Trek Novels - Star Trek - The Captain's Table Book One: War Dragons

Well, it’s another day and another Star Trek novel. This one is a little special though. Today’s post is the start at a look at an anthology series that was released throughout 1998 called “The Captain’s Table.” The basic premise is that there is a special bar called The Captain’s Table and captains of all sorts come and relax for a bit. Six books looked at  the different captains  at that time. There are even a couple of surprises in there if you don’t know who I’m talking about. Obviously, there isn’t one for Enterprise (this early series anyway), so just look to my The Good That Men Do review for that goodness. I’m going to try to look each book during the next few months.

Today’s book is called War Dragons and features Captain James T. Kirk and surprisingly, Captain Hikaru Sulu. The writers are Julia Ecklar and Karen Rose Cercone. They did the book under the pseudonym of L.A Graf. The two, as well as a third writer, came together to write different Trek books. Now, the book actually has two timelines for a bit.  The first is right after the TOS episode, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” while the other timeline takes place between the fifth and sixth movie.

Star Trek: The Captain’s Table – War Dragons

Author(s): L.A.Graf

BRIEF BLURB: Captains Kirk and Sulu visit a bar at the Utopia Planitia colony on Mars. There, they tell the patrons about their dealings with the Nykkus and Anjiri, a race of space pirates.

Favorites - My Random (though not perfect) Star Trek Crew

Since this is Star Trek’s 50 anniversary, it’s finally time to make this post. I have other posts planned for the next few months and this is one of them.

Over six shows, 13 movies (I’m counting Star Trek Beyond too), and a crapton of novels, we’ve been shown a lot of officers. We’ve had some good ones and a couple of okay ones. I doubt we’ve had any bad crew members unless you count Harry Kim. Personally, he’s alright but he’s definitely not on this list. Some have braved the vastness of space and have done some cool things. Others just did their job and they were good at that. I can say one thing about the many crews: they were at least good at their jobs. You can’t always say that in real life.

So, here is my ultimate Trek crew. I know that folk online have done this, so I’ll try to do my own spin on this. By the way, some of these may not be my favorite characters from the show. They may not even be the best at their certain job. I also wondered what team-ups or pairings would be interesting. I’m also not going to crowd it with just one crew. I could do that easily, but that wouldn’t be fair to the other shows. I do think each show has at least one character that would be on a list like this. So, if I was Admiral Williams of Starfleet (played by Tony Todd or Michael Dorn for cool reasons), who would I want to head a crew that’s heading into that final frontier we call space?

Random Thoughts On... A Black James Bond? – An Opinion

‘Sup, guys. I think it’s time for something a little different on the Random Boat of Randomness. So, I recently watched Spectre a couple of weekends ago. I have to admit that it left me a little cold. I wouldn’t say it was bad, but something did feel lacking. I don’t know if it was the direction or the story, but it felt off especially towards the end. Since Daniel Craig has hinted that he may be done with Bond, the look for another woman-loving, butt-kicking, alcohol-drinking dude is probably on right now. A few names have been tossed here and there. 

One thing that has been a bit of a thing for the last few years is the idea of a black man as James Bond or a James Bond who happens to be black. Take your pick. I thought about talking about this here a few years ago, but I didn’t know what to say on the matter. In a way, I still don’t know what to say. As you can tell, that’s something I’m really good at doing. Just ask anyone I know. Would something like this be possible? Should it even happen? My answer is yes… and no. I’ll go into why below.

"It's a Video Game!" - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 - The Sith Lords

So, I’ve finally finished this game. It was a long ride. I had originally found KOTOR 2 at this game store in Columbia. I played it for a while until I found its predecessor at McKay’s. I put KOTOR 2 on the backburner and went on to play and finish the first game. After I was done with it, I started over with KOTOR 2 and eventually finished it. Was it worth it all? I’ll get to that below. By the way, I’m talking about the original Xbox version of KOTOR 2. I know there’s a more modern version floating out there, so I just want to stop the confusion here.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 – The Sith Lords was released for the Xbox during December 2004 by Lucasarts. It’s an action-RPG game that takes place five years after the events from the last game. Obsidian Software handled the development of the game instead of Bioware this time. Bioware wanted to center on its own original ideas, so they handed it over to Obsidian to develop. It also got good praise and reviews at that time. Like its predecessor, you get to build your own character from the ground up with his/her own set of skills and powers. You still can’t mess with the looks all that much though. At least that level cap is gone!

Still no similarity. Just call him “Random Black Jedi/Sith #2!”

In the game, you play as an exiled Jedi General from the Mandalorian Wars. The Exile (in my case, Kirok Vulcanos) had been in hiding for about 10 years and missed the events of the first game. The Jedi have also been wiped out by the re-emerging Sith during this time as well. You wake up a med ward at a fuel depot on Peragus. After a long while, you and your new companions head to Telos IV, a planet that’s being rebuilt. You find out about another Jedi being on the planet and after that horrible interaction (seriously, Atris is one… witch), you’re off on a mission to find the remaining Jedi and face the Sith. You and your companions face all sorts of calamity and twists will await you. This is Star Wars after all.

Well, it's either "I wear my sunglasses at night" or Geordi LaForge needs to step aside.

Turtle Tracks - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Season 1

You know, it’s been a while since I’ve talked about anything related to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Let’s change that, shall we?

By now, the newest movie has come out. The word of mouth has been a little mixed from fans. I know it’s not a good film, so I’ll just wait this time. Besides, there are other movies to look forward to. A long time ago, I said I wasn’t going to comment much on the original tv show. It was mostly because I had no access to the original series at that time. I am a fan the franchise, but I’m not going to go out and get everything with them in it. Besides, I think I had enough TMNT toys from back in the day to fill some sort of chest. Too bad I don’t have them now.

This kind of changed a couple of years ago when I found the DVD to TMNT’s first season. TMNT’s first season is a short one. It only consisted of five episodes and it was first aired in syndication in 1987. I guess the episode run for the season was so short so they could see how it would do, I’m not sure. Of course, I wasn’t watching the show at that time. I didn’t start to watch the show until it aired on CBS. I do remember seeing these batch of episodes on VHS. The whole season was also cut to be a feature length movie and I used to rent that at Jitney Jungle. It didn’t include the third episode for some reason though.

The season pretty much where it all began with the Turtles. We get their origin and their first meeting with April O’Neill. She’s gets accosted while reporting on the Foot Clan, Splinter’s old ninja clan, and they save her. By they way, Splinter is Hamato Yoshi here instead of being Yoshi’s pet rat. As the mutagen changed the turtles, it turned him into a rat. Afterwards, they get involved with saving her from the Foot Clan which is being led by the Oroku Saki, the Shredder. He’s also in league with Krang, an alien from Dimension X who wants to rule the Earth. The rest of the season involves the Turtles trying to stop Shredder and Krang from doing this.