A couple of times a week, not really often enough, I walk a three-mile course on the treadmill. This is not very exciting by itself, so I generally use the time to watch or rewatch something.

Tonight, it was the last significant Klingon episode of Classic Trek, Jerome Bixby’s “Day of the Dove”.

This is a story that actually starts out somewhat promising. Indeed, for most of the first 20 minutes or so, I thought perhaps the rather low opinion my memory held for it must have been mistaken. There’s a real mystery, coupled with the longstanding distrust between humans and Klingons to build tension. Michael Ansara’s Kang shows hints of the kind of Klingon we’re more used to from TNG and after. We even get a glimpse of the Klingon’s rather tangled gender relations, with the appearance of Kang’s wife and science officer, Mara.

Unfortunately, that’s right about when someone–the director, I presume–started telling Shatner he wasn’t chewing the scenery enough. Continue Reading »

Star Trek is, of course, a world full of ubiquitous computing, although it’s rarely portrayed in those terms exactly. We see communicators, tricorders, flat-panel displays everywhere…and, for portable information access and messaging, the PADD.

Of course, these are really all just non-functional props. But the ideas behind them have long-since fired the imagination of real-world engineers. Communicators have already completely infiltrated our real-world lives–we call them cellphones. Flat panel displays are now so common it’s getting hard to remember when televisions took up significant cubic volume and not just rectangular area. Tricorders…well, we’ve got a way to go on that one, because we’re nowhere near the necessary technology for that kind of magical scanning. But they’re working on it.

PADDs, however, are in reach of our real-world technology, and the iPad seems to be consciously trying to make them a reality. The way PADDs have been portrayed, even as far back as Classic Trek¹ gives us some insight, I believe, into how Apple envisions the iPad being used.

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[This was begun before the release; hence the now slightly outdated time reference]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

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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.

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