Welcome to a new, semi-recurring feature on WORLDOFHURTONLINE.COM: Off-Topic Mondays.  Occasionally,  I have ideas, questions, or notions that I can’t even tangentially relate to Blaxploitation, and since it would be irresponsible to litter the Intenet landscape with another blog, I came up with Off-Topic Mondays, with all apologies to Gangstarr Girl’s Blaxploitation Friday.  The first entry in the series does kind of deal with the 1970s and genre fiction, but unless you want to have Billy Dee Williams in the captain’s seat, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with Blaxploitation.  Now give me one second to proudly unfurl my geek flag and here we go:

VS.

You’ve got three days to get across the galaxy.  Which would you rather travel in to reach your destination, the flagship of the Federation, the USS Enterprise (pick whichever model you want), or the Corellian freighter, the Millennium Falcon?

Personally, I’d buy a seat on the Millennium Falcon.  I figure it would smell like a curious blend of patchouli, motor oil, curry and wet fur, and I’d guess that your sleeping compartment would be separated from the others by a measly set of beaded curtains, but the trip would be pretty cool.   You probably wouldn’t even make it to your planned destination, but all the fun would be in the journey itself.  Han would tell awesome stories; I’m sure he’d know the best places to stop, eat, and drink along the way (I mean delicious, authentic, ethnic/alien food served at crappy hole-in-the-wall joints); and more than likely, he’d even let you fly the ship for a while.

With the Enterprise, you’d be guaranteed to reach your final port of call, and the crew would be polite and efficient, but the experience would be a little antiseptic.  I’m sure later models of the Enterprise could even replicate a tasty Applebee’s entree for you, if you so desired.  However, even if something interesting happened along the way, you wouldn’t know it, because some well-groomed crew member would hustle you off to your cabin at the first sign of danger, spout some techno-babble by way of explanation, and lock the door behind him on the way out.  Yawn!

Now let the nerd wankery begin!

- JEP