on the space jump

[solarbird]

Having just watched the space jump - the skydive from near-orbit, the edge of space - I have to say one thing on an old topic.

People talk a lot about things from science fiction coming true, most particularly Star Trek. Star Trek kind of holds the record on that, arguably, and you can quibble about whether that’s prediction or cause (since it

Comments

[agrumer]

What's come true from Star Trek?

We have cellphones that have roughly the same shape as an old hand-held communicator, but the functionality is totally different. (Communicators lack a modern smart phone's computing capabilities; cellphones lack a communicator's range and ability to operate without a cell network.)

I guess the iPad is a lot like the PADD from Next Gen, so that counts as one thing.

And Klingons. Klingons came true, so that's a second thing. But is that really the record?

[solarbird]

Oh, a lot of little things. Not necessarily earth-shaking. And not exact, but people site it all the damn time - and absolutely do consider cell phones to be communicator-like, which I think is valid even if the methodology is different. (The idea of anyone being being able to contact anyone else with a similar device anywhere...) There's a theory of warp drive now that people are talking about, A/V being driven by computers/library computers, small portable computers (even if they look really weird, they had them), sterilisation fields arguably (tho' not for surgery use), a lot of the medical tricorder stuff can actually be done now and is packaged together...

I agree that it's a more in reputation and by generalisation, but all of that is still out there. And it's always the one cited. I just wanted Lost in Space to get its due when it actually got something. :D

[wrog]

I'm told that some of the features of the bridge design in the original series got copied back for use in actual warships. Not necessarily high tech, but cool if actually true...

[pywaket]

Tablet computers really should be credited to Arthur C Clark and 2001, I think.

[solarbird]

It was today, and webcast live. New records of 39,000(ish)m total jump height, fastest speed attained in a jump (well over mach 1), and highest manned balloon flight (40km). Technology developed for the jumpsuit will be used in astronaut suits, moving forward, I read.

The previous jump record holder retains the record for longest time in freefall, however, by several seconds. Which is cool.

[wrog]

Nobody remembers this, but for one year - the black-and-white year, which generally isn’t in reruns - Lost in Space was hard SF. Not always very successfully - arguably, not often very successfully - but very much intentionally. They were trying.
Ah yes, the first six episodes or so, where there was a coherent plot line and Dr. Smith was actually a vaguely credible/frightening villain. Too bad they had to ditch that...

[solarbird]

I'd go further than that - I'd say the first half or so of year one is more good than bad.

Going through the episode list:

The first five (101-105, that initial arc, "The Reluctant Stowaway" through "The Hungry Sea") are really solid. 106 ("Welcome Stranger") is broken because of a lack of understanding of distances in space, but 107 ("My Friend, Mr Nobody") is a genuinely solid piece of storytelling. It's one I show people to say, "This is what this show wanted to be, when it was trying to be good."

Then things slip, because "Invaders from the Fifth Dimension" (108) is just a bad idea, and amusingly similar in some ways to Spock's Brain, and "The Oasis" (109) is a complete mess. And you think, "oooookay, well, that was fun while it lasted."

Just when you're giving up, though, you get "The Sky Is Falling" and you give it a few more episodes. "Wish Upon a Star" would be a lot better with, shall we say, different costume design, and "The Raft" has the same problem as "Welcome Stranger" while making even less sense. But "One of Our

[wrog]

hm. I'll have to admit, I only ever saw it sporadically in reruns; never really got to see them in any kind of sequence prior to Hulu, and even then never actually tried to watch the entire first season.

Your account makes me wonder if they lost their One Good Writer midway through the first season - Wikipedia lists Shimon Wincelberg as writer on all of the early episodes; he then disappears after "Invaders From the 5th Dimension" (unfortunately he wrote that one, so I'm still not sure about this theory; then again, everybody has bad days, cf. Steven Moffat...)

Meanwhile Wikipedia also notes that in the 2nd season they were scheduled up against the premier of the Adam West Batman and evidently someone made a conscious decision to try to compete on campiness.

In which case, bad producer, no biscuit. Not clear where this ranks on the Bad Decisions spectrum in relation to Lew Grade's conclusion after its first season that Space:1999 badly needed to be startrekified and that Fred Freiberger was the guy to do it

[solarbird]

Oh, the camp years were totally successful, and it was quite popular with people who wanted a camp fake-SF show. CBS didn't even cancel it outright - they wanted a Year 4! But they also wanted a budget cut, and Irwin was starting to head towards movies, and had another show starting (Land of the Giants) so he said no, and turned them down instead.

[kvogel]

Mention of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea does remind me that the first season of that tried to be "serious" with cold war action and quasi-legitimate monsters from the deep and such, and quickly degenerated into rubber suit of the week to menace the crew or wrastle with the ship model.

[solarbird]

First year, very much so. Second, they were still really trying, I think - that was the first colour year, and the thing about colour is that it makes all the SFX look much worse. They reuse a couple of monsters from year one later in the series, and where it looked pretty okay in black and white - in colour? Just silly

[solarbird]

(Anna, btw, is a huge van of Voyage. She has every episode on DVD.)