Week 11 & 12

Been a slow two weeks for my Star Trek fix. It was compounded by the fact that my neighbor tilled up my Comcast connection and so I missed a couple nights, on the weekend no less. So for the past two weeks I've only seen 6 episodes. While the content of this batch of episodes is better than the early Season 3 ones, the art direction is still out of wack. I'm not sure who they hired, but the guy should have worked on some Stanley Kubrick wanna-be, not Star Trek. But in any case, there were a few episodes that were thinly veiled exploration of some issues here on planet Earth, such as racism (Let That Be Your Last Battlefield), overpopulation (The Mark of Gideon), and even political marriage (Elaan of Troyius). Definitely an improvement over the last batch.

66. The Empath •••
    
67. Elaan of Troyius ••••
    
68. Whom Gods Destroy •••
    
69. Let That Be Your Last Battlefield ••••
    
70. The Mark of Gideon ••••
    
71. That Which Survives •••
    

Count 71 of 726

Star Trek: Legacy

Yesterday I finished Star Trek: Legacy on the Xbox 360 (also available on PC). The game is a bit old now (2006) and you can find it used for $15 at GameStop. It took a beating in the reviews when it came out. They ranged from 5/10 to 8/10. Remember, with game reviews anything below an 8/10 is considered shit. The scale pretty much starts at 8. However, I think a lot of people were too harsh. I thoroughly enjoyed the game. I enjoyed it so much that when I brought RE5 home on release day, I actually put in Legacy first and played a stage before I finally opened RE5. Maybe my enjoyment had something to do with how I am literally entrenched in Star Trek right now, watching an episode almost every night. Or maybe also because I played the game on Admiral (hard) difficulty, so it was more challenging than some reviewers had played. But I liked it so much I plan on playing it again and trying for some extra achievements.

The game is technically a Real Time Strategy (RTS). You control up to four federation ships in campaign mode. You start with only one, the Enterprise NX-01. You quickly rescue a second ship and take control of it. The combat is fairly straight forward. You have phasers and photon torpedoes. Phasers works better on shields and photons work better on hulls. You can redirect power to engines, weapons, or shields. You start in the Enterprise era so none of your own ships have shields yet, though your enemies do. There is a tactical map where you can issue orders more easily. The combat is essentially dog fighting. The missions vary from rescue, search and destroy, defense, recon, all kinds of things. No two missions felt the same. The game reminded me a bit of X-Wing, the old PC game. I loved X-Wing. While Legacy is far less complicated than X-Wing, it also means that Legacy is far easier to pick up and play. Legacy is not a number crunching strategy game. It is by no means a "casual" game, but it is certainly accessible. The strategy is small tactical deployment. You have four ships, a limited resource. Losing one can cost you in future missions. So you try to keep them together, but once in a while you want to send one of your faster ships off alone to achieve an objective while the main fleet defends another. You earn command points with which you can buy new ships. And those command points are restrictive enough that you don't want to lose a single ship if you can help it. I had a TOS era Constitution class ship right until the final stage, which means it was vastly outgunned and under shielded. But it was still very helpful as one more gun and one more target to distract enemy fire. If I had let it be destroyed in a previous mission then I would have been at a big disadvantage.

The game was a great fan service, IMO. They had every captain from every series with the real voices of the actors. Archer, Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, they're all there. Every version of every ship is there: NX-01, NCC-1701, NCC-1701-A, NCC-1701-D, NCC-1701-E, NCC-74656 (Voyager), NX-74205 (Defiant), and even DS9 makes an appearance. As far as I can tell, it has a complete roster of every Federation ship ever seen on screen. The same is probably true of the Klingon, Romulan, and Borg fleets.

Finally, I'd like to address some of the "problems" of the game, which I think have been greatly exaggerated in other reviews.

1. Pizza Box map - The maps are 3D but limited in the Z-axis, resulting in a pizza box shape. Honestly, I see this as a pro, not a con. It keeps the tactical map and the world at large much easier to manage and navigate. A large Z-axis would have just really complicated the UI and had you flying around trying to find things that are a million miles above or below you.
2. Flaky Controls - The controls do flake out once in a while. Your camera will suddenly jump 180 degrees, or one of your other ships would suddenly forget the command you gave it. While it would have been nice for these to have been fixed, it by no means ruins the game. The camera jump is harmless, and the lost commands are not very often and you are always monitoring all of your ships (or at least you should be) so you will notice rather quickly that Janeway has suddenly decided to go AWOL and is flying out into space.
3. Ship AI does not repair - You are always in direct control of one of your four ships, and the other three will be on AI unless you jump to it. I've read more than one reviewer complain that the AI ships will not conduct repairs no matter how damaged they are. These guys obviously didn't play the game very much. If they did, they would realize that if the AI did enact repairs on its own, it would be suicide. Enacting repairs on any part of the ship redirects a large amount of the ship's power. This means your engines, phasers, and most importantly, your shields will suffer. My guess is these systems lose at least 50% power. This means shields and phaser banks pretty much do not regenerate at all, and your ship is flying at half it's regular impulse speed. That ship is a sitting duck while conducting repairs. If the AI started repairs at the wrong time it would go down in seconds. Repair management is left to the user, and for good reason.

This is not a AAA title, and it seems some reviewers only want to see and play AAA. Well, in my mind, the game has to be first and foremost fun to play. And that automatically makes Star Trek: Legacy better than most of the so called "AAA" titles out there. I loved the game. I think any Star Trek fan with a 360 or PC should play it.

Week 10

Four down this week, and nothing special. This season, while not bad, has been a little lackluster. Also, the weekly women are not always drop dead gorgeous; big disappointment. They did finally fix Scotty's hair (no more greaser look). I don't know who decided to change everyone's hair this season, but they were all bad decisions. They fixed Kirk's pretty quickly, but Uhura is still sporting her horrible new dew. In addition to the new hairstyles, someone decided Star Trek was a good place to start using artsy camera work. In truth, it's the worst place to do it. It's like the studio is trying to kill the show. "If it aint broke, don't fix it!" I'm pretty sure they had that expression back in the 60's.

62. For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky •••
    
63. The Tholian Web •••
    
64. Plato's Stepchildren •••
    
65. Wink of an Eye •••
    

Count 65 of 726

A New Star Trek TV Show?

Bryan Fuller wants to see a new Star Trek TV show. And he might be the guy to make it happen. Could he replace Rick Berman and revive Star Trek? The guy says TOS was his favorite and would like to return to that era, or at least the feeling and attitude of that era. To me, it sounds great. He wrote for the first season of Heroes, which was the only good season of Heroes, so he's got a thumbs up from me!

New Star Trek Fragrences

Two colognes and a perfume coming soon. Maybe a gift pack of all three? Being entrenched in Star Trek as I am now, I actually thought for a minute that I'd buy this. But really, I doubt it.

• Tiberius - Boldly Go
• Red Shirt - Because Tomorrow May Never Come
• Pon Farr - Drive Him Wild

Week 9

Seven episodes down this week. So far season 3 is unimpressive. If the season continues on this way, then there is no wonder why there was no season 4. This week had some disappointments, and only one stand out episode, "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" "The Paraside Syndrome" was notable for one of the worst Shatner scenes ever, in which he elates at his impending marriage to Pocahotness.
Scenes like this gave Shatner his bad rap. I blame the director for letting it by. Can you say "take 2!"

55. Spock's Brain •••
    
56. The Enterprise Incident ••
    
57. The Paradise Syndrome •••
    
58. And the Children Shall Lead ••
    
59. Is There In Truth No Beauty? ••••
    
60. Spectre of the Gun •••
    
61. Day of the Dove •••
    

Count 61 of 726

New Movie Trailer

A new trailer for Star Trek is up! Pure awesome. The only reservation I have so far is Bones. He better raise that goddamn eyebrow sometime during the movie, or I will be greatly disappointed!

And I love the desperation in Eric Bana's voice when he shouts "Fire everything!" Can't wait.