Hidden In Plain Sight

Goodbye 2011...

Hello 2012!

Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

Boldly Going for 45 Years

It's the 45th anniversary of Star Trek. The show aired on the US network NBC on September 8th, 1966.

The show was set on the USS Enterprise, a starship traveling interstellar space, and introduced us to concepts such as faster than light travel, technology which included the transporter and tricorders, and alien species the Vulcans, Klingons and Romulans, to name but a few.

Star Trek was rumoured  to be canceled after it's second season, however a letter writing campaign by fans persuaded NBC to bring the show back for a third season. The final episode of The Original Series (as it was later to be known) aired on June 3rd, 1969, a month before mankind took their first steps on the Moon.

Syndication helped the show maintain it's popularity. The Original Series was followed by an animated series. Another live action TV series, Phase II, was planned but never underwent production.

After the success of Star Wars, it was decided to bring back Star Trek, but this time for the big screen, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture was made, recycling the scripts from Phase II.

More movies featuring the original crew were produced (The Wrath of Kahn, The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home, The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country). Star Trek also returned to its home on television with Star Trek: The Next Generation, later followed by Deep Space 9, Voyager, and the prequel series Enterprise.

After The Next Generation finished it's run on television, it too transitioned to the big screen with Star Trek: Generations, where the baton was passed from the original crew to the Next Generation crew. Three more TNG movies were made: First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis.

After Nemesis opened to poor reviews, and Enterprise was canceled after four seasons it looked like Star Trek's long journey was coming to an end. The franchise was revived with the eleventh movie in the series.

Simply titled Star Trek, it was set in an alternative timeline and attempted to appeal to a wider audience by rebooting the story of the original crew from the '60's television show. It became the highest grossing movie of the franchise to date. A sequel is planned for release in 2012 or 2013.

All A Twitter

I thought I'd give Twitter a go.

Writing tweets of 140 characters or less may give me the inspiration to start writing posts for this blog again. You can see what pointless babble I come up with via the widget on the right hand side of this page.

Silence Has Fallen

The new series of Doctor Who kicked off tonight, and introduced us to it's latest, and some say scariest, monsters yet. The Silence.

The Silence has been mentioned a few times in the last season, though this is the first time they have been seen on screen. Scary to look at, they have the ability to render themselves forgettable when out of sight, and as such they have been free to manipulate history for some time.

Steven Moffat said “Humans will have been subconsciously aware of The Silence for many centuries and that awareness will have manifested itself in paintings such as The Scream.”

It will be interesting to see how The Silence is weaved into established history, and what impact they have in the Whoniverse.

Rest In Peace

Elisabeth Sladen, known to the millions of fans of Doctor Who as Sarah Jane Smith, passed away yesterday. She had been battling cancer for some time.

I was truly shocked and saddened when I heard the news. Her tenure as The Doctor's companion (1973-1976) was a bit before my time, but I enjoyed watching her reprise the role in several episodes of the revamped Doctor Who, as well as her own spin off show, The Sarah Jane Adventures.

My thoughts go out to her family. She will be missed.