So I just watched The Giver movie for the first time. Like everyone else I had to read the book in school. I've even read the sequels (FYI: don't bother, the connections to the first book are weak at best and introduce even more plot holes). However, I'm not as passionate as some about "they changed X, Y, and Z from the book, this is a disaster!" with this book. (If the remake of The Phantom Tollbooth is ever made, expect me to be passionate about THAT!)



PNQ: Was it even worth trying? Are there some books that just can't be translated to the screen without serious damage to the message that was intended?


A key problem that I found was the amount of exposition that was blatantly left out because we didn't have a Jonas inner monologue. I know that this dates me even more, but upon reflection I think that the book falls into the Flowers for Algernon trap (yikes, I haven't thought about Flowers for Algernon in like twenty years). Some books are supposed to be about the inner workings of a person, and those kind of stories just can't be told well in movie format.



PNQ2: What books can you think of that are also focused on the inner workings of the main character?


One that comes to mind immediately is Dear Mr. Henshaw. (PNQ: Are kids still made to read Dear Mr. Henshaw these days?)



Think about it, the reason why a lot of books work is because there's the audience POV character that responds to the main character. That can be translated to the screen a lot easier. But in The Giver a key plot point is that nobody can relate to Jonas except the Giver himself.

So yet another article on the changes made to the Trill between TNG and DS9 is making the rounds on Facebook...


PNQ: Why did they bother calling the DS9 race the Trill?


I mean, "The Host" wasn't a particularly good episode to begin with. Looking back they never really did a good job with love interests for Beverly besides Picard. I don't revisit that episode, and I doubt many viewers cared to see more of the Trill. If they had renamed the race to go with the new makeup and backstory I doubt anyone would have cared.

So Washington, D.C. wants to be a state...


PNQ: Opinions?


The latest news is that the supporters want to name the new state "Washington, Douglass Commonwealth", which I think is a horrible name.


Personally I'm in favor of retrocession, i.e. returning everything except the formal government buildings to Maryland. And even if I wanted it to be a state, I'd just call it Columbia.

Courtesy of Facebook...


PNQ: Could a lightsaber cut Captain America's shield?


Personally, I doubt it. The shield specifically spreads out energy applied to it.


Times the shield has been damaged.


Usually it's magic. Don't ask me how Ultron destroyed it. Molecule Man is an essay by itself.



Mark Hamill votes in favor of lightsaber.


Kyle Hill (he makes videos tackling pop culture science) also votes for lightsaber.


Personally I think Cap would be smart enough to not allow continual contact in order to protect the shield.

what's after vapourwave?

PNQ: How often do you refer to the 2009 film as Star Trek XI?


If Not Always Right is to be believed, not very many people call it that.

So I'm watching the Garak tribute again, and I got to wondering...


PNQ: What Trek character would've made the greatest changes to history if they had never existed?


Think about it. Garak changed the course of the Dominion War many, many times. So many times that I can't even list them all without going episode by episode.


Then again, no Worf means Duras would've become Chancellor, broken the Federation Alliance, and the Klingons would've become pawns of the Romulans.



Without Kirk the Klingons would've gotten a much larger foothold in Federation territory in the TOS days PLUS the Chang conspiracy would've taken control of the Empire.


No Picard means the first Borg invasion would've gone quite differently. And frankly Q's interactions with the Enterprise would've been much different. For that matter, would Riker have figured out the Devron anomaly paradox?


No Spock means no Khitomer Conference. Another ambassador wouldn't have gotten things done so fast. Chang would've had a much easier time taking over the Empire.


No Data...wow. Once again the first Borg invasion would've gone very differently. Not to mention the Klingon Civil War.


Scotty has a good shot at the title as well. Not for any one thing, but for lots of little examples of miracle repairs.



No Sisko...yikes. That's a thread by itself.

In "Meridian" Quark pulls a con on Kira, claiming that she's his one millionth customer...


PNQ: How plausible is this?


We don't know when Quark's opened beyond "before 2363." Meridian is 2371, so let's say it's been open ten years. The bar runs on a 26-hour cycle like Bajor, so that's 337 Bajoran days per year, or 3370 total. A million customers is 300 per day. We've seen that Cardassians enjoy their gambling and drinking as much as anyone else, so let's call this reasonable.



An episode in the first season claims 300 people on board, which I find dubious. Upper limits on a steady population for the station are usually around 7,000, which I also find dubious.



The writer's guide for the first season apparently claims 200 Bajorans and 50 Starfleet on board. I'd say Quark had about 20 Ferengi and assorted alien Dabo Girls working for him before the FCA ban.



Memory Beta claims almost 700 permanent residential quarters in the Habitat Ring and another 350 in the Central Core.



Okay, so it's not plausible for Quark to take ten years to get to a million customers, let's say that he means AFTER the Occupation. Two years or 700 days means over 1400 people per day. Over 50 people per hour. That's a lot of visitors, but I'm not sure about that either. He'd have to wait until Season Five and the Klingon peace for that kind of business.

So in "Disaster" Picard gives away one of his pips, easily attaching it to civilian clothes...


PNQ: How do the pips and commbadges attach to their uniforms?


If they only attached to uniforms, we could assume that there is a corresponding magnet or other device built into them to allow for easy attachment. But this happens to civilian clothes all the time, whatever mechanism is in play must be confined to the devices only.


Could there be some sort of spring-loaded hook mechanism built into them? Press the thing into cloth and hundreds of tiny hooks extend to grab the cloth. Press again and they retract.


Could all clothes come equipped with a mesh that has a function other than attaching pips and commbadges? I'd suggest temperature control or stain resistance, but we've seen plenty of sweat and dirt on clothes. Another possibility is identification, instructions for people who find survivors, etc., but once again people seem to act like the commbadge itself is all the ID needed. Low-level armor also seems unlikely, we've seen phasers leave very clean wounds that don't seem dispersed in the slightest.

So I'm watching the "Inspirational Speeches of Trek" video again...


PNQ: How is ANY Starfleet career "playing it safe"? If Picard wanted to "play it safe" wouldn't he have left Starfleet to work the family vineyard or become Professor Galen's assistant?



Okay, you could argue that there are "safe" Starfleet careers like working at Utopia Planitia or one of the embassies on the core worlds, but those are few and far between, and I'm not sure a timid Picard would like working there, either.

PNQ: Suppose Seven never replaced Kes. No Borg stories, no Species 8472, none of that. What could you see as replacement stories?


Undoubtedly a key one would've been Kes having a baby. The way they wrote themselves into a corner with that one means they never could've gotten away with her chosing not to get pregnant again. And given her lifespan it's not like she could've frozen an embryo for later or something like that.



Perhaps there would've been a progression of her mental abilities, even to the point of letting her extend her lifespan.



There would've been a need for another major villain besides the Hirogen.



It saddens me to think of how much better certain episodes could've been without resorting to the "Seven learns something about humanity" trope. I get that it was done well with Spock and Data, but the law of diminishing returns was inevitable.


I wish that Voyager's reputation could've improved gradually, even to the point of a coalition like in Enterprise's later seasons (Voyager would've been better if it was more like Enterprise? Is it Opposite Day or something?).


A proper romance for Chakotay (NOT Janeway) would've been nice. Perhaps adding another member to the crew as a guide and doing it better than Neelix this time.

In The Undiscovered Country Spock makes reference to "almost seventy years of unremitting hostility" between the Federation and the Klingon Empire....


PNQ: Really?



It seems to be a given that the Organian Peace Treaty didn't last very long, but it DID exist and would seem to qualify as a "remittence" of hostilities.



STVI is set in 2293, so what happened in 2223 or so to start things off?



What's weird is that "In A Mirror Darkly" makes reference to this 2223 event without specifying what it is.



Oh, and Sybok and Kirk's brother Sam were also born in this year. Odd coincidence.

Inspired by a Deepfake video....


PNQ: If they remade Back to the Future, only with a current kid being sent back to the '80s, would it work?


I mean, there are plenty of culture shock possibilities there. No Internet, no cellphones, etc. There are plenty of jokes to be built around the evolution of slang.



Of course you couldn't have the same George/Lorraine plot and a lot of the other interactions would change (it would be harder for older Biff to make George do his "homework" at work these days, for instance), but it would be possible.


Getting plutonium from terrorists probably wouldn't fly today, but that wasn't an important plot-point anyway. In fact, it would be better for the Marty equivalent to know about today's circuitboards and have to teach the Doc equivalent how to recreate them with '80s tech.

So I watched a clips video from the Friends episode "The One Where They All Turn Thirty"...


PNQ: What was your big "I'm getting old" birthday?


When I turned 30 I was too preoccupied by other problems to really worry about it. It wasn't until 31 that I had to leave a young person's group that I really loved. I turn 40 next year, and it doesn't seem like such a big deal.

Inspired by a YouTube video...


PNQ: In what order should you read Jane Austen's novels?


I've only read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, so I don't really qualify as an informed judge. Personally I would suggest S&S first, as the plot is much simpler with less of the subtext found in P&P. P&P requires a lot more intimate knowledge of the dos and don'ts of Regency life.



What Austen novels have you guys read? What would you recommend for the order of the rest of the six?


I've watched bits of a couple different versions of Emma and have read an abridgement, but I don't like it. People who think they're perfect and always make the right decisions until they figure out how wrong they are is not the kind of plot that I enjoy. Well-intentioned meddling leading to disaster is not fun for me as a novel-length plot, that sort of thing should be limited to a chapter at a time.

I only just read P&P recently and enjoyed it. I found a paper online talking about the choice of card games in the book, and what they all would convey to a contemporary audience, but it seems to be buried in all the other Austen card game results in my search results now.

So I've seen a few YouTube videos trying to explain inconsistencies in stardates. This question even came up in the TOS days, so Gene said...


This time system adjusts for shifts in relative time which occur due to the vessel's speed and space warp capability. It has little relationship to Earth's time as we know it. One hour aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise at different times may equal as little as three Earth hours. The star dates specified in the log entry must be computed against the speed of the vessel, the space warp, and its position within our galaxy, in order to give a meaningful reading." Therefore star date would be one thing at one point in the galaxy and something else again at another point in the galaxy."


PNQ: Why is the ship's location and speed a factor? Doesn't this imply that every single ship, starbase, planet, etc. has an independent stardate system that must continually be corrected against each other?

PNQ2: Furthermore, isn't the entire point of subspace to correct for relativistic effects? I can understand full impulse (0.25c) messing things up, but not warp speeds?
PNQ3: Shouldn't the current date and time at Starfleet headquarters be the "official time" against which all logs are marked? I mean, I can understand each ship, etc. having a local clock for shifts and missions, but everything should be correlated back to the official clock for the ship's logs, right?

Courtesy of Facebook:


PNQ: What's the first major world event you remember as a child?


I was a little too young for the Challenger disaster, I don't recall the fall of the Berlin Wall, etc.


Truth be told, the first major world event that I witnessed knowing that it was a BIG DEAL was 9/11, and I was 19 at the time.

PNQ: Do you think they'll eventually do a Kelvin-style reboot of TNG?

Ed Asner died today.


Yet another in a long line of "I thought they were already dead" entries.



PNQ: Favorite Asner role?


The Mary Tyler Moore Show and similar are way before my time. I had completely forgotten that he voiced Hudson in Gargoyles, so I guess that would have to be my pick in retrospect. Second would be J. Jonah Jameson, and third is his various appearances as Granny Goodness.



As for Mike Cosgrove on Freakazoid, I never really watched that show. The whole Animaniacs-style of overly topical jokes doesn't appeal to me.

Easily Carl from Up.

I only watched Up once. They were trying too much for a kids movie (I've noticed that Pixar tends to do that, with varying levels of success). And like everyone else, I would've rather have had the whole movie be the "Married Life" stuff. That scene still tugs at the heartstrings.

Watching the 1992 presidential election returns on TV.


I think Hollywood will eventually do a reboot of everything that smells like they can make even a shred of money off of it.

Regarding Colonel Kira being made a Commander in Starfleet...




PNQ: Shouldn't she be a Captain?



As an aside I decided to look up a chart comparing Army (i.e. Bajoran Militia) and Navy (i.e. Starfleet) ranks. Major is equivalent to Lieutenant Commander, which is odd is retrospect. I think Kira was in charge of the entire Militia within the Bajoran system (besides Bajor, of course).



Perhaps she was really a Lieutenant Colonel, which is equivalent to Commander. A full Colonel is equivalent to Captain. Memory Alpha confirms the Colonel/Captain thing and brings up Colonel West.



Then again, Colonel West wore uniform decoration above the level of a Captain (and again, insert Nate's theory that army-ranked people were really members of UESPA integrated into Starfleet).



Of course, I suddenly wonder why Bajor would use Earth rank titles anyway.



And while we're on this rank kick, I found myself wondering why the Romulan Commander would equal a Starfleet Captain and where the term "Sub-commander" came from.



Apparently for Sub-commander T'Pol it was declared that the rank was somewhere between Commander and Captain.



Memory Beta has a chart comparing Vulcan and Romulan ranks. Which is odd, you'd think they'd be the same. And don't forget, the Vulcans have their own fleet separate from Starfleet.


The Trek BBS forum has a nice conversation comparing Vulcan and Starfleet ranks.

Inspired by a YouTube video...


PNQ: What does it mean to "prepare" to go to warp?


Sometimes the command is given, sometimes not. What does this entail?


It stands to reason that there are some systems that need to be switched on to activate warp drive, but how many need ten seconds to "warm up"?


Do the warp engines have a proverbial clutch? Does warp plasma not enter the nacelles until you actually go to warp?



If the warp core wasn't actually needed for anything except warp drive you could imagine "prepare to go to warp" meaning "activate the warp core using the slower and safer matter/antimatter injection process rather than the faster and more damaging one". And while I could see that in TOS, I'm pretty sure that in the TNG era you need an active warp core for most systems like the main deflector dish.

So I'm binging Friends clips on YouTube, and a commenter compared David the Scientist Guy to Leonard from Big Bang Theory...


PNQ: Really?



It always offends me when people think that there's only one kind of nerd. There's not. And while the awkward may classify themselves like this, to the world in general there are only two camps, nerd and geek.



David is more socially awkward than Leonard, Leonard is more insecure than David. David is definitely closer to "nerd" and Leonard to "geek", but the complete picture is way more nuanced.

I have Amazon Prime, so I get to stream things that I've never heard of. The shocking discovery for me is how much I enjoy Chinese historical romance dramas.



PNQ: What's a genre like that for you, where you quickly go from finding out about something to really liking it?


On the whole I don't even enjoy subs. It has to be something special for me to enjoy that sort of thing. I think my first real enjoyment at the sub experience was the uncut Cardcaptor Sakura. As for historical romance dramas, probably my earliest experiences were the works of Miyazaki.

okay, but what happened to the Avenues 1-4 in the television series Avenue 5?

So someone beat the OOT demo within Smash Brothers Brawl in under five minutes, and someone on Twitter complained that speedrunners don't know how to have fun.



PNQ: Isn't this sort of thinking rather short-sighted?


I find it amazing how blind some people can be about other people's hobbies. People are different, and their hobbies are different. Just because I wouldn't find fantasy football fun doesn't mean that I bash people who enjoy that. I obsess about the minutiae of Treknology, but I don't bash people who don't.



Besides, when it comes to speedruns the fun doesn't just come from the final video, it's knowing HOW that final video happened. Where did this or that glitch come from? How can we apply it to this or that route? Could we combine it with a strategy that was eclipsed years ago, giving it new life?

I found myself pondering Scotty's statement in The Voyage Home that the time travel "drained" the Klingon dilithium crystals.


PNQ: Opinions?


In TOS they were all over the map regarding what dilithium actually was or did in the engines. I don't think the modern concept of matter/antimatter reaction transformed by dilithium into warp plasma existed in final form until TNG.



It's true that in STIV the crystals weren't explicitly called "dilithium", but for the sake of argument let's say that they are, as all Alpha/Beta quadrant powers other than the Romulans operate on the traditional matter/antimatter technology.


Spock speaks of recrystallization. Scotty was concerned about fracture in the E-D crystals.



As an aside, the novel How Much For Just The Planet (which I highly recommend) goes into a bit of depth about how dilithium works. Dilithium crystals extend past the standard three dimensions into the higher realms, which is essential for matter/antimatter reaction. Presumably the portion of crystals lying in the higher dimensions can't interact with matter OR antimatter and in fact deflects the streams away from the portion in standard space. Thus if matter is "twisted" in one way and antimatter in another, perhaps regulated matter/antimatter collisions are even more powerful than the ordinary kind because they've been focused. Like how ordinary crystals disperse a light-beam into a full spectrum or condense a spectrum into a single white light beam.



Furthermore, let's consider how in TOS they're always looking for dilithium. The tech isn't good enough for a full match on the focused streams, you end up with a lot of excess energy that must be contained and then expelled as "exhaust". Furthermore, it could be that the extra unfocused energy is the part that decrystallizes the dilithium.



Think of it like a filter that gets gunked up. In TOS the gunk eventually makes the crystals unusable. In TNG we know how to prefilter the fuel AND create "backwash" to remove the gunk.



Furthermore, suppose that Klingon crystal tech is less advanced than the Federation. They need raw dilithium even more than our heroes because the gunk builds up faster. Furthermore, suppose that their supply is smaller than ours, so they have to build their ships to handle lower-quality dilithium. Plus, y'now, you have to imagine that they run their engines hotter than our heroes because of the need to be battle-ready 24/7 (or whatever the Klingon version of that expression is).

when will MST3K riff Plan 9 from Outer Space?

A boy's mother has very strict rules about acceptable books for her son.


1. No princes or princesses.
2. No knights.
3. No dragons or other fantasy animals.
4. No talking animals.
5. No men that have to save women.


PNQ: How many books can you think of that meet these criteria?


One thing that springs to mind immediately about these criteria is the assumption of fantasy only. There are children's book genres other than fantasy, lady!


Let's get real, the big sticking point here is Point 5.



And since it's the Christmas season, I have to be reminded of Miracle on 34th Street here. Poor Doris...

Today's Star Trek entry for Ashens' Advent Calendar is a set of coasters with TOS-style computer graphics (pre-LCARS) on them.


PNQ: What era of computer graphics do you like the best?


The TOS-style of computer interface never got a name. Since the later movies used TNG sets you'll see a bit of LCARS in them, but we'll chalk that up to real-world events, not proof that LCARS existed in the 23rd century.



The Amazing Thing I Learned Today is that Wikipedia has an article on LCARS. Weird.


Of course the Kelvinverse totally ignores canon and includes touchscreen tech called PCAP-SYS. Abrams himself felt that they should be full-blown holograms.


The 29th century timeships used TCARS instead of LCARS. Temporal computer instead of library computer. I do wonder what a "temporal computer is".

Actually there's a Department of Temporal Investigations short story that says that they have the ability to make PADDs whose stored data will not be altered by changes to the timeline. Hence agents can see that an alteration has been made and a hint of what was changed and when. One wonders if they use TCARS.

what happened to the xindi in the 24th/25th centuries?

Didn't RiffTrax already get it?

Yeah, there's quite a few. Within fantasy, and suitable for children, I don't know. The animals are the sticking point for most of what I've read. And if there's danger then sometimes the men might have to save the women and the women might have to save the men without it being remotely sexist at all.

PNQ: Why does everyone hate Pulaski?


When it comes to Trek characters far too many people latch onto the writing alone as a reason to hate them, with no thought to the actual performance. Neelix comes to mind immediately.



Pulaski's Spock/McCoy dynamic with Data was poorly written and it took the writers way too long to put an end to it. But that's not the fault of Diana Muldaur. In fact I think she did a worse job performing her TOS roles.



Neelix was written poorly, but Ethan Phillips gave it his all. Janeway was written poorly, but Mulgrew acted it well.



Oh boy, now I have to talk about Enterprise. That's a show where I'm not sure how much blame I have to place on the writer, how much on the director, and how much on the actors. At least I have another ten years to think about it before the ENT recap (I might move that one up five years, but we'll see).

In my research, this quote from Ronald Moore came up...


"Replicators are the worst thing ever. Destroys storytelling all the time. They mean there's no value to anything. Nothing has value in the universe if you can just replicate everything, so all that goes away. Nothing is unique; if you break something, you can just make another one. If something breaks on the ship, it's "Oh, no big deal, Geordi can just go down to engineering and make another doozywhatsit." Or they go to a planet and that planet needed something: "Oh, hey, let's make them what they need!" We just hated it and tried to forget about it as much as possible."


PNQ: Opinions?


I think that Moore is overreacting. The writers did a good job explaining why certain spare parts can't be replicated ("Empok Nor" comes to mind immediately). Sure, almost every food ever discovered can be replicated with a margin of imperfection (insert rant about how much I hate Eddington here), but that doesn't extend to spare parts or more complex medications. Furthermore, remember that food is reconstructed from a base material specifically designed to be turned into food. Spare parts have to come from pure energy, a much more resource-intensive process. It gets worse when you think about the more exotic base materials that have to be transmuted from the more common stuff.



Even so, I never like "Planet A needs a medicine that can't be replicated, but a plant over on Planet B can be turned into the medicine" plotlines.



Plus gold-pressed latinum is specifically nonreplicatable (although I wonder how anything that can be transported can't be replicatable even if it's not economical).

PNQ: Three favorite Christmas movies?

1. Had a theatrical release.
2. Feature length (90 minutes or more).

Miracle on 34th Street (the original), White Christmas, Muppet Christmas Carol.

Someone on Reddit makes a good point: after DS9 Kira had to replace half of the senior staff...


PNQ: Would this really be her job? Wouldn't Starfleet send replacement crew?
PNQ2: Until Bajor officially joins the Federation, wouldn't Starfleet still want a Starfleet officer in charge?
PNQ3: Now that the war's over, does the station still need a Strategic Operations Officer?
PNQ4: Was Odo grooming a replacement? What with the time he spent in Cardassian space and the virus, wouldn't somebody already be doing his job?

PNQ5: Who's commanding the Defiant now? Even if Starfleet is willing to have Kira pinch-hit unofficially, the ship would need a full-time Starfleet captain, wouldn't it?