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20110905

Other fictional ships of my youth

My first fictional love. I had all kinds of wild daydreams about sailing off into deep space, visiting strange planet after bizarre anomaly. When my last Grandmother - Gen - died, my Aunt (her Daughter) sent me a bunch of stuff from my youth she had collected. One piece was an 8 by 11 drawing of the Enterprise in battle, fighting off the Klingons. It was rather elaborate, and remarkable, for it was signed, Redshirt, Age 4. I've been a Trekkie a long time, though I have given up practicing, the last 3-5 years of Trek so terrible I just couldn't stand it anymore. Sigh! I wasn't the biggest fan of the latest movie, though it was alright, and leagues better than the atrocious Trek of the years before.

I remember drawing space battle after space battle throughout my youth, featuring not just the Enterprise, but other ships. The Yamato:
An awesome show. At least as I remember it. Though I now question why anyone would have a spaceship look like a navy Destroyer.
From the truly excellent "Space:1999". Which, LOL! Yeah, right, in 1999 we were still talking about Slick Willie's Willy. And to be honest, I don't think we really partied like it was 1999 either. We failed you, Prince!
Also?
Next time you watch the original, and best, Star Wars, note the discrepancy between Luke and Leia's behavior. Leia watched her homeworld get incinerated, everyone upon it dying. Luke watched a guy he met a few days earlier disappear. And yet the entire second half of SW is spent focusing on Luke's loss and how he deals with it - and not the loss of Owen and Beru, either, his adoptive parents for his entire life. Just the old hermit dude. Whereas Leia's loss is not mentioned again.

I blame the Force.  For this too:
We only got to see one Ewok die in ROTJ, and here's his action figure. Realistically, a shitload of Ewoks should have bit it that glorious day. But the movie would have you believe it was cuddly teddy bears defeating the finest legion of the Emperor's Guard, with but one loss. Lucas! I posit he'd already lost his "vision" by ROTJ. For any complaint you would level against the second trilogy, and there are many (though I enjoy it overall), look back to ROTJ and see if the same complaint doesn't stand. I bet it does.

Thus, the lesson: Success breeds complacency. Therefore, never be successful.

2 comments:

Blue Collared Snob said...

How bizarre is it that just the other day, the same day that you were writing this blog I was thinking, geez those storm-troopers really suck to get taken out by Teddy Ruxpin. I mean in The New Hope they killed all the Jawas and burned Luke's Aunt and Uncle. You could believe they were truly bad assed. Now they can't hit Ewoks from ten feet away. WTF!!!

Redshirt said...

Not bizarre to me - I think about stupid shit like this all the time! Didya know the Ewoks were supposed to be Wookies, but the budget/special effects at the time couldn't pull it off, thus, the Wookies. It would make sense the Wookies could take out the Stormtrooper Legion, and thus, ROTJ.

Lucas got lazy - I mean, c'mon: Second Death Star?