I have had this gumbo brewing for some time. The comments, marinating in a soup ready to bubble over, now I think I am ready to give it all out.
As I said somewhere in these Archives, Star Trek is perhaps the closest thing I have to an organized religion. I adore it. It makes me feel safe. But I am a sort of puritan about it. I have a lot of friends that say 'Any Trek is good Trek' I disagree. That is why while I tolerate Enterprise as a show if nothing else is on, I could not stand it when it came out. Let us not even speak about Discovery or what those CBS hogs turned Trek, into a subscription.
FREE TREK FOR ALL!!!
If Star Trek is an organized religion, a fanatic preacher of sci-fi; Dungeons and Dragons is easily my mother archetype. Played around a tabletop, with a snack thrown in, or deep in a dark cozy basement- D&D was my absolute comfort food. For a supremely awkward but imaginative kid growing up in the Eighties- I needed a LOT of comfort (yeah I was a kid from Weird Science- but fat).
Speaking of Weird Science. In the eighties there was a strange sci-fi movement- the favorable- preferred dystopia (unlike what we are going through today- a boring apocalypse). It spun series' like Mad Max, Blade Runner, and that Tom Petty video.
https://youtu.be/mtLpZWNyM0I
It was a preferred apocalypse, where the selfish and tacky world of the eighties was blasted out of existence, leaving Mutant Year Zero or Gammaworld. I was one of those guys, one of those guys, the guys that were waiting for the Russians to press the button so that this whole damn society could MUTATE!
I hurrahed the other references to Planet of the Apes- classic, not that new Cesar crap! Wondrous for Doctor Who. Where Star Trek saved the world with a giant fleet of ships, Doctor Who did it with a damn screwdriver!
Yes, bravo, Inferno, bravo- for bringing us a stunning menagerie of our shared subconscious- Jung would be proud!
But then you brought in Alien.
Alien (1979), I was nine years old and I saw the trailer in my cousin's house- 'In Space No one can hear you Scream!". I saw that damn egg crack green and spent the entire evening in a half trauma screaming "WHY CAN'T THEY HEAR YOU SCREAM WHATS OUT THERE??????"
(As a child and well into my early adulthood, I suffered from numerous, operations, procedures, tests and other things that the medical profession found vastly humorous, so there is a bias, a big one.)
The trailer, the damn toys, the little glimpses I had of the creature, of the style, continued to scare me so damn bad that I think I waited another ten years to watch the movie. And I did so reluctantly. It still scared the very depths of my core. No doubt because the entire ship looked surgical, and the alien birth was anything but surgical. I watched Aliens with bravado, knowing that there 'could only be one' in the end. You know how many times I heard "You get away from her, you bitch!" after that movie came out?
But still I have an irrational fear, and a healthy respect for the alien franchise. I almost became sterile when they fused the predator and alien universes (Ye gods- one CREATED the other? It was better than when I heard a cinema legend about the Clone Wars).
[Way back somewhere in the clouds of the late seventies and early eighties. I think between Empire and Jedi, a theory came out about what the Clone Wars was. To combat the Sith, who outnumbered them, the Jedi made clones of themselves. But since these were copies, the force just did not work right with them. So they in turn, became Sith.
OH YE GLORIOUS GODS OF GALADOR THAT IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN WHAT GEORGE DID!]
I don't do surgical horror and I detest horror video games except on godmode (I tried playing F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon way back in 2005- I was 35- and all I wanted was for NOTHING to happen in the video game!
So that is why Chaka is stunned. Yeah sure, I was real lifed for a few days but its also I'm also injecting a bit of player pooping in the pants into the player character.
If that's metagaming, fine. I'll still be under the bed...
Screaming.
