Japanese inscription appears on screen (written in the Latin alphabet) and is read by a man’s voice challenging the viewer to follow him for an adventure. "Are you adventurers? Do you seek the truth behind the mythical being that lies beneath the blue waterfalls named The Perilous. If you are, then you must first find me." This derives from the perplexing challenge of Arne Saknussemm in Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth.
• The series contains numerous nods to other Japanese television series, as is to be expected in a series by Gainax, which is famously comprised of "otaku" (fervent anime fans). Ostensibly, the Grandis Gang are modeled after the villains from Tatsunoko’s Time Bokan series, and M78, the home system of the Atlanteans, is also the home of Tsuburaya’s Ultraman.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, authors Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach state that the superconducting crystals used in Starfleet phasers are called fushigi no umi. Sternbach is a noted fan of anime.

One of the most important notes here is the forth and fifth bullets talking about the “infamous island episodes”.  While they are still in the general Nadia style, and are fun, they have their downsides.  I would personally even recommend skipping at least one and a half of these episodes, due to them being so worthless. They are:

• A large chunk of #26 “King’s on his Own” - After Jean gets knocked out after a terribly silly Wile E. Coyote falling gag homage and he dreams of inventing 21st century technologies.
• Most, if not all, of #34 “Love to Nadia”, which is a “singing recap” episode.  What I remember of the songs are especially atrocious.

On that note, the movie really isn’t worth watching at all either.  Especially the first 1/3 (30 minutes) of the movie, as it is nothing but a recap of the series.

Oh, also, the original title was translated as “Nadia of the Mysterious Seas”.

So I’ve been rewatching lots of old shows over the past few years that I watched as a kid and remember enjoying.  The latest reinstallment of this pattern would be Disney’s Gargoyles.  It’s still a lot of fun to watch even though the antagonists’ plots are a little... unbelievable sometimes :-).  The main reason I wanted to mention it though was the fact that it has a plethora of star trek actors, mostly from Next Generation, showing up in it.  Hearing familiar voices I recognize always makes me smile, especially when put to animated characters.  The ones I’ve recognized so far are:

But of course, many of these actors have played dozens to hundreds of other rolls and deserve to be known for more than just Star Trek, including recently Nichelle Nichols on Heroes, right after George Takei (Sulu) left the stage.  If you haven’t ever seen any of Takei’s stand up, I would like to note it’s good stuff, and that he has a wonderful sense of humor.

On another note, John Rhys has always been one of my favorite actors too.  He’s been in more things than you could shake a stick at, and you probably wouldn’t have even realized about half of them.  Most people nowadays would most readily recognize him as Gimli from the Lord of the Rings movies.

One other recent smile came during rewatching DuckTales.  I’m sure anyone of my age group that watched the show will remember the Golden Goose episodes.  I had just noticed on a recent rewatching of the series that when the mystical water is used to turn things back from gold, it uses the lightsaber activation sound :-).

I’ve been a Star Trek fan for as long as I can remember... which goes back to at least the age of 3. One of my first memories is watching the live airing of a Star Trek The Next Generation (STTNG) episode in which a parasitic alien race, very much like the Goa’uld that come much later in Stargate, tries to take over Star Fleet.

I’ve religiously watched STTNG, Deep Space 9 (DS9), and Voyager through the years, and quit at that point with much animosity towards Enterprise and Star Trek: Nemesis.

Anyways, let’s get to the point of this post. I have recently started watching the 3 seasons of The Original Star Trek (TOS). My only impressions before this had been made up by seeing a random episode or two over the years, which screamed campiness to me. I can honestly now say though, after getting through a number of episodes, it’s still, after so many years, quite fun. And that’s saying something, as old stuff usually seems crappy unless you have nostalgia towards it.

The 2 things I respected most about STTNG and future co-spinoffs, for as long as they held it... was that they TRIED to maintain a proper continuity starting with STTNG. At the beginning, it was rare that they ever contradicted themselves, but as the legacy grew, the inconsistencies started becoming ridiculous. This has been my opinion for many years, and now that I am watching through TOS, I can finally see how bad it can really get (well, to be honest, I think Enterprise went way beyond anything in this regard, but I didn’t watch enough of it to talk about it in an informed manner. I will only talk about thing’s I’ve seen enough of to bash, and yes, I have gone through a lot of crap purposely for this reason...). It is actually quite good, however, that STTNG disregarded quite a bit of the original canon because it would have ruined the universe in a manner.

For example, in one of the first episodes of TOS, they traveled back in time by no special means other than pushing their engines faster than warp X. There was another early episode where they had fully functioning androids and the (slightly abused) machinery that created them (contradicting Data of STTNG). These are just two of many other “large” cans of worms they opened up by being too “open ended”. However, the producers made the right decision, IMO, and scrapped all the canon from TOS that they wanted and only made reference to it when they felt like it, starting the true canon of the Star Trek universe with Jean-Luk and his crew all the way through the end of DS9 and Voyager.

I am still very anxious to continue watching TOS but time has been very constrained lately and my multitasking abilities have diminished significantly over the years... a large part I’m sure from medications I take (such as for ADD or whatnot...).

On another random point about the Star Trek universe, while watching TOS, I found myself really enjoying the short costumes on all the female characters. I myself am quite the feminist, so this would usually go against my views, but for some reason, it fits real well and makes it more of a... shall I put it... fun/less serious atmosphere ^_^;. They tried to carry this legacy over to STTNG with Diana Troy in her “relatively skimpy” outfit(s), but they really did not do a good job of it. It just did not fit, at all. There was a specific episode were Picard is forced to leave the ship (to find some Romulan device that he has specific knowledge of due to a senior thesis or something), and another captain takes over. It raised my eyebrow when he harshly ordered Diana to put on a proper uniform, but he was completely right in doing so. I believe this might have been the producers/directors attempt at commenting on the issue.

The final thing I noticed that I wanted to comment on was just a little giggle for me. In the very first episode of TOS (with Shatner, not counting “The Cage” pilot with Pike) in which a crewman gains god-like powers, he creates/materializes a grave for Kirk, which reads “James R. Kirk” - which as we all know, Kirk was given the middle name of “Tiberius”, as he is often cited as “James T. Kirk” .... Just one of those minor continuity things that you wonder why they hadn’t caught it at the time... or maybe they decided to ignore it and still go with “Tiberius” as it is a pretty cool middle name.

Anyways, Star Trek (OST, STTNG, DS9, Voyager) & Star Gate (Seasons 1-7) are all very good stuff that do not date too badly on social issues. For anyone open to checking out new stuff who hasn’t tried watching either of these (is that possible that anyone hasn’t ever been exposed to at least one Star Trek series?), they are well worth it.