First, a fond farewell to James Doohan, TV's Montgomery Scott. Here's
Reuters' quick take, and IMDB has a complete filmography. One of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation was 'Relics', when the Enterprise discoverd that Scotty was alive and well 75 years after it was thought his ship was lost. He then has a conversation with the curreent chief engineer Geordi LaForge:
Scotty: "Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want."Essentially, the secret to Scotty's magic was to multiply every estimate by at least a factor of four, and emerge a genius.
LaForge: "Yeah, well, I told the captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour."
Scotty: "How long will it really take?"
LaForge: "An hour."
Scotty: "You didn't tell him now long it would really take, did you?"
LaForge: "Of course I did."
Scotty: "Laddie, you got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker!"
The second loss isn't all that public, but still important. Gerry Thomas lost a long-running battle with cancer on Monday. If you've ever been single, or left alone at home when you wer a kid, you're familiar with his work. Forbes has a quick story on him, but to summarize, in 1954 he came up with the idea of the TV Dinner. While the idea of a precooked dinner was unique, it was the 'TV' concept that really made the product stand out. TV was coming into its own, and somehow the two concepts were joined as one.
So join me as I dig into some Salisbury Steak and watch some Star Trek reruns.
Courage,
Mike G.
No comments:
Post a Comment