Have you seen the latest commercial for Verizon 4G LTE, in which they proclaim that their download speeds are faster than a missile?

The commercial is the usual chest-thumping nonsense, but what gets me is the text shown in the lower right corner during the rocket’s firing and flight:

“Do not attempt.”

Please explain something to me. How the fuck would the average viewer attempt this?! Who has regular access to an empty airport runway? Or expensive 4G equipment that they’d gleefully destroy? Or…you know…goddamned missiles?

Many couch potatoes possess the intelligence of a pillowcase filled with doorknobs. And I understand that some people would look for any excuse to start their own space program in their garage with a funnel and a couple of rusty cans filled with gasoline. (Guilty as charged.) But holy shit, anybody with even a single functioning brain cell left should find this insulting.

I spent a few weeks catching up on Doctor Who, and other than the usual good acting and stories mixed with the occasional gigantic plot holes, I’ve noticed something missing.

The Doctor needs new recurring antagonists that are morally ambiguous.

The bad guys on the show are almost always pure evil, with no shades of gray. Not only that, but the most popular villainous races — the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, and so forth — have gotten incredibly silly. (I’m sick to death of the Daleks. They fucking suck, people. Get over it.) The Doctor’s malicious archenemy, the Master, has become a joke; he’s supposed to be out of regenerations, but he keeps coming back. Out of the new crop of villains, the Weeping Angels are great, but work best when used very sparingly. But even then, they’re simply malevolent.

So the Doctor clearly needs someone who will clash with him, but whose motives and morality will constantly remain unclear. They might even end up working towards a common goal more often than not, but still be shrouded in mystery and confusion. Shades of gray make for much more interesting storytelling than the simple “defeat the bad guys” trope.

My recommendation? Faction Paradox.

I know Faction creator Lawrence Miles would likely never permit this, but for the sake of argument, let’s pretend it’s possible.

In a nutshell, Faction Paradox was once one a powerful house of Time Lords that went rogue. Now, they muck about in time for their own purposes, using unique time travel methods, alternate universes, and bizarre rites. The Doctor’s faced plenty of nefarious time travelers before, but none quite like these guys. What the Faction is up to is never clear-cut, and if portrayed correctly, they wouldn’t always be the bad guys. They’d equally be good, bad, and anywhere in between. That’s the entire point of their existence.

Faction Paradox first appeared in many Doctor Who novels featuring the Eighth Doctor, but later spun off into their own series. The reason for this is that their “swan song” in the Doctor Who novel The Ancestor Cell was godawful, and Miles has stated that it most certainly does not count in continuity. (Miles did not write Cell; it was handled by Peter Anghelides and Stephen Cole in order to close the Doctor Who Faction storyarc.)

Faction Paradox was explored much further in their own series, and their robust history, politics, and character would be a perfect fit for the current Doctor Who series. Their motives are never black and white, and while that may not be easy for the series’ younger viewers, the adults would certainly appreciate it. I beats one-dimensional baddies like the Daleks and friends any day of the week.

If nothing else, robed villains in skull masks would sell quite a few action figures.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

Fans of the Star Trek franchise always have their favorite ships, and longtime devotees often spend many hours discussing their pros and cons just as naval history buffs do with real-world vessels.

While much is made of the vaunted Constitution class and Galaxy class, of which the two most popular Enterprises were a part, Star Trek boasts a wide variety of other striking starship designs. The Oberth class in particular is notable for a having a rather unique appearance. The famous saucer, warp nacelles, and engineering hull are all there, but in a configuration unlike any other ship in Star Trek.

(all images found on Memory Alpha)

This ship type has shown up many times in Star Trek films and series, but often, the ships are the site of some horrible tragedy that usually end in their destruction. Sure, the Oberth-class ships are primarily designed for science missions, and thus cannot boast the offensive and defensive capabilities of larger vessels, but it still seems that the class is a bad luck magnet. In other words, if you’re a Starfleet officer or civilian assigned to an Oberth-class vessel, get the fuck out.

Here’s some of the grim fates that have befallen Oberth-class ships. In the first appearance of the class, the Grissom was destroyed by a single “lucky shot” from a Klingon battlecruiser. (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock)

The crew of the Tsiolkovsky fell prey to polywater intoxication, eventually resulting in some freezing to death and the rest dying of apshyxiation. The ship was later sacrificed to enable the Enterprise-D to escape from an oncoming stellar core fragment. (Star Trek: The Next Generation: “The Naked Now”)

The Vico was ripped apart by gravitational wavefronts. The only survivor was a kid. (Star Trek: The Next Generation: “Hero Worship”)

The Raman was never shown onscreen, but confirmed in official publications to be an Oberth-class ship. And yes, something awful happened there: the entire crew was killed by subspace lifeforms, and the the ship itself was destroyed in the lower atmosphere of a gas giant. (Star Trek: The Next Generation: “Interface”)

The Pegasus was the testbed for an interphasic cloaking device, and ended up stuck inside an asteroid. (Star Trek: The Next Generation: “The Pegasus”)

Aside from these humiliations, Oberth-class ships have also gotten steamrolled by the Borg. To be fair, almost every ship that goes up against the Borg ends up quickly meeting the Angel of Death, but the then-aging Oberth-class ships were thrown onto the frontlines during the Battles of Wolf 359 and Sector 001. (Star Trek: The Next Generation: “The Best of Both Worlds,” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: “Emissary,” Star Trek: First Contact)

There’s also instances where Oberth-class ships were still the sites of unlucky events even if they didn’t end in the vessels’ destruction. For example, the Yosemite got stuck in a plasma streamer, and its crew was trapped in the transporter system. (Star Trek: The Next Generation: “Realm of Fear”)

It’s a shame that the Oberth class often gets singled out for such nightmarish happenings. I guess that’s the price they pay for being different.

As much as I love the Blu-ray format for the rich home theater experience it can provide, I’m extremely picky when it comes to older films.

While newer movies generally don’t need a lot of work when it comes to BRD mastering, older ones often have to be rescanned and restored. The problem is that many studios are often incredibly lazy with this process, and instead of hiring skilled restoration workers, they try to handle the cleanup via digital noise reduction (DNR).

DNR is the bane of my existence when it comes to home film viewing. It’s the absolute worst thing that can happen to an old film short of it being set on fire. See, DNR automatically scrubs out defects and damage…but cannot differentiate between actual defects or damage, film processes, or the filmmakers’ intent. For example, it might clean out obvious dirt and scratches, but it also tends to remove film grain. This is a problem because film grain is not a defect, nor does it detract from the viewing experience. Directors and cinematographers made very specific choices when it came to film stock for their movies. Scrubbing out the grain not only ruins that artistic and stylistic choice, but it also results in a colossal loss of detail from the film itself, such as in the infamous 2010 BRD release of the classic science fiction action film Predator. Why bother watching a movie in HD if the detail’s been washed away?

I do need to go off on a bit of a tangent here. There’s some serious misconceptions out there when it comes to high definition in general, and BRD in particular. I’ve lost count of the amount of times people have told me that BRD versions of older movies are pointless, because they weren’t “shot in HD.”

First of all, that complaint is utter nonsense; if it was shot on film, then it shot in very high definition, often much higher than what the average digital movie camera is capable of. Most films can be scanned at 5k or higher, which is five thousand lines of resolution. (Compare that to HDTVs that top out at 1080p, or one thousand and eighty lines.)

What people should say is “shot with an HD camera.” That’s a completely different process than film, but even then, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get a better picture. Cameras are still just tools, and they’re only as good as the crew behind them.

If an older movie that I enjoy is getting a BRD release, I always make sure to check the reviews on The Digital Bits and High Def Digest first. Those sites are staffed by hardcore videophiles and cinemaphiles who actually know what they’re talking about, so their critical analysis is extremely useful to me.

And if BRD transfers look like crap? Then I’ll stick with my DVDs. Upscaled proper DVD transfers blow DNR’d-to-hell high definition ones out of the water any day of the week.

With the recent cancellation of Stargate: Universe, the last of the science fiction shows to heavily feature a starship has disappeared. This is a trend that has been building since at least 2005, when Star Trek: Enterprise went off the air.

What has become more popular over the past decade is “blue sky” science fiction, where a majority of the action takes place on planets or other solid ground. (I did not coin the phrase. I saw it on a message board somewhere.) This kind of style has been around for quite some time; classic shows like Doctor Who, Quantum Leap, and The X Files, as well as more recent material like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Caprica all fall into this category. It’s always coexisted with space-based shows, but nowadays, it seems that all sci-fi television is blue sky.

It’s strange, because starships have always been ridiculously popular. Star Trek is a testament to that, where the various incarnations of the USS Enterprise are easily just as popular as the characters. Aside from Stargate: Universe, the last really good examples of ship-focused science fiction that we had were Battlestar Galactica and Firefly. Jeez, both of those series’ names come from their ships! (In Firefly‘s case, it’s the type of drive system, but the movie followup Serenity was named after the ship itself.)

The closest thing to a ship showcase we have now is Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but as popular as Star Wars ships are, they can’t hold a candle to the Jedi or other characters. They’re simply mass-produced vehicles like cars or trucks, albeit with much cooler designs; we don’t grow attached to any particular one. (Don’t bother bringing up the Millennium Falcon, as that’s not featured on Clone Wars. Which is a good thing.) Most ships in Star Wars are designed to be blown apart in space battles, anyway. Even then, a majority of Clone Wars episodes, and arguably the best ones, take place on planets.

So why the downturn in ship spotlights? Perhaps creators and networks are rooting sci-fi programs to the ground in order to make them more accessible to a wider audience. It’s easier for most folks to wrap their heads around a modern-day setting with a few sci-fi twists than future people and aliens working on highly advanced spacecraft, as there’s a natural point of reference.

You also might think that budgetary constraints would have something to do with it, but that’s never stopped creators before. Watch the original Star Trek, with its cardboard sets and whatnot. Or even Enterprise, when the franchise wasn’t doing so well; the sets and special effects were jaw-dropping.

I can only hope this trend will reverse itself, and we’ll start seeing memorable ships exploring the cosmos once again, with an intrepid crew at the helm. That’s always been my favorite genre of sci-fi, and there’s more to starships than just space battles.