Wednesday 29 April 2009

Wordy Wednesday - Living in the Future

When I was young, maybe eleven (nearly 30 years ago!), I thought it would be really great to turn my bedroom into the control room of the TARDIS. Perhaps like this 10-year old.


I'm not quite sure why I wanted to do this, except I was a fan of the Doctor Who series. The room is dominated by the central controls, and there's a distinct lack of comfy furniture. I suppose since I would have spent a lot of my time playing with LEGO on the floor of my bedroom this didn't seem to be such a big problem.

By the time I was fourteen or fifteen, living abroad and having only watched the small number of episodes that friends had obtained on video tapes from the UK, I remember realising how childish the programme was.

As you might expect, some people have turned their houses into spaceships. These people are generally male and probably single. One of them has a website and is offering this as a service. He might be a great 24th Century interior designer, but he clearly doesn't know much about creating a useable website. Since it has apparently not been updated for a few years, I wonder whether he made a viable business out of this.

If asked whether I'd turn my flat into the Star Trek Bridge or the TARDIS, I would of course give the same answer as most other sane people. However, I did start wondering about different space-age places, and what it would be like to really live in them.

The TARDIS (Doctor who)

They didn't generally show many other rooms of this machine, but it was supposed to be infinitely large, so there might have been some nice bits to live in. However, the controls never really worked and the Doctor got lost more often than Bugs Bunny. And everywhere he went there were Daleks, or Cybermen, evil geniuses bent on world destruction, and so on. I don't really want to end up saving the world every time I go out to get a pint of milk, so I'd give this one a miss.

The U.S.S. Enterprise (Star Trek)

This doesn't strike me as a pleasant place to live. The beds look uncomfortable, and the decor is somewhat drab. It's full of contradictions. How come you can just talk to the ship's computer, and yet there are so many control panels all over the place?

Like the TARDIS, the Enterprise goes from one life-threatening situation to another, and the red alert siren would get a bit annoying after a while. Nevertheless, there are supposed to be children on board. I wonder why...

Professor Xavier's Institute (X Men)

Bits of this seem quite nice - the old-fashioned house and garden, but having mutants walking through your walls might be unnerving. People complain about living on aircraft flight paths, never mind having the X-Men jet taking off in your back yard...

Earth (Blade Runner)

People practically have whole apartment blocks to themselves, and there are loads of Chinese fast food places within walking distance. The reason so many places are unoccupied is that the aftermath of WWIII has left the planet irradiated, and most people have gone to live on Mars. Nevertheless, you always see crowds of people in the streets.

Whilst the idea of having all that living space seems great, everything is very dark and dreary, and all the people there are a bit unhinged. Otherwise they'd have gone to Mars too.

Earth (Buck Rogers)

New Chicago looks like a rather miserable place to live. Like so many futuristic places, this is very stark and bright. The brightness probably has something to do with energy-saving lightbulbs, although they never seem to turn lights off, and the lack of comfortable furniture may be due to the depletion of natural resources. Or it may just be that these programmes were low budget..

Serenity (Firefly)

If you haven't seen the Firefly series, or the film Serenity, then stop reading now and go and get the DVDs. The cancellation of the programmes after a small number of episodes was criminal. Although this ship is also always in danger, I'd actually quite fancy being on it. This is nothing to do with the fact that it has it's own resident prostitute, but it's a community made up of people with different skills and a sense of loyalty to one another. I've no idea what I'd be able to contribute, admittedly, but out of this rather random selection of options, it's the one I'd choose.



Hello, this is Brian. I'm not at my computer right now (which is why I've not visited your blog this week), but if you'd like to leave a message after the tone, I'll get back to you in a few days. Beeeeeeep...

8 comments:

Jean Knee said...

FIRST!!!!

I don't know Brian, I'll just stick to my 1970's bean bag chair.

those things are sweeet

Bee said...

That's a lot of Sci-Fi, Brian who is Tahiti. I’ve heard of that Firefly thing and how the movie was a cult hit but I really don’t like watching movies based on futuristic stuff. The Star Wars series doesn’t count because that is supposedly in the past and in a galaxy far far away.

Bee said...

Also, my couches are uncomfortable enough.

for a different kind of girl said...

Maybe, just maybe, that guy who had the neglected website met a woman, fell in love, and got married and she convinced him it was time to change his ways. However, speaking as a woman, if you could promise me that Nathan Fillion would come with any room outfitted to look like the ship in Serenity, I would allow that in a heartbeat.

Unknown said...

My house looks like the set from "Stig of the Dump."

Cost me a fortune!

Brian o vretanos said...

Jean Knee:

That 70's look is also futuristic - it's due back in fashion sometime in the next 100 years or so.

Bee:

Firefly is the Wild West in space, and everything looks old in the way that some of the Star Wars stuff is.

FADKOG:

Yes, it's unlikely that the Star Trek flat would survive a woman's touch.

Chris:

That should increase the value, presumably?

Super Happy Girl said...

I just want to live in a future where people dress good, not in rags like in Mad Max.

Gives me nightmares!

Jean Knee said...

you have a point NCS but remember how cute Mel looked in his bedraggled rags?



of course that was before we knew he was an anti semite adulterer