My previous former life

My first job out of college was working for a UK-based Defence Contractor, where I was involved in a very small way in the development of Avionics for the Experimental Aircraft Programme (EAP), a technology demonstrator for the Eurofighter Typhoon.

Here is a video of the beautiful beast in flight.  Here is a more detailed description of the plane and its systems. Here is a rather nice write-up on the plane. Here is another.

“We worked all hours, we could be in until midnight and then back in at 6.30am, it was hard work but it was satisfying. You knew you were at the start of something really special, what we created was the forefather of the next generation of flight“

Boldly going… nowhere

Star Trek: Beyond Review

I am an old-time star Trek fan. My childhood was filled with re-runs of the original series (Kirk, Spock, Bones and the ever-expendableEnsign Ricky Redshirt), and I grew up “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. So I decided to pay out good money to see “Star Trek Beyond” (shouldn’t there be a semi-colon in there somewhere?) in the theater.

Beyond Star Trek

I can’t say that I was that impressed. Star Trek was all about the future of humanity. About Optimism. About where we are headed. And if this is where we are headed, then the future looks disappointing indeed. The Star Trek universe used to be filled with adventurers, and explorers, and feats of derring-do. Aside from the few “hero” characters in the movie, most of the crew and almost all civilians have become hedonistic sheep, wandering about, having a good time, and doing the 24th-century equivalent of staring at their iPhones every thirty seconds. It is no surprise that the Bridge of the Enterprise looks a lot like an Apple store.

Having said all that, this is a great action movie, and a fun enough romp for grown-ups. But it is not really a Star Trek movie: there are more fistfights than starship battles, and the philosophical moments resemble an infomercial for a “let’s-all-be-friends” brand of pacifistic globalism. The stunts are “oh-come-on” unrealistic, and the characters are “oh-come-on” invincible. And Dr McCoy still has a potty mouth. Physician, heal thyself.

Perhaps the most poignant moment for me was right at the end. This movie was dedicated to Leonard Nimoy – the original Spock – who passed away earlier this year, and “For Anton“, which I later found out was Anton Yelchin, the actor who played Ensign Pavel “Wictor-Wictor” Chekhov, who died in an accident shortly after the movie was completed. Chekhov, the word is given. Warp Speed.

The Final Final Frontier

The Star Trek reboot has been a jolly enough jape, but at fifty years of age, it is time to put the franchise out to pasture. I don’t think that I will be seeing another Star Trek movie, and I will be avoiding Paramount in future. Not only because this movie fails to live up to the true spirit of Star Trek, but because the Executives at Paramount have gone back on the creator’s word. Gene Roddenberry used to say that “Star Trek belongs to the fans“; he welcomed Fan fiction. But Paramount recently issued a directive that said, among other things, that Fan films should not be more than fifteen minutes in length, and cannot include any known Star Trek actors), and their suing of the creators of the fan film “Star Trek: Axanar” has left a bad taste in my mouth.

And for that reason, if nothing else, I regret seeing “Star Trek Beyond”