Aristotle in Star Trek?

Last semester I took a public speaking class and learned the basics of writing a good, convincing and even persuasive essay. Earlier today I was thinking about these basics and the thought came to mind, "Maybe this is why Star Trek is so good; so engaging; so believable. Of course, my opinion of it being believable is pretty far out, but you must admit, Roddenberry did an awesome job of portraying human nature even in a futuristic world.

So what are these basics that I speak of? They are those elements of writing which Aristotle came up with: Ethos, Logos and Pathos (ethics, logic and emotion). Ethos describes how trustworthy a statement is, while logos explains how logical it is to proven fact. Pathos appeals to the emotions, even if the content is an assumption or completely falsified.

The statement, "We are miracles of God," is not necessarily a statement with strong ethos, simply because there is no basis for the statement. However, you could reword it and say, "According to the living word of God, we are His miracles." Now the statement has some origin which skeptics could reference your statement to to see if what you were saying had any basis.

Now I feel like I'm rambling. So I'll get to the point of this post: Star Trek. What made Star Trek so engaging and why does it still have a huge fan-base? I think it is partly because Gene Roddenberry heavily utilized these three tools in every single one of the episodes. He even personified them into certain characters throughout the multiple series that were created.

Example: Spock is obviously the persona of logic, or logos. Every statement he made was based off of a believable scientific or statistical fact. Kirk was the example of ethos. He could not have become captain of a starship without a good trustworthy background. And his crew followed him into every scenario even when at first glance, the decision seemed crazy, because they knew he could be trusted. And McCoy was a good example of pathos. Everything he did seemed to contrast to Spock, because he was a very emotional person. He based many of his decisions on how he felt at the time.

Of course, Next Generation equivalents would have been Data, Picard and Troi, respectively.

Now Roddenberry could not have created hundreds of episodes by making sure logos, ethos and pathos were present in every single one. No. In fact, I believe he intentionally reversed them in many cases. Recall the sadistic parallel-universe Kirk, or the time Picard was taken over by the electrical alien, making his crew extremely suspicious of his actions and even sparking mutinous feelings. In these cases, these leaders had lost their ethical credibility! So even a reversal in ethos, pathos and logos were used to create and add even more variety and interest to the world of Star Trek.

Can new technology go too far?

The first time the Star Trek people remastered all their videos on DVD, they simply did a straight conversion with maybe a little cleanup. However, with all this new Blu-ray stuff, they've remastered it AGAIN and have gone so far as to "digitize" the video, replacing the model Enterprise hanging on strings in the studio with a poorly done 3D render. Well, I was watching the ad on some of our videos and it says that you can watch the videos with that 3D render instead of the original model if you so choosed. But I think this is just a cheap way of advertising Blu-ray. In fact, I think Blu-ray is way too over-advertised anyway. How much can we remaster old videos to make them better and better?

Seriously, Blu-ray is just a way to create a 40GB DVD. And of course, if the technology is popular with a big company like Disney or Universal, well, they'll do everything possible to get sales including remastering these old videos into high quality digital video with replacement 3D renders and adding hours of 'extras' which are a waste of time.

Personally, I say if you want Blu-ray to take off, stop advertising so much in the way of "hours of special bonus features!" Instead, why don't you pack hours of actual MOVIE onto the disc. Why not put Toy Story 1 at 2 (and now 3 in June) onto one side of one disc and say, "Get all three Toy Stories on one single-layer Blu-ray disc!"

Well, really it seems as though they invested in this great technology and now they don't exactly know what to do with it. It's like getting a one-million dollar check in the mail and...now what?

Back to old videos though: sometimes the mistakes and cheap look that the old videos had can be appreciated MORE than a remaster of them to make them look cooler. Star Trek for example was COOL when it was cheap! Of course, it's kind of cool now, but not as much.

In the Limelight

It seems this blog thing is getting more and more into the limelight. This word, limelight, comes from the 19th century spotlights of directing a flame at a stick of lime (calcium-oxide, the main ingredient in concrete). The stick would glow and they could reflect the high-intensity light at the performer, orator, etc.

Only problem with my blogging, is it takes at least three edits before I finally get a post perfect. Such is the problems: grammar, missing information, improper html formatting, blah blah blah. Once I think I even performed eight edits before I finally said that was good enough. Oh well. It's fun anyways!

And pictures aren't always a necessity either, although I put some of the Wrath of Khan pictures up as a slideshow on the sidebar for your enjoyment. This is actually my Picasa miscellaneous folder, so anything I deem fit will go there and show up on the little slideshow.

Nothing else too extraordinary to report, except that it's a potluck (share-a-dish for the politically correct people) at church, and I'm cooking up a double batch of chili. Probably should post this and go check to see how it's going. Anyhow, just thought I'd drop by. I hope I don't become a daily journalist like my sister. No. I won't. Although this is becoming more and more interesting as it goes on...

Edits this post: had to come back and add these paragraph breaks, since it jammed everything together. I should have checked my post options before I published, but I'm just absent-minded like that y'know.

Happy Star Trek Day

So I wanted to get this up last night, but I completely forgot. Here you are! Happy Star Trek day! Speaking of which, we watched the original pilot program with Captain Christopher Pike called "The Cage." It was redone with Kirk in a second shoot but they kept the Pike guy in the archives and only recently dug it back out. Anyhow, Happy Star Trek Day and may it be filled with...oh..I don't know. Whatever you fill Star Trek Day with!

I wanted to get this

I wanted to get this up yesterday, because yesterday was the day, but Happy Star Trek Day!!

Youtube

I've finally discovered Youtube's user profile. I've had one for a while, but I finally decided to start uploading my videos. Here's the full-length feature animation of a Star Trek Spoof I did in July, 2007. Acutally it was done by me AND my sister, and she should get some credit. Oh, and also, she's coming out with a new one called Cowman (Batman spoof). Maybe I'll get ahold of the preview for it. It's the greatest. But that's for another day, and another link.


Galactic Conflicts Playlist