StillPaisleyCat

This ScienceOf.org interview with Professor of Genetics/Evolution (& Star Trek biological science advisor) Mohammed Noor on the biology, especially the r-selection reproduction, of the Gorn in SNW is marvellous.

Just the kind of uncomfortable but great biological thinking I was hoping we’d get into here at Daystrom Institute.

e.g. Can we think of the Gorn in viral terms?

Treating Gorn like this, each infected person could infect four more people, so the R0 for Gorn would be 4. Not wildly big, but large enough to do the job. Of course, the hatchlings would also be going after one another, so the analogy’s not perfect.

But if you want to think of the Gorn as intelligent, viral space dinosaurs, that does get the idea across.

It seems that with long hiatuses in new onscreen Trek ahead, genre coverage is starting to profile Trek novels again.

This set of ten weird but readable books isn’t necessarily the trippiest, but it does put the first of the Shatnerverse books at the top.

(Perhaps @ValueSubtracted@startrek.website there’s yet hope for Shatner’s wild imaginings to make it into S&S monthly Star Trek ebook deals promotional rotation.)

Bleeding Cool previews behind the scenes commentary from Hageman Brothers from prerelease of DVD-BlueRay bonus content.

CBS Entertainment is keeping the profile up on Prodigy merchandising. A bright spot amidst Paramount’s erasure of Prodigy in Star Trek Day content.

/ Film is continuing to report and opine on key points in the oral history book "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams," edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross.

For those of us who haven’t (yet) invested in the book, these extracts and reflections can prompt some interesting discussion.

In this case, it sounds like Nimoy’s hesitation led to a much less action-oriented integration of Spock’s presence. An interesting thought experiment.

Also, it sounds like tapping nostalgia and interlinking shows has been a constant pressure from senior executives at the IP holder. It’s well known that Roddenberry resisted close callbacks to TOS, and was determined for TNG to stand on its own in its own era. Even five seasons into TNG, Paramount senior executives though still weren’t convinced it didn’t need a TOS-connection boost.

Considering the amount of callback mining and IP nostalgia mining in the current era shows, it seems as though Kurtzman’s got a hard road to convince Paramount to give new characters and eras a chance to stand on their own.

This was included in the Star Trek Day content, but released separately a couple of days ago.

It’s nice to see Discovery getting a lot of love in this. It also really shows how great so many of Discovery’s vfx heavy scenes have been.

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/1569624

Because it’s the weekend and Star Trek’s new Moopsy is possibly the most frighteningly inspired adaptation/extrapolation of Pokémons to hit the screen.

Because it’s the weekend and Star Trek’s new Moopsy is possibly the most frighteningly inspired adaptation/extrapolation of Pokémons to hit the screen.

It appears that this is a promotional feature in Smithsonian Magazine for a a new book Reality Ahead of Schedule: how science fiction inspires science fact.

This seems a good fit for Daystrom Institute, but happy to relocate if it’s a better fit for another community.

As previously advertised.

The rebranded Star Trek magazine Explorer, published by Titan, is including original fiction.

For those who are fans of @DavidMack@davidmack@wandering.shop, this month’s issue may be one to add to your purchases if you’re not planning to already.

In honour of Star Trek day, this month Simon & Schuster is offering 23 ebooks at discount prices.

Books from every era are represented. (A special shout out from me for the Diane Duane one.)

As usual, look for the discounts in the US, Canada and UK through the major ebook platforms.

Enjoy!

An interesting, deliberately thought provoking 🤔 question for a lazy long weekend Sunday morning…

Setting aside whether specific fans like specific ‘gimmicks’ (crossovers, musicals, bringing back Kirk or Khan) or tropes (transporter malfunctions), Space.com is posing the hypothesis that the proportion was too high in Strange New Worlds second season.

There’s no arguing that the season was successful in drawing in large audiences week after week. Taking a look back though, was there too much trippy-Trek(TM) dessert and not enough of a meaty main course? YMMV surely.

For my part, I can both agree that trippy Trek is something I’ve been wanting more of, and that I would have welcomed 2 or 3 more episodes were more grounded or gave the opportunity to see more of Una as a leader and dug into Ortegas backstory.

The 90s shows seemed to be bit embarrassed by trippyness, although Voyager found its pretext allowed even stern Janeway to pronounce ‘Weird is our business.’ One can argue that the high proportion in SNW is a feature, not a bug.

I’d still prefer a 12-15 episode season though.