At 12:35 PM 10/1/01, Kevin Street wrote: >Doug wrote: > > > So did anyone catch the new Star Trek pilot? Any good? > > >I caught it. It wasn't bad, better than TNG's pilot or Voyager's >"Caretaker," but not as good as the DS9 premiere. > >The special effects were wonderful. There's a lot of money in >"Enterprise," and it shows.
I just hope they didn't blow it all on the pilot. >The story was okay. It was kind of fun. > >The characters were a bit flat. Except for the Vulcan science officer, if you know what I mean. >But hopefully they'll develop some depth >in future episodes. > >The dog is really cute. :) "Coming next week on a very special episode of _Enterprise_: Barfy the dog gets some Klingon bitch in trouble and gets taken to a Klingon vet to get 'fixed'." Seriously, however . . . I loved the opening credits. If they keep using that sequence, maybe it will inspire us to get the _real_ space program in gear again, like it was in the days of TOS. However, I was rudely jarred out of the fictional world when I realized that apparently none of the writers, producers, or director had ever read an astronomy book or even gone outside and learned a few stars, nor apparently do any of them own a calculator. We learn early on that warp 4.5 = 100 times the speed of light, the maximum speed of this _Enterprise_. 100c = 1 light year every 3.65 days. It will take the _Enterprise_ 4.5 days to get to Qo'noS from Earth. Thus Qo'noS is 1.23 light years from Earth. Bzzzzt! At present, the closest star to Earth (other than the Sun, of course) is 4.4 light years away, and neither it nor any of the other stars within several dozen light years is moving fast enough to be substantially closer than that within the next 160 years. Out???: Unless perhaps they are going to come along in a future episode and claim that Qo'noS, its star, and its entire planetary system are cloaked. (Of course, our heroes eventually found the system, suggesting either that it's not cloaked, that the Klingon High Command saw a strange new ship coming and decided it looked friendly and turned off the cloak, or they forgot to pay the electric bill and had the power shut off just before the _Enterprise_ arrived.) Apparently, the Klingons already have a century-long headstart on cloaking technology able to hide a starship before Kirk gets his ears bobbed and steals it from the Romulans. That should have given the Klingons an unbeatable technological edge over humanity: at least as great as the Europeans had over the "Native Americans" (or whatever this week's PC term for them is), and somehow I doubt the Klingons are loath to press an advantage. So it will be interesting to see how they deal with this in the series. If we now assume that 22nd century Klingons have the ability to cloak an entire planetary system, there would not have been anyone else but Klingons around in the 23rd century. Moving along: Our heroes follow the trail of the bad guys to the tenth planet of a star called Rigel, which is obviously within a few light years of Earth, as our heroes do not grow old and die en route while moving at the above-mentioned speed of 100c = 100 light years per year. Bzzzzt! There is already a star named Rigel, aka beta Orionis, which is not only in one of the best known constellations in the night sky as seen from Earth but is also the seventh-brightest star as seen from Earth. The best distance available, from the Hipparcos mission, is 770 light years (an interval of one standard error being from 650 to 950 ly). Clearly, this is not where they were going. Out?: Alpha Centauri, which is the aforementioned closest star to our solar system, is sometimes called Rigel Kentaurus, with the first word also sometimes spelt "Rigil" or "Rijl." This name is not recommended precisely because it would lead to confusion with the other Rigel, though I can see how perhaps it might be used, and even shortened to just "Rigel", when everybody knows the other Rigel is so far away it's out of reach, sort of like if I were to tell somebody I was going to Athens and then drive off in the car without luggage, it would be reasonable for them to assume that I meant Athens, Alabama or perhaps Athens, Georgia, rather than Athens, Greece. Even if they meant Rigel Kentaurus = alpha Centauri when they said "Rigel", though, the batteries in the science advisor's (I didn't catch the name. Does anyone else recall it, or will I have to check the tape when I have a chance?) calculator must have been dead. IIRC, the Vulcan chick said that "Rigel" was "15 light years" from their current position when they started toward it. At a speed of 100c, it would take a bit under 55 days, or 2 months, to get there. Additionally, even if their initial course from Earth had sent them in the opposite direction from alpha Centauri (in the direction of the constellation of Cassiopeia, near its border with Perseus), they would have to have been 10.6 light years away from Earth for alpha Centauri to be 15 light years away when they turned, and that would have taken them just shy of 39 days to get that far from Earth, which means they were totally lost if Qo'noS were only 4.5 days away from Earth. Perhaps the _Enterprise_ hired the navigator from the _Jupiter 2_ after _Lost in Space_ was cancelled . . . What nerve!: Once they reach Rigel 10 (wherever the heck it is), they meet up with an alien woman named "Sarin." I guess she uses that name in preference to her full given name of "Isopropyl Methylphosphonofluoridate"? Why didn't she just go by her initials, "GB"? Come on, people! With all that money they had to spend, why didn't they hire Marc Okrand again, or someone like him who could have come up with a believable alien-sounding name instead of naming her after a nerve agent? Particularly one that everyone knows by that name because of its use in the attack on the Tokyo subway by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in March of 1995? Will I watch it again this week? Of course, if only to see in which direction it goes boldly (at least they finally fixed the best-known split infinitive in 20th century English!). -- Ronn! :) God bless America, Land that I love! Stand beside her, and guide her Thru the night with a light from above. From the mountains, to the prairies, To the oceans, white with foam� God bless America! My home, sweet home. -- Irving Berlin (1888-1989)
