NASA's Spooky Sounds from Space

            In honor of Halloween, NASA decided to release a playlist of creepy sounds collected from across the solar system. The playlist is embedded below.

            There’s no atmosphere or other way of carrying sound waves in outer space, but the instruments aboard NASA’s various spacecraft can capture radio emissions. Those radio emissions are then sent back to Earth and converted into sound waves. The playlist includes the “roar” of Jupiter from the Juno spacecraft as it entered the planet’s magnetosphere. The sound captured reflected the collision of stellar wind and Jupiter’s magnetosphere.

            The playlist consists of sounds collected from Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede. In 1996, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft collected radio signals from the moon as it made its first ever flyby. There are also sounds captured by the recently departed Cassini spacecraft from its many missions to Saturn. These include sounds from a giant thunderstorm during one of Cassini’s close dives into the planet’s rings. The playlist also features interstellar sounds collected by the Voyager spacecraft and up-close and personal visit with the comet Tempel 1 by the Stardust spacecraft in 2011.

            This playlist is probably the scariest thing you’ll encounter this Halloween.

Star Wars Film Rankings: Part Two

Last week, we started our look back at the films in the Star Wars universe as ranked by scores on Rotten Tomatoes. We looked at the four highest ranking films. So this week we’ll take a look at the four lowest ranking.

Star Wars Film Rankings
Film	Rotten Tomatoes Score
Empire Strikes Back (Episode 5)	94%
A New Hope (Episode 4)	93%
Force Awakens (Episode 7)	89%
Rogue One	85%
Return of the Jedi (Episode 6)	80%
Revenge of the Sith (Episode 3)	79%
Attack of the Clones (Episode 2)	65%
Phantom Menace	55%

Return of the Jedi: When we get down to the bottom is where I really start disagreeing with these Rotten Tomatoes scores. Jedi loses some points, in my mind, for the middle portion of the movie, which is slowly paced and spends way too much time on the Ewoks. The opening and closing acts (freeing Han from Jabba’s palace and the Battle of Endor), however, are quintessential Star Wars. At the beginning, we see Luke putting his Jedi skills into action. (The film also suffers from sexually objectifying Carrie Fisher in her slave outfit.) The end effectively balances the space battle above Endor, the fighting on the surface, and Luke’s confrontation with Vader and the emperor. It is a fitting emotional end to Luke’s journey and his father’s redemption. While it may not be perfect, it’s still belongs ahead of either Force Awakens or Rogue One.

Revenge of the Sith: Revenge of the Sith may be the best of the prequels, but that’s like saying Sbarro is the best airport pizza option. In the end, it still sucks. The film’s opening space battle is enjoyable enough, but it still suffers from plodding dialogue and incredibly poor pacing. The sequel trilogy reduced Natalie Portman’s Padme from gun wielding intergalactic badass to weeping pregnant woman in three short movies. Her delivery of the line, “Anakin, you’re breaking my heart” is painful to listen to—even today. The film’s emotion comes solely from Ewan McGregor’s ability to convey betrayal. There’s no way this movie comes anywhere near Jedi.

Attack of the Clones: I’d personally rank Clones below Phantom Menace. Clones drags on interminably (sensing a theme? George Lucas has pacing problems in his movies). The middle sections where Padme and Anakin escape back to her home planet are some of the worst written romance sequences ever put to film. Throw in a murderous side trip to Anakin’s home planet where he rescues his mom and murders an entire village of sand-people and you’ve got a disaster on your hands. Then there’s the inclusion of Jango Fett—because Boba Fett, the galaxy’s lamest bounty hunter, needed a tragic backstory?—who promptly gets his ass handed to him by a bunch of Jedi. The film’s battle scenes are simply a collection of CGI mumbo-jumbo as one giant CGI army fights another one.

Phantom Menace: This isn’t an argument that Phantom Menace is a good movie, just that it’s better than Attack of the Clones.  Phantom Menace has a fun podracing scene—ripped off from Ben-Hur, but still fun. There’s also Liam Neeson doing his best with some truly clunky George Lucas dialogue (also another Lucas weakness). Yes, Jar-Jar Binks is terrible and a racist stereotype (one of several in the film). And if you watch the film in the Machete Order (4, 5, 2, 3, 6) you can skip Phantom Menace entirely and not miss a beat. But I’d still put the film’s climatic duel with Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, and Darth Maul up above anything in Attack of the Clones.  

Star Wars Film Rankings: Part One

            We’ve spent a lot of time the past few weeks talking about Star Trek Discovery and revisiting the universe of Star Trek. So we figured it was time to shift to the other big sci-fi universe with star in the title. A few years ago, we looked that the Star Trek movies as ranked by Rotten Tomatoes score. We’ve listed the films below from highest to lowest score. This week we’ll look at the top four films and then next week tackle the bottom four.

Star Wars Film Rankings
Film	Rotten Tomatoes Score
Empire Strikes Back (Episode 5)	94%
A New Hope (Episode 4)	93%
Force Awakens (Episode 7)	89%
Rogue One	85%
Return of the Jedi (Episode 6)	80%
Revenge of the Sith (Episode 3)	79%
Attack of the Clones (Episode 2)	65%
Phantom Menace (Episode 1)	55%

The Empire Strikes Back: Embracing a darker tone, Empire pushes deeper into the emotional core of its characters. There’s more Han-Leia banter as the two grow to realize that they can’t stand one another but also love each other. Luke starts training to be a Jedi and risks turning to the dark side to save his imperiled friends. Darth Vader is back and more determined than ever to crush the rebellion. The Battle of Hoth rivals the destruction of both Death Stars for its scale and staging. Then there’s the famous, “No, I am your father” scene. And Han’s “I know” response to Leia’s declaration of love as he’s about to be frozen in carbonite. Sci-fi doesn’t get much better than this.

A New Hope: All these years later, A New Hope remains an enjoyable viewing experience with Luke Skywalker’s heroes’ journey from farm boy to galactic savior. Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher shine as Han and Leia. Alec Guinness lends his considerable gravitas to his role of Obi-Wan giving the film an air of seriousness and depth. As was shown in the prequel trilogy, George Lucas’s clumsy dialogue sounds a lot worse in the hands of lesser talented actors. The climactic attack on the Death Star remains one of Lucas’s best directed set pieces of the entire series. There are a lot worse ways to spent two hours than revisiting this classic movie.

Force Awakens: The Force Awakens benefits from strong casting and character work as well as being competently entertaining following the under-baked prequel trilogy. Tasked with introducing a new cast to go alongside the old veterans, director J.J Abrams more or less made a carbon copy of a A New Hope, which isn’t the worst thing in the world, but limits the film’s upside. The plot of the last hour or so takes a backseat to character work as there’s another bigger, badder Death Star but without any of the tension or stakes that came from blowing up the first two Death Stars. Abrams, however, moved the franchise in a positive direction by creating likeable and relatable main characters like Rey, Finn, and Poe.

Rogue One: Director Gareth Edwards has an impressive grasp of scale. He frames a Star Destroyer in the foreground with the installation of the Death Star’s super-weapon in the background. Rebel fighters crash into the front of a Star Destroyer exiting hyperspace. The film’s climatic hour succeeds where Force Awakens failed, by creating clear stakes for each part of the battle to retrieve the Death Star plans. Unfortunately, the film’s first half suffers from underdeveloped characters and a grueling slog from anonymous planet to anonymous planet that reeks of reshoots and a desire to make a film where everyone dies at the end into a family friendly adventure.

Star Trek Series Rankings

            The premiere of Star Trek: Discovery last month marked the return of Star Trek to television for the first time since 2005. There had been long gaps between Star Trek shows before, most notably an eighteen-year gap between the Original Series and Next Generation. Including Discovery, there have now been six Star Trek TV series of varying quality. Star Trek fans, a particularly vociferous group, have their own favorite captains, crew members, aliens, and villains. A few years ago, we ranked all the Star Trek movies from best to worst. So in honor of the premiere of Discovery (which will not be included, since it’s only aired 4 episodes), we figured it was about time to rank the TV shows themselves.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—Being set on a space station meant that the show’s writers had to develop plot from character interactions rather than weekly visits to new planets. As a result, DS9 featured the best sustained character work from a Star Trek series. Sisko, Kira, Dax, Odo, Quark, Jake, O’Brien and Bashir all underwent significant character growth throughout the show’s seven seasons. Kira transformed from unrepentant terrorist to loyal soldier and leader. Bashir went from rookie doctor to war-weary veteran. Poor Chief O’Brien had to suffer some life-altering tragedy at least once a season. DS9 also developed a strong stable of villains or recurring characters like Garak, the exiled Cardassian spy, Gul Dukat, Kai Winn, the Jem’Hadar, Weyoun, and the Dominion.

Star Trek: The Next Generation—The show that launched a million Picard memes. After some brutally terrible episodes at the beginning of Next Generation’s run, the show offered a positive vision of humanity’s future. Crewmembers on the Enterprise accepted one another’s cultures, sought peace and cooperation, and generally lived together in harmony.  Captain Picard was more lawyer than soldier, seeking to peacefully resolve disputes rather than resort to violence. Commander Data, the android, sought to become more human. Worf, the security officer, was the last honorable Klingon in the galaxy. The female characters, however, were underdeveloped. Counsellor Troi loved chocolate and frequently lost her empathic powers. Dr. Crusher had a know-it-all son and an episode where she had sex with a ghost. The less said about the short-lived Tasha Yar and the rape planet the better.

Star Trek: The Original Series—The Original Series may be ranked too low, but I couldn’t find a reason to push it higher. The show’s campy elements occasionally overwhelmed creator Gene Roddenberry’s view of a utopian future. The show featured strong character work and sci-fi plotting. Allegories abounded about racism, the Cold War, and contemporary American politics. The episode titled “City on the Edge of Forever” featured Kirk back in the 1930s allowing a young woman (whom he loved) to die rather than change the course of Earth’s history. TOS also established the relationship between Captain Kirk, the logical Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy that would anchor the series and six follow-up movies. The show is, and remains, a classic.

Star Trek: Voyager—Voyager began with a great premise: A Federation starship, stranded over seventy years from home, all alone in the Delta quadrant. Without the support of Starfleet how would they survive? The ship had a strong willed female captain and a racially and ethnically diverse crew. Yet the show squandered it all, never developing its characters beyond single, easily identifiable traits. There’s Chakotay, he’s Native American. We know that because he goes on vision quests. There’s Harry Kim, the navigator, he’s young. There’s Seven of Nine, she used to be a Borg and wears cat-suits to appeal to young male viewers. Then there were the same recycled plots about the holodeck malfunctioning, encountering God-like aliens, and a seemingly endless supply of shuttlecraft even though the show seemingly destroyed them every other episode.  

Star Trek: Enterprise—Undoubtedly the weakest of all the series, Enterprise was a prequel to the Original Series trying to tell the story of the founding of Starfleet and the Federation. Instead, the show recycled too many old plots from the previous series without offering anything new or interesting. The characters (always the most important part of a series) were even blander and more inoffensive than the crew of Voyager. The over-sexualization of female characters continued with Vulcan science officer T’Pol continually subjected to Seven of Nine-esque costuming. This was a show that refought World War 2 (again) with space Nazis, had numerous poorly handled 9-11 allegories, and a series finale that focused on Commander Riker from Next Generation rather than any of its own characters.