Electric Ladyland

Stick With Me -
 - this takes a while to develop.  Like an old photograph, or a wine, or a cheese, or -  Mongolian Haemorrhaging Liver Fever.
     Today, Martin and Chris were teasing Freddie, because he is a bit of a nerd about the very same subjects that your humble scribe is interested in - one being that obscure cult series from the Sixties and it's Eighties successor "Star Trek".  Of course, not being at all shy or retiring about his interests* Conrad simply had to eavesdrop and interject.
     "Which Captain is best?" asked the interlocutors.

Certainly not this nosey alien-investigating piker!

     "THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE CAPTAIN!  JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK!" responded your humble hack.
     Since I was a good fifty yards from where the conversation was taking place, I feel that my input was less than appreciated.  
     "We hesitate to ask, especially as you seem to have been at the cooking sherry, Conrad, but - what on earth are you on about?" I hear you query.
     You could dignify it with a bit of Yin and Yang, the human dichotomy, Alpha and Omega and all that philosophical swill, but Conrad is a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to drama.  Conflict is the heart of drama, and when it comes to 'Star Trek' you want a character that positively embodies conflict.  Art?

 JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK
(Fighting or snogging? - only you can tell!)

     If you want a two-fisted, womanising drunk for a starship captain, then look no further than  JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK  because he ticks ALL the boxes.  Including some you didn't know were there in the first place.
     I mean, can you imagine the contrast between the same scene written for JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK versus one written for Captain Picard?  Allow us to portray this -

(A hostile alien spaceship appears, broadcasting dangerous short wavelength radiation)

Jean-Luc Picard                                             JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK
Can we relocate to a different locale?            Where's my triple-strength black coffee?

If we cannot run, at least we can                   PHOTON TORPEDOES!
communicate.  Open hailing channels.           (Get Scotty to sweep up the bits)

Another positive contact for Federation         Pieces.  Don't get any in the engine intakes.
diplomacy - A meaningful peace!                   Where's my triple-strength black coffee?

"If it's sleek and meek then - MAKE IT SQEUAK!"

OR

(Our hero is stranded, incommunicado, on an alien planet, battling a Gorn)

Jean-Luc Picard                                            JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK
Can't we sit down and talk this out?               Karate chop! Kidney punch! Foot to the guts!

Okay, we can't talk.  In that case, I               <Hurls large rock, searches for club>
shall carry out my escape and evasion
training.

Unseen alien overlords, can I appeal to          <Constructs crude cannon, blows large hole
your better nature <adds long speech that     in Gorn, gets sent back to the Enterprise>
appears lifted from Shakespeare>                  VICTORY!  Get me a brandy.

Fight!  Fight!  Fight!

OR

(Our hero is isolated in a subterranean Arctic bunker, amongst sinister alien androids)

Jean-Luc Picard                                            JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK
Whilst I sympathise with your sense of          Wow!  Look at that hottie!  Hey, honey, do
vaunting ambition, I'm afraid I cannot           you need a little warming-up? <catches nurse
acquiesce with those plans where they          looking at him disapprovingly>  What?  I'm
imply galactic domination.                            - er - doing diplomacy.  Yeah, diplomacy.
I see - so you are a female android?  That     You're a robot?  Who cares - you're a HOT     
would technically mean you are a gynoid.     robot!

I apologise that your creator saw fit to          Got any sisters?
objectivise and sexualise you to such a
degree.  Have this bin liner.

A touch saucy but still SFW

     Here an aside.  That last skit is from the classic episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of", and you may call Conrad a pervy old letch (although not a letchy old perv, as that would be too much) but why on earth is there only ONE sexy female android wandering around?  If your humble hack had his hoary hands on an android-making machine - well, you would have wall-to-wall electric ladies.  Hence the title of today's blog, so it's not that much of an aside, more an acknowledgement.
     What's that?  You thought this was going to be a load of salacious slobbering about that incredibly NSFW album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, which features a lot of (as Isaac Asimov once put it) the undraped female form divine?
     NO!  Get out of here!  We may tiptoe along the borderline between weird and frightening, but BOOJUM! is proudly SFW.


*  Apart from thermonuclear weapons design - that - that you don't discuss in public.