Nerd Trash Person of the Month for October: Jodie Whittaker

No surprise there. The new season of Doctor Who starts this month and we'll finally get to see the first female incarnation of The Doctor in action!

Source: PIP/CAMERA PRESS / The Times.

Via: Daily Jodie Whittaker Twitter.

Via: Daily Jodie Whittaker Twitter.

Via: Daily Jodie Whittaker Twitter.

June's Nerd Trash Icon: Shuri from Black Panther

Because Shuri (played by Letitia Wright) was one of the tip top things about the Black Panther. I loved how she was a super genius who, judging from that scene in Infinity War, is probably smarter than guys like Bruce Banner and Tony Stark. I also dug how she took no shit from her brother T'Challa and had zero problems with dragging him. Being King of Wakanda and Black Panther doesn't spare you from your little sister.

http://fuckyeah-nerdery.tumblr.com/post/174437983135/toney-starks-i-invite-you-to-my-lab-and-you

 

February's Person of the Month: Sir Arthur C. Clarke

(via Wikipedia)

I've decided to revive my short-lived "Icon of the Month" feature and having just finished The Hammer of God, I can't think of no one better to honor than Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

Clarke, of course, is a titan of the SF genre. From his pen and mind came astounding works of science fiction such as Rendezvous With Rama, Childhood's End, The Fountains of Paradise, and more. His most famous work, without a doubt, would be 2001: A Space Odyssey, written in conjunction with the groundbreaking Stanley Kubrick film. 2001 would spawn three sequels as part of the Space Odyssey series.

Rendezvous With Rama was the first novel of his that I had ever read and I loved it. It was one of those books that I wish I had read long ago and regretted not having done so.

He had an impact outside of the SF as well. In 1945, he first wrote a paper describing the potential use of telecommunications satellites in geostationary orbit. While it's not clear if his paper led to the development of such satellites, he predicted them almost a decade before anybody else. Today, geostationary orbit is called Clarke Orbit.

He also played TV host in the 1980s and '90s to a trio of shows: Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World, Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers, Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe.

Arthur C. Clarke was the last of the "Big Three" of Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and himself to die. Even though I had never read any of his books at the time, his death in 2008 was a gut punch because it was crystal clear that SF and the world at large had lost a bit of greatness.

Nerd Trash Icon of the Month: Velma Dinkley

Don't call it a comeback because I in all honesty don't know if this is will be a regular thing again.

The choice of Velma Dinkley is entirely inspired by Tim Knight's photo dump over on HeroPress, so you know, blame him. Velma has always been my favorite Scooby Doo character and it should be pretty obvious why: She's a nerd. Just look at her.

Mary Jane shoes, the skirt, the knee high socks, and of course, that ever present turtle neck. Throw in the glasses and even back then Velma probably would have been a wallflower. And yet, she was cool and smart. She made being smart cool.

Linda Cardellini.

Hayley Kiyoko.

Then there's the cosplay!

jmnettlesjr

bygreenorg

GinaBCosplay

DanielleDeNicola

HarleyTheSirenxoxo

Alhvida

HarleyTheSirenxoxo

😍

August's Icon of the Month: Jyn Erso from Rogue One

Sure, it might be premature to label Jyn Erso an "icon" before Rogue One has even hit theaters, but given the meager number of women action heroes, she's already certified as a future icon.

Not much is known about Erso yet, but that'll obviously change as we get closer to Rogue One's release date. We do know that she's got a rap sheet that includes forgery, possession of stolen property, aggravated assault, and resisting arrest. Nothing huge, but I'm hoping that there's more in her criminal record, because I can't imagine the Rebels recruiting someone for such a dangerous mission based entirely on what is honestly petty crimes.

I have high hopes for Rogue One because it'll be interesting to see a war movie set in the Star Wars universe. Hell, it'll be nice to see a Star Wars movie with (hopefully) no Jedi.

July's Icon of the Month: Superman (Christopher Reeve)

More specifically, the Christopher Reeve Superman. I plan on using the other incarnations in future installments and honestly, he's my favorite one.

Why do I like the Reeve Superman so much? Well, part of it because I watched the first two movies before any other adaptions and so my thinkbox automatically jumps to him whenever Superman movies or TV shows come up. The other reason is because in my opinion, Christopher Reeve is, was, and always will be Superman because of how he lived his life after his tragic accident. Aside from a brief period right after the accident, he didn't wallow in self-pity or become a recluse from society. Instead, he worked and worked to try and defy his doctors and get his body working again. He was never fully successful in that endeavor, but he did have some success near the end of his life. I also admire his dedication to stem cell research and how he campaigned tirelessly to get as much funding for it as possible. The thing about it that always gets me is that he knew full well that a cure for spinal injuries and paralysis would never be found in his lifetime or in the lifetime or other disabled people but that a cure would be found and it would benefit future generations. His desire to see that nobody should have to endure that kind of tragedy ever again is both inspiring and humbling and makes him the real Superman.

May Icon of the Month: Deanna Troi

Well, we had a bit of a stumble with the Icon of the Month series last month. Somehow, I forgot to post one for April and by the time I remembered, it was just too late. It didn't seem quite fair to post one halfway into the month, so I opted to skip it. Fortunately, I did remember this month, so let's get on with it.

I chose Deanna Troi both because she's one of my favorite Trek characters and because I feel like she's under-appreciated. Unfortunately, I believe there's a mentality that Troi was a pointless character that served no other purpose than to be the show's T&A. Sadly, there is some truth in the latter argument as it did seem like there were people involved in the The Next Generation's production that seemed to view Troi as just that.

To me, though, Troi had a lot of potential that was just never utilized and developed. We saw glimpses of it with her empathetic powers coupled with her natural intuition and diplomatic skills. One dumb criticism I've seen of her is about her having her own seat on the bridge of the Enterprise when she was "just" a counselor. That ignores her aforementioned skills and abilities. After all, she was usually the one briefing Picard on whatever alien races they were going to meet during a diplomatic mission. She was also the one he turned to when he needed input on what someone or something was feeling during the various shenanigans the Enterprise found itself in. It's worth noting that in the Star Trek: Titan book series, this role she had on TNG is reflected in her position as Diplomatic Officer of the USS Titan.

Another critique is in her "lack" of piloting skills, that the two times she was shown at the helm of the Enterprise-D and E, she crashed them into either a planet or another ship. This is really incredibly stupid because it ignores the context of those two instances. With the former, the saucer section was caught in the explosion of the Enterprise-D's stardrive section (this happened in Star Trek: Generations, btw) and was sent crashing down to the nearby planet. If anything, Deanna turned the crash into a crash landing and saved everybody. In the case of the latter (Star Trek: Nemesis), she rammed the Enterprise-E into Shinzon's ship because Picard ordered her to.

In terms of favorite episodes of moments, one that comes to mind is Disaster. In this one, the Enterprise is hit by two quantum filaments and left severely damaged and disabled, with the cast being trapped in different parts of the ship. Troi finds herself in command of the bridge owing both to her rank as Lieutenant Commander and that the bridge officer that was in charge took an exploding control panel to the face. She's ultimately faced with two choices when it's discovered that the ship is losing antimatter containment and will blow up if it isn't fixed. Ensign Ro argues for a saucer separation because they have no idea if anybody in the stardrive is still alive and that it's better to save the people in the saucer than for everybody to die. O'Brien argues against this and Troi ultimately agrees with him, but at the end of the episode notes that Ro could just have easily been right.

There's another episode, Face of the Enemy, where she's kidnapped and forced to pose as a member of the Romulan Tal Shiar in order to help with the defection of a Romulan Viceproconsul and his two aides. It was interesting watching her take on the mentality of a Tal Shiar agent which is the polar opposite of her normal personality.

All in all, Deanna Troi is a character that could and should have been handled better by the writers, but still managed to be as memorable as any other Star Trek character, male or female.

March Icon of the Month: Geordi La Forge

As I said back when I first talk about doing this Icon of the Month feature, the people I'd choose weren't restricted to just women, but would include men, and fictional characters. So with that in mind, I decided to choose a fictional character and one of my favorites from Trek, Geordi La Forge, Chief Engineer of the Enterprise-D and E.

Whereas Scotty is the favorite of many Trekkies, Geordi is mine. Don't get me wrong, I love Scotty, but TNG was the first Star Trek series I watched and so I was exposed to Geordi before Scotty.

One of the things I like about Geordi is that he was both disabled and not treated differently at the same time. Typically, TV shows at the time would treat disabled characters as tools to send a "message" to the audience about how people with disabilities shouldn't be treated as defective or as different from able-bodied people. The fact that these shows would do this with "very special episodes" that treated disabled characters as being different was overlooked by the writers and producers. But on TNG, Geordi was given equal treatment. He was expected to do his job and was held to the same high standards as anybody onboard the Enterprise. But his disability wasn't ignored either and it was discussed in several episodes. It was just a part of his life.

His friendship with Data is one of my favorite things ever. I love how they rely on each other. If one had a problem, they would go to the other for advice. I think their relationship could be described as siblings. Geordi was an only child and Data's brothers were a psychopath and Windows 2000 with limbs, so they both found a companionship that they never had before.

There's an episode of TNG called The Most Toys where this asshole kidnaps and fakes Data's death so that he could add the android to his personal collection of stuff. Geordi is the only one who refuses to accept that Data died in a shuttle accident and eventually proves that he didn't. Meanwhile, in the movie Generations, Data is wrought with guilt and shame after Geordi is kidnapped by the baddies. He blames himself and while the emotion chip he had installed earlier in the movie was obviously hyping up his emotions, they were still there.

Like I wasn't going to add this picture.

All pictures from Memory Alpha.