So I’m running through the entire series of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine again for old time’s sake.  It really is the best of the Trek series for my money.

The characters are so much deeper and the plotlines so much more involved.  It honestly makes TNG look like a walk in the park, full of privileged brats.

But that’s not why I’m writing.  Instead, I’m commenting on a particular episode in the second season called “Paradise.”  What?  Don’t have every Star Trek episode memorized?  I’ll sum up.

Be warned: If you haven’t seen The Village and don’t want to be spoiled, you should probably stop reading.

Basically, Sisko and O’Brien go galavanting onto some planet where they find a colony of crash-landed humans who have been living planetside for 10 years.

They haven’t left or contacted anyone for help because none of their technology works thanks to some sort of interference field that they surmise is some sort of naturally occuring phenomenon.

But then we find out that that natural occurrence is actually a technological device placed there and hidden by the leader of the colony because she abhors technology.  So she hoodwinked a few dozen people for 10 years so that she could live out her fantasy of a “better life.”

Fast Forward over 10 years later in real time, and Shymalan releases The Village to mixed reviews.  I actually liked the movie a great deal and really wish people would move past The Sixth Sense to appreciate him as a filmmaker.

But it occurred to me as I watched this episode that The Village is practically the exact same story.  Sure, the macguffin is different but the goal is the same — crazy purist seeks to destroy lives by forcing them to live a ’simpler’ life.

I’m not naive enough to think that the DS9 writers came up with this sci-fi plot device all by themselves, and I even admit that Shymalan could have gotten his inspiration from a wholly different source.

But where from?  I find it interesting how some stories are so familiar yet so new at the same time.  Both Trek and Shymalan likely pulled on some earlier source that probably also pulled from an even earlier source.

Not being well-versed in sci-fi literature and media, I open it to you.  Where did this story get its start?

And how it screws everything up.

I’ve talked about Time Travel before. Everyone knows that I’m not necessarily a huge fan of the concept in movies and television.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy a good Star Trek episode with time travel. Episodes like ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ and ‘Trials and Tribble-ations’ are too much fun to pass up.

But the beauty of Star Trek time travel is that each movie and each episode is self-contained. Star Trek was never a serial drama, so the fact that cast and crew went whipping through time last week really had no bearing on what happens this week.

When time travel is put into a story that does matter, though, it almost always screws up the story in one way or another.

Enter Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

There’s a writer’s strike going on and I have few choices in entertainment. Terminator isn’t exactly my kind of show, but I like Summer Glau enough to stick with it.

Last night’s episode kills me, though. If you haven’t watched it yet, stop reading now because I’m about to talk all about the plot.

The basic premise in this episode is that a Terminator has been sent back from the future to store off some metallic alloy in a bunker so that when the apocalypse comes, Skynet will have tons of material from which to build its army of evil.

Our heroes, John, Sarah, and River, are going to save the day by making sure that the alloy doesn’t get stored in the bunker, and the Terminator army isn’t as strong in the future. Sounds like a major blow to the whole future war, right?

There’s just so many problems associated with this, though, that it hurts my head to think about it.

First off, when Skynet opens up the bunker in the future, it’s going to know that its terminator failed and when said terminator is reactivated it will also know that John, Sarah, and River stopped it from succeeding.

So then Skynet knows that John, Sarah, and River are at that place and time. So then Skynet can send back terminators to deal with that. Or it can reprogram the first terminator to be watching for them.

Regardless of the outcome, Skynet has to know that its alloy is never stored away. And since its alloy is never stored away, why did it even bother sending someone into the past to store it? It has to, of course, because if it hadn’t then it would never know that it wasn’t stored.

So Skynet had to make the illogical decision of sending a Terminator back to store some alloy that it knew wasn’t going to actually get stored.

Furthermore, Skynet had to have made the illogical decision to not even let said Terminator know that it was going to fail at its mission at the hands of the person they’re all out to kill — John Connor.

John Connor delivered himself into their hands, and Skynet was too stupid to capitalize on it. Skynet’s not so bright. I don’t understand why the resistance is having so much trouble with it.

So everyone has heard of the Bacon Number. It’s that fun little game where you take an actor and try to find the shortest path to Kevin Bacon.

For example, let’s take Megan Fox. Megan Fox recently starred in Transformers with Jamie McBride, and Jamie McBride starred in Beauty Shop with Kevin Bacon. So Megan Fox has a Bacon number of only 2.

Well, yesterday I came across something even more intriguing — the Erdős-Bacon Number.

This mishmash number is the sum of a person’s Bacon Number and their Erdős number. Paul Erdős is a Hungarian Mathematician who is used to determine a persons worth at writing mathematical papers. Interesting cross, eh?

More surprising is some of the people who actually have relatively low Erdős-Bacon numbers. Among them are Natalie Portman, Danica McKellar (aka Winnie Cooper), and Mayim Bialik (aka Blossom).

So I got to thinking — who is the center of the Blogosphere? Kevin Bacon is actually not the center of the Hollywood circuit. In fact, analysis by the University of Virginia shows that Rod Steiger would actually be a better center.

So why Kevin Bacon? It’s really a mix of a lot of things I think. Kevin Bacon is prolific, famous, and also slightly infamous.

With those three criteria in mind, I hereby deem Wil Wheaton to be the center of the Blogosphere. Mr. Wheaton is definitely prolific, unquestionably famous, but also undeniably infamous.

I mean this as no offense to Mr. Wheaton, of course. He’s both a scholar and a gentleman in my book.

But how do you make the ties in a virtual world without the clear bounds of mathematical papers or big-budget movies?

I think it works like this. In order to have a Wheaton number, your blog has to have been linked from a post of someone who was linked from a post of Wil Wheaton’s, etc, etc.

As far as I know, I have no Wheaton number at this point in time but if I were to catch Mr. Wheaton’s attention with this (for example), then sites such as Cryptomundo, Screen Rant, and The Technonaut would all gain a Wheaton number of 2 (assuming they didn’t already have a Wheaton number of 1).

Let the games begin! Kudos to the first person who can post here who actually has a legitimate Wheaton number.

Although we’re not going to be transporting people or animals anytime soon, scientists funded by the European Space Agency have succeeded in transporting information through thin air over 89 miles. I know, I know — we can already do that with well placed cell towers and satellite, but this is really thin air.

Dubbed “Quantum Teleportation,” the whole thing is a study in Quantum Entanglement, first theorized by the Einstein himself.

Not being a scientist, and not having the mind for Quantum physics I can’t say that I even understand the entire concept here, but it sounds exciting.

The initial goal is just to be able to send encrypted data from one place to the other. That’s kinda boring and can already be done given the proper infrastructure. When are they going to start transporting things?!

Even if we don’t do people, it’d be really swell if Amazon could just beam me my order. Then I could have my Tivo Series 3 in much less time so I can shed the evil DirectTV (who just told me they were going to force me to switch hardware). But I digress — yay for Quantum Physics!

Growing up, I was a huge Star Trek fan. Not so much the old series, cuz frankly I’m not that old, but the Next Generation was wondrous to me. The world, the technology, the excitement. I’d daresay that Star Trek may have been responsible for my interest in computers and my career as a software engineer.

I watched TNG with glee, and was an avid Deep Space Nine fan. DS9 is by far the most underrated entry in the Star Trek universe. It had some of the deepest characters and most epic stories in the franchise. When Voyager hit the scene, so did girls and high school, cars and studies. I couldn’t keep up anymore, and Voyager fell by the wayside. I tried to watch it here and there but the first season was disappointing and I finally let Star Trek slip away from my life.

Recently, I’ve come to a point in my life when I can afford to reminisce about the good ol’ days. Luckily I also have the funds as well. I purchased all 7 seasons of Voyager on DVD (through Ebay; Best Buy prices are stupid). Since then I’ve been working my way through the series. I’m halfway through season 4 now and I’m impressed.

What started as a mediocre entry into the Star Trek cosmos grew into a wonderful world with all new aliens and problems; characters with depth and humor. I didn’t feel that Janeway could ever live up to Kirk, Picard or Sisko but over the seasons she came into her own and took the show in all the right directions.

To anyone who is an avid reader of my wife’s blog, you’ll know that we have plans for a week long excursion to Vegas where we will be attending a 40th anniversary Star Trek convention. A little crazy, but the kind of crazy that sounded like it could be a good time.

I’m glad that I’ve gotten to watch at least most of Voyager before attending. Having not indulged in the Voyager universe I was missing a huge chunk of Star Trek lore that made me incomplete as a Trekker. Now I won’t feel like a nubtard when the freak next to me asks me what I thought of the EMH Mark II or the USS Prometheus.