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In loving memory of the hopes I had cultivated of actually doing NaNoWriMo this year, I’ll be attempting to post at least something to atypicalreview every day of November. Two things today though, to make up for yesterday.

As those of you who will have read Jackson’s Star Trek review will one day know,¹ this year J.J. Abrams brought us a pretty impressive film. I was even able to rise above my childhood Doctor Who versus Star Trek rivalry to enjoy it. Perfectly paced, funny, exciting, moving.

It’s just out on DVD, Blu-Ray, and iTunes as well. May I caution you as an aside; do not just buy it on iTunes. It’ll cost you $25 there, but for an extra $5 you could get the blu-ray edition which comes with its own digital iTunes copy. Even if you don’t have a blu-ray player, one day you might. Think about it.

Anyhow, that’s not the point, as you may have guessed from the picture up in the top left hand corner.² What people often rightly applaud Star Trek for is its agenda of social progress and togetherness and the triumph of humanity against its base urges. The first inter-racial kiss on television. The first romance between a cyborg and an artificial intelligence.³ So it surprised me somewhat to be watching the scenes deleted from Star Trek and to find a pretty ropey scene between our hero Kirk and an Orion woman. Allow me to paraphrase:

KIRK: I’m really sorry. I realise it looks like I used you shamefully but I won’t actually come out and say that I did. I’m very awkward right now. I’m even a bit reluctant to make eye contact with you but I clearly have on several occasions in this sentence.
…pause…
You’re not Gaila, are you?

For those playing at home, that’s a joke about how all girls with green skin look the same and how Kirk can’t tell them apart. And we’re not talking about girls he’s barely met. We’re talking about girls he’s slept with. Take a moment to think about just how that’d play if, say, Kirk had the same issue but with Uhura and another girl of similar skin colour.

Luckily, it didn’t make it to the film. But not because it was in bad taste — in fact, J.J. and his crew still seem to think it’s really funny. It’s all a bit weird. How tragic that on the same day that I note that anti-robot stereotypes are on the decline, we see once again the ugly face of intergalactic racism. Truly, equal rights in genre movies is an ongoing battle.

1. Patience my children. Remember the parable of the Not Fade Away review. ↩
2. I reserve the right to one day change the layout of this website and not update this sentence. ↩
3. Well, almost-romance. Curse you, Voyager! ↩

It’s all about this crap, you see. It is a storm in a teacup, but it’s a very badly handled storm. Frankly, no matter where you’re having a storm, you probably don’t want Daryl Somers in charge. He’ll probably just slip his arm around the storm and explain to it that it’s slightly out of shot and he’d like to move it a few feet to the left.

1. To Daryl. I strongly suspect that an apology would mean more if you apologised to the people you thought might have been offended by the sketch, and not to Mr Connick Jr.¹

2. To people whinging about ‘political correctness’. Call it what you like, but it seems to me that it’s only manners to avoid pointlessly offending people.

3. To people saying that if it was acceptable years ago it’s acceptable now. Lots of things used to be OK that aren’t any more. I don’t expect to see you attempt to prove your point by marrying your 13 year old cousin and taking a slave tomorrow. Console yourself in the knowledge that lots of things that used to be frowned upon are more accepted now. Enjoy them! Leave the house without your hat, vote to choose your leader, and let someone have sex with your bottom.

4. To people arguing that Harry Connick Jr may be a hypocrite. That’s not really the point here, is it?

5. To me. Admit it. You’re kind happy because now you have a morally justifiable reason to think Hey Hey sucks.

1. Do you say Jr when you only use someone’s last name? Enquiring minds want to know. ↩

The 2010 Doctor Who logo has been announced.

The answers to my questions turn out to be “Above”, “No”, “Serif”, “Neither” and “the coloured lights are inside it”. It hearkens back strongly to the older, simpler logos, which is nice. I see everyone at the BBC still gets excited by lens flares. I’m reasonably keen, though I’m curious to find out when they use the initials and when they use the full word. It’s certainly a nicer logo for putting on DVD spines which is obviously my main concern.

Hrmmm.

There’s not actually very much to say about a new logo. I should have covered the Apple event instead. They’re much more contentious. I went onto a Who forum to try to find crazy fans whinging that the new logo doesn’t do target disk mode, but no such luck.

2009 has been a quiet year for Doctor Who news, so the BBC are stretching things out as much as possible. The latest in a slow and meticulously planned trickle of announcements is the new logo, to be announced this Tuesday. This throws up all sorts of intriguing questions. Will the “Doctor” be above the “Who”, or to the side? Will any parts of the word be set in a rakishly cheesy angle? Will it be serif, or sans serif? Arial or Helvetica? Or will it just be the old logo bent a little bit with coloured lights behind it?

The excitement never stops around here. I hope you’ll join me for the unveiling tomorrow.¹

1. No, seriously. I will actually post something tomorrow, or my name isn’t Jackson Kearney. Hang on, sorry. I mean, because my name isn’t Jackson Kearney. ↩