Soccer Dad

New DVD/VCR Player

A few weeks ago I bought a (cheap) DVD/VCR combination player. To break it in I rented a couple of movies. The one I really liked was "Galaxy Quest."
"Galaxy Quest" is a hilarious "Star Trek" spoof. Featuring Tim Allen as a William Shatner clone and Alan Rickman as a Leonard Nimoy knockoff as well as Sigourney Weaver and Tony Shalhoub, the movie starts by showing our heroes as captives of their once glorious past. They starred on a now defunct space opera called "Galaxy Quest" and have become trapped in their roles for the past twenty years making regular appearances at conventions playing their parts for legions of fans, some of whom have a tenuous grasp on reality.
That all changes when the crew is recruited by a race of aliens who have intercepted the eternal reruns of the fictional TV show and interpreted it as a "historical record." The aliens are facing doom at the hands of a powerful enemy and are convinced that the actors are real space heroes. (The notion that these aliens are so sophisticated that they can create the make the fake technology of the TV show into real functioning technology, but be fooled into thinking that the TV show is real is absurd. But this isn't supposed to be deep. It's supposed to be fun.)
Since "Galaxy Quest" is a comedy you know that the good guys will win, summoning the moxie that their characters had in the show. It's a dead on spoof of "Star Trek," but it's a gentle, knowing spoof. It's not at all mean to its inspiration. There's a very happy ending and no one feels cheated.
The other thing I did was buy my first DVD. I went to half.com and bought my favorite Trek movie, "The Wrath of Khan." It is a story of revenge with literary pretensions. It's as good as Trek gets.
The outline of the plot is this: Khan, a villain from the first season episode of the original series, "Space Seed" was marooned on a planet. When the planet that Khan was exiled to falls out of orbit, leading to hardship and tragedy. Khan blames Kirk for his circumstances and the death of his wife., who exiled him for not checking up and making sure that everything was OK. He seeks to destroy Kirk in return. Of course he's not quite able to do it, but he gives it his best shot.
"The Wrath of Khan" may be the perfect Trek adventure. It's a straightforward story of revenge and redemption and tragedy. Watching the movie again (for the sixth or seventh time) I'm still amazed that the first attack on the Enterprise is still filled with suspense. I still think it's possible for the Enterprise to raise shields quickly enough and blunt the attack. Of course that never happens and Kirk must bear the guilt of being caught with his "britches down."
Then there's the famous ending in which a major character is killed off (for about 2 years.) "The Wrath of Khan" may not hold any surprises anymore, but it still entertains quite nicely. (The similarities between "The Wrath of Khan" and the latest Trek movie "Nemesis" are striking. "Nemesis" though is quite inferior.)