Hot Nerd Girl

Tag: deep space nine

  • Star Trek night at Dodger Stadium

    I’m that rare combination of girl who is a huge nerd but is also a big sports fan. I’m pretty much in 7th heaven right now with the Olympics being on.

    My favorite non-Olympic sports to watch are football and baseball. I’ve never been to a professional football game (it’s on the bucket list) but I’ve been to tons of professional baseball games. It’s one of my very favorite things to do.

    I happen to have a family member who has amazing season tickets for the Dodgers. So I’ve gone to a few Dodger games in my day even though I’m not actually a Dodger fan. No, I have the sad misfortune of being a Padres fan (one of these days we’ll get there!) But that’s beside the point. If I don’t care about either team I root for the Home Team. It’s just good manners.

    So when cousin Chaney discovered that Friday, August 3rd was Star Trek night at Dodger Stadium, we got the invite to attend. Not gonna lie, I was pretty frakking stoked. They were playing game 1 in a series against the Cubs.

    I debated whether or not I should dress up in one of my three Starfleet uniforms. I have a number of Star Trek t-shirts and I was thisclose to wearing one of them but my Mama Jedi is constantly telling me to be big and brave and bold so I opted for the uniform.

    Thankfully no one in my group was completely mortified by this. In fact, they were even more gung ho than I was. I was worried I would embarrass them but they all thought it was pretty cool.

    Sold.

    It turned out that I was the only one in attendance who was big and brave and bold. I didn’t see one other person dressed up. Chaney saw one Star Trek t-shirt but that was it. In fact, most people who stopped to ask me why I was dressed that way had no idea it was even Star Trek night.

    Sigh.

    Oh well, I’m used to being the only weirdo in the room. Or in this case, the packed stadium.

    In honor of Star Trek night the Dodgers were giving away Spock jersey t-shirts. They were actually pretty awesome and I totally wanted one but it turns out they were only giving them away at one entrance and they ran out pretty quickly.  Sad robot 🙁

    The second we sat down I looked up and the eyes immediately zeroed in on a figure standing on the field. I yelped and said “holy shit, it’s William Shatner!” much to the surprise of my companions.

    I went down to try and catch his attention to see if he’d come over for a picture since I was the ONLY PERSON in the entire stadium in costume.

    I’m 99% sure he saw me. He was looking right at me and when I waved he looked away and avoided looking in my direction for the rest of the time he was on the field. That was kind of depressing but I have to admit that it’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve even started to like William Shatner. To be clear, I have always loved James T. Kirk, just not always the person who portrayed him. It seemed like he’d warmed up to his Star Trek fans in the last couple of years though. Especially in his documentary The Captains (which is fantastic by the way). Apparently he has to be in the mood. Oh well. I was still ridiculously excited to see him. I was literally less than 20 feet away from him at one point. Star Trek actors are really the only people I get star struck by and that was a doozy.

    Shatner did all of the announcements and the roll call and even threw out the first pitch.

    I filmed it for you…

    [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lW9MS3NthI]

    –

    You’re welcome.

    I’m not going to go into the whole game or anything (Dodgers won) but one cool thing happened that I’ve never experienced before. Having a foul ball fly right at my face and having someone in my group nab it. It was the first foul ball of the game off the bat of David DeJesus from a pitch by Chad Billingsley. It bounced off the chairs in front of me, landed on the ground to the right of us, then rolled back in front of us before it was scooped up by Christian who had propelled himself over a row of seats to get to it. It happened very fast and frankly, I was relieved to have my face intact, but it was one of the coolest 2.5 seconds I’ve ever experienced at a ball park.

    Every once in a while I would catch a player turn around and look right at me (I wasn’t hard to find, I was bright red in a sea of white and blue). At one point that player was Matt Kemp. I was pretty excited to see Matt Treanor. I could really care less about him but he got Misty May to marry him and she’s awesome so he must be doing something right.

    The evening ended with Friday night fireworks set to the theme songs of the various Star Trek shows. They started off with a little film that was pretty much just a love letter to The Next Generation.

    Then the music started and the fireworks began.

    They did the theme songs in bizarro order. First Star Trek, then DS9, then Voyager, and ending with The Next Generation.  Enterprise got the shaft. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen fireworks and I really truly seriously LOVE fireworks and these were set to music from my very favorite franchise ever. It took a long time for me to wipe the goofy grin off my face.

    I filmed the Star Trek and TNG parts of the fireworks. You can see them here:

    Star Trek: The Original Series…

    [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-DnKN7DKOw]

    –

    Star Trek: The Next Generation (and the grand finale)…

    [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArjSpHIZdAg]

    –

    All in all, a pretty awesome way to spend the evening.

  • 5 reasons why I heart Deep Space Nine

    Hey guys, what are ya talking about? Huh? Oh, Tribbles? That’s cool.

    –

    Right now my brother is halfway around the world serving his country.

    Right now I am sitting comfortably in my house in sunny San Diego.

    He is a better man than I, it’s true.

    But there’s one thing we have in common right now.  We are both rewatching that great soap opera in space, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

    –

    DS9 is the red headed step-child of the Star Trek universe.  A little too dark, a little too stationary, a little too outside the norm compared to the other series.  It started off with Commander Sisko showing obvious disdain for Captain Picard, one of the most beloved characters in the entire franchise and it continued to take the road less traveled.  You either loved it or you hated it.  I remember when the The Next Generation cast spoke of Nemesis being their last movie there was talk that Sisko’s batch of oddballs would be skipped over in favor of the Starfleet-full Voyager crew.  Obviously neither was selected and JJ Abrams took the franchise in a completely different direction.  But the message was clear, you’ve had your fun now don’t expect anything more.

    In my opinion DS9 was the most poetic of the series.  It wasn’t clean and bright.  Instead of just adventure it had intrigue.  Instead of a story of the week it had story arcs that spanned all seven years.  It marked the first killing of a major character since Tasha Yar back in the first season of TNG.

    It brought imperfection to a previously perfect universe.

    I loved it for that.

    Here are 5 more reasons why I heart DS9:

    1. The Women

    Y’all know I love strong women and Star Trek is full of them.  In Star Trek women are equal to men.  Period.  It’s what our mama’s fought for.  But one strong woman stands in a class all her own and that’s Colonel Kira Nerys.  A battle-hardened freedom fighter, Kira struggled with her new role as part of the status quo, often picking battles with her superiors and searching for a new cause to believe in.  If she lost a fight it wasn’t for lack of trying. Fiercely stubborn, she could quickly change gears and be extremely kind.

    And on the other end of the spectrum you have the Dabo girls.  Submissive, obedient, scantily clad but strong in their own way as they fought to find a place for themselves in the universe.  Leeta, for example, started off as a Dabo girl, formed a labor union, joined the resistance against the Dominion and ended up the wife of the Grand Nagus.

    All in a days work Leeta

    However, the honor of my favorite female Star Trek character ever goes to Jadzia Dax.  I’m pretty sure that we would be BFF’s if she was a real person.  I was way into RPGing in High School and College and I was almost always a Trill joined with the Dax symbiont….usually Tra’cia Dax.  I know, super original, right?  What can I say?  I have no excuse other than the fact that I love Jadzia so much.  A friend and I used to promise each other that we’d name our daughters Jadzia.  And while I don’t see that happening if and when I ever have a kid, I still totally love that name.  I named my pet rats Jadzia Maria Dax and Ezri Ann Dax.  Don’t ask me where the middle names came from; I totally pulled them out of my butt.  I even painstakingly drew Trill spots down each side of my face when I wore my TNG uniform once.  I cried the ugly cry when Jadzia died.  Not when the possessed Gul Dukat went all Pah-wraith on her, but when she and Worf said their goodbyes. Ugh.

    Sucks to be me!

    2. The Religion

    The other four series dabbled in alien religions occasionally, namely Klingon rituals, but DS9 is the only series to have it be a major plot point.  Some would probably argue that this made Gene Roddenberry turn over in his grave.  Gene was famously agnostic and had a strict no-religion rule that was stretched occasionally but rarely broken. DS9 portrayed religion as a complicated and tenuous thing.  It wasn’t always good, it wasn’t always bad.  Politics got in the way.  But even Sisko accepted it in the end.  The powers that be got away with this because it was the Bajorans who were religious, not the Starfleet officers.  Deep Space Nine itself acted as a gateway to the celestial temple and was therefore the location of many heated debates.  Bajoran piety affected everyone on board, especially Quark. He not only lost a crapload of income during the Time of Cleansing, but got bitch slapped by a brand spankin’ new union when he tried to cut his employee’s wages.  Because religion is such a hot topic in the world today, what with wars being fought and elections being influenced by them, it’s easy to see why Star Trek would want to discuss religion.  Star Trek has always taken current events and explored them in such a way that it becomes clear when we’re getting it right and when we’re frakking it up.  It took guts for the producers of DS9 to make it such a large part of the show and for that I applaud them.

    3. The War

    I’ve never been in a war.  I don’t know what it’s like to fight for a cause or to fight merely for survival.  I really hope that I never have to.  I come from a military family and I hear the stories they are willing to share.  I have stood by proudly and watched as my Dad retired and my brother graduated from boot camp.  I’ve cried when they left and cried when they returned half a year later.  I’ve never been in a war myself but I can tell you that it is not easy to send someone you love to one.  Naturally, anything with a war in it has a bit of an impact on me.

    War in space can seem remote when you’re watching it on TV or in a movie.  You watch as spaceships get destroyed but you don’t see much about the people inside them getting hurt.  Deep Space Nine took the battle to the ground.  We didn’t just see the starships battling it out with phasers and photon torpedoes, we saw the soldiers in the trenches.

    Including my favorite Ferengi

    “The Siege of AR-558” is one of the greatest hours of television ever produced.  I will freely admit that I cried like a baby the first time I saw it and every time I’ve seen it since.  It showed war for the messy, confusing, exhausting thing that it is. It didn’t sugar coat it and it didn’t try to make it seem glamorous.  Our loved ones fight for us so that we won’t have to think about these things but it’s something that people need to be reminded of every once in a while lest we forget to be grateful for their sacrifice.

    4. The Money

    In general Star Trek avoids the topic of money like the plague.  They acknowledge its existence only long enough to balk at it and proclaim that they have no use for it, that the betterment of mankind is payment enough for their service.  Don’t get me wrong, I love that.  The idea of a world without greed is especially appealing in these perilous economic times.  But there’s something very amusing about watching Quark scheme and plot for gold-pressed latinum.  Or watching Jadzia Dax throw it down as she spanks all the Ferengi guys at tongo.  Or having to pay to use the holodecks instead of just walking in, never knowing what dirty program had been played just a few minutes before.

    As much as I would like for it to be true, I just can’t imagine a life without some kind of currency.  They never satisfactorily explain how normal people within the Federation purchase clothing or food without money.  I would argue that they simply replicate everything but I’ve seen too many shops and markets and bottles of Chateau Picard wine for that to be the case.  So how does that work?  Someone walks in and they just give him bottles of wine?  Why doesn’t everyone have huge swaths of land to do with as they please?  I know that World War III wiped out much of the population but it’s recovered enough that there’s not enough land on Earth for everyone to do whatever they want with it.  I seem to remember that the DS9 crew gets some kind of allowance so that they can partake in Quark’s Bar and the holodeck for recreation, etc. etc.  But if the Federation doesn’t have money, where are they getting the funds for the allowance?  I’ve heard the term “credits” thrown around a few times but then a producer will say that credits don’t exist in Star Trek.  I finally looked it up here but it only confirmed my suspicion that no one really knows.

    At any rate, the presence of gold-pressed latinum on the station has made for some very amusing episodes and I’m glad that it’s there.

    5. The End

    I’m one of those people who likes things to be all wrapped up.  I don’t like loose ends.  Maybe it’s the list maker perfectionista in me.  As much as I love Star Trek and The Next Generation, they didn’t have proper conclusions imho.  Star Trek was cancelled before they could write one (although it was wrapped up nicely in the movies) and TNG’s left me unsatisfied (both on TV and in the movies).  DS9 has a real, honest to God ending.  Yes, it left on a cliff hanger with Sisko but it gave you the feeling that this was truly the end, the last time you were ever going to see your friends together in one place, that there would never be a moment like this again so you’d better savor it.  I wept like a baby during that final episode.

    In short, I love DS9 for all the ways in which it ISN’T like Star Trek.  Which is kind of weird because I really REALLY love Star Trek.

    Whatcha talking about? Huh? Huh? Oh, still Tribbles. Ok cool.

    “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

    – Quark, quoting Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, last spoken line of the series

  • Battlestar Galacticawesome

    I’ll admit it.  I was a late bloomer to the Battlestar Galactica universe.  When it came out my time was otherwise occupied and by the time I had time it was so far in that I thought I would get lost if I started in the middle.

    Then I was given Season 1 on DVD by a friend a couple of years ago (shout out to Vetty Spaghetti) who thwacked me on the head, called me an idiot and practically threw the DVD set at me.

    She is a very wise woman.

    After getting scoffed at by a few more friends, some *gasp* not even nerds, I knew I was in trouble and rapidly losing my nerd cred.

    So I embarked on a mission to watch and absorb all things BSG.

    **Disclaimer: I wasn’t a total BSG virgin, I did see the introductory miniseries when it first came out in 2004.

    I watched 5 hours the first day and was addicted.  I watched 3 more hours the day after that.  And so on and so forth.  I threw money at Amazon.com in an attempt to get seasons 2-4 as fast as shippingly possible.

    I’m pretty sure that the moment I got hooked was when Starbuck shoved a slimy, half-biological, half-technological Cylon oxygen tube in her mouth without even flinching.  I thought, hot damn, now THAT’S a woman.  I’d like to think that I would do the same if I were stranded on a lifeless, alien moon.  I’m pretty bad ass.  I’m not sure I’m that bad ass but one never knows until they’re in that type of situation.

    Yes? No?

    And is it just me or does everyone think of Dr. Julian Bashir whenever Dr. Gaius Baltar walks onscreen??  They look like they were separated at birth.  Of course, as soon as Gaius opens his mouth (or looks over at the imaginary Cylon dry humping him) all similarities end abruptly.

    "My monogram is better than your monogram."

    As far as Dear Leaders go, ya’ll know I’m about as big a Trekkie as they come so I’m still partial to my Kirk’s, Picard’s and Sisko’s but EJO holds his own as Adama.  I could have done without the 80’s porn ‘stache he sported but other than that I have few complaints.  I do like that both he and his XO have some serious flaws.  I can hold my own in a drinking contest but drinking before work everyday?  It takes a man like Saul Tigh to pull that off.  My hat is off to you Sir!

    Back to the ladies, I may or may not have a slight girl crush on Cally.  Any girl who bites off a guy’s ear even though it means taking a bullet to the gut is a-ok in my book. Plus, she fixes things.  We have much in common.  Throw in some Dee and I might just change teams.

    I started out thinking that Lee was kind of a whiny little bitch BUUUT, he grew on me.  I definitely have no problem with him taking his shirt off.  No problem at all.  Ever.  Speaking of da boys, I have a soft spot for Chief Tyrol, having been raised by a Chief myself.  Plus, how funny and awesome is it that he got to boom boom with Boomer??

    I’m a big Mary McDonnell fan; she had alien attack cred already with Independence Day, a movie I love to this day (mock me if you must).  Her quiet strength while looking blitzed out of her mind both inspire me and crack me up.  She can pull off the bald look too.  That’s no easy feat for a chick my friends.

    And the Cylons…oh, the Cylons…I’m not going to address the end in case there are readers who haven’t seen it, but, in short, I can do without the guys but Tricia Helfer and Grace Park can feel free to stick around for as long as their little pseudo-Terminator hearts desire.  I’m pretty sure C6 is about as perfect a woman as God (or the gods) can create and if I was Dr. Baltar, I’d have constant fantasies about her too, day-glo spine and all.

    "Don't ask me where I found this, but be glad that I did."

    In short, yes, I was a dumbass for not watching the series while it was on TV but I don’t really regret it.  I got to sit back and watch them all without having to wait in anticipation for the next episode week after week.

    Winning!

  • Let’s do the time warp again

    Hot Nerd Girl circa 1930

    I attended a friend’s birthday party over the weekend that had a 1930’s theme.  Next thing I know, I’m in a room full of gorgeously dressed gorgeous people in authentic 1930’s formal attire.

    Naturally that got me thinking about time travel.

    Time travel via giant donut

    Because, really, what nerd brain wouldn’t go straight to Captain Kirk in City on the Edge of Forever or Captain Picard on the holodeck in The Big Goodbye or Vic Fontaine crooning to the crew on any given episode of Deep Space Nine?  It’s only natural.

    Time travel is a common theme in science fiction.  It’s a convenient story line that can take up an entire episode or movie and be self-contained or expanded into a multiple episode story arc.  The possibilities are endless and the hardest part is making up some kind of space-time fluctuation to get our heroes to the time period needed.

    Back when Gene Roddenberry first envisioned his “wagon train to the stars,” he got together with some of the greatest scientific minds of the time to hash out all things science-based on his show.  He wanted to know exactly what could be done and how it could be done that was accurate and feasible.  In other words, he asked these scientists to look into the future and dish the dirt.

    The result has been the precursor to the cell phone, the hypospray, the modern computer, and so on and so forth.  Their predictions were so accurate that NASA named one of its space shuttles Enterprise to acknowledge the fact that Roddenberry and his cohorts were far ahead of their time and deserved to be recognized for it.  Every time I read an interview with an astronaut they claim to have been inspired by Star Trek.

    Fake astronaut, meet real astronaut. Real astronaut, meet fake astronaut.

    But what about their ideas on time travel?  Some of the earliest evidence of exploration on the topic comes from the 700’s BCE with the Sanskrit Epic Mahabharata.  In it, King Revaita travels to the heavens, meets God, and returns to discover that many years have gone by on Earth since he left and everyone he knows is long dead.  The Japanese tale Urashima Taro and Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle contain the same basic storyline of a lone traveler leaving and returning to find themselves in the future.  Even A Christmas Carol is a study of time travel. 

    Time travel in science fiction is often a paradox, a confusing mess of “what if’s.”  If I step on a butterfly in the past, will I alter human life in the future?  If I altered human life in the future, how could I have stepped on the butterfly in the past?  It’s a classic chaos theory or “butterfly effect.”  I’ve seen wormholes, time dilations, subspace temporal distortions, a transwarp corridor and a temporal casualty loop all used in the name of story telling.  But is time travel real?

    That'll do Scott Bakula, that'll do.

    Time travel does exist, just not in a way that is convenient for us to go back and tell our 20-year-old selves not to get drunk and sleep with so-and-so.  According to the theory of relativity, if I board a spaceship and start traveling away from Earth at a relativistic speed and then turn around and come back after a few years, more time would have passed on Earth than did for me on the spaceship.  Therefore, technically, I would be traveling into the future.  Einstein also theorized that it would be possible to travel into the past using specific types of motion in space. Folds in space time are another popular theory.  If space folds in on itself, then why can’t we skip from one fold to another?  One of my favorite books, The Last Legends of Earth by A.A. Attanasio goes into this in depth.  Ancient magic has been the inspiration for many time travel stories as well.  From Claire Randall going through ancient Druid standing stones in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, to Hermione’s Time Turner in Harry Potter, the possibilities are endless.

    It's true.

    Physicists all tend to have their own theories of what is and isn’t possible.  Stephen Hawking has been one of the biggest naysayers of most time travel theories.  Ironic, since science fiction writers like to use black holes as a time travel source and Hawking is the world’s leading expert on the phenomenon.

    If I could go back in time and attempt to change something, I’m not sure that I would.  I would love to have prevented some deaths I feel were unnecessary, but who am I to make that decision and change the course of history ala Quantum Leap?  Is it even possible to change it?  Maybe it would simply result in fate finding a way like in Final Destination.  Given the choice, I would much rather travel to the future.  I would love to see what the human race is able to accomplish 100, 200, 300 years from now.

    I promise I won’t step on any butterflies.

    Credit to ewallpapers.biz