Mark W Tiedemann

Category: Television

Trekness

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

I sometimes marvel at my own inability to apprehend the cluelessness of my fellow beings. Some positions come out of the zeitgeist that leave me gobsmacked at the utter feckless density of people.

And then I recover and reconsider and realize, no, I’ve been hearing this kind of nonsense my entire life. One just never expects it from those one considers allies. It calls into question all assumptions, then, about what one considers an ally, and the realization (which has always been there, really) clarifies that it’s all surface.

There are fans of Star Trek who have apparently only ever cared about the ship, the uniforms, the phasers, and the astronomy (such as it is).…

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How Doctor Who’s Sex Change Explains Everything

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

Heavy sigh.

Seriously? People are getting exercised over this? I suppose these will be some of the same people who will come out in angry revilement if the next James Bond really is a black man.

There’s a certain space wherein this kind of angst is perfectly acceptable.  Private conversations with people who share the same interests and have Opinions about the condition of a favorite bit of entertainment and how it would be if certain changes were made.  Three or four of you get together over beers (or floats, depending) and pizza and spend an hour or two reconstructing the whole æsthetic as you would have it. …

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Uncle Joe

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

Now we know what it’s like to have Uncle Joe running things.

I’ve been watching, as has the world, the Trump administration unravel. I have to say, anyone capable of making George W. Bush look like an exemplary president has a degree of chaos in attendance difficult to comprehend.

But this is our Uncle Joe.  In charge.  You know who I’m talking about. Most families have an Uncle Joe, who shows up at family functions and proceeds to dominate discussion with his opinions on everything from the world series to nuclear proliferation.  He will sit there and tell you how if he were in charge things would be different, he wouldn’t let those people get away with this or that, he’d solve the Middle East problem thus and so, and Russia?…

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50

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

I was eleven when Star Trek premiered. I’d seen the previews all summer, I was salivating in anticipation. Just from those minute or so clips it looked just so cool!

We watched the first episode—Man Trap—and disaster struck.

See, I was a somewhat “sensitive” child. I hate horror. I was prone at an earlier age to nightmares.  I recall a couple of times waking up screaming. Of course, I’d been like four or five. It had been years. But my mother was adamant about keeping me away from anything that would curse my nights and ruin their sleep. She was skeptical that this—this—Star Trek Thing—wasn’t just another monster show. …

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We Prospered: Leonard Nimoy, 1931 to 2015

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

He was, ultimately, the heart and soul of the whole thing.  The core and moral conscience of the congeries that was Star Trek.  Mr. Spock was what the entire thing was about.  That’s why they could never leave him alone, set him aside, get beyond him. Even when he wasn’t on screen and really could be nowhere near the given story, there was something of him.  They kept trying to duplicate him—Data, Seven-of-Nine, Dax, others—but the best they could do was borrow from the character.

I Am Not Spock came out in 1975.  It was an attempt to explain the differences between the character and the actor portraying him. …

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Stop Shooting At Each Other, Please

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

I’m 60.

What this means for the purposes of this post is that I lived through the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King Jr.  I watched the reactions of the nation on the news, listened to the discussions that went on constantly for weeks and months (and in many ways are still going on), and I saw my neighborhood change in anticipation of a kind of Armageddon.  I remember the summer of  1968 seeing many of my neighbors sitting on front porches and steps holding shotguns and rifles, some with pistols strapped onto their waists, waiting for the wave of rioters to come charging down the street. …

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Pet Peeve

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

I don’t watch a lot of television.  Possibly more than I should, given everything I have on my plate, but I grew up with tv and have loved a lot of what’s been on it and it is, or can be, a great source of pleasure.

One of the shows I’ve been devoted to the last few years has been Castle.  From the first episode, I’ve been hooked.  Firstly, how could I not like a show about a writer?  And especially the writer as many of us dream of becoming.  Secondly, Nathan Fillion.  I mean, Firefly?  I was so happy to see him get a new show. …

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The Last One

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

The last motion picture theater of my youth is gone.

For several years, The Avalon, sitting on Kingshighway, across the street from a mortuary that has now become a church, has been shuttered and slowly decaying and finally has met its inevitable fate.

In a way, good.  It has been an eyesore for some time, a constant reminder of neglect and a ruin of a bygone era.

Hyperbole? Indeed, yes, but true nonetheless.  As you can tell by what remained, it was an elegant, simple building, with a lovely facade.  A symbol of an age thoroughly gone—the single-screen, stand-alone movie theater.…

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Dead Stuff

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

This may be social suicide, but I’m going to say it anyway.

I don’t like zombies.

Not too thrilled with vampires, either.

I mean—hell, they’re dead.  Dead.  And motivating.  The contradiction alone is…

I am tired of zombies, though.  And vampires.

zombie-me.jpg

In the last several months, I have picked up at least two novels I was very much looking forward to reading because their premises looked really cool.  I put both down because zombies got dragged into them, and I thought unnecessarily.  Zombies are cool right now, though, and apparently a lot of people like reading about corpses shambling around trying to eat the neighbors. …

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The Future of Space Commercials (or is that Commercial Space…?)

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

This is very cool.  This is the promo video for the next generation of privately-built low-earth orbit heavy lifters, the Falcon Heavy from SpaceX.  What I like about this is, basically, it’s a commercial for a spaceship.  Appropriately weighty music track, great imaging, and the brag lines are like any other commercial for any other industrial product.

When I was a kid reading stories about the future of space travel, it didn’t occur to very many of the authors that there would have to be advertising to go along with their services.  One of the many things not quite gotten right. …

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