Star Trek: The Original Series Season 3
Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2
SPOILERS AHOY
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301: Spock's Brain 1968 September 20
(First watched 2008-04-18) Â "His brain is gone!"
So the man's surviving without his brain. Â Is it REALLY necessary to install a remote-control system to make him walk around?
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302: The Enterprise Incident
(First watched 2009-04-04) Â Pretty flagrant aggressive action on the part of the Federation here. Â Kirk and Spock use subterfuge to steal the cloaking device, but it's perfectly clear who did it. Â Considering how at odds the Federation and Romulans are, it's surprising this didn't cause some much bigger blowback.
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304: The Paradise Syndrome
(First watched 2009-04-08) Â Hey, finally the "I am Kirok!" episode.
I guess this is as close as Kirk gets to a "The Inner Light" situation, living another life, though it doesn't last for decades as for Picard. Â So really in that regard it's more like a couple Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis episodes I can think of.
Busy episode for Kirk, though. Â Becomes a god, medicine man, husband, father-to-be, and widower within the span of one episode.
Was it really such a surprise to Salish that the god Kirok could bleed? Â I mean, he eats and breathes and behaves in all other ways like a regular person. Â Why not bleed? Â Even if he was a god, it would seem he'd taken complete human form in a biological sense.
Spock was talking about the logical choices and all, but he really seemed to blow it by blowing the engines. Â They had to waste 2 months crawling around. Â Perhaps with full power they could've used those two months to devise an alternate plan, or go get more help, rather than requiring last-minute use of a Preserver device.
Preservers are an interesting concept. Â An ancient race that moved life forms around from planet to planet to help things not die off. Â McCoy says it helps explain why there are so many humanoids around, but not really; it would only help explain why there are humans around on other worlds, or whatever other duplicates.
And featuring... white people as Native Americans!
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305: And the Children Shall Lead
(First watched 2009-04-09) Â I like the goofiness of being able to summon a spirite/energy being/whatever by just replaying the summoning ceremony's audio. Â I guess we viewers are damned lucky the glowing guy in robes didn't appear for all of us.
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306: Is There in Truth No Beauty?
(First watched 2009-04-11) Â Hey, Dr. Pulaski! Â And she's blind! Â Funny how they made such a big deal about how even with an advanced sensor dress, a blind person shouldn't pilot the ship. Â A biiit different from the first season of TNG when Geordi and his VISOR helmed the Enterprise-D.
I think maybe TOS and I have a language problem. Â Sometimes there's a concept that I think I can grasp, but they explain it in what seems an off way. Â For instance, I can buy that there's something weird about the Medusans that can cause many humanoids to go insane upon seeing them... but to just repeatedly call that "ugliness". Â Come oooon.
The end confused me a bit. Â Kirk seemed to be making accusations without certainty, and I wasn't happy with the lack of resolution. Â If she wasn't trying to kill Spock by influencing his mind, he was just being a big asshole. Â If she was, it doesn't seem a good idea to just happily send her on her way after she helps him recover.
The Spock/Kollos melding was pretty interesting. Â And gives Nimoy one of his few chances to use a very different demeanor with Spock.
Standard Kirk move of the week: When called upon to create a distraction so big that it will distract Dr. Jones from telepathically noticing things... of course Kirk's solution is to try flirting. Â Which fails.
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307: Spectre of the Gun
(First watched 2009-04-13) Â More half-assed logic from Spock that turns out to be absolutely correct. Â Their knockout gas doesn't work, and he concludes this means they're in an unreal situation. Â OK, that's fair. Â But from there he determines that things are only as real as they believe them to be... based on what? Â Maybe their alien captors just replaced their knockout mixture with high tech. Â Maybe it's a simulation that prevents dangerous toxins from being created, but where bullets are just as real. Â With this kind of logic, Spock would end up dead in a Reg Barclay holodeck production.
I've got the benefit of having seen more Star Trek than these characters, but I saw the "it was a test to see if you'd kill" thing coming from a mile away.
I kind of like the way that using building fronts at a skewed angle was both a way to make the sets cheap and easy, and part of an incomplete alien recreation.
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308: Day of the Dove
(First watched 2009-04-15) Â Another energy being. Â This one seems to go about things in a needlessly complicated way. Â It needs to feed on hatred, and can manipulate people's perceptions to help get it. Â Given that, wouldn't it have been simpler to just use the crew of one ship against itself, rather than needing to bring together a small portion of the Enterprise's crew against Klingons? Â And what was with going at extremely high warp? Â If the dilithium crystals busted they weren't going to actually reach anyplace, and putting the ship in danger would end the game right quick.
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309: For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky 1968 November 8
(First watched 2008-04-29) Â Meeting a species for the first time, deciding to stay and marrying one, divorcing one and leaving all on the same day? Â Isn't that a bit fast, Bones?
Having no prior symptoms, discovering you've got a rare condition that gives you one year to live, immediately displaying symptoms, and finding/applying a cure all on the same day? Â Isn't that a bit fast, Bones?
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310: The Tholian Web
(First watched 2009-04-16) Â I've seen episodes that follow this up, books, comics... but finally I see the original. Â It's interesting, given the title of the episode, Â how incidental the Tholians are to the main plot. Â They look weird and set up their fancy web, but essentially it just sets a time limit on the Enterprise's attempted rescue activities, as many other things could have.
Kirk's taped message to Spock and McCoy in case of his demise really anticipated their difficulties. Â And both of them too embarrassed to admit having watched it.
Kirk floating around through things was kind of goofy, but I guess really no more so than other instances of people being "out of phase" in Star Trek or other sci-fi.
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