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World’s Worst Trekkie: The Omega Glory, The Ultimate Computer, Bread and Circuses, and Assignment: Earth

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I know I usually tackle this show three episodes at a time, but with only four episodes left in Season 2, I thought it’d be best to lump them all together.

This is important because it means I have to adjust my very scientific ice cream based rating system. I will now be introducing a fourth flavor: mint chocolate chip. And while I know that many of you will be incorrectly thinking yum, mint chocolate chip is, in fact, the worst flavor–yes, even worse than strawberry–because mint is the devil’s food. There is no lower grade on this blog than mint chocolate chip.

“The Omega Glory”

Wow. Wow. I guess I know what’s winning the mint. “The Omega Glory” may very well be the worst Star Trek episode I’ve ever seen, which is saying something. I mean, it’s worse than the Nazi episode. The Nazi episode. It’s almost impressive, how awful this is. The fact that touch telepath Spock mind controls a woman from across the room simply by Intense Staring is the very least of this episode’s problems.

It doesn’t start so bad. The Enterprise discovers that nearly the entire crew of the U.S.S. Exeter were infected with some weird disease which essentially dehydrated them so badly that their bodies collapsed into crystals. Like, yikes. Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Red Shirt, also now infected, beam down to this planet where they’ll be safe so long as they don’t leave. Captain Tracy, sole survivor of the Exeter, pretends to be a good guy for a whole three minutes before vaporizing Red Shirt and holding our heroes hostage. Turns out, the people on Omega IV all live for centuries or longer, and Tracy wants to figure out this Fountain of Youth shit so he can leave the planet and live forever.

Tracy is a weirdly cartoonish bad guy, especially considering how he’s introduced as this legendary Starfleet captain. (It’s almost funny, just how few fucks this dude gives about his entire dead crew.) Of course, Immortality Seeker is a classic villain trope, but it feels bizarrely random here, like they picked it because it was classic, not because it actually makes sense for this character or this story. Still, the aliens are the real problem here: the Yangs (portrayed by white actors) and the Kohms (portrayed by Asian actors). The Kohms are peaceful and “civilized,” while the Yangs are the unreasonable “savages,” something that’s clearly presented as a surprise, like, isn’t it shocking how the brown people are the civilized ones? It’s definitely no accident that Sulu remains onboard for the majority of this racist ass episode.

It turns out that, somehow*, this planet mirrors Earth’s history to a ludicrous degree. Like, the Big Twist is that the Yangs are actually this planet’s equivalent of Yankees, complete with their own version of the U.S. Constitution, the Pledge of the Allegiance, and–I shit you not–a whole ass American flag. Meanwhile, the Kohms are communists, I guess, and unlike Earth (where a war was avoided), the Kohms defeated the Yangs way back when, pushing them out of civilization and taking over their lands. Which is why the Yangs dress, act, and speak the way they do–because they’re also supposed to represent the Native Americans in this world. It’s, whew. It’s real bad.

Honestly, there’s so much gross bullshit here that it’s hard to even know where to begin. Like, how this episode fully embraces several racist Native American stereotypes, or how Cloud William (the Yangs’ leader) speaks in what I guess is meant to be some kinda generic Native American accent? How the Kohms were secretly bad guys all along, kicking the freedom-loving Yangs out of their land, and how the poor white people were just trying to fight for their own home. How incredibly, ludicrously stupid these language parallels are, and how Spock refers to the Kohms as “Asiatics.” Like, dear God. I can’t even get into Kirk’s hypocritical treatment of the Prime Directive here, which is also garbage. I just . . . wow, there really is nothing good to say about this episode. It is appalling. My eyes are weeping blood.

*There are apparently explanations in some tie-in novels, but in the episode itself? Nope.

Chief Asshat: Gene Roddenberry, who actually wrote this shit

MVP: Scotty and Chekov, for having the good sense to not be in this episode

Grade: Mint Chocolate Chip

Line of the Episode:

(about the Vulcan neck pinch)
“Pity you can’t teach me that.”
“I have tried, Captain.”

“The Ultimate Computer”

We’ve already had a ton of supercomputers on TOS, so I may have facepalmed when I saw the name of this episode. Surprisingly, though, I enjoyed “The Ultimate Computer.” The Enterprise is ordered to install the M-5, a system so sophisticated that it only requires a skeleton crew, which very well may put Kirk out of a job. (And you know. Most everyone else on the Enterprise, but nobody really addresses them.) All the job anxiety stuff still feels pretty relevant now, TBH, and I love how the M-5 totally calls Kirk out for assigning himself and Bones to away missions when their presence is definitely not required. Not that this pattern will be changing anytime soon, alas.

For a while, things go great. Then the M-5, having difficulty distinguishing between a real threat and a false alarm, obliterates an empty freighter. That’s enough for Kirk to call the whole thing off; unfortunately, as he insists on saying this out loud, it’s no real surprise when the M-5 easily locks them out of control before killing a dude who gets in the way and then starts attacking Federation vessels for good measure. Bunches of people die. The M-5 is desperately trying to protect itself because its whole purpose is to keep people from dying in space; when Kirk points out the obvious logical inconsistency, the M-5 self-destructs–a logic bomb that works better than others, I think, because it’s actually written as the M-5’s decision, rather than an inability to compute some paradox it would totally be able to compute. Then Kirk saves the day by relying on human intuition, and everything ends happily . . . except for Dr. Richard Daystrum, that is, who created the M-5 and has a full breakdown.

Some things I enjoy: the M-5 was created with human engrams and is, for all intents and purposes, an AI, which is kind of neat. And Daystrum (who will be referenced in multiple other Trek shows), is played by William Marshall, AKA, Blacula. Marshall was a very, very tall man and had a rather nice voice, so I just like listening to him talk–usually to insult Kirk. He has a few moments here I enjoy: his whole “men no longer need die in space” monologue and when he’s trying to reason with the M-5. Also, I think we see a space station for possibly the first time? Oh, and when Kirk is feeling low, Spock tells him, “A starship also runs on loyalty to one man, and nothing can replace it or him.” Which is obviously Vulcan for, “Dude, I love you, and I’ll follow you anywhere.”

My only real problem here is that I’m not wild about how Daystrum’s motivation goes from “saving people” to “no one thought I was relevant and cool anymore, so I made this (ultimately terrible) thing.” It’s not that the latter motivation can’t work (or that Daystrum couldn’t feel both simultaneously), but the bitter childhood prodigy angle felt a bit forced to me, a bit too late in the game for my liking. I’m much more interested in Daystrum as this tragic figure who simply tried his best to help people and failed. Still, overall, this is a pretty solid episode.

Chief Asshat: Oh, Commodore Wesley, no doubt. He needles Kirk by calling him “Captain Dunsel,” essentially saying Kirk serves no useful purpose anymore, and then immediately assumes Kirk is responsible for the attack when it makes way more sense for it to be an M-5 malfunction.

MVP: William Marshall. Could listen to that man all day.

Grade: Chocolate

Line of the Episode:

“Please, Spock, do me a favor and don’t say it’s fascinating.”
“No, but it is . . . interesting.”

“Bread and Circuses”

“Bread and Circuses” makes a lot of Top 10 Worst TOS Episodes lists, and I get why: it’s pretty dumb, and it’s dumb in a lot of the same ways that “The Omega Glory” is. This is yet another world that’s basically just alternate Earth, only here we have 1960’s tech in a world where Rome never fell . . . which means we get gladiator fights on reality TV. Honestly, that part was great; I laughed out loud when they pulled back to reveal the Hollywood set. Unfortunately, it also means that we have to learn about Hodgkin’s Bullshit Law of Parallel Planet Development to explain budget problems, ethnocentrism, a criminal lack of imagination how these people could possibly speak English, amongst other nonsense. I guess that’s better than not explaining it at all?

Despite this, “Bread and Circuses” is considerably less offensive than “The Omega Glory” and far more fun to watch. For one, Kirk isn’t the guy engaging in (seemingly unending) fisticuffs! Bones and Spock get that honor this time, facing off against a pair of gladiators, and it’s delightful. Spock gets a new undercover beanie, too; this one is tan and, per usual, he loses it almost immediately. Let’s see . . . I immediately and correctly predicted Evil Roman Dude would stab Last Minute Redemptive Bad Guy in the back, so yay, me. And there’s a really interesting scene between Bones and Spock, where Bones tries to thank Spock for saving his life and ends up accusing him of being afraid to live. I don’t know if the whole scene works for me, exactly–I don’t think it has quite enough space to breathe–but it is, well, fascinating.

Of course, it’s not all fun fight scenes and antagonistic heart-to-hearts. I can forgive the bad guy, I guess, who doesn’t exactly have a firm grasp on the concept of “incentives.” (“Beam your whole crew down so that most of them can die, or else I’ll . . . kill only these two officers?”) The Prime Directive stuff here, too, is pretty ridiculous, and I’m not sure why we’re only clearly defining it now, anyway, at the very end of the second season.

But the worst bits are definitely these: A) it’s heavily implied that Kirk sleeps with the pretty sex slave who, while apparently “willing,” definitely cannot give actual consent, and B) our heroes save the day by . . . running away, leaving behind the last few survivors they actually came to rescue. They don’t defeat the bad guy or end slavery or any of that good jazz, but it’s okay, see, because it turns out that the rising rebellion of Sun worshippers are actually Son worshippers, which means we don’t have to feel bad for abandoning the planet because Christianity is coming to save everyone.

Chief Asshat: Kirk, no question

MVP: Scotty, who basically saves the day by interpreting Kirk’s orders as guidelines

Grade: Strawberry

Line of the Episode: Ooh, difficult. There’s Bones taking the time to yell at Spock, even as he’s poorly defending himself in the gladiator fight. There’s also Spock dryly agreeing with Kirk that the people shooting at them do, indeed, seem to mean it. But I think I have to go with Bones’s somewhat relatable anti-Prime Directive wish:

“Once, just once, I’d like to be able to land someplace and say, ‘Behold! I am the archangel Gabriel!”

“Assignment: Earth”

“Assignment: Earth” is the season finale of S2 and kind of an odd episode all around. For one thing, our heroes have intentionally time-traveled back to Earth 1968 for, I guess, historical research? Which is just not how time travel usually works in Trek. (It also remains unclear how they were gonna conduct said research, as Kirk and Spock make it seem like the initial plan was not to leave the ship, which seems . . . counterintuitive?) More importantly, however, our heroes are largely absent for half the episode and mostly just manage to fuck things up when they are around. (Spock insists they actually helped history play out as it was supposed to, but he’s just trying to save face. Kirk absolutely almost gets everyone killed.) Instead, the action mostly focuses on this mysterious dude, Gary Seven, and his pet cat, Isis, who have come to stop a missile launch that will doom everyone. The setup is so strange that the whole episode almost feels like a backdoor pilot, except did they even have backdoor pilots in the late 1960’s?

Apparently, yes. They did because that’s exactly what “Assignment: Earth” is, a backdoor pilot for a show that nobody picked up. It’s unfortunate, too, because although the pacing of this one is a bit off, I actually really enjoyed Gary Seven and Isis. Seven is sort of an understated character, but he has a dry sense of humor that appeals to me, and I had fun watching him deal with his delightfully snotty computer, the Beta 5, and communicate with his cat. (Isis has a human form too, of course, but we only briefly see it at the end of the episode.) All of Isis’s cat attacks are hilarious. Also in one scene, Seven clambers up to the missile to sabotage it, while Isis helpfully hangs out on his back. It’s fantastic. I’d have watched the holy hell out of this show.

Teri Garr is fun in this, too. She’s playing Roberta, the secretary who accidentally gets wrapped up in all these secret agent/time travel shenanigans, and she feels like the rare female character in TOS who, by God, actually gets to be funny. The new characters all click here; it’s mostly that the action, itself, isn’t terribly interesting, particularly in the second half. Plus, yeah, the characters you actually showed up for are kinda twiddling their thumbs a lot. Still, I had a decent time watching this episode.

Chief Asshat: I mean. Kirk doubting Seven totally makes sense, but it also nearly starts World War III, so . . .

MVP: The Gary Seven, Isis, and Beta 5 trio.

Grade: Vanilla

Line of the Episode: “That’s why some of my generation are kind of crazy and rebels, you know? We wonder if we’re gonna be alive when we’re thirty.”

TV Superlatives: March, April, May – 2021

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It is time, once again, for me to spend far too many words discussing all the television I’ve been watching. In today’s post, we will be awarding TV shows (or maligning them) with silly superlatives like Favorite Weapon, Favorite Product Placement, Least Favorite Ship, and The Blood Thirst Letdown (AKA, The Stannis Award).

Here is the list of everything I’ve been watching these past few months:

Ancient Detective
Star Trek: TOS (Season 2, Episodes: 11-22)
Last Week Tonight
Detective L
Star Trek: Discovery (Season 3)
Nancy Drew (Season 2, Episodes 7-18)
The Head
Heaven’s Official Blessing
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
A Murderous Affair in Horizon Tower
The Mandalorian (Season 2)
Murder Princess
Word of Honor
A Black Lady Sketch Show (Season 2)
Sell Your Haunted House (Episodes 1-13)
Shadow & Bone

A quick reminder for how these work: superlatives may be bestowed upon any show I’m watching, no matter whether it’s currently airing or not. As always, I will do my best to clearly mark all awards with appropriate spoiler warnings.

Lots to get through today, so let’s go ahead and begin.

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World’s Worst Trekkie: Return to Tomorrow, Patterns of Force, and By Any Other Name

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There’s a lot to discuss today. Big, glowing balls. Weird speeches. Leonard Nimoy smiling. Whiskey as a resistance strategy. Tonal inconsistencies. Logic problems. And unfortunately, Literal Space Nazis.

Let’s twist this.

DISCLAIMER

There will be SPOILERS for these three episodes and probably also the Star Trek franchise in general. You’ve been warned.

“Return to Tomorrow”

Hey, this is one of the TOS episodes with Diana Muldaur in it! Hi, Young Pulaski!

I enjoyed watching this one, although I’m itching to tweak a few things, particularly the ending. Let’s begin with Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch, three super advanced beings made up of pure energy who’ve survived half a million years in these big glowing balls. They want to temporarily possess three people (specifically, Kirk, Spock, and Mulhall, our Pretty Woman of the Week) so they can build themselves android bodies and roam around freely. Sargon seems pretty shifty at first, but ultimately, everyone agrees to the plan, in part because of Kirk’s, uh, impassioned speech, which TBH, would only have convinced me that he’d been brainwashed during the earlier Spirit Swap Demo, like, that monologue is so overacted it passes over “passionate” and skips straight to “alarming.” (Also: the Spirit Swap Demo? Funny as hell.)

Quickly, it becomes clear that Sargon actually isn’t a shifty motherfucker; unfortunately, Henoch, possessing Spock, absolutely is. Possessed Spock smiles a lot. He’s a flirty, evil little shit, and it’s delightful. These scenes absolutely make the whole episode for me. Henoch wants to keep Spock’s body, of course, and temporarily sways Thalassa (Sargon’s wife) to the Dark Side; however, she feels guilty after torturing Bones a little and decides possessing a living body is too great a temptation. Meanwhile, Sargon and Spock briefly seem to die, but they’re both fine, as the former escapes into the Enterprise itself, while the latter escapes into Nurse Chapel’s body.

Conceptually, this is totally awesome. In execution, definitely a letdown. Spock-as-Christine is disappointing because Majel Barrett never gets the opportunity to act as Spock, which is a huge missed opportunity. Meanwhile, it’s not that I expected Sargon to permanently become the Enterprise (although that would have been, in a word, fascinating), but it could’ve been really interesting to see him and Thalassa living as other ships–or they could’ve gone with the robot plan, whatever, maybe worked to create androids that would’ve been able to experience sensory pleasure. Anything, really, would’ve been preferable to Let’s Disperse Into Oblivion Together. It’s the most obvious possible ending, emphasizing all the usual morals: it’s wrong to live past your time, your humanity will be lost if you try, death is how it’s meant to be, etc. I get why it’s a popular SFF trope, immortality not actually being in the cards for any of us losers, but I still find it dull and predictable, particularly here where it feels like Sargon and Thalassa suddenly agreed to doom themselves just because Henoch is a big jerk.

Chief Asshat: Henoch. I mean, you can’t just be brainwashing Christine; that’s rude.

MVP: . . . but also Henoch, or really Leonard Nimoy, because he’s a lot of fun here.

Grade: Chocolate

Line of the Episode: Oh, I can’t choose. It’s either this surprisingly good line in the otherwise terrible monologue: “Risk is our business. That’s what this starship is all about.” Or it’s, ah: “Your captain has an excellent body, Dr. McCoy. I compliment you both on the condition in which you maintained it.” I mean, what in the fanfiction hell?

“Patterns of Force”

Oh, boy. So, this is Nazis in space, literally, and it’s just about as bad as that sounds. There are, admittedly, a few bright spots. Like, we get the (very brief) return of Spock’s undercover beanie. There’s some dude who kinda reminds me of a 1960’s Tom Holland. At one point, Kirk and Spock are flogged, and their “blood” is pretty clearly just red and green paint. (Which I have to admit, I do so love the juxtaposition.) And at one point, Spock has to stand on Kirk’s back, which ends up being amusingly difficult for Kirk. I now desperately want to read a 5+1 fanfic where Kirk and Spock have to boost the other up, er, platonically. (The +1, of course, is less platonic.)

Unfortunately, the rest of the episode is kind of a mess, and not just because Kirk pronounces Nazi like he’s Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds. The reason we’ve found literal Nazis halfway across the galaxy is because, while observing the people of Ekos, revered historian John Gill became disturbed by how fragmented and divided the planet was. The only way to save everyone, he decided, was to bring in some fascism, but like, nice fascism, I guess. You know, they’re the good Nazis.

Unclear what that even means? Me, too. But TOS isn’t gonna bother with specifics here. Instead, we discover that everything went swimmingly until this one Bad Guy decided to make the Nazi party evil again, drugging John Gill to, heh, the gills, and secretly taking over. With his dying breath, Gill confesses that he was wrong, that non-interference is the only way, but bitch, non-interference isn’t even the problem here! You could have introduced any political philosophy to try and stabilize this shit, and you chose the Nazi party?! Sure, Spock agrees that Nazi Germany was the “most efficient state Earth ever knew” (uh, really? In ALL of human history?) and suggests that Gill must’ve assumed “such a state, run benignly, could accomplish its efficiency without sadism.” But seriously, what the fuck does it even mean to be a Nazi without sadism? Cruelty is a feature, not a bug. Nazis didn’t solve divisions between people; they widened them, preying on existing prejudices and fears to make a convenient scapegoat out of an entire ethnoreligious group, and then–and this is key–murdered about six million of those people. Not to mention that, so far as I can tell, the conditions which led to the Nazis’s rise to power bears no resemblance to anything happening here, so this whole “plan” makes no sense on either a logical or ethical level.

It’s also just very strange to watch Kirk and Spock go undercover as Nazis when William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy are, and were, both Jewish. Of course, I have no idea how they felt about this episode, and perhaps they didn’t have a problem participating in it. Honestly, I hope that’s the case. But even if it is? “Patterns of Force” is poorly written and just all around ill-conceived.

Chief Asshat: Holy shit, John Gill. WTF, my dude?

MVP: Um. Spock’s beanie?

Grade: Strawberry

Line of the Episode: “To the logical mind, the outlook is somewhat gloomy.”

“By Any Other Name”

When I saw the title of this episode, I tried to prepare myself for some tragic nonsense between Kirk and The Pretty Woman of the Week, but we go a different way here. The Enterprise responds to a distress call; unfortunately, it’s a trap, and the ship is easily (too fucking easily) captured by four Kelvans. The Kelvans are these super advanced aliens from the far-far-away Andromeda galaxy, and they need the Enterprise to get back home. (It’ll take 300 years, which means only their descendants will actually make it.) In their original bodies, the Kelvans are gargantuan, with “a hundred limbs which resemble tentacles.” (I can only assume this means they’re secretly Old Ones.) But to survive in this galaxy, they’ve taken on human form, which means they’ve begun reacting like humans: enjoying physical sensations, feeling emotions, etc. Thus to retake the ship, our heroes have to exploit these weaknesses. Which means:

Bones keeps giving one guy Irritation Hypos.
Scotty eventually drinks one dude under the table (before quickly passing out himself).
Kirk (sigh) seduces the Alien Girl. (Who, BTW, is a dead ringer for Sansa Stark.)
Spock manipulates the Alien Leader’s jealousy of Kirk and Alien Girl.

Scotty’s scenes are probably the funniest, considering just how much alcohol he has to sacrifice to, er, complete the mission. (TNG will later pay homage to this scene in the episode “Relics.”) Kirk’s part is predictably the worst, especially because Alien Girl doesn’t even seem all that seduced at first–it’s pretty great, TBH–before having a sudden and inevitable change of heart. All in all, though, the episode ends on a relatively light note: the bad guys aren’t killed or imprisoned; instead, they decide to stay in this galaxy, having fun in their new human forms, which is all well and good until you remember Yeoman Thompson.

See, the Kelvans like to turn people into porous rocks; they do this to literally everyone on board (except our four previously mentioned heroes). After a failed escape attempt, Yeoman Thompson and Lt. Shea are the first to be transformed. To discourage further resistance, Alien Leader crushes one of the rocks, and I admit, I was very surprised when we discover that it’s Lt. Shea who survived, as I definitely assumed the writers would kill off the one Black man and save the one white woman. It’s a good surprise, honestly, but it does rather feel like poor Thompson’s murder is completely forgotten about in the second half of the show, when the tone noticeably shifts from “suspense” into “wacky hijinks.” This is especially true of the ending, considering the Kelvans experience absolutely no consequences of any kind for their terrible actions.

You know what I’d like to see? A spinoff show where a bunch of unjustly murdered Starfleet officers come together to haunt their respective captains. It could be bloody. It could be animated. We could call it . . . Star Vengeance.

Chief Asshat: Probably the Alien Leader. He’s the one who murders Yeoman Thompson, and also, jealousy is just not a good look on anyone.

MVP: Scotty, for his out-of-the-box thinking.

Grade: Vanilla

Line of the Episode:

Alien Dude (about the bottle of alcohol Scotty is holding): “What is it?”
Scotty (drunk off his ass): “It’s, um . . . It’s green.”

World’s Worst Trekkie: A Piece of the Action, The Immunity Syndrome, and A Private Little War

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All right. I have a sinus infection. I’m running on caffeine, antibiotics, Ibuprofen, and not nearly enough sleep, and we’ve got roughly three hours of Star Trek to discuss. Let’s just dive into it, shall we?

DISCLAIMER

There will be SPOILERS for these three episodes and probably also the Star Trek franchise in general. You’ve been warned.

“A Piece of the Action”

Oh, God. Folks. Fellow humans. I can’t with this episode. I was so bored.

“A Piece of the Action” is about Kirk, Spock, and Bones beaming down to 1920’s Mobster World, and I know it’s supposed to be funny, but good lord, it’s like a ten-minute gag that’s stretched, kicking and screaming, into a full episode. I’d watch it again, maybe, but only as a drinking game. The first and second rules are obvious: 1) drink whenever Kirk, Bones, or Spock get the drop on any of the gangsters, and 2) drink whenever any gangster gets the drop on Kirk, Bones, or Spock. I cannot emphasize enough how often this happens, and if that sounds somehow exciting or action-packed, let me assure you that it is not. This episode is like watching someone playing Hot Potato with a Tommy gun, only somehow boring. There is simply a limit to how many times one can get and lose the upper hand before any sense of tension or stakes are annihilated; this episode surpasses that limit by a wide and wild margin.

Another rule: drink whenever Kirk shows off all the noir slang he’s picked up. You will be drinking non-stop for the last 10 minutes straight.

Here are a few things I did enjoy: the origin of fizzbin. How absurdly large The Book (AKA, Chicago Mobs of the Twenties) actually is. It’s basically a giant Bible, like, it’s gotta be the size of Kirk’s whole torso at least. I also enjoy Kirk and Spock in their respective suits, and the irrefutable fact that, in the Prime timeline, Kirk absolutely cannot drive. (Obviously, he learned how to do this at a very young age in the Kelvin verse. These are the important canon divergences to analyze, people.)

Unfortunately, that’s about all I really enjoyed here. The whole concept of this episode–an alien society so imitative that they rewrote their entire culture just to mimic one (ridiculously gigantic) book–is ludicrous, of course, but ludicrous can be entertaining. This, however, mostly struck me as tiresome and grating, particularly the slang, (which I found too cartoonish to be convincing) and the constant Tommy gun Hot Potato.

Chief Asshat: All the mob bosses, mostly for the crime of being annoying.

MVP: The kid who briefly teams up with Kirk and Spock, I guess.

Grade: Vanilla

Line of the Episode:

“But the odds of getting a Royal Fizzbin are astro–Spock, what are the odds in getting a Royal Fizzbin?”
“I’ve never computed them, Captain.”
“Well, they’re astronomical, believe me.”
*Spock silently mouths astronomical and looks away, resigned*

“The Immunity Syndrome”

“The Immunity Syndrome” is unlikely to make it to my personal Top Ten, but it’s not a bad episode. The stars disappear at some point, which is always creepy. There is a giant amoeba (and not a “giant glowy space fish with one eye,” which was my immediate impression). Kirk has to decide whether to send Spock (Friend/Lover #1) or Bones (Friend/Lover #2) on what’s almost certainly a suicide mission. (He picks Spock, and I desperately hope that there’s fanfic about all of this.) And Spock essentially senses a great disturbance in the Force when 400 Vulcans die, because his touch telepathy will forever and always be dependent upon what the plot requires. (I now find myself wanting to see Spock in Star Trek 2009 psychically reeling from the collective death of basically everyone on Vulcan, which would admittedly be a lot on top of killing his mom. But since Winona Ryder played the only version of Amanda Grayson I’ve ever liked . . . yeah, let’s save her and do this scene instead.)

There are things that don’t totally work for me here. Spock’s idea that the dead Vulcans could not have conceived of their doom because Vulcans, as a species, have never been conquered feels like incredibly sketch logic. (Also, it’s a retcon, at least if Bones in “Conscience of the King” is to be believed–which, to be fair, I never really did.) I don’t know if I entirely buy Bones actively campaigning to go on the suicide mission for the sake of Science, either. I can absolutely see him sacrificing his life to save others, but that’s not quite how this is framed. Like, I bought Bones helpfully interrupting to say “I recommend survival” (without any suggestions as to how, natch), much more than Bones asking Spock, “Do you think that I intend to pass up the greatest living laboratory . . .” when the cost of going is near-certain death.  I also wish someone at least brought up the possibility of trying to save the giant amoeba, too.

I remain amused, also, about A) how quickly Bones resorts to just drugging everyone with stimulants–space cocaine definitely feels like a solid medical treatment–and B) how both Bones and a nurse personally come to the Bridge to administer, like, six adrenaline shots, when 2/3 of the ship have also been affected and are waiting on treatment, goddamnit. All this aside, “The Immunity Syndrome” is a totally decent episode, and much better than what came before . . . or what’s coming next.

Chief Asshat: Actually, no one’s really terrible here, but I’m giving this to Kirk anyway, for not slamming those breaks early.

MVP: Spock, maybe, for verbally bitchslapping human history.

Grade: Chocolate

Line of the Episode:
“Shut up, Spock, we’re rescuing you!”
“Why, thank you, Captain McCoy.”

“A Private Little War”

If you look very, very carefully, you might be able to find a good episode hiding somewhere in the depths of this one, but boy, it would be a long and arduous excavation. I do have some suggestions, of course. Buying better wigs is probably not the most important one, but holy Jesus, these wigs are awful–not to mention that the subtle symbolism of Good Blond Aliens vs. Evil Brunette Aliens leaves something to be desired.

A bigger problem is Nona. The Good Blond Aliens are led by Pacifist Tyree, who is Kirk’s friend; Nona is his duplicitous brunette witch wife who drugs men with aphrodisiacs and heals them with plants, blood, and sexy writhing. I hate literally everything I just wrote. Nona potentially could be interesting, if you altered her ridiculous healing process and straight-up cut the gross non-con behavior. See, this planet used to be a very peaceful one, but a Klingon spy is giving the Evil Brunette Aliens superior weapons, and Nona wants Kirk to give the Good Blond Aliens the same weapons (or even better ones) to defend themselves with/wipe out their enemies.

This is a perfect setup for a morally ambiguous character who advocates for terrible things but for pretty understandable reasons, which is so much more interesting than Sexy Evil Chick who tries to sell out her husband’s people and inevitably gets killed for it. A better episode, IMO, would still have Nona knock out Kirk and steal his phaser, but this time she’d die after successfully assassinating the Evil Brunette Leader. It would be a much more satisfying/badass death for her personally, but would still be tragic overall–because while Nona would die thinking she sacrificed her life to save Good Blond Aliens, the audience would see how her death actually served as a catalyst for Pacifist Tyree’s transformation into Vengeful Tyree, thereby only extending the war.

You see how bad this episode is? I’m basically just pleading for this show to fridge women better. And I haven’t even gotten into how this episode is also somehow a mangled Vietnam War allegory, or the whole side plot where Spock gets shot and must literally be slapped in the face, like, twenty times to properly heal. (Okay, this is hysterical, actually, but I can’t help but feel that Plot A and Plot B have been horribly mismatched here.) Or how the Klingon spy is is basically just dropped from the story–and why was this guy getting involved, anyway? These people are unlikely to be a big asset to the Klingon empire. And yeah, that whole serpent of Eden metaphor, too. Ugh, guys, enough is enough. Please leave Eden alone, I am so tired of it.

Oh well. At least we got the introductions of M’Benga and this dude, I guess.

Chief Asshat: Kirk, who continues to be an asshole about Klingons, snaps at Uhura, Scotty, and Chekov, and justifies giving the Good Blond Aliens rifles with some pretty shaky logic. But M’Benga is also a candidate, as he’s a bit of a condescending dick to Nurse Chapel when she asks for some pretty reasonable clarification.

MVP: Definitely the mugato.

Grade: Strawberry

Line of the Episode: “This man believes the same thing we believe in, that killing is stupid and useless.” (A great quote from Bones, but I’d hardly call it a consistent TOS philosophy.)

World’s Worst Trekkie: Friday’s Child, The Deadly Years, and Obsession

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Okay. I started watching TOS, like, actual years ago. This damn show is all of three seasons; I should probably be on DS9 by now, and yet I keep putting TOS off because while I enjoy my recap/reviews, they also take forever to write. This is always my problem with the blog. I’m too damn chatty. I have 18,000 thoughts on any given movie or episode of television, and wrangling these thoughts into something even vaguely coherent is just so time-consuming. It’s been stressing me out. Thus.

We’re gonna trying Triple Scooping this bitch. It’s not a perfect system–it is, in fact, damn silly–but I think I might work better for me. We’ll see if it sticks or not.

DISCLAIMER

There will be SPOILERS for these three episodes and probably also the Star Trek franchise in general. You’ve been warned.

“Friday’s Child”

This episode is very hard to take seriously because–and I don’t say this lightly–the Capellans might have the most ridiculous costumes I have ever seen on this show. You can see them in the background above, but for further examples, please look here. And here. Assuming I ever go to a convention again, I demand to see this cosplay.

“Friday’s Child” is okay. Parts are kinda yikes; for instance, when Bones slaps a pregnant woman. (She slapped him first–twice, even–but I can guarantee you that the doctors at my job are not allow to hit their patients back. Besides, she told him not to touch her. Listen to your patients, dude.) Actually, Eleen (Julie Newmar!) is probably the most interesting part of the whole episode, something I mostly attribute to stage presence. There’s a story in here, somewhere, that could be fascinating: the pregnant widow of an overthrown king whose baby puts her life in grave danger and, thus, wants nothing to do with it . . . a grieving woman who’s not interested in being a mother without her partner . . . a fugitive queen who bonds with a strange outworld doctor who’s trying to help but only half-understands her customs, etc. Unfortunately, nuance and feminism aren’t exactly selling points for TOS, so what we actually get is Bones trying to persuade a patient that of course she wants her baby and other cringeworthy stuff. (Credit where credit’s due, though: I did laugh at Spock reluctantly holding the baby, as well as Kirk insisting that Bones’s baby-talk is an example of an obscure Earth dialect.)

Random Asides: A) Bones can apparently tell a woman’s about to give birth just by touching her belly, which, sure, that’s definitely more effective than his actual Tricorder, B) The Klingon ship backed down from a fight? Fuck you, they did. What utter horse shit, and C) if you need more evidence on TOS’s somewhat mixed moral message, consider this bit where Spock asks, “Revenge, Captain?” and Kirk responds, “Why not?”

Chief Asshat: The Red Shirt who immediately gets himself killed by pulling a weapon on this random Klingon the second he sees him, like, uh, no?  You don’t just get to attack people? Kirk’s all indignant about it, too, offering up a frankly disturbing “he was young and impetuous, it’s all understandable” defense. So, good to see that Kirk’s racism is still going strong here, well before the Klingons murdered his son.

MVP: Probably Scotty, for proving once again that he’s a competent officer. Poor Scotty. The movies did you wrong, man.

Grade: Vanilla

Line of the Episode: “I think you’re both going to be insufferably pleased with yourselves for at least a month. Sir.”

“The Deadly Years”

Ah, it’s The One Where Everyone Gets Old! Specifically, Kirk, Bones, Scotty, Spock, and Nurse Dead Meat get old; Chekov, mysteriously, doesn’t age at all, even though he was on the same away mission. At first, I was very excited by this, if only because Spock is usually the anomaly in these kinds of situations, and I was interested to see what made Chekov so special. (Spoilers: it’s FEAR. That is, adrenaline; Chekov sees a dead body in the beginning of this episode and freaks the hell out. Which A) valid, but also B) IDK, I feel like our heroes see a lot of corpses? Shouldn’t Chekov be used to this by now?

Unfortunately, this mystery is barely part of the episode. Instead, “The Deadly Years” is far more interested in examining Kirk’s rapidly progressing dementia as the crew hems and haws over whether he’s currently competent enough to be in charge, which, no, he is not; he is very, very clearly not. And yet we still have to watch, like, a whole tribunal to discuss Kirk’s incompetence, which is basically just a rehash of scenes that, FFS, we just saw. The acting isn’t bad here; in fact, it’s genuinely hard to watch Kirk’s anger and confusion as his mental faculties deteriorate. But we spend a lot of time on this, and I think that’s time that could’ve been spent better elsewhere: on our other aging crew members (like Nurse Dead Meat, who apparently no one cares about, or Scotty, who’s barely in this episode), or into The Mystery of Chekov, or maybe even on Kirk’s 87th Ex-Girlfriend, a blonde, breathy doctor who–and I can’t stress this enough–does absolutely nothing of any plot significance in this episode.

Part of the problem here, too, is that our big dilemma is Who Will Be in Charge Now . . . only it feels like a trumped up crisis. Spock insists that no one on the away mission, including himself, is currently capable of assuming command, which means that this entirely inexperienced Commodore has to do it. But this is nonsense: for one, if a junior officer can’t command the ship in an emergency, then maybe it would behoove us to have more than four senior officers on board; for another, Sulu’s definitely been left in charge before, only we’re conveniently forgetting that now for Contrived Plot Shit. The one good thing I will say here is that it’s nice that our Commodore, while somewhat useless in battle, isn’t actually a mustache-twirling villain. He’s not trying to steal anyone’s command; he’s just trying to step up and do what’s right.

“The Deadly Years” isn’t one of my favorite episodes by any means, but there are things I enjoy about it. Sulu and Chekov get a brief moment to banter. Kirk (now young again) saves the day by bringing back the Corbomite Manuever, which was a fun callback. And the old age makeup is hilarious because it’s absolutely as awful as you’d expect; actually, it might be even worse than normal, as rapidly aging seems to have made Bones’s hair . . . longer? (There are many, many hairline problems in this episode.) Bones’s Southern accent also gets much, much thicker, which happened in “This Side of Paradise,” too.

Chief Asshat: You know, I’m not sure I’ve got one this time. Kirk’s kind of a dick here but, for once, that’s not really his fault.

MVP: Chekov, maybe? In a way, his fear totally saves the day, and also I enjoy watching him bitch about all the medical tests he has to go through. Sulu thinks it’s funny too. His amused little smile is the absolute best.

Grade: Strawberry

Line of the Episode: “What a stupid place to hang a mirror.”

“Obsession”

Looks like it’s time to question the captain’s competency again! This time, Kirk is convinced that this strange smoke which killed a few of his crewmen is not some random weather pattern but an intelligent and malevolent creature; moreover, Kirk believes he has encountered this entity before, back when he was an ensign. Young Kirk hesitated for a split second before firing on said entity and thus blamed himself when, like, 200 people died, including his old captain. Now Kirk is obsessed with taking down this creature, even if it costs lives–and not just the lives of his crew, but also of the people on Theta VII, who are waiting for their super perishable vaccine doses.

I like that Kirk’s obsession stems from a mistake he thinks he made, rather than, IDK, a dead girlfriend or something. I like, too, that his trauma is echoed in Ensign Garrovick, who also hesitates and becomes convinced that he’s to blame for the deaths of his fellow officers. (Although I think making Garrovick the old captain’s son is silly and unnecessary.) There are several interactions with Ensign G that I enjoy: from Nurse Chapel’s comfort via tough love (oh my God, it’s amazing, where has this Nurse Chapel been all my life), to Spock’s comfort via tough logic (“I know you would prefer to wallow in a pool of emotion . . .”), to Kirk telling Garrovick that he isn’t to blame and thus quietly realizing that he, too, should forgive himself.

Still, I feel like improvements could be made. Kirk’s irrationality in this episode doesn’t entirely work for me, partially because it comes on too fast for my liking, and partially because I feel like “Obsession” really wants Kirk to be right in the end, which . . . I’m not convinced that he is. Sure, he’s correct about the smoke being an entity, but that doesn’t mean that delaying to Theta VII is the right call here. When the captain’s all nonchalant about the potential deaths of citizens, like, maybe that’s a big problem? It bothers me, too, that Kirk arguably gets some of his own officers killed, yet never seems particularly concerned or guilty about that. Like, how is this not being factored into his trauma? Also, Kirk’s whole instinctual and/or possibly psychic connection to the entity is incredibly vague and just feels like lazy writing to me.

Chief Asshat: Kirk. Which is funny because as soon as we saw this episode’s title, Mek asked, “So, who’s going to be a dick this episode?” to which I immediately replied, “Kirk.” Mek, quite rightly, refused to take that bet.

MVP: Nurse Chapel, hands down. Thus far, Majel Barrett has been wasted on this show. Is it too much to hope we get more awesome moments like this?

Grade: Chocolate

Line of the Episode: “You know, self pity’s a terrible first course. Why don’t you try the soup instead?”

TV Superlatives: December, January, February – 2020/2021

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It seems I’m capable of watching either a lot of TV shows or a lot of movies, but not both. Fall 2020 was Movie Time, specifically, Horror Movie Time, and TV definitely fell by the wayside. Winter, however, was rather the other way around.

Here is the list of TV shows I’ve been watching over the past three months:

Tale of the Nine-Tailed (Episodes 10-16)
Running Man (Random Episodes)
The Uncanny Counter
Alice in Borderland
The Expanse (Season 5)
Sweet Home
The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty
WandaVision
Nancy Drew (Season 2, Episodes 1-6)
Busted (Season 3)
Infinity Train (Season 2)
L.U.C.A.: The Beginning (Episodes 1-5)
Last Week Tonight
Star Trek: Lower Decks

A quick reminder for how these work: I will bestow whatever TV shows I’ve been currently watching with my usual nonsense awards, whether they’re currently airing or not. As always, I will do my best to clearly mark these awards with spoiler warnings.

With that said, let’s begin!

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TV Superlatives: June, July, August – 2020

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It’s that time again! We must discuss only the most prestigious of TV Awards: Favorite Sidekick, Best Revenge, Most Horrifying Fashion, Favorite Ship, and more!

A quick reminder for how these work: I will bestow whatever TV shows I’ve recently been watching with such awards, whether they’re currently airing or not. As always, any awards with spoilers will be very clearly marked. As a reference point, here are the shows I’ve been watching for the past few months:

Agents of SHIELD (Season 7)
Village Survival: The Eight (Season 2)
Star Trek (Season 2: Ep. 7-10)
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (June 7th – August 30th)
13 Reasons Why (Season 4)
Floor is Lava
Mystic Pop-Up Bar
Dear White People (Season 1)
Unsolved Mysteries (2020)
Dark (Season 3)
The Baby-Sitters Club
I Remember You (Hello Monster)
It’s Okay to Not Be Okay
Chip-In
Love in the Moonlight (Moonlight Drawn by Clouds)
Lovecraft Country (Ep. 1 – 3)
Running Man (er, just a bunch of random episodes from multiple seasons)

(You may notice that some shows have two titles listed. K-dramas usually have at least two, and sometimes my brain flip-flops helplessly between both. I’m going to attempt some consistency throughout these superlatives, but I make absolutely no promises.)

Also, clearly, it’s just . . . it’s a lot of K-Dramas, folks. MY LIFE HAS BEEN TAKEN OVER BY K-DRAMAS AND VARIETY SHOWS, AND I’M OKAY WITH IT.

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World’s Worst Trekkie: Carlie Takes On “Journey to Babel”

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Spock’s family tree is weird. Not, like, Skywalker weird–I’m relatively sure no one was impregnated by a mystical energy field–but still, people can’t seem to resist giving this guy completely random siblings. This happened first in The Final Frontier (23 years after TOS first aired) and then in Discovery (51 years after TOS aired). “Journey to Babel,” however, introduces us to a slightly higher branch of that tree: Sarek and Amanda.

Yes, friends, foes, and total strangers, it’s time for Meet the Parents: the Star Trek edition.

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