{"id":5910,"date":"2013-04-29T05:29:45","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T05:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/?p=5910"},"modified":"2024-02-29T07:16:47","modified_gmt":"2024-02-29T07:16:47","slug":"the-best-of-both-worlds-on-the-big-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/2013\/04\/29\/the-best-of-both-worlds-on-the-big-screen\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Best of Both Worlds\u201d on the big screen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Aw yeah, that’s a baby Borg on my t-shirt!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Aw yeah, that\u2019s a baby Borg on my t-shirt!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Star Trek<\/i>\u00a0is my first nerdy love. Without it, I would not be the nerd I am today. I\u2019ve said before that I literally have no memory of my life without\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>. Watching\u00a0The Original Series<\/i>\u00a0with my parents on Saturday nights is one of my earliest memories and, although I was very young when\u00a0The Next Generation<\/i>\u00a0came on the air, I was not so young that I don\u2019t remember watching it for the first time very clearly. In my humble opinion it is, quite simply, the greatest franchise ever created.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/i>\u00a0episode\u00a0\u201cThe Best of Both Worlds\u201d\u00a0is arguably one of the greatest cliff hangers in the history of television. So, when my friend Mike reminded me that it was going to be playing in movie theatres across the country this past Thursday evening in all its remastered glory, I immediately bought my ticket.<\/p>\n

\n

Me and my friend Mike before the show<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I love seeing stuff from my childhood on the big screen. In a relatively recent phenomenon, they\u2019ve started bringing movies back to the theatres for limited runs. \u00a0Movies like\u00a0Star Wars,\u00a0Top Gun,\u00a0Jurassic Park,\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0The Lion King<\/i>. It\u2019s so much better than remaking a movie and introduces them to a whole new generation. When I lived in Los Angeles, they would have events where they would play a movie on the big screen for the first time in decades, then have people who worked on the movie do a Q&A panel afterwards. My NerdBFF\u00a0Geek Outlaw\u00a0and I\u00a0went to one of these for\u00a0Ghostbusters<\/i>\u00a0and LOVED it. Events like that are one of the few things I miss about living in LA.<\/p>\n

The lights went down and we were immediately treated to a behind-the-scenes look at the making of \u201cThe Best of Both Worlds, part I & II\u201d that included interviews with the people involved and fan reactions to the season three cliffhanger. Some highlights:<\/p>\n

\u2013\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Patrick Stewart\u00a0recalled how a woman pulled up next to him while driving, rolled down her window, and shouted \u201cYou ruined our summer!\u201d and a guy walking past him in the NY subway, paused in front of him momentarily and said \u201cYou\u2019re keeping it real.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The late, great\u00a0Michael Piller\u00a0wrote the episode thinking he\u2019d be leaving the show and someone else would have to figure out how to get the crew out of this mess. Of course, he ended up sticking around and had to clean up after himself.<\/p>\n

\u2013\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For some reason, I never put two and two together that\u00a0Elizabeth Dennehy\u00a0(LCDR Shelby) was\u00a0Brian Dennehy\u2019s\u00a0daughter. Which is weird because I LOVE Brian Dennehy. Turns out he didn\u2019t really want her to do an episode of\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>. Elizabeth didn\u2019t really know anything about the franchise. It was one of her first auditions after moving to Los Angeles and she didn\u2019t know enough about it to be intimidated. She also didn\u2019t realize that it wasn\u2019t like working on a soap opera (where you apparently get several hours to just sit around and learn your lines) and was completely unprepared the first day of shooting. She learned quickly and never made that mistake again.<\/p>\n

\u2013\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been one to notice hairdos, but once Elizabeth Dennehy pointed out how much hairspray was used in her updo, I couldn\u2019t help but notice how it affected other people\u2019s hair.<\/p>\n

\n

That\u2019s DOES look like it takes way more time than a Commander has in the morning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Especially\u00a0Dr. Crusher\u2019s, whose hair pretty much didn\u2019t move when she turned her head. It was like a gloriously shellacked red waterfall.<\/p>\n

\n

I never understood why one side of her hair was longer than the other<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2013\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They showed how they achieved many of the special effects and how they remastered them for the\u00a0Blu-ray. The hardest part was the starship graveyard at\u00a0Wolf 359, mostly because of their limited budget.<\/p>\n

\u2013\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m always struck by how the actors have to pretend like they\u2019re being jostled around when the ship is struck by enemy fire. When I was a kid they had an attraction at Universal Studios in which members of the audience were called up to participate in some scenes from\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>. We got to see firsthand how they put together an episode, including having to fake being bounced around in your seat. So I\u2018ve always known that this is how it\u2019s done. But it\u2019s quite funny to see the actors do it over and over again, take after take, with a completely straight face.<\/p>\n

Then it was time for the episodes, which they combined to make a feature length presentation. In case you haven\u2019t seen the episodes, here\u2019s a little summary\/background information:<\/p>\n

First seen in the 2nd<\/sup>\u00a0season episode \u201cQ Who\u201d (thanks to\u00a0Q\u00a0playfully tossing the USS\u00a0Enterprise<\/i>\u00a0right in the path of a\u00a0Cube), the\u00a0Borg\u00a0have been on the Federation\u2019s mind for years. None more so than\u00a0Admiral JP Hanson\u00a0and\u00a0Lieutenant Commander Shelby\u00a0who have been working tirelessly to develop weapons and defenses based on what they know from the\u00a0Enterprise\u2019s<\/i>\u00a0encounter. They assumed it would take the Borg a certain amount of time to reach the\u00a0Alpha Quadrant\u00a0but they severely underestimated the Borg\u2019s capabilities and they arrived much sooner than planned. The Borg\u2019s goal is to reach Sector 001 aka Earth. To do this, they need to tap someone\u2019s brain, someone who has the knowledge they need to get around the Federation\u2019s best laid plans. They choose\u00a0Captain Picard, assimilating him into the\u00a0Collective, making him their spokesman, giving him a killer mechanical six-pack, and dubbing him \u201cLocutus of Borg.\u201d To my knowledge, Locutus is the only Borg who is ever given a name as opposed to a designation (ie,\u00a0Seven of Nine). Despite the friction in their relationship,\u00a0Commander Riker\u00a0and Lieutenant Commander Shelby must work together to rescue Picard and stop the Borg from reaching Earth.<\/p>\n

\n

Mmmmm\u2026Borg abs\u2026.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When the third season ended abruptly with Picard as Locutus and Riker telling\u00a0Worf\u00a0to fire on the Borg Cube, a collective (heehee) uproar went up in the\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>\u00a0community. No one knew what was going to happen or if Patrick Stewart would be coming back to the show, not even the showrunners. Speculation was so great that someone wrote a fake script in which the whole thing was a prank orchestrated by the\u00a0Q Continuum.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Best of Both Worlds\u201d is critical in\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>\u00a0cannon. It provides a major part of the back story for the TV show\u00a0Star Trek: Deep Space Nine<\/i>, and is the basis for the movie\u00a0Star Trek: First Contact<\/i>.<\/p>\n

After the ending credits, we were delighted to watch a blooper reel featuring outtakes from many different episodes. Some of the highlights included stumbles over the technobabble, forgotten lines, Worf blurting out that he never played with little boys,\u00a0Guinan\u00a0cursing, and\u00a0Lieutenant Richard Castillo asking\u00a0Tasha Yar\u00a0to call him \u201cDick.\u201d It was a lot of laughs that were missed by at least half the audience who walked out during the ending credits.<\/p>\n

Speaking of credits, I must say, it was amazing to see the opening credits on the big screen. Every time I ever watched them as a child, it was always on our little 1980\u2019s-era tube television set. As an adult I\u2019ve watched them on my nice flat screen TV but NOTHING compares to seeing it that big and whispering the words along with Patrick Stewart in movie theatre surround sound. They are some of my favorite words in the world and I\u2019ve known them by heart since before I could read:<\/p>\n

\u201cSpace, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship\u00a0Enterprise<\/i>. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life, and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one as gone before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thanks to Mike for being my nerdy\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>\u00a0buddy!<\/p>\n

One last note: folks have been asking me to put out a calendar for the last couple of years and I finally got around to doing it with the amazing artistic talents of my sister-in-law, Reba. It\u2019s really an awesome calendar. It\u2019s got every nerdy holiday you can imagine, plus a super handy convention calendar, and some never-before-seen pictures that will never, ever be seen anywhere else. I know it\u2019s almost May but it\u2019s worth it to get the 2013 calendar. Besides, if I don\u2019t sell these, then there probably won\u2019t be one next year so, ya know\u2026buy one \ud83d\ude42 Since it is almost May, they\u2019re super discounted (I promise you I\u2019m not making a fortune off of them) AND\u00a0I\u2019ll sign it if you want.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Buy one here:\u00a0http:\/\/hotnerdgirl.com\/shop\/<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aw yeah, that’s a baby Borg on my t-shirt! Aw yeah, that\u2019s a baby Borg on my t-shirt! Star Trek\u00a0is my first nerdy love. Without it, I would not be the nerd I am today. I\u2019ve said before that I literally have no memory of my life without\u00a0Star Trek. Watching\u00a0The Original Series\u00a0with my parents on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4,12,13],"tags":[129,442,589,590,885,893,949],"class_list":["post-5910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event","category-sci-fi","category-star-trek","tag-borg","tag-hot-nerd-girl","tag-locutus","tag-locutus-of-borg","tag-star-trek","tag-star-trek-the-next-generation","tag-the-best-of-both-worlds"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}