Muy caliente, but she’s just a hologram. I prefer my imaginary girlfriends to be real. Or, um, uh, … I seem to have been in a fog the past few days … Oh my God! I started a Star Trek thread?!?!? Talking about the women!?!?!?!
I GOTTA give up this message boarding. I thought I outgrew this thirty years ago.
Before I go, may I make a quick nomination of Ann Francis’ legs and fundament in Forbidden Planet?
Ok, it was cheesy. But it was fun cheese. And I kinda like the multipurpose laser/taser/bo staff weapon that Sorbo carries.
And I was amused by the Hercules reference.
It’s just a pity the ant-woman was killed - she had potential to be a very interesting character. The only other female hotshot pilot in scifi is Leela from Futurama.
I liked it. It was “Babylon 5” with a dash of “Star Trek,” “Earth: Final Conflict” (two other Roddenberry shows, so that’s a natch), a touch of “Farscape” and a bit of the directing and production styles of “Hercules.”
Not bad. Could be fun. Let’s hope they don’t get too preachy…
Esprix
[hijack]Esprix, how come you never weighed in on your opinion on the Dalek/Borg celebrity deathmatch you suggested?
For the next one, I suggest Major Kira Nerys versus Seven of Nine. I’m not a lesbian, but I’d pay to see THAT catfight. 
[/hijack]
I thought I did, didn’t I? I think the Borg would kick butt - the Daleks are too weasly (it’s all Davros’ fault), and the Borg can adapt.
Esprix
Spoiler alert…
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So, nice call there, kasuo. Any more predictions?
I just caught the rerun of the first show the other week, so maybe someone can explain who has the flimsier grasp of physics, me or the writers of the show?
The premise is that the Andromeda Ascendant wandered too close to the event horizon of a black hole and lost 300 years of time. Now my understanding of what happens when you enter the event horizon is not that you freeze in time, but that you are apparently frozen in time because the light that would report your fiery demise has can’t exit the gravity of the black hole.
Now there might conceivably be relativistic effects which compress time for the people in the space ship. But…Kevin Sorbo and his buddy are apparently frozen while within an artificial gravity field (no tidal effects, no massive acceleration towards the black hole). So why would there be any time dilation effect at all? Certainly their rescuers were not affected.
And why did they say that the Andromeda would eventually have freed herself from the black hole? That’s not how black holes work in my understanding. It’s sort of like a bad sitcom – it always sucks.
GuanoLad wrote:
Now now, I think Sigourney Weaver qualifies as a mammal.
(Maybe only a marsupial, but still…)
I think they way it goes is that from a relativistic standpoint, I see you stuck forever. No time passes for you and you get smushed. We are both right, according to our point of reference.
It you have a great big, black hole proof starship and are willing to suspend your disbelief, you do not become smushed but start a nifty TV show.
Finagle wrote:
Yep. The stronger a gravitational field you’re in (i.e. the more “curved” local space is), the more your clock will slow down relative to outsiders who aren’t in the gravitational field. Gravitational time dilation is usually much, much weaker than good old-fashioned special-relativity velocity-induced time dilation, but since space is curved “infinitely” at the event horizon, it becomes significant if you get too close.
Note that you don’t have to be “feeling” the force of this gravity for the time dilation to work. If you’re in “free fall” near a black hole, your clock will slow down.
The whole concept of “artificial gravity” generators plays havoc with general relativity. This is one reason why many physicists think artificial gravity is impossible.
<rimshot> He’ll be here all week! Tip your waitresses!
But seriously, folks:
It is theoretically possible for an object to “miss” the sigularity at the center of a black hole, if it’s orbiting the black hole at a high enough speed when it crosses the Schwarzchild Radius. (“Schwarzchild Radius” is the dry, boring physicist’s term for the distance from the center of the black hole at which the event horizon lies.) If an object misses the singularity, it can theoretically come out the “other side” of the black hole – said “other side” consisting of a hypothetical object called a “white hole.” No evidence for white holes has yet been discovered, and there’s a good chance that the only thing that can come out of a while hole is randomized radiation, not space ships.
Well, I think my point is that no matter what relativistic state the Andromeda is in, it wouldn’t just hang in space for 300 years. It would either plunge into the event horizon, or orbit the black hole at near light speed. So from the external frame of reference of the rescuing spaceship, the Andromeda would have been 300 years gone.
Um, hello? This is Gene Roddenberry we’re talking about - you know, Master of Plot Convenience Playhouse? “Physics? We don’t need no stinkin’ physics!”
And remember, kiddies - the engineer gave the ship’s computer physical form that is still directly tied to ship itself in the second episode with 300 year old technology. I think “suspension of disbelief” is doing cartwheels in its grave.
Esprix
Let’s see, next she is going to get into a cheerleader outfit and start running around the ship, showing off her pom-poms! ::crossing fingers::
I’ve been catching up with this show in the rerun season. I like it; the premise is basically Star Trek after the Federation collapsed. Which I think is pretty much the only story left to be told in Star Trek, barring prequels.
I haven’t seen every episode yet. Significantly, I haven’t seen the pilot episode or the season-ender, so please don’t spoil those for me.
Andromeda seems to get better with every episode. The one with the radiation-poisoned kids in the “accidental” generation-ship was pretty bad, but most episodes featuring Tyr prominently are very good.
Trance Gemini is a hottie. So is Andromeda’s avatar.
I suppose Beka’s a hottie as well, but she doesn’t do it for me.
Now, here’s some musings/questions:
[ul]
[li]Are the Nietzscheans true aliens, or genetically-engineered humans? I’m a little confused by their obsession with bloodlines and “sociobiological Darwinism” (my term!). In the episode where Tyr retrieved the remains of his ancestor, he said he had a genetically-engineered and nanotech-enhanced immune system. So, if the Nietzscheans monkey with their genes anyway, why make such a big deal out of genealogy? It doesn’t matter. Also, if the Nietzscheans are true aliens, how did they come to adopt an Earth philosopher as their guide?[/li][li]Dylan has met and interacted with his fiancee from 300 years in the past. He failed to bring her forward to his time using Harper’s exotic new teleportation technology. But this is a problem we can solve with today’s knowledge of physics. Sarah could simply accelerate her ship to relativistic speeds and let time dilation burn through the three centuries for her. Obviously from a dramatic point of view we can’t have that, but since generally speaking Andromeda is better about the science than Star Trek, I’m disappointed they didn’t at least address it.[/li][li]What do we know about Tarn Vedra?[/li][li]As I said about the science: I like the little touches, like when Rommie’s viewscreen shows a ship being destroyed and she tells the crew there’s nothing they can do about it, because the images are three light-minutes old. You never see that stuff in Star Trek.[/li][li]And speaking of Rommie, is her avatar mechanical or biological?[/li][/ul]
It’s a bit scary that I can answer these from memory without reference to a website. 
“Are the Nietzscheans true aliens, or genetically-engineered humans? … Also, if the Nietzscheans are true aliens, how did they come to adopt an Earth philosopher as their guide?”
They’re definitely human. It’s been explicitly stated in more than one episode. And, not surprisingly, they apparently they follow Ayn Rand almost as much as Nietzsche (I dread spelling that name for fear of errors ).
“What do we know about Tarn Vedra?”
Capital planet of the Systems Commonwealth. Captain Hunt’s home planet. Inhabitants invented slipstream drive and (purposely?) cut the planet off from (most of?) the slipstream system when the Commonwealth collapsed.
“And speaking of Rommie, is her avatar mechanical or biological?”
Mechanical. In the episode “with the radiation-poisoned kids in the ‘accidental’ generation-ship,” Harper built the avatar from one of those security and maintenance robots (with breasts!?) that are seen in the background in some scenes.
BTW, that wasn’t a generation ship, it was a surviving (well…) High Guard space station. And yes, that episode WAS cheesy!
I know it wasn’t meant to be a generation ship, but it became one by default. The kids were descendants of the original crew, right?
Captain Hunt is a human from Tarn Vedra. Is Earth then lost/destroyed/out in the boonies of the Commonwealth? Are most of the humans from Tarn Vedra in the world of Andromeda? Does Tarn Vedra also have an indigenous sentient species?
I’ve heard it stated that they’re close to year 10,000 in the calendar the Commonwealth uses. Is that our current calendar, such that Andromeda is sat about 8,000 years from now?
Thanks for the help, John Bredin.
I have a coworker who hates the show but just can’t stop watching because she has a huge crush on Tyr.
I’ve been assuming it’s 10,000 years since the foundation of the Commonwealth, which would be a ways into our future.
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There is no doubt in my mind. Kevin Sorbo.
Not so, tracer: assuming the ship could survive the crushing tidal forces and the intense gamma radiation near the singularity, it would still have no easy exit from the hole. There is such a thing as an Einstein-Rosen bridge that would theoretically connect two holes, but for a non-rotating black hole (called a Schwarzchild hole) this structure is extremely unstable and flickers in and out of existance like a camera shutter.
Now, if the hole were rotating, it would have a more stable bridge called a Kerr tunnel. Unfortunately, they’re only stable by themselves: they’re highly sensitive to outside perturbations, and the presence of a ship entering one would cause it to immediately colapse.
Also, as I pointed in this thread, any theoreticaly white holes would have dissapeared long ago. Even if a ship were to successfully navigate a tunnel, it would only lead to another hole. The grim truth is that once you’re in, there’s no way out. (Unless you’re Voyager, in which case there’s a “crack” in the event horizon to let you through)
Are you people sure that Sorbo & Co. actually entered the hole? It’s quite possible for them to stay just outside the event horizon if they orbit the hole fast enough. To an outside observer it would look like they were frozen in time, but for them the clock would still tick at its normal speed.