Because he’s in love.

YouTube – Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain, why is he climbing a mountain?.

I have only seen a couple mentions lately about the television project, Boldy Going Nowhere by Charley Day, Rob McElhenney and their fellow It’s Always Sunny in Philadephia crew.  (Hi Glenn)

Announced last year, Boldly Going Nowhere is  a sci-fi show set on a  spaceship and, according to Variety, is a “high-concept comedy set in the future and focused on the mundane world of a spaceship captain when he’s not on a mission.”  But according to Comic Mix,  “McElhenny, Day and Howerton do not consider the series as science fiction, but rather a unique twist on the workplace sitcom.”

David Hornsby, who Sunny fans know as Rickety Cricket, stars in the show along with Arrested Development’s Tony Hale (who plays a character named Robot).

I would just like to say…for the record…that this project sounds a lot like a project idea I submitted to Paramount during a Star Trek screenwriting contest a few years back.  I called it Star Trek: The Night Crew, which is a half hour sci-fi comedy about the “Second Stringer” crew that works the helm of the Enterprise when the primary characters are off duty.  Instead of fighting the Klingons they have to deal with mundane everyday problems like the ship’s toilets getting backed up or the Captain’s chair getting a stain on it.  The last thing they want to do is ever have to call a RED ALERT and wake up the Captain and the first string crew.

As for Boldly Going Nowhere, apparently a pilot was made and they weren’t all too thrilled so Fox ordered a second pilot and brought in heavyweight Larry Charles (Borat, Bruno, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm) to presumably make it better (and possibly more Sci-Fi-ey).

Where is it now?   Unfortunately according to io9, Glenn Howerton, doesn’t really know if this “pet project” will ever see the light of day.   Hey guys…if you’re stuck…I have a few ideas

Boldly Going Nowhere 2009 TV.

I came across a post by Matt Bailey called Analytics According to Captain Kirk.  In it, he points out that in Star Trek, the Enterprise has a crew of 430 in its original five-year mission. 80 episodes were produced, during which 59 crewmembers were killed (13.7% of the crew).

* Yellow-shirt crewperson deaths: 6 (10%)
* Blue-Shirt crewperson deaths: 5 (8 %)
* Engineering smock crewperson deaths: 4 (6%)
* Red-Shirt crewperson deaths: 43 (73%)  <<< RED SHIRTS ARE EXPENDABLE!!!

from the Star Trek Inspirational Posters site.

In Philip K. Dick’s novel, “Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep” (the book on which the film “Blade Runner” was based), technology has advanced to the point that humans can build very realistic-looking (and acting) synthetic animals and androids.  Some of the androids escape and walk among the human population undetected, which is against the law.  The main character, Rick Deckard, is a bounty hunter who is charged with hunting down rogue androids and, um, “retiring” them.

In the novel, the latest and greatest androids are practically indistinguishable from humans in any way.  No white-blooded Data-skin R2-D2 droids here, Deckard is a one-man death panel and has to ensure they are NOT humans before he can, gulp, “retire” them.  Which leads the book to explores the issue: What does it mean to be human?  It drills to the very core of human thoughts, emotions, religion and morality.

Unlike humans, the androids possess no empathic sense.  They have no emotions at all, and some are not even aware they’re NOT human.  This makes for some interesting reading, which is probably one reason why Philip K. Dick’s writings were the basis of Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck and many other films.  He’s got the steak and the sizzle.

So how do you tell if someone has no empathy?  You have them watch something like this and you watch them very carefully for empathetic reactions:

If they didn’t start crying, they’re most likely a robot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZtU676jA_k

Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser.   Of course, you remember in Star Trek IV, Scotty traded the formula for  ‘Transparent aluminium’ to get the plexiglass needed to store the humpback whales in the Klingon Bird of Prey.  But the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.

“What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,” said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. “Transparent aluminium is just the start…which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.”

Transparent aluminium is ‘new state of matter’.

Stewart Moss deserved an Emmy for this scene from Star Trek – The Naked Time.

As Captain Kirk will show you in this clip, it’s important to re-affirm your identity.

YouTube – I’m Captain Kirk!.

YouTube – How to kiss a woman by Captain Kirk.

In 1988 there was a movie called Alien Nation that starred James Caan about Earth’s first contact with an alien civilization. In the film, and later the television series of the same name, the aliens, known as “Newcomers”, are first quarantined but are later integrated into human civilization, only become the victims of a new type of discrimination.

The fundamental premise of District 9 is very similar.  In a not-so-distant past, an alien ship appeared hovering over South Africa.  The ship’s inhabitants are lobster-like creatures who don’t seem to be all that bright, and their ship (along with much their technology) is disabled.  We aren’t told why or how.

The aliens are brought out of the ship into Johannesburg, where they are segregated from humans and regarded as savages.  These are not cute E.T.’s or furry A.L.Fs; they’re loathsome.  Unlike the squeaky clean happy future of Star Trek, these aliens scavenge like roaches for cans of cat food and evoke so little sympathy the humans call them bottom-feeding “prawns”.

All of this is told in a mockumentary format through interviews and hand-held COPS-like shaky cam footage (which got a bit tedious at a few points).   The main story begins 20 or so years after their arrival as a private company named MNU is tasked with relocating the aliens from District 9 to a new internment camp (District 10) which is hundreds of kilometers away from the city.

We follow a hapless MNU bureaucrat tasked with heading up the relocation as his team enters District 9 and they begin literally a door-to-door eviction process.  Of course, the company has sinister motives, and the aliens have their secrets too (this is a summer blockbuster movie, right?)

Why are they here?  Why can’t they leave?  Why do they have weapons but they don’t seem to use them?  All of these questions (and dozens more) started pouring through my mind and I found myself quickly immersed inside this dirty, grotesque District 9.  It really sucks you in quickly and doesn’t let you go until it’s over.

I’m hesitant to give away much more than that, because part of the fun of the movie is not really knowing where all of this is headed.   Will the aliens rise up against the humans?   Do they come to form an understanding?  What of this superior yet seemingly defunct technology?

As the questions mount, so does the excitement.  It has elements of Enemy Mine, Independence Day, Alien Nation, and the Alien films.   But if you felt duped by Signs or War of the Worlds, you can go into this film confident that it won’t leave you with the SciFi equavelent of blue balls.  District 9 pays off.