Season 2 Episode 3 ('The Changeling')

I'm pretty sure this episode ended with a Jewish-mother joke. I approve.

That said, generally speaking, it was also just a pretty decent episode in general. It wasn't all Cold-War-y, although it could become so in future episodes, if they ever meet the race that made Nomad. Basically, they run into this tiny little thing that is spitting ridiculous amounts of energy at them in an attempt to destroy them. It turns out, it's an old satellite launched by Earth that was initially tasked with finding new lifeforms, but had a bad car wreck with an unknown alien civilization, and got super-powered and tasked with destroying everything that was not perfect.

It think Kirk is its creator, so it assumes Kirk is perfect, and is willing to chill, but then Kirk gets mad and fucks up, and admits to imperfection, at which point, all bets (which were previously on, presumably) are off. If I had to name just one complaint with the episode, the most obvious and heinous flaw would be that it does nothing with Spock. There is room for serious hi-jinks and comedic escapades, when you've got a computer that wants to kill everything that isn't perfectly logical and absolutely efficient, and a Vulcan that thinks it is but isn't. That could have been hilarious.

Alas, they didn't take advantage of the opportunity, but it's still a lot of fun.

Random trivia: one bottle of Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, one shot of Eagle Rare, and two South Paw Lights, one Bond movie watched previously, too late being how up I am, and one happy continuation of the series.

Season 2 Episode 2 ('Who Mourns For Adonais?')

Odd, how the last line of the episode made me like it a lot less. But more on that in a second... basically, some guy had recently read 'Lord of Light' by Roger Zelazny, and then got asked to write a Star Trek episode, and he did an appropriately schlocky 60s TV take on beings with powers-that-seem-magical posing as gods.

The Enterprise is checkin' out a previously-un-checked-out planet, and a massive energy field in the shape of a hand grabs onto it. A Grecian looking fellow then declares that the hand is never going to give them up, because he is the god Apollo and they are returned unto the rightful fold and can now be what humanity was always meant to be, namely, subservient to him.

Kirk, McCoy, Chekov(!), Scotty, and the episode's silly-headed-bimbo teleport down to the planet, to deal with him directly, while Spock is tasked with figuring out how to kill the fist-fucking energy field from aboard the ship. Apollo demands that they all worship him, they all have no truck with that, except the bimbo because she is a Star Trek chick who is not a main character, which means that she is just a bucket of hormones, pheremones, and don't-want-to-be-alones, and is therefore ripe for the plucking.

And the plot progresses; watch the episode if you want the specifics. You know how it's going to turn out; it's basically another Cold War metaphor, with the bad-guy offering/imposing every physical need being met in return for complete subservience. Hint: Stalin never wins, in Star Trek episodes.

The thing that was really annoying - the aforementioned final line of the episode - was that after all was said and done, and they'd conquered the 'god' so they could bounce, after the bimbo redeemed herself and Spock did great work with calculations, was that maybe it would have been okay to just be a little subservient. Which is like...

I mean, if he'd thought that was a good idea at any point in the preceding 50 minutes, the episode could have been completely different, the tragedy could have been averted, it could have avoided being another same-ole plot and done something interesting... or not. There's no way to know, there's basically nothing to know, because it is fiction and only what is actually fictionalized has any reality.

But the episode proceeds down its inevitable procession because that is a compromise Kirk can't make, and subservience is never acceptable, freedom can never be compromised, bla bla bla. To invalidate that assumption that underlies not only this episode but most every episode with a similar premise which is a decent number of episodes in the first season, as well as this 'un... it just felt lame. Like, why even bother being such a dick about your principles, if after you're done being a dick, you're going to be all "Well, maybe my principles aren't that great, eh? Oh well! Onward!"

I feel like you should probably settle on your principles first, and then act on them, personally.

Season 2 Episode 1 ('Amrok Time')

I think I saw Spock looking at porn, on this one. At least, he totally had some chick on his little screen and looked totally ashamed and hid it, when Kirk walked in. It was sort of adorable.

That's pretty much the tone of this whole episode, outside of the whole combat-to-the-death/Kirk-disobeying-Star Fleet Command thing. Apparently... Vulcans go full-on crazy when it is time to fuck. Yes, that was crass. So was the episode, a little bit, in its adorable sixties fashion.

Basically, Spock goes batshit-crazy cuz it is his mating season, so the Enterprise drops everything to get him married, and then it turns out his bride doesn't want him, so he has to fight Shatner to the death. Clear everything up? Probably not. But you can watch it and fill in the gaps that way, if you care!

Not Cold-War-y at all, and relatively unique so far, it wasn't really an interesting episode but it was at least not the same old crap. Bodes well for the new season!

Random Stats: a bottle of Argentenian wine, one shot of scotch, and two drinks with ginger-infused Skyy that really sucked.

Season 1 Episode 30 ('Operation: Annihilate!')

Second-cheesiest monsters so far; they went out on a high(low) note, in this season. Not quite as ridiculous as that Godzilla-monster-suit that Shatner went toe-to-toe with earlier, these pancakes are almost as bad. Yes, they look like pancakes. When they are captured, they kind of look like plastic pancakes made of blood-bags gone bad, when they are dead, they just look like pancakes. And they flop like one would imagine pancakes would, if pancakes ever dropped off of the ceiling.

Other than that, it was a decent episode. They do a psyche-out thing with Spock's blindness that is a little cheesy but it was fun anyways. They also killed Kirk's sister-in-law and brother, but left him a living son-in-law or nephew or whatever your brother's kid is. Did latter series ever do anything with that? Would seem a shame, a bit, if they didn't. There ought to be at least one appearance of Kirk Jr. in The Next Generation, I'd think.

Basic set-up: The Enterprise is investigating a civilization-killing phenomenon that, if it continues on its course, should be showing up next on a planet that it turns out Kirk's brother is currently living on. They check it out, and it turns out that it has, in fact, turned up. D'oh! The phenomenon turns out to be plastic pancakes that take over the nervous system of their host-bodies and cause them intense pain if they don't do what the pancakes want. What the pancakes want is to kill everyone and move on to the next star-system, which is a bit short-sighted/limited as far as parasitic relationships go, but certainly not unheard of in nature.

Good times! I finished writing up the first season! Awesome!

Random stats: 30 or 29 episodes watched, depending on how you count, 8 shots of Prairie Organic Vodka I'm hoping I don't regret tomorrow, 1 good time for 2 episodes tonight, and 100-percent completion of the first season. Now that I'm done with the re-watching of the last 3 episodes, I look forward to checking out season 2.

Season 1 Episode 29 ('The City On the Edge of Forever')

Back in the saddle again! I'm not gonna lie, it is hard to get motivated to re-watch these episodes that I had too many shots for to write about, a few months ago. But I'm doing it! I have the work ethic of a drunken mule. This one is probably my favorite in this season.

The Enterprise runs into some weird time-distorting thing that is messing up physical reality, and causing the whole ship to shake and rock like it always does whenever anything bad happens. In the course of treating Tsulu after a particularly jarring shock, Bones jabs himself with a drug that makes him crazy, beats everybody up and ends up transporting down to the center of the time-disturbance.

To make a long story short and avoid any spoilers (I know, that's silly, the show's been out for 40 years, I don't care; writing about entertainment shouldn't just be describing the plot, dammit... ), Shatner and Spock end up following Bones to 1930s Earth, so the episode mostly takes place during the Depression, and it also plays with time-travel in a way that could have been interesting. Time-travel stories always involve trying to undo changes to time that wreak havoc.

This one is, sadly, no different. There could have been a dichotomy between a change that erases the future, but creates a better future, or maintaining the status quo but making the future suck. This episode was written by Harlan Ellison, who is the most negative fucker to ever write anything, and doesn't believe in the possibility of better futures, only shitty ones. So they didn't go that route, and instead made it a choice between personal preference and duty. Just more of the same, but still, more complicated/emotional than most of the episodes in this initial season of Star Trek.

Took the Cold War thing to a whole new level, tho. That was interesting. I mean, this show has mostly been a paranoid, xenophobic, reflection of Post-War culture. This one actually dealt with The War head-on, in a way. Not in a philosophically interesting way or anything, but it was nice to see the stuff that had been subtext pop up in the overt-text.

Great episode, relatively speaking. I'm not sure how great it is in comparison to other episodes of other television shows (or even other seasons) but it totally stands out in this season of Star Trek as an emotionally complicated (for 60s TV) and intellectually interesting story.

Episode 27 ('The Alternative Factor')

Sort of topical, in that it revolves around an alternative universe composed of anti-matter. Tho I suppose which one was anti-matter would depend on which one's matter you were composed of. The science in this episode is a little super-ridiculous.

Examining things and doing science, as the Enterprise is wont to do, the universe 'winks out' for a bit. Which is apparently a technical term. They keep using it that way, anyways, and with the kind of gravitas that one would say 'nuclear holocaust,' so it must be, right?

Somehow related to the winking-out phenomenon is a dude and his crash-landed space craft. The dude's name is Lazarus. I keep looking for symbolism there, but I can't find any. Which is weird. Lazarus is one of those names that no one uses except for when they're being symbolic.

Anyway, I don't want to 'spoil the plot' but the science continues to be wacky, while maintaining internal cohesion, and in the end, the universe is saved from implosion by a Lazarus who willingly accedes to an eternity of struggle and pain to make it so. Sad when that happens.

The vibe, as far as the Enterprise goes, is almost more WW2 movie than Cold War, in this one, with Star Fleet command telling Shatner that he's on his own, and has to figure out the source of this 'winking out' that could very well be a precursor to invasion.

Good episode. Glad I finally got around to watching it again so I could write it up. Hopefully, we'll finish up with this first season shortly; I've already seen the rest of the episodes, as noted in the previous post, but I'm having to watch them again so I can actually like, remember them, as I ran through them all in one night a few weeks ago and didn't write 'em up when they were fresh in my then-addled head.

Random statistics: 2 Lazari, 4 shots, second time watching, 1 universe saved.

It's Been A Long Time Since I Rock n' Rolled...

... I haven't updated this in forever, because I watched three episodes in a row while doing way more shots with Shatner than I should have, and wasn't together enough to post about it. I haven't decided if I'm going to re-watch those episodes, or just roll on and start season two, yet. Just thought I'd provide some closure, on the off-chance that someone was reading this. :)