Double Crime Recap!!!

Excellent television last night on Monk!

Very creative!

I love it when a show breaks out of the TV box and does something really neat.

Y’know how on detective shows they tend to have a moment at the end where the detective figures out how the crime was done and describes it for everyone, often with us seeing a flashback of what happened during the crime?

Well, on last night’s episode of Monk ("Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever"), we got a double-dose of this–simultaneously!

During the middle of a gun battle at the episode’s climax, Monk and Lt. Discher each figured out how a different crime was committed.

In union, they said "I’ve got it!"

Then, rather than either deferring to the other, they both began to blurt out how the respective crimes were committed, and we were treated to flashbacks of them done in split-screen fashion a la 24, watching the different criminals walk through their misdeeds while Monk and Discher talked over each other.

As the gun battle raged, a confused local sheriff asked Capt. Stottlemeyer, "Which one are you listening to?"

"Neither," Stottlemeyer replied, trying to focus on the gun battle.

Great stuff!!!

Haven’t seen that on TV before!

One more reason to watch Monk!

Friday TV Roundup

STAR TREK ENTERPRISE:

"United"

Trapped on a remote-controlled Romulan ship, Trip and Malcolm must outwit their captors to escape. NOTE: This is the second episode of the Andorian arc and continues to lay the groundwork for the Romulan War leading to the founding of the Federation.

STARGATE SG-1:


"It’s Good to Be King", Episode #813.

While attempting to warn a former adversary of an approaching threat, the SG-1 team stumbles upon what may be an ancient time machine. NOTE: Features the return of everyone’s favorite semi-bad guy, ex-Col. Maybourne of the NID.

STARGATE ATLANTIS


"Hot Zone", Episode #113.

McKay must stop a deadly virus from spreading throughout the population of Atlantis.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA


"You Can’t Go Home Again", Episode #105.

Adama and Lee put the fleet at risk while searching for Kara.

MONK


"Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever"

After Monk witnesses a Chinese mob killing, he goes into protective custody and is taken to a remote cabin in the woods, where he uncovers another murder.

The Day Star Trek Died

Star Trek Enterprise is dead. It has been cancelled.

Press release:

02.02.2005

Star Trek: Enterprise Cancelled!

After four seasons, Star Trek: Enterprise has reached the end of its mission …

PRESS RELEASE

UPN and Paramount Network Television have jointly announced that this will be the final season of Star Trek: Enterprise on UPN. [Production will continue until the end of this season, which will finish shooting in March.] The series finale will air on Friday, May 13, 2005.

"Star Trek has been an important part of UPN’s history, and Enterprise has carried on the tradition of its predecessors with great distinction," said Dawn Ostroff, President, Entertainment, UPN. "We’d like to thank Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and an incredibly talented cast for creating an engaging, new dimension to the Star Trek universe on UPN, and we look forward to working with them, and our partners at Paramount Network Television, on a send-off that salutes its contributions to The Network and satisfies its loyal viewers."

David Stapf, President of Paramount Network Television, said, "The creators, stars and crew of Star Trek: Enterprise ambitiously and proudly upheld the fine traditions of the Star Trek franchise. We are grateful for their contributions to the legacy of Trek and commend them on completing nearly 100 exciting, dramatic and visually stunning episodes. All of us at Paramount warmly bid goodbye to Enterprise, and we all look forward to a new chapter of this enduring franchise in the future."

A prequel to the original "Star Trek" series, STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE premiered on UPN on Sept. 26, 2001, and aired for its first three seasons on Wednesdays (8:00-9:00PM, ET/PT). On Oct. 8, 2004, STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE moved into its current time on Fridays (8:00-9:00PM, ET/PT). Through its four-year run, STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE produced a total of 98 episodes and earned four Emmy Awards [SOURCE; cowboy hat tip to the reader who e-mailed this].

With the passing of Enterprise, the Star Trek franchise now goes into hibernation. The franchise has been suffering from fatigue for a number of years, such that even when it has produced quality work (as recently on Enterprise), audiences haven’t tuned in. There has also been a lot of competition from other sci-fi shows, which weren’t on the air when the franchise re-launched years ago with Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The cancellation was expected. A year ago Star Trek was only barely renewed, and the Paramount brass apparenly told the creators of the series that they had a year to wrap it up in a nice way. It was also moved to Friday nights, which is a death-night for ratings in general (The Original Series was also moved to Friday night in its last season), and especially so for sci-fi series when the Sci-Fi Channel has such an excellent lineup opposite a show like Star Trek Enterprise.

The franchise is likely to lie fallow for several years, though there are indications that a Star Trek movie (reportedly involving exclusively new characters) is in development.

Though, personally, I wish Enterprise had got to finish its planned seven-year run, I recognize that a hiatus will be good for the franchise, allowing the field to lie fallow creatively and, more importantly, allowing the audience to regain an appetite for Star Trek. (Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all.)

Whether its eventual re-launch (pun intended) will be successful is entirely up in the air. (Star Wars’ re-launch wasn’t that successful, despite eager fan anticipation.)

At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, allow me to offer a few thoughts on why Enterprise failed.

Apart from the phenomena of franchise fatigue and competition from other shows (and, indeed, a whole network devoted to sci-fi), the creators of the show fundamentally misjudged what the audience wanted to see. They made it too similar to previous Star Trek series in some ways and too different from them in others. What they produced in the early seasons of Enterprise was virtually a mirror image of what they needed to do.

Specifically:

  1. They misjudged the main plot of the show. The fans were not excited about seeing another Star Trek series where the characters are just wide-eyed explorers of the galaxy. We’d seen that before. What the fans were interested in seeing was the Romulan War and the founding of the Federation. Yet the creators stupidly set the series too early in Star Trek chronology for us to see that except in brief flash-forwards (complicated by the complicated and never-satisfactorily-resolved Temporal Cold War plotline).
  2. The fans were not interested in seeing the sexy aspects of the show, which at times verged on soft-core porn (or so I am given to understand from film critic definitions, never having watched any kind of porn, myself). Sex has always been around on Star Trek, but it has been handled in a less in-your-face way than in the current series.
  3. The series showed itself too similar to prior shows by introducing in its first season implausible meetings with aliens not-met-in-this-way or not-met-until-later-series (the Klingons, the Ferengi, the Borg). Rationalizations were offered for why these meetings didn’t violate established first contact facts, but they still alienated fans (no pun intended).
  4. The series showed itself too different from prior shows by reinterpreting major facts about beloved races, most notably the Vulcans, who are very different from how they have been portrayed in later series (a fact that was recently rectified in the current season, but only after alienating fans for three seasons).
  5. The series also was too different from other series by its "packaging." Instead of the vibrant color and slick design schemes that previous series had, Enterprise was far more drab in its color scheme and mundane in its design. While some of the latter was justified by its closeness to the present in time, the creators went too far.
  6. The creators also made a boneheaded mistake by not having the words "Star Trek" in the title of the series in its early seasons. This is a classic illustration of how the "re-thinking" of Star Trek simply went too far.

Having said all that, I look forward to the DVDs of the series, which will begin to be released May 3, just ten days before the final episode airs. The DVDs will allow me to see many of the episodes for the first time. (Since I had The Dinkiest Cable IN THE WORLD when the series began, I didn’t see a lot of them; also I was sufficiently unimpressed by what I did see that I wasn’t motivated to tune in when I moved and got better cable.)

To end on a happy note, the current season of Enterprise is much better than what has come before, and the final episodes of the season are supposed to be even better. The last episode is rumored to be very good and to serve not only as a fitting end to the series (given its cancellation) but also to be a "Valentine" to long-time Star Trek fans.

Watch ’em while you can, folks!

The Day Star Trek Died

Star Trek Enterprise is dead. It has been cancelled.

Press release:

02.02.2005

Star Trek: Enterprise Cancelled!

After four seasons, Star Trek: Enterprise has reached the end of its mission …

PRESS RELEASE

UPN and Paramount Network Television have jointly announced that this will be the final season of Star Trek: Enterprise on UPN. [Production will continue until the end of this season, which will finish shooting in March.] The series finale will air on Friday, May 13, 2005.

"Star Trek has been an important part of UPN’s history, and Enterprise has carried on the tradition of its predecessors with great distinction," said Dawn Ostroff, President, Entertainment, UPN. "We’d like to thank Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and an incredibly talented cast for creating an engaging, new dimension to the Star Trek universe on UPN, and we look forward to working with them, and our partners at Paramount Network Television, on a send-off that salutes its contributions to The Network and satisfies its loyal viewers."

David Stapf, President of Paramount Network Television, said, "The creators, stars and crew of Star Trek: Enterprise ambitiously and proudly upheld the fine traditions of the Star Trek franchise. We are grateful for their contributions to the legacy of Trek and commend them on completing nearly 100 exciting, dramatic and visually stunning episodes. All of us at Paramount warmly bid goodbye to Enterprise, and we all look forward to a new chapter of this enduring franchise in the future."

A prequel to the original "Star Trek" series, STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE premiered on UPN on Sept. 26, 2001, and aired for its first three seasons on Wednesdays (8:00-9:00PM, ET/PT). On Oct. 8, 2004, STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE moved into its current time on Fridays (8:00-9:00PM, ET/PT). Through its four-year run, STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE produced a total of 98 episodes and earned four Emmy Awards [SOURCE; cowboy hat tip to the reader who e-mailed this].

With the passing of Enterprise, the Star Trek franchise now goes into hibernation. The franchise has been suffering from fatigue for a number of years, such that even when it has produced quality work (as recently on Enterprise), audiences haven’t tuned in. There has also been a lot of competition from other sci-fi shows, which weren’t on the air when the franchise re-launched years ago with Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The cancellation was expected. A year ago Star Trek was only barely renewed, and the Paramount brass apparenly told the creators of the series that they had a year to wrap it up in a nice way. It was also moved to Friday nights, which is a death-night for ratings in general (The Original Series was also moved to Friday night in its last season), and especially so for sci-fi series when the Sci-Fi Channel has such an excellent lineup opposite a show like Star Trek Enterprise.

The franchise is likely to lie fallow for several years, though there are indications that a Star Trek movie (reportedly involving exclusively new characters) is in development.

Though, personally, I wish Enterprise had got to finish its planned seven-year run, I recognize that a hiatus will be good for the franchise, allowing the field to lie fallow creatively and, more importantly, allowing the audience to regain an appetite for Star Trek. (Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all.)

Whether its eventual re-launch (pun intended) will be successful is entirely up in the air. (Star Wars’ re-launch wasn’t that successful, despite eager fan anticipation.)

At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, allow me to offer a few thoughts on why Enterprise failed.

Apart from the phenomena of franchise fatigue and competition from other shows (and, indeed, a whole network devoted to sci-fi), the creators of the show fundamentally misjudged what the audience wanted to see. They made it too similar to previous Star Trek series in some ways and too different from them in others. What they produced in the early seasons of Enterprise was virtually a mirror image of what they needed to do.

Specifically:

  1. They misjudged the main plot of the show. The fans were not excited about seeing another Star Trek series where the characters are just wide-eyed explorers of the galaxy. We’d seen that before. What the fans were interested in seeing was the Romulan War and the founding of the Federation. Yet the creators stupidly set the series too early in Star Trek chronology for us to see that except in brief flash-forwards (complicated by the complicated and never-satisfactorily-resolved Temporal Cold War plotline).
  2. The fans were not interested in seeing the sexy aspects of the show, which at times verged on soft-core porn (or so I am given to understand from film critic definitions, never having watched any kind of porn, myself). Sex has always been around on Star Trek, but it has been handled in a less in-your-face way than in the current series.
  3. The series showed itself too similar to prior shows by introducing in its first season implausible meetings with aliens not-met-in-this-way or not-met-until-later-series (the Klingons, the Ferengi, the Borg). Rationalizations were offered for why these meetings didn’t violate established first contact facts, but they still alienated fans (no pun intended).
  4. The series showed itself too different from prior shows by reinterpreting major facts about beloved races, most notably the Vulcans, who are very different from how they have been portrayed in later series (a fact that was recently rectified in the current season, but only after alienating fans for three seasons).
  5. The series also was too different from other series by its "packaging." Instead of the vibrant color and slick design schemes that previous series had, Enterprise was far more drab in its color scheme and mundane in its design. While some of the latter was justified by its closeness to the present in time, the creators went too far.
  6. The creators also made a boneheaded mistake by not having the words "Star Trek" in the title of the series in its early seasons. This is a classic illustration of how the "re-thinking" of Star Trek simply went too far.

Having said all that, I look forward to the DVDs of the series, which will begin to be released May 3, just ten days before the final episode airs. The DVDs will allow me to see many of the episodes for the first time. (Since I had The Dinkiest Cable IN THE WORLD when the series began, I didn’t see a lot of them; also I was sufficiently unimpressed by what I did see that I wasn’t motivated to tune in when I moved and got better cable.)

To end on a happy note, the current season of Enterprise is much better than what has come before, and the final episodes of the season are supposed to be even better. The last episode is rumored to be very good and to serve not only as a fitting end to the series (given its cancellation) but also to be a "Valentine" to long-time Star Trek fans.

Watch ’em while you can, folks!

Mike Speaks!

PoeIt was years ago when I heard my first computerized voice.

My father–a mechanical engineering professor–had always been uncommonly computer-literate and had encouraged the same in his family. (Incidentally, that’s Edgar Allen Poe in the picture; not my father, though they do look a bit the same.)

To that end, he bought primitive home computers for us when the technology was still in its infancy.

One of these had a primitive, robotic, computerized voice that could "read" texts on the screen.

It was awful.

At least by contemporary standards.

As part of my recent audiobooks quest, I realized that the computer voices that are now available were undoubtedly much better than the clunky computer voices I had known in real life or heard on radio and TV shows.

I had no idea.

The voices curently available are not just better, they are a world of difference.

Let me show you:

Currently the top-of-the-line voices are the NaturalVoices from AT&T and available for about $30. You can buy and download them for use with programs like TextAloud. Though they’re still not perfect, they are head and shoulders above what you’re probably familar with.

HERE’S NATURAL VOICE "MIKE" READING EDGAR ALLEN POE’S POEM "THE RAVEN." (.mp3 format)

I made this .mp3 file myself using "Mike," TextAloud, and the public-domain text of "The Raven."

Poetry is a particular challenge for artificial voices due to its atypical cadence, but you’ll be amazed at how well "Mike" does with "The Raven." Take a listen!

As good as computerized voices are now, I can imagine how good they’re goint to be in the future:

  • Already the voices that are available are staring to vary by accent. You can buy voices, for example, that have British or Indian accents. Soon you’ll be able to buy voices that have Texas, Boston, New York, or Georgia accents. (This is just a diversification of what is already happening.)
  • You’ll be able to input sheet music and have the voices sing to you in realistic fashion. (This is actually already being done, but is not yet commercially available to my knowledge.)
  • You’ll be able to read a prepared text and so reverse-engineer your own voice so that you’ll be able to read texts to yourself.
  • You’ll be able to plug your TiVo into your home computer and have it reverse-engineer voices from telvision so that, in no time, Captain Katherine Janeway will be reading you Jane Austen novels.

I can’t wait.

Adventures In Audiobooks #3

One of the ideas I got for how to get more audiobooks for my Christmas trip to Texas arose like this:

1. There’s a bunch of freely available, public domain texts online, such as those at Project Gutenberg.

2. I bet I could download a text-to-speech program that would read these to me. Years ago, I had speech-to-text software that could also do text-to-speech. I was never very pleased with this software, but I figured that it would be possible to get a simpler version that just does text-to-speech and have my computer read these texts to me.

3. I then went to hotfiles.com and found some downloadable programs that do just this.

4. Some of these progams would speak the text directly into .mp3s for you.

5. Therefore, I could use the freely available e-texts in conjunction with the software to produce my own audiobooks in .mp3 and burn them to CD for listening on the way to Texas.

Yee-haw!

Now, turns out that the Project Gutenberg folks have already figured this out, so they have been adding their own homestyle audiobooks to their inventory. (Sven pointed this out in the comments box a couple of days back, but I had to delete it as it was a spoiler for this post.)

Iff’n yew want to make your own, however, you can also use the technique described above.

After looking at different text-to-speech programs, I decided to go with TextAloud, which is inexpensive and has a feature combination that I like. (Among other things, it dosen’t try to integrate itself into every other text app you have; programs that grabby are generally bad news.)

Since my Christmas trip to Texas didn’t happen this year, I haven’t used it to produce audiobooks for my pickup, yet, but I’ve been very pleased with using it to listen to all kinds of downloadable e-texts.

One of the nice things about it is that it supports multiple different voices, and the voices have improved amazingly in the last few years.

But that’s the subject of my next post. (Don’t want to spoil myself.)

Friday Night TV Roundup

ENTERPRISE

"Babel One"

The Enterprise’s benign cooperation in a peace conference between
Tellarites and Andorians turns dangerous when a secret Romulan vessel
begins attacking ships on all sides. NOTE: A riff on the TOS episodes "Journey To Babel" and "The Balance of Terror."

STARGATE SG-1

"Prometheus Unbound",
Episode #812.

Daniel must face off against a powerful enemy when a search-and-rescue misson goes wrong. NOTE: Features a guest appearance by Gen. Hammond!

STARGATE ATLANTIS

"The Defiant One",
Episode #112.

While investigating a distress signal, Sheppard and McKay become the target of a hungry Wraith.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

"Act of Contrition",
Episode #104.

Starbuck is forced to admit her role in the death of Adama’s son Zak.

MONK

"Mr. Monk vs. The Cobra"

Monk tries to figure out how a person who has been dead for six years could have committed a murder.

CHECK YOUR LOCAL LISTINGS.

Yesterday Morning’s Mondegreen

ThebandYesterday morning I was driving to work when I experienced a mondegreen.

"What is a mondegreen?" you ask.

It’s a place where you mishear a song lyric.

The name "mondegreen" is itself a mondegreen.

The 17th century ballad "The Bonnie Earl O’Murray" ends with the line "They hae slain the Earl o’ Murray and laid him on the green." But this line was misheard as "They hae slain the Earl o’ Murray and Lady Mondegreen."

Hence the name.

A famous recent mondegreen is mishearing the Jimi Hendrix lyric "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" as "Excuse me while I kiss this guy." (Whoever heard that must have been in a purple haze.)

My all-time favorite mondegreen is one I read about where someone’s grandmother misheard the lyrics to the Beatles’ song "She’s Got A Ticket To Ride" as "She’s got a tick in her eye." Granny kept asking "But why would anyone want to sing about that?"

So yesterday, I was driving to work and listening to the album

THE BAND (by The Band)

which is a really great early 1970s album. (Greally toe tapping music with insightful, though not always fully moral lyrics; one song I refuse to listen to utterly.)

One of the songs on the album is haunting "Unfaithful Servant," and lately I’ve been trying to figure out the lyrics to it. This morning I mondegreened the first two lines as:

Unfaithful servant . . .
I hear you even sin in the morning.

"Wow," I thought. "That would be pretty unfaithful . . . not even waiting until afternoon to start sinning. What a great line."

Unfortunately, unless other people on the ‘Net are mondegreening it differently than me, the actual line turns out to be:

         Unfaithful servant . . .
I hear you leavin’ soon in the mornin’ [SOURCE].

Which I must admit fits the theme of the song, which is of a servant leaving the country house where he has worked for many years after an unspecified act of betrayal against the lady of the household. The last stanza is:

Goodbye to that country home,
So long to a lady I have known,
Farewell to my other side,
I’d best just take it in stride.
Unfaithful Servant, you’ll learn to find your place;
I can see it in your smile,
and, yes, I can see it in your face.
The mem’ries will linger on,
But the good old days, they’re all gone,
Oh! Lonesome servant, can’t you see,
That we’re still one and the same, just you and me.

Haunting stuff when you hear it set to music.

BUY THE ALBUM.

LEARN MORE ABOUT MONDEGREENS.

VISIT A SITE OF MONDEGREENS.

Share your own mondegreens in the comments box.