Star Trek: Hidden Frontier – 201 – Refugees

February 13, 2010ByTars Tarkas

Star Trek: Hidden Frontier – 201 – Refugees

2001 Official Site
Directed by Rob Caves

It’s Season 2! So don’t be blue. Because this ain’t Avatar. Welcome to season 2. This is the season where Hidden Frontier irons out a few of the kinks, cut down on the ginormous cast, and start streamlining the show into a better product. Just remember the differences of who you were freshman year of college vs. your sophomore year.

So after the review of Season 1, we are all set to go. But there are a few mysteries that happen between the transitions between seasons. First is the Mystery of Commander Joseph Johns, who vanishes. Was he killed by the Grey? Trapped on the Titanic? Locked in a stairwell by his aunt and uncle until he gets a letter from Hogwarts? Who knows!! Okay, I peeked at the Hidden Frontier Wiki and he pops back up a few seasons down the line, but that spoils all my jokes so we’re going to ignore that until he pops up again. There is also mystery of Ensign Amanda Hanley, who is no longer in the opening credits despite never appearing on the show. The Grey strike again! Several other cast members depart during Season 2 as well, and new people join.

We are going to proceed as if you are familiar with the show, as you should be by now. You should all be getting my Dr. Henglaar in-jokes. And if you are expecting video clips, forget it! I had a lot of trouble converting the .mov files into a format I could edit clips out of, because everything I tried either had corrupt frames or dropped audio. Just watch the whole freakin’ episodes, they’re pretty short and it is a better way to spend your time than looking up camel porn on the internet. Mmmm…shaved dromedaries…

Episodes of Hidden Frontier are available online at HiddenFrontier.com. You can also see their other series and participate in their forums.

A new season means we have a new opening credits sequence! Huzzah!

	Captain Ian Quincy Knapp (David W. Dial) – Still Angry! His brother was killed by the Dominion, and left Captain Knapp angry! Had a mysterious encounter during the Dominion War (The Dominion who killed his brother) with mystery aliens that made him angry, and now that he commands Deep Space 12 and the USS Excelsior he can take out his anger over his brother’s death with flaming kill-lasers. Did I mention his brother was killed?
	Commander Elizabeth Shelby (Risha Denney) – Stop standing in Shelby’s way or I’ll kick your butt! Shelby’s back and being Shelby and stuff.
	Dr. Henglaar (John Whiting) – Medical Doctor, Tellarite, and an actual interesting character. Ignore the fact he is wearing a pig nose and Muppet gloves…for now! John Whiting rules. He’s really high on the hog.
	Counselor Myra Elbrey (Barbara Clifford) – Betazoid, used to teach at the Academy. Survivor of the Grey attack on the USS Rutledge. Has a dog named Mr. Scott. Occasionally blonde.
	Ensign Brad T. Rawling (Tristan Clark) – Ensign Ro’s best friend and lover of alien poontang. Communications officer. Makes bad jokes. Spends a lot of his time hanging out in his quarters with Ensign Ro and getting hammered.
	Ensign Jenna McFarland (Adrianne Lange) – Half-Trill, Half-Human, all Navigation. I still don’t know if she has a worm in her belly. Is always there if you need the ship steered. Has amusing stories that she never gets to finish due to the plots developing. Her uncle’s name is Rufus.
	Lt. John Martinez (Anthony Diaz) – Chief of Security who looks like a Chief of Security. Thus he is the Chief of Security. I know he does so on the USS Excelsior, but I don’t know if he does so on Deep Space 12 as well. Will eventually wander off in the middle of the season.
	Ensign Andrew Barrett (Tyler Bosserman) – Communications officer and brand new member of the third grade! Wooo!! A whole season later and he still has no character development.
	Ensign Artim Ibanya (Beau Christian Williams) – Because YOU demanded it, the kid from Star Trek: Insurrection with the CGI mouse is now a grown up main character! Wait, who demanded this? Someone did. And now we got it. His character is not as terrible as you might imagine, which is a shock to me.
	Lt. Cmd. James Darwin (Cliff Gardner) – Darwin replaces Joseph Johns in doing whatever the hell it was Joseph Johns did. He’s sort of like an extra first officer for Captain Angry. Darwin was on the old USS Angeles show, so he is another holdover.
	Admiral Nechayev (Renee Huberstock) – The best admiral ever is now a semi-main character, appearing in pretty much every episode and yelling at everyone. Renee Huberstock was a day player in several episodes in Season 1, now she has a permanent role, so they’ll need another person to play random background women. Will Captain Angry and Admiral Angry yell at each other? Heck yeah!

Guest Star Roll Call

	Princess Illiana (Katie Moss) – Princess Illiana flees her homeworld which is under attack by the Grey, like they are every day for a million years or something. Then they want the Federation to send thousands of ships to defend their big ear culture in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, that will work! Illiana is a Tren’La, which is like a Cobra’La, except not at all. But she does have big ears, so big Spock gets all jealous. But Spock would never admit it, because he’s a Vulcan.
	Aris (John Reynolds) – Illiana’s son who becomes friends with Artim and they pal around and become tactical geniuses who save the day. He’s got extra brains in those big ears. Or extra ear wax. That he uses to throw at people. The Ferengi regularly mock his tiny ears.
	The Grey (Jason Munoz) – Evil Psychic Space Smurf Jawas. Etherials are the master race, and Jawas are used as foot soldiers. They have a Hive Mind. Remember, Hive Mind=Scary Villain. It’s true, just read any science fiction book ever written.

InCulture Wars, Privatization

Blackwater kicked out of Iraq

February 12, 2010Bydm

The Iraqis have been working on this for years (and lied to about it) but it looks like they’ve finally pulled it off. Iraq’s interior minister expelled 250 of their employees from the country yesterday:

Making the announcement on Thursday, Jawad Bolani, the interior minister, said: “We have sent an order to 250 former Blackwater employees, who today are working with other security companies in Iraq, to leave the country in seven days and we have confiscated their residence permits.

“All of those concerned were notified four days ago and so they have three days to leave. This decision was made in connection with the crime that took place at Nisur Square.”

Separately, more charges of prostitution and fraud are being reported by the Washington Post :

In court records unsealed this week, a husband and wife who worked for Blackwater said they have firsthand knowledge of the company falsifying invoices, double-billing federal agencies and improperly charging the government for personal expenses…

In their suit, the Davises assert that Blackwater officials kept a Filipino prostitute on the company payroll for a State Department contract in Afghanistan, and billed the government for her time working for male Blackwater employees in Kabul. The prostitute’s salary was categorized as part of the company’s “Morale Welfare Recreation” expenses, they alleged.

If you’ll recall, not that long ago a big fuss was being made over alleged prostitution and fraud and canceling contracts with another organization:

Multiple bills were produced with many co-sponsors, with one eventually being passed and quickly ruled unconstitutional by a federal court. Legislation to simply restrict companies running wild with mercenaries has not been given nearly as much attention. In 2007, Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky introduced a bill to do just that, titled the Stop Outsourcing Security Act . It was promptly sent to die in committee.

InCinema Articles

Star Trek: Hidden Frontier Season 1 Recap

February 12, 2010ByTars Tarkas

Star Trek: Hidden Frontier Season 1 Recap

To prepare for upcoming reviews of Season 2 of Hidden Frontier, this is your Hidden Frontier Season 1 recap!

Things to know:

USS Excelsior – The USS Excelsior is a Galaxy-class III dreadnought that looks suspiciously like the Future Enterprise from the episode All Good Things…. It is the flagship for Captain Knapp as he spreads his anger across the Briar Patch and gets into fights with Blue Space Jawas.

Deep Space 12 – Deep Space 12 is the new starbase built to deal with the Ba’ku stuff. You would think one tiny planet in a nebula would be really boring…

Briar Patch – goofy nebula place the Ba’ku planet was at during Star Trek: Insurrection.

Download these episodes from HiddenFrontier.com and then read these reviews to help you better digest them. Or just read these reviews and watch the whole series later. In any event, make sure you read these reviews, probably dozens and dozens of times. You need to keep reading TarsTarkas.NET or you will get cancer.

Enemy Unknown Part 1 – We are introduced to Captain Angry and his anger, Doctor Pig, Counselor Lady, and Toby. They have an unfortunate incident with The Grey that takes place before the actual series starts during the Dominion War.

Enemy Unknown Part 2 – It is now Modern Day, and Captain Angry is captain of Deep Space 12 as well as a Future Enterprise ship, the USS Excelsior. We are introduced to every character in the show, almost all of which seemed to have went to Starfleet Academy at the same time and are best buds. Besides the introductions, absolutely nothing happens in this episode.

Enemy Unknown Part 3 – Captain Angry takes out the USS Excelsior to go frak some Greys up. But the Grey are too big of jerks to get frakked up so easily. Angry will have to lure the Grey out of the Briar Patch, as the Grey are invincible while in it, but total nerd weaklings the second they leave it. So, of course, the Grey are retarded and leave the Briar Patch and the Federation blasts them up and captures their ship. This deliberate and blatant act of war is somehow sanctioned by the Federation, who must have been replaced by their Evil Mirror Universe counterparts or something.

Two Hours – Grey, Schmey. This episode is about Joseph Johns’s magical ride back in time to the Titanic. We learn Joseph Johns’s hobby is the Titanic, and Federation Timeships are completely useless. Some bad guy messes up the timestream in order to enact some revenge, and Johns fails to correct it and many innocent people die (including some blown off of a ladder as the enemy ship attacks!) Johns then dies as does his entire crew, but not until they hit the reset button so none of this ever happened. Except for the hundreds of people who died back in time on Earth!

Perihelion – Star Trek is invaded by Star Wars, except it is just the Executor and no one is on it. Then the kid from Trekkies is captaining a ship and kills everyone on it, including himself. But the Excelsior escapes that fate thanks to some technobabble and explosions. This episode introduced Commander Shelby as the new first officer, showing that Shelby must have been frozen for a decade or so right after her appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Echoes – Wesley Crusher shows up and is bald and wearing red pajamas. Then the Grey attack a colony outside of the Briar Patch because they are stupid and forgot they are vulnerable if they attack outside the Briar Patch. So Captain Angry and the fleet blasts them the frak up. There are also some terrorists in this episode and Captain Angry gets super-angry on them. I don’t know if this was made right after 9-11, but it is interesting to speculate.

So that’s the whole season, and Season 2 takes up soon afterward, with cast changes, makeup changes, special effect changes, hair growing where the show didn’t have hair before, and strong biological urges to thrust naughty parts with fan fiction series of the opposite gender. Look out, Star Trek: Phase II!

InMovie News

Movie News Droppings

February 11, 2010ByTars Tarkas

The Spiderman reboot, which looks like they are going to go all Twilight with (sigh…), will also be in in 3-D. So expect sparkly Spiderman shooting webbing directly at the camera while obsessed pale Mary Jane spends large portions of the film sitting in a chair, depressed. Then Werewolf Goblin takes off his shirt.

The remake of Escape From New York is moving forward, as now we got dirty bombs, a non-trashed New York that is still a prison, and Snake rescuing a female senator instead of the President, probably so he can bang her. It will still be terrible.

The Superman reboot will be “Godfathered” by Chris Nolan, of Dark Knight fame. Basically, they will give him a bunch of cash to tell them if their ideas are dumb so they can try to make a billion dollars again, But they probably won’t listen and they’ll make another bomb. Meanwhile, the important news is that Nolan has an idea for the third Batman film, and he and his brother are writing the script.

In non-reboot news, Roland Emmerich is still making Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, and now it will be 3D Motion Capture, because he can demand more money from YOU! I am officially over 3D, and even the promise of a 3D Mule won’t get me back into it. This news is so bad I wish I had more reboot news…

Foywonder has discovered that Asylum is making Titanic 2. Yes.
titanic2

Black Dynamite was awesome, and can now be yours!

InWingnut Web

According to FOX News, the Tea Parties are 'racist', 'fruitless'

February 10, 2010Byskiplogic

Check out the poll and vote, if you feel the need, here. I’d say that FOX News kind of has the kung-fu grip on the Conservative media reader’s pulse, so it’s not too far of a stretch to claim that this poll is very representative of what most Conservatives who read FOX News believe. Hell most polls that get quoted on television consist of a sample of maybe 100-150 people who get phone called by robots, but the almost 89,000 individuals (at the moment of taking the screen shot) who answered the question in this poll are nothing to sneeze at. Like any other poll you read about in the newspaper or hear about on television, internet polls, especially, mean jack shit in the overall scheme of things, but this poll and the way it is worded, and especially the 64% of people who believe that it’s a “fruitless mix of racism and conspiracy theories” above all the other possible options, does say something strong in my opinion.

So we all know that the Tea Party/Birther/White Nationalist movement is a pretty insular community who are very inter-connected through social media, which creates an echo chamber and make these same crazies think they make up a significant portion of Conservatives and voting Americans. If you read some other FOX News polls you’d probably get the sense that they’re as popular too. Unfortunately there is a whole mountain of evidence that runs contrary to the tea baggers idea that they’re millions strong, and even more so in the Conservative movement, I think we’re seeing a slight return to sanity in terms of folks distancing themselves even further from the dogma of a movement that started as a protest of lower taxes and government spending but has turned into a big heaping help of crazy radical bullshit over issues that don’t even exist, let alone make sense to argue.

We’re sure as heck not out of the crazy forest yet, but if 64% of FOX News readers, almost a super-majority if you will, agree that the Tea Party movement represents a racist and conspiracy-fueled lunacy unmatched by any supposed issue they might be aligning themselves behind, then I think it’s safe to say that the Birther tide is beginning to ebb in popular politics. Sure these folks will always be around so long as Ning.com lets them have their social communities and as long as they keep doing stupid stuff and Sarah Palin continues to say retarded things, but their market for new followers is starting to get a bit shallower. Oh, and this Rassmussen Report poll that was taken during the weekend of the CPAC convention shows that only 17% of voters would choose a Tea Party presidential candidate at the ballot box. There are some really good trends represented in this poll to, such as 48% of Republicans identify with the GOP now as opposed to 39% in December. Meanwhile among Democrats and Independent voters favorability ratings of the Tea Party still rank in the single digits (the high single digits!).

Like the teenage rebel whose mixed emotions led him to do some pretty stupid shit as a kid, Conservatives are beginning to grow-up and find their rational minds again.

InCulture Wars, Wingnut Web

AmericanGrandJury.org – Obama never attended Columbia University

February 9, 2010ByTars Tarkas

Chinese stooges AmericanGrandJury.org and their new best bud convicted felon Pastor David Manning have just spend an exhaustive investigation of looking at pixellated Japanese porn and have concluded that Barack Obama never attended Columbia University.

ChineseGrandJury.org declares:
1) Columbia University will not divulge whether the “alleged” diploma issued was in the name of Barry Soetoro or Barack Hussein Obama. No public record exists regarding the diploma.

2) Obama alleges he attended Columbia in 1982, 1983. But, the investigators have been UNABLE to turn up a single shred of written documentation for the years 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984 that show where Obama appeared on a school roster, register, faculty memo, bulletin board, school awards, dean’s list; where Obama’s name appeared in a yearbook, club record, fraternity record, extra curricular activity member roster, student newspaper, student radio or tv activity; where Obama appeared in any records as a worker, employee, laborer in or about Columbia University; where Obama enrolled in any sports activity or program.

3) As a graduating senior in 1983 he does not appear in any Political Science (his major) or Granduating Class yearbook or invitation records.

4) There is absolutely no documentation of any kind to show Obama attended, lived, worked or played at Columbia University during the investigated 4 years.

5) Interviewed professors, college employees, students (who were at Columbia during the years in question) have failed to turn up a single person that can remember Obama. This is irrefutable evidence. Think about your own situation if Obama had attended your college? A “now-famous” person went to your school? Many would be able to say, “of course I remember.” At Columbia, not a single person has been able to say he or she remembers Obama.

One small problem, there is all this evidence that he did attend Columbia University. All easily found on Google in a matter of seconds. But no problem!

The commentors on the blog were ecstatic over the discovery…

If I declare everything about Barry Soetoro lies then I can claim anything!

It is a good day when people die, just like Jesus said in the Bible. Oh, wait, I meant Worf on Star Trek…

Barack Obama doesn’t keep his Columbia diploma in his back pocket to show to people, thus it doesn’t exist!

One guy=entire black community.

How dumb to you have to be to get banned from RedState.com?

Rev. Manning is part of the conspiracy of disinformation! He’s the real long-legged mackdaddy!

This guy can’t even spell birth certificate, much less know what one looks like

Go back to writing science fiction novels, Kevin Anderson!

The news hit FreeRepublic.com like a ton of bricks, and soon bricks were crapped in every direction as the crazies fought to be the most crazies while voices of reason were ignored like the RINOs they are. Only REAL PATRIOTS know that Barack Hussein Obama was born of a pod and had no real parents, only the genetic donations of Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Malcolm X, an actual black panther, and Dolemite.

We are seekers. Seekers of poo!

A black zombie, of course…

Galtoid is willfully ignoring the links I posted above, many of which are in that Freeper thread.

Speaking of which….But wait, that means Barack Obama roomed with Al Qaeda! I got you now, Barry S.!

Everyone is covering everything up. They even blew up the shuttle Columbia to help cover Obama’s Columbia records!

ETL is freaking crazy, but at least he doesn’t believe Obama is the Anti-Christ. And bonus “revenge against the libs” guy who will probably try to burn down your house if Palin is elected in 2012.

Barack Obama – armed truck robber! I think someone needs to stop watching Armed and Dangerous! No, wait, that movie rules. Everyone needs to watch Armed and Dangerous!

Sorry, I didn’t read this post, I was thinking about that scene in Armed and Dangerous where John Candy gets in the Semi and that cool dude starts driving through traffic….

“Everything will fall down like a house of cards” and similar phrases are in about 50% of these posts, so if you ever want to pretend to be a Birther you have to use that phrase every other post.

In 18 months, Missouri gal is going to be very disappointed.

What the frak is this crap?

Freeper poetry.

Only FreeRepublic.com can get to the bottom of this mess! To the Freepmobile! Wait, the Freepmobile is a rascal scooter…

mojitojoe, racist extraordinaire, I have saved your post to laugh at in 2012.

Of course, no man would have a mustache like that…

The most retarded photoshop conspiracy on Freep of the day belongs to…

Hey, you, guy with actual facts! Get out of here!

You see, the negroes are all such slores that they are all related due to childhood sex.

Just think of Kent Brockman screaming “It’s in Revelations, people!”

Luckily, we’ll be saved when John Candy shoots his 50 caliber handgun at the car with Palin in it and it crashes into the tanker truck filled with rocket fuel…

Yes, it is a mystery indeed!

Now With bonus Dr. Orly Taitz Birth craziness!

Rev. Dr. Mr. HM Orly Hussein Taitz Jr. Esq TE has uploaded this secret document sent to her of Barack Hussein Obama’s mother’s forged Social Security card. As you can see, this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt Barack Obama had no mother!

Thanks to User-Friendly and Seventyfour for the tips!

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