Old Type 40

Whovian, Sherlockian, and just a geek in general.

[garak-pussy-indulgence]

do u guys think Ben Reily is actually powered by hydraulics in the same way spiders are? Discuss

[old-type-40]

There was some commentary in the tag about this a number of days ago and the thought was this is why Ben is so awkward at climbing through windows and other movements. My personal take is that he probably still has human muscles and muscle fibers. But running through his muscles is a spider-like hydraulic system and this allows him at times to have superior reflexes and strength. But these two systems come into conflict which is why he's awkward at times and why he said he had to watch movies to learn how to move like a human again.

[goodoldcharley]

Episode 2 - The Mourning After [ 3 | 4 ]

Indiana Jones easter egg

[old-type-40]

"Throw me the idol. I throw you the whip." OMG, how did I not notice this? Now I'm wondering if there was a Star Trek First Contact easter egg for Alfre Woodard. I may need to do a rewatch.

[old-type-40]

"Maybe, maybe,maybe, maybe The Spider is a guy just like anyone else. You ever think about that? You ever wonder what his problems were? He's swinging around burning buildings, saving people…"

Even if this was purely a film noir tribute, Nicholas Cage was perfectly cast as a world weary, down on his luck gumshoe.

[petralemaitre]

Gaius Baltar is a monsterfucker. Pass it on.

[cosmictuesdays]

Toasterfucker.

[old-type-40]

Whether you call Six a monster, a toaster, or even a skin job, can you really blame him?

(Image from @frakyeahbattlestargalactica)

[old-type-40]

Sisko: You killed him. Garak: That's right. Sisko: That's what you planned to do all along, isn't it. You knew the data rod wouldn't hold up to scrutiny. You just wanted to get him on the station so you could plant a bomb on his shuttle. Garak: It wasn't quite that simple. I did have hopes that the rod would somehow pass inspection, but I suspected that Tolar may not have been up to the task.

Ever since this episode first aired, I've felt that Garak wasn't being quite honest and that it was his plan all along to assassinate Vreenak. He planted the bomb on the shuttle before Vreenak had a chance to study the data rod which meant that it really didn't matter if it stood up to scrutiny or not.

And the more that I think about it, I believe Garak would see this as the correct thing to do even if he believed the data rod would stand up to inspection. It's not just Tolar's ability to create a perfect forgery that's in doubt, but there's also whether Sisko could lie to Vreenak in a convincing manner. For all we know, Vreenak did not find any flaw in the forgery. (He's a senator, not an expert in data forgeries.) He just made the accusation to see if Sisko would give up a tell. After all, Starfleet officers are not practiced in the art of deception.

Also, there would always be doubts among the Romulan leadership even if the rod passed a technical inspection given that it came from Starfleet. If Starfleet Intelligence was able to get such highly classified information, why is it losing the war so badly? Also, what if the Romulans had an operative in Starfleet who would be able to check if Starfleet Intelligence had penetrated the Dominion/Cardassia command at all? It's better to let the Romulans believe that Vreenak obtained the data rod on Soukara and keep his stopover at DS9 completely secret.

[old-type-40]

There already may be many posts about this but I'm not about to go into the Spider-Noir tag as I've just started the series. I had a few minutes of aggravation as I wasn't getting the option for the black and white version via my TV streaming device. Pulling up the episode via a web browser on my laptop and switching there did not carry over back to my TV. You have to switch the setting when using the Prime Video app on either a tablet or phone and then it'll default to black and white when you resume on your TV.

(Now that I think about it, I wonder if I would've seen the option if I had gone into the Prime Video app on my streaming device rather than just starting the series from the main menu.)

Update: Episode 2 is back to the color version and nothing I do is getting it to switch back.

[old-type-40]

"We wanted to create a show that is inspiring but also a show that is full of adventure. They are unlikely heroes. And the fact they are older is why they are heroes… The central question of the show is what will you do with the time you have left. They all realize they've all got more life left to live."

Will Matthews & Jeffrey Addiss, creators and showrunners for The Boroughs

BTW, there's been a number of shows recently featuring senior protagonists which help to debunk certain stereotypes regarding older adults. A Man on the Inside. The Thursday Murder Club. And now The Boroughs. And over a dozen years ago, British illusionist Derren Brown set out to do the same by recruiting a team of senior citizens to pull off a real life art heist. This is also a very fun watch.

[finalfrontierpsychiatrist]

Same vibes tbh

[old-type-40]

Okay, now that you've created this association between Rimmer and Bashir, I'm stuck with a mental image of Julian kicking the Grim Reaper in the nuts when he's facing imminent death.

[old-type-40]

Most of the discussion was about their previous work with Alfre talking about Star Trek First Contact, Alfred talking about Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Bill talking about Spaceballs. There was one question about what may come if there is a season 2 of The Boroughs but the showrunners didn't divulge anything to the cast.

For the Trek fandom, the most interesting thing to me is that Johnathon Frakes is Alfre's godson and she did the film because of this! And she tells an amusing story about a mishap during the shooting and Frakes' reaction to it.

Alfred talked about how Raiders was his first time working in a movie and that it launched his film career. Before he was cast, Spielberg asked Molina if he could do a latin accent and if he was afraid of spiders.

Pullman talked about how much he enjoyed working on the first Spaceballs movie and his real life son will be playing his son in the new movie.

I do hope we get a season 2 of The Boroughs. Though Netflix will probably wait several months to decide what will happen as their execs understand that it takes time to determine the size of an audience for streaming unlike the morons at Paramount who looked at the immediate audience metrics for SFA.

[shiverandqueeef]

how measurements work in canada (ie/ badly)

[meneatyoghurt]

We have similar problems.

Here's a UK version:

(it gets more complicated than this but this is the basics that most people need...also there's an age disparity in that some older people will only use imperial and some younger people have never used things like stones and pounds)

[old-type-40]

In Star Trek TOS, there is a mix in use of metric and imperial units. And the distance to places is often expressed as the time it will take to get there in days (or even years). People sometimes complain the show is so clearly American. But it must really be Canadian!

[old-type-40]

No surprise that Jon Favreau reached out to Roy Choi to come up with an actual sandwich for a scene in The Mandalorian and Grogu. It was great seeing these guys cook together again. I need to rewatch The Chef Show.

P.S. I'm betting some sauteed kimchi might be a nice substitute for the grilled onions.

[old-type-40]

When Olan Rogers was remembering what it took to get Final Space on the air, he eventually shed some tears. And when he talked about all the challenges to get the book out, it looked like he was fighting back tears. (x)

And I'll never stop being pissed at how badly Warner mishandled and mis-marketed the series and then the a-holes deleted the entire series for tax reasons.

[old-type-40]

Elsbeth 3x19 Catch and Kill

I love how they constantly bring back characters from past episodes. But I was especially amused on how they brought back Tracey Ullman to play a different character in this episode but still found a way to get in a reference to the character she played last season.

[hellostuffedtiger]

Considering how pro all things Bajoran Kira is, it's actually quite remarkable that she dislikes Winn, the religious leader of her people. That said, the fact that she knew both Opaka or Bariel and has also been privy to the human/political side of the kai (and that Winn herself has been rude to Kira) contextualizes who Winn is to her. If she hadn't been, I wonder if she would've been a Winn proponent.

[prof-grace-aspen]

She WAS!!

In the episodes Winn is introduced in, Winn has (allegedly) come to the station to protest Keiko teaching the science about the wormhole instead of the religious explanation in her school. A lot of Bajorans on the station join Winn and remove their children from the school. Several Bajoran officers stop coming to work.

When Sisko is talking to Keiko about the first encounter at the school, Kira is there, and says she agrees with Winn, and suggests the idea that there be two schools on the station. When Sisko asks Kira to describe Winn, Kira says Winn is from a small orthodox sect, and probably won’t win the elections coming up. Sisko asks if Winn has any support, and Kira says “she has mine”.

Winn loses Kira’s support when her REAL purpose is revealed: assassination. The crew discover that Winn is only using the school as a lure to get Bareil out in the open so she can try to get him assassinated. Kira hates lying and hypocrisy and being two-faced and twisting the words of the Prophets to serve one’s own purposes. Winn is all those things.

So, despite the fact that Winn is orthodox and Bareil is reform, Kira ends up in love with Bareil because he’s open and honest and doesn’t sneak around manipulating people in the dark.

[old-type-40]

Yes! Not only did Kira have good reason to believe Winn was behind the attempted assassination of Bareil, in later episodes Winn allied herself with a racist ass hat who was behind the coup of the government and she was willing to start a civil war because her ego couldn't stand having people defying her will. Winn was definitely a complex character but she was a vile person and Kira knew that. That's why Ira Steven Behr paid tribute to Louise Fletcher for the quality of her acting in bringing such a complex villain to life.

[gracefelldownaflightofstairs]

I love showing my non-Doctor Who friends the clip from the five doctors where everybody gets abducted by the weird triangles without context and refusing to elaborate

[polarity-disturbed]

I love this show

[what-even-is-thiss]

Yes.

[old-type-40]

What I love is that the BBC put much more effort into the FX for the 20th anniversary special than they normally did. Even though this is the early 1980s and American scifi series were using movie style FX, Doctor Who was still using cheap video overlay FX, spaceships on wire (with debris from spaceship explosions falling towards the bottom of the camera frame), and two guys in a rubber suit as a sea monster.

[alphamecha-mkii]

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Jem'Hadar Tricorder Concept Art by John Eaves

[old-type-40]

I think the only time we saw this tricorder was the ep In The Cards when Weyoun was wondering what was happening in the quarters just below his when Giger was testing his cellular regeneration and entertainment machine.

[old-type-40]

“[Star Wars] was really about the Vietnam War, and that was the period where Nixon was trying to run for a [second] term, which got me to thinking historically about how do democracies get turned into dictatorships? Because the democracies aren’t overthrown; they’re given away.”

—

George Lucas (x)

George may be very imaginative when it comes to the fictional universe he created. But the message behind the OT and PT was very poorly communicated. And that’s too bad because we’ve forgotten the lesson of Nixon’s attempt to undermine democracy by claiming absolute control over the executive branch of government especially the DOJ and the FBI.