While waiting for Sean to bring over his copy next week – I’m gonna try to score one this weekend, though! – I did a little bit of pre-rewatch IMDB recon and discovered a few interesting tidbits:
- Wil Wheaton is in TLS.
According to IMDB, Wil originally had a speaking part, but it ended up on the cutting room floor. Apparently he does still appear in some of the trailer park scenes, so I’m going to keep an eye out for him. (IMDB says he’s wearing a football jersey.)
I’m a huge Wil Wheaton fan. For any of you who haven’t kept up with the post-Wesley Wil, I’ll say something a friend once said to me when he discovered that I hadn’t read A Stranger In A Strange Land: I envy you. Why? Because there’s a special feeling when you discover something really, really cool, and though you’ll enjoy it from then on, there’s only one first time experience.
I came to his blog first via a link from Margaret Cho’s oft-entertaining blog, and immediately started plowing through his archives. His blog was originally at wilwheaton.net – known to readers as WWdN – but after some technical difficulties a while back he moved to a hosted Typepad setup, which he dubbed Wil Wheaton Dot Net: In Exile. It seems the freedom from maintaining the site technically opened his creativity floodgates even more, and the content on the new site remains a great read.
Another recommendation for WWdN: IX, on a personal level: When I first found Wil’s site, I was working very hard at a job that I really didn’t enjoy much. It provided well for me and my family, but I received little satisfaction from it – mainly because I (erroneously) assumed that I had to push down my creative urges in order to “work.” As you’ll notice when you read WWdN, Wil talks quite a bit about his own struggle with harnessing, releasing, and living off of his own creativity, and his writing really inspired me.
I credit Wil and his blogging for inspiring me to tap my own creative side both for fun and for profit. I started a blog (unrelated to GWC) and began writing, which led me to opportunities to write for major magazines. Now I make a good portion of my living as a freelance writer, and I’m happier than I have been ever before.
In a way, Wil is also responsible for GWC. I’ve always loved the concept of the collaborative creative. The best creative projects require the love and dedication of many people, and almost nothing is more fun to me that participating in that process. For years I got that experience from playing in bands, but that’s a tough life, and I (incorrectly) assumed that I didn’t have a place for that kind of thing in my life anymore. Reading WWdN opened my mind again, and participating in GWC was one of the results.
Anyway, if you haven’t already, jump over to http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/ right now and be prepared to spend a bit of time there. I recommend the RSS feed so you miss nothing.
(Note: I’ve always thought it would be a lot of fun to have Wil on as a GWC podcast guest. I think many GWCers who haven’t been exposed to him outside of Trek would really get a lot out of it. We’ve contacted him, but I’d guess he gets hundreds of such requests and can’t fulfill them all. Thankfully he’s made a few awesome podcasts of his own, which you can check out on his site.)
- There’s a TLS videogame for the Atari 5200.
The Atari 5200 was, for me as a kit, the ultimate gaming system. I drooled over it in the stores, and wanted one so bad I could even envision where I’d put it in my room. But alas, it was never to be.
Obviously, at the time of TLS’ release it was totally impossible to create a game with any kind of 3D effects, so IMDB trivia says Atari instead created a sort of Star-Trek-Text-game-like title which never saw the light of day. IMDB mentions that a 2600 game called Solaris was the public result of the development, so maybe I’ll see if I can get my hands on it.
- The movie’s (for the time, incredible) effects were created on a Cray X-MP.
Why does this matter to me? I heard about a company out in San Francisco last year that was selling X-MPs as scrap. A post made its way around the blogosphere about a guy who bought one and turned it into a chair for his daughter’s room. That strikes me as just about the coolest thing ever, and if I could figure out how to get out there, get one, and haul it back to Texas, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Sorry for the rambling, but it’s Saturday after all. I hope to see you back here during the week for the rewatch.
