The Avengers/Terminator Mash-Up We've All Been Waiting For!

 This is the sort of thing I do when I get bored.  I started a Vimeo account just for this, because Youtube would probably immediately pull it.  



Avengers/Terminator mash-up! from Micah Heath on Vimeo.

Star Trek: Justice League

Superhero movies are massive right now. There's no sign this trend will die out soon either.   So I've been thinking- what would happen if Star Trek tried to cash in on this?  Thankfully, they probably won't. Still, it makes for some interesting speculation. So, if superhero team were to form in the Star Trek universe, who would it consist of?

In my own speculation, I've limited it to the 24th century. Several reasons for this. Partly because, despite special skills or intelligence, no one in the original series crew is what you would call "super-powered". Sure, it could be argued that a character like Spock has exceptional intelligence, but I don't think that qualifies.  When it comes down to it, he's just a human/Vulcan hybrid who, at best, might make it on the team as a sort of non-powered Batman-type.

So, my 24th century candidate list is as follows. 

Data- An android built by the legendary scientist Noonian Soong.  Data possess incredible physical strength, superior intellect, motor control, reflexes, etc.  And while there have been other androids in the Star Trek universe, Data is a unique "Soong type" android, capable of individuality, sentient thought, and possess a strong sense of right and wrong.  Despite his non-aggressive demeanor, Data is capable of some serious ass-kicking.

Possible Superhero Weakness: He has a "off" switch... seriously.
 

Odo- Deep Space Nine's Chief of Security.  Odo was discovered as an amorphous blob by a Bajoran scientist.  Over several days of study, the scientist discovered that Odo was a sentient lifeform that could take on the shape of things around him.  Soon, he was taking on humanoid form.  Odo doesn't carry a phaser- after all, when you can camouflage yourself into a wall, turn your hands into maces, or disarm your opponent with the flick of that tentacle you just sprouted, why would you need a firearm?  Odo is also blessed (cursed?) with an unyielding sense of order.

Possible Superhero Weakness:  He's incredibly OCD.

Seven of Nine- A former Borg drone, recovered from the Borg Collective by Voyager and integrated into the crew.  Seven underwent a difficult journey to rediscover her humanity.  Aside from already having the physical form of a female comic book superheroine, Seven's natural abilities are enhanced by her Borg implants.  Speed, strength, reflexes, mental abilities, hand-eye coordination have all been augmented by Borg technology, as well as a wealth of knowledge she retains from the Collective.

Possible Superhero Weakness:  She lacks a basic understanding of human behavior.  She's also over-analytical and excessively thorough to a fault.  Her need for order mirrors Odo's in some ways as well.

Doctor Julian Bashir- The chief medical officer of Deep Space Nine.  Bashir is brilliant, charismatic, and very sociable.  He also lived most of his life hiding a dark secret.  He had been born with mental deficiencies so severe that his parents sought illegal genetic engineering to "fix" him.  Despite this, he was allowed to retain his position in Starfleet. In addition to making several groundbreaking medical advances over time, he's also seen his fair share of combat, both on ground and in space.

Possible Superhero Weakness:  He has a tendency to get caught up in personal issues and is often lead by emotional attachments, usually attachments to romantic interests.  He is also, basically, human, despite his enhancements.

Kes- Former Voyager crew member with incredible mental abilities originally picked up by Voyager in the Delta Quadrant.  Originally, she'd been a prisoner of the Kazon until she was rescued by Neelix and the crew of Voyager.  She spent some of her early time on the Voyager building up the hydroponics bay.  Everything seemed normal for a while but over time it was apparent that she was developing various telepathic and telekinetic abilities.  Eventually these abilities had gotten so strong that she'd become a danger to herself and everyone around her.  She departed in a shuttle and by the time she resurfaced (several years later) she'd been able to harness her powers into an incredible destructive force.

Possible Superhero Weakness: Her species only lives nine years.

The Runner Ups

Guinan- Civilian bartender aboard the Enterprise D.  Little is know of Guinan and her myseterious past.  We do know she's at least 400 years old, and it SEEMS as if she's capable of withstanding the powers of Q.  Or Q at least seemed wary of her.

Benjamin Sisko- We honestly don't know what happens to Sisko after the last episode of Deep Space Nine.  We can only assume he now has godlike powers. 

Q- Omnipotent beings, the Q Continuum posses unimagined power, but for they most part, they avoid interfering with lower life forms.  Q (also being the name of the entity from the Continuum that most often interacts with humans) has mostly been presented as a trickster-god type character, though in other instances he helps or guides human characters. 

That Creepy Dad From Beethoven

Wait, you must be thinking, Beethoven was a cute, family friendly movie!  How could you dare call out one of it's main characters as creepy?  Well, I'm sorry.  I'm here to destroy your fuzzy childhood memories.  The premise of this 1992 film begins when a St. Bernard puppy escapes from some sort of pet burglars and finds a home with the Newton family.  Hilarity ensues as the father of the family deals with the destruction, drool, and wacky hijinks involved with a large breed dog.  Eventually, a plot unfolds involving the pet burglars and their evil boss- some sort of black-market munitions/chemical tester.  Beethoven is recaptured and the family springs to the rescue with lots of "awwww" moments in between.  To be fair, there are worse family-friendly films out there, but rewatching Beethoven as an adult, I noticed a few things about the father, George Newton (played by Charles Grodin).

First, he seems adamantly opposed to having a dog.  This isn't that weird- lots of people just don't like them... but George Newton's dislike of dogs seems to stem from an obsessive compulsive disdain for disorder.  One scene stands out in particular, where Beethoven slobbers on George's pants.  George flies off the handle about how his schedule is ruined, because if he changes his pants, he has to change it jacket.  If he changes his jacket, he has to change his tie.  If he changes his tie, he has to change his shirt.  And he will never have his schedule back.  Seem a little off yet?  Well, get this... he owns an air freshener manufacturer.
 

Everyone's gotta work somewhere, I guess... 

Ok, still not THAT bad, right?  We just have a guy who flips out when his clothes don't match, who has an obsession with making sure things don't stink, so he's probably a neat-freak.  Oh yeah, and in his household's opening scene, we find out that he forces his entire family to wake up at 7:00 AM on Saturdays, seemingly for no reason.  These things could probably all be dismissed... but lets delve a little deeper into the mind of George Newton, shall we?

There's this memorable scene where he and his wife are discussing her returning to the work at his company...

Startled by a sound downstairs, his wife prompts him to go look.

It was just Beethoven, up to his old tricks.  He darts out of the room before George sees him.  But while he was downstairs, George's wife Alice got up to check the thermostat, because that's what you do when you think there's an intruder in the house.

Yeah, we all know what happens next.  While Alice is checking on the kids, Beethoven steals her spot in the bed... George comes back, lays down, and.... 

Hey, it's probably happened to all of us at least once.

And THIS... yes, this is why George is creepy....

Never mind that I'm a parent of a little girl- I think I can say unbiasedly that no married father with two young daughters living in the house should really be saying something like that.  Yeah, I can be a creepy guy, but this just seems wrong if you have little girls in the house.  Totally fine for, say, a younger couple with no kids... or maybe even an older couples whose kids have moved out long ago... but for this guy?

Still not convinced?  Later on in the movie, we find out that the main bad guy, the black-market scientific tester, is posing as a veterinarian (or maybe he really is one, and testing live ammunition on large breed dogs is just a hobby).  While Beethoven is in for routine vaccinations, he casually mentions to George that he's had to put down several large dogs like Beethoven because they occasionally turn on their owners.  Of course, he's just laying the framework for a plot to kidnap Beethoven a little later in the film, but his words really seemed to bother George.

Her expression tells you something...

"You promised you'd never bring that up again."

So there you have it.  Beethoven is the story of a very repressed crossdresser.  He wants to be fabulous, he wants to explore some very creepy sexual avenues, but he got roped in to the American Dream of living in the 'burbs, married, with 2.5 kids, a station wagon, and a dog.  Living this buttoned down life has only pushed him further into his neuroses, making him OCD, nervous, and not very likeable.

The movie, of course, ends on a high note and lays the groundwork for half a dozen awful sequels, but it really wasn't that bad for something you can watch with your kids.  And sure, maybe I'll ease up on George a little bit... his oldest daughter from the film looks like this now...

Insert creepy "daddy's little girl" quote here.

Books. My Top 10 Most Influential.

I had every intention of going over to my shelf to come up with a list, only to realize, sadly, that I don't own hard copies of most of my list (except, of course, those 30 or so Bibles).  The slow demise of print is depressing.  So are the boarded up bookstores.  I embrace the new technology though.  There is always a new order that will eventually replace the old, and regardless, I feel like the following list is just as important (to me at least) where it's on paper, a tablet, or an audio recording.  I present them now, in no particular order.

But for goodness sake, don't take the entire thing literally. 

  

10.  The Holy Bible.
There, I said it.  Regardless of how any individual readers out there feel about it, the Bible has influenced all of us in some way.  It is literally the cornerstone of Western civilization.  And while I cannot justify the countless atrocities that have been committed in the name of religion, and I would argue that the Bible has had an equally positive influence on many reformers, artists, statesmen, and everyday people across the world.

Having read the whole thing several times, I can give you the following advice- It's okay to skip Numbers, Leviticus... really, pretty much 75% of the Old Testament.  Also, most biblical scholars agree that only about 2/3rds of the writings attributed to the Apostle Paul were actually written by him, so take the letters of Paul with a grain of salt.  Now, what I would definitely pay attention to, and even try to adopt in my day to day life?  The teachings and example of Jesus, as recorded in the four Gospels.  Oh, and the Book of Revelation.  Revelation is like an acid trip.  It's amazing. 
  
9.  Atlas Shrugged.

Because I immediately follow the Bible with a book by Ayn Rand.  (I wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea about me).  A very well done bio comic of Ayn Rand can be found here, for those of you who like and need pictures.

Often times, Rand's writings are dismissed as a mere justification of greed and her own self-exaltation of being a self-made woman.  Her characters are remarkably strong, determined, and incredibly self-reliant.  Yes, she does seem to equate charity to communism, and yes, the far-right Republican types LOVE her, but that isn't to say that there aren't certain virtues that can be found in her writings.  The book centers mostly around the character of Dagny Taggart, an heiress to a railroad empire, set in a failing sort of alternate-America (think parallel world, even though it isn't really stated as such in the book).  Dagny's constantly at odds with her brother, who is the president of Taggart Transcontinental, and the ever-increasing government regulations.  Atlas Shrugged also centers around a mysterious figure named John Galt, and the disappearances of numerous good-guy CEOs and prominent businessmen.  The book mixes philosophy, alternate-history, drama, mystery and a little bit of sci-fi.  Very controversial too.

8.  Dandelion Wine

Very few grown men have made me cry.  Ray Bradbury is one.  Dandelion Wine is speculative fiction set in a small Illinois town.  It's about growing up.  It centers mostly around a boy, his family, various adventures around town, and life in general.  I think it touches me on a nostalgic level (even though I didn't grow up in the 1920's).  Green Town, Illinois becomes Every Town, USA.  Douglas Spaulding, his brother, and their friends become your own childhood friends.  The characters are vibrant and teeming with life and possibilities.  The seemingly unrelated stories weave together beautifully, and the book itself is almost more poetry than descriptive or narrative writing.

7.  Sex at Dawn

I was hesitant to include this one at risk of looking like a pervert.  But it's SCIENCE!  Actually, I'm not going to go into great detail about this one, but I will say that it changed the way I view sexuality and relationships.  Basically, this book portrays a scientific deconstruction of the classic "boy meets girl, marries, has children, lives happily ever after" narrative.  Turns out that nature and human evolution still affect us in ways we don't realize, and often times, it's at odds with current social norms.  Basically, a couple million years of evolution are raging against the past few thousand years of social programming. 

6.  The Star Trek Encyclopedia

Imagine every character, ship, race, gadget, and planet from the Star Trek universe at your fingertips.  Now, imagine you're a lonely, socially awkward, twelve year-old nerd who is obsessed with Star Trek.  Yeah... that about sums up my childhood.  But really, this book was pretty cool.  I used to spend hours flipping through it's pages, reading about random characters or episodes.  The full-color version had some impressive diagrams and artwork in it as well.  The timeline was also very handy.  Nowadays, we have the internet and websites like Memory Alpha, and of course, the Trek universe has grown considerably since this book was published.  Still, it stands proudly on my shelf, next to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual and Worlds of the Federation. 

5. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

One of C.S. Lewis's best know works, the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia is often thought of as a Christian allegory, although Lewis himself once stated to the contrary once stating,

"I did not say to myself ‘Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia’; I said, ‘Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as he became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.'"

Think of it less as an allegory and more of a "what if?" story.  It opens up with four children who are refugees from London during the London bombing during World War II.  They are taken in by an eccentric and reclusive professor.  Inside one room of his mansion in the countryside, they find a magical wardrobe that transports them to the land of Narnia.  It's a fairly short read, and definitely for picking up.  

NOT the book cover. Still bad-ass though.

4. Brave New World

This one's pretty well known.  Written by Aldous Huxley in 1931, this terrifying dystopia predicts a world that runs like clockwork, so long as none of it's cogs come out of place.  Huxley envisions a terrifying future where all of mankind is homogenized into several classes and not only assigned, but brainwashed into fulfilling their predetermined role in society.  Born in test tubes and gestated in bottles, no human, save for an occasional anomaly, thinks outside the box.  Society runs smoothly enough, until one of these anomalies visits a reservation- an area of land outside of "civilization."  And they bring back a "savage" who turn society as they know it on it's head.  

3. 1984

Like Brave New World, this book is fairly popular.  Another dystopian nightmare, but 1984 differs from Brave New World in that, rather than being controlled by comfort and complacency, it's citizens are controlled by fear.  Centered in London, in the future nation of Oceana, everything is controlled by government, and at the heart of that government, Big Brother.  This book has no resolution or happy ending and will thoroughly depress you.  On the other hand, it was the inspiration for the famous Picard torture scene in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode "Chain of Command." 

2.  Stranger in a Strange Land

This one's been called many things by many people.  It's a bit controversial, but it's also sometimes elevated to the status of a sacred text amongst some polyamorist communities.  In short, it's about a man from Mars, the son of two members of an expedition team, who is brought back to Earth years later by a second team.  It's soon learned that, in addition to some strange customs, the Man from Mars has picked up a few "abilities."  He goes on the run, eventually resurfaces, then establishes a sort of "church" based around Martian ideals, then is martyred for "blasphemy" by the established, dominant church.  

1.  The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Another interesting piece by Heinlein.  This one makes my list because it was a sort of gateway drug to a whole different way of thinking in terms of human relationships and the first Heinlein book I'd ever picked up.  It centers around the moon, and it's inhabitants, the descendants of Earth's prison colonists, and their fight for independence from Earth rule.  They are aided by "Mike," an intelligence that has somehow evolved from the moon's supercomputer.  There's also a certain pulp-fiction quality to it that's a lot of fun.




So, there you have it.  Once again, no particular order.  Any life-changing books you'd recommend?  I feel like Fahrenheit 451 would be on the list, except, rather than reading it, I saw the movie adaptation.  That seems almost fitting though.   

Photoshop Phoolishness #1

I'm introducing a new segment here on Codex Micah.  I made these.  Feel free to distribute, but at least give me a shout-out.  

Admit it, you'd give your left arm to see this movie.

I'd like to think this scene was cut.

And of course, you can't have alien invasions without Torchwood finding out about it.

Look! I made it tolerable!

Totally unrelated to the rest of this post.

Recreating Other Franchises in the Star Trek Universe

Star Trek spans nearly 50 years of television, and a time period of over two hundred years in-universe, covering everything, literally, just about EVERYTHING you could imagine.  Still, (despite one or two exceptions) Star Trek always seems to center around a group of mostly humans on a ship.  Usually, it's the Enterprise.  The plot lines are generally predictable- prevent an interstellar war, rescue some colonists, make first contact with a new alien race.  Trek also tends to shy away from being too dark, gritty, or realistic.  It also avoids going too far out there.

Joe Straczynski, the creator of the groundbreaking series Babylon 5 once proposed a reboot of Trek, saying,

"Imagine buying a new Porsche and leaving it in the garage all the time, because if you take it out on the road, it might get scratched.  But that is exactly what's happened to Star Trek.  The Porsche is still clean and polished, but where driving around in a nice, reasonable family car.  It's time to throw caution to the wind and go out for a drive... a real drive." (The complete proposal for his reboot idea can be found here.  It's a fascinating read.)

Ok, so the following are reboot ideas... no, actually they're terrible ideas, but they do illustrate how big the Star Trek universe is, and how you could literally do ANYTHING other than gravitate toward the Enterprise and still have a decent show idea.

Bad Idea 1.)  Antares.  Set 10 years after the Federation/Dominion war, this series centers around the crew of the Antares class freighter, Athos and its captain, a former Maquis who fought for independence against the Federation and lost.  The crew are a mixed group of travelers with mysterious and dark pasts- a female Klingon first officer who has pledged her loyalty to her captain, an Orion slave girl with an unspoken mutual desire for the captain, a Bajoran priest, a mercenary, a brilliant doctor and his genetically enhanced sister, the cocky pilot, and the quirky, young engineer.  On the edge of Federation territory, they smuggle, steal, and do whatever it takes to survive, even when it puts them at odds with Federation law.  This series would be much loved but cancelled after 13 episodes.

Bad Idea 2.)  Gary Who.  Beloved TOS character Gary Seven steals a time-travel pod from the 31st century and uses it to explore time and space!  Using advanced holography, he disguises it as an old Earth police call-box. He travels, meets new companions, and saves Earth many times over.  Whenever he's near death, he transfers his consciousness into a new, cloned body.

Bad Idea 3.)  Star Gateway SFG1.  Archeologists excavating some old ruins discover an Iconian gateway capable of taking living matter across the galaxy in a matter of seconds.  From a top-secret base located deep underground, Federation scientists and Starfleet special forces military personnel begin using the gateway to explore other distant planets with gateways.  They divide up into Starfleet Gateway Teams (or SFG Teams) and scavenge for new technology and resources.  The main team is SFG1- a top-notch group of soldiers, including a wise-cracking human commander, a brilliant scientist, a tough-as-nails Klingon/Vulcan hybrid warrior, and a bookish Federation archeologist/linguist.

Bad Idea 4.)  Far-Escape.  A cryogenically frozen astronaut with a vast knowledge of 20th century pop-culture wakes up in the 24th century- his craft quickly damaged and taken aboard a Gomtuu style ship.  A living ship.  It's crew is a band of escaped convicts, who have hijacked the Gomtuu ship, named "Myrtle."  They are made up of a Bolian woman, a sword-weilding Klingon, a human-looking woman, and several other more "alien" aliens.



Bad Idea Bonus)  Deep Space Five.  A space-station on the edge of the final frontier.  Its goal, to prevent war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call - home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for peace..... Hey, wait a second...

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