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ExerTrek: The Emissary

Mar 11th, 2010
by Will Ludwigsen.
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[For my daily workout, I'm pedaling on a recumbent exercise bike while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm posting my reviews here.]

(195.4 pounds)

Wait, Worf is a Republican? Let’s see: security conscious, taciturn, tending to a grim humorlessness, easily frustrated and confused by subtlety, and willing to get married after a single sexual encounter? Yep. I guess they can’t solve ALL our problems in the future.

Well, that’s not entirely fair. I LIKE Worf, and I enjoy this episode. It’s nice to see him show a little feeling, especially to a character so interesting as K’Ehleyr, the titular emissary sent to handle an errant ship of Klingons unaware the war is over. She shows humor and emotional intelligence, playing against the Klingon stereotypes, and the actress makes her somehow impish and powerful at the same time. That’s the kind of girl you want in this world, funny but ready to kick ass. Maybe even yours, when you need it.

They work well together, too, once the sexual tension is…uh…taken care of…after fighting a couple of monsters on the Holodeck; their solution to the problem of the rogue ship is nice.

On a fashion note, I have to say that red leather and spandex is hardly professional dress for a Federation envoy, unless she’s Ambassador to Sin City.

My grade: B.

Shhh! The Wires are Talking

Mar 10th, 2010
by Will Ludwigsen.
1 comment

Probably my best friend in middle and early high school was Carl Johnson, and his father was a CB radio enthusiast. Carl’s father worked at Radio Shack and made extra money installing massive antennas for other radio hobbyists, those big metal towers you see attached to mobile homes.

I don’t remember much about the guy except two things: he wore a blue sock around one of his wrists for arthritis, and he inadvertently said one of the wisest things I’ve ever heard about writing (and, indeed, all creation).

Carl and I were helping him one day by coiling up a big knot of wire. It was flailing and whipping all around us as we tried to wrestle it into submission, and Carl’s father finally climbed down from the antenna and quickly tamed it into a neat circle.

“Wire talks to you,” he said. “You’ve got to listen to it.”

Now, Carl and I made gentle fun of him behind his back for years after that, imagining a world in which he thought that electronics were eerily alive. But as I’ve worked more as a writer, I’ve come to see his strange wisdom: most difficult things get less difficult when you pay attention to their own patterns and laws. Wires and hoses gladly coil for you, but you’ve got to follow the way they want to coil.

I’m in a tricky place with the novel now, three-quarters through. The first three-quarters is completely finished, rewritten and polished, all but ready to go. The last quarter? Blank pages, emptied by all the changes I’ve made earlier in the book.

Yet now, exhausted by the whole novel process, I find myself impatient to skip the usual step of lousy first-draft writing and snap this last quarter perfectly into place like the rest. I’ve tried to listen to the wires of my novel, and now I’ve got this last tendril that isn’t fitting because I’m not listening to anything but all the rest. I’m trying too hard to force it.

And of course, this waiting for perfection is just delaying the work even more.

So much of writing is lulling oneself into a strange fugue state of surrender, of letting the wire coil itself. That’s all the harder close to the end of something, when you have the promise of all the rest to fulfill.

Sigh. I guess it’s time to bring on the liquor.

ExerTrek: Manhunt

Mar 10th, 2010
by Will Ludwigsen.
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[For my daily workout, I'm pedaling on a recumbent exercise bike while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm posting my reviews here.]

(196.2 pounds)

When Lwaxana Troi comes aboard in the midst of Betazoid heat, we’re “treated” to another strangely plotless episode that happens to have a few moments of charm: Mr. Hom holding his hand to his eyes as sign language for Geordi, Data’s “rescue” of Picard from the awkward dinner. Of course, she saves the conference in the end with her spotty and subjective telepathic powers, too.

Yet nothing is really resolved or changed at the end of this episode; Troi leaves with the same problem as when she arrived, with no new understanding of it or possible solution. Like the viewers, the characters must merely endure to the end.

My grade: D.

ExerTrek: Up the Long Ladder

Mar 9th, 2010
by Will Ludwigsen.
1 comment

[For my daily workout, I'm pedaling on a recumbent exercise bike while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm posting my reviews here.]

(196.2 pounds)

I’d almost forgotten how filthy, backward, drunken, and opportunistic the Irish are before this episode reminded me. Whew! And I was about to hire one to reshingle my barn.

(Though their women are rawr-worthy, if Brenna O’Dell is anything to go by. So maybe that makes up for it.)

What a train wreck of a story. A colony ship splits into two factions, one comprised of prudish technophilic clones and the other comprised of the cast from Darby O’Gill and the Little People. The clones are losing their genetic pool, and the Irish have lost their planet. The solution? Yeah, just what you think–though there’s still time for Riker to sleep with Hottie O’Gaelic before everyone has to have three spouses.

Which shouldn’t be a problem at all, with plenty of liquor to be had. In fact, you should probably have a few Guinnesses yourself before trying to watch this.

My grade: D-. You know an episode is bad when you find yourself thinking, “Hey, I kind of like that Doctor Pulaski.”

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