Star Trek Discovery - First Impressions

Now I know I am a little late to the party, but our household recently started a Netflix subscription (primarily because we has just finished Parks and Recreation from start to end) and Mrs Leese had seen clips of Brooklyn 99 on YouTube. Brooklyn 99 is only available through Netflix, so that was that - we subscribed to Netflix.

An additional benefit is that Netflix streams Star Trek Discovery. It wasn't my idea to subscribe to Netflix, but I am not complaining!

Star Trek Discovery is the first new Star Trek series I've seen since Enterprise, and a lot has changed since then - 9/11, ISIS, the discovery of the Higgs Boson... it's a whole new world.  Star Trek has kept pace with changes in sci fi TV visuals, in the same way as the rebooted films have presented the best of Hollywood's visual effects.  But what about the audience? While Enterprise was airing in the UK, I was recording episodes on VHS video cassettes, so that I could watch episodes either live or at a time after their original air date.  It took weeks and months to get through a series (season), and by the end of a season  you could watch the series from end to end and better see the threads in the plot - if there were any.  Star Trek was entirely episodic, so you knew everything would be back to normal by the end of the hour.  In fact, season 3 of Enterprise (the Xindi arc) was widely criticised because it ran as a season-long arc and you couldn't just watch an episode in isolation (there were a few that could stand alone, but not many).

Now, with streaming services delivering on-demand TV 24/7/365, it's possible to watch Season 3 of Enterprise in a day. Not sure you'd want to, but the possibility exists.

Star Trek Discovery is able to balance the episodic nature of Star Trek with the demands of modern streaming audiences. The first two episodes are best viewed back-to-back, in the same way as TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise all started with two-parters. There is a clear arc set up - the start and execution of the Klingon War - and then there are some serious differences. Observant viewers will notice that the series is called Star Trek Discovery, but the episodes start on the Shenzou. And the Captain is played by Special Guest Star Michelle Yeoh, who, as a Hollywood film actress is unlikely to be sticking around for the series. I predicted the destruction of the Shenzou with the captain on board before the opening credits had even finished.


Not that I'm complaining. The story shows us life in the Federation from the perspective of a mutinous officer who has only been saved from the brig and eventual court martial and expulsion by the needs of war.  Star Trek hasn't had a criminal in the crew since Tom Paris was pardoned and allowed to join the Voyager crew, and Lt Suder fought his violent tendencies while trying to integrate into the same crew.  This allows for some wonderful character interaction as the crew realise that they have Michael Burnham (famous mutineer) on board.  Meeting the crew from Michael's perspective means that we're thrown into the middle of a fully integrated crew - there's no shakedown time.  

The characters and names in this story are entirely fictitious. 
Any resemblance to any persons living or dead...

This is more TNG than Voyager, for sure.  Voyager started with the death of the second officer, the chief medical officer and the conn officer, throwing the Maquis and the Federation crews together.  There's none of that here; this is an established crew  who already know each other - and we don't.  The officer with the eye-enhancement (Keyla Detmar), who bears no resemblance to Seven Of Nine; the bridge officer who looks like a relative of Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy (Airiam) - we know very little about them, except that they're bridge officers. Still, there's plenty of time for the series to show us more about them, all in good time.

...is entirely coincidental.

So far, I have watched the first seven episodes, up to and including Magic to Make The Sanest Man Go Mad, and I am pleased to say I have thoroughly enjoyed a very new, fresh angle on the Star Trek universe. The crew have a healthy smattering of imperfections and character flaws; and when placed in a stressful war scenario, these imperfections become exposed .  The writers are not afraid to kill off characters and destroy ships with alarming frequency (the captain of the Shenzou is one example).

And there's a great balance between episodic and arcing TV. In episode five, Choose Your Pain, we meet Harry Mudd (who will go on to become a thorn in James T Kirk's side). By the end of the nearly wrapped episode, he's left to to rot in a Klingon prison, and that's a neat and tidy conclusion.  But oh, no, he's back again in the standout episode seven, Magic to Make The Sanest Man Go Mad, and he wants revenge.  Again we have another episode which reaches a firm conclusion, but now we're also wondering how long it will be before he'll be back again.

There are a few minor drawbacks to the way the story has been set up, the most noticeable being that as a prequel, we know how the story is going to end - there's no spore drive in Kirk's universe, so the ship is probably going to get destroyed eventually.  I just hope it doesn't get erased from the timeline completely ("And Spock woke up and realised it was all a dream"? No thanks).

Otherwise, I am thoroughly enjoying the new series and can wholeheartedly recommend it.

I mean, it's good, but it's not as good as Star Trek: Picard; here are my episode reviews for the first season of Picard:

Episode 1: Remembrance
Episode 2: Maps and Legends
Episode 3: The End is the Beginning
Episode 4: Absolute Candour
Episode 5: Stardust City Rag
Episode 6: The Impossible Box
Episode 7: Nepenthe
Episode 8: Broken Pieces

Episode 9: Et in Arcadia, Ego - Part 1

Episode 10: Et in Arcadia, Ego - Part 2

"A Puzzle A Day" - Flowers, and Venn Diagrams

The next puzzle can be solved longhand, but the best tool I would recommend is a Venn diagram, which solves the puzzle and elegantly shows your working (which my maths teachers said was always a good thing).

"Betty was making paper flowers for the local carnival.  11 flowers had red in them, seven had yellow in them, and five had red and yellow in them.  How many flowers did she make?"

The short answer (11+7+5 = 23) is incorrect; the point here is that the 11 flowers with red in them includes the five that had both red and yellow in them.  Similarly, the seven yellow flowers includes the five that had red in as well.

The quickest way to solve this is with a Venn diagram - see below.  Each circle contains the number of flowers of that colour, and the overlap shows the number of flowers which contain both red and yellow.

We know that there are five flowers which have both colours in them, so we can write 5 in the intersection (overlap) point of the two circles.  We also know that the red circle in total must contain 11 flowers, so the area outside the overlapping section is 11-5.  Finally, for the yellow the circle, the total needs be 7.

Simplifying this, we can see that there are 6 flowers that are red-only, 2 that are yellow-only, and five that are both red and yellow:

And hence the total is 13.  The initial "23" (11+7+5) counts the overlapped area twice more than it should be (i.e. it's counted as a red flower, a yellow flower and as a red-and-yellow flower).  By drawing out a simple Venn diagram, it's easy to see what the correct solution is.

Other articles in the 'A Puzzle A Day' series:

Three Horse Race
How Old is Aunt Tabitha
Big Ben Strikes Twelve

Around Goes The Gossip
Sugar Cubes (Orders of Magnitude)
Adding Nine, Reversing the Digits
Flowers and Venn Diagrams
Sum of Three Numbers equals Their Product

Other Calculator Fun and Games articles:

Snakes and Ladders (Introducing the Collatz Conjecture)
Over and Out (reduce six-digit numbers to zero as rapidly as possible)
Calculator Games: Front to Back
Calculator Games: Investigating the Kaprekar Constant

"A Puzzle A Day" - add nine, reverse digits

This puzzle is one of those which is almost as simple to solve as it is to state:

Find a two-digit number that reverses its digits when you add nine to it.

Knowing that the nine-times table contains numbers which have two series of ascending tens and descending units, this should be a case of just identifying a pair:

9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, etc.

However, there are many more pairs of numbers that fit the requirement in the question:

23 and 32
34 and 43
45 and 54 we've already mentioned
56 and 65
and so on

Any two digit number of the form (10x + (x+1)) or 11x+1 will reverse its digits when adding nine (up to 89 + 9 = 98).

The situation changes above 100, and its not possible to reverse digits by adding just nine (and we have three-digit numbers).

If you like this article, can I recommend this one:  Calculator Games: Front to Back?  It's on a similar theme.

Other articles in the 'A Puzzle A Day' series:

Three Horse Race
How Old is Aunt Tabitha
Big Ben Strikes Twelve

Round Goes The Gossip
Sugar Cubes (Orders of Magnitude)
Add Nine, Reverse Digits
Flowers and Venn Diagrams
Sum of Three Numbers Equals Their Product

Other Calculator Fun and Games articles:

Snakes and Ladders (Collatz Conjecture)
Crafty Calculator Calculations (numerical anagrams with five digits)
More Multiplications (numerical anagrams, four digits)
Over and Out (reduce large numbers to zero as rapidly as possible)
Calculator Games: Front to Back
Calculator Games: Up, up and away with Ulam sequences
Calculator Games: The Kaprekar Constant

"A Puzzle A Day" - How Old Is Aunt Tabitha (age in days)

Next puzzle - another interesting one: 

Aunt Tabitha was extremely touch about her age.  When an impudent nephew was brave enough to ask her, she cunningly replied that she was 35 years old, not counting Saturdays or Sundays.  How old was she?

So Aunt Tabitha has given her age in weekdays, and weekdays only account for five-sevenths of the total week.  Therefore, Aunt Tabitha's stated age of 35 is only five-sevenths of her actual age; 35 / (5/7) = 49.

So she's 49 years old.  But I'll leave it to the impudent nephew tell her that.

It might have been more interesting if she'd given her age as 14 years old in weekends - which is also a more exciting and appealing way of describing her age.

Having said all that, I can say that I'm 30 years old (excluding weekends), or, even better, 12 years old in weekends.  I'm not touchy about my age, but the thought of being 12 years old in weekends (and not even a teenager) is definitely more appealing than stating my actual age!

If you've enjoyed this puzzle and found this post useful, you may also be interested in some of my other posts on a similar theme:

Snakes and Ladders (Collatz Conjecture)
Crafty Calculator Calculations (numerical anagrams with five digits)
More Multiplications (numerical anagrams, four digits)
Over and Out (reduce large numbers to zero as rapidly as possible)
Calculator Games: Front to Back
Calculator Games: Up, up and away with Ulam sequences
Calculator Games: The Kaprekar Constant

"A Puzzle A Day" - A Three Horse Race

This puzzle comes from the Puzzle A Day pad (it's meant to last a year; at this rate I'll be completing it in 2025).

The question is simple (but with a slight twist):  "How many ways can a three horse race finish, including ties?"

The simple answer (excluding ties) can be found by looking at all the possible combinations; if we call the horses A, B and C, then we have:

ABC
ACB
BAC
BCA
CAB
CBA

Six ways (3*2*1 = 6, for those who are considering combinations and permutations).

Now, refreshing the list and including the ties (which will be shown in brackets):

ABC
A(BC)
(AB)C
ACB
A(CB)
(AC)B
BAC
B(AC)
(BA)C
BCA
B(CA)

(BC)A

CAB
(CA)B
C(AB)

CBA
(CB)A
C(BA)
(CAB)

13 in total - there are three variations for each of the previous combinations, so ABC now becomes ABC, (AB)C and A(BC) - but we must now deduplicate A(BC) and A (CB), and so on.  The red text above shows a duplicate of a combination which has already been seen above it in the list.

And there's one where all three tie together (ABC).  The need to deduplicate the ties makes this question more complex than it appears at first sight, and so (as is often the case) care is taken to fully understand the question.

Other articles in the 'A Puzzle A Day' series:

Three Horse Race
How Old is Aunt Tabitha
Big Ben Strikes Twelve

Round Goes The Gossip
Sugar Cubes (Orders of Magnitude)
Add Nine, Reverse Digits
Flowers and Venn Diagrams
Sum of Three Numbers Equals Their Product

Another random puzzle:

Over and Out (reduce a six-digit number to zero in six arithmetic steps)

"A Puzzle A Day" inspired by Prof Rubik: Big Ben Strikes Twelve

I've recently bought a "Puzzle a Day" - it's a block of 365 single-sheet puzzles (intended to be one a day for a year) on a charity shop visit.  It was new and unopened (I should have taken the hint and walked away immediately), but I thought it might stretch my brain in new ways, and some of them will probably be blog-worthy.

Some are, some aren't.

The first couple don't translate well to a blog article, but Puzzle 3 is interesting: 

"If it takes Big Ben six seconds to strike six o'clock, how long will it take to strike twelve o'clock?"

The immediate (and wrong) answer is twelve seconds; the trick is this:  there is no time to be measured after the sixth ring.  The duration of the rings is not one second between the first and second, then another between the 2nd and 3rd, 3rd and 4th, 4th and 5th, 5th and sixth, and then a second after the sixth ring.  In fact, there are six fifths (1.2 seconds) between each chime. The sixth chime occurs after the previous five have rung out, = 5 * 1.2 seconds = 6 seconds.

Now that we know that there are 1.2 seconds between each chime, we need to calculate the length of 11 chimes (knowing that the 12th chime will occur immediately afterwards).

11 * 1.2 = 13.2 seconds, or 13 1/5 seconds.

Not 12 seconds (as you may have immediately guessed).

Sorry ;-)

Other articles in the 'A Puzzle A Day' series:

Three Horse Race
How Old is Aunt Tabitha
Big Ben Strikes Twelve

Round Goes The Gossip
Sugar Cubes (Orders of Magnitude)
Add Nine, Reverse Digits
Flowers and Venn Diagrams
Sum of Three Numbers Equals Their Product

Another random puzzle:

Front to back (palindromes in numbers)

Transformers Trading Card Game: Data Analysis

After my previous post, where I started playing the Transformers Trading Card Game, I started looking at the types of battle cards and doing some back-of-the-envelope data analysis.  I don't expect to find any trends, but I wanted to take a look at how the battle cards break down by type (colour, and action vs upgrade, and type of upgrade).

In my previous post, I carried out some quick high-level analysis: how many of each type of card are there?

I was surprised to see that more than half of the cards are in the Action group, while less than one in eight is Armour.  It certainly made me pay more attention to the cards I was choosing for my deck, and to consider the types of cards I was using (and not just if they would be fun to play - in theory).

Let's break them down further - what colour icons do the cards have?  White; blue; orange or green?

I know tables aren't to everybody's liking, but here's a quick, simple table that breaks down the card colours and types:

Some thoughts (from a data perspective)

- There's an approximately equal quantity of pure blue cards and pure orange cards (46 and 48); twice as many as pure white (24).  
-  White is only combined with green, not with blue or orange.  That makes sense from a game-play perspective; when attacking or defending, it would be too much to get the benefit of an orange (or a blue) and then also draw two extra cards to further add to your total.
- There are three cards which are blue/orange (an interesting and useful combination in the game); these are Recon System (which is a star card); Matrix of Leadership (can be used only on Autobots) and Roll Out!

 

Now, these are all great cards since they provide both defence and offence boosts.

- It is possible, but not necessarily desired, to play all white; all blue; all orange; or all blank (no icons) - any row that sums to 14 or more will produce a complete deck of that type.  There has been a lot of play with all-blue (or mostly blue) 'defensive' decks, and all or mostly orange "aggressive" or "aggro" decks.  My personal preference is towards a mixed deck with a lot of white, but I'm still working on it (I'm looking to play Mirage; Hound and Jazz, and other 'white-friendly' teams).

Wave 3 of the Transformers TCG is coming up in less than two weeks, so I'll probably be doing further analysis on how the overall card profile changes.  I'm personally looking to get the new Red Alert (with his liking for mixed decks) and Private Stakeout (who likes white), and to play them with Hound and Jazz; or Mirage/Bumblebee BW/Jazz/Private Stakeout.  We'll see!