(pop·so·fee·uh) n. the wisdom in pop culture; c.2011, from pop (abbreviation of popular as in "pop culture") + L. sophia < Gk. sophía "wisdom" < sophis "wise, learned."
A friend made a good point when he said that the things which make Kirk awesome and the things which make Picard awesome, while completely different (and often opposed to one another) are equally valid. That being said, I thought the following list would be a good way to cap off this long series of Trek-related posts:
#10. He doesn't bang everything, thus avoiding space STD's.
#9. Picard solves crime mysteries in his spare time. Kirk couldn't if he tried.
#8. He's not a foolhardy idiot, never leaping into action and risking Red Shirts' lives in the process.
#7. He has a lovely singing voice and can play the flute damn well.
#6. He's got principles and stuff like that, leading him to give awesome impassioned speeches on morality:
#5. Size matters.
#4. (This one's from the wife.) He doesn't feel the need to take off his shirt willy nilly, but when he does... Wow. Kirk, not so much.
#3. You can rub his head for good luck.
#2. He got assimilated and freaking came back from it!
#1. He's British. 'Nuff said.
That's the last Star Trek post for a while. I promise.
Last post we discovered that we contributed to the downfall of Nature when we sinned in the Garden. We also realized that, because fangs and poison and death and other bad stuff seem to have been around before us, they must be due to some other evil influence on the world.
There can only be one answer to who that could be, seeing as, before us, there's only one other source of evil: the Devil and his fallen angels. But why should the Devil have anything to do with God's Creation?
In The Silmarillion, Tolkien recounts his creation myth, called the "Ainulindalë," meaning, "Music of the Ainur." The Ainur ("Holy Ones") are Middle Earth's angels, beings of pure spirit, issuing out of the mind of God before time itself. Together, they perceive God's plan for Creation, and begin to sing their respective parts in harmony with one another, which causes the universe, in all its splendor, to jump into being.
Granted this is a work of fiction, but what Tolkien has done is to synthesize two seemingly contradictory myths of creation, the classical and the Judeo-Christian. God is still the Creator of the universe, and exterior to it, as in Genesis, but his creative act is performed through others, each of which has a domain which they create in accordance with the will of God, and later rule on his behalf. In the end, then, there are Ainur of the sky, and sea, and craftsmanship, and so on, just as in the pagan pantheons.
All of this is to say that God's act of Creation needn't be direct in order for it to be his. It is entirely consonant with Christian theology and what we know from the Book of Genesis for God to have created via the angels, whom he has given charge over the disparate categories of Being.
C.S. Lewis picks up on this idea in his Space Trilogy, when he has different angels (he calls them "eldila") as the caretakers of the various planets in the Solar System. The hero discovers that the rest of the universe refers to Earth as "the silent planet" because Lucifer its caretaker, and when he rebelled against God, he cut us all off with him.
In Tolkien, this notion of the fallen angel occurs when Melkor decides to rebel against the will of God for Creation and begins singing his own, discordant tune, and thus bringing a level of disorder and chaos to the things being made. I think something similar happened at the beginning of time, the Devil doing his best to mess things up even as God and the angels were creating the universe. "Really?" Really:
Last time we saw pictures of messed-up mammals. Today we're obviously looking at birds, reptiles, and amphibians. Technically speaking, I would put birds in between mammals and reptiles, but since they're basically just slightly less terrifying, slightly more highly-evolved reptiles anyway, I decided to include them here.
More than just this list of horrible animals, we see in Genesis that things had already gone wrong long before Mankind showed up. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This verse is likely more of a title than a verse. Oftentimes Jewish literature begins with a short summary of the story it will tell in detail. The story really begins with Genesis 1:2: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep."
"Formlessness," "void," "darkness," does that sound like the work of God to you? It seems to me that Satan was there from the beginning, trying to corrupt everything as best he could. The story of history, then, turns out to have been a rescue mission from the beginning, God fighting a war with the Devil for Creation, in order that he might fashion a world fit for his Son to inhabit, and thus undergo the ultimate act of redemption on behalf of the fallen universe.
At long last I present the actual list of Voyager episodes that will blow your mind. Or at least impress you. You might like them, I guess.
Honorable Mention - Fury
So, Kes... Yikes. Basically, she's the Wesley Crusher of Voyager. Except without the redeeming sweaters. She doesn't do anything but be young and naive and optimistic. There's really no depth at all. Interestingly, though, almost 3 years after leaving the show at the beginning of Season 4, she shows up again without warning. And because her species only lives 9 years, she's super old. Oh, and she's super pissed:
Honorable Mention - Homestead
I've said before that Janeway was a successful captain by running her ship like a family. Part of that meant picking up a few strays who needed a home along the way. One of those was the Talaxian Neelix, who became the ship's cook and later ambassador. In his role as morale officer, early on Neelix made it his personal mission to cure Security Chief Tuvok of his emotionless, Vulcan-y ways, and bothering him severely in the process. Part of this meant getting Tuvok to dance. A few episodes before the Season Finale, Voyager came across a stray colony inhabited by some of Neelix's people, and he decides to stay with them rather than continue the journey toward Earth:
#10 - Someone to Watch Over Me
When Voyager got pulled into the Delta Quadrant, the ship's original doctor died. As such, the newly-invented holographic backup doctor had to take over. Over the years, he goes through a kind of Data-like transition from mere machine (or in this case, computer program) to close to human, and ends up being one of the best and most important parts of the show. One of the big steps in that process was the Doctor's unrequited love for Seven of Nine, which he discovers when he offers his help to the former Borg in honing her social skills:
#9 - Future's End + Relativity
Those infamous Voyager time travel episodes. These are really good, though. In the first, Voyager gets conveniently thrown back to the precise time they happened to be filming that episode. Then they beam down to L.A. The budget's not that big, guys. Sarah Silverman and Ed Begley Jr. costar. The latter plays a Bill Gates-like computer mogul who it turns out has been "inventing" revolutionary new computer technology be stealing it from a crashed Starfleet shuttle from the 29th-century he happened upon while hiking on some hippie vision quest in the 60s. At any rate, that shuttle from from the USS Relativity, which shows up again in a later episode and recruits Seven of Nine's help in changing history for the better. Just solid time travel stuff really.
#8 - Timeless
This was supposed to be Voyager's "City on the Edge of Forever," which is like, the classic episode of The Original Series. It is really good. It has problems, though. The main one being it features Harry Kim and Chakotay's bad acting and shallow characters waaay too prominently. That being said, what a fantastic episode opener:
#7 - Living Witness
Admittedly, the alternate-reality-where-everyone-is-evil deal has been done before. It's still cool, though. This episode features kind of an interesting twist on that idea. Mainly, though, you just get to see everybody go bad:
#6 - Equinox
Of all things, Voyager stumbles upon another Starfleet ship. It's only a small science vessel, though, with a skeleton crew. Turns out they haven't held themselves to as high a standard as Janeway and her crew, who come face-to-face with what they might have resorted to had they not been so lucky.
#5 - Real Life
One of the big steps in that process was when he decided he should have a family. So he makes himself a holographic one. At first, he designs them to be the perfect, Normal Rockwell family. When the Klingon Engineer meets them, she informs him that real people don't get to pick their family, and he agrees to let her tweak the program for more realism. Turns out she does too good a job, and the Doctor has to say goodbye to someone dear.
#4 - The Killing Game + Flesh and Blood
In "The Killing Game," a group of hunter aliens commandeer Voyager and begin using the holodecks to simulate new and interesting environments in which to repeatedly kill the mind-controlled crew. The majority of the episode takes place in World War II-era France, the crew believing they're part of the Resistance, which is a neat change. Of course, Janeway finds a way cut a deal with the aliens and they take the holodeck technology for themselves. A couple of seasons go by and it turns out things didn't work out so well for them. They built a giant holodeck, but the made the hologram prey too smart and they've revolted, stolen a ship, and embarked on a killing spree.
#3 - Endgame
Like Next Gen, one of the big reasons I consider Voyager as a series successful is that it went out well. Besides wrapping it up before it started to go downhill Seinfeld-style, it ended on a big high note with Endgame. Fantastically, the episode opens with Voyager returning home. In a weird twist, it's actually old footage being played on the tenth anniversary of their return, which took 16 more years after the previous episode, suffering gradual losses the whole way. Turns out the aging Admiral Janeway has hatched a plan to travel back in time and bring Voyager home sooner.
#2 - Scorpion
Way back in early Next Gen, when they introduced the Borg, we knew they originated in the Delta Quadrant. When Voyager got thrown there it was only a matter of time before they ran into them and would be forced to traverse Borg Space. This giant season-straddling two-parter is really when Voyager came into its own, as a ship and a show:
#1 - Year of Hell
So, the best episode of Voyager. Guest starring the dad from That 70s Show, who's great by the way. Basically, "Year of Hell" is just Voyager at its best. It's rough and tumble, in fact, it never gets any worse for Janeway and her crew, and that's why it's so good. Everybody (especially Janeway) gets to show off their badassery skills. The episodes cover an entire year of Voyager squaring off against an alien species with temporal weapons, who kidnap Paris and Chakotay. The Doctor has a near breakdown from having to sacrifice two crewmen for the greater good. Janeway gets 3rd-degree burns over 60 percent of her body that the Doctor can't completely repair because systems are so badly damaged. Tuvok goes blind from an explosion saving Seven of Nine. Most of the ship gets straight up destroyed, and they can't keep ahead of the attacks. That's the thing about Voyager, though, as bad as it gets, it's the fact that the crew is a family that gets them through it. That's just about the only thing that's kept everything going this long, and this far from home. (Sorry about the imperfection at the beginning. I don't know what that's about.)
So, the "Saturday Morning Classics" post is upcoming. In the meantime...
The first thing to do when compiling this list was to break down the movies into three tiers: Tier One being the above average films, Tier Two being the average films, and Tier Three being the below average films. From there, it becomes easier to sort them into specific rankings within the three tiers.
Tier Three:
#36 - Oliver & Company
#35 - Meet the Robinsons
#34 - The Princess and the Frog
#33 - The Great Mouse Detective
#32 - The Emperor's New Groove
#31 - Pocahontas
#30 - The Aristocats
Tier Two:
#29 - The Rescuers
#28 - Hercules
#27 - Fantasia
#26 - Tarzan
#25 - Lady and the Tramp
#24 - The Sword in the Stone #23 - Alice in Wonderland
#22 - Winnie the Pooh
#21 - The Rescuers Down Under
#20 - Lilo & Stitch
#19 - The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
#18 - The Fox and the Hound
#17 - Robin Hood
#16 - Pinocchio
#15 - Mulan
Tier One:
#14 - Sleeping Beauty #13 - Cinderella
#12 - Bambi #11 - Aladdin
#10 - The Jungle Book #9 - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs #8 - The Little Mermaid
#7 - Dumbo
#6 - Peter Pan
#5 - Tangled
#4 - 101 Dalmatians
#3 - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
#2 - The Lion King
#1 - Beauty and the Beast
So it's really difficult to put the films into exact order. Without a more thorough investigation into each film, it's hard to say which of two very close in quality is better. I'm not dead set on the exact positions in this list, but it's pretty close, I think.
The following films in the official list of Disney features were unable to be ranked because (1) they're obviously terrible and I haven't gotten around to seeing them as a result, (2) I regrettably haven't seen them yet, or (3) they're really just an extended short film. I'll let you figure out which reason(s) applied: Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, The Black Cauldron, Dinosaur, Fantasia 2000, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, Home on the Range, and Chicken Little, and Bolt.
UPDATE: You'll notice the list of excluded films has gotten a bit shorter. Turns out I can't automatically disqualify computer-animated Disney films on account of Tangled deserving its new position at #5 (many Tangled-related posts soon). As a result I've appropriately added Meet the Robinsons, which I had seen previously, near the bottom of the list. I've also rethought a couple of rankings since the original posting, and added Winnie the Pooh in its proper spot having seen it just prior to Tangled. What do you think?
The world isn't the way it's supposed to be. Let's look at childbirth by way of example. The first commandment God gave us, way back in Gen. 1:22 was to "be fruitful and multiply." We should remember that God's commandments are not arbitrary. That is to say, moral imperatives are not dictated down from on high for no reason. On the contrary, morality stems from Nature and Being itself. In other words, when Scripture tells us God has commanded us to do something, it is not because that's what God wants, it's because that's what God is, or because that's what we are.
It is of God's very essence (and therefore ours as well) to bring forth life. This is why doing so is an explicit commandment in Scripture. This idea is perfectly consonant with what modern science tells us. Procreation is the earliest and most fundamental aim of evolutionary development, the most basic reason for our existence. The pagan philosopher Aristotle said the same thing almost 2400 years ago when he named the propagation of the species as the ultimate telos (end, goal) toward which all life tends. All of this is to say that, if the world were the way it was supposed to be, childbirth would be the easiest, most natural thing in the world. Unfortunately, like so many other things, it's one of the biggest struggles in life: "in pain you shall bring forth children," (Gen. 3:16).
But it wasn't just humanity that was harmed by our sin: "cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life," (Gen. 3:17). For example:
the star-nosed mole,
this mutant dog thing,
possums,
and cat lady. Messed up as they are, as mammals (and marsupials), this group of horrifying creatures (along with those we saw in Part One) are actually the least horrifying of all.
After God finished his work of creation, he entrusted all of it to Man: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth," (Gen. 1:26).
Much has been made of the word "dominion." What the Hebrew writers of this passage would have meant, and what Western Christians would have understood it to mean until relatively recently, was not a "master/slave" relationship but something more like a "husband/wife" relationship. St. Paul explains Christian marriage in a similar fashion, saying, "Wives, be subject to your husbands," (Eph. 5:22). Of course, he balances this verse with the complementary commandment to husbands, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her," (Eph. 5:25). The relationship is one of self-gift, each living for the other. In the same way, Man is lord of creation in the same way Christ is Lord of us, by sacrificing himself for it. It is a lordship of love and self-gift, our "dominion" is that of the servant, the caretaker, the Lover.
As Man fell, so fell the World. Our sin could not help but affect our most intimate companion, Nature itself. Scripture confirms this when it prophesies that the New Creation will be quite different from the one we currently inhabit:
"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord," (Isa. 11:6-9).
If the recreated order after the Parousia is perfect, and in it lions don't eat antelope, it must not be perfect for lions to eat antelope. We saw last post that all this ugliness can't have come from God. Where, then, did it come from? Us. By our sin, evil entered the world and corrupted the operation of Nature. Suddenly only the fittest can survive and things with fangs and claws and venom start popping up. But wait, the fossil record teaches us that fangs, claws, and venom predate Man. It turns out, then, that we just complicated matters and death and destruction entered into the world another way.
Here's the deal... Notwithstanding the heartfelt claims of many a wrongheaded scientist or misguided animal lover, there are many creatures which, just... Well, they're not pretty. For example:
the naked mole rat,
the aye-aye,
and the elephant seal bull.
This just can't be what things are supposed to look like. Bottom line, beauty isn't in the eye of the beholder. That is to say, while it is true that we receive our standards of beauty from cultural and environmental conditioning, these standards themselves are not arbitrary. Here's why:
All things that exist receive their existence from something else. We received existence from our parents, they from their parents, and so on. Keep going and it all gets traced back to the Big Bang (if you believe in the Big Bang, which I do). But the Big Bang had to be caused by something. Basically, you can't keep going on forever. Eventually there has to be a First Cause that is itself un-caused by anything else, an Unmoved Mover, from which every other thing that exists received (and is currently receiving) its existence. This we call God, (cf. Acts 17:28).
Okay. So everything that exists comes ultimately from God. What about evil? If evil exists, then it must come from God too. Thankfully, it doesn't. Evil is the lack of good. You see, "the Good" is what is desirable. But God is the ultimate cause of everything that is desirable. As a result, he must be the ultimate definition of all those desirable qualities. In other words, God is not only the best thing, he is Goodness itself, in all its forms. "None is good but God alone," (Luke 18:19). All other beings are only good insofar as they participate and share in his supreme goodness.
One of the forms of goodness is beauty, for we all desire beauty. There is, then, an ultimate standard of beauty, Beauty himself, against which all other beautiful things must be judged. Ugliness is the lack of beauty, and boy is there plenty of that to go around. How, then, do you end up with animals like those above that were supposedly created by the supremely good and beautiful God? You don't. God didn't create them.
Look forward to the rest of this series in which we shall journey through the most disgustingly horrifying animals Nature has to offer and discuss a possible explanation for how they could have gotten here.
So, the "Saturday Morning Classics" post is upcoming. In the meantime...
The first thing to do when compiling this list was to break down the movies into three tiers: Tier One being the above average films, Tier Two being the average films, and Tier Three being the below average films. From there, it becomes easier to sort them into specific rankings within the three tiers.
Tier Three:
#33 - Oliver & Company
#32 - The Princess and the Frog
#31 - The Great Mouse Detective
#30 - The Emperor's New Groove
#29 - Pocahontas
#28 - The Aristocats
Tier Two:
#27 - The Rescuers
#26 - Hercules
#25 - Fantasia
#24 - Tarzan
#23 - Lady and the Tramp
#22 - The Sword in the Stone
#21 - The Rescuers Down Under
#20 - Lilo & Stitch
#19 - Alice in Wonderland
#18 - The Fox and the Hound
#17 - The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
#16 - Robin Hood
#15 - Pinocchio
#14 - Mulan
Tier One:
#13 - Sleeping Beauty #12 - Bambi
#11 - Cinderella #10 - Aladdin
#9 - The Jungle Book #8 - Dumbo
#7 - The Little Mermaid #6 - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
#5 - Peter Pan
#4 - 101 Dalmatians
#3 - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
#2 - The Lion King
#1 - Beauty and the Beast
So it's really difficult to put the films into exact order. Without a more thorough investigation into each film, it's hard to say which of two very close in quality is better. I'm not dead set on the exact positions in this list, but it's pretty close, I think.
The following films in the official list of Disney features were unable to be ranked because (1) they're obviously terrible and I haven't gotten around to seeing them as a result, (2) I regrettably haven't seen them yet, (3) they're computer animated, or (4) they're really just an extended short film. I'll let you figure out which reason(s) applied: Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, The Black Cauldron, Dinosaur, Fantasia 2000, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, Home on the Range, and Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, Bolt, Tangled, and Winnie the Pooh.
In the spirit of recognizing the solid storytelling in Star Trek: The Next Generation, what follows is a list of the 10 episodes everyone should see before they die.
#10 - The Drumhead
Speaking of preachy... This episode epitomizes one of the major elements of the entire show—Picard taking a stand on moral issues in the face of a corrupt bureaucracy. In the later seasons, there’s always this tension in Picard, between the liberal ideas he's adopted as a Starfleet captain and the Traditional values he was brought up with...in France...even though he has a British accent. They don’t ever explain that. Or how such a conservative family could still be around in such an “advanced” society. Anyway.
#9 - The Nth Degree
I know what you’re thinking...
The ninth best Next Generation episode came first.
By far one of the best things about the later seasons of Next Gen was Lieutenant Barclay. Nervous, neurotic, and accident prone make for good ingredients in a lovable character. Wait... Shouldn’t Roddenberry’s "perfect" society have done away with these qualities by genetic engineering and selective breeding? Anyway, in this episode, Barclay accidentally makes himself the smartest, most charismatic person alive.
#8 - Masks
Captain Picard could have been an archaeologist. In this episode, he gets to show off his mad skills. Throughout the course of the ship this alien device gradually converts the Enterprise into a replica of the civilization that built it, including Data. As a result, Brent Spiner gets to play multiple characters, which he does really well (and which happens quite a bit actually, now that I think about it).
#7 - Elementary, Dear Data + Ship in a Bottle
These two episodes (the first from Season Two and the second from Season Six) are basically two halves of the same story. Data and Geordi are messing around on the Holodeck in Season Two, playing Sherlock Holmes, and the computer accidentally creates a holographic version of Holmes' archvillain Moriarty self-aware. Trouble ensues. Just really clever stuff, and a fine adaptation of Holmes to boot.
#6 - The Best of Both Worlds, Parts I & II
By far the most important contribution Next Gen made to the Star Trek universe (aside from the badass-ness that is Captain Picard and Data) was the Borg. A hive mind of cybernetic drones bent on galactic domination. They’re pretty much zombies. Except, if the zombies were super strong cyborgs linked to a central computer that can tell them exactly where you are and how to kill you, based on the knowledge its accumulated over several millenia of turning trillions of other people into zombies. In this season-straddling two-parter, they manage to zombify Captain Picard. How do you defend against an enemy which has just obtained all the knowledge of one of your foremost military commanders?
So, my dad made a good point. It’s a cliffhanger, right? Check it out:
...and that’s it. My dad said that was the only time he checked the TV Guide every week all Summer.
#5 - Cause and Effect
Always in Star Trek (that is, until the travesty that was Star Trek: Enterprise) the coolest episodes involve time travel. They rarely hold up logically, but they're awesome just the same. In this episode the Enterprise gets caught in a time loop. ...Also, Frasier Crane makes a cameo appearance.
#4 - All Good Things...
Isn’t it the worst when good shows just kind of fizzle away, or jump the shark and end on a low note? Thankfully, Next Gen wasn't one of those. Its finale really satisfied. Picard finally sat down at the poker table with the rest of the guys. Plus, it involved time travel.
#3 - Darmok
Now this is just a really, really good episode. One of Trek's biggest cop outs has always been the Universal Translator. Basically it makes everybody speak English. Which is dumb. I mean, even if it like overrided the communications system and simulated them speaking in English over the speakers, they should still be mouthing in their language, right? Anyway, in this episode, it stops working—rather, it can't translate these guys' language. So they've gotta figure it out. Turns out it's a super cool language, P.S.
#2 - Chain of Command, Parts I & II
Captain Picard steps down as captain of the Enterprise and goes on a super secret black ops mission. Um, do I really have to say anymore? Maybe that he gets captured and tortured by Russians! I mean...Cardassians. (You see, they’re this alien race that the Federation is in a Cold War with. All similarities are coincidental, though.) It’s pretty interesting, though, ‘cause we rarely ever get to be reminded of the fact that Starfleet (not to mention the larger Federation Military) is about much more than flying around in starships. There must be ground troops, artillery, troop ships to ferry them all from planet to planet, special forces, in short, just about everything we have. I mean, surely they’re at least kinda prepared to defend themselves against an all-out invasion, right?
#1 – The Inner Light + Lessons
"The Inner Light" is the best episode ever. Seriously. Picard gets probed by this satellite thing and it takes over his brain and makes him live an entire lifetime in a matter of minutes. Throughout which time he teaches himself to play the flute in his free time. When he dies in that life, he wakes up and he's back as Captain Picard of the Enterprise. The satellite shuts down and the only thing the crew can find inside is a small box containing the very flute Picard dreamed about playing.
What a fantastic idea to explore the effects that such an experience might have on a person, which the series does in subsequent episodes. One of those is "Lessons," which isn't as good in itself, but it builds on "The Inner Light." Picard falls in love for reals, sharing his second lifetime and flute with someone for the first time, leading to this poignant scene:
Later, he has to make the decision to sacrifice her in the name of the greater good. It's rough. Fantastic television.
