[This was begun before the release; hence the now slightly outdated time reference]

With the release of Star Trek Online due tomorrow, we’re currently working through the Head Start period. This is the second phase of “bonus” time for pre-order cusotmers, the first being the Open Beta period that ended on 26 January.

The good news is that I’ve found a great deal about the general user experience has improved significantly. Controls work more smoothly, and rarely fail to work when expected.  The GUI has been cleaned up and streamlined a bit, to good effect. I haven’t once materialized on a planet as a starship, or in space as a person, since toward the end of the Beta. I’ve seen far less rubber-banding and other such network and server lag effects.

The bad news is that the game is still not as polished as it really should be with general release less than 24 hours away. The other bad news is that there’s still whole areas of potential Star Trek content that are either missing or just not done in a convincing way.

That said, I plan to keep on playing, as much to see how it evolves as anything else. Read on for more details after the jump.

Continue Reading »

I have a number of fellow geek friends who are deeply distressed by the current trend in computerized gadgetry, in particular, the iPhone and the much rumoured, but, as of this writing, still entirely vapourware Apple tablet device.

Myself, I think it’s pretty much where the industry’s been heading since the day the first truly retail home computers hit the market, and more to the point, I think it’s exactly what they should be doing.

Continue Reading »

From the day I first heard they were going to do a Star Trek-based MMO, I knew two things: firstly, that whoever dared attempt such a thing was extremely brave; and secondly, that I would almost certainly be plunking down my cash to see how it came out. Because, let’s face it: while I’ve gone through periods of denial, debunking, and disenchantment, I am, at heart, still a Trekkie¹.

What I did not know was whether it would actually be good, meaning both a fun MMO to play, and decent Star Trek lore.

And now? I’m afraid I still don’t know. Not for sure. There’s a lot of potential here. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and I’m definitely  still rooting for it. I’m subscribing when the release comes up in a couple of weeks.

But the game shows signs of not having quite enough resources spent on its development, which means that I don’t think it will truly be release-quality on release day. Of course, these days, nothing is. It doesn’t bother me, personally, but I know it will turn off a lot of people, which could affect the long-term viability of the game.

Continue Reading »

I would love to be able to tell you that “The End of Time, Part 2″ redeemed the flaws of Part 1, not only pulling all the right rabbits out of the right hats but giving us a perfect send-off for an extremely popular and successful Doctor. Sadly, I can’t. On the other hand, I don’t have to say it was a steaming pile, either, because it wasn’t.

It was, in the end, the same sort of mixed bag Part 1 was. It was a little more solid, which continues RTD’s pattern of having shaky setups followed by better (but not always spectacular) pay-offs. But really, it was more of the same, for good and for ill, and overall, I think I’m disappointed.

RTD did succeed in handling two key parts in ways that completely surprised me. I’m still trying to decide if I like the surprises, but I like the fact that I was surprised.

Continue Reading »

Today on Twitter there’s a tag-meme, #10yearsago. It’s not all that unexpected, given that we’re coming up on another round-number year, but it has special significance to many, because, of course, in 2000, there was a chance that we were facing the End of the World as we Knew It™.

We were wrong, of course, but not far wrong. The disaster we all expected never came to pass, but 21 months later, a different chain of events really did sort of change the shape of our world rather significantly.

But I digress.

On the off chance that someone reading this was living on a desert island that year, or was simply too young to remember, here’s a quick summary of what was generally called the Y2K problem:

Continue Reading »

The good news is that “The End of Time, Part 1″ is noticeably better than the first half of the Series 4 finale, “The Stolen Earth”. Of course, the problem is that “The Stolen Earth” was a steaming pile of cat feces, so improving on that standard is simply not very difficult.

The bad news is that, as fun as “The End of Time, Part 1″, it isn’t as good as it ought to be. Russel T. Davies has proven time and again (most recently, I’m told, with Torchwood: “Children of Earth”, which everybody seems to rave about), that he actually knows how to write in a non-clunky, non-fanwanky way. And yet, when it comes to Doctor Who finales, he continues to fall back on clunky, contrived, fanwanky writing.

That said, RTD does make good on something he was quoted as saying about this story. In an interview, RTD had said that this story was going to be “huge and epic, but also intimate.” When I first read that, I twitched, because it sounded like a salesman trying to convince us that his product is all things to all people, which never works out.

So I was pleased to discover that he actually succeeded at crafting a story that manages to be both things at the same time.

Continue Reading »

And so, it begins.

And what, exactly is it?

For a start, the name is a revival of an older, Slashdot-style weblog I ran for a short while focusing on fantasy and science fiction.

While that’s still the site’s focus, it will be more particularly focused, at least for the moment, on my own sometimes-informed opinions about the subject. This will largely take the form of reviews, but there will be other opinionated comment as well.

Continue Reading »