saucers and plates

Given the long weekend and all my shows going into summer reruns, I’ve spent most of the weekend with “Deep Space Nine” boxed sets running in the background. I missed the last two seasons of the show when they originally aired, so it’s not only new but also good, as the writing seems especially strong in season six.

One complaint, though. The episode “Sacrifice of Angels” opens with a battle sequence with lots of Federation ships, including Galaxy class starships (which the “Next Generation” Enterprise was) flying into battle with their saucer sections in place. It’s a minor nitpick, but in the pilot for “Next Gen”, they made a big deal about how the saucer section could detach before battles and be left behind somewhere, so that the civilians weren’t endangered. I read later, though, that they only showed it once or twice because the effect was so expensive.

Was it too expensive to take the models apart before they shot the “Deep Space Nine” sequence, though? Like I said, nitpicky of me, but the fan in me looked at that shot and immediately grumbled. The shot of a burning, crashed ship sinking into the ocean behind the crew on the beach that opened the second episode of the season more than makes up for it, though. That looked awesome.

In other news, I had to throw my superhero plates away today, because I finally gave up on keeping them clean. I had three plastic plates with DC Comics superheroes on them that I got at the Warner Brother’s store back when they still had those, and somewhere along the way, sitting in the sink waiting to go into the dishwasher, they got some sort of grease on them.

It didn’t come off in the dishwasher.

I presoaked, then dish washered again, and still had a greasy residue.

Presoaked, hand washed, greasy residue. Presoaked, hand washed, dish washered, greasy residue. Presoaked, dish washered, hand washed, back into the dishwasher, greasy residue. Today, I finally gave up and decided to throw the plates away without even scraping the apparently indestructible greasy residue off of the plates for resale to some chemical firm. Since the WB Stores all closed, I can never have another set.

I guess I shouldn’t have gotten grease on them.