The Christmas Tradition: 2016

I just noticed that it's been nearly a year since my last post on this blog. My Warhammer 40,000 blog has almost always gotten a lot more attention, but even that was neglected for over eight months. Unfortunately, 2016 has been pretty tough for our family.

On February 9 of this year I slipped on a patch of ice in my driveway and broke my ankle. Within a week I had a steel plate and eight screws in my leg and doctor's orders not to put any weight on it for six weeks. Almost two months later, on my first day back to work, our youngest child was diagnosed with leukemia. Thankfully it's the most treatable form of leukemia, but it turns out that an "easy" cancer is still a challenge.

Even a rough year can't stop us from fulfilling the annual tradition, though. Once again we went to Hallmark.com to order the family's Christmas ornaments. Each child ended up with an ornament, with the three girls choosing Finding Dory and Harry Potter ornaments. With a little bit of prompting from Dad, our oldest boy chose BB-8 from Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Originally my wife chose a cute Mickey and Minnie Mouse ornament while our youngest child was going to get Captain America from Captain America: Civil War (in 2014, when he was too young to choose for himself, we got him the Captain America ornament from The Winter Soldier). However, the youngest, who was already spoiled before he got sick, claimed the ornament for himself and relegated Captain American to Mom. This wasn't exactly a great sacrifice on Mom's part since she's an enormous Captain American fan. We couldn't have Captain America without Iron Man, of course, so I chose the latter for my annual ornament.

    

It's also become a tradition that Dad gets more ornaments than he really needs. I bought Poe Dameron's T-70 X-wing from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, figuring that it would go well with the 1998 X-wing ornament that was among the first Hallmark ornaments I ever owned.

Hallmark tried to sabotage my effort to own every Star Trek: The Original Series character by making Chekov in-store only. Luckily, my own wonderful mother was able to grab the last copy of Chekov from her local Hallmark store. Like my Scotty ornament, Chekov had been the display model.

The Christmas Tradition: 2015

I've written before about our family's tradition of buying a Hallmark Christmas ornament for each member of the family (here and here). Sadly, our local Hallmark store closed shortly after Christmas 2013, meaning that the annual trip to the mall has been replaced by the annual visit to Hallmark.com. I don't much care for the mall, but it's not nearly as fun to buy the ornaments online.

We bought our ornaments a little earlier this year. Last year we waited too long and there was a shortage of the Frozen ornaments that our daughters wanted so badly. They weren't available online (another problem with not having a nearby Hallmark store), so my mother in San Diego did her grandmotherly duty and harassed every Hallmark store in her area until she could get a couple.

Hallmark has continued the line of Star Trek characters that started with Captain Kirk in 2010. Although I'm not particularly enthusiastic about any of the Original Series characters besides Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty, I'm still a hopeless collector. Of course I bought Sulu last year and Uhura this year. And I can guarantee that I'll be buying Chekov next year.

Unlike the past few years, which have had some rather mediocre Star Wars ornaments, this year has some pretty good ones. I ended up buying Kylo Ren; Episode VII's mysterious Sith lord. There were several other Star Wars ornaments that I would have loved to get (especially the Y-Wing), but I'm not quite willing to spend $15 to $30 each on even more ornaments that will sit in a box for 11 months out of each year.

As usual, the children were allowed to choose their own ornaments. And again, I'm proud of the oldest daughter's choice. Two years ago, she was the one who chose the Bilbo Baggins ornament. She still loves The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, so of course she wanted Smaug this year.

If only the other children had such good taste.

The Christmas Tradition Continues

A few years ago I mentioned our family's annual tradition of going to the Hallmark Store and buying ornaments for the Christmas tree. This year, as usual, we put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving and went to buy the new ornaments on Saturday. Although this is our usual time to buy them, we were surprised to find that a couple ornaments we wanted were sold out. Fortunately, the store allowed us to buy the display models (they even had the boxes in their store room) and a crisis was averted.

In 2010 I bought Captain Kirk, who was the first in the series. The next year I got Spock and the year after that I bought Doctor McCoy. Predictably, this year's ornament ended up being Scotty. As fate would have it, Scotty was one of the ornaments that had been sold out. Our theory is that a) the original Star Trek series isn't popular enough to justify stocking a lot of them and/or b) the unusual number of engineers living in our area means that there are a lot of geeks around that want to have the Chief Engineer of the USS Enterprise on their tree.

Having already hung Kirk, Spock, and McCoy on our tree the day before, and being one of those engineers that idolizes Starfleet's "Miracle Worker", I had to get Scotty even if it was the display model. Fortunately the model looked like it had just come out of the box and I went home a happy Trekkie.

Except for our youngest, who still thinks everything that falls into his hands is supposed to go into his mouth, each kid was allowed to choose his or her own ornament (while Bride of Atomic Spud decided that the youngest wanted Spider-Man). Our oldest daughter's choice received my enthusiastic approval:

Our daughter finished The Hobbit last year when I promised to take her to the movies if she read the novel first. She loved the book, loved An Unexpected Journey, and can't wait to see The Desolation of Smaug. When we reached the Hallmark Store there was absolutely no hesitation on her part; she walked directly to the display and immediately grabbed the first Bilbo Baggins ornament she saw.

My wife often worries that our daughter will have a hard time in junior high.

A Christmas Tradition

Today we took the family to the mall to fulfill an annual Christmas tradition. We went to the Hallmark store where we each bought a Christmas tree ornament. Okay, so I got two, but I paid for one from my own allowance. As per tradition, I bought a Star Wars and a Star Trek ornament.

The tradition started years ago when my Grandma surprised me with a small Christmas tree covered in Star Wars and a Star Trek ornaments (Grandma has always known what I like). Since that Christmas she has added at least one ornament to my collection each year. I have significantly enlarged the collection with previous years' ornaments I found on eBay as well as my own annual purchases. Every year the collection goes up on "Daddy's tree"; a Christmas tree we keep in the basement living room just for my ornaments. The family tree (i.e., the tree we're willing to let normal people see) is kept upstairs.

This year I got Captain Kirk; the first in a promised set (I assume Spock and McCoy will follow in the next couple years). I also got Luke Skywalker in his snowspeeder flight suit. Interesting how both are shown in an action pose with a futuristic weapon in his hand. Christmas just isn't Christmas without some sort of raygun, I guess. The girls got various Disney or Barbie ornaments (I think I'll stick with my rayguns) while Son of Atomic Spud got Superman. Since Dad has his Star Wars/Star Trek theme, Mom decided the boy should have a superhero theme. I tried to convince her that he would want Star Wars and Star Trek too, but I think my motivations were too obvious. Superheroes are a good second choice, though.

Star Trek

This past Saturday my wife and I finally saw Star Trek. Now, I've been a fan of every incarnation of Star Trek since about 1990. I've seen every single episode of the five different series with the exception of a few Voyager episodes (I was on a mission in Mexico at the time). I own the two-disc special editions of all the previously released movies, all four seasons of Enterprise, and the last two seasons of Deep Space Nine. Unfortunately I'm not quite rich enough to own a whole lot more than those six seasons. I actively collect Star Trek novels. I own the official encyclopedia and the official chronology as well as the Original Series, Deeps Space Nine, and The Next Generation technical manuals. I have the Star Trek Star Charts. I even have the official blueprints of the Enterprise-D from The Next Generation. In other words, I think I'm fairly well qualified to judge J. J. Abrams' new Star Trek.

I thought it was the best Star Trek movie ever.

My wife, who didn't exactly grow up on Trek, was very impressed by it (and actually teared up during the first fifteen minutes).

The story was engaging, the characters were good (better than the originals, in fact), and the action was constant without ever dumbing down the movie. The cinematography was more dynamic than in any previous incarnation of Star Trek (this is particularly noticeable in a noteworthy scene in which the Enterprise swoops in with literally all phasers and torpedoes blazing). They even addressed the age-old complaint that all action in the Star Trek universe occurs in a single plane, with all the starships being presented as if they were sea vessels limited to the surface of the ocean rather than moving in the three dimensions of space. In one particular scene the Enterprise actually appears upside down with respect to the object on which the camera is focused. This may seem like a small detail, but it shows that the new caretakers of the franchise have been paying attention.

The film is also filled with minute details for the fans: various sound effects are cleverly modernized versions of their 1960s counterparts, quotes and paraphrases from the Original Series and its movie spinoffs can be found throughout, and there's even a reference to "Admiral Archer" and his beagle that viewers of Enterprise will find pretty funny. Since the movie was obviously designed to appeal to a larger audience than the typical Trek movie, I was pleasantly surprised to see how faithful they were to their source material.

In short, Star Trek was a great movie that seems to appeal both to Trek fans and non-fans alike, as indicated by its 95% on Rottentomatoes.com. This compares pretty favorably with The Dark Knight's 94% (let's just ignore that in my last post I said I don't usually agree with the critics). Once the closing credits appeared, my wife and I agreed that we couldn't wait for the sequels. I'd give the new Star Trek a 4.5 out of 5:

My Introduction to Star Trek

My previous post on the new Star Trek movie seemed to get comments faster than any of my previous posts. I found Desi's comment about her grandparents to be pretty funny. I guess I've never thought of anyone's grandparents being enthusiastic Star Trek fans.

I think most people know me as an enormous Star Wars fan. Although I had enjoyed the original trilogy since I was young, I didn't really get into Star Wars until Episode III came out in 2005. Only then did I start collecting the novels, comic books, Legos, etc. Long before that, I was a Star Trek fan.

My uncle enjoyed the original Star Trek series, so I saw the occasional episode while visiting my grandparents' house. When Star Trek: The Next Generation came out in '87, my best friend and his family watched it religiously. I also remember my parents watching the Next Generation series premier. However, I was never really interested in the show.

One night in 1990, while looking for something to watch on TV, I came across a rerun of the Next Generation episode Peak Performance. That's the episode where Commander Riker is commanding the U.S.S. Hathaway in wargames with the Enterprise when the Ferengi interfere. Shortly thereafter I saw what was to become one of my alltime favorite episodes, Yesterday's Enterprise. I was immediately hooked and began to watch the series regularly. The next year I saw my first Star Trek movie in the theaters, Star Trek VI (which has one of the coolest post-opening credits moments ever). By that time I had begun collecting trading cards, novels, and technical manuals. Soon I had even caught up on all the original series episodes that were shown on cable at various hours.

I never missed an episode of Trek prior to college. Unfortunately, I was deprived of Star Trek for most of my time at BYU since BYU Cable didn't get the Paramount network. The worst was that I only got to see a handful of episodes of Star Trek: Enteprise before it was cancelled (then I bought all four seasons on DVD and watched the entire series within a couple months).

With the cancellation of Enterprise and Star Trek: Nemesis' poor performance at the box office (I really liked the movie, personally) it looked like the franchise might be dead. Novels were still being published, but TV series and movies seemed to be long gone. I think it was the apparent death of Star Trek, along with the subsequent rise in the popularity of Star Wars (which seems to have reached a peak with the excellent Clone Wars cartoon series) that turned me from a casual Star Wars viewer into a fan. However, I really hope that this new Star Trek movie revives the franchise in one form or another. The more I see of the movie, the more hope I have for it.

New Star Trek Movie!

The full trailer for the new Star Trek movie is finally online. There's been some debate over what it's supposed to be about. The oldest rumors said that it was about Kirk and Spock's first adventure in Starfleet Academy. That seemed like an absolutely lousy premise to me. However, now that the still photos and full trailer are out, it seems that the events of the movie occur well after the Academy. The director (J. J. Abrams, who directed Cloverfield) and the writers say that the movie won't violate the history established by the original TV show, but a lot of what I've heard suggests that that might not be true. It doesn't really matter to me; I'm perfectly happy with a reboot ("rebooting" means to take the basic premise of an old series and to reimagine or revise it; this was done with Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Woman, and most recently with Knight Rider).

The opinion regarding casting has been fairly neutral, with most comments being along the lines of "he's a decent actor, but he doesn't look like such-and-such." However, the notion of Zachary Quinto as Spock has been taken pretty well by the Star Trek fans. Quinto has made a name for himself as Sylar on Heroes and he looks more like Leonard Nimoy than almost any other well-known actor. The Heroes fans among us will have a hard time forgetting him as the brain-stealing supervillain, though.

The images of the redesigned Enterprise have caused some controversy. Many have pointed out that it's very different from the ship on the original TV series, but that it's similar to the Enterprise refit from the movies. Now I know that normal people can't see the difference between the Enterprise in the '60s show and the Enterprise in the new movie, but trust me, the nerds can tell the difference (the deflector dish glows, the primary hull connects farther back on the secondary hull, the secondary hull undercut is much longer, the front end of the warp nacelles/Bussard collectors is totally different...). I actually like the design, which makes me somewhat of a Trek heretic.


The photos of the new Enterprise bridge have also had a mixed reception. It's certainly not the cardboard and plywood set of the TV show, but some have criticized it as looking like it was made for a Galaxy Quest sequel. Again, I quite like the new bridge's look.


Anyway, I'm really looking forward to this movie. The rest of the Star Trek fan base seems to be divided: some are cautiously optimistic while others are bitterly pessimistic, slouching in front of the computer in their parents' basement and posting on Star Trek-themed bulletin boards about how Trek lost it's way sometime during The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine. These are the same whiners whose lack of support allowed Star Trek Enterprise to get cancelled a few years back (yes, I'm still bitter about it).