Star Trek was a missed opportunity. I'm going to make this quick, because nobody cares anymore.

Here's what I liked, in order:

Actors: Check. I wouldn't change a one of them. They all amused, convinced, and won me over. "I can do this!" Keep 'em all.

James Bond Movie Opening Sequence (The-Short-That-Begins-A-Movie): Check (qualified). It was compelling and it got a tear out of me (qualified: I was a willing tear doner). 

Missed opportunities: I'm keeping these to myself for selfish reasons. 

What is to be done? Everything else needs an overhaul. It can be done. It has been done.

The original Star Trek movie, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" had this going for it:

Actors: Doubleplus Check. 

James Bond Movie Opening Sequence (The-Short-That-Begins-A-Movie): Check. Stunning. Alien Klingons with beautiful battlecruisers, bridge, and subtitles."Tactical!"

Look and Feel: Check. Beautiful. The Enterprise as imagined by Michelangelo. Real, actual special effects. I wouldn't change a thing.

And that's about it. Eveything else needed an overhaul. All the fun was in the interpersonal relationships (see: Actors, above) and in marveling at the craft of the special effects artists, who managed to present the beauty and grandeaur of Star Trek tech in an understated-yet-awesome way that did not become the reason to see the movie.

Yet if you had to pick a movie worthy of putting in a capsule and sending off into space to bedevil an alien civilization, clearly it would be "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" rather than "Star Trek." One has enduring value, the other doesn't.

So, how to give the reimagined Star Trek enduring value? Keep the actors. Otherwise, start over. Ditch the director (keep him as producer, in keeping with his true talents) and the writers. They are talented, but they don't understand Star Trek nor the nuances and personal dramas of a superb battle scene. (More on this later.) The current director and writers aren't going to be able to sustain a franchise on the back of what they have accomplished in their current roles. Even though it's hard for the powers-that-be to sneeze at $250 million, sneeze they must if they want to build a movement.

It can be done. It has been done. Wrath of Khan: It was the best of those movies. 

Check back for a review. I'm sick as a dog right now (not with THAT, hopefully), so I can't see it today. And I don't want to read any reviews beforehand.

 I'm sure I'll have my complaints, though...

Has the Bush Administration no bottom?

The movie looks gorgeous. Gone is the gloom of the last Star Trek film, Nemesis (2002), which seemed cast in the depressing shadow of George Bush’s post-9/11 America. The prequel, though conceived before the rise of Barack Obama, taps into the optimism of his presidency.

And is there anything President Obama can't do if we all just believe...?

The first time I died was inside a gelatinous cube in Quasqueton. My cousin Dave killed me. I loved it!

I got the Boxed Set for Christmas in 1979. The first book I bought was the Monster Manual, followed by closely the Dungeon Master's Guide, both of which I read cover to cover. The Monster Manual was magic. The DM Guide was a call to arms. I didn't get the Player's Handbook until a little bit later, and that was just to keep an eye on those of you who used to claim all sorts of outrageous abilities. I had to bicycle from Manhasset to Great Neck to get some modules you hadn't seen yet, before I started to write my own. Then later, when we had permission, we all used to meet in Mineola, at Waterloo II, after taking a couple of buses. Afterward, we'd have a couple of crap hamburgers outside of Jack in the Box in the cold, early winter dark, waiting to get picked up. 

Best game ever. Thanks!

 "No, Mr. Haniyeh. I expect you to die."

I thought I was gonna, you know, to just come to power...

"We did have a very nice, you know, conversation, and obviously I'm not gonna talk about that, except to say that [Senator Hillary Clinton] said this was the greatest job that she'd ever had and could imagine having," Kennedy said. "So, she was very encouraging, and that was, you know, that was nice because she's a huge inspiration of mine."

I'm jealous that the stinky, prole-smudged rite that is voting isn't an obstacle to Caroline attaining, at Hillary's encouragement, the greatest job imaginable, as it would be for me.

The Republic, you know, obviously, is in excellent hands.

Isn't Madoff the best name possible for the man who (and as a former journalist, I feel that I must insert "allegedly") perpetrated the biggest swindle ever in human history?

Two things:

1. It's got NY Post written all over it, but where's the headline pun abut the man who made off with all that money?
2. I empathize with the proud, law-abiding members of society bearing the the Madoff family name who have accomplished much through hard work and the travails of their ancestors.

But still: Show me the Madoff with the money pun!

Over at the Ace of Spades, one of the bloggers presents an illustration of why you don't want to drive across an open field toward US positions. Have a lookee at this.

From its flyout, I think the missile looks more like a Javelin than a TOW. What do you think? Regardless, I love the enthusiasm after the hit...

UPDATE, 12/24: Ace also shows us some of the handiwork of the unsung heroes of the Empire. If you're going to conquer the world and set foot on Mars, you need people like this.

I get a huge kick out of the song "Lilizela Milizeli," which I got from the album Mondo Africa that I used to provide some background music for a video I made of my sister-in-law's and nephew's trip to Africa in 2007. I play the song a lot, and I particularly enjoy the contribution of what apparently is called the "groaner," the male, often-discordant thread running through the beautiful harmony of the female vocalists. 

Circumstances inspired me to revisit the song, and I found a website dedicated to the artists who recorded it, Mahlathini and the Mahatolla Queens. Clearly, they are a big deal.

On December 7, 1941, air and naval forces of the Empire of Japan struck the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and surrounding Army and Navy facilities. Twenty-one ships of the Pacific Fleet were sunk or damaged in the attack, including two battleships sunk and six heavily damaged. Nearly 200 US aircraft were destroyed and over 150 damaged, most while still on the ground. Total US casualties amounted to 2,403 dead (68 of which were civilians killed by improperly fuzed anti-aircraft shells) and 1,178 wounded. Nearly 1,800 sailors perished on the battleship USS Arizona alone. Japanese losses amounted to 29 aircraft shot down and five midget submarines sunk or beached: 64 men in all.

The raid commenced when the Japanese cruisers Chikuma and Tone each launched a floatplane about 220 miles north of Oahu at 0530 local time to ascertain the exact anchorage of the US fleet. Twenty minutes later, the carriers of Japan's First Air Fleet, Akagi, Kaga, Hiru, Soryu, Zuikaku, and Shokaku turned into the wind to begin launching approximately 350 fighters and bombers in two waves. The aircraft included Nakajima Type 97 "Kate" level bombers, some armed with torpedoes and others with bombs; Aichi Type 99 "Val" dive bombers; and Mitsubishi Type 0 "Zero" fighters. Cmdr Mitsuo Fuchida, leading the first wave, used a Honolulu radio station broadcasting Hawaiian music to home in on the target. At 0735 the scout plane from Chikuma broke radio silence that had been maintained since the force left Japan twelve days earlier with a report that the US fleet was at its Ford Island anchorage. Fuchida sighted the ships at 0740 and saw that they were sleeping peacefully. As his attack wave divided into smaller units to deliver its ordnance, Fuchida radioed the code words signaling complete surprise had been achieved: "Tora! Tora! Tora!" ("Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!").

Radio Silence
While credit for the success of the Japanese attack must go to the audacity and attention to detail of its planners -- particularly its chief architect, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander in Chief of Japan's Combined Fleet -- the maintenance of strict radio silence for the entire outbound voyage played a crucial role in the results it achieved.

In the previous July, a Japanese carrier task force consisting of Soryu and Hiryu and their escorts accompanied the convoy of troop transports carrying Army forces to seize French Indochina. During its 2,000-mile voyage from Japan down the coast of China, the task force intercepted British radio reports from Hong Kong to London that pinpointed the location of the Japanese ships, and even identified specific types. The Japanese communications and intelligence officer understood that the British were plotting the fleet's movements using radio direction-finding equipment. This generated an official requirement that future task forces would maintain radio silence during an operation -- even to the extent of sealing transmitter keys -- and that efforts would be made by other units to send false messages to mislead whomever might be eavesdropping.

For the Japanese, the importance of radio silence surpassed even the benefits of aerial reconnaissance. The presence of six fleet carriers and several other vessels that carried floatplanes with the First Air Fleet would enable a system of air patrols to thoroughly cover huge swaths of ocean for ships and planes that might detect it. On the other hand, such a system of patrols increased the chances that a radio message would be sent in a hasty or unguarded moment, or if a pilot had an emergency. For the raid on Pearl Harbor, no air patrols were flown until the morning of the attack for just this reason.

Nevertheless, the interest in Japanese radio communications shown by US intelligence personnel both raised flags and caused strategists to second-guess themselves. The Japanese strike at Pearl Harbor was one of more than two dozen landings, raids, and related operations scheduled to coincide over a two-day period. As of December 1, the US was aware of a great "movement to the south" that presaged Japanese attacks on the Philippines, British possessions, and the Dutch East Indies. In fact, deployments southward of Japanese troop transports, supply freighters, destroyers, cruisers, and even battleships were indicated by radio traffic and this seemed to support preconceived notions among US planners that the inevitable blow would be struck in Southeast Asia, not the Central Pacific, let alone both.

There was some alarm at this point that no radio traffic had been identified from the Japanese fleet carriers for many days. Furthermore, the Japanese had just changed their radio call signs for the second time in a six-month period, which was unprecedented. Even more disturbing to some was the overall precipitous drop in the volume of Japanese radio traffic. However, US intelligence officers were "confident" that the carriers were in the home waters of Japan and not "rounding Diamond Head" as Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, Commander in Chief of the US Fleet, half-jokingly speculated. Such confidence on the part of seasoned intelligence officers was born of disbelief that the Japanese could mount a carrier attack on Pearl Harbor. If the Japanese carriers were not heading south, then they must be in their home waters, or so went conventional wisdom.

Upon recovering his aircraft Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo again clamped strict radio silence over the First Air Fleet. The US carriers Enterprise and Lexington were at sea somewhere nearby, and the last thing he wanted was an unexpected encounter. Nagumo did order air patrols to cover his withdrawal from Hawaiian waters, prepared to strike the enemy if he encountered him. Fortunately for the US flattops, perhaps, the First Air Fleet retired without such an encounter.

• At Dawn We Slept, The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor by Gordon W. Prange (Penguin Books, 1982)
• "Modern History Sourcebook: Pearl Harbor Attack Documents, 1941"
• "Pearl Harbor Operations: General Outline of Orders and Plans"