It was o-pun mike night at Callahan’s.
I remember back in the phone message machine days a character would come in and the camera would pan over to the machine sitting on a desk with a big, blinking, red light the size of your thumb sticking out the top of it. I pictured prop masters buying and modifying machines by the dozen.
I always took it to mean he was a warrant officer, higher in rank than any enlisted but lower than a butter bar. In the army they are informally addressed as “chief” but in the navy not so much, presumably so they aren’t confused with CPOs.
Warrant officers in the Army holding the rank of warrant officer 1 (WO1) are formally addressed as “Mr/Ms” [last name]. Upon promotion to chief warrant officer 2, “Chief” becomes an additional authorized term of address. WO1s are informally addressed as “Chief” by many soldiers as well. In the Navy, warrant officers are typically addressed as “Mr/Ms” [last name], “Chief Warrant Officer”, or informally as “Warrant” regardless of their grade.
See I always assumed that Obrien was more like a Master Chief Petty Officer in that he was a senior NCO who “worked for a living”, not like one of these fancy upper deck academic nerds. While they’re all up there trying to “Prime Directive” Starfleet’s latest encounter with some “new life and new civilization”, O’Brien is busy keeping the phaser banks charged and preventing the warp core from blasting through the saucer section.
Lt Robert Tomlinson, late of the Enterprise (Balance of Terror) Starfleet Academy grad
That’s LaForge’s job. Lt/Lt Cmdr. Starfleet academy.
He has nearly a 100% record in accomplishing that.
What did Obrian do? I know he was on DS9, but didn’t he work on the Enterprise (AKA the “Nerd Bird”*) first?
- Ok, I don’t know if that is canon.
Yes, he was, and yes, it is.
I’m not sure if you understood the question.
Is the phrase “Nerd Bird” canon? If you did understand, and are claiming it is canon, do you have a cite? I’ve never heard it before.
Sorry, I did misunderstand. I thought the question was about O’Brien being on the Enterprise. My mistake.
No, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen/heard the phrase “Nerd Bird.” I assume it was coined by fandom?
Some problems with the Alien films. Warning: spoilers
Here’s my timeline of the alien story following Tiers 1-3 mentioned here:
DEFINING CANON IN AN ALIEN WORLD | roguereviewer.
but with discrepancies resolved. Also, not all works are mentioned because several don’t create discrepancies (I think):
The prequels take place.
New media explain how Weyland-Yutani (W-Y) fails to receive or loses all information about the aliens encountered in the prequels. All they know is that there are aliens and ships. They also set up a bio-weapons division and special orders to monetize any finds. Works like David’s drawings are discovered only much later.
They detect a signal from LV-426 and think it might be one of the alien craft. When the Nostromo is docked, they have the science officer replaced with Ash and prepare to have the ship investigate the signal.
When Nostromo is closest to LV-426, Mother detects the signal, wakes up the crew, re-routes the ship based on company instructions (and thus overriding any orders from Dallas, the Nostromo captain), and has the signal decoded partially what little info the company got from the events in the prequels. It’s not a distress signal but a warning.
The first movie takes place.
Create new media explaining how W-Y fails to receive or loses all information from Mother, including the coordinates that give the location of the signal.
In the Isolation game, one ship recovers the Nostromo flight recorder and visits the derelict ship. They deactivate the beacon, The rest of the game follows.
Create new media explaining how W-Y loses all information about what happened in the game such that they have to wait to get the coordinates from Ripley’s lifeboat flight recorder.
Ripley is rescued by a ship working with others and doing mining on a rock, where they encounter aliens as well. Ripley’s memory of the encounter is wiped off, and she is left in cryo-sleep and drifting in space once more.
Create new media explaining how W-Y fails to receive or loses all information about what happened to Ripley in that adventure.
Media explaining what happened to the colony and the second movie takes place. Create new media explaining how W-Y removes the coordinates from the flight recorder to explain why the board does not want to heed Ripley’s request and investigate the Nostromo landing site.
Create new media explaining why W-Y sent only one squad of Marines and a warship with no captain and crew. It can point out that the company believed that only two aliens were involved, which is why it sent only one squad. Also, W-Y and certain military officials were colluding and working covertly against the ICC and ECA, which is why it sent a ship that was about to be decommissioned on automatic pilot, and a Marine squad that was supposed to be demobilized.
The rest of the second movie follows.
Create new media showing how the colony is destroyed but the derelict ship is not damaged. Various ships revisit it following the W-Y Report and ACM Manual, but those and the derelict ship are destroyed by volcanic activity caused by the explosion from the colony. This explains why, without anything from the derelict ship, W-Y needs to get the alien and embryo from the prison.
The third movie follows.
The submarine I served aboard had a painting of a naked Ann-Margaret in the wardroom. I believe that it was two-sided so when we were in port they could bring a guest aboard, who would only see a portrait of the USS Nautilus.
Skynet will bring that tech to fruition. No need to worry your (puny) little human head over the problem.
I mean our little heads. Our. nod, nod
Plus, they’re only a dollar (the drinks).
50 cents if you don’t want to break the glass.
And Pyotr will drive you home when you get sideways.
It was coined by me based on my fan theory that the USS Enterprise is where the nerdiest members of Starfleet get assigned because the rest of the fleet finds them insufferable. While the Enterprise crew is the sort of overachieving dorks who gets all jazzed up about “going where no one has gone before” and “meeting new life and new civilizations” and whatnot, the rest of Starfleet view their jobs in a more traditional military POV of long stretches of tedious routine patrolling the Neutral Zone, ferrying diplomats about, and taking gas samples of nebulae, punctuated by sheer terror of being vaporized or assimilated by some alien species.
“Nerd Bird” was also a nickname for a direct flight between Silicon Valley and Austin when those two cities were huge IT places. At least according to my mom who worked for American Airlines till 1998.
It was rumored that 90% of the passengers had laptops
I had heard that term as well, but for flights between Silicon Valley and Boston in the mid 90s.
I can confirm that. I didn’t take it that often, since my companies didn’t have offices in Austin, but when I did I almost always knew someone who was also on the flight.
Never heard it applied to Boston, but I moved to the Valley in 1996 when Boston was mostly over as a center, with vestigial companies still there.