I am a Star Trek fan since, well, forever I guess. My formative years were the seventies and eighties and I remember watching Star Trek the original series (ST:TOS, as re-runs) all through elementary school and junior high. I have always enjoyed Science Fiction but ST:TOS holds a special place in my heart. Â Even as campy as Shatner was as Kirk, you have to love the character – heck, in ST:TOS there was not a bad character in the bunch (except those darn red-shirters – kill ’em all!).
Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG) came along during my high school and college years. While the show started somewhat weak, after a season or two it really got surprisingly good. Many people would say ST:TNG is better than ST:TOS but I consider them equals in most ways. ST:TNG is generally less campy and Picard is a great captain, but hey, Kirk was a bad-ass and a ladies man to boot.
In my post-college years I watched some of the other Star Trek series on and off, but they never held a candle to other sci-fi like Firefly. Sorry ST:DS9, ST:V, and Enterprise, you just didn’t do enough to capture my love (or maybe I didn’t give you a fair enough chance).
When it comes to Star Trek movies, everyone knows that the “Odd / Even” rule strangely applies… odd numbered movies are pretty bad and even numbered movies are pretty good. Or it did until now! I saw Star Trek (J.J. Abrams reboot on the series) on IMAX on Saturday morning and for the 11th film (odd) it was amazingly good. Heck, I think even non-Trek fans will have to agree it is a really amazingly well done movie. I won’t tell you much about the movie (go see it! it is a big-screen movie if ever there was one) but I think the character casting was spot on perfect (especially Kirk and Spock). My only character complaint was casting Anton Yelchin as Chekov. I generally like Yelchin but the character didn’t seem as smooth as the others. Oh well. Did I mention you should go see it? Close the browser, go see it!
If you are still reading, I guess you’ve already seen it or your back from the theater. Welcome back.
The other thing that consumed my weekend was a game called Gun. Gun came out in late 2005 for every gaming system imaginable, although I played it on the Xbox 360 (because I love achievements). Gun is a “western” game set in the 1880’s. The style of game is Grand Theft Auto with Horses (Grand Theft Horse?). It is an open world game with a main story and lots of side things to do which you can do in whatever order you like (or skip them all together). It is a somewhat short game – I probably finished the main story and all side missions in less than 15 hours – but it does nearly everything right. The graphics are nice, although a little dated. The control is spot on and the story is well developed. All of the actors that do the voices are top level talent, almost all voice you will recognize. Unlike the GTA games, they even have mid-mission checkpoints so playing the game never gets frustrating. If you enjoy GTA-like games, I can recommend it very highly. You can easily find a used copy for $15 or less.