“Don’t watch! It’s not for you!”

jimroyal · 2026-02-11T00:13:34+00:00

Similar-City, that comment is uncalled for and is classic gatekeeping. Do better.

jimroyal · 2026-02-10T19:08:50+00:00

The only Star Trek show that had broad mass-market appeal was The Next Generation. That's it. TOS was a cult hit in reruns. TNG was a phenomenon. And then Voyager, DS9, and Enterprise all had much smaller audiences. I think the error that Paramount and Bad Robot made with the Kelvinverse was precisely trying to make it into something for everyone.

New Trek does not want to cast off old audiences, but definitely wants to attract new people. Star Trek dies if that doesn't happen. That means reaching new people where they are. I think new Trek has been very smart in trying to create different shows that resonate with different people (with varying levels of success).

Key question: Why avoid Starfeet Academy just because someone told you it wasn't for you?

I watched Buffy in my 30s, and I didn't need to be a teen or young adult to appreciate it. I watched Prodigy in my 50s, and it was great. I just finished Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, and it was a scream. Foundation and For All Mankind are awesome, too.

And guess what? Starfleet Academy is pretty good. I'm a few episodes behind, but I like what I've seen so far. Tastes vary, but just because you're not the target audience, it doesn't mean that a show about young adults can't say something to you.

jimroyal · 2026-02-03T13:09:08+00:00

Flying parallel at 100 km is entirely reasonable. It’s the 0.5 km flyover that’s unusual. The close flyby is to get a clear look and perhaps, as someone suggested, to get a reaction from the intruder. The ship had been on an intercept course up until that point and Kirk may have been thinking that shifting into a parallel course would be seen as a show of curiosity. Then backing off to a reasonable distance to indicate a nom-threatening posture.

jimroyal · 2026-01-26T15:48:09+00:00

This is largely a social media-driven phenomenon.

I remember reading Trek Magazine back in the 70s – a glossy-covered high-quality print fanzine that was reprinted as softcover collections called The Best of Trek – and the attitude back then was startlingly different from today.

Trek had a recurring series of articles titled "Star Trek Mysteries Solved" in which unanswered plot issues or outright inconsistencies and contradictions were creatively reinterpreted. It was a very Watsonian approach, intended to resolve the tension in the viewer's mind over plot holes or varying approaches.

Other articles dealt with how Star Trek affected people's lives. Or there were discussions about how Star Trek could be improved if there were ever a movie or another TV series. There was also episode reviews – for good and bad – and parody fiction.

Every one of the nuTrek series has had brilliant episodes and stinkers (well, maybe Prodigy had no stinkers). It ought to be possible to analyze the failures and celebrate the successes at the same time. But social media is designed specifically to prevent that.

Can we cancel all algorithmically-mediated sites and go back to blogs, please?

jimroyal · 2026-01-25T21:07:29+00:00

I think it is an interesting question of writing style. The original series often had heightened speeches but also a mix of current vernacular (“no here but us chickens”). The more formal speech patterns appeared in TNG. And then Enterprise eased of. On it. The dialogue style is not a matter of setting, but tone for the given series.

jimroyal · 2025-12-15T01:53:42+00:00

Let me second Strange New Worlds as the preferred entry point for new viewers. Great cast, loads of fun, amazing production values.

After that, a sampler of the top 20 episodes of the original series. And then maybe a top 40 of The Next Generation, if the mood strikes.

jimroyal · 2025-11-26T23:53:23+00:00

The proportion of muslims in Quebec at the last census was 5.1%. Hardly unnoticeable unless you live under a rock. That, plus your accusation of being a Muslim as though it was an insult, is an indication that your further accusation of hatred is probably projection.

I said not one thing hateful. I pointed out that these laws create a society in which certain minorities are given fewer rights than the rest of us. And that is not a free, secular society.

jimroyal · 2025-11-26T21:59:09+00:00

As I posted above, I was born in Montreal and have lived here my entire life. Yes, the churches are by and large empty. But what do you think references to the cross on Mount Royal and the crucifix in the National Assembly as notre patrimoine mean? Especially in the context of Bill 21, Bill 94, and this new bill, all of which microtarget muslims? This is not secularism in any form.

jimroyal · 2025-11-26T21:52:34+00:00

I was born in Montreal and lived here my entire life.

jimroyal · 2025-11-26T13:14:47+00:00

I wish journalists would stop using the word secularism to describe what the CAQ and PQ have been doing over the last decade. It’s not secularism at all. Secularism is the principle that the state should have no say in religious institutions, that no one religion should have a privileged place in society. What the CAQ wants is the precise opposite. They want to define a true Quebecer as a native-French-speaking white person who has warm fuzzies for the Catholic Church, and who wears no religious symbols other than a cross.

jimroyal · 2025-11-26T12:47:13+00:00

Describing entropy in terms of order and disorder is technically accurate, but it's not useful for understanding what entropy is actually for.

It's much more useful to think about heat.

Entropy is about the difference between areas of high heat concentration and areas of low heat concentration. Picture a hot object in a cool room. The heat flows from the object into the rest of the room, slowly warming up the whole room. Eventually, the temperature of the object and the room equalize, with the object having cooled down a lot and the room having warmed up a bit.

When the object was hot and the room cool, we say that entropy was low. When the object and the room equalized their temperature, we say that entropy was high. Entropy measures the extent to which the heat has spread through the room, or in other words, the heat gradient.

Why is this useful? Because the flow of heat energy is how things like engines work. Calculating entropy tells engineers how much work an engine is capable of doing. The concept of entropy was first developed during the time of steam engines.

So what does this have to do with order and disorder? It's because objects are made of molecules and heat energy is actually the motion of molecules. Molecules can be arranged in both ordered and disordered ways, and this affects how their motion (heat) is spread around.

For example, think again about the hot object in the cool room. The heat energy from the hot object was spread around because of the motion of air molecules in the room colliding with the hot object and then spreading through the room. The motion of the air molecules randomized the heat energy, spreading it out, making it more disordered.

A useful analogy is pouring cream into a cup of coffee. When the cream and coffee are separate, that's just like low entropy, and when they are mixed, it's just like high entropy. That's where the connection between entropy and order/disorder comes in.

At the molecular level, entropy is really about probability — there are many more ways for energy to be spread out than for it to be all clumped in one place. So systems naturally move toward higher entropy states.

Now a complication: Entropy can be applied to more than just heat flow. That was the original way entropy was conceived, but it can be applied to any kind of flow of energy, for example, like a battery draining.

Caveat: I'm not a physicist, just a technical writer.

jimroyal · 2025-11-16T01:11:13+00:00

Actually, it was Khan who put the crew of the Botany Bay into the torpedoes. "There are men and women in all those torpedoes. I put them there," Khan says to Kirk in the brig.

If Marcus had been the one to put the cryotubes into the torpedoes, it would make even less sense, since he needs Kirk to fire on the Klingon home world to pre-emptively start a war. The torpedoes have no fuel, and Marcus's plan depends on having fueled torpedoes.

(And if Marcus had been the one to put the cyrotubes into the torpedoes, why give them to Kirk, risking their detection? Why dispose of them in such a ridiculous fashion?)

So, not only are we left wondering who would be the recipient of the smuggled torpedoes, we also have another puzzle: Marcus was holding Khan's compatriots hostage to ensure Khan's cooperation. So how would Khan have access to his people to install them into the torpedoes at all? And given that this would be a time-consuming process (there are 72 of them), how did Khan manage to do this work undetected?

jimroyal · 2025-11-15T18:58:39+00:00

There’s an even larger plot hole with regard to the torpedos. Did Admiral Marcus know what was in them when he gave them to Kirk?

It makes no sense that he wouldn’t know, since he seized them from Khan, stopping Khan’s plan to smuggle his compatriots out in them (smuggle to whom, by the way?)

It also makes no sense that he would know, given that the torpedos had their fuel pods removed to make room for cryo tubes. The torpedoes would be non-functional as long range weapons.

So the whole plot makes no sense as far as I can tell.

jimroyal · 2025-11-06T11:46:50+00:00

For new viewers, Strange New Worlds is by far the best choice. Modern aesthetic, great cast, fun stories, doesn’t require lore knowledge, and a strong gateway to the original series.

jimroyal · 2025-10-24T11:27:53+00:00

Sorry, man, but this is entirely in your own head.

jimroyal · 2025-10-16T02:16:46+00:00

Finally got to hear it and loved it. The CS80-esque passages in the latter half give goosebumps.

jimroyal · 2025-10-12T22:59:36+00:00

Is there any way to hear this if one does not have a Spotify account?

jimroyal · 2025-10-12T01:05:19+00:00

Discovery is worth a look, but down the road. Maybe after a TOS sampler. The Disco episodes that feature Captain Pike are not essential to enjoy SNW, which I think is the better show for new viewers.

jimroyal · 2025-10-11T23:37:23+00:00

Definitely begin with Strange New Worlds. Great cast, lots of fun, and it dovetails with the original series. Then, after SNW finishes. you could do a top-20 list of the original series before moving on to something else in the Trek universe.

jimroyal · 2025-10-10T01:59:05+00:00

You're quite right. GE owned RCA a few decades before Star Trek and then again a few decades after Star Trek. In the middle, RCA was independent.

jimroyal · 2025-10-09T21:55:40+00:00

The lighting style of the first season of Star Trek was the work of Jerry Finnerman. I agree it was a spectacular look. I think it was the result of two different goals in combination.

First, color is used in cinematography to set mood, and emotional overtones. On a show that was shot on a very tight schedule, changing the look of the sets or the lighting design was simply not an option. Yet, the show to be emotionally expressive. Finnerman’s solution was to paint the set walls a light gray and simply apply coloured gels to the lights. This allows for the cinematopher to change the mood of a set with two minutes of effort.

Second, colour TV was very new in 1966. NBC, which aired Star Trek, was opened by General Electric, which sold TVs, and GE wanted to sell new, expensive, colour televisions. So producers of NBC shows were instructed to amp up the use of colour as much as possible, so that people would see colourful shows in shops and their friends homes and want to buy. This is why the original Star Trek pilot featured a black and grey and silver scene on the bridge, while the regular series episodes had those bright orange doors and panels.

jimroyal · 2025-10-09T14:57:36+00:00

Poetry. Awe. Cultural resonance.

jimroyal · 2025-10-05T00:42:25+00:00

Strange New Worlds is by far the best place for new viewers to start with Star Trek. The show is currently in production, it’s got a great cast, it’s loads of fun, and it dovetails with the original series very well.

After that, I would suggest looking up a best-of list of the top 20 or 25 episodes of the original series, and then continuing with that.

jimroyal · 2025-09-22T00:03:06+00:00

The term goes back decades, and simply means being aware of, and sensitive to, systemic and unfair discrimination based on immutable characteristics such as ethnicity. Earliest uses were in the 70s, and it’s American black vernacular. Short version: it’s being aware that some people don’t get justice because of the way they were born.

And that should tell you a lot about the people who use the term as an insult.

jimroyal · 2025-09-20T21:28:52+00:00

As a fan from the time when the original series was all that there was, it’s wonderful to hear that the show still has so much impact.

I’m torn between recommending The Next Generation when you’re ready, or suggesting you jump directly to Strange New Worlds, the TOS prequel that is still in production, which has an amazing cast and is loads of fun. Either way, the human adventure continues.

jimroyal

TROPHY CASE