Hot Nerd Girl

Tag: borg

  • “The Best of Both Worlds” on the big screen

    Aw yeah, that’s a baby Borg on my t-shirt!

    Aw yeah, that’s a baby Borg on my t-shirt!

    Star Trek is my first nerdy love. Without it, I would not be the nerd I am today. I’ve said before that I literally have no memory of my life without Star Trek. Watching The Original Series with my parents on Saturday nights is one of my earliest memories and, although I was very young when The Next Generation came on the air, I was not so young that I don’t remember watching it for the first time very clearly. In my humble opinion it is, quite simply, the greatest franchise ever created.

    The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Best of Both Worlds” is arguably one of the greatest cliff hangers in the history of television. So, when my friend Mike reminded me that it was going to be playing in movie theatres across the country this past Thursday evening in all its remastered glory, I immediately bought my ticket.

    Me and my friend Mike before the show

    I love seeing stuff from my childhood on the big screen. In a relatively recent phenomenon, they’ve started bringing movies back to the theatres for limited runs.  Movies like Star Wars, Top Gun, Jurassic Park, and The Lion King. It’s so much better than remaking a movie and introduces them to a whole new generation. When I lived in Los Angeles, they would have events where they would play a movie on the big screen for the first time in decades, then have people who worked on the movie do a Q&A panel afterwards. My NerdBFF Geek Outlaw and I went to one of these for Ghostbusters and LOVED it. Events like that are one of the few things I miss about living in LA.

    The lights went down and we were immediately treated to a behind-the-scenes look at the making of “The Best of Both Worlds, part I & II” that included interviews with the people involved and fan reactions to the season three cliffhanger. Some highlights:

    –          Patrick Stewart recalled how a woman pulled up next to him while driving, rolled down her window, and shouted “You ruined our summer!” and a guy walking past him in the NY subway, paused in front of him momentarily and said “You’re keeping it real.”

    –          The late, great Michael Piller wrote the episode thinking he’d be leaving the show and someone else would have to figure out how to get the crew out of this mess. Of course, he ended up sticking around and had to clean up after himself.

    –          For some reason, I never put two and two together that Elizabeth Dennehy (LCDR Shelby) was Brian Dennehy’s daughter. Which is weird because I LOVE Brian Dennehy. Turns out he didn’t really want her to do an episode of Star Trek. Elizabeth didn’t really know anything about the franchise. It was one of her first auditions after moving to Los Angeles and she didn’t know enough about it to be intimidated. She also didn’t realize that it wasn’t like working on a soap opera (where you apparently get several hours to just sit around and learn your lines) and was completely unprepared the first day of shooting. She learned quickly and never made that mistake again.

    –          I’ve never been one to notice hairdos, but once Elizabeth Dennehy pointed out how much hairspray was used in her updo, I couldn’t help but notice how it affected other people’s hair.

    That’s DOES look like it takes way more time than a Commander has in the morning.

    Especially Dr. Crusher’s, whose hair pretty much didn’t move when she turned her head. It was like a gloriously shellacked red waterfall.

    I never understood why one side of her hair was longer than the other

    –          They showed how they achieved many of the special effects and how they remastered them for the Blu-ray. The hardest part was the starship graveyard at Wolf 359, mostly because of their limited budget.

    –          I’m always struck by how the actors have to pretend like they’re being jostled around when the ship is struck by enemy fire. When I was a kid they had an attraction at Universal Studios in which members of the audience were called up to participate in some scenes from Star Trek. We got to see firsthand how they put together an episode, including having to fake being bounced around in your seat. So I‘ve always known that this is how it’s done. But it’s quite funny to see the actors do it over and over again, take after take, with a completely straight face.

    Then it was time for the episodes, which they combined to make a feature length presentation. In case you haven’t seen the episodes, here’s a little summary/background information:

    First seen in the 2nd season episode “Q Who” (thanks to Q playfully tossing the USS Enterprise right in the path of a Cube), the Borg have been on the Federation’s mind for years. None more so than Admiral JP Hanson and Lieutenant Commander Shelby who have been working tirelessly to develop weapons and defenses based on what they know from the Enterprise’s encounter. They assumed it would take the Borg a certain amount of time to reach the Alpha Quadrant but they severely underestimated the Borg’s capabilities and they arrived much sooner than planned. The Borg’s goal is to reach Sector 001 aka Earth. To do this, they need to tap someone’s brain, someone who has the knowledge they need to get around the Federation’s best laid plans. They choose Captain Picard, assimilating him into the Collective, making him their spokesman, giving him a killer mechanical six-pack, and dubbing him “Locutus of Borg.” To my knowledge, Locutus is the only Borg who is ever given a name as opposed to a designation (ie, Seven of Nine). Despite the friction in their relationship, Commander Riker and Lieutenant Commander Shelby must work together to rescue Picard and stop the Borg from reaching Earth.

    Mmmmm…Borg abs….

    When the third season ended abruptly with Picard as Locutus and Riker telling Worf to fire on the Borg Cube, a collective (heehee) uproar went up in the Star Trek community. No one knew what was going to happen or if Patrick Stewart would be coming back to the show, not even the showrunners. Speculation was so great that someone wrote a fake script in which the whole thing was a prank orchestrated by the Q Continuum.

    “The Best of Both Worlds” is critical in Star Trek cannon. It provides a major part of the back story for the TV show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and is the basis for the movie Star Trek: First Contact.

    After the ending credits, we were delighted to watch a blooper reel featuring outtakes from many different episodes. Some of the highlights included stumbles over the technobabble, forgotten lines, Worf blurting out that he never played with little boys, Guinan cursing, and Lieutenant Richard Castillo asking Tasha Yar to call him “Dick.” It was a lot of laughs that were missed by at least half the audience who walked out during the ending credits.

    Speaking of credits, I must say, it was amazing to see the opening credits on the big screen. Every time I ever watched them as a child, it was always on our little 1980’s-era tube television set. As an adult I’ve watched them on my nice flat screen TV but NOTHING compares to seeing it that big and whispering the words along with Patrick Stewart in movie theatre surround sound. They are some of my favorite words in the world and I’ve known them by heart since before I could read:

    “Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life, and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one as gone before.”

    Thanks to Mike for being my nerdy Star Trek buddy!

    One last note: folks have been asking me to put out a calendar for the last couple of years and I finally got around to doing it with the amazing artistic talents of my sister-in-law, Reba. It’s really an awesome calendar. It’s got every nerdy holiday you can imagine, plus a super handy convention calendar, and some never-before-seen pictures that will never, ever be seen anywhere else. I know it’s almost May but it’s worth it to get the 2013 calendar. Besides, if I don’t sell these, then there probably won’t be one next year so, ya know…buy one 🙂 Since it is almost May, they’re super discounted (I promise you I’m not making a fortune off of them) AND I’ll sign it if you want.

    Buy one here: http://hotnerdgirl.com/shop/

  • San Diego Comic Con, Part 4 – Sunday Shenanigans

    Geek Outlaw and Hot Nerd Girl aka Nerd Best Friends Forever

    This has been my craziest Summer ever. I feel like I’m never home and I pretty much haven’t been since the beginning of June. Some of the reasons have been great (weddings, visiting new family members, hiking through Yosemite) and some of them have been sad (Grandma’s funeral) but all of them have been very time consuming. So I apologize for being so behind in answering emails and messages. Hopefully things start to calm down a bit.

    In the meantime, here is my last SDCC 2012-related post! (Don’t forget to check out my interview with Rod Roddenberry in the very near future. It was conducted at SDCC but is a beast all its own).

    Even though I had a couple more costumes to choose from I opted not to cosplay on Sunday. Not gonna lie, it was kind of a pain in the ass and one day of it was enough for me. I will definitely cosplay at future conventions though. It was a lot of fun despite the hassle.

    The first half of the day was consumed by the Fringe, Supernatural, and Doctor Who panels in Hall H. In case you missed it, I wrote about all of the Comic Con panels here.

    The second half I spent wandering around the Exhibition Hall. I didn’t see as many celebs on Sunday but Convention regular Thomas Jane was there.

    A bunch of people requested that I check out the Suicide Girls booth. Ask and you shall receive. They really liked my buttons.

    My buttons turned out to be pretty popular actually.

    Which is awesome cause I’m pretty much obsessed with my new button machine.

    I really wanted an awesome souvenir from the Con, and y’all know I’m a huge Trekkie, so when Geek Outlaw found Brian Rood’s booth I got really excited. I bought that lovely Kirk-Spock print you see in the pic.

    Some other randomly awesome stuff from the Floor:

    I’m actually pretty bummed that they remade Total Recall (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it mmmkay?) but I’ll wait until I see it to pass final judgement. I gotta admit though, this hover car was pretty badass.

    Geek Outlaw disappeared on me so I took this picture to make him feel guilty for ditching me 😉

    We ran into fan Andrew while roaming around.

    Michonne forgot to cut my arms and jaw off. Bad Michonne.

    My friend Eddy was sad that he was a zombie.

    We heard that there were Batmobiles across the way at the Hilton so we made our way over there.

    On to costumes!

    It took this badass chica about 1000 hours to make this armor out of aluminum.

    Where was this uber hot Cap when I needed her?? We were bummed that we didn’t run into each other when I was dressed as Thor the day before.

    Orcs! and Trolls!

    And Gollum! Oh my!

    I think he’s a little scared of me.

    This Bane was very friendly.

    As was this Darth Vader. All he wanted was a hug and everyone was just walking by. He looked very surprised and happy when I hugged him. What can I say? I’m a lover.

    Dark Helmet was not as friendly.

    Shit! I hate it when I get my Schartz twisted.

    I know who I’m gonna call. The World’s Tallest Ghostbuster standing next to me.

    It’s a Starfleet officer who has been assimilated by the Borg and has an Alien busting out of his chest WHO HAS ALSO BEEN ASSIMILATED BY THE BORG!! *le sigh* … I think I’m in love.

    Exterminate! Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!!!

    While taking the picture with the Dalek I heard someone yell “Hey Hot Nerd Girl! Show us your tits!” I turned around and my friend Leia was standing there! She’s a fellow HNG and sexy beast. Sorry guys, I did not show her my tits.

    And so ended my 2012 Comic Con experience. It was a great first crack and I can’t wait to go next year. I’m going to try to make it to APE Con in San Francisco in October but with all this traveling I’ve been doing I may not make it. We’ll see. In the meantime, thanks to Mama Jedi, Troi, Darcy, Joy, Christian, Eddy, and especially Geek Outlaw for hanging out with me at SDCC. Thanks again to Daniel and Morgan for the great panel seats. Thanks to everyone I met and chatted with. And thanks to you for patiently waiting for this SDCC coverage while I was off gallivanting around the country.

    I leave you with this totally awesome picture I took of Geek Outlaw.

    You’re welcome.

  • Red shirt, blue shirt, gold shirt, no shirt

    Oh captain my captain, what has time done?

    Now there’s a Dr. Suess book I could get behind.

    Poor, poor redshirts. They never stand a chance.

    If I was a gal going in to Starfleet Academy in the year 2267, I would request a job that required a blue or gold uniform.  Why were the redshirts always the first to go?  I could give you the technical answer about how red uniforms are worn by Engineering and Security personnel and one or more of them would be required to go on away missions to protect the Captain or go in first to investigate.  But let’s be honest.  It’s the “black dude dies first” rule but since Star Trek is so enlightened they had to find another way of going about it.

    You know it’s true.

    At my first Star Trek Convention in San Francisco we were treated to some short films produced by fanboys.  One of them (and by far the most popular) was one about redshirts.  I don’t know if this was the exact one but it is equally as humorous:

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3cL1Aofy90&fs=1&hl=en_US]

    The term “redshirt” has embedded itself in pop culture.  Anyone expendable is now a redshirt.

    Personally, I like to think about how Ensign Ricky would have felt about all this.  I’m sure his mama would be proud that her brave young son will always be remembered for taking one for the (away) team.

    By 2364 the red and gold uniforms had been swapped. I think this was a good move.  Red is more regal and commanding than yellow is.  It demands respect.  The Next Generation understandably didn’t want to become a joke by continuing the redshirt joke.  But they still needed a way to show that the bad guy was bad without killing off the main characters (Tasha Yar being the exception, but hey, she wanted out).

    *bitch slap* "Don't you know who I am? I am the borg! Resistance is futile, A**HOLE!"

    This is where The Worf Effect comes in to play.

    Worf is the biggest and most badass of the good guys so if a bad guy can throw Worf across the room (which they often do) they MUST be really bad!  Of course, Worf is a Klingon so he never really gets hurt (they leave that to falling cargo containers – far more deadly than the Borg apparently – but wait! He’s got back up organs!)

    So the goldshirt never really took off like the redshirt did.  Which is probably for the best.

    The blue uniforms have always been for Medical and Science personnel.  Let’s face it.  They are far less interesting.  Sure Dr. Crusher and Councilor Troi were hotties but Crusher covered hers up with a lab coat and Troi ditched hers altogether after the first two episodes in favor of cleavage.  If it wasn’t for Spock, the blueshirt wouldn’t even be purchased by fanboys for ComicCon and Halloween.  It’s a fact.

    And lastly, the no shirt. Made famous by Captain James Tiberius Kirk.  Whichever Orion slave girl made his uniforms had an ulterior motive because there is no reason for his uniforms to fall apart at the seams during every episode while everyone else’s stay intact.  Even while battling Spock in “Amok Time” Spock’s uniform manages to stay in one piece while Kirk’s is ripped to shreds.  I’m not complaining, I’m just saying that shirt shredding should be equal opportunity amongst all of the handsome men…

    …and maybe some of the women.

  • Icheb the Borg Boy asked me out…

     

    Sad emotocon…

    And then never called me.

    It was 06 APR 2002 at the Star Trek Convention in San Francisco.  I was attending with an ex-sort-of-boyfriend and fellow nerd.  Even though I have been an avid Star Trek fan since birth, this was my very first convention and I was uber excited.  I found my way downstairs to the celebrity and vendor floor and after buying a celtic ring (I know, way random) ended up at Manu Intiraymi’s table where he was having a spirited conversation with a fan in full uniform.  I had a question for him (can’t for the life of me remember what it was) so I sort of listened in on their conversation and looked through the photographs of him and Jeri Ryan spread out on the table.  He kept glancing at me.  I wasn’t in uniform; however, I was wearing my communicator and several Star Trek pins.

    Finally the uniformed fan stepped away and I turned to ask him my question.

    Borg Boy beat me to it.

    MI: “So, are you here with your boyfriend?”

    HNG: “Excuse me?”

    MI: “Girls like you only come with their boyfriends who are into this stuff.”

    HNG (looking incredulous): “No, I’m not here with a boyfriend.  I’m a Trekker.”

    MI (looking incredulous): “Are you serious?”

    HNG (getting pissed off): “Yes, I’m serious.”

    MI (looking stunned): “Huh.”

    Don’t let the hat fool you. He’s cute.

    I then proceeded to ask him my question and we spent about 5 minutes engaged (heeheehee) in a nerdy conversation regarding some aspect of playing a Borg on TV.  I asked if I could get a picture taken with him and he said yes so I ran back up to where my friend was waiting and grabbed my camera and headed back down.  I popped in a Listerine Pocket Pak because, well, one always wants fresh breath when confronting the Borg.  Uniformed Fan was back so we had him take the picture.

    MI: “What’s that great smell?  Is that gum?”

    HNG: “No, it’s a Listerine Pocket Pak, want one?”

    MI: “Sure.”

    I then proceeded to explain to Borg Boy and UF the virtues of Pocket Paks for those who can’t chew gum due to TMJ…Paks must have been relatively new to the market or something because they listened with rapt interest and declared that I could be a spokesperson for them.

    Whatever.

    The conversation turned to Borg Boy’s upbringing by hippie parents and how his parents still live here so he comes to visit a lot.  He asked if I wanted to hang out sometime when he was in town.  I said, sure, why not?  He asked me for my phone number. (UF is watching this with his head moving back and forth like it’s a tennis match).  I wrote down my number and gave it to him.  He put it in his wallet with a promise to call me and take me out to dinner.

    Whatever.  I’m not holding my breath, fresh as it may be.

    I walked away and UF followed me, rambling on about how cool it is that I got asked out by a Borg.  Yeah, it’s cool I guess.  I finally ditched UF and headed back to my friend/ESOBF.  I tell him the whole story and he can’t even believe it.  WTF?  Why is it so hard to believe?  YOU asked me out.  Geez.

    Anyways, it’s a good thing I’m somewhat cynical because I never did get a call from Borg Boy…