Attention geek girls, whether or not you already own the slave Leia costume, you can now attract your nerdy catch by smelling like the sexy princess as well. Better pre-order now, Star Wars shop is officially starting to sell the Slave Leia perfume on August 30.

Link Via Foolish Gadgets

Deviant Art user CyberDrone has a great collection of printable Doctor Who characters and icons for your geektastic pleasure. She even has each of the eleven doctors, so you get to play with your favorite.

Tom Baker, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant can finally try to out Doctor each other at my beck and call. Mwahaha.

Link via Craftzine

Ever wonder what Doctor Octagon’s room looks like or what Wonder Woman is up to behind closed doors? Enter the excellent photography of artist Ian Pool. WebUrbanist has a great collection of his images featuring geek icons doing what they do when no one else is watching.

Link

If you are one of those poor geeks who has been misled into thinking that only cool people can play guitar, here’s the instrument that will turn it all around for you: The Koopa Troopa guitar. Finally you can please both your rocker side and your gamer side at the same time.

Link

My thanks to Alex for the chance to try out something different, to my patient wife for giving me the extra time, and all of our readers and commenters who made NeatoGeek a part of their day. It’s been a blast.

Some commenters disagreed my high assessment quite strongly. JoeyJoeJoe wrote (in part):

Sorry to sound so harsh, but Enterprise was a horrible, lazy and terribly-written entry into the world of Trek. Considering that all other modern ST series lasted for 7 seasons (even Voyager, for god’s sake), there’s a reason that Enterprise was CANCELLED after 4 seasons. Think about it – when you have a cash cow like Star Trek, with millions of built-in fans ready to watch every episode, you need to work pretty hard to screw that up. They succeeded in doing so.

And Gordon Daily wrote:

My misgivings about Enterprise was that it turned into a soap opera. Season 3 became one long seralized story. ST:TOS and ST:TNG episodes were all stand-alone stories (two-part stories episodes notwithstanding). Also, when Enterprise went into this never-ending story, they lost all sense of humor. The first two seasons were peppered with light-hearted stories, or at least stories where some comic relief was inserted.

I must respectfully disagree with my fellow Trekkies.  Now to be sure — de gustibus non est disputandum.  People have different tastes reflecting their own aesthetic values.   Gordon disliked the third season of Enterprise for the exact same reason that I liked it.   It was a long, serialized drama akin to the Dominion War in DS9 or almost all of Babylon 5.  Each of us prefers a different balance between light and heavy, probably varying with one’s mood and purely individual taste.

As for ENT, as JoeyJoeJoe points out, the show was canceled after only two seasons, in contrast to its long-lasting near-contemporaries, TNG, DS9, and VOY.  This is true.  But I don’t understand how the show’s lack of popularity defines its quality.  The most recent Trek movie, for example, was a stunning box office success.  Yet, as I wrote at my old site, it was a disgracefully poor movie.  It doesn’t seem rational to equate quality and popularity.

Now there were times in which ENT’s continuity was uneven and inconsistent.  But all Trek shows demonstrated this, and I don’t see how ENT was disproportionately bad in this regard.

To the contrary, the fourth season — the strongest, in my opinion — was a masterpiece of continuity.   This is particularly noteworthy in “Affliction” and “Divergence“, which actually repaired a long-standing problem in Star Trek continuity.  The very next episode, “Bound“, returned to an entire species that had barely been mentioned since TOS (in fact, the entire series dealt with the long-ignored Andorians).  The next two-part episode, “In a Mirror, Darkly“, was a brilliant performance that dovetailed into two TOS episodes in exhausting detail. And the concluding episode, “These Are the Voyages“, fit neatly within a TNG episode using TNG actors and sets.

Now to address specific points of continuity that JoeyJoeJoe brought up:

In the TNG episode, A Matter of Time, it’s clearly stated that there were no phasers in the 22nd century (Archer’s time period). Sure enough, what did we see in Enterprise? Phasers.

Actually, ENT refers to them as “phase cannons” and “phase pistols“. A small difference, but perhaps this would work as an analogy: the Kentucky long rifle and the Krag are both rifles and are called such, but very different pieces of technology.

The lineage of all starships named Enterprise has been very explicitly spelled out since the Star Trek movies. The Enterprise D and E had little models of all those ships (including the sailing vessel, the aricraft carrier and the Space Shuttle) in their observation lounges. The NX-01 never graces those walls. They invented this ship simply for the series and never bothered to explain where it came from.

True, but it strikes me as a very minor point that existed in the background of a set on a show that decided that warp drive was too dangerous to use in one episode — and then ignored the proclamation for the rest of the franchise.

Picard once stated that “first contact with the Klingons was disastrous and led to decades of war.” We saw that first contact on the ENT premiere, but where was the war?

First contact really didn’t go very well with the Klingons, leading to real mistrust and even open combat between the different sides during ENT. It could easily spill into open warfare at the conclusion of ENT. In fact, the Klingons would have even greater reason to see the newborn Federation as a threat.

In the 22nd century, the Federation was also at war with the Romulan empire. Where was that?

Probably at the conclusion of ENT, with the birth of the Federation.  And I’d like to point out that a TOS episode stated that no one had seen a Romulan before.  ENT, in its five Romulan episodes, kept that continuity by ensuring that no one ever did and live to tell about it.

Also, take a look at the Daedalus class of starships – the class that was meant to follow that of the NX Enterprise. Does the Daedalus class look like it’s a design improvement? I knew that it was going to be a production design challenge to make the tech in this series seem less advanced than the cheesy 1960′s sets, but they missed the mark on this too.

Remember, we’re in 2010 and we have computers now that are smaller and more powerful than those on TOS. We have touchscreen interfaces, but in the future, we’re supposed to all go back to buttons and toggle switches.

Star Trek was born in the 1960s, so it’s primitive even by today’s standards. The spherical shape of the primary hull of a model kept in the back an office strikes me as nitpicking. Yes, that’s what we Trekkies do. But what if all series were held to this standard, would any be worth watching?

The writers had a number of pre-set historical events to deal with and they ignored nearly all of them. If you’re going to play in this universe, please respect the canon that has already been established.

Such as?  They covered the Eugenics Wars quite well, and those were supposed to take place in the 1990s.   Colonel Green was mentioned.  I mean, ENT managed to keep consistent despite conflicting with our reality. That’s pretty good work.

Now I haven’t been blogging for five years without learning that text is a limited way to communicate because it removes body language and vocal tone.  So just in case I’ve given the impression that I’m angry or emotional: I’m not.  I just disagree. We wouldn’t be geeks if we didn’t get into arguments about trivialities.

Enterprise was fun.  And if you haven’t seen the final sixty seconds of the series, do so now.  It’s a wonderful send-off to a story that has enriched so many lives.

Image: Paramount

Who is your favorite Doctor?

Image: BBC

Artist Cody Frisbee took six monsters and creatures from Dungeons & Dragons and imagined them as sports team mascots. I’d love to root for the Gelatinous Cubes, who would, of course, hail from Cleveland.

Geeks Are Sexy (SFW content, despite the URL) has a roundup of all six mascots.

Link via Geekosystem | deviantART Gallery

This is for all you new people: I only have one rule. Everyone fights. No one quits. You don’t do your job, I’ll shoot you myself. You get me?

Cartoonists Mike Cornnell and Dana Wulfekotte have a great idea. Hollywood, please make this movie.

Link via Culture Kills

I’ve previously featured Japanese beatbox performer Hikanin demonstrating the Super Mario Bros. theme music. He’s back, this time performing music from Street Fighter.

via technabob | Official Website – Google Translator Version

Geek Tyrant came up with a gallery of alternate movie posters, mostly from the superhero and horror genres, with a retro feel and different actors. I don’t know which artist to attribute, but s/he’s a genius! Featuring Clint Eastwood as Wolverine and Boris Karloff as Skeletor.

Link

Artist Faith Pearson recreated scenes from Star Trek, Godzilla, and King Kong using old printer ink cartridges. You can view four more images at the link.

Link via io9

The Earth experiences a near-miss with an asteroid, which skims the surface of our atmosphere. Afterward, people notice that mergers and acquisitions attorneys are unusually ravenous. They begin biting people, who themselves, after a short illness, become mergers and acquisitions attorneys. Soon, it’s not safe to venture out at night because the streets are filled with mergers and acquisitions attorneys hungry for human flesh (as in real life, sunlight is a natural foe of mergers and acquisitions attorneys). The world becomes consumed with their bloodthirsty howls and SEC filings as the human population dwindles….

Here’s my idea for a movie:

A biological warfare program has an accident, and an airborne pathogen spreads across the world. It kills everyone who has gone through puberty. Once it kills off the adult population, the virus itself dies as it lacks proper hosts. Children are left to rebuild the world.

Alternatively, the virus kills 95% of the post-pubescent population, leaving only all the children and a few adults.

What’s your idea for a novel? What’s your idea for a movie?

Image credit: unknown, via David J. Batista.

Tatooine has very few natural resources aside from sand and water. The indigenous “sand people” are violent and roam around in packs with weapons with few in authority to stop them, which makes it dangerous to be outside at night (or during the day in some cases). On top of that, there is really no centralized authority on the planet aside from an area that is deliberately sectioned off for an international mafia family. Similar to the way “thug life” is structured, the Hutts give back to the community it exploits, and runs the planet like a fiefdom. Because of this, and as there is little possibility for economic growth deriving from the planet’s natural resources, it is a very difficult and harsh environment to live day-to-day.

Link via reddit

deviantART user Tara Reich made this outfit that looks like a TARDIS. The Fourth Doctor scarf from Limebarb adds to the groovy 70s look. Reich does some amazing work and her cosplay gallery is worth a click.

Link via Topless Robot | Gallery

Yesterday, I posted a video of a live performance battle between Tekken and Street Fighter characters at a con in Germany. What I didn’t know was that it featured the directors of those games, Katsuhiro Harada and Yoshinori Ono, respectively. Apparently, they’ve spent the past week getting in mock battles with each other and playing pranks at the hotel. Kotaku has a roundup of pictures and tweets from this clash.

Not many men look good in a Chun-Li outfit. Including this one.

Link

Link via io9 | Image: BBC

At a recent convention in Cologne,Germany, Namco had martial artists/actors put on a live performance of a battle between Street Fighter and Tekken characters. It’s about sixteen minutes long and hilariously weird. It resembles the drama of professional wrestling more than anything else.

via Kotaku

Every year, Atom Films hosts an online competition for Star Wars fan films. The film above, entitled “The Unconscious Sith” is a well-directed depiction of a young boy entering a comic book and moving from panel to panel, gradually becoming a Sith. It won the George Lucas Selects Award.

I’m not sure if that’ll make you more or less likely to watch it.

2010 Finalists via Geekosystem

Link via io9

Image: Paramount

Cartoonist David Stonecipher previously depicted famous female video game characters as male. Now he’s tried the opposite approach and drawn eight male characters as female.

Link via Kotaku

Artist Kyle Starks drew ABC figures for lesser-known Marvel villains. His copyright notice speaks of a dark conspiracy:

All these lame-os are property of Marvel Comics, which is owned by Disney. Which is owned by the frozen head of Walt Disney.

Link via Super Punch | Artist’s Website

Each is about twelve minutes long and features outstanding animation and storytelling about two lesser-known DC superheroes. Spoilers after the jump.

Jonah Hex tells the tale of a saloon prostitute who, along with her accomplices, casually murders and robs customers. There’s a bounty on the head of one of her late victims, and Hex wants it. He’s heard that she knows his whereabouts. To the killer, Hex is another potential mark, and she tries to lure him into her trap. Hex is voiced by actor Thomas Jane, who played the title role in the 2004 film The Punisher.

Police detective Jim Corrigan is the alter ego of The Spectre. When a film executive is murdered, Corrigan’s job is to bring justice to the crime. The Spectre’s calling is to avenge the dead. This film features the voice talents of actress Alyssa Milano.

“There is a big difference in the movie superhero of today and the comic book superhero of yesterday,” said psychologist Sharon Lamb,

PhD, distinguished professor of mental health at University of Massachusetts-Boston. “Today’s superhero is too much like an action hero who participates in non-stop violence; he’s aggressive, sarcastic and rarely speaks to the virtue of doing good for humanity. When not in superhero costume, these men, like Ironman, exploit women, flaunt bling and convey their manhood with high-powered guns.”

The comic book heroes of the past did fight criminals, she said, “but these were heroes boys could look up to and learn from because outside of their costumes, they were real people with real problems and many vulnerabilities,” she said.

Susana Polo of Geekosystem wrote a lengthy response to Lamb, noting the psychologist wrongly assumes that superhero narratives are primarily aimed at children:

While the superhero genre has well established tropes and rules, any genre can accommodate tonal shifts. No one would imply that Animal Farm represents a corruption of the talking animal genre of children’s literature. Fantasy doesn’t get called out for telling morally ambiguous stories.

There are comic book superheroes for kids, yes. Captain Marvel has had a kid oriented series lately, and then there’s Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and others. But the majority of comic book superheroes haven’t been written for small children for twenty years now.

Precisely. It’s improper to assume that while the tone has shifted, the the intended audience has remained static. Parents should shield their children from superhero comics and movies that would do them emotional harm.

A few weeks ago, I extolled the greatness of the movie Kick-Ass, and a Facebook friend asked me if she should take her kids. I told her absolutely not. It’s about kids being heroes, but it’s not for kids at all.

Link via Geekosystem | Image: kamillyonsia

Previously: Why Iron Man Is the Gen Y Superhero

Today is the birthday for the late Gene Roddenberry, Jonathan Frakes, and Diana Muldaur.

Roddenberry would have been 89, Frakes in 58, and Muldaur is 72.

So think of it as the Trekkie equivalent of All Saints’ Day.

Okay, that’s probably not a good analogy. But it’s enough of one to make me break out the Romulan ale.

via GeekDad | Images: Paramount

The team that brought you the knock-off The Incredible HALKa now rips off/parodies Spider-Man.

College student Cheater Parker is a college student and enthusiast of photography and footography (that means that he likes to take pictures of feet). Parker is bitten by a spider and transformed into MakraMan!

via NerdBastards

Link (self-starting sound) via blastr | Screenshot: Star Wars Uncut

One of the highlights of Star Wars Celebration V was that R2D2 tied the knot. You can watch the video of the grand spectacle here (warning: self-starting). He married Bonnie Burton, the editor of StarWars.com.

Really, she’s deluding herself if she thinks that he’s going to be faithful.

via io9 | Photo: StarWars.com

Google Translate isn’t being terribly helpful, but I gather that this is a custom bike design (not a finished product) modeled after the transformable armor from Genesis Climber MOSPEADA. This series was integrated into the American Robotech universe by the late Carl Macek.

Link (in Japanese) via Super Punch