Keeping Up With The Cardassians

Menacing Aliens Fodder For Popular Reality Television Show

The Star Trek folks sure know how to make aliens ugly.  I mean, not like the Horta ugly–that was just a blob of rock.  Not like the Gorn ugly–that was just a big lizard.  But those darn Cardassians on Deep Space Nine, man, they make you want to barf just looking at them.  Give ’em eye ridges, sunken goopy eyeballs, and barnacles all over their faces, they said, and yeeeeecchh…there you go.  No science fiction is complete without menacing, ugly aliens, I guess.   And then give them slicked back mullets, because all aliens need those.

Let’s meet some of our Cardassian friends…there’s Dukat, and even though he has a few good moments, basically is just the evil leader-type, he would like nothing better than to get rid of our hero, Captain Benjamin Sisko (no, the good keptain didn’t make Internet routers, that’s Cisco).  Then there’s Damar, who sides with Cardassian rebels against the Dominion.  Finally, there’s Elim Garak, an ex-spy who opens a tailor shop on DS9.  Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a reality show that followed their exploits?

We could see their mom Kris and their adaptive step-Dad Bruce Jenner, who used to be on Wheaties cereal boxes–try to help manage their fashion careers.  Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney would get into various hyjinx involving photoshoots, trying to launch perfume and clothing lines, going on location, you know.  And you’d have to keep up with them.  Well, you could keep up with them by watching the show.  Not really the best title.  Wait…a…minute…those are Kardashians, not Cardassians.  Sorry.  The Kardashians aren’t ugly at all–far from it–and they don’t commit acts of Interstellar Aggression.  But check it out, even Wikipedia isn’t sure–they list them together on the same page.  To make things even more confusing, Khloe recently changed her last name to Odom.  Wasn’t he the shape-shifting sherrif of Deep Space Nine?  Guess I’d better grab a bowl of Wheaties and try to keep up.

Sulu Jonses White Castle

 

Medical Personel Mystified By Unprecedented Gristle Cravings

The casting for the new Star Trek  movie was mostly top notch.    Well, okay, a lot of people really could have been Kirk or Spock, your basic angry hothead or cold logic-driven types.  Nah, the one that was really impressive was Dr. Leonard McCoy.  We all know and love DeForest Kelly’s performance, but how would you describe it, really?  Cantankerous?  Is that even a word anymore?  If it is, McCoy owns it.  No matter, Karl Urban pulled it off with flying colors. Makes you miss the old sickbay scanners just a tad, though.

And John Cho delivered a spot-on performance as Hikaru Sulu.  Cho is a Sulu of action, not slowly delivered repetitions of the same line (“Captain.  Phasers.  Locked.  And.  Ready.”)  And he’s so good in the role that it’s hard to recall his earlier performances as stoner accountant Harold Lee in the Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle movie and all its various sequels (Harold and Kumar Go To Amsterdam, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, and the forthcoming A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas…no, I’m not kidding….)  At least until you leave the theatre and start thinking about it.

I only had one gripe with the new ‘Trek and that’s no matter how big a metaphor it is, you just can’t build a starship in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa.  You’re going to get corn weevils in the warp nacelles.  As a comedy, I only had two gripes about the first Harold and Kumar:  1.  There are White Castles in both Edison, NJ and Greenbrook, NJ that are closer, and 2.  There is no actual hill in Cherry Hill to hang-glide off of.   So that’s why it made sense to go to Canada to film it, I guess: if the actual geography of New Jersey doesn’t match the script, go to Canada.  Do not pass White Castle, do not collect “Slider” pack….

Trek On.
–Raven

Why Kirk Can’t Date Normal Women

Famed Intergalactic Explorer Prefers "Salt Vampire" Test to Turing, Voight-Kamff

Long before he sold out to eBay and Priceline, William Shatner produced some very disturbing material.  And not just that “T.J. Hooker” cop show.  I mean those spoken word versions of famous pop songs.  Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.  (But please play loud enough that I can’t hear that spoken word dude next to you….) It’s kind of like a book on tape, except that it’s a song.  Or isn’t.  No, wait.  A song would already be on tape.  My point is, if you can’t sing, and don’t even want to try, why not make books on tape?  Oh, yeah, nobody uses tape anymore.  Except people who send things to random strangers across the country using eBay.  Tape, and bubblewrap.  Why didn’t Shatner make books on bubblewrap?  That would have been cool.  Oh, well.  At least he didn’t pull a “I Am Not Spock” and then turn around and say “I Am Spock” on his next record.  Well, he would have said “Kirk”, but you get the idea.   No, wait, I think he should have done “I Am T.J. Hooker” and then “I Am Not T.J. Hooker” thus ending the great Kirk/Hooker debate.  Which is irrelevant since due to all of his experiences with weird fem/aliens, he can no longer relate to normal human women.  Except for that time that he was one for most of an episode.   Ennh, he still probably couldn’t have related to them then anyway.  No matter.  Just remember the awesome, grusomely hysterical  expressions he made as Evil Kirk in “Mirror, Mirror” and try to sleep at night.  If that doesn’t work, put on some spoken word bubblewrap.