Geek Critical Mass: Star Trek Meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Brian Doherty | September 25, 2006

I'm always hesitant--perhaps after this, you'll think not hesitant enough--about blogging this sort of thing; in the YouTube age it can easily eat up your entire life plus, and that said I don't spend enough time on YouTube to know if this is exceptional and worth noting or all-too-common. But its particular mashup of the two classic geeky enthusiasms of my generation, plus the revelation of how much silly dancing you can find in Star Trek, and the fact that it's Monday morning, made me say what the hell: Via Mark Evanier, the crew of the Enterprise decides to visit Camelot.

Tim Cavanaugh told you all you need to know about Star Trek in Reason's Aug./Sept. issue.

Comments

|9.25.06 @ 12:37PM|#

Tangentally off topic: Author John M. Ford is dead. He wrote How Much for Just the Planet?, the only Trek novel to feature a pie fight.

|9.25.06 @ 12:39PM|#

I'm very sorry to hear about Ford. How Much for Just the Planet is hands-down one of the funniest books I've ever read.

|9.25.06 @ 1:30PM|#

To answer your question, Brian: it's all too common.
Not that it isn't funny.

|9.25.06 @ 1:36PM|#

Oy....

|9.25.06 @ 1:56PM|#

I don't spend enough time on YouTube to know if this is exceptional and worth noting or all-too-common.

YouTube and every site like it exist to show four kinds of video:

- Kids lip-syncing to pop songs in front of web cams
- Clips from the Daily Show
- Gnarly accidents and Jackass-type stunts gone awry
- Video mash-ups like this

Although you will get an occasional rare treat in the form of a really bad fight scene from an old movie.

James Anderson Merritt|9.25.06 @ 3:23PM|#

Perhaps those four classes of video are are reason for YouTube, et. al., but just last night I checked out some great recent news footage of an electric car leaving a Ferrari and a Porsche in the dust at Infineon race track in Northern CA, courtesy of YouTube. YouTube in particular seems to have a great deal of interesting content for those who are willing to dig, or are lucky enough to stumble onto the right links.

The Star Trek-Python mashup is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. It is the original-series "blooper reel" that never was, but should have been. Wow.

lunchstealer|9.25.06 @ 3:26PM|#

Ah yeah, How Much for Just the Planet was excellent. Probably one of the last Trek novels I read, too, before going to non-franchise sci-fi.

My personal favorite reenactment of the Knights of the Round Table was the Lego version.

raymond|9.25.06 @ 3:41PM|#

There's the odd commercial, too.

|9.25.06 @ 3:54PM|#

YouTube has many other attractions:

1. Surprising number of clips of jazz musicians including Miles, 'Trane, Blakey, Coleman, Bird &
Dizzy and on and on

2. Lots of rare footage of classic rock bands

3. Clips from obscure British and German TV shows that never make it to the US (the whole episode if you're lucky)

|9.25.06 @ 4:26PM|#

Brian,
Fun Links are just for Fridays anymore.

|9.25.06 @ 7:26PM|#

I meant to say "They aren't just for Fridays anymore."

raymond|9.26.06 @ 12:00AM|#

Clips from obscure British and German TV shows that never make it to the US

Intriguing use of the word "obscure".