I can't even tell you how much I want to see a figure skating science fiction anime movie where the lead has a Mancunian accent.

I'm glad I read your post, I was all ready to stick this up.

[youtube N-uyWAe0NhQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-uyWAe0NhQ youtube]

One of the things that annoys me about this film, beyond the obvious whitewashing issues, is that it spends all its running time justifying the grim and gritty aspects it's bringing to Trek while forgetting to justify the actual good. Our heroes win, and that's pretty much all the support they get. The initial bombing guy? To save his comatose daughter. John Harrison? To save his crew, to get revenge against people who treated him terribly. The Admiral? The one example of Klingons the film gives us shows them to be unable to be reasoned with and who attack immediately a theoretically neutral ship they find.

Even our heroes aren't immune to the fun of justifying villainy. Scotty's big hero scene of refusing to work with the torpedoes is great - except it's purely on the basis of "this isn't safe for us" not "this isn't moral for us". Spock beating Harrison to death is a bad thing not because it's a bad thing to beat Harrison to death, but because if he does so he can't save Kirk.

It's a common pitfall for media that tries to go a more shades of grey viewpoint to make their villains (and heroes acting villainously) have at least a little justification for their actions without remembering that if the point you're trying to make is that these are villains, then your heroes have to be justified too, and more so. You can't just rely on the audience going "Well, hey, the Enterprise crew are good guys, so we want them to win." A story called "Into Darkness" makes no sense without a light to contrast with.

I don't watch this movie again often, but I do watch those first ten minutes every while. It's a really good opening.

I took a copy of each! Thank you. :)

Expired! :)

As a player of Dwarf Fortress, the concept of underground water locks strikes me as the kind of thing that would very quickly lead to "Shit, there's suddenly water here, where's the leak?, crap, three dwarves are already drowned, aha, there's the leak, but the lever to close it off is behind the leak, quick dig into it, WHY IS NO-ONE DIGGING, change the priorities, crap, a megabeast NOW?"

In keeping with your excellent news; if the Star Trek people came to you and said, "Soon-to-be-published novel author Mark Oshiro, we need a writer to carry on DS9 in a book series set right after the finale, any ideas?" what areas would you be interested in exploring further? Besides Sisko being immediately brought back and the Prophets given a stern talking-to.

Danke schon! :)

Hey, it's some DS9 for you:
http://markdoesstuff.fetchapp.com/get/f79b9918