Castle Magus

A post on WIL WHEATON dot NET.

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"Wil Wheaton on His Star Trek Family and His New Podcast Storytime with Wil Wheaton"

"Hi everyone, happy Tuesday! I am so excited for this week’s episode. I’m talking to the one and only Wil Wheaton! You know Wil from his roles as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: Next Generation, Gordie in Stand By Me and his appearances on The Big Bang Theory. Wil is also a super-nerd and a prolific audiobook reader. He has a new podcast called Storytime with Wil Wheaton, where he reads a new short speculative fiction story each episode and I highly recommend it! We had such a lovely conversation— Wil is a deep thinker and one of the kindest people I know. I can’t wait for you to get to know him a little bit better! Stick around after the interview for the hindsight, where my producer Jeph and I talk about the episode, as well as some upcoming live podcast recordings, our new Patreon and oh yeah, time travel!"

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Apparently the only thing you have to do to get me to watch an entire hour and a half episode of your podcast is simply to have Wil Wheaton on as the guest for that episode. Like so.

Also, it's kind of funny, because I'm sure most other geeknerds (or is the proper term "nerdgeeks"? *shrug*) like me would know Katee Sackhoff from Battlestar Galactica. Here's the thing, though... I have never seen anything of Battlestar Galactica, either the 2004 version or the original show or anything else, outside of maybe an occasional clip on Youtube or something that I don't even remember now. (I always tend to get it confused with Babylon 5, as well, which is another geeknerd show that starts with the letter "B" and of which I have yet to see a single episode. How far in the toilet is my geeknerd cred now?) Nor have I seen any of that other nerdgeek stuff like all that Star Wars stuff mentioned on her Wikipedia page there. What I have seen a fair bit of her in, though, is Longmire, because there is an over-the-air TV channel which I don't recall the name of right now that my sister watches, and it airs a metric assload of Longmire episodes, back to back, on at least a weekly if not daily basis, and I see bits and pieces of it whenever I happen to exit my room to go the kitchen or something (also stuff like Stargate SG-1 and The Closer/Major Crimes and Rizzoli & Isles and NCIS and whatever else that channel [those channels?] tend to air, but that's beside the point). Beyond that, I have no other experience with pretty much anything Katee Sackhoff has done, unfortunately. At least as of right now. So far. Yet.

Okay, so...

There's a fair bit of overlap here with what Wil said in the Mayim Bialik podcast and what he has said on his own blog, but there's a lot of stuff that's new, too. That's one of the cool things about Wil is that even if he's telling largely the same story as one he's told before, elsewhere, he's still able to put a new spin on it. It's not just the same thing, over and over.

At one point, early on, Wil says that if he could give up all of his acting success if it meant that he would instead have a normal childhood where he had parents who weren't terrible, he would do it in a heartbeat. However, later on, about halfway into the episode, when asked about if he could time travel and change something, would he do it, he says that if he could go back and change the bad things about his childhood, he would not do it, if it meant that it led to him never meeting Anne, his wife. It was an interesting contrast. His acting career he would sacrifice in a moment, if it meant he could instead have had a good childhood with loving parents, but not his wife and her kids that he later adopted as his own. By the way, his stories about his wife's children, separately, asking him to formally, officially adopt them when they were each 18 was very touching.

Oh, and the short story they were talking about is Wikihistory. I'm glad Wil mentioned it because it gave me an excuse to read it again (this will be the fourth of fifth time now). In fact, I literally paused the video, then went and read it again, before returning to the video. It's definitely as good as he says it is (though he did get some of the details about it wrong, i.e. there was no "baby Schlimmel" or whatever).

And the fish story is this one or one of several like it told by Michio Kaku.

Finally... I haven't gotten around to it as of yet, but I think I'm going to start actually making the time to go through It's Storytime with Wil Wheaton now. Perhaps even getting started right now, in fact.

"There's always going to be shitty people in the world, that's just how it is, but we can choose whether we're going to be one of them."

I was going to save all of the "undead Pat returns to Montreal from the west coast of Canada and visits Woolie at Woolie's streaming set up for a while" arc and post the clips all at once, but this is good enough to have its own post.

*puts on Trekker/Trekkie hat (because I don't give a shit about the supposed distinction between "Trekker" and "Trekkie")*

Well ackchyually, Pat, we didn't watch "like 200 episodes where people go faster than warp 10." Because warp 10 was the hardline "you cannot go this fast" limit for all of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager up to that point, and also after that point (outside of the occasional wonky shit such as this, which almost always involved godlike entities like Q or The Traveler or the Caretaker doing godlike entity shit). There were a rare few cases in The Original Series where something went faster than, like, warp 8 or so, and even those cases were seen as extraordinary. The only times I recall them explicitly going above warp 10 like it was a normal, everyday thing were in a couple episodes of The Animated Series, and some of the non-canon novels (and, I guess, the non-canon future of "All Good Things...", though that, again, involved Q). The showrunners for TNG and beyond decided to retcon the fact that you could exceed warp 10 in those earlier shows and explained it as a "recalibration of the warp scale" to account for the fact that "faster than warp 10" was seen in TOS and TAS, making it so they didn't really go faster in the earlier stuff than the speed that was recalibrated to be "warp 10." Hell, in Peter David's novel Vendetta (written years before "Threshold", before even Voyager itself [or Deep Space Nine, for that matter] existed) which was basically a (completely awesome) "what if the Doomsday Machine fought the Borg" work of official fanfiction on David's part (did I mention it was completely awesome?), he explores what happens if one were to reach warp 10, and it's pretty interesting. (Hint: it's not "you 'evolve' into salamanders.")

The above, specifically, is a textbook example of Pat's Stand, Crazy Talk, activating.

Beyond that, though, Pat's completely right in that Star Trek: Voyager mostly sucked asshole (though "Phage" is still my least favorite episode, more so than even "Threshold"). Even Enterprise was better, for the most part. And yeah, all that shit about Chakotay and the fake Native American consultant was absolutely true, unfortunately.

Oh, and that thing Pat talks about where the original Harry Kim died and was replaced by another version of himself... yeah, that happened. But then, Kim is not even the first to whom such a thing happened. Just a year before, on Deep Space Nine, the original Miles O'Brien was similarly killed and replaced by a temporal clone.

The planet of angry black people was, sadly, a thing in Next Gen, true enough. That was the super racist first season episode of Next Gen. There was a super sexist first season episode of Next Gen as well. And the Irish sex ghost thing was real, too. And the Worf spits acid thing was real, too.

And yeah... when they mentioned Quantum Leap and immediately went nuts laughing, I knew exactly what they were talking about. That wasn't too great, either.

And I remember at least the first season or so of Sliders. Or, at least, I remember that Sliders was a thing that existed. The only thing I actually remember from Sliders is that they jumped to a world that was almost like their original world, except that (among other things that were revealed later) green lights meant stop and red lights meant go.

Finished it. It's still pretty great. Instead of "reviewing" it or whatever, I'll just talk about what I want to see in the future (because it's good enough that I want to see more of it). One thing I want to see, no make that two things I want to see, in season 3 (after they resolve the "to be continued" cliffhanger at the end of season 2), the first is the Wesley "The Traveler" Crusher thing, which seems like a pretty sure thing.

The second thing I would like to see in season 3 (or at some point, at least) of Star Trek: Lower Decks...

Basically, I want to see something akin to the "Trials and Tribble-ations" episode of Deep Space Nine, where they went back in time to the Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles." Except, in the case of Lower Decks, they'd be going back into an episode of The Animated Series in a similar fashion. I mean, it doesn't even have to be one episode. Could be "More Tribbles, More Trouble," could be "The Practical Joker," could be that one where they met the devil, or any combination of those and the rest. It would be interesting to see the Lower Decks crew trying to... um... let's say, emulate the animation style from TAS, in the same manner that the DS9 crew tried to emulate how things were in the Original Series era (like how Worf had to hide his forehead ridges due to Klingons not having them back then). It'd be worth it just to see Dr. T'Ana and M'Ress in a scene together, if absolutely nothing else (or maybe something happens to M'Ress that requires T'Ana to have to try and pretend to be M'Ress for a while or something). Oh and, of course, they'd totally need to bring back Mulder and Scully I mean Dulmur and Lucsly for this, too.

Hell, given that Wesley Crusher is a Time LordTraveler now, they could even combine the two things I want to see into one thing (or bring Wil Wheaton back again after the first thing for the second thing). Really, I wouldn't mind Wesley "The Traveler" Crusher becoming a semi-regular guest on Lower Decks in the same way that Q was on Next Generation (and DS9 and Voyager and Picard).

In the incredibly unlikely event that someone in charge of Star Trek: Lower Decks (or Wil Wheaton) happens to read this post, take this idea absolutely for free, I don't care. I just want to see it.

Nerd Shit™ like this is why Wil Wheaton is awesome.

Also, I've never heard of analog horror until this post, either.

"This is episode 198 of the Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN), a review of the Commodore 64 and a bunch of it's licensed and weirder games. The Commodore 64, also known as the C64 or the CBM 64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International. The C64 took its name from its 64 kibibytes of RAM. With support for multicolor sprites and a custom chip for waveform generation, the C64 could create superior visuals and audio compared to systems without such custom hardware. Except, well, the software was kinda garbage."

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I'm pretty sure that the Commodore 64 is the first system on which I ever played a video game in someone's home, pre-Arcadia 2001, pre-Atari 7800, and pre-NES. It was certainly the first time I ever played video games in my (parents') home. The one I spent the most time on belonged to my youngest sister, who had already long since moved out of our parents' house, and I first played it in the house she was living in at the time, but after that, for a span of several years, that same C64 was relocated to my (parents') house, when her kids (i.e. my nieces, the oldest of whom is only four years younger than me) started staying there, between the time when we got home after school in the afternoon and when my sister got home from work later in the evening (and then, later on, when they started actually spending the night at my [parents'] house something like two or three nights a week during a period of a year or three when my sister was taking classes at a night school). But even before that, I remember my oldest sister also had one for a little while. Whereas the games on the one my youngest sister owned were all on floppy disks, the games on this other one were all in cartridge format. The main thing I recall from the one my older sister had was that they had GEOS for it (which I mainly remember for geoPaint).

I'll list off the games I remember playing for C64 as a kid: Donkey Kong, Defender, Congo Bongo, Dig Dug, Ghostbusters, Choplifter, Raid on Bungeling Bay, Summer Games, Robotron 2084, Centipede, and Labyrinth. There were almost assuredly others, but I can't recall them now.

I wanted to say World Class Leaderboard Golf as well, but I can't find the right video (that one there isn't it). I might actually be confusing it with the DOS version, as I definitely remember those bird calls at the start, and it definitely had those voice clips included with it, and that looks more like the version I remember playing... but I also (maybe incorrectly) recall playing it in the living room at my (parents') house as a kid, and the only thing we ever had in that room was the Commodore 64, so... I'm not really sure what's up with that. Maybe the C64 version did have those sound/voice bits and improved graphics too? I dunno...

I also recall two different "music videos," which I definitely can't find on Youtube or anything like that now. One was a version of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" that had a pixelated Michael Jackson dancing onscreen. The other was a version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" except that I distinctly recall that it was renamed "Somewhere Over the RAMbow," i.e. a play on RAM and such. It was basically just the lyrics of the original song played on screen, but changed to be computer themed. I also recall being disappointed the very first time I ran it, because I thought it was a Rambo game, but it was cool enough for what it actually was. Ah well.

Okay, this one was an odd one. To start with, it was a bottle show, taking place entirely on the TARDIS, apparently for budgetary reasons. Which was fine, as far as I'm concerned. Some of my favorite episodes of the various seasons of Star Trek were bottle episodes. This one for Doctor Who, though, maybe not so much.

The gist is that the spring on a button on one of the TARDIS controls was stuck, which apparently caused them to accidentally fly backwards to the beginning of the universe(?) and threatened to destroy the entire ship, and, as it turned out, the TARDIS itself was trying to warn them of what was going on, in a weird, not entirely helpful manner.

The character interactions seemed really off, to me, especially in part 1. They were all really antagonistic toward one another. Susan brandishing scissors at the others and crazily stabbing a mattress. The Doctor accusing Barbara and Ian of trying to take over his ship and then threatening to boot them out right then, regardless of where they may have happened to be. Ian grabbing The Doctor by the throat for seemingly no good reason. Barbara was pretty much the only one who didn't entirely act weirdly assholish, for the most part.

When Susan had hypothesized at one point that someone or something had entered the TARDIS and was "inside one of us," I figured that was it. Some kind of parasite was controlling them and forcing them to act out of character. I had already sort of guessed at something like that being the case even before she said it.

But, no? Apparently that wasn't the case? Apparently, they were all just being gigantic assholes to each other for seemingly no good reason, aside from something the TARDIS was doing? I mean, even taking into account that the Doctor had been acting kind of assholish from the start, this all seemed more than a bit much, even for him. I don't think the episodes came even remotely close to adequately explaining why they were all acting so hostile to each other, aside from saying "The TARDIS did it." Somehow. Maybe I just missed something.

But, anyway, then Barbara (somehow) interprets the "clues" that the TARDIS was giving them, figures out what is going on and saves the day and makes the Doctor bumble and stammer and try to apologize for the rest of the episode, before she finally accepts, and then all is well and back to normal. Apparently?

Anyway, this is also the first hint that the TARDIS itself is alive, in some way (aside from Ian's "It's alive!" when he touched it in the first episode of the first serial). It's something I already pretty much knew to be the case from having watched the first (Christopher Eccleston) season of the modern show, so that wasn't too awfully surprising or anything.

The music in these two episodes had a rather Silent Hill-ish feel to it, at times.

And by "marathon," I mean watching it off and on over the course of the next however long, be it months or years or whatever, similar to how I did my Star Trek marathon.

Obligatory copy/paste from Facebook:

It has begun.

I just finished watching the four part "An Unearthly Child" episode of the original 1963 Doctor Who. Right now, the plan is to, eventually, after probably months if not years, go through all (that is available) of Doctor Who.

"A somewhat-mostly-accurate educational parody film by Max Landis, Produced by Bryan Basham @bryan_basham
Starring Elden Henson, Elijah Wood, Mandy Moore, Morgan Krantz and many more."

Yeah, that's pretty much how that Death and Return of Superman thing went, as far as I can remember of reading the whole thing myself, years ago.

Okay. So here's (mostly) the chain of events that led to me finding the above video, which I'd never seen or even knew existed before today (well yesterday, actually).

First of all, I was watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In this episode, I got as far as to the point where Xander and Oz were briefly discussing various colors of Kryptonite.

And so, completely derailed and completely abandoning my viewing of that episode of Buffy for the time being, until probably tomorrow (later today) or whenever, I started looking up stuff about Kryptonite. While doing so, I found a mention in the Gold Kryptonite section of someone named Clark Luthor, and I was like "Who the fuck is Clark Luthor?" It turns out that Clark Luthor comes from Smallville, apparently (the TV show, that is, of which, incidentally, I've only seen maybe the first season or two). He's an alternate universe, evil version of Superman.

Which got me to thinking about other alternate universe versions of Superman (and there are so many), specifically evil versions of Superman. And, on a whim, I decided to see if there were any versus threads anywhere concerning Justice Lord Superman from the DCAU and Regime Superman from the video game Injustice: Gods Among Us. There are such threads, by the way.

However, as you can see from that Google link (at least as of the time of this post, anyway), one of the top results in that search was to this thread on GameFAQs, where people debated about whether or not Regime Superman was justified in what he was doing (which was interesting, until it devolved into people hurling insults at one another, as is typical for GameFAQs forums). In that, I found a link to another, similar thread, also on GameFAQs. And it was in that thread, finally, that I found the link to the above embedded Youtube video (on the bottom of page 2 of that second, 28-page thread).

So yeah...

...um...

...yeah. Uh huh.

And now I'm going to bed.

*nods sagely*

Okay, the second episode of "Star Trek: Pegasus" has gone up.

It can be found here and here.