June 5th, 2009 by Calvero

One thing I should have added in my last post was the Jewish connection with Spock. I had know for a while that both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were Jewish. But what I found out a few days ago was where the Vulcan salute came from.  I was curious and did a search on YouTube.  I could tell you about it, but Nimoy does a much better job:

(if the below video does work, here’s a direct link)

So there you have it, the Vulcan salute is the name of God :D.

For more info on the  Jewish connections in Star Trek, check out TrekJews.com run by Rabbi Yonassan Gershom.

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June 4th, 2009 by Calvero

First, thanks to those who told me how much they liked my review. 🙂

I have thought of other things that I wanted to add to it:

Random thought: Was anyone else surprised that Winona Ryder was in it?  And that she played Spock’s mom? Assuming that you did not know who was in the movie prior to seeing it, that is ;). That surprised me when I was watching the credits and thought “She was in this?”

More on Roman history: And while watching the TOS episode “Amok Time” (the one where Spock returns to Vulcan and first does the Vulcan salute),  I suddenly remembered the relationship of Vulcan (the Roman god of fire) and Spock’s home planet (D’oh!). It’s because the planet is volcanic (ah, the wonders of Roman mythology on the English language!), and therefore hot and the air is thin. And then I remember the scenes in the movie seeing the outside shots of Vulcan. I knew there had to be something connecting the two!  My mind just went blank when writing my earlier review.

And to talk about something not directly related to the movie, here’s a connection with TNG:  Back in 1976, BBC aired a 12 part television series called “I, Claudius” about the goings-on of the Julio-Claudian household from Claudius’ point of view (like a soap opera, but with more literal knife stabbing and poisoning and it’s pretty close to being historically accurate). Claudius was one of the family members and would later become emperor.  It had a big cast, among them Patrick Stewart who play Sejanus, the captain of the Praetorian Guard (the emperor’s elite bodyguards) under Emperor Tiberius, and who is believed to have tried to become emperor by killing off people.

Eleven years later Stewart would become Captian Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) , a much more noble man.

I hope to write a review of that BBC series. I’ve seen it a few times and love it.

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