COMM. STATION
With Darren Maxwell
A couple of Comm Stations back I made a reference to a Lexus ad in the Herald Sun Newspaper which said “Battle Star”. When I read that I thought that perhaps there were some closet sci-fi fans working at the newspaper, as a convention featuring a Battlestar Galactica actor was taking place the day after the newspaper article appeared. Well imagine my surprise when I saw an ad on TV for the same Lexus using the catch phrase “resistance is useless.” Now does THAT statement sound vaguely familiar! Sci-fi coincidence? I’ll let you be the judge.
Who says you can’t use sci-fi to promote EVERYTHING? In the April issue of Men’s Health magazine there’s a picture from Star Trek First Contact (I think), of the Enterprise E firing at the Borg cube (someone please correct me if I’m wrong); and the catch phrase to the article it relates to is... “Blasting Prostrate Cancer!” I have to admit I never thought of using a Starship for such a purpose (gee you’d have to be a pretty good shot).
Having said that, I was in a Doctor’s waiting room recently and whilst scouring over the various leaflets and other tidbits of paperwork there I suddenly saw a big red spray-painted “V” on a pamphlet. Now my first thought was “what is V - The Mini-Series doing in a doctor’s waiting room?” Well, upon further investigation I found it was a pamphlet relating to some kind of male blah, blah, blah problem. The disappointing thing is that there wasn’t a lizard or a mouse mentioned anywhere in the whole thing! Obviously someone thought “hey if we put the famous V logo on this leaflet, lots of people will look at it” (that’s my theory anyway). Well, it worked for me - and no I don’t suffer from a “blah, blah, blah” problem either.
Talk about a guy who’s always got sci-fi on his mind. I was wandering through K-Mart a little while ago and saw a small digital clock for sale. The time shown on the clock’s packaging was set at 11:38 and I immediately thought “hey look THX 1138!”, which of course was a futuristic sci-fi film made in the late 60s by George Lucas. Personally I thought that was pretty good spotting on my behalf.
And whilst on the numbers trail, I was watching the film 1984 a little while ago and sure enough some guy walks on screen with a 1701 number on his back and I immediately thought of Star Trek. Doesn’t sound like I get out much does it?
A few months ago I saw a Star Trek chess game with a twist. In this version, it’s the Federation vs ........ the Federation? Yep the same characters play on either side of the board. To differentiate one side from the other, one has pieces wearing the TNG TV series coloured uniforms (where the chest section has the largest amount of colour), and the other side has the DS9 coloured uniforms (where the colour goes across the shoulders and neck). I gotta admit that it’s a cute concept and it does prevent the old argument of WHO would be the King and Queen of the “black” side. However the problem of working out which side is which in an actual game wouldn’t be that easy as the colours are the same, they’re just in different places (as if Chess wasn’t brain-straining enough). At least the pawns look grouse. The “TV” side has the Enterprise D, while the “movie” side has the Enterprise E. (Imagine a pawn storm featuring a fleet of Enterprise Ds, wouldn’t that look awesome!)
I always remember the in-joke of the three aliens (named Klaatu, Barada and Nikto) standing side by side in the sail barge sequence of Return of the Jedi. Now it’s no coincidence that this took place because “klaatu barada nikto” was the command given to the robot Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still to stop him from destroying the Earth and generally being a nasty pastie. Imagine my surprise when I found a new triple pack of three Star Wars figures featuring… you guessed it: Klaatu, Barada and Nikto. So after 16 years, the joke (and the homage to the original film) still lives on.
A friend of mine who studies Karate was telling me that in a training session the teacher got them to perform some unusual push-ups. The teacher said that he’d just seen Star Wars and was using some new Jedi training techniques, and the students all had to push harder if they too wanted to be Jedis. Needless to say, the students didn’t progress very far after that as they were all falling about in fits of laughter.
Talk about really bad marketing. I couldn’t help but be really miffed that the newly re-released videos of Planet of the Apes has a mega spoiler on it (I guess I’m not ruining anything by mentioning it here either). I couldn’t believe that they put a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the video cover of the film, which of course denotes that the film is set on Earth, and is in the last scene of the movie. This kinda jerked me off because not everyone has seen the film, and the movie spends its whole time making you believe you are anywhere BUT Earth. Sure a 90s audience would probably work it out pretty quickly, but still, you don’t want EVERYTHING handed over to you on a silver platter. Argh!
If you’re a Star Wars fan, you’d better pay attention to this next bit, if you’re a Star Wars collector, you’d really better pay attention. The Director of the Australian Star Wars fan club who recently resigned after 11 years of service is preparing to sell the majority of his Star Wars collection via the Internet. Unlike most collections which focus on toys and figures, this one specifically relates to books, magazines, posters and other “paper” related items. I’ve seen this collection for myself on numerous occasions and it’s easily the largest and most comprehensive Star Wars paper-related collection in the country (especially the Star Wars movie posters which alone are worth thousands), and soon it will all be up for grabs. First it has to be catalogued in a database which will take a couple of months in itself to prepare but by the end of the year it should be available online in one mega-auction. So be sure to stay tuned for that one!
Finally, just to prove that some people DO read Comm Station, I’d like to say a special “hello” to Vincent after he asked me to personally autograph one of my Comm Station articles at the Armageddon sci-fi convention held at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre in early June. Ahhhh fame at last!
Until next time, stay galactic.