Entertainment
NuTrek Is Better Than Classic Star Trek In Exactly One Way
By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated
Right now, Star Trek has failed as a franchise. That’s not just a matter of opinion, either: all of the NuTrek shows have been canceled prematurely with the exception of Picard, which was planned for only three seasons. Starfleet Academy got canceled as soon as Season 1 was over. Now, Paramount is pivoting the film to the big screen, meaning that we may go a long time before getting another new show. It’s easy to get mad at Paramount, but all of this ultimately comes down to the power of math, people: with a minimum per-episode budget of $8 million, these shows just don’t get enough views to justify their price.
Long before Paramount pulled the plug on Trek’s TV shows, fans negatively compared these newer shows to earlier series like The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. The general consensus is that classic Trek was just better than what came later, with fans fervently waiting for Paramount to fire Alex Kurtzman and hire someone who could bring the old magic back. However, according to the franchise’s greatest actors, NuTrek is better than classic Trek in exactly one way: letting people improvise dialogue instead of sticking to the script.
Improv? Make It “No”
Classic Star Trek shows like The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager had amazing dialogue, courtesy of writers who understood the franchise and truly loved it. For better or for worse, the writers and producers were very protective of their scripts. After some of the TNG cast mocked a script from Maurice Hurley, the show stopped doing table reads with the actors. Furthermore, improvising new lines was frowned on by many people on the show; this included Patrick Stewart, who actually scolded the TNG cast for improvising funny lines, ultimately storming off the set in frustration.
Stewart eventually mellowed out, but this became a moot point as producers effectively tightened the leash on improvisation of any kind. There was a method to their madness: writer Ronald D. Moore once told the official Star Trek site, “We had to lock down scripts and make sure that everybody was going to say exactly what they were going to say well in advance of production.” Why is that? Rick Berman and Brannon Braga once told ComicBook.com that they wanted everyone to speak the lines exactly as written to create a timeless style that was very distinct from contemporary speech.
Beaming Up Shenanigans
How bad did things get? On Star Trek: Voyager, Neelix actor Ethan Phillips once read the line “Can you hand me that PADD?” as “May I have that PADD?” This shut down production of the episode and led to a joint discussion with the writers, the director, and all three producers. They ultimately decided that the new line was fine, but Phillips was so aghast at causing this much trouble that he never tinkered with the dialogue again. Decades later, NuTrek more or less abandoned this practice, allowing actors to improvise if they had better lines or better ideas for their characters.
This astonished Riker actor Jonathan Frakes when he directed the crossover episode between Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks. When he appeared on the D-Con Chamber podcast, he described his astonishment when Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid began improvising new lines. He huddled with two producers, and they all agreed that the new lines were (in Frakes’ words) “f*cking great!” From that point, he began encouraging improvisation, something that Anson Mount and Ethan Peck really took to. Now, Frakes and other directors encourage NuTrek actors to improvise lines. In fact, Sam Kirk actor Dan Jeannotte recently told a Trek convention that “Frakes lets us do whatever we want.”
Even in the NuTrek era, there are still directors who prefer everyone stick precisely to what is written. But Frakes helped lead the way in normalizing improvisation and generally trusting the actors to bring their characters to life. Arguably, this is a far better approach to creating Star Trek, one that leaves room for others to make the episode as strong as it possibly could be. Now, the franchise is about to boldly go into a new era of film, and we can only hope future directors encourage future Trek actors to make these characters their own instead of slavishly sticking to every single syllable they are given.
Entertainment
macOS 27 Beta has a secret Siri AI interface. How to try it.
You’ve waited long enough for Apple’s relaunch of Siri as an AI assistant, and now you can finally try out the Siri AI beta for iOS. But, psst, don’t tell anyone, but there’s even more Siri AI for you to try out with a secret Siri AI interface on Mac.
A Reddit user on the r/MacOSBeta subreddit has discovered a “hidden lightweight UI” for Siri AI in the macOS 27 Golden Gate beta. This feature basically provides users with an array of AI tools, presented in a pop-up menu whenever text is highlighted.
The Siri AI pop-up interface includes AI tools such as Rewrite, Proofread, “How does this sound?,” and “Edit with Siri.” There are also menu options for summarization and providing bullet points from the selected text.
Siri AI can also provide a selection of specific tools dependent on the context of what’s selected. For example, highlighting a phone number provides a pop-up to “Add to contacts” or when selecting an address the pop-up offers an “Open in Maps” option. There are tools for creating calendar events, composing messages and emails, and tracking flights and packages as well.
Why is the feature hidden? Well, as MacRumors points out, the Siri AI interface in macOS 27 developer beta 3 and public beta 1 is simply an unfinished product. Certain features don’t yet work how they’re supposed to. Some options don’t work at all. Clearly, Apple has yet to make it available because it’s simply not ready.
Mashable Light Speed
However, Reddit users say there is a way to turn the interface on in the macOS Golden Gate Beta. According to Redditor pdfu, if users running the macOS 27 beta simply need to open up the Terminal and input a few lines of code.
Please note: We do not recommend running terminal instructions or changing important OS files unless you fully understand what you’re doing. We have not tested these terminal instructions, so proceed at your own risk.
sudo mkdir -p /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain && sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/WritingTools LightweightUI_macOS -dict Enabled -bool true
After that, the Reddit threat instructs users to restart their computer and the Siri AI interface will be enabled.
If you’ve had enough of the unfinished interface, you can turn it back off by once again opening Terminal and the following input:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/WritingTools LightweightUI_macOS -dict Enabled -bool false
It’s unclear if the Siri AI interface will launch with the official version of the new macOS. However, it’s certainly interesting to see Apple further brand its Siri AI relaunch as an all-in-one AI tool across the company’s products.
Entertainment
X-Men ‘97 Just Secretly Connected Itself To The Raunchiest Marvel Movies
By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated
As a longtime Marvel fan, one of my favorite things about X-Men ‘97 is how many fun Easter eggs are stuffed into every single episode. Sometimes, these are winking references to earlier episodes. More often than not, they are connections to the comics and to the larger Marvel universe. Of course, these references are often of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-them variety. Because of this, you sometimes need to be as fast as Quicksilver on the remote control if you want to catch every wacky bit of trivia that pops up onscreen.
That was certainly the case with the recent episode “Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs.” This episode follows up on an earlier Animated Series episode (“Weapon X, Lies, and Video Tape”) and has Wolverine and a team of oddballs discovering major secrets about Weapon X. It’s an episode filled with some jaw-droppingly weird X-Men lore, including an appearance from everyone’s favorite xenomorph knock-offs, the Brood. However, that’s not the weirdest thing about this terrifying tale. The episode provides a list of characters attached to the Weapon X program, and if you pause at the right moment, you’ll see names from the raunchiest, bloodiest Marvel movies ever made: Deadpool and Logan!
The Ultimate In ’90s Media Technology
In Marvel Comics, it’s revealed that Weapon X wasn’t actually the name of the program. Instead, it was the Weapon Plus program, and Wolverine was referred to as “Weapon X” because he was the tenth experiment created by the program (X is the Roman numeral for 10). Incidentally, Weapon I was Captain America, who was turned into the world’s greatest soldier through an experimental super-serum. Later, the project switched to experimenting on mutants, with the goal of creating weaponized warriors who would be easy to control. There have been many characters experimented on or otherwise connected to the program, which is why so many names appear in “Weapon X, Lies, and DVD.”
The episode doesn’t get into the full tangled history of the program, which is consistently referred to as Weapon X. However, the characters do find test subject data on DVDs, all of which are helpfully labeled with the name of the person who was experimented on. One set of DVDs is very easy to view, and the other appears for only a brief moment. With the help of the pause button, though, you can identify some major names. This includes Bucky Barnes, better known to MCU fans as the Winter Soldier. It also includes characters who have only appeared in the comics, including the creepy villain, John Sublime.
The X-Men Get Raunchy
Unsurprisingly, Wolverine and his crew from this episode (including Maverick, Garrison Kane, Sabertooth, and Lady Deathstrike) all appear on the DVDs, as do other characters from Wolverine’s past, including Silver Fox. But for fans of the live-action movies, the most notable names that appear in the episode are Ajax and Deadpool (the villain and hero, respectively, of the first Deadpool movie) and X-23, who appeared in both Logan and Deadpool & Wolverine. Amusingly enough, this effectively connects the (mostly) family-friendly X-Men ‘97 with some of the raunchiest and most vulgar Marvel movies ever made!
Deadpool effectively paved the way for modern, R-rated superhero movies with a film that combined over-the-top ultraviolence and hilariously crass dialogue. It was also unapologetically raunchy, with a naughty Morena Baccarin sex scene that likely made the pre-cancerous Wade Wilson wish that his booty had a healing factor. Logan, meanwhile, was more serious but no less brutal, connecting X-23 (who was created for the kids’ show X-Men: Evolution) to a violent and heartbreaking film where we bid farewell to both Logan and Professor X. Now, that same character (who made a fan-favorite return in the wonderfully offensive Deadpool & Wolverine) is permanently tied to X-Men ‘97.
Does that mean we’re likely to see X-23 onscreen? Not really: even if X-Men ‘97 runs for several more seasons, there are so many ‘80s, ‘90s, and early ‘00s stories to adapt before the writers would ever get to her story. Deadpool might be likelier to appear: after all, he appeared in X-Men: The Animated Series via things like flashbacks and Morph transformations, and Morph continues to take on this appearance in X-Men ‘97. Is all of this leading up to a proper appearance from the Merc With a Mouth? Maybe. Somehow, though, I think Jean Grey will be too busy fighting Apocalypse to help Deadpool properly celebrate International Women’s Day!
Entertainment
Raunchy Stargate SG-1 Episode Is So Bad Even The Show Made Fun Of It
By Jonathan Klotz
| Updated
Once any show has been on the air for five years, it will start to wobble under its own internal logic, lore, and mythology. Stargate SG-1 was on the air for a decade, which means those early Season 1-3 episodes sometimes contradict what becomes canon later. In the case of Season 1’s “Hathor,” it’s unclear why a Goa’uld Queen needs male DNA to produce more larvae. Later episodes show that it’s not needed, and they can reproduce asexually, but that’s the least of the issues with “Hathor.”
Stargate Goes Full Species
“Hathor” centers around the unearthing of the Egyptian Goddess of Love, Hathor (Suanne Braun), who emerges from a sarcophagus after 3000 years, speaking English. Drawn to the Stargate, she shows up at Cheyenne Mountain and quickly starts bringing the men within the base into her thrall. Starting with Daniel (Michael Shanks), then General Hammond (Don S. Davis), O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) is the next to succumb, though Teal’c’s (Christopher Judge) Goa’uld renders him resistant to her power.
That sets up a showdown between the men and the women (all five of them), led by Captain Carter (Amanda Tapping) and Dr. Frasier (Teryl Rothery) in the locker room where Hathor is preparing to use a hot tub to birth a new generation of Goa’uld larvae using Daniel Jackson’s juices. That’s how the show refers to it. It’s as awkward as it sounds.
The Writers Chose To Ignore The Episode
Stargate SG-1 would eventually mock “Hathor” in the Season 8 episode “Citizen Joe,” a clip show that highlighted the ridiculousness of those early season episodes. “Hathor” was the first episode in the series where the team didn’t travel through the Stargate, and the only one written by David Bennett Carren and J. Larry Carroll. Hathor herself would come back two more times, as a much more formidable (and better written) villain, particularly in Season 2’s “Out of Mind.”
Ever since Homer introduced the concept of Sirens in The Odyssey, the “beautiful woman mind controls all men” trope is widely used in sci-fi and fantasy shows. Stargate SG-1 had no problem recycling classic tropes and often doing them incredibly well, from time loops (“Windows of Opportunity”) to “that old man can kick everyone’s ass” (Bra’tac), but “Hathor” was a misfire.
Teryl Rothery wasn’t even able to deliver the line “there’s five women in here, and we’re very lonely” while keeping a straight face. The more series re-watches you do, “Hathor” sticks out more and more like one of the worst episodes of the series. Unlike “Emancipation,” which was so bad it caused the writers to rework Carter’s character, “Hathor” has no silver lining, other than the self-styled goddess having more character, personality, and better lines in her later appearances. Her debut episode could be erased from the timeline, and you’d still know everything about her within minutes of her second appearance.
They can’t all be winners, and with a decade of episodes to get through, Stargate SG-1 was going to have some episodes you don’t have to bother watching.
Ben Askren Didn't Win the Match—But He Won the Weekend
macOS 27 Beta has a secret Siri AI interface. How to try it.
