Season 1 Episode 22 ('Return of the Archons')

Okay, this episode began with Tsulu and O'Neill running around through some old-school lookin' streets in some old-school lookin' clothes. I didn't ever really get clear on what prompted their presence on this planet that was filled with hippy-dippy-dudes in 19th-century garb, but... well, they were on a planet filled with hippy-dippy-dudes in 19th-century garb. Go figure.

Tsulu gets zapped and O'Neill gets lost, so Shatner-et-al head down to figure out wtf is going on. It doesn't really make a lot of sense, in a lovely sort of way - almost reminds one of The Wicker Man. The planet is populated with Puritans who do nothing but tell one another how peaceful and tranquil and loving they all are, except for when 'The Festival' happens. 'The Festival' seems to be everyone running through the streets pawing at women, except for the women, who are getting pawed at.

OH! I have had the episode playing again, in the background while I type this, in the hopes that the Enterprise's presence on the planet would be explained, and I just missed it the first time because I was busy texting and doing shots. Turns out, that happened: They're researching the disappearance of another Federation ship, a century ago. That makes a lot of things make perfect sense, all of a sudden.

Anyways, basically, it's just another 'Machination and shit is impersonal and kills the souls of men. That which is perfect is the enemy of that which is human,' episode that reflects its Cold War origins in the same frustrating way that so many others do. For all of that, it's a good time, tho. There's partyin' down going down in the streets, some sardonic humor with Spock, Shatner looking like the spitting image of James Garner as Maverick and a 'supercomputer' that basically looks like it was crafted out of cardboard.

Good times.

Random statistics: 3 shots installing an XP VirtualBox so I can watch Netflix while running Linux, 2 shots during the actual episode, 40 text messages during the first ten minutes of the show (no, really, I counted), 5 slices of pizza, 2 operating systems running simultaneously on my machine, 1 hour or thereabouts of fucking about with installing XP on a virtual machine and updating it, and infinite satisfaction at getting the shit to work properly.