Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Entertainment’ Category

Once the original Star Trek series started to do really well in syndication after it had been canceled it was obvious that “something” would be produced to follow it up although it was probably not so obvious that so many “somethings” would be done over the decades which followed it.

Clearly the easy thing to do is to produce a follow-on of some sort but for a successful series that becomes more and more difficult to do both in terms of the writing and indeed of the fees demanded by the actors to reappear. In the case of Star Trek this meant that the follow-on series were spin-offs with very little real connection with the original series. Certainly the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine made little attempt to truly place themselves within the confines of the original series. Funnily enough, although Voyager was effectively in an entirely different universe, it was the one that seemed to me to be closest to the concept of the original series in exploring new worlds, new civilisations and boldly going.

Once the sequels had largely been exhausted it was time to consider prequels. In a science-fiction series these can get away with being set so many years before the original that there’s no problem with actors needing to appear younger and so Enterprise got away with an entirely different cast. The problem with that series seemed to be that it’s quite difficult to develop a plausible set of technologies that whilst more advanced than what we have now, are less advanced than what’s to come. Unfortunately in the case of Enterprise this was particularly difficult as a lot of the technologies from the original series are already available in the shops in some form eg the communicator, electronic notepad, etc. which meant that those remaining seemed to be confined to limiting the capability of what was shown on the original series eg the less perfect transporter, the slower warp drive, and, of course, the much grimmer decor of the ship (I suspect that this last one is what felled the series ultimately: it didn’t look science fiction enough).

Which brings us to the prequel film. Clearly the studio had decided that it was time for another Star Trek film but apparently didn’t want to pay enough to drag the various actors out of retirement. Thus we have an entirely different set of actors with pretty much the only common link to what had gone before being the name of the film. But, then, what else could they do?

It’s all so much easier to do in books….

Although they’ve one of the most frequently used pieces of technology around for a long time, most people don’t buy a new TV terribly often.

However, it always seems to be close to the worst time to buy one no matter when you’re looking for one, doesn’t it? For a long time it was safe enough buying TVs: from the 1970s when colour came out in the UK it was OK to pick up a 405 line set for getting on for 20 years until the 405 line broadcasts were turned off. Even within that period it was fine for quite some time if you bought a 625 line model as they were fine well into the 1990s.

These days it’s a whole different story though. Not only have we moved from the simple 625 line broadcasts in their 4:3 aspect ratio to the more common widescreen version but we’re also getting into the digital transmission era, moving to flatscreen technology and high definition all at the same time.

Aside from the flatscreens being a whole lot lighter than their predecessors, there isn’t really a whole lot going for them right now in that the colour on the old style CRT versions is generally better and you don’t get those annoying little coloured spots that are found on flatscreen versions. Most flatscreens come with digital tuners as standard though which is something of a plus in that the analogue signals are gradually being turned off.

What about HD though? Well, that comes in two versions: the real thing and “HD ready” which means that it’s not really HD at all. Going for true HD seriously bumps up the cost though and since there aren’t really a whole lot of HD broadcasts around at the moment, it seems to make more sense to go for an HD ready TV now with a view to replacing it in four or five years time when the price of true HD will have dropped and the number of HD programmes should have gone up a lot.

Of course, by then chances are the first of the 3D TVs will be starting to drop to relatively sensible prices….

Whilst series that get off in their prime can often stop very abruptly even in the midst of a double episode, long running series tend to wind down more gradually these days with the A-team of writers being replaced by the B-team in often a very noticeable way.

So, it’s nice to see that a long running series like MASH was allowed to make a proper final episode which tied up all the loose ends, going through what each of the characters was going to do afterwards. Most of the time these days there’d be a major league lead-in to spin off series but that didn’t happen here which meant that the couple of spin-offs had to stand on their own (neither did particularly well).

Still, I suppose that MASH was an exception that wouldn’t happen these days. After all, who would let a strong series just stop rather than simply wind down into obscurity?