Attack of the Waste of Time

I get the impression that G4's "Attack of the Show" is not exactly intended as compelling, relevant television, but wow. Besides rather mildly tantalizing glimpses of the cleavage of some chick named Olivia and much more tantalizing glimpses of some cute-as-all-hell British hottie, there is no apparent purpose to the program. Shows like this are why I don't often bother with television anymore.

But I digress ...

Since I have already wasted an entire blog entry about the "Star Trek vs. Star Wars" segment that appeared on the show, I shall therefore waste two.

The debate was billed as a battle royale, with hints that there would even be (probably shallow) tech-talk. This means that mankind still awaits the advent of truth in advertising. For all of five minutes, two talking heads had the floor. On the left side of the screen with a holodeck background was Mark Altman of Free Enterprise fame, whose professional credits are lengthy and his shoulders broad. On the right with a Death-Star-against-stars background was Kevin Rubio of Troops fame, whose professional credits are almost as lengthy but who has an astonishing, and really quite disconcerting, utter lack of shoulders. His arms were never visible, but had they been I believe they would've appeared to erupt from either side of the mid-torso.

You may think I'm just making useless commentary with the above, but I'm actually making a point. If I were to stop right here with my report on the segment, I would have offered a recap featuring greater depth than the segment itself actually provided.

So instead of providing depth, let's just hit the amusing highlights. Rubio comes strong out of the gate noting the influence of Star Wars on the film industry and the generation as a whole. Altman was hit hard, and fell back to the usual 'optimism about the future' Trek-wank. From there it just devolved, and the most entertaining thing about it was seeing Altman attempt to speak through an everpresent smile, sitting cattywompus so that one shoulder loomed magnificently over the rest of him, while the shoulderless Rubio and his avenging disco 'fro (complete with 1970's 'stache) gazed upward, rocking to and fro (no pun intended) and looking for all the world like he was doing his best Stevie Wonder impersonation.

Altman was always pretty steady, quality-wise. His performance started off along the thin line between mediocre and somewhat-tolerable, and by the end he was doing pretty decent. However, Rubio started off insightful and slowly slipped toward insane. As example of his insight, at one point he assigned Trek's slips of late as being due to its lack of change as a franchise that's been doing the exact same thing for years, which was of course Berman's whole modus operandi. And he called Kirk a ho.

But around the time he mentioned Star Trek and its "opening alien frequencies" he started going completely bananas. I quote:

"I'm saying that Star Wars was enough to inspire a defense initiative which brought down the Soviet Union, destroying communism."

He's talking, of course, of the popular (and originally derisive) common name for the Strategic Defense Initiative, a largely pie-in-the-sky notion from the Reagan years designed to suggest that we had the upper hand in the nuclear arms race. The name came in part because of the planned use of lasers. The SDI pseudo-farce was part of the overall strategy of dominating the Soviets in military and military research spending, among other areas, fuelling their collapse.

Y'know, I've heard of a lot of things supposedly being inspired by Star Trek, but I'm pretty sure no Trekkie has ever claimed that Star Trek has shaped world events. Maybe some deluded Trekkies out there dream that perhaps Star Trek could inspire all of us to open our alien frequencies and sit down together in harmony and understanding, but I'm fairly certain none of them would assign, say, the Cold War avoidance of nuclear armageddon as being Trek-related. Basically, Rubio's rationale was like saying the shuttle program was inspired by Star Trek . . . like SDI being called Star Wars, the first orbiter was the Enterprise!

But in any case, the time you've wasted reading this entry is now longer than the length of the segment, so it's time to sign off. The only other bit worth noting is that the online voting for an Enterprise vs. Star Destroyer fight was won handily by the Star Destroyer.

I think this speaks volumes about the viewership of such fine, compelling television.