Nova Olympic

In addition to writing snarky essays about Disney World, I have also been known to write Star Trek stories. I haven’t written very many, because good stories are actually really hard to write. It is much, much easier to write a sarcastic essay making fun of a badly-written piece of fiction than it is to write a good one.

But every once in a great while, I have a good idea. Or at least an idea I think is good enough to spend time on. A few years noted publisher of Star Trek fan fiction Orion Press ran a contest in which writers were invited to submit a short story that took place entirely on the bridge of the Enterprise. In my brain, something clicked. I’d recently re-watched my favorite Battlestar Galactica episode, “33”, and I wanted to do a Star Trek story where Captain Kirk was forced to make an impossible decision similar to the one President Roslin and Commander Adama have to make.

At the same time, I’ve always had a special affection for the first few episodes of the original series. Star Trek had a different flavor then: space was a big and lonely place, William Shatner played Kirk in a much more subdued manner, and the Enterprise seemed busier (more extras in the corridors) and more complex to operate. For example, although the ship’s phaser banks were aimed from the bridge, the command to fire actually had to be relayed down to the phaser control rooms.

In an extremely rare occurrence, the complete story popped into my head almost fully-formed. It didn’t win the contest, but I’ve gotten some positive feedback on it nonetheless.

So, if you’re still here you’ll find my short story “Nova Olympic” after the jump. It’s got drama, action, and even a few EPCOT Center references. Enjoy!

Star Trek Into Darkness Teaser Reaction

I love the Internet on days like this. You see, I knew that there was going to be nine minutes of footage from the new Star Trek film shown before the IMAX release of The Hobbit, and I hoped that we’d also see some kind of trailer released to the web around the same time. I certainly didn’t expect to see anything before then. But when I woke up this morning, the Internet was waiting for me with not only a Star Trek Into Darkness teaser, but also HD screencaps and a shot-by-shot breakdown of said teaser!

In case you haven’t seen the teaser, here it is (I’ve linked to the slightly longer, Japanese-subtitled version). Don’t worry about spoilers; it does a pretty good job showing you stuff without really giving away anything, not even the name of the villain:

If there’s one thing the trailer makes clear, it’s that the film’s villain, whoever he is, is mad about something, he believes the heroes are responsible in some way, and he’s out to get revenge by attacking Earth. Sound familiar? It should, because it’s the same plot device we’ve seen in the last two Star Trek films, and here’s where I worry a little bit.

Although 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis and 2009’s Star Trek were very different movies (i.e. one was a tired, derivative attempt to cash in on the Next Generation franchise one last time, and the other was a fresh, exciting, and genuinely entertaining romp) they each featured a revenge-driven villain who was determined to destroy Earth for reasons that didn’t really make sense. In each film, as the villain announced his Earth-destroying intentions you could almost hear the screenwriters saying to themselves “we’ve got to threaten Earth or the audience won’t be invested”. Now, this is not necessarily a problem if the movie is genuinely entertaining, but it can hurt the film in repeat viewings.

A key reason why The Wrath of Khan is still so highly-regarded three decades after its release is because it makes sense. Khan’s actions are what drive the plot, and because those actions make sense the movie has a high rewatchability value. I’m not saying that’s the only reason why Star Trek II is so good, because it’s not, but if Khan was just your regular poorly-written action movie bad guy whose motivations weren’t believable, that fact would become more and more obvious with each viewing of the film, and eventually it would be defined by its flaws. This happens all the time; when Independence Day came out all anyone could talk about was the action and the special effects; now it’s chiefly remembered for the nonsensical plot device of its heroes hacking into an alien spaceship with an old Macintosh PowerBook.

As of this writing, we really don’t know a lot about Star Trek Into Darkness. Hopefully there’s a well-thought-out plot behind all that action.

The Semi-Informed Test Track 2.0 Assessment

As I write this the new Test Track at EPCOT is in soft openings, and lots of fans and professional blogger types have seen it. I would love to give you a firsthand account of the newly-refurbished pavilion, but unfortunately that’s going to have to wait until the next time I make it to Disney World (which at this point looks like it’ll be no earlier than the first half of 2014)

Fortunately for people like me, there’s always the Internet, and there are quite a few videos out there that give a nice overview of the entire Test Track 2.0 experience. Here’s one of them:

Obviously a video is no substitute for being there, so what I have to offer here is really just a semi-informed opinion. I’m sure it’ll evolve after I’ve actually visited the pavilion a few times.

If you’ve ever read this blog before then you know that I’m a hardcore original EPCOT Center man. If people ask me when the best time to visit EPCOT is, I tell them 1989. I absolutely deplore how the park has been cheapened and dumbed-down over the past 18 years. In fact, a big reason why I haven’t written a lot about EPCOT lately is because I haven’t really felt like going there. It had honestly gotten to the point where the park’s offerings weren’t worth the price of admission to me.

Does the new and improved Test Track erase all my misgivings about the horrible way Orlando’s executive leadership runs the place? Not at all. But for the first time since the Spaceship Earth rehab in 2007, there’s actually something new at EPCOT that I want to see.

Now, I’ve heard folks online claim that Test Track’s redo, while certainly a step in the right direction, is not quite worthy of EPCOT Center. Some of them even complain about the use of the old World of Motion logo here and there, saying that it’s just there to mollify the fanboys and make them overlook any problems the pavilion may have. Now, those folks are certainly entitled to their opinions, but I believe that the new Test Track is pretty much exactly what a 21st century EPCOT Center pavilion would look like if the Florida property had enjoyed the benefit of competent executive leadership these past twenty years.

Believe me, no one loved the old EPCOT Center more than me. But the fact is that all the stuff I loved, the Omnimover rides, the futurism, and the hopeful and thought-provoking shows and attractions, simply does not play well with the average parkgoer. The sad truth is that we do not live in a world where most people are eager to have their thoughts provoked and their horizons expanded. We live in a world with Kardashians in it. People who go to Disney World want to go on rides that feature licensed Disney characters, thrills, or dumb humor. And then they want to stand in line to meet Mickey Mouse.

What the people responsible for Test Track 2.0 look to have done is give us something that will simultaneously appeal to the small number of EPCOT Center-loving futurists like me and the dumbed-down, Kardashian-watching thrill-seekers that comprise the majority of your average theme park audience. It’s a compromise they would have had to make even in a perfect world where the purpose of EPCOT Center was never forgotten.

Yes, there are little issues here and there. The exterior loop stands out even more as a horrible design choice now. But the cost of enclosing it would likely have pushed the refurbishment’s price tag above what GM was willing to pay, and we all know that the Disney’s executives were far too busy dumping truckloads of money down the NextGen Black Hole to pay for it themselves. And while I hope that GM’s sponsorship money will guarantee a higher standard of maintenance than we see just about everywhere else on property, most of the people I know do not seem to be optimistic about that. They envision that the pavilion will be a wasteland of dead touchscreens and broken effects in a few months. But there’s no use complaining about that unless it happens, right?

Final sum-up, at least for now: the new Test Track looks good. It’s a real EPCOT Center attraction. Or the closest thing to it that modern audiences will tolerate. And it even managed to give us that TRON aesthetic I’ve been yearning to see in Future World since I first saw TRON:Legacy.

All is not well in EPCOT yet. But it’s better than it once was.

The Lucasfilm Announcement Stream-Of-Consciousness Reaction

Tuesday afternoon. Think I’ll check Twitter, see what’s going on.

Hey, look! Somebody tweeted that Disney acquired Lucasfilm! Ha ha! What a hilarious joke! Now other people are tweeting it, too. Hmm, I sure hope they realize it’s not true, otherwise a giant false rumor could get started.

Wait, one of the tweets has a link to a press release. A Disney press release.

Holy crap, it’s true! Disney acquired Lucasfilm. That means they own Star Wars. Disney owns Star Wars.

Disney. Owns. Star Wars.

Wow.

Well, I wonder what this means. Probably nothing. There’s already a Star Wars ride in the parks, after all. And they already sell Star Wars and Indiana Jones merchandise in the parks. Probably all this means is that Disney just gets a piece of all the money Lucasfilm makes. They’re not going to do anything major, I’m sure.

Hey, somebody tweeted that there’s going to be a Star Wars Episode 7 in 2015. Okay now, that’s just stupid. There’s no way that one’s true. In fact, let me read over the press release. There’s just no way Disney’s going to make another-

Sweet Mother of Optimus Prime, they are! They’re making Episode 7! What? WHAT?!

No. No no no no no NO NO! No. Uh-uh. Nyet. No more Star Wars movies! The prequels were bad enough! The last thing we need is more wooden acting, long conversations about politics, and racially insensitive CGI comic-relief Muppets! More of THAT please!

On the other hand, maybe it could be good. I mean, if Lucas isn’t directing, and the people involved are fans of Star Wars it could work. Right?

Holy Mr. T’s Mohawk, I can’t believe this. I must be having some kind of a fever dream. Did somebody spike my Pepsi with a hallucinogen?

Disney owns Star Wars.

There’s going to be more Star Wars movies.

Holy William Shatner’s Toupee.

Holy Wesley Crusher’s Rainbow Sweater.

Look, only 50 people have made the “I guess Leia is a Disney princess now” joke. And every one of them thought it was original and funny. Sometimes I think the Internet is making it where we all think alike. This is probably how the Borg Collective got started.

More Star Wars movies, wow. This was not what I expected when I got out of bed this morning.

Star Wars. Disney. Star Wars is Disney.

Holy Richard Simmons’ Afro.

Holy Superman’s-Red-Underpants-That-He-Doesn’t-Have-Anymore-In-The-New-52-Continuity.

Wow . . . .

From The Seas to The Living Seas and Beyond

In 1981 visitors to Florida’s Magic Kingdom could stop by the EPCOT Center Preview Center on Main Street and get a preview of the new park by watching the 15-minute film “The Dream Called EPCOT”. For many people, that film was the first they ever heard of The Living Seas. Interestingly, although it described a Living Seas experience that was pretty much exactly what we got, other EPCOT promotional literature promised a much more elaborate adventure that was rooted in earlier concepts for the pavilion.

One of the earliest renderings of the Seas’ aquarium is this one:

It’s certainly a pretty picture, but it’s also a rather fanciful concept that would have been impossible to build with late-1970s technology and would likely prove daunting to 21st century engineers, as well.

A much more reasonable version of the Seas pavilion could be seen in WED’s EPCOT Center concept model from 1978:

Positioned in the Future World West plot now occupied by The Land, this version of the pavilion featured a rocky-looking exterior with a cavelike main entrance and a glass-roofed aquarium. This would seem to be an exterior view of this cutaway model seen in Richard Beard’s EPCOT Center book:

It was this version of the Seas pavilion that formed the basis for most official descriptions of the attraction contained therein. And since The Living Seas didn’t open until 1986, these descriptions hung out there for four years after EPCOT Center’s 1982 opening. In the process, they served to set a lot of incorrect expectations for what a visit to The Living Seas would be like.

Originally, The Seas was supposed to consist of three main experiences:

1. A preshow hosted by Poseidon or perhaps Neptune, which led to:
2. A dark ride in bubble-shaped Omnimovers through a number of set pieces and Animatronics depicting scenes of undersea wonder and peril, culminating in:
3. The ride vehicles cruising into the pavilion’s massive aquarium through a clear tube leading to an observation area, where visitors would disembark to observe the aquarium and perhaps view educational exhibits.

And although the location and exterior configuration of the Seas changed several times, that basic attraction layout persisted. Another draft of EPCOT Center, likely dating from 1979, shows the Seas pavilion in the Future World East plot that Horizons would eventually occupy:

In this rendering the building looks a little sleeker, and there’s now a blue dome over the aquarium.

By 1980 the Seas had been moved to its final location in Future World’s northwest corner. And it had received another facelift:

This version of the Seas pavilion had a less organic appearance, and this time the aquarium was covered with a multifaceted golden dome, much like the one that later became Wonders of Life’s defining visual feature.

Giving the aquarium a transparent or semi-transparent roof was certainly visually attractive, but I wonder how practical it would have been. For one thing, it likely would have made it more difficult to control the water temperature. That’s critical because live coral can’t handle much temperature variation. And imagine the noise when the torrential downpour from a tropical storm or Florida afternoon thunderstorm struck that roof!

Finally, the EPCOT Center concept painting from 1981 shows what many people believe to be the final version of The Living Seas pavilion:

But is it? Let’s compare this painting of the pavilion to an aerial photo:

Notice how the northeast corner of the pavilion in the painting contains an angular extension that’s missing from the pavilion as constructed? Why is that? Well, according to Martin Smith’s Living Seas Ultimate Tribute video the final Seas concept to include the immersive dark ride was, on the outside, very similar to the pavilion we ended up getting. It was just a little bigger in the back to accommodate the ride. Therefore, it’s a good bet that the Living Seas pavilion we see in the 1981 painting is that version.

Of course, by the time that construction began on The Living Seas in 1984 (the year it was originally supposed to have opened) corporate sponsor United Technologies had refused to pay for the dark ride, and a scaled-down version of the pavilion was what began to take shape behind the construction wall. Nevertheless, the Coming Soon sign on the wall featured this concept painting:

I love this picture. The bubble cars, the impossibly futuristic divers’ suits, and the Honda Civic-sized mini-sub tooling about, it’s great. But it has the same problem as the first piece of concept art we looked at: it depicts a saltwater tank that’s impossibly huge. I realize that this is more a piece of artwork than a technical diagram, but wow! The aquarium in the actual pavilion was the largest ever constructed at that time, but it’s a kiddie pool compared to this! Still, the mini-sub is extremely cool (even if it is too big for the actual aquarium at the Seas) and it’s a shame it didn’t make it to the final version of the pavilion because it definitely had merchandising opportunities, as this Seabase Alpha interior rendering shows:

 ^{“In 2012 I’m gonna sell this thing for a million bucks on eBay!”}

This next couple of concept paintings may very well date from the version of the pavilion that featured Seabase Alpha and the bubble-car dark ride. We get a glimpse of the Omnimover unload area here:

. . and a scene from the ride itself here:

^{Is it just me, or does the guy on the left look a lot like Lando Calrissian?}

These renderings belong to the family of paintings I call “Smiling People Pointing At Things”. But as I mentioned previously, despite the Concept Art People’s happy pointing corporate sponsor United Technologies decided it didn’t want to pay for this awesome ride. So the bubble cars were turned into more garden-variety Omnimovers, and the dark ride was completely scrapped. Now, the SeaCabs would just convey visitors on a short trip past some aquarium windows and into Seabase Alpha.

The attraction flow of the Seas pavilion was therefore changed. Instead of the preshow/dark ride/Seabase combination that we’d been hearing about for four years, we got a preshow/Hydrolator/SeaCab/Seabase combination.

While they didn’t make up for the loss of the dark ride, the Hydrolators were a nice touch. Aside from the interior effects that simulated movement, the Imagineers even added “overflow pools” outside the Hydrolators that bubbled up as the Hydrolators reached the “surface”, as if their upward movement was displacing the water in the submerged elevator shaft.

SeaBase Alpha was impeccably detailed:

It really felt like an undersea research station you’d see in one of the Star Trek movies from the mid-80s. In fact, if you remove just a very few of the 20th century trappings, it would have served as an ideal filming locale for an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’m told that seaQuest DSV actually did film there, but I never watched seaQuest. In fact, the only thing I remember about it was that there was a talking dolphin and that kid from the ridiculous movie that gave birth to the Chuck Norris Facts meme.

The thing that doomed the Seas, in the end, was the modularity of its experiences. I’ll explain: the pavilion only worked if you experienced everything: the preshow film, the Hydrolators, the SeaCabs, and the Seabase. Each individual experience wasn’t terribly immersive, but they all added up to an experience that was nearly as immersive as the proposed dark ride would have been. But when United Technologies failed to renew their sponsorship, the Eisner-Pressler cost-cutting machine swung into operation and walled off the Seacabs. Because of the way the ride was designed, the unload area was just a scant few yards away from the load area, so it was nothing to simply block the whole thing off and funnel everyone from the Hydrolators directly into the Seabase. You could never do something like that to Spaceship Earth; the design of the building just won’t permit it. Just like that, a key piece of The Living Seas experience was gone, and the pavilion now felt incomplete. People began to stay away, maintenance cut back, and the pavilion gained the derisive nickname “The Dead Seas”. Eventually, The Living Seas was shuttered and slated for Pixarification.

I’ve always tried to maintain a balanced view of The Seas With Nemo And His Computer-Generated Friends. After all, since its facelift the Seabase area is absolutely teeming with little kids who are genuinely excited and curious about the marine life swimming around in the tank. However, the pavilion still suffers from United Technologies’ decision not to fund the elaborate dark ride. How? Well, thanks to the pavilion’s modularity (there’s that word again!) the Seacab ride was never demolished, just walled off. So when the Seas got its Nemo refurbishment, the Imagineers took the logical route and simply built a ride around the existing (very short) ride track. The preshow theaters and Hydrolators were ripped out and replaced with . . . an elaborately themed queue. And while it’s really nice-looking, you have to work a lot harder to suspend your disbelief and convince yourself that you’re “really” going beneath the sea.

If, back in the early ‘80s, United Technologies hadn’t been so stingy, we might still have The Seas With Nemo and Friends. But it would be a much more immersive and transportative experience than what we have today because the longer dark ride would still be there.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this exhaustive, long, and rambling look at The Living Seas. If you did, then you absolutely must check out Martin Smith’s Ultimate Tribute To The Living Seas, which was where I got the majority of my information for this post. Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Progress City, USA’s (and D23’s) Michael Crawford for helping me get some of my facts straight.

Why EPCOT Center?

Well, EPCOT’s 30th anniversary celebration has come and gone. Sadly, I was not able to be there, which really killed me since the chance to be in the park with other people who appreciate it like I do probably won’t come again until the 40th anniversary in 2022. Still, thanks to Twitter I was able to keep abreast of the goings-on, and it certainly looked to be a weekend awash in EPCOT Center nostalgia.

If you’ve only ever experienced the present incarnation of the park, it can be hard to fathom why such nostalgia exists. Why do people get teary-eyed when they hear “One Little Spark” or “Tomorrow’s Child”? And what is with their insane devotion to Horizons, a ride that was torn down over a decade ago? It can be easy to draw the conclusion that we’re unable to let go of our childhoods and wish the park would remain forever frozen in the year 1989. But that’s not it at all.

EPCOT Center aimed not only to entertain, but also to inspire and educate. And it did an excellent job. For those of us who experienced the unique inspirational power of EPCOT Center as children, it profoundly affected us for the better. It left a positive imprint that’s stayed with us for the rest of our lives. And although most of us went through our snotty teenage phase where we considered things we’d enjoyed in our prepubescent years to be lame and uncool, when it was time to face the world as adults it was inevitable that we’d return to EPCOT looking for that same spark of inspiration. And boy, did we not find it.

It’s not that we expected EPCOT to never change. In fact, change was a big part of the original EPCOT Center experience. Especially in Future World, things were supposed to constantly change as the years went by and technology advanced. Of course, keeping what was essentially a giant-sized Tomorrowland on the cutting edge of technology was probably an impossible task, especially after the corporate sponsorships began to thin out. So some kind of re-focusing of Future World in a way that deemphasized technology was always inevitable. But as long as the park retained its focus on inspiration and education, I don’t think anyone would have had a problem with that.

Unfortunately, most of the changes made to EPCOT in the last eighteen years served to strip it of that inspirational quality. Also mostly gone is the experience of walking into a huge pavilion and experiencing a ride or show that transports you to another time and place. Most of the more recent EPCOT attractions seem to be designed to provide a certain minimum level of entertainment while funneling people into a gift shop, all while being cheap to operate.

So, when those of us who remember what EPCOT Center used to be say that we wish Horizons or World of Motion or Journey Into Imagination were still around, what we’re really saying is that we miss going to EPCOT to be inspired and transported to other places and times. That’s what made EPCOT Center so special. And that’s why we miss it so much.