Symptom 15: Do Androids Dream of Positronic Emotions

This week is another Isolation Unit Episode, meaning Corey, Nick and the Ragemaster could not make it.  Of course this also means Scott had no one to stop him from talking about Star Trek.  Symptom 15 discusses Data from Star Trek The Next Generation and his supposed lack of emotions. 

Data is portrayed throughout the series as having no emotions. By season three it is firmly established that he has no emotions. In this week's Sci-Fi Malady I argue that this is as believable as the sales pitch of a Ferengi.  While Data may not have complex emotions, or display the physiological manifestations of emotion, he clearly, on some level, has emotions, even if he doesn't realize that he does. 

This, like all solo efforts, is a shorter podcast, its only about 20 minutes in length. Feel free to leave comments and feedback at our website, RavingLunaticMedia.com or tweet at us @mediaraving on Twitter. 

Episode 7: Retcon this Title

Retconning.  Necessary evil or abomination? Much debated by fans, and much maligned, retconning is sometimes necessary, and when done well, an effective story telling device. This week, Scott and the Ragemaster discuss when retconning is, in our opinion, properly used, and examples of when it has been horribly applied to gut the soul of a science fiction franchise. 

Note - please realize I reserve the right to retcon this description to address future criticism of the episode. 

Episode 6: To Struggle is to Grow

It's the first Sci-Fi Malady Isolation Unit episode. What does that mean? It means its just Scott because we were unable to get the crew together to record this week. Me being a trekkie, I decided to discuss a theme from TOS, (The Original Series) that a society that does not have conflict or struggle is a flawed, non growing society, even if it is perfectly happy, crime, poverty and disease free. It is by facing difficulty and striving to overcome it that individuals and humanity as a whole, improve, not by being happy or healthy.  While being happy and healthy are important and everyones end goal, it is only by overcoming obstacles that we improve. 

1/19/17 Edit - The original upload had an editing error which had 30 seconds of dead air. I corrected that with today's upload. 

Sci-Fi Malady Episode 3: A Golden Age of Nerdom

It's current a golden age to be a nerd. After years of all things geek being uncool, science fiction, fantasy, video games, all things once considered nerdy, are now fringe cool. In someways that is awesome.  A wider market for science fiction and fantasy products means more movies, novels and TV shows.  It has given us Game of Thrones, The Ender's Game Movie adaptation, a new Star Wars Trilogy, a new Star Trek TV show, but is has also given us AVP, AbramsTrek and countless other movies which lack any messages, substance, or in some cases a plot. 

In the Golden Age of Nerdom, movies are now made for the masses, which means more and bigger special effects and explosions, murder-killing, flash panning and fast cutting camera shots, and all types of things out of a Michael Bay wet dream.  In this weeks episode the crew laments that so much new science fiction is watered down garbage while discussing examples of past science fiction we felt was done at a high level. 

Show ending soundbite goes to The RageMaster - he is starting to earn that name. 

***A note on production. I had a latency issue with the computer while recording this.  There are a couple minutes of distortion halfway through, then it clears up, bear with it, it won't last long.  You do however, miss a good discussion of Dune and the Chronicles of Riddick, which were unfortunate casualties of this computer failing, or maybe operator failing***