Author: John Ostrander

John Ostrander: The Bat, Man!

As the Bat-mythos goes, Bruce Wayne saw a bat fly into his window and thought, “Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot. I shall become a bat!” I’ve never been quite sure how the first half of that statement leads to the second half, but never mind. Maybe the bat flying in so freaked Bruce out that he thought he’d freak everyone else out by becoming a bat.

Either I’m cowardly and/or superstitious or I’m a criminal but we had a bat in the house incident recently and it freaked me out. For those of you who are bat enthusiasts, you should know that I don’t hate the flying rodents. I know that they eat mosquitoes and other supposedly useful things. I just don’t want them in the room with me. This isn’t as hotel. They aren’t paying rent. Their place is somewhere else, preferably outside.

We know we have bats in the attic. We’ve been intending to get rid of them but there have been other priorities so it’s been live and let live.

One night My Mary and I were in the living room, watching TV and eating dinner as is our wont. That’s when Mary screamed. There was a bat flying around the kitchen, having found a way downstairs from the attic. Mary’s Amazonian scream freaked the bat and it flew into my office. We closed the door and sealed it off from the rest of the house while we figured our next move.

That’s when we realized that our youngest cat, Hildy, was probably still in the office.

Hildy has become quite a hunter. In one 24-hour period recently, she found 11 baby mice in the basement and brought their carcasses to us. We were both repulsed and impressed and appropriately praised her. Now, however, we had a problem.

This is actually where it got serious. The bat could have rabies. Michigan, where we live, has been having an outbreak of rabies in bats. Hildy had last gotten a rabies shot two years ago but it was effective for one year only. What with moving last year, we had neglected to update her shots.

bat boyWe opened the office door a little bit and tried coaxing Hildy out. She didn’t come, which meant she was busy elsewhere – which meant it could have been the bat. Before dashing in to get her, we had to seal off the entry to the rest of the house or the basement in case the bat flew out again. We draped sheets. By the time we’d accomplished that, Hildy was scratching at the office door to be let out. We opened the door a crack and she popped out.

There were no bites on her that we could see but bats have needle like teeth and we could miss it. We called the vet in the morning and then we realized the seriousness of the problem.

We had to recover the bat and it had to be tested for rabies. Otherwise, there were two options. She could be quarantined for six months or she could be euthanized. The same went for our other cat, Windy, since we had failed to quarantine Hildy the previous night and the two cats had been in contact. We had already lost my buddy, Micah, a few weeks earlier and I was not ready to lose our last two cats.

Mary read up on the Internet on how to capture a bat that involved surreptitiously putting a box over it and then sliding another sheet of cardboard behind the box and trapping the vermin. Yeah. Right.

First we had to determine if the bat was still in the office or if it had gone back up in to the attic. If it had, we were sunk. We snuck into the office with all the caution of Elmer Fudd hunting that Wascally Wabbit. We found it hanging on the door of the office closet, up by the top. A good sign. Not likely Hildy could get at it there.

It appeared to be sleeping. Mary carefully negotiated the box around it but, as she tried to slip the cardboard between door and the bat, the li’l bugger got free and started flying around the room.

Gaaaah! Run away, run away, run away! The beastie flew over our heads and at one point it flew right at my face! Mary almost trampled me trying to get out. We needed another plan.

Or maybe a stiff drink. Well, Mary doesn’t drink, but I needed a stiff drink… but I waited.

Mary devised a new catcher – she took a large clear heavy plastic Tupperware cake lid and duct taped it to a squeegee mop handle. We fashioned bat costumes of our own – I had on my cap and Mary tied a long sleeved shirt around her head. We were ready or as ready as we were going to get. I needed a batarang.

Problem was, we weren’t sure where the bat had migrated. We opened the door cautiously, hunched over, and glanced around.

The nasty bugger was hanging from the ceiling right above the damn door, looking at us.

Squelching a yelp, we got in and closed the door and proceeded with the plan. Deftly, Mary got the cake lid over it and slid the beastie down until we could slide the cardboard behind it. This time we could see the bat and could make sure it didn’t escape. It was trapped. We duct taped the shit out that sucker to make sure it couldn’t get loose and Mary punched some tiny air holes in the cardboard.

Now we had to find a place to take it and get tested. This was now Friday afternoon before the Labor Day weekend. The last thing we wanted was to entertain our batty guest for the three-day weekend.

Some quick phoning around directed me to the state Public Health and Environmental Concerns office and so Mary and I drove up to Saginaw to deposit our little “friend.” I don’t think they get a lot of live bats brought in and there was considerable interest. A woman in the waiting room screamed and ran out when the bat stirred in its plastic cage. I guess she was part of the cowardly, superstitious lot. Maybe a criminal.

We waited some ten days before we finally got word. The report from the lab had been sent to the wrong office but eventually we found out that the bat did not have rabies. Our cats are okay, we’re okay, the bat – not so much.

I swear, though, if another bat finds its way into the office I’m going to get all Joker on it.

 

John Ostrander: Too Much

I read recently that Dan Brown’s book Inferno has been optioned for a film. Brown is most famous for The DaVinci Code that was subsequently made into a film by Ron Howard starring Tom Hanks as Brown’s character Robert Langdon. I’m not a big Brown enthusiast, but I bought Inferno. I needed something to read, was looking for some light entertainment, and that was the best that was available.

I read it and sort of enjoyed it, as is the case with me for most of Mr. Brown‘s books. There were some very good scenes and taught suspense and/or action sequences but Brown also has to have his twists and often these start to strain credulity. That was very much the case for me in Inferno and I thought that the climax and resolution veered into science fiction. I like science fiction but this was not really a SF book. The story got to be too much.

“Too much” is also part of the theme and the plot of the book.

Central to the whole concept of the book are the theories of The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus who lived in the late 1700s/early 1800s. His theories involved the rate of population growth and the ability to feed everyone. He said “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.” A Malthusian catastrophe occurs when the number of people in a given area exceeds the ability to feed them.

In the past, plagues and natural catastrophes would cut down on the population. One theory suggests the Black Death so reduced the amount of people in Europe that the survivors actually wound up having more prosperity and this led, in part, to the Renaissance. In theory.

But we’ve gotten better at keeping people alive; people live longer – at least in first world countries. And that will put a further strain on resources – not just food but water and other resources.

Brown isn’t the only person who has dabbled in Malthusian theory. In DC’s Green Lantern, the planet Maltus was originally the home of those who would become the Guardians – who created the whole Green Lantern Corps. Maltus had a severe overpopulation problem; the planet’s name of Maltus is so close to Malthus that it’s inconceivable to me that the writer wasn’t referring to him.

Central to Brown’s plot is that, according to Malthus’ projections and given the rate of increase in the world’s population, it becomes a mathematical certainty that the Malthusian catastrophe of overpopulation will occur in about fifty years.

That in itself is pretty depressing. Add to that environmental catastrophe and the view gets bleaker. (We’re not going to debate climate change here; deny it if you wish but do it elsewhere. And while you’re at it, deny the Earth is round.) There are climate scientists who think we’ve already gone past the tipping point and we can only mitigate the damage, not stop it.

It’s not that there aren’t solutions to these problems but those solutions are themselves difficult, complex, perhaps draconian and involves the world acting in concert. It will call for drastic change. That looks very unlikely. I don’t think there is the political will to achieve it; politicians these days are concerned almost exclusively to keeping their constituents happy. We will have to be in the crisis before we will address it realistically and that will be too late. The world Dan Brown writes of in Inferno will be well on its way to becoming Green Lantern’s world of Maltus.

And to think I picked up Inferno for a little light reading.

John Ostrander: Telling The Story

We distinguish “pop culture” from “High Culture” usually because the main objective of “pop culture” is to entertain while “High Culture” looks into the human condition. It can entertain and should. Tragedy should entertain but in ways that are different from, say, Guardians of the Galaxy. But that is not its primary purpose.

That said, pop culture can also look into the human condition, into the world around us, and “hold a mirror up to nature.” That line is from Shakespeare who is very High Culture now but in his day was disparaged by some as being “too popular.” He appealed to the groundlings – those in the cheap seats – and that is part of the reason, I believe, that he is still so playable today. He knew that to reach someone’s mind and heart you first had to get their attention. The best way was to tell them a story.

That was a lesson that was also taught to me by our own Denny O’Neil. He has been a large-scale influence in my life. I was a fan when he wrote some seminal stories in the Green Lantern/Green Arrow book. The Green Lantern series had low numbers at that point and he was given an opportunity to write it; I once read that he liked the assignment because it was no fail. If he saved the book, that was great. If it got cancelled anyway, management would assume that the book was in a downward spiral and couldn’t be saved. In a way, he couldn’t lose. So he added Green Arrow, got Neal Adams as artist, and took a new path.

That has also influenced my career path; I liked taking on the B list characters. You could play with them, change them, without too much objections by the Higher Ups. You could take chances you might not be able to do with flagship titles. Don’t get me wrong; I would have loved to get a crack at a regular Superman or Batman gig (I did write some stories with the characters but never a regular book) but I found The Spectre to be wide open and Tom Mandrake and I crafted over 60 issues of which I am proud. It’s been one of the highlights of my career.

While ultimately Green Lantern/Green Arrow did get cancelled, Denny set a standard. He taught me that you could write about important subjects, about the issues surrounding that time, and create something that entertained as well as make you think. He addressed racism, drugs, even the environment (among other topics); that wasn’t being done at the time. He showed me what the potential of the medium could be.

He’s never forgotten, however, that the purpose of Pop Culture is to entertain. We were working on a project together with me as writer and he as editor. The purpose of the project was very definitely to make a comment on the subject of guns and gun violence. His direction was very clear. He told me that, in comics, “You can say anything you want but first you have to tell a story.” This wasn’t a pulpit and preaching isn’t narrative. Our first job was to tell a good story. That’s what the reader was paying to get. That was the job. It still is.

 

John Ostrander: Who Are You?

Let’s have our own little adventure in time and space. At the time I’m writing this, the new season of Doctor Who, starring the new guy, Peter Capaldi, has not yet played. By the time you read this, it will have already been on. A bit of the old timey-wimey thing.

If you’re not a viewer of the time traveling import from the BBC (and we Whovians pity your poor benighted souls), Doctor Who is a fifty-year old TV show featuring a madman in a blue box. The madman is also known as The Doctor and the blue box is his TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). The Doctor is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey and while he looks human, some bits of him aren’t. Such as the ability to regenerate when his physical body is in close danger of dying. It’s not just a reboot; his entire body changes… and so does his personality. It is this ability to change actors every so often that has helped keep the show on the air for fifty years (give or take a hiatus or two).

That’s one of the exciting mysteries about the new season. We’ve only seen bits and pieces of Peter Capaldi as the Doctor but we already know he’ll be very different from his predecessor. Matt Smith was sort of the Robin Williams of Doctors; anything that came into his head came out his mouth. Capaldi is also older than the three prior Doctors, harking back to the first versions of the Doctor. He also appears to be more serious to the point of being grim. I’m very much looking forward to finding out who and what the new Doctor is.

The challenge for each actor playing the Doctor is to find a way to put their own stamp on the character while, at the same time, finding the core of the character, the part that doesn’t change. It’s a challenge not only for the actor but also the writers of the show and it illustrates an important aspect of writing characters in general.

We are, all of us, like a diamond. Turn the stone and the different facets can reveal different aspects. We have many different sides to us and they come out according to the situation or who we are with. You may be different with your friends than with your parents. Guys are one way with their guy friends but if you introduce a female to the mix, they change. The body posture, the voice, the way a guy expresses himself may be way different with a female (especially a new attractive unknown one) than his buddies. I don’t know but I suspect the same is true for women.

What we find to be true in life should be true in our writing. If you are creating a complex character, you have to find their contradictions. A person can be very brave in some aspects and yet very scared in others. They can go from one thing to the other in a heartbeat. Maybe you’ve noticed that some people are really nice until they get behind the wheel of a car where they can turn into flaming assholes. Maybe you’ve been that person. We have heroes within us; we also have villains. That’s why writing a villain can be a lot of fun; you get to let loose that side of you without any real ill effects.

One of the purposes of a supporting character in a story is to bring out this aspect or that aspect of the protagonist. Have you ever noticed how some people bring out the best of you and others bring out the worst? Back in my college days, there was one person I really didn’t like being around. I finally figured out why; he demonstrated aspects of myself that I didn’t like and seeing those traits made me uncomfortable. As a writer, however, that’s all useful.

The thing to remember is that all those aspects are you just as all the past incarnations of the Doctor are the Doctor. As in life, so in our writing. All our characters are an aspect of us. That’s part of the fun of it.

As for me, I can’t wait to see what the newest incarnation of the Doctor is like. Maybe by figuring out Who the Doctor is this time, I may also learn a bit more about Who I am.

 

John Ostrander: In Passing

This last week saw the passing of two luminaries in entertainment – Lauren Bacall and Robin Williams. Ms. Bacall died just short of 90 and had a rich and full life. Robin Williams died at 63, evidently a suicide.

We are told Mr. Williams was battling severe depression and was in the early stages of Parkinson’s.

My first reaction was shock and then denial. It couldn’t be true because I didn’t want it to be true. And then came the questions – how? Why? The how was soon told but the why may never be known. Robin Williams was talented, successful, had family that loved him. Why would he kill himself?

I never met Robin Williams but, like many others, I thought I knew him. That happens with many artists and for many people; we know them from their work. Since the best artists put a lot themselves into their work, we do know something about them but far from all. The artist reveals and conceals at the same time.

There was a very dark side to Robin Williams and ultimately it consumed him. Was it there to be seen? You look at some pictures of him now and think maybe you see it. Will I ever watch his comedy again or his movie roles and not spot it or at least think I do?

His mind was incredible to experience. The speed of his invention was dazzling and I don’t know of anyone who made me laugh as hard or as often. He was also an actor of great depth; he could do a straight part with no clowning around.

There have been many tributes in the media for Robin but, of course, there have also been the assholes. Rush Limbaugh said “He had it all but he had nothing. Made everybody else laugh but was miserable inside. I mean, it fits a certain picture or a certain image that the left has. Talk about low expectations and general unhappiness and so forth.” Limbaugh later said he was misquoted and misrepresented by the general media. That trick never works, especially when we have what he said on tape and in print. I wonder what it feels like to have bile running through your veins instead of blood.

And then there are the so-called Christians (some, not all) who claim that Williams was a coward and that he is now in hell because suicide is an “unredeemable sin” since the person can’t ask forgiveness. I’m an agnostic in general and an atheist in particular. I don’t believe in any religion’s version of a deity.

But I was raised Roman Catholic and I was taught never to presume a suicide went to hell. You couldn’t know if, at the last moment, the person killing themselves repented. To think, to say otherwise was a Sin itself, a sin of Presumption. These assholes making their pronouncements should make sure about their own souls before judging anybody else’s. Assuming that souls exist. I like to think they do but, as with everything else spiritual, I’m not sure.

Most people, however, are sorry that he is gone. Perhaps his humor wasn’t to everyone’s taste but everyone can appreciate his loss. Tragedy is defined as the ruin of someone, usually sympathetic, who suffers from a fatal flaw. In that sense, Robin Williams’ death certainly is a tragedy.

I doubt we’ll ever see his like again.

 

John Ostrander: The Strange Gift of Micah

The columns here on ComicMix usually are about some aspect of pop culture. I’m not doing that this week. I need to do this instead.

Years ago, my late wife, Kim Yale, and I owned a French bulldog. He was named Yoda because of his outsized ears and Kim especially doted on him. He died suddenly, choking on some food while we were not there, and Kim took it hard.

We went to a grief counselor specializing in pet bereavement. She told us something that has remained with me, a concept I refer to as a “strange gift.” A strange gift is when you receive something of value, some insight or understanding, under circumstances that you would just as soon avoided. It’s there if you are open to it and willing to see.

I’ve had cause to revisit that concept this week. My cat, Micah, died. We found out he had lymphoma two months ago. With medication, he was able to have a mostly normal life although we knew it was borrowed time.

It was always borrowed time with Micah. When we took him home as a kitten he became really sick, so sick I really didn’t think he would make it. However, nobody gave him the memo about dying. Thanks to our vet at the time, he pulled through.

Micah loved both me and Mary but she and I both knew I was his human. He was my buddy, he was my pal. He liked just being near me. He was playful, he was funny, he was smart, he was sometimes goofy. He was full of life, a bright spirit, and he loved being alive.

About a week ago, he went into serious decline. He stopped eating and drinking and he retreated to the basement most of the time. He lost control of his bladder and his hind legs were giving out on him. It was time.

At the vet, Mary and I stayed with him through the end. I wanted him not to be scared as he passed. We both talked to him and petted him. Mary said he was smiling and I know he was looking at me when the end came. Yes, I cried and I’m crying a bit as I write this.

“It was just a cat,” some people may think. True, but he was my companion. He was important to my life.

There are other people who have it much harder than me right now. I know that. Sometimes I don’t know how they handle it but, then again, many people told me they didn’t know how I handled it through Kim’s illness and death. I don’t know, either; I just did it.

So – what was the strange gift that Micah’s death gave me? What insight did I receive? It’s a little soon; more thoughts will come to me, I hope, as time flows past. However, there is this – I know now that love matters right to the end. To his last breath, Micah knew I loved him and he loved me, too. That made it all bearable.

That’s what I know. The purpose of this column is to share what I know. I hope it’s of some use to you.

 

John Ostrander: To Be A Hero

Doctor Who has aired a new trailer for the upcoming season that starts August 23rd*. You can <a href=”

it here. It’s our first real glimpse at the new Doctor played by Peter Capaldi and I think it all looks very promising. He’s very different from the past few Doctors. In some ways, he’s more reminiscent of the first one.

Something bugged me, tho. At the end of the trailer, he asks his companion, Clara, if he is a good man. She seems a bit flummoxed by this and answers, “I don’t know.”

My first reaction to the question was “I do. The Doctor is a good man. He’s a hero. He has saved the planet, the galaxy, all of reality about a bazillion times.”

Then I thought about it some more. Do you have to be a good man in order to be a hero? You don’t have to be a good person to be the protagonist; many good stories have been told using someone bad or even evil as the center of the story. Hero, on the other hand, is a different matter, isn’t it? A hero needs to have certain moral values – honor, nobility, courage, self-sacrifice and so on. They may have these qualities from the onset of the story or acquire them along the way. They can rise up as heroes as the story progresses or the qualities they already have can be tested.

The hero is something we might want to emulate. Superman in my youth was a big blue Boy Scout. Even Batman, for all the fact that he dresses more like a villain, was more of a hero in a traditional sense.

Then Marvel came along with its more complicated set of heroes. Spider-Man had a lot of hang-ups. At the same time, they were heroes because they rose to the challenges. They exhibited a certain honor, nobility, and so on.

The anti-hero seems more in tune with modern society. He or she is the protagonist of the story but not the moral center. Typically, they are in it for themselves and what they can gain or they are simply tossed around by life and not masters of their own fate. Kafka’s Joseph K in The Trial is an anti-hero because his choices simply do not matter. He is a victim and cannot change his own fate.

I tend to write more towards the anti-hero side of the scale. I like the moral complexity they present; it interests me as a writer. Even a good person will struggle to find the right thing to do in a given situation. J.K. Rowling in one of the Harry Potter books has her character Dumbledore say that the time is coming when people will have to choose between what is right and what is easy. There’s always a cost involved to do what is right.

Can you be a hero without also being a good man or woman, at least to some degree? I don’t think so. It may be difficult for the character to make the “right choice” but they need to have somewhere inside of them a degree of courage, empathy, honor and so on. George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life has to struggle with his frustration and sense of helplessness. He lashes out in anger towards the climax of the movie against people he loves. Yet even in his deepest despair, he will jump off a bridge to save what he thinks is a drowning man.

So, is the Doctor a good man? He certainly is a hero and, whatever his failings, he is a good man. The fact that he asks the question makes him a good man; a bad man wouldn’t care.

* Also coming to a handful of movie theaters, probably not near you. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Ostrander: Where’s Johnny-O?

Well, John Ostrander wasn’t at the San Diego stock yards. And John Ostrander isn’t here on ComicMix, where one regularly finds him on a Sunday morning.

So… Where’s Johnny?

John’s at home, recovering from a particularly difficult photo shoot late last week. We’re not sure he’s sitting down yet. Wink wink, nudge nudge. 

John should be back here next week. But if you happen to run into him and he offers to show you his latest photos… you might want to give that a pass.

(Oh, and you can stop searching the artwork above for Sergio Aragones. He’s not there.)

 

John Ostrander’s Late Look: How To Train Your Dragon 2

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2I don’t always get out to see movies these days and I’ve missed some this summer that I wanted to see. My Mary and I had a chance to sneak in a film this week and we chose to catch How To Train Your Dragon 2 before it disappeared from the movie theaters. We had seen the first one and I had been impressed: good story, good animation, and a sense of things having consequences.

I liked the sequel even more.

I should note that sequels can be notoriously difficult to pull off well. You’ve already told your story. What else do you have and, if it’s any good, why didn’t you tell it first? Mind you, there are notable exceptions to the rule. Godfather II is not only better than the first film, it’s often described as one of the best films of all time. The Empire Strikes Back is also a better film than its predecessor and, for many Star Wars fans, the best of the bunch. The Dark Knight was, for me, the best Batman film thus far.

However, you have others that just don’t live up to the original. Iron 2 was rather sucky, for example. Superman 2 was not as good as its predecessor. Babe is a favorite film in our house; Babe 2… rarely watch it. Once upon a time Warner Bros considered making a sequel to Casablanca.  Fortunately, they never got around to it.

The problem with a lot of sequels is that they exist, not because the creators have a new vision but because the studio, seeing how much money the first one made, wants another bite of that apple. Sometimes, all you get is a refried version of the first movie.

So – what makes How To Train Your Dragon 2 even better than the original? (Mandatory spoiler warning now issued. If you haven’t seen it yet – and you should – you may want to avoid the rest of the column. I’ll be as circumspect as I can.)

(more…)

John Ostrander: Old Star Trek Tech

Capt KirkI’m a Star Trek fan. Not a rabid fan, but a fan. I‘ve at least sampled all the shows and some I liked better than others. I’ve seen all the films and some I really liked; the first Trek film – not so much. I even enjoyed the two most recent films although I have a nephew who may disown me for saying so.

I’m not a big tech sort of guy (just ask ComicMix’s own Glenn Hauman) but I do have a major tech gripe with the series. The original communicators very much influenced the design of cel phones – mine still flips open, thank you very much, and I don’t know how many times I’ve asked Scotty to beam me out of some situations. Unfortunately, all the communicators are good for is audio. No video. Star Trek is set in our future. My antiquated Trekfone can take pictures. We have cel phones that can take movies. ST communicators cannot.

You would think that having video capability would be valuable for away teams stepping foot on new planets and meeting new civilizations. Their space ships have sensors that can pick up life forms on planets below or peer long distances into space and throw up the image on the bridge’s screen but they can’t do video from the planet surface to the ship orbiting overhead. Here today we can get video to and from the International Space Station. Our probes can throw back images from distant planets.

I understand why that had to happen that way in the Original Series. The show didn’t have the CGI or the budget to make it work. Why not update the tech in the later series? Why not in the movies, especially the most recent ones?

They have teleporters, for cryin’ out loud. Figuring out how to get video from planet surface to an orbiting ship is harder than disassembling someone’s atoms, beaming them somewhere and re-assembling them? Seriously?

Are they keeping to the audio-only rule because that’s the way it’s always been? They’ve already alienated the hardcore Trek fans with the re-boot; are the fans going to get more cheesed off because now the communicators can send pictures? Are they afraid all the ST characters are going to start doing selfies? Although I could see Kirk doing an Anthony Weiner with his.

Why does this bug me? Because, in my book, it’s a failure of imagination.

I remember a great scene in Galaxy Quest (one of the best non-ST Star Trek films ever made). IMDB does the pocket synopsis this way: “The alumni cast of a cult space TV show have to play their roles as the real thing when an alien race needs their help.” Their fake TV ship has been lovingly created by a race of aliens who believe the TV episodes (which have found their way into outer space) to be a “historical record.”

In one scene, Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver have to get to the manual off switch for the self destruct button and are confronted with a corridor of large pistons slamming together from side to side and up and down at an alarming speed. Weaver’s character balks; there’s no reason for those chompers to be there. Allen says it’s because it was in an episode. Weaver screams, “That scene was badly written!” She snarls that those writers should have been shot; this always makes me giggle.

That’s my point. The aliens put the banging pistons in the corridor not because they make any sense but because they were there before. Same problem with the communicators for me: they don’t make any sense.

The early communicators were way ahead of their time and that’s part of what Star Trek tech has always done – inspired us and given us a sense of wonder, of possibilities. That stimulates the imagination. Communicators shouldn’t be able to do less than our cel phones; they should be able to do more.

The stories should also be more than re-makes of past stories. Tell us new ones. Take us boldly to where we’ve never been before.

 

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