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Since the story didn't even bother linking to the online episode and there are no obvious links anywhere that I could find...

http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/33_full_episode/

The writer maintains a blog where he answers questions from viewers, such as why 33 minutes?

I found it very interesting.

I'm guessing you mean The Andromeda Strain, not Hercules in Space. :)

The Stars My Destination or TIGER TIGER (Tiger Tiger was the translation of the name of the book into Russian)

I posted this somewhere above, but I wouldn't want anyoen to miss out. If you've even a passing interest in synesthesia, read this story. It's rather awesome.

If you've even a passing interest in synesthesia, read This story. It's rather awesome.

Remember the old days, when OMNI magazine was about science? Then it started turning into a persistent hawker of crackpottery. Even the fiction lost its edge and got lugubriously spooky.

And the Sci-Fi channel. About sci-fi, before it became All Vampires, All the Time. It's pulled back a bit, maybe.

To me, this story, along with this one. are the tip of the Slashdot woo-woo iceberg.

But hey. Anything for click-through, huh?

Obviously you didn't watch last night's episode of Battlestar Galactica...

I've read a lot of interesting solutions in this thread. Some might even be feasible. But like the music and movie industries, no one will try any of them until it's too late. Which it may be already.

I think it's ironic that one of the most celebrated sci-fi shows right now is written by a Star Trek writer who gave up on that franchise. Battlestar Galactica is written by Ron Moore (among others), and his background is Trek (DS9, I think). He was clearly disillusioned -- in a video interview on the BSG site, he talks about working on Trek and how he couldn't see any reason to do any more sci-fi, unless he could actually do something new with it. That sounds like a nice high-minded goal -- until you realize the implication is that Trek was driving him nuts with stale storylines.

It's no wonder that BSG has all the elements I loved of the original Star Trek: lots of sex; great space battles; tension and trouble for the crew; sometimes crap technology that makes things difficult or worse for the crew; and real drama. There is so much sex in BSG, I almost half-expect to see a green bellydancer. And it wouldn't surprise me at all to see Starbuck get her in bed. What I like about BSG, and this was also true of Farscape, is that it feels like a space world I can relate to. People act imperfectly. They disagree. Bad things happen. Getting past a bad thing can take more than one episode, and even if it's overcome, people will refer to it and learn from it, in future episodes.

I think the fans should take note: when the writers of Trek leave and start kicking Trek's ass with infinitely better shows, it's time to move on.

Is that what the documentary implied?

Oh, no, no way. The question came in in a piece of fanmail. Bamber & Callis found it "a little too amusing".

I think both of their characters are supposed to be pretty straight. Baltar certainly appears to be, although I've heard pathological sexual addiction such as his attributed to repressed homosexuality. I cannot, however, see the Suits thinking on that level.

Apollo is IMHO in considerable danger, over the long term, of being nailed by Starbuck. You hide & watch, and give 'em a couple years to fly together and run out of subplots. They'll probably get stranded somewhere, this worked for Worf & Ezri, and Janeway & Paris, and Hawkeye & Houlihan, and (almost but not quite) Picard & Crusher, and...

HMmmm... I wonder if any BSG:TOS fanfic ever paird up Apollo and Starbuck...

How often does this documentary air?

I dunno. I caught it when Sci-Fi was rerunning the miniseries/pilot.
Maybe you might get it from BitTorrent? It's the sort of thing the Suits shouldn't object to being passed around, I would think, but then, I don't think like Suits.
You might find some of it here.

...they were stupid and stopped to help some one. won't make that mistake again.

If you can regard stopping to get hijacked by Claudia Black(can't link directly to her photo) as "a stupid mistake we won't need to repeat", I'm sorry, I can't help you. I'd rather wait in line for a chance to get beat up by her. 'Prometheus Unbound' has to rank as THE best SG-1 episode I've ever seen (not that that's really an extensive statistical sample, YMMV).

Damn. Farscape DVDs go for about $90 a season.

How long before we have a BG Technical Guide like the one for Classic ST?

While you're waiting, you can read this.

It's too bad Ron Moore wasn't involved with Enterprise, because Moore could have turned Enterprise into a potentially great series. :-(

On what might have been, Moore posted his interesting view on Enterprise (and Star Trek in general) at his blog:

Trek goes back to the Fans

Now that Enterprise has been cancelled, we're about to enter a period not seen since the orignal series ended its run just a few weeks before Apollo 11 landed on the moon: a time without a Star Trek film or TV project on the horizon. From the reaction I've seen thus far, the consensus view seems to be that this is merely a pause in the trek, and that before too long, we'll be talking about the newest take on Roddenberry's universe, be it television, feature, animation or sock puppet. I tend to agree, insofar as I know first hand that Viacom considers "the Franchise" to be one of their crown jewels and I've personally heard them refer to the "next fifty years of Star Trek" as a corporate priority.

So Star Trek isn't dead and it isn't dying. It has, however, entered into an interregnum, a pause in the treadmill of overlapping productions that have become the norm for the series that was once considered "too cerebral for television."

Certainly there is sadness in this news. There has been a Star Trek production either in prep or being filmed on Stages 8 & 9 on the Paramount lot since 1977, when Star Trek: Phase Two began initial construction for a second series featuring all the original characters but Spock (these sets were then revamped for Star Trek: The Motion Picture). An entire infrastructure has been built around the productions, staffed by people whose involvement in the Franchise goes back over two decades. The dedication, passion, and talent of these artisans and craftsmen cannot be overstated. The unsung heroes of Trek, the people who sweat every detail, who take the time to think through continuity and try to make the vast universe consistent, people like Mike and Denise Okuda, Dave Rossi, Michael Westmore, Herman Zimmerman, Bob Blackman, and many others, are about to leave and take with them an enormous body of knowledge and talent that cannot be and will not be replicated again. That is cause for both tears and eulogies as the close of Enterprise signals the true end of an era.

However, there is another side of this story, one that perhaps is somewhat more hopeful and positive: Star Trek has now been returned to the care of its community of fans.

I say returned because there was a time when the fans were the exclusive owners and operators of what would later become the Franchise. From 1969 until 1979, a genuine grassroots movement of fans gathered together in conventions, published newsletters (in the primordial ooze of the pre-internet era, no less), wrote scads of fan fiction, created their own props and uniforms, and dreamed the dream of what it was to live aboard the good ship Enterprise.

I was one of those fans; I was a kid growing up in the 1970's who found Star Trek in strip syndication and bought every book and magazine I could lay my hands on and every piece of fan merchandise I could con my parents into buying and I can tell you that some of those efforts were abysmal and some were brilliant, but all of them were driven by a sense of passion rooted in a belief that Trek was our secret club. We, the fans, embroidered the Trek tapestry while the powers that be at Paramount dawdled. In those years, the best stories told not those written by Gene or any other "professional writers" (no offense to the short-lived, but well intentioned animated series), but by people like Sondra Marshak, Myrna Culbreath, and Jacqueline Lichtenberg. Who are they? Fans. People who loved Star Trek and were able to breath life into it during the interregnum between the show and the Franchise.

Star Trek now returns to the care of its fans and its fans can decide for themselves what kind of experie

Check out this story about household objects with increased intelligence and wireless comms ability grouping up, combining into "blebs" with "surprising levels of Turingosity".

Yeah... Captain Archer makes one ugly woman!

A funny short story about emergent behavior that I found on Boing Boing today.

I was browsing del.icio.us from a link in today's Bittorrent article, and I found a highly relevant story, And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon by Paul Di Filippo. Read it, and beware!

Paul Difilippo wrote an excellent short story about what might happen when household items are able to network.

The fact that I encountered blebs everywhere did nothing to reassure me or lessen what I now realize had become a mania. And a lonely mania at that. No one else seemed concerned about these accidental automatons. There was no official Bleb Patrol, no corps of bounty hunters looking to take down rogue Segways driven by Xerox machines. (I saw such a combo once.) Everyone seemed as blithely indifferent to these runaway products as Cody was.

The Volition Bug was launched anonymously from a site somewhere in a Central Asian republic. It propagated wirelessly among all the WiFi-communicating chipped objects, installing new directives in their tiny brains, directives that ran covertly in parallel with their normal factory-specified functions. Infected objects now sought to link their processing power with their nearest peers, often achieving surprising levels of Turingosity, and then to embark on a kind of independent communal life. Of course, once the Volition Bug was identified, antiviral defenses--both hardware and software--were attempted against it. But VB mutated ferociously, aided and abetted by subsequent hackers.

This calls to mind Paul Di Filippo's short story And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon, set in the near future. The premise is that the integration of RFID, high-powered microprocessors, and wireless connectivity into every consumer product available is followed by the outbreak of a virus called the Volition Bug. Under its influence, everyday appliances and furniture occasionally form "blebs" which work together to achieve their unfathomable goals, and even achieve sentience.

The Volition Bug was launched anonymously from a site somewhere in a Central Asian republic. It propagated wirelessly among all the WiFi-communicating chipped objects, installing new directives in their tiny brains, directives that ran covertly in parallel with their normal factory-specified functions. Infected objects now sought to link their processing power with their nearest peers, often achieving surprising levels of Turingosity, and then to embark on a kind of independent communal life. Of course, once the Volition Bug was identified, antiviral defenses--both hardware and software--were attempted against it. But VB mutated ferociously, aided and abetted by subsequent hackers

The Volition Bug was launched anonymously from a site somewhere in a Central Asian republic. It propagated wirelessly among all the WiFi-communicating chipped objects, installing new directives in their tiny brains, directives that ran covertly in parallel with their normal factory-specified functions. Infected objects now sought to link their processing power with their nearest peers, often achieving surprising levels of Turingosity, and then to embark on a kind of independent communal life. Of course, once the Volition Bug was identified, antiviral defenses--both hardware and software--were attempted against it. But VB mutated ferociously, aided and abetted by subsequent hackers

The Volition Bug was launched anonymously from a site somewhere in a Central Asian republic. It propagated wirelessly among all the WiFi-communicating chipped objects, installing new directives in their tiny brains, directives that ran covertly in parallel with their normal factory-specified functions. Infected objects now sought to link their processing power with their nearest peers, often achieving surprising levels of Turingosity, and then to embark on a kind of independent communal life. Of course, once the Volition Bug was identified, antiviral defenses--both hardware and software--were attempted against it. But VB mutated ferociously, aided and abetted by subsequent hackers

Reminds me of 'The Real World' by Steven Utley (give it a read at http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/original s_archive/utley/utley1.html/ - see page 3). We will have to start wearing goggles to filter out the airvertising..unless of course we end up enjoying it [g]. It's just a matter of time before the technology has us there....Minority report was just a taste of what will no doubt be coming to major cities.

If your impication is that BSG isn't all that hot because it's got roughly the same number of viewers as Enterprise, then you should remember that BSG airs on the SciFi channel in the US, which has significantly less coverage than UPN does. Therefore, numbers that are great for SciFi aren't that good for UPN.

For reference, the Stargate Atlantis premiere on Sci Fi was their first ever show to break 3 million viewers (source)

From what I hear from pals, much of the interesting interface work is in ubiquitous computing. The basic notion is that we're reaching the end of the era where the computer is an appliance that you go to like a stove or a refrigerator. Instead, computers get woven more closely into everyday life, including handhelds, wearables, and smart furniture. Although today it's mainly science fiction and art projects, I'm hearing interesting stories from friends about research prototypes.

May I suggest Battlestar Galactica as an alternative. Sci-fi for grownups.

Enterprise is the first series running the risk of being cut short...if you tuned out during the first 3 seasons, you should tune in and give it a shot).

Nope, sorry, too busy watching the revamped Battlestar Galactica on SciFi.

Haven't we learned anything from the new Battlestar Galactica?

Where to start? I'll pass on some comments made about Rick Berman by David Gerrold, writer of "The Trouble with Tribbles", at a sci-fi club meeting talk. But first, you have to pay for the soup. :-j

If the last season of Enterprise made me think "let this series end soon", this season makes me want to scream "it's too late!" Let's start with ...

Fans' original expectations . Obviously I can't speak for all fans but being one of the apparently few on /. who actually watched episodes of the original Star Trek (TOS) when they originally aired (not a lot, since it was on past my bedtime, but that's of historical interest), I expect Star Trek at the least (a) be thought provoking and (b) to entertain me.

Apparently what passes for for "entertainment" these days is a steady stream of

simple (i.e., predicable) plots,
lots of explosions,
skimpy costumes,
attractive yet forgettable & talentless guest actors,
cool special effects,
banal scripts,
and not much else.

Sure, all the Star Trek series have shared these attributes as have many other popular and (relatively speaking) high quality TV series -- this is television, after all. But with such consistency? No. Well, Voyager, perhaps.

Enterprise started out well enough. Teething problems for sure but there was some interesting character development and exploration going on from episode to episode. For the first two seasons. But even then it was obvious what was happening: the powers that be decreed that more action and adventure was needed to boost the ever important ratings. And then there was season three.

And now for David Gerrold's comments at a sci-fi club meeting I attended in Philadelphia. He talked about how Rick "Vermin" took over Star Trek from when Gene Roddenberry stepped back prior to his death. I think the nickname speaks volumes especially when combined with other sources of information (xref: Inside Trek: My Secret Life with Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1930 709420/qid=1106092798/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-823530 8-0104835?v=glance&s=books)

In Deep Space 9 episode "Trials and Tribble-ations", members of the DS9 cast are edited into TOS footage of "The Trouble with Tribbles" as was done in Foresst Gump and Back to the Future. I don't recall if Gerrold had any creative input for the DS9 episode, but he did visit the shoot and enjoyed meeting the cast and crew. Cool stuff. As a derived work (or whatever the technical issue) and according to Writers Guild rules, Gerrold deserved to be paid. Berman refused. After a protracted battle involving forced arbitration through the guild, Gerrold finally received his due even though it was obvious from the start that Gerrold was in the right.

Without knowing exactly what has happened through the years, my best guess is that under Berman's stewardship, the talent and spirit of the people who have made Star Trek achieve the (relative) high quality through the years has been squandard, discarded, alienated, and/or allowed to wither away.

The single best example of why Berman must go is Star Trek: Nemesis. Oy, what a turkey. But in this interview http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2003- 02/04/11.30.film, Berman didn't understand why it flopped:

"There's no way of telling what happened, ... I'm convinced that we made a very good movie, and I'm also convinced that the movie was promoted properly."

Need I say more?

Does this mean that we are on the way to making robots that will look like this Cylon from the new Battlestar Galactica series?

Why 33 minutes?

The truth is, there's no real answer. It's just a random number that felt right when I came up with the idea that our people were under continuous, relentless attack since the end of the pilot. I wanted it to be a short interval, just long enough for them to grab a bite to eat, jump in the shower and maybe try to catch a catnap before dragging themselves back to their duty stations and begin the whole tedious, terrifying ordeal all over again.

A deeper truth is, I was never interested in coming up with an explanation for Why? Never. I mean, I suppose I could've come up with a sufficiently important-sounding bit of technobabble that would've made sense (you see, the Cylon double-talk sensors tracking the Olympic Carrier's nonsense drive signature needed 15 minutes to relay the made-up data wave through the pretend continuum, then the Cylon navigational hyper silly system needed another 10 minutes to recalculate the flux capacitor, etc.) but what would that have really added to the drama? How does explaining that 33 minute interval help our understanding of Laura's terrible moment of decision, or bring us to any greater knowledge of Dualla's search for her missing family and friends, or yield insight into Baltar's morally shattered psyche?

It doesn't, of course. The answer, however artfully it may (or may not) have been crafted can only subtract from the experience we have in watching the episode. Not knowing the how's or why's of the Cylon attack puts us in the same seat as the characters we're watching. They're in the dark, and we're in the dark. The relentless attack is unfathomable in its origin and unstoppable in its execution. It's mortality coming at you on a loop. If you only had 33 minutes before the next time you could die, what would you do? And what about the time after that? And the time after that? At a certain point, you stop caring about why it's happening, all you know is that it is happening, and it's happening to you.

So the mystery of 33 will be permanent on this show. No explanation, not even the attempt. Let it just be a number that seemed like an eternity for five long days on the battlestar Galactica.

A deeper truth is, I was never interested in coming up with an explanation for Why? Never. I mean, I suppose I could've come up with a sufficiently important-sounding bit of technobabble that would've made sense (you see, the Cylon double-talk sensors tracking the Olympic Carrier's nonsense drive signature needed 15 minutes to relay the made-up data wave through the pretend continuum, then the Cylon navigational hyper silly system needed another 10 minutes to recalculate the flux capacitor, etc.) but what would that have really added to the drama? How does explaining that 33 minute interval help our understanding of Laura's terrible moment of decision, or bring us to any greater knowledge of Dualla's search for her missing family and friends, or yield insight into Baltar's morally shattered psyche?

Showrunner Ron Moore has started a blog where he comments on each episode - here is his comment on Why 33 ?

A letter has appeared on the sci-fi forums, urging anyone who wants the serie to continue to watch it on television too, to keep the ratings of the show up. http://mboard.scifi.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=2 84022&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#284022

Ask, and ye shall receive.

Sternthal told the trade paper that the new conceit is that the computer programmer gets trapped in a cyberworld, so that the film can utilize the Internet.

Is there an analogy between this and meteors? We keep not seeing little ones until they're on us or even past us - is it the same with icebergs?

If a big section of ice were to break up, would it affect sealevel in a significant way? Even if we know these bergs won't, how much warning will we get before a a big one happens?

In Green mars a large portion of antarctica breaks up, raising Earth's sealevel by around 8 metres. Though it's not due to happen 'til 2127.

We already know what they'll find in the middle of the comet. Naquadah.

Did you see the episode of Lexx where they blew up the CRTC (and the rest of Ottawa)?

CRTC: "Protecting Canadians from themselves"

(I think that the producers of Lexx had some run-ins with the CRTC.)

And what is the cause for this newly-found belief? Battlestar Galactica. They took a well-thought-of series I barely remembered from my childhood, changed various elements of the story and cast, and made it into something interesting and current. The first two pilot episodes -- the mini-movies -- struck the same chord in me as the pilot of Stargate SG-1: the acting was good, the plotline was interesting, and the characters each had something that drew me to them, because they didn't feel like something sprung from a can.

And what is the cause for this newly-found belief? Battlestar Galactica. They took a well-thought-of series I barely remembered from my childhood, changed various elements of the story and cast, and made it into something interesting and current. The first two pilot episodes -- the mini-movies -- struck the same chord in me as the pilot of Stargate SG-1: the acting was good, the plotline was interesting, and the characters each had something that drew me to them, because they didn't feel like something sprung from a can.

Rumours has it NBC will be showing Battlestar in January...

Not NBC, SciFi, and not a rumor. http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/

There is clear evidence that the execs are getting worried about TV sharing. Recently one of the head honchos behind the new Battlestar Galactica posted to a message board appealing for users not to download the show (which is getting rave reviews in the UK/Ireland) but does not air in the US until January.

An interesting point here, is that they are not just worried about people stealing intellectual property, but they are worried that people looking at shows before they air, means that actual Nielson figures will not reflect how many people actually watch the show -- very relevent for Sci-Fi.

Link to that post:
message

I first read it in a paperback but when I saw this slashdot post, I remembered it and found it online.

Enjoy.

I thought they found it in Pegasus galaxy...

http://www.scifi.com/atlantis/

Weak; typical nerd butchboy-wannabe machines mixing it up. I'd rather see 'em gettin' down and doin' the horizontal moto-mambo than doing Road Warrior outtakes. Of course, Paul Di Fillipo already dealt with that possibility, so I guess it's no biggie.

Noo, Everyoen knows it was REALLY caused by a sadistic time-traveller