Has to be Star Trek

What movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times?

I have watched Star Trek, the original series over fifty years. I keep coming back to it. I’ll leave it a few years and then watch then again. My favourite character is Spock, although I do like James Kirk too.

I also enjoy Star Trek Voyager and The Next Generation and try and catch them occasionally too. I guess I like the fairness and attempts at diplomacy in the series. I’ve enjoyed the films, especially ‘The voyage home’, there is a charming humour to them. Yes there are anachronisms and things that would be depicted differently now. I would like to see more recent series but as I can’t afford a streaming service, we’ll I don’t know anything about them. I would like to catch the Picard series if it ever comes on terrestrial TV.

Nostalgia

A Clarice Cliff pottery pattern that I painted as a mural in the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke on Trent. The design is called umbrellas. It’s one I would love to own.

Nostalgia is that warm feeling you get when you see or remember old or ancient images or things. I haven’t looked up the actual definition. But things like this, or even old TV shows like The original series of Star Trek, give me a warm fuzzy feeling. I know somehow I’m safe, like I have gone back in time, as a memory or a thing I learned about in the past.

I get the same thing with the James Stewart film It’s a wonderful life. I think nostalgia and being nostalgic must be good and calming for the mind. The equivalent of a mental sigh.

Well done Captain Kirk!

The drawing of Captain Kirk I did years ago. Now William Shatner, who played him in the Star Trek sci-fi series in the 1960’s, has flown up in a rocket and reached the edge of space.

60 miles up, a ten minute flight. But he’s 90 years old and he has done it! The oldest person/ actor/ sci-fi star to hitch a ride above the Earth. Well done x

Feeding the Maw

I just remembered this word ‘Maw’, it sometimes feels like social media is a voracious maw, gulping down tons of information and generating a lot of waste or rubbish alongside useful information.

Take the moon landing for instance. There are people today who think it didn’t happen. Some of those people were not born when it happened.

I remember being allowed to stay up to watch it. The grainy pictures, the slow step of Neil Armstrong off the lander. Later visits where other astronauts drove the lunar rover. And bouncing across the surface and one of them tripping over slowly in the 1/6th gravity of the Moon.

Talking about Maws, I remember a Star Trek episode where a giant world eating machine threatens to engulf the Enterprise. Somehow they defeat the monstrous killer.

So why write about Maws? I guess it’s because I keep blogging here. I feel like I’m feeding an insatiable need. Perhaps what I churn out is rubbish? You decide X

Kirk and Spock

My favourite sci-fi characters. Captain Kirk and First Officer Spock from the 1960’s TV show ‘Star Trek’. I drew this at a website called Sketchfu which closed a few years ago. Even with the simple tools there I was able to draw them reasonably accurately. There were not that many episodes made and it only ran for three series. But it came back a few years later with follow up films and TV series. The franchise must have made a great deal of money for its backers x.

My favourite Star Trek character.

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Always was, always will be. Spock. Played by Leonard Nimoy in the original series.

I quite like Zachary Quinto who plays him in the recent Star Trek movies. I haven’t seen the new outing of a new Star Trek series with Spock played by a different actor, and Captain Pike before Captain Kirk took over the part.

Anyway this was drawn at an old website called sketchfu which is sadly missed by a lot of people.

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Sonnets

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Digital drawing of Partick Stewart as captain Picard from Star Trek. Drawn on the sketchfu app a few years ago. I was quite pleased with the result.

I’m currently watching Partick Stewart read Shakespeare’s sonnets on Instagram. He is reading them from lockdown, and I think he is on sonnet 54.

I love his voice, it is so impressive, I think it has ‘gravitas’ and he has a thoughtful way of putting the words across. When I’ve had a stressful day his reading calms me down.

I do not know the sonnets, I’m hearing them all with a fresh ear. I don’t have expectations of how they should sound. Listening is like a meditation.

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Digital drawing, Picard.

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Jean Luc Picard

I’m a big fan of Star Trek, and one of my favourite characters was Jean Luc Picard from the Next Generation series. I think the actor Patrick Stewart gives the part a great gravitas, although sometimes it can get a little weird.

I don’t have a favourite episode, but I do like the film where the Borg go back in time to an Earth where Zephram Cocheran is about to use warp drive for the first time. I can’t remember what it was called. Something like First Contact. But that’s the title of a Science Fiction film with Jodie Foster, about aliens contacting the Earth. Written by Carl Sagan, so I’m not sure.

This portrait was drawn on the sketchfu website that I used to work on. I think this is about seven years old. I will probably find more of them popping up on my Facebook memories.

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