Kirk Your Enthusiasm

A recent post on io9.com alerted me to the fact that Hilobrow has posted a series of 25 short essays by 25 different authors on the many faces of Star Trek's James T. Kirk. It's called, fittingly enough, Kirk Your Enthusiasm :) Some are meditative, some funny, some thought-provoking, some just plain Kirk-boosterism, but they're all well-crafted and all written from a place of respect and genuine affection for the series.

Each essay focuses on a single memorable Kirk-centric scene. Most of the writers chose a scene from the original series but there are also a few from the movies. They include Kirk's first self-destruct bluff (Let That Be Your Last Battlefield); Kirk recites the U.S. Constitution (The Omega Glory) which includes some perceptive comments on Shatner's acting style; "the canonical TOS episode of great slashiness" (Amok Time); Kirk's letting Edith Keeler die (Return to Tomorrow) which draws parallels between Kirk and John F. Kennedy; and lots more. The final essay is particularly interesting: it examines the scene in ST the Reboot where Kirk taunts Spock into losing control so that Kirk can take command of the Enterprise, and argues that Spock is the real hero of the scene since by stepping down he recognizes that being captain requires calmness and rationality, neither of which the rebooted Kirk exhibits.

The essays are a great chance to wallow in an excess of Trekkiness (yay!!) in the company of a bunch of writers who love it too. The index to the essays is here. Go. Read. Wallow :)

Holidaygen and anarchy

What a great combination of subjects, eh?

hp_holidaygen is now open for signups, yay! I had great fun writing mine for last year, because I was assigned characters I don't usually write and thus given a chance to stretch myself a bit. Signup post is here, so go forth and put your name down!

On a totally 'nother note, Mr Psmith has gotten me hooked on Sons of Anarchy. Initially I thought it was pretty awful, like a soap opera only with more guns and a much higher body count, but as I've been drawn in I'm starting to see a sort of epic-ness to it. Some of the episodes, admittedly, are just epic train wrecks that you can't look away from: anything these guys touch seems to disintegrate into a bloody fiasco and nobody tells anybody the truth, ever, under any circumstances. But the last two episodes from Season 4 were classic Greek tragedy.

( More here, but spoilery )

I'm sure there are more analogies that can be made (Piney, for example, nags at me as being an archetypal figure but I can't put my finger on it), and I'd be interested to hear any that others have spotted or conjectured.

So it's turned out to be an interesting ride (no pun intended!), and I'm looking forward to next weekend when Season 5 starts with a whole new set of episodes to probe for classical/mythical allusions :)