After 43 Years, Star Trek Episode "Patterns of Force" to Air in Germany

"Don't mention the war," was the warning from Fawlty Towers. It appears that Star Trek didn't get the message, and it paid for it for more than four decades.

German public broadcaster ZDFneo is going to air the original Star Trek episode "Patterns of Force" for the very first time, nearly 43 years after it aired in the United States, according to a report on The Local, an English-language German news website. Though the episode did air on German pay TV in the mid-1990s, this is the first time it'll air on public TV.

The episode, written by John Meredyth Lucas, is an extremely unsubtle homage to World War II and a certain rotten little German regime run by Nazi fanatics. Whatever art might have been in the episode is probably drained away by the heavy-handed bluntness; as The Local notes, it involves a war between two planets, one of them named Zeon, whose partisans are called "Zeonist pigs."

Okay, so not all science fiction is finely honed cultural critique. Sometimes the critique is slathered on with a ping-pong paddle.

Nonetheless, the German broadcaster apparently decided that the Huns – oops, one war too far back – could stand a little thinly veiled attack on a German government that was soundly blasted into smithereens 66 years ago.

One wonders what they would think about Starship Troopers ...

Northside San Francisco: Reviewing Henning Mankell's Latest

My book review also appeared in the latest issue of Northside San Francisco.

BOOK REVIEW
The Last of Kurt Wallander
The Troubled Man, by Henning Mankell
By John Zipperer 

For a country that is rich and at peace, Sweden sure does have a bad case of Scandinavian gloom. When Britain produces world-famous popular literature, it is from people like J.K. Rowling and Terry Pratchett who write about worlds of fantasy, wonder and hope. But nearby Sweden’s contribution to the global best-seller market is the edgy mystery thriller, with isolated heroes and heroines solving brutal crimes against the backdrop of social and political decay.
Read the entire article

Northside San Francisco: Oh, Give Me a Home

My latest column from Northside San Francisco magazine:

COMMON KNOWLEDGE COLUMN
Oh, Give Me a Home
By John Zipperer 

In the midst of a tough fight for the GOP nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney recently decided to tear down and replace his 3,009-square-foot beachside home in La Jolla, Calif., with an 11,062-square-foot property. It might be less of an attempt to tell the American people “I’m one of you” and more to let them know “I might hire you to paint my garage.” This led Vanity Fair to run a list of things that would fit inside Romney’s new house, including “the Diane Von Furstenburg flagship store in New York’s meatpacking district” or “the world’s largest whale.”
Read the entire article

Bank of America Home Loans president Barbara Desoer says the recovery is slow but real. Photo by Ed Ritger.

Question for Obi Wan

So, wait: There were only a million people on the entire planet of Alderaan, or only a million of them bothered to cry out?

Pro Bowl Packer (and Former Neighbor) Gale Gillingham, RIP

I was sorry to see the news today of the passing of former Green Bay Packers player Gale Gillingham. It's a name that many of you – even recent Packers fans – might not remember, but I've always known it; during the NFL season back in the early 1970s, his family lived in the same apartment complex as we did on Green Bay's west side. We played with his kids, and I remember that his family was very nice. My condolences to the Gillinghams.

In the Spirit

Here's a photo of the Halloween season checkout counter at Fog City News in downtown San Francisco. Okay, the copy of Cricket doesn't help anything, but Fangoria sets the tone.

Bet You Didn't Know This Much about Battlestar Galactica

... before I told you:

Open publication - Free publishing - More comics

Bad Lip Reading's Latest

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann as you've never seen her before, or perhaps like you've always seen her:

Steve Jobs, RIP

The Apple website homepage says it all:

Farewell to a business and technology genius.

They'll Be Burning This Issue of Monocle All Across Silicon Valley

What?!? Old media isn't a waste of time? It can still be profitable? The all-new-media-all-the-time crowd is going to fall off their skateboards when they see this issue of Monocle – assuming they see this issue of Monocle. The cover story announces "Newspapers booming, book sales up, record shops opening: Monocle charts the media trend that's e-free, profitable, and going global," and "confirmation that old-school media models are fit and healthy, and how the American media stuffed itself."

Well, the American media stuffed itself by listening to a bunch of trend-following lemmings who didn't take the time to figure out why people actually read magazines, consume long-form journalism, pay for content, expect quality.

It is appropriate that this story is appearing in Monocle, a magazine (and company) that truly thinks differently and has been successful by stressing quality and content.