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.

Season 1 Episode 26 ('Errand of Mercy')

Another super-powered mentalist civilization, but this time, rather than looking like flamboyantly gay Roman gods when unmasked, they looked like normal Roman/Greek/whatever dudes when pretending, and like absolutely nothing when not putting on a show for regular humans.

In a time of uncertainty, with the Klingons threatening war, the Enterprise is sent to secure a strategically important planet before the Klingons can. Federation records suggest it is a backwards planet with very low levels of technology. Kirk and Spock beam down to offer them the fruits of Federation tech in exchange for resisting the Klingons, but while K&S are 'negotiating' the Klingon fleet arrives and establishes a military occupation of the planet.

The 'people' on the planet keep being all 'Stop being dicks to one another, we're not going to let anyone, Klingon or Federation, commit violence,' and Kirk keeps being all 'You guys are pussies; I am going to kill every Klingon in the galaxy to keep you safe, but you don't deserve it, because you have no spine!' The head of the Klingons is very Klingon-y.

In the end, the super-powered beings on the planet tell them all to go fuck themselves, because they are super-powered and can do that, and the Federation and the Klingons end up having to chill the fuck out.

This was the first ep I'd seen Klingons in, and it makes more sense than the Next Generation Klingons - I'd been wondering how some civilization of aliens completely unconnected to humanity managed to have homeworlds named Romulus and Remus and all. In this incarnation of Star Trek, the Klingons are basically just humans. There's no reason to believe they're not a splinter sect of humanity that has a warlike culture; basically, they look and act like some sort of analog to the Mongols, rather than being a different tree entirely from humanity, they're just different branches from the same trunk. I wonder why they changed that for the Next Generation?

Anyways, Kirk - while deploring war - is totally all about waging one, because the parties involved in the war have the right to make that decision for themselves, and that crux is the basic conflict around which the moral of the episode revolves. I found it annoyingly reminded me of an argument I continue to have with people who use ad-blocking software. Although at least Kirk seemed to have a moral leg to stand on; users of ad-blocking shit don't. And the stakes are a lot lower, so... bah, nevermind.

Good episode.

Random trivia: three shots of 100-proof root-beer flavored Smirnoff and 4 shots of 70-proof ginger infused Skyy. The Smirnoff is much tastier. Good times.

Season 1 Episode 25 ('The Devil In the Dark')

The Enterprise is sent to investigate a mining planet that's recently acquired a rather high mortality rate, in this one. It turns out a silicon-based lifeform is responsible. In a delightful turn of events, the Federation is able to make a deal with the thingy so it and its can live well, while the Feds can keep mining the shit they need.

There were a couple of things that stood out to me during this episode that I totally wanted to talk about but, to be honest, I've forgotten what they were. It was a solid ep, and it was nice that they were looking at non-carbon-based lifeforms (it may even have been amazing; it's hard for me to know exactly how cutting-edge this show was, coming at it 40 years later and having grown up on its offspring, but even now, you don't see a lot of TV rocking the non-carbon-based plot).

I think this may have been the first time I heard Bones say "I'm a doctor, now a(n) [x]" and that's a pretty significant milestone. The 'bad guy' was amazingly reminiscent of the dessert in that Monty Python ep that plays tennis with Scotland. It was nice that the plot resolved itself with advancing humanity and foreign-life-form finding a resolution that let both sides get what they wanted/needed.

I can't think of anything else to talk about.

Random trivia: 1 shot of Hendrick's gin, 1 shot of Clontarf, three shots of Elijah Craig 18-yr, one Schmirnoff (sp?) 100-proof root-beer & Pepsi Wild Cherry, three Canadian Club-plus-the-aforementioned-Pepsi-cherry, and three episodes watched on my Android phone rather than the computer. Honestly, after you get used to the screen-size (which takes like, a minute), it tends to be MORE engrossing. When I'm watching these on my PC, I find it really hard to not do other things, and keep getting side-tracked. Watching an ep on the phone, I'm just staring at the phone. It works out pretty well.

Season 1 Episode 25 ('A Taste of Paradise')

There are two tacks I could take, here: the dead horse of Cold-Warisms, and the fresh young foal of making-me-think. Let's do a plot summary, and then see if we can remember what the latter was. Cool?

The Enterprise is checking on a colony that should be dead, cuz' there's crazy bad-rays (these are like X-rays, only they kill you (X-rays probably do too, given enough of them, in which case, bad-rays are defined by there being enough of them)), only when they roll up (beam down) they discover that the colonists aren't just fine, they're in better health than they were when they left Earth four years previous. To the point that people with appendectomies now have fully functional appendixes.

This magic is due to a magic plant that spits out magic spores that absorb the bad-rays and make happy, perfect, tranquil, peaceful, blissful, hippy-tastic people. EVEN VULCANS! To be fair, while the transition to emotion-feeling awesomeness is pleasant for humans, it briefly hurts for Vulcans, apparently. So they are still better. Or worse.

Which is where the whole made-me-think thing comes in to play: Kirk has some amusing lines in this one, including a few that basically can be summarized as, "Wait, you're happy? What are you, fucking insane? We're not meant to be happy. You should be SUFFERING right now!" And on the face of it, that's kind of a dickish thing to say. Kirk basically states that he thinks his crewmen, and humans in general, should be confronted with struggle and hatred and misery and toil and sadness, and they're all crazy to prefer being immortal (presumably), in good health (definitely) and happy.

My gut reaction was to side with the converted: fuck you, guy, if you want to make everyone suffer. I mean, really, what's the harm? Isn't that what we're all working towards? Not being miserable, even being actively happy? That's a good thing.

And I still don't side with Kirk, but I started thinking about myself, and my own life, and in my own life, I'm doing SHOTS with Shatner. For a specific reason: I don't really see the point to life, and the shots (as well as, to a lesser but probably important extent, the Shatner) make it bearable while I'm trying to find some self-sustaining reason to keep breathing.

Part of the reason I am not dead is that pro-actively dying inevitably involves some pain, and is not entirely sure regardless of methods. I've forgotten where I was going with this, so I'm going to just forge ahead and come up with a NEW reaction to the falling apart of my faith in the purpose of life, I guess. That was an aside, though I did not put it in parentheses, so it may have been hard to tell.

Anyway, living is not innately rewarding, at least to me. So being happy thanks to some spore that made me perfectly healthy and perfectly happy would mostly be exactly like my life when I'm drunk, but would preclude hangovers and would also mean I had no reason to drink (because we drink for the same reason that we commit suicide or tell jokes: because doing so is more satisfying than not doing so).

Being completely happy means having no reason to do anything. And if you're completely happy because you worked for it and suffered to get there, well, that's an accomplishment. Cuz' it's hard as fuck, if me or Kim Kardashian are anything to go by (ironic? or straight? You be the judge...). That's probably a really satisfying place to be. But if you're just happy because of nothing... while it's nice for you, what was the point? You might as well just be dead. There was nothing there before, and there's nothing there now, you're just a thing. You're functional, not living.

So maybe Kirk is right, even if he IS an asshole. Either way, I'm drunk. And I think that's a positive thing.

Cold War-shit: I'm not going to go into it, I'm just going to note that this episode also had some Cold War tropes living large, and I want to know that in prose, because I am really amused by how many of these eps do, and I think I'm going to revisit that after I've watched the whole first season, and just tally up the ratio of 'any-age sci-fi' to 'totally written in the Cold War-era sci-fi' in the first season of Star Trek. Was that really all one sentence?

Random stats: 1 swig from the 100-proof root-beer vodka bottle, two shots of Canadian Club, two Canadian Club and Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi drinks, two shots of Grant's scotch, and... possibly some more shit. Not a lot of food, I can tell you that much. Also, one never-spoken-of love-affair between Spock and a chick who later ended up hippy-spore-food, which was awesome. And a shit-ton of laundry done, tonight. Seriously, I did a lot of laundry. It's nice to have clean clothes n' sheets n' stuff, again. I did it about three days after I needed to do it.

Season 1 Episode 24 ('A Taste of Armageddon')

I have to be up in a few hours, so I don't have time for my usual ramble. This episode has the Enterprise couriering a diplomat to a planet, in order to open diplomatic relations with the civilization centered there, so that a treaty-port can be opened.

The basic premise is pretty similar to actual historical situations; they just Trekified the opening of Japan, kind of. Yay, gunboat diplomacy! Then they threw a further twist in there by having the Japan-analogue be five centuries into an endless interplanetary war governed by computers. The computers determine the number of casualties their virtual attacks would have had, if they'd been real, and then the citizens of the two warring planets who are deemed casualties by the computers report to suicide stations and off themselves.

Which was a fun concept. The moral of the story ends up being that nice, controlled, clean 'virtual wars' are way worse than real wars, because they can go on indefinitely and are not offensive enough to make peace desirable.

All in all, decent plot, fun scenery/set-design, decent actors in the guest-star spots, and a good time.

Random trivia: This is the second episode I've watched without drinking. I feel a bit guilty about that.

Season 1 Episode 23 ('SpaceSeed')

More of the same, in that it was an overdone sci-fi plot done as well or better as one would expect from a TV show in the 60s. Interesting in that it revolved around eugenics; I just heard a show on WRIR last week about the birth-control chick that ended up involving discussion of the eugenics movement in the early 19th century.

The Enterprise discovers a starship full of cold-sleep cats from the 1990s. They end up being ubermensch guys who were the result of a eugenics program that led to the last world war on earth. Fun stuff.

As all genetically superior beings must be, they are kind of douchebaggy and don't care about souls or people or any of the glorious things that we, as Americans/members of the Federation who aren't Vulcan, care about. So there's some fightin' and some disagreein' and in the end, they end up losing to us glorious soul-filled people who know what's what as far as important shit is concerned.

Yayness.

Random stats: Diet Mtn Dew with scotch, one, with ginger-infused vodka one, with reposado tequila two, with water one; straight reposado one, and straight scotch one. Amazingly, feel reasonably good NOW, after watching the ep, after feeling bad all day. The healing powers of alcohol are awesome in their might.

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.

Season 1 Episode 21 ('Court Martial')

Two things, right off the bat, so I don't forget: a.) it is possible to be too civilized, and b.) there's nothing like Cold War-era pop culture to demonstrate that our drive to fight communism led us to do the bad things that we despised in our communist opponent. The latter might be a bit of a stretch; we'll get to that in a moment.

First, let's describe the episode: After an 'ion storm' - which lead to the death of a crew member - damages the Enterprise, they hit a base for repairs. Filing a report on the incident, it is discovered that the computer record disagrees with Kirk's version of events and suggests that Kirk either wilfully or negligently killed the poor crew member. The head poobah is all, "Look, you dumb fucker, smile, nod, take a fall, and we'll refrain from locking you up, and just give you a shit job on the ground on some planet somewhere." Kirk is, obviously, all "Fuck you guys. I didn't do anything wrong; it wasn't MY fault!"

And we get a courtroom drama, where Kirk - with the assistance of a brilliant legal mind who is old and curmudgeonly and doesn't like computers - attempts to prove he ain't done nothin' wrong, while his ex-gf (now a high-falutin' attorney in the prosecutor's office of the Federation JAG) is forced to go against the wishes of her heart and try to prove he's a total dick.

Somewhat predictable, in that I sort of guessed what the dillio was early on, discarded it as too cheesy, but kept coming back to it as the only possible reconciliation of the facts that would lead to a positive ending. But who gives a shit? Predictability is a plus, as far as TV-shows are concerned. I think. All the evidence points that way, anyways. It was a fun episode. There was some stuff I was curious about that wasn't resolved - Kirk apparently tells a bald-faced lie to get the one-up on a baddy, and that seems out of character for him, generally speaking, and I'd also just like to know what the object-of-that-lie's reaction was to the whole situation - but the important shit is resolved in that by the end of the episode, the status quo is restored, and Kirk is an awesome good guy who ain't done nothin' wrong.

Okay: too civilized? This is a throway thing I noticed, and not really important (even by the standards of this blog), but apparently, in the future... justice has abandoned the gavel for the dinner-bell. Specifically, that 'ding... ding...' thing that Jeeves-esque "Butlers of the Old School" do in super-old movies. It was absolutely ridiculous, watching the proceedings of this super-serious Tribunal get underway with this silly sound. Justice is not a pussy, and justice does not serve cucumber sandwiches. The Federation has obviously become "too politically correct" or something. THE REPUBLICANS ARE RIGHT!

Okay, they're not. Neither are the Democrats, but that's not important now, and don't call me Surely.

Re: the whole 'as bad as the thing we hate' half of the shit I wanted to talk about... I now want to talk about it less, because it just seems like an awful lot of effort, and I'm so over this blog-entry. I want to drink more.

But in short, the Federation are the good guys. And here in this magical future wonderland, they're supposed to be enlightened and full of win. Instead, they're trying to shitcan the greatest err... Naval?... mind to ever enlist in a service, because they believe in computers, not people. And they pre-judge court trials. And they care more about the perception of their branch of service than they do about justice. Like, you could probably change less than twenty words in this hour of television and have a plot that demonstrated the evils of Soviet Russia.

And while that was not, maybe, a thing that would leap out at someone who wasn't already sort of weirded out by the whole Cold-Warness of the whole show, so far, the tiny way in which it was true for Star Trek is really easy to find in reality. Virtually no one argues that the fact that the USSR tried/claimed-to-try to feed all of the hungry, educate all of the populace, ensure both employment and subsistence to all of the populace, and ensure growth as far as economic, physical, and spiritual well-being was concerned, was a bad thing.

Well, okay, the right-wing in the U.S. is now probably totally capable of seeing a government with those goals as a bad thing.

But anyways, during the 60s, none of that was why communism was presented as being bad: The Red Menace wasn't the a menace because it wanted to give people bread. It was a menace because it dehumanized people, was autocratic, was dishonest and hypocritical, and ruined the lives of good people.

And all of those criticisms can be applied to both Star Fleet in this episode, and McCarthyist politics. Also, PATRIOT Act, etc., I have no interest in talking about current-day politics on this blog, but if you want to draw parallels, you can make a case for 'em.

That is amusing.

Season 1 Episode 20 ('Tomorrow Is Yesterday')

Best episode yet! This one was totally fantastic! No greater-power-with-ESP douchebaggery, and there weren't any annoying characters or tropes, mostly.

That said, it was also probably the most ridiculous episode, from a technical point of view. Vive la ridiculousness!

I'm a little drunk, due to the shots, so I don't know if I'll be able to get in all I wanted to, with this textual synopsis, here. But I'm going to try. First off, thinking about this episode has me amused by how it contrasts with earlier episodes. This one is the first one to really just make no sense at all, from a physics-logic standpoint (I think; for the record, I'm not a physicist); partially, the earlier episodes avoided that conflict/hazard by being... not about science. Writing this makes me realize that while 'Star Trek' is considered the hard sci-fi god, and 'Star Wars' is considered the fantasy sci-fi god, there hasn't really been a lot of difference between them, in these early Star Trek episodes. There hasn't been a lot of hard science - at least from a plot standpoint - going on.

This episode of Star Trek, however, is rooted in actual science. Bad science, I think - for one thing, they refer to what I think is a black hole as a 'black star' - but still, the plot revolves not around fantastical beings but the concrete effects of physical actions. They get caught in a 'black star' and escaping it launches them backwards into time, where they have to deal with the actual effects of time travel, and - importantly - not just the drama of dealing with personalities.

I'm tempted to say "This! This is what science fiction should be!" but that would be a.) a little overly enthusiastic, and b.) diss space opera, so I won't. I do think this episode is the best representative so far of what Star Trek should be, or at least, is viewed as being. Personalities are neat, and I don't think 'hard' sci-fi is defined by a lack of personality; Robert A. Heinlein is probably my favorite author (Neal Stephenson is seriously fighting for the title, but I don't think either would really care), and his stories manage to be both 'hard' in their being grounded in actual science and also predominantly about people and personalities, not predominantly about physics.

But the preceding 19 episodes have been about as 'hard' as my cock while I'm thinking about your mom (so sorry for that, but after thinking it up, I couldn't not share it), and have been personality-driven in the way that soap operas are, not in the way that non-embarassing stories are. 'Tomorrow Is Yesterday' managed to give the semblance, at least, of being about actual science, not ESP or magic rays, and also do the Heinleinian thing of just looking at how that science would effect actual people in an actual circumstance.

I've spent an awful lot of time saying "This episode is not painful to watch," but that's basically what it boils down to. It was interesting people who were likable reacting to an interesting situation in an internally consistent universe. That hasn't really been the case, a lot of the time, to date.

Arggggghhhh! There was something else I wanted to mention, but I've forgotten what it was. That's just frustrating, dammit. Oh! I remembered! The time period! As I snickered at the show's usage of the term 'black star' I also was reminded of how amazingly old this show is. Not, like, ancient - I guess 'amazingly' was probably a bad term - but like... I dunno, it's a lot like thinking about Heinlein's stuff. It reads as good science fiction today. Like, after we went to the moon. After we have satellites in orbit giving us global communication at near real-time. After we have people living in space in a space station. The fact that it was conceived and produced before any of that was true... and still rings true, as a satisfying narrative... is amazing to me. That Heinlein wrote 'The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress' three years before we actually even landed on the moon is awesome. That this episode deals with time warps and black holes ('stars') and shit, before we'd landed on the moon, is less impressive but still impressive.

Less impressive? Let me tell you why: The resolution doesn't really make any sense. They put a bunch of people into a place where they already exist and rather than making both versions explode into pudding because they're occupying the same space, they just forget shit. I've read a lot of time-travel sci-fi in my day (well, at least a bit; I get annoyed by it, because it always tends to travel the same paths, so I actively avoid it, but I've still hit most of the high points as far as respected sci-fi with time travel goes, I think) and this episode's take on time travel issues is almost insulting in its lack of any real logic at all. No matter what Spock says.

So we're left with something of a paradox (apropos, considering the time-travel plot) in that this was the most satisfying and 'hard' sci-fi feeling episode to date, despite it being the first one I could argue with on the grounds of science and logic. Because for once, the crux of the plot didn't revolve around science-as-magic ridiculousness, but instead revolved around science-as-we-know(knew)-it.

Basic plot summary: The Enterprise gets warped back in time, to the 1960s, and beams aboard a historically important Earth-person of the 1960s. Getting back to the future without destroying it is the desired end-point. They get there by way of ridiculousness, but the ridiculousness is satisfying.

Random statistics: 1 50mL bottle of cherry (wild or black; I can't remember) Stolichnaya, 1 shot of Deep Run vodka straight, and 5 vodka tonics constructed of one part Deep Run to two parts Schweppes tonic water; WAY TOO LONG spent rambling about shit on this post, and VERY HAPPY about watching a Star Trek episode that was super-satisfying on all levels (even the ones it was disappointing on) after 19 episodes that fell short of what I expected from the most famous sci-fi series ever.

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.

Season 1 Episode 15 ('Balance of Terror')

Hey, we got Romulans in this one! I was a little confused by that. They seemed indistinguishable from Vulcans? I'm probably just missing something, but as far as I could tell, Romulans were Vulcans in Flash-Gordon-level-kitschy costumes, with an obsession with war and a culture that was - totally inexplicably - based on ancient Rome.

That last bit bothers me, a bit. I mean, seriously? How did they end up being so influenced by Rome when they are a.) obviously not human, with the ears to prove it, and b.) have never been seen by humans. At least, I think that was what was said early on; I might have misheard and they just had never been seen by any currently-living humans, but the impression I got was that there had been a war that had been fought without any real communication/contact other than slaughter and had been finalized via visionless radio-transmissions when both sides had had enough.

Either way, it's weird. The episode actually started out with a wedding underway, which was annoyingly predictable. If you see a wedding going down that gets interrupted by bad shit, you can pretty much bank on the fact that bride or groom is not going to survive the episode; doesn't matter what show or even what genre. That's a trope of tropes, and it was followed to the letter in this 'un.

There was more anti-Spock racism, in this one. Bones seems to have pretty regular issues with Spock/Vulcans, but this was the first ep (as far as I can recall) that had another crewman being all dickish about Spock. It may have been suspicion of Spock personally, rather than all Vulcans; it seemed to revolve around Spock's study of the Romulans? I dunno.

In case you couldn't tell, I was doing other shit while I watched this, namely learning about SSH authentication n' stuff, so while I was paying 85% attention to what was going on in the show, the 15% of time I was reading or doing something on the other PC meant I occasionally missed important stuff. Still, I think I caught the gist of it, and enjoyed the episode.

After the serious Cold War vibe I've been getting from the show already, I'm wondering if the introduction of an enemy that is not communicated with and that exists behind an 'Iron Curtain' neutral zone, and has scary technology, is going to end up reinforcing that. I got a kind of Das Boot vibe from this episode specifically - it seemed very submarine-warfare, as far as the action goes, and it was also kind of about a cloaked/hidden attacker trying to get home, in a way. I haven't seen Das Boot in 17 or 18 years, but at least in a broad way, I'm pretty sure that comparison holds water. Pun totally intended. If not very good.

Random stats: 5 large shots of Boru vodka, 2 hour interregnum between watching the episode and writing about it (I forgot), 1 miserable-ass hangover from last night's multi-booze frenzy of rock shows, clubs, and television shows, and 0 desire to get that fucking drunk again tonight. As far as the episode goes, I can't think of anything interesting that I could throw a number on.

Season 1 Episode 14 ('The Conscience of the King')

I think this was probably my favorite episode, so far. It was also the least "hard sci-fi" episode so far, but I think that's just a coincidence. There's tons of hard sci-fi with decently human stories, just not a lot of it going on in these early episodes of Star Trek.

The Enterprise is informed of a miracle-food crafted by a former acquaintance of Kirk so they rush there, only to find that there a.) is no miracle food, and b.) the former acquaintance thinks that some Shakespearean actor is actually Hitler-in-hiding. Not actually "Hitler" per-se, but a guy who ordered half of a colony's population slaughtered so the other half could survive.

I don't want to be all spoilery, but the Hitler-guy is in fact the guy he's suspected of being. This episode was interesting because he was both burdened by his past, and also a bit unapologetic. The Hitlerization of his character is a bit incomplete; it's hard to tell if he was just a guy in a position of power who had to make a choice, and did make it, even though it sucked, or if he just a douchebag who killed a bunch of people he was predisposed to hate, when it was convenient. They at first suggest the latter, but his own statements suggest the former, and nobody really gainsays him.

Which was nice. I mean, not that the arbitrary killing of people is nice, but it's nice that it's sort of left up in the air. The only definitely wrong person in the whole thing is Hitler-guy's daughter. And blaming her for her wrongness is problematic. I'm not a big fan of grey-areas for their own sake, but this episode hit that sweet spot where we got the moral grey and still got closure. It was satisfying.

Random Statistics: 1 mini-bottle of cognac because I sell the shit now and I thought I should know about it, 2 PBRs at a Frank Turner show because my friend Fontaine is awesome, 200mL of Early Times whiskey because it was a long walk home, and some more Irish vodka (man, that sounds wrong) cuz' there was a Star Trek episode to watch. Yeah, that was just my booze and what I did with my night. I can't think of any other things to say, I'm kind of drunk.

Season 1 Episodes 12 & 13 ('The Menagerie', Pts. I & II)

After Captain Pike (from the pilot episode? You remember, right?) suffers a disfiguring accident rescuing cadets from a busted-up thingummy, Spock decides to kidnap him and take him back to the planet from the pilot, where he can live a peaceful life of illusion with full control of his limbs and a sexy face.

Decent episode, though, having already watched the pilot, the fact that this two-part episode was just a way to get some use out of that footage (you watch the entire thing; it's sort of an episode within an episode, explained away by saying that the inhabitants of the mentalist planet have taken over the viewscreens and are forcing them to see the whole story of what happened to Captain Pike on his first visit) for the broadcast run was a little annoying. There were maybe twenty minutes worth of new footage and new plot, out of the whole 100+ minutes.

All in all, though, it made for some entertaining television, showed Spock doing something that was against regulations which is important for his character development (even if he, possibly tongue-in-cheek, insists that he played it logically all along (a case could be made for that)), and gave some closure to the story of the one-off Captain-that-was.

Thinking too hard about it makes it kind of icky, though. For one thing, Captain Pike and chick-from-pilot, hereafter referred to as Vena because I'm not sure what her name was but I think that was close, both agreed in the pilot that she was too ugly to have any fun in the real world, so the mentalists gave her an illusory Captain Pike to pretend-populate-the-earth with.

Which is creepy in and of itself; I feel like a better course of action would have been for her to leave, and either get some plastic surgery, or just learn to live with being physically a little odd compared to the rest of the (human) chicks in the galaxy. Ugly bitches that DON'T crash-land on alien planets manage to get by in society - maybe they own a few more cats than is usual, but who wants to be usual?

But aside from that, which was already done, what happens now that the real Captain Pike is also on the planet? "Hey baby, now that I'm a disfigured parapalegic, you're good enough for me! Drop that zero-because-he's-imaginary and get with this used-to-be-a hero!" Or do they just never tell her, and live separate but equal lives of illusion? I feel like that wouldn't really work for the mentalists, because they'd like to have some human beings makin' with the fornication and giving them some human babies n' shit. So they're going to interact somehow.

Maybe it's a tightly maintained double-illusion, where she's kept thinking there's no change in her Pike while she unknowingly bangs his parapalegic, metal-entombed body, and he thinks she knows what's up and loves him for his mind? I feel like all of these outcomes are a.) relatively happy for the two people involved but b.) send a really bad message about, y'know, self-image, self-worth, truth, and acceptable compromise. Or maybe a really good one, I guess, depending on your moral stance. I don't think I'd consider any of them optimum, personally.

On the plus side, considering that the first episode began the annoying four or five episode run where every ep was about finding a powerful something, fearing it, and wanting to destroy it, this did at least wrap that up and turn it into a good thing, because they went to the 'villains' from episode one and ended up having them be saviors of a human or two.

Random stats: 2 episodes to show 1 episode of pre-taped content, 4 shots total because I watched the first half last night when I had to work early, and only started drinking for the second half, tonight, and [every time the black-haired chick was on the screen] times I was reminded of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Season 1 Episode 11 ('The Corbomite Maneuver')

I was trying to figure out why my mouse wasn't working properly in XFCE but was working properly in KDE for the first ten or fifteen minutes of this episode, so my eyes weren't on the screen so much, but it seemed like much ado about nothing, at first. They found a box with multicolored sides floating in space. First it came right for 'em, then it followed 'em around, and then they blew it up.

Also, there was a young guy who seemed to suck at his job, working next to Sulu. Bones thought that he sucked at his job so much that Shatner should not let him work, but Shatner had faith in him because he was young and impetuous. Guess how that worked out?

Anyway, it turns out that the weird multicolored box was sort of a 'space buoy' for another civilization, and by blowing it up, the Enterprise demonstrated that they deserve to die. They get ten minutes to make their peace with their gods. At this point, I 'called it' and I ended up right, which was not as satisfying as it would sound, as I just finished a book that I 'called' the same thing in, halfway through, and slogging through the book for the payoff was miserable, so it sort of reminded me of that and got me all out of sorts, when I was proven correct.

Random stuff (non-stats): More of Kirk bitching about having a female yeoman, more Irish vodka, more Natural Light because I have to work tomorrow, but - delightfully - NOT more 'all things that are not us and are powerful must be destroyed,' which was nice. For once.

Season 1 Episode 10 ('Dagger of the Mind')

Most notable feature of this episode: The Vulcan Mind Meld! This ep must've been where that all began. I failed to note the episode in which Spock first used the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, so I'm glad I remembered to mention this one. It's totally a milestone, right up there with the first ep to feature Bones, and the first ep to feature Scotty.

Scotty was not running the transporter, in this one. That made me kind of sad. I like his bad-toupee-and-bad-accent character very much.

The Enterprise is doing a mail-run to a penal colony for the criminally insane, and a 'prisoner' ends up escaping from the prison-planet to the Enterprise. The prisoner turns out to be former-administration on the penal colony, but even before anyone knows that, Bones can feel it in his gut that something ain't right. Kirk n' a femme fatale (who rises above her psychologist-socialist-devil-woman roots by the end of the episode) drop down to investigate, just to shut Bones up.

Can I just say that, so far, this show is about as pro-intellectual as the Tea Party? By which I mean that this show is way anti-intellectual. Smart guys are always bad. Even nominally smart guys, like doctors, are only right when they're getting 'hunches' or whatever, as the whole Bones-insists-something-is-wrong thing makes blatantly clear. Presumably that will change, but if anyone's thinking that this whole anti-intellectual streak in the Tea Party is something that is new to America, early Star Trek episodes will certainly rob them of that misconception.

Good episode, though. I think the series is starting to really find itself, despite the fact that it's still about as secular humanist as Mohammed.

Random stats: 1 Seagrams cherry-whiskey thing, because it was a dollar, 3 big-shots of Boru Irish vodka because the 750ml bottle was on sale (man! It's SO MUCH BETTER than Aristocrat... I know that's faint praise, but it's still true; this shit's decent), 2 defining Vulcanisms exhibited on the show so far, 4 episodes about mental shit (it seems like that number should be higher, but I just ran through the last 9 posts, and that's really it), and 10 episodes that hate Communists in one way or another.