Which is why I’m now wondering if including an actual bowling alley on the Star Trek Enterprise was intended as kind of a joke.
He doesn’t like the “No 7-10 pickup” scenario.
Cite? :dubious:
If its popularity has declined somewhat, I’d wager it’s for the same reason as with other out-of-home activities: TV and video games.
Remember Joe in*** Destination: Moon***? He got to come along after one of the prime crew got sick. This was necessary because the movie needed someone to explain everything to so the audience would understand what was going on.
“Here on the Moon, night is two weeks long!” :eek:
Seriously? You need a cite to prove that bowling is much less popular than it was fifty years ago?
By the way, the decline is mostly attributed to the fact that many fewer people are in bowling leagues than in decades past.
Bowling has dropped in popularity? Nobody said anything about it last night at the drive-in!
Anyone see professional bowling in TV schedules lately?
That’s because you were the only one at the drive in! Didn’t you notice the lack of cars? And lack of a movie?
Does Scotty have a dedicated engineer on his staff that just services the pin setters? Those things are maintenance hogs.
Yes, I think the experience of WWII really shaped a lot of early TV and movie SF. You serve on a destroyer in the Coral Sea with guys who a few months ago were a farmboy from Kansas and a hoodlum from Brooklyn and a preacher from Alabama and a shop clerk from Cincinnati, and the idea of normal blue collar guys ending up on Mars seems a lot more plausible. They looked at the radical changes that happened between the 30s and the 50s, and then tried to imagine the crazy future world of the 1990s. And it looked a lot like 1950, only in space.
VR Bowling?
Take a look at this shot from the episode Charlie X. See the two guys in the back, battling with giant Q-Tips? Compared to that, bowling IS three-dimensional chess.
You mean the pugil sticks?
Why, that was Ambo-jitsu - the Ultimate Evolution in the martial arts.
Well, at that stage it was just the penultimate evolution - they weren’t playing blindfolded yet.
Yes, I would prefer not to rely on anecdotal evidence, thank you.
**
EDIT:** According to the article, “Despite a drop in league numbers in recent years, bowling remains the No. 1 participatory sport in America – with 50 million people bowling at least once per year in a $10 billion industry.” Sounds like it’s not doing all that bad.
Once per year is a lot different than the weekly bowling leagues that used to be common.
I should point out that this element was an early TNG-era whim of Gene’s; enlisted personnel were seen in the franchise both early on (the various TOS Yeomen), and afterwards (Chief O’Brien, for one).
This was basically my point; that in 1966, it seemed reasonable that on a starship several centuries in the future, people would still be bowling. But today, not so much. (What was the last show that showed people bowling?) Perhaps today, we might expect that starship residents would be playing the 23th century version of paintball.
I don’t know why you’d need a bowling alley when you’ve got holodecks, but that’s hardly the oddest thing supposedly on the D. Apparently, according to some materials and references, they also have tanks with live dolphins on board. Not just for transporting somewhere as a one time thing, just part of the ship.
From that link
Badger Open
(First Aired: Oct. 5, 2016)
From Thunderbowl Lanes in Allen Park, Mich.
Wed 10/59:00pm-11:00pmCBS SPORTS
Thu 10/61:00am-3:00amCBS SPORTS
Fri 10/712:30am-2:30amCBS SPORTS
Sun 10/96:00am-8:00amCBS SPORTS
Wed 10/127:00pm-9:00pmCBS SPORTS
Detroit Open
(First Aired: Oct. 12, 2016)
From Thunderbowl Lanes in Allen Park, Mich.
Wed 10/129:00pm-11:00pmCBS SPORTS
Thu 10/131:00am-3:00am
edit: oh, i thought that was one post, somehow missed the quote box.