Season 1 Episode 19 ("Arena")

Great galloping gay gods of Greece! Not that the episode was particularly exciting, that's just what the superior beings in this one reminded me of. Well, Greek gods if they were Tinkerbells in disco-clothes. I'm being a bit obtuse, but it's more fun that way.

The Enterprise responds to an invitation from a famously-generous-host who runs an outpost only to discover the outpost has been destroyed by a previously unknown species of alien. They chase the aliens down, to kill them all so they'll know not to mess with Texas/humans. The aforementioned shimmery beings then seize control of both the Enterprise and the aliens - the "Gorn" - and insist that, since they were uncivilizedly bent on destroying one another, the only thing that they can do, in all of their civilized glory, is force the captains of the two ships to fight to the death, and kill whichever group's captain fails to win. Because that just makes sense, right?

You don't actually see them in corporeal form until the very end, after a series of the worst rubber-suit battles you've ever had the misfortune/good fortune to witness. Kirk eventually wins, after being an idiot for far too long and trying to find a phaser buried in the dirt, by constructing a primitive cannon (that looks more like a potato gun), and then refusing to finish off the alien.

Basically, just another episode that drives home how dickish superior beings can be. And also how hypocritical.

Random stats: Two Leinenkugel Sunset Wheats, too little sleep last night, and one battle that makes Godzilla's exploits look like the height of special effects, choreography, and pacing.

Season 1 Episode 18 ('The Squire of Gothos')

The title to this one sounds very Shakespearean. I meant to look it up and see if it was, but I never got around to that, and now I've started writing this, so I guess I will just leave it, for now.

I begin to tire of superior beings with 'technology so advanced it is indistinguishable from magic' or whatever that Arthur C. Clarke quote is. This is yet another of those episodes. I grumble a lot about the show repeating itself; maybe I'm being too hard on it. But these races of super-beings just seem so indistinguishable from one another. I guess it's sort of like the whole problem with trying to understand god's motives, to jesus-loving folks. If we are as ants, then we can't really see the differences between the beings who are as humans to us and the beings who are as apes to us, and the beings who are the little green men from Mars Attacks! to us. They're all just really big things that occasionally step on us.

That might work for religious people, but I think it falls apart for me, especially when it comes to TV shows, because they're written by people who are as people to us. So, upon further reflection in this silly digression, I declare it to just be lazy writing on the part of the Star Trek guys.

Anyways, the episode: The Enterprise finds a planet where none should be and - for once - declining to investigate, cranks up their sensors to pick up data while they fly by it, and heads off to do their important delivery mission (jesus, people complain about MMO fetch-quests - do they realize that that is apparently 90% of the genre-fiction that most MMOs are based on? What is the Lord of the Rings but one long delivery mission, I ask you?). Sadly, they find themselves unable to do so, because before Tsulu can plot their course away from the planet, he disappears. Then Kirk runs over to where he was, and he disappears too. Damned annoying, that.

Spock sends Bones (after declining to go himself, or let Scott go, because they are indispensable, which is pretty catty to Bones, really) and a presumably-senior security-person I was unfamiliar with down to the planet to investigate, which leads to a number of surprises, starting with the climate and culminating in a Napoleonic-era castle-type-thing furnished to the nines.

You could probably guess from the intro: it turns out that castle is populated by a dude who's totally super-powered and moreover, kinda megalomaniacal as so many of these superior beings are wont to be. The progression of the plot is fun, so I won't spoil it or anything, and it was basically a pretty decent episode, but it ends with a silly sci-fi cliche where painful-interactions-with-stupefyingly-powerful-races are concerned. All in all, a jolly good romp, but just a bit too old-hat to really be all that fun.

Random statistics: Three shots of Jim Beam Black, which contrary to popular opinion, I do not find to be superior to Jim Beam Normal, and not much else because I'm trying to do some other shit before I go to bed.

Season 1 Episode 17 ('The Galileo Seven')

The name of this episode kind of made me think of the West Memphis Three or the Birmingham Six, but it turns out to not be an episode about a prison planet - unlike an episode we just watched, amusingly. There are people trapped on a planet, tho.

The Enterprise is on the way to deliver 'medical supplies' to a planet with a plague (dude, that has to be the most common plot in all of sci-fi) but they stop to investigate a quasar or pulsar or some other -sar (I can't remember) that was a beautiful neon green. A shuttle crewed by Spock, Bones, Scotty, a chick, a black guy, and a couple of crackers, heads out to check it out.

The shuttle ends up stranded without contact with the Enterprise on a planet inhabited by 'giant' fuzzy-guys who throw spears and rocks and stuff. A cracker ends up dead, and Spock's callous obsession with logic leads to tempers flaring, so mostly, they bicker about how inhuman he is, and how they all want to make stupid emotional choices, for the majority of the episode. Meanwhile, some Federation muckity-muck is riding Shatner's ass, because he wants the Enterprise to abandon searching for their missing shuttle and get the med supplies delivered.

The day ends up being saved by a 'completely human emotional action' on the part of Spock. Yay! The episode ends with an incredibly forced thirty seconds or so of laughter on the bridge of the Enterprise, which was also a yay moment, in the same sarcastic tone of voice.

Good episode. Nary a Cold War trope in sight!

Random statistics: Three glasses of Tullamore Dew, one burrito from Alamo BBQ, two cringeworthy attempts to make normalish-sized dudes look ten feet tall, a bunch of very inaccurate spear-chucking, and a good time was had by all.

Season 1 Episode 16 ('Shore Leave')

Delightful episode. I thought it was going the way of earlier eps, but it ended up being exactly what I hoped it would be! Pleasant, no one is evil, hilarious, and good fun. It kind of peaked at the beginning, with McCoy's brief Alice-In-Wonderland-interlude, but it remained good fun throughout.

The Enterprise finds a planet devoid of life and considers letting everyone off the ship to hang out and chillax for a bit after their trying experiences of the past 15 episodes. Then McCoy sees a human-sized rabbit who's running late, and a blonde girl who's chasing after him, and they end up getting wary. There's a mixture of various fantastic things going on, with fighter pilots doing strafing runs and black knights threatening fair maidens, and when they kill McCoy, you think "Oh, shit, I guess it's a bunch douchebag over-powered mentalists trying to exterminate humanity again," but it ends up being not-that.

When the credits rolled, and I saw 'Written by Theodore Sturgeon,' it all made sense. I'm not super-familiar with his work but my brother wrote a thesis on the guy, and I think he was the real-life basis for Mr. Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout, so it would make perfect sense that an episode he wrote would buck the banal trends and be a thoroughly fun experience. It would also make sense that it fit firmly within the pulp-sci-fi tropes that were well-established by the time of Star Trek, but I'd rather see a cliche well executed than anything outside of a new cliche being born (which innately involves solid execution).

Random stats: A week after my brother cancelled his NetFlix account before I found someone else I could piggyback off of for this blog, 3 shots of New Amsterdam gin that confusingly taste of chocolate, 1 big rush to get this typed so I can go watch X-files with my roommate, and 100% satisfaction at being able to continue this blog, after thinking I was going to have to let it die.