Star Trek: The Original Series Season 1

SPOILERS AHOY

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122: Space Seed 1967 February 16

(First watched 2008-03-03)

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123: A Taste of Armageddon 1967 February 23

(First watched 2008-03-04)  Interesting concept.  A culture makes war more survivable by having the fights be false, but the deaths real, so the society isn't harmed.  This makes war drag on forever since it's so survivable.

However, and I suppose as the very first season of Star Trek it's got to have some leeway, but... it really wasn't the place of the ambassador or Enterprise crew to be forcing themselves on this society and changing their way of life just because they think it's awful.  Prime Directive, sir!  Also, I was sure it was going to be revealed later on that the General Order 24 thing was a big bluff... but it wasn't.  So Starfleet actually has a numerical designation for an order to destroy the entirety of a planet's surface?  And Kirk was going to use it if the society they'd been meddling with didn't let the handful of captives go?  What the hell?

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124: This Side of Paradise 1967 March 2

(First watched 2008-03-05)  Boy oh, did those flowers ejaculating spores onto people look ridiculous.

I found myself wondering why Kirk was at first immune to the spores, and even once affected was sound enough of mind to be able to fight it off.  I suppose it's a difference between old and new Trek.  In a recent Trek show, there'd have been some eventual explanation about how his blood type was resilient and yada yada yada, but in old Trek he can just get away with it because he's Mr. Awesome.

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125: The Devil in the Dark 1967 March 9

Though everyone (but Spock) started out a bit blood-thirsty, this becomes a really positive sort of Trek story.  Two species so different they're not even based on the same element start a relationship of accidental murder and retaliatory murder, but manage to reach an understanding and peace once a means of communication (Spock again) becomes available.

I notice his Vulcan telepathic capabilities seem stronger than Vulcan stuff I'm more familiar with.  A few episodes back he controlled a guard on the other side of a door, and in this one he established a lower-level mind meld with the Horta from a small distance away.  To get the best connection he had to place his hands on it, though.

McCoy's line on patching up the Horta with thermal concrete was great.  "By golly Jim, I'm beginning to think I can cure a rainy day!"

There must be something really weird about Janus VI to cause the Hortas to evolve such a weird trait as a mass die-off and birth of a new generation with a single protector every 50,000 years.

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126: Errand of Mercy 1967 March 16

Interesting that the Organians make the claim that in the future the Klingons and Federation will get along great, in that it took more than 20 years from the airing of this for us to see such a future in The Next Generation.

I guess the Organians don't have an equivalent of the Prime Directive... or at least are as loose with it as Kirk is.  Meddling with the affairs of lesser-developed peoples seems to be a no-no, even if it's for preventing bloodshed.

I didn't realize it until checking Wikipedia, but apparently this is the first appearance of the Klingons.

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127: The Alternative Factor 1967 March 23

Sorry, this episode just loses me.  That there's two versions of this guy trading places, OK idea.  But... the eventual danger they talk about is what will happen if the matter and antimatter versions meet.  However, they've been going at this a while and it hasn't happened.  They end up at each other's throats indefinitely and it doesn't happen.  When was it supposed to happen?  And wouldn't locking them together make something like that more likely instead of less?

Also silly-points to paranoid Kirk and the admiral or commodore or whoever at Starfleet he was talking to.  An unknown phenomena occurs, and his best guess at what it means is that it's a prelude to invasion?  That's your #1 guess with nothing to go on?  Sure, it might be a good idea to take precautions in case that is what's going on, but they think that's the most likely scenario?

I also wonder if that effect (all gravity/magnetism/other such things momentarily not functioning) was really galaxy-wide or universe-wide as they suggested?  And if so, what awful effects might it have caused far beyond the scope of this episode?

Also, what was with the talk of the Lazaruses (Lazari?) fighting for eternity, until the end of time?  Unless I missed something, they're still fairly normal humanoids.  Won't they just starve and dehydrate pretty quickly?

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128: The City on the Edge of Forever 1967 April 6

Great episode, but it bugs me that their ultimate purpose is to save the future by nipping a peace movement in the bud.  Spock says something about Edit having "the right idea at the wrong time", but it still seems awfully militaristic.

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129: Operation: Annihilate! 1967 April 13

(First watched 2008-03-12) Kirk and crew vs... what appears to be fried eggs.

In retrospect it seems weird that for as big a character as Jim Kirk is, his brother Sam's actor only ever gets to portray a corpse.  *After checking Wikipedia*  Shit, that was just Shatner with some makeup on?  I guess they didn't show him long enough for me to tell.

Though Spock's blindness was only temporary (thanks to being the show's resident magical non-human), it was still pretty foolish of them to rush him into testing the extreme brightness thing before they got the full results from their first test, which indicated they didn't need to go so visibly bright.

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Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2