From Whence They Came
'Cause the original isn't always the best.
      by Rachel Hyland

Star Trek: Voyager

The crew of Voyager in happier, Seven-less days.

History: Star Trek: Voyager (TV)

When Zephram Cochrane invented warp travel in the year... no, okay, that's probably a little too historical. Um... Captain James T. Kirk and the USS Enterprise stole a cloaking device from the Romulans... no, still too far back. The Enterprise D encountered the Borg... Captain Sisko did battle with the Maquis... there is too much Federation history to get through here. I will compress. The starship Voyager and the renegade ship it was pursuing were taken through a portal to the other side of the galaxy, and have been attempting to get home for six interminable years. There, that wasn't so hard. Anyway, on the ship are a merry bunch of castaways -- many of them extremely annoying -- whose travails and tribulations have made for many, many hours of mediocre viewing in years past. Now in its last season, Voyager has become a by-word for the decline and fall of a once great civilization... the historians of the future will consider our decadent culture to have been "voyagered" when we are eventually over-run by the plentiful artificially-intelligent robots over whom we have lost all control. That Garret Wang is still a cutie, though.

The Present: Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force (Video Game)

Hey! It's Engineering!

Wow, what a game. As either Alex or Alexandra Munro, you are a member or Security Chief Tuvok's Hazard Team, an elite force (hence the name) designed to function at the highest level of violence and cunning in the unlikely contingency that something ship-threatening happens to Voyager that Seven of Nine and young Naomi Wildman can't fix before the second ad break. The graphics are incredibly realistic, the action intense -- it's the holodeck you have when holodecks haven't been invented yet. And the best part? When you save the ship, you actually get thanked once in a while.

The Best? Trek fan or not, gamer or not, Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force is such a very exciting, absorbing and inveigling experience that you can't help but be gripped. Just wondering what is going to come next, what new twist to the plot, what frustrating development that you have no control over, lends breathless anticipation to every moment. The last time I wondered what was going to happen next in Voyager was when Neelix got injured and I allowed myself to fantasize about the possibility that he was going to be Doyled.

Video games. They're still weird. Find out why here!

X-Men

Superhero-y.

History: The Uncanny X-Men (Comic)

In a time when humans are evolving to the next step, when there are those among us who possess powers incredible and strange and frightening, there comes a man who seeks to harness those powers for good -- and, of course, his opposite number, the guy who is all about using the same powers for destruction. See, mutant abilities don't kill people, other mutant abilities kill people. Thousands of comics later, in all manner of time-streams, alternate realities and re-written histories, the X-Men (the Autobots of the mutant world) are still keeping the planet safe for non-mutants by battling the forces of darkness represented by Magneto, Mystique, Pyro and many other baddies who don't really have an all-purpose nifty little name. They should get their own letter... like, I dunno. Q? No, taken by both Trek and Bond. Z? No, Lord Zed from the Power Rangers wouldn't like it. E? Hmm, E for Evil could work, despite the GvsE connotations. Yes, E-Men, E-Force, E-Factor, E-Babies... oh, wait. Bad idea.

Read the 11th Hour review of Counter-X: Revolution here!

The Present: X-Men (Movie)

Hugh Jackman-y.

Well, not only was it a blockbuster of mythic proportions, but it is the best movie to be made out of a comic book in the history of such things... and that includes previous title-holder, Tim Burton's Batman. It's funny, scary, suspenseful, well-plotted and dramatic, with a sense of the long legacy of the story it is telling without getting weighed down in the details of who begat whom and why, when and how. Also, come on. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, James Marsden as Cyclops, and the ever-listenable Patrick Stewart as Professor X... it was a hell of a wonderful thing.

Read the 11th Hour reviews of here, and also here!

The Best? Love the comic books. Buy the comic books (well, as many of the comic books as is practical, what with there being a zillion current X-titles, and counting.) But the movie... as a veteran of eleven cinema showings, and having never once felt cheated of my thirteen bucks, it's pretty obvious to me that the film has something that the comics -- the many, many comics -- do not. And no, I don't mean the hot men factor ('cause I've always had a bit of a thing for Gambit, and there was no Gambit, darn it all.) I mean the purpose, the meaning, that a decade-spanning comic book series with dozens of creative driving forces and artists, writers, editors, letterers and the like can never hope to achieve. The cohesiveness of the film delivered an exhilarating roller-coaster ride that the books can never capture... hey, they're great, and still on the shopping list, but they have been well and truly beaten at their own game. Plus, Chris Claremont didn't write the movie -- and Joss kind of did -- so, folks, I think we have a winner.

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