neurological dryer lint

over on 'teh wack' mike mentioned something about the protesting at paramount about enterprise's cancellation. it really is a total shame about that. people are saying 'man, just when the series was getting good' and that's not an exaggeration - the storylines, writing, and imagination have been fantastic this season (with the exclusion of the lame nazi-alien storyline). it's been primarily due to the work of manny coto, a writer/producer they brought on this season with some excellent ideas. the mini-arcs are really entertaining and work well in the trek universe - the good storylines are too complex to wrap up in an hour. the vulcan revolution series was decent, but the gems were the the 'augment' episodes (with brent spiner) and the andorian/aenar series...

but last night (and the week before) they had a two week klingon series that creatively just shined and showcased manny's mad skills. i'll explain a bit.

ever watch the original series? notice how the klingons look?



and then you watch TNG, DS9, etc. and the klingons don't look the same:



yeah, yeah, different time period, better makeup effects, etc. they even joke about it in a DS9 episode, one of the characters notices the difference between Worf and a klingon from the original series era, and Worf says something about how "it's not something they talk about with outsiders." that's how writers would pass something like that off, right?

manny is better than that. so they produce this arc on Enterprise - these two episodes deal with how a klingon general (played by James 'Uncle Phil' Avery from Fresh Prince, incidentally, who is a frickin great klingon) is using the human augment (genetically modified humans with better strength and intelligence, i.e. Khan) DNA to produce klingon augments, except the experiment creates a virus that starts killing klingons en masse. Enterprise's doctor develops a cure for the disease - which happens to change klingons and make them look like the original series dudes in appearance. the cure leaves them at that stage, and genetically it takes a few generations to restore the klingon race back to normal.

genius! the man creates a great, dramatic storyline, and uses a discrepancy in the series history and not only comes up with a creative, original way to address it but makes it really entertaining in the process. this guy is the trek fan's dream, a guy who's writing for the hardcore fans instead of the network or the lowest common denominator.

the guy that made babylon 5 wants to do a trek show now, which might be quality. if they ever have trek on TV again in my lifetime, manny frickin coto needs to write for them. the man is brilliant.

i just reread all that. about two of you will understand any of it, because you're a trek fan or i've made you watch it before. you can ignore this otherwise, which i'm sure you did when you saw the word 'klingon' in the post.

listening to: ludacris + sum 41 - get back (remix)