That's a Star Trek: The Next Generation reference, right? It's really not fair to expect netizens to get a reference that's, what, 20 years old now?

Ok, you officially suck now, aiight? 'Cos I know you can hum that theme song, just like I can, and it got nothing to do with warp speed! :)

Sorry, just couldn't pass up the chance to make someone feel even older.

Speaking of disco-era sound effects, isn't it strange how nobody uses them any more? I don't think any shows produced after 1980 used the boops to represent vision powers, or the na-na noise for bionic strength, etc. Maybe because the studios figured out new ways to represent such abilities visually, so the sound cues were no longer needed; maybe it was a conscious decision on the part of the Hollywood studios to purposely date their 70s productions, in order to take advantage of the nostalgia people would feel for them 30 years down the road.

0r maybe it's because they finally realized that the sound effects weren't as cool as they thought (part of the "holy crap this music sucks" death-knell of the disco era), so the studios went back to using the recorded sound effects they used before they discovered synthesizers.

(... @nd did you really have to set your spam filter to freak out when I start a sentence with a conjunction? I realize it's poor grammar, but sheesh!)

Nope. It's because the TV producers caught a nasty case of teh ghey* many years ago. The results of this are American Idol, Magnum PI, any of those damn shows about angst-ridden teenagers (the OC, Dawson's Creek, etc.). Aside from Scrubs, Discovery, the History Channel, and Cartoon Network, there aren't any actual shows worth watching.

*not that there's anything wrong with that.