Court Martial: TOS Season 1 Episode 20

Plot Synopsis

The Enterprise took some damage from an ion storm and the only fatality was Ben Finney. We quickly learn that Kirk and Finney had a history, early on in his career Kirk filed a report that showed Finney in a bad light and it played a part in his slow career advancement. The allegation was that Kirk had something against Finney and the bad report was maliciously, and that perhaps Finney's recent death was intentional. If charges come against Kirk it will be a court martial, the first time it has happened to a captain of a starship. The admiral Kirk talks to tells him to just slink away and they would sweep it under the rug, but Kirk insists he's innocent and demands the court martial!

So a trial ensues, it turns out that in the ion storm they were in yellow alert. At some point when the danger was particularly high Kirk went to red alert, which told Finney that he had to act quickly, he failed to do that and Kirk had to take action which killed Finney but saved the rest of the ship. The prosecution claims that Kirk took that action before going to red alert, never giving Finney the chance to save himself. Kirk insists that this is not the way it happened, but they had damning evidence, video of Kirk pushing the "jettison pod" button with only the yellow alert light blinking

It seems that all is lost, whether intentional or accidental, this seems to be Kirk's fault. He makes some vague statement to Spock about chess as the court is adjourning. Spock goes and plays chess against the computer and wins several games in a row. This should be impossible as he programmed the computer with his own chess skill, he should be coming to a stalemate. It appears that someone has been messing with the computer. Perhaps Finney isn't even really dead, but just trying to frame Kirk.

They evacuate the ship of almost everyone and then have the computer listen to any noise through the whole ship. It can detect everyone's heartbeat, they filter out everyone that is known to be on the ship and there is one heartbeat remaining. They isolate where he is and Kirk goes to confront him. They fight, but ultimately Finney has sabotaged the ship and is ready to die along with anyone else remaining in the ship, Kirk the reveals that he beamed up Finney's daughter. With this information, Finney tells Kirk how the ship was sabotaged and the damage is able to be undone.

Justice

In the scene where the admiral was trying to get Kirk to simply slink away quietly, to just go away and avoid his court martial, the admiral was primarily interested in appearance. He didn't really seem to care about what had happened, in fact, it's quite possible he believed Kirk guilty. But he didn't want a stain on starfleet put there by a captain being put through a court martial, he wanted to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Kirk was interested in justice, he didn't care how it looked, he wanted the truth to come out. Great stuff.

Science

There were two things in this episode that from a scientific standpoint caught my attention. The first was a silly little throw-away line from Spock while he was testifying in court. He was arguing that even though he didn't watch Kirk push those buttons, he knew that Kirk had done things in the right order because he knows the man. He said it is no different from dropping a hammer on a planet with positive gravity, he knows it will fall without looking. I love the idea that there could be a planet without positive gravity. Perhaps there is a planet with some exotic substance where gravity doesn't work in our normal sense. Seems a bit silly, but sometimes science fiction is about exploring silly ideas. I liked it, and again, it was just a throwaway line.

The other thing did really bug me though. Near the end they cut power to the enterprise and in a very short period of time they were going to fall out of orbit. This seems to misunderstand what orbit is. It takes power to put yourself in orbit, but once your there you should stay in orbit without the need for power. Sure, over a long period of time a "stable" orbit can decay, but this was a very short period of time, on the order of hours. A similar thing happened in the recent movie, and that bugged the crap out of me too.

Spock and McCoy

Some more banter between Spock and McCoy that caught my attention. When Spock was playing chess, bones found him and was upset that he was doing that, not realizing he was helping the captain with this action.

Bones: Mr. Spock, you're the most cold blooded man I've ever known

Spock: why, thank you doctor.

Love it!

Ripped Shirt

During the fight near the end between Kirk and Finney, at some point Kirk's shirt gets ripped open. I think Kirk needs to stop getting uniforms made out of tissue paper.

Side note here, my wife say me write down the time stamp here and asked what I was doing. She thought it was hilarious that I am keeping track of this. I don't know why it amuses me so much, but I just can't stop laughing when their shirts get ripped.

Rating

8/10

Overall an enjoyable episode.

The Galileo Seven: TOS Season 1 Episode 16

Sorry I missed a week, but in my defense, I do have a good excuse. I am going to try to keep up with them once a week because I have fun writing them, although I might have to streamline it a bit. I'll probably have to do a lot fewer screenshots. It's a shame, because I have a lot of fun going and getting them, but it does take a lot of time.

Plot Synopsis

The Enterprise is on a relief mission of sorts, they need to get some medicine to some people, and they have 5 days to get there. It is only a 3 day journey so they decide to send some people in a shuttle craft to investigate at quasar. Things of course go south and the shuttle lands on a nearby planet. Because of radiation the transporters and sensors are pretty much useless, and now they only have 2 days to mount a proper rescue before they must leave to deliver their medical supplies.

The shuttle crash lands on a planet and Spock is the ranking officer. There is an immediate clash between the other crewmen in the shuttle and Spock over his logical approach to command. This pretty much seems to be the whole point of the episode. He's cold and calculating, for example the other crewmen want to bury a guy who died, but Spock said it's not worth doing because it's dangerous, they are battling the clock and there's no advantage to it. Why is it dangerous? There's some big monster guys on the planet.

Ultimately they are able to lift off of the planet, but they are too late as the Enterprise has already started leaving. Even though they have very limited fuel Spock dumps it and ignites it, dooming them because without the fuel they will fall back to the planet. But this allows the Enterprise to find them and beam them out. Oh yeah, in the meantime they fixed the transporters.

Spock is super Logical!

The way they portray Spock as a 100% logical being was kinda rubbing me the wrong way in this episode. It's not just that he's logical and without emotion, he can't understand emotion and refuses to consider that others might act emotionally. It's hard to imagine him rising to this rank in starfleet without ever learning this lesson.

Transporter Malfunction

I also found this a strange choice. I guess it was one more obstacle to overcome, but they fixed it before they needed it anyway. And there wasn't something interesting or novel about the fix as far as I can tell. It was just "the transporters don't work" and then later "they work now!"

Against the Clock

I know they were trying to create a situation where Kirk would have to leave them behind, but it seemed like an incredibly poor choice to send the shuttle out when they had such a small time window. It was just a quasar, it would be there in a week or whatever. They should have delivered the medicine and come back. I suppose it could have been doing something that is rare and they could witness it, but I don't think that was the case here. Plus, if you are delivering medicine it is silly to plan to get there in exactly the time you need instead of getting there as quickly as possible.

Original Versus Remastered

I thought the quasar graphic was really cool, and I was curious what the original looked like, so I went and looked at the non-remastered version. It's quite a difference. They really did a good job on the new effects.

Rating

6.5/10

I'm trying to decide between 6 and 7 here, guess I'll split the difference. It was a fine episode, but there were definitely issues.

Intense Debate Comments

I've decided to remove intense debate and go back to the default blogger comments. Of course, ID holds your comment threads hostage so you will stay with it, but luckily I don't have too many. I have taken screenshots and edited them into the bottom of their posts so they won't be lost.

The Menagerie: TOS Season 1 Episode 11 & 12

Plot Synopsis

This is certainly an interesting episode, the original pilot "the cage" was only shown to the television executives. They wanted to repackage that episode and deliver it to the public, so they combined it with another story and made it a two-parter. According to the wikipedia page, with all of their special effects they were having trouble getting things done on time, so this not only kept them from wasting the footage of the original pilot, but it also gave them some breathing room.

We start the episode with the enterprise coming to a starbase, which is apparently an unscheduled visit. Kirk insists that they were called there and the guy in charge of the starbase insists that it didn't happen. Kirk says the only possibility is that Spock lies, which is impossible since he's Vulcan. Of course, he's half human, but that part of him is repressed so it still seems impossible. We soon find out that indeed Spock is behind all of this as he sneaks around and uses recordings of various voices to take control of the Enterprise.

The reasons for doing this are not immediately clear, but we do know that it has something to do with Captain Pike and the forbidden planet Talos 4. Breaking the quarantine is the only thing left that still holds the death penalty. Captain Pike was seriously injured in an accident, he was saving children from a fire, or building collapse, or...something, I forget. The point is, he helped a bunch of people but got really hurt in the process. He is confined to a wheelchair and can only communicate through beeps (one for yes, two for no) but his mind works perfectly.

Shortly after Spock has taken the Enterprise and is en route to Talos 4, Kirk figures out what is going on and follows in a shuttle, he won't be able to catch up, but once he runs out of fuel and is stuck Spock goes back to pick him up and submits for a court marshal. But he has the computer set to autopilot to go to Talos 4, and he somehow tied the engines in with life-support so it can't be canceled. We proceed with the trial in which Spock shows evidence which basically consists of showing The Cage interspersed with scenes of the trial. 

The rest of it was pretty much the same except for the ending. In the Cage, when they let the Enterprise crew go and the girl stayed, a copy of Pike was left there for her to love. In this episode, they seemed to just let the Enterprise crew go and she stayed there, apparently alone. Then they cut back to the ship and Pike was sent down the the planet to be with the Talosians who could give him the illusion of having a body, and effectively escape the confines of his broken body. Then they cut to the same scene with Pike and the girl. I like this ending much better, as the illusion of Pike staying behind always made me a bit uncomfortable.

Characters

Spock: This may or may not be the first time we've seen this, but they talked about how Vulcan's can't lie and therefore Spock shouldn't be able to, but he might be able to break this as he's half human. (Episodes 4 and 5 mentioned that he was half human, but I don't think it has mentioned that Vulcans can't lie yet)

Enterprise: Again, not exactly a character, but learning things about the ship sort of fits in the same category. We learn that the events of The Cage happened 13 years ago, but the opening credits say the ship is on a 5 year mission. I never really thought about it before, but I guess the ship had been around longer in the past, and it is just embarking on this particular 5 year mission recently. I had always assumed that the 5 year mission started when the Enterprise was first built, apparently not.

Rating

8/10

Intense Debate Comments

I've decided to remove intense debate and go back to the default blogger comments. Of course, ID holds your comment threads hostage so you will stay with it, but luckily I don't have too many. I have taken screenshots and edited them into the bottom of their posts so they won't be lost.

Dagger of the Mind: TOS Season 1 Episode 9

Plot Synopsis

Right at the start there is a bit of tension between Bones and Kirk as they have different opinions about prison in general. Kirk says he has been very impressed with the new type of prisons "they're more like resort colonies now". Bones responds that "A cage is a cage". Kirk says that Bones is behind the times, but he was having none of it. A little bit later on in the episode Spock has an amusing comment "Interesting, your people glorified organized violence for 40 centuries, but you imprison those who employ it privately". Anyway, they had to beam down some supplies to the penal colony and they brought back some mysterious classified box of stuff that they weren't supposed to look at. But it turned out that a prisoner (Gelder) had snuck aboard in the box and he soon he knocked out the transporter operator and stole his clothing.

Dr. Adams (the guy in charge of the penal colony) tells them that Gelder was very intelligent and dangerous. Which set up an expectation for me that they would have a lot of trouble catching him, but he pretty much went right to Kirk and requested asylum. They knocked him out and took him to sickbay, and intended to return him to the penal colony but Bones thought that something was up and insisted that he keep Gelder aboard to study him. He quickly discovered that Gelder seemed to have fragments of memories, but there was a lot of missing information. He also discovered that Gelder had been a doctor. Something is definitely amiss! When they arrived back at the penal colony Bones remained on board to continue studying Gelder, so he sent Dr. Noel along with Kirk to go down to the planet to check things out. Hilariously, Kirk had previously hit on Dr. Noel at a Christmas party and was annoyed that Bones had sent her. He said she had better be the best choice for the job

When they get down to the planet they meet Dr. Adams and a number of other people who seem to be working for him. Everyone except for Dr. Adams has a blank look on their faces, it seems very strange indeed. Dr. Noel for some reason is very invested in Dr. Adams, because she seems blind to all of the strange stuff that they are seeing. Kirk is asking a lot of questions, and focuses on a strange looking machine which includes a prisoner sitting in a chair getting his mind manipulated. Kirk thinks Adams is being evasive, so he comes back later to investigate with Dr. Noel. He sits in the chair and she uses the machine to implant memories into his mind. She starts making him feel hungry, and then tries something a bit more difficult, she makes him remember that Christmas party with him taking her back to his quarters.

Adams catches them and takes over the controls. We see his real methods as he turns the intensity of the machine up and tells him that if he remembers what really happened here he would be consumed with great pain. Luckily, Dr. Noel was able to get away. In the meantime Spock does a mind meld (the first ever!) with Gelder to find out the horrible things that Adams has been doing. Being afraid of what is happening on the planet with the captain, he prepares to beam down but can't get through while the shields are up. Luckily, on the planet Dr. Noel is turning off the power. In addition to allowing Spock a chance to get down to the planet, it saves Kirk from the chair. Kirk then kicks Adam's ass and he winds up in the room by himself. When the power comes back on Adams is hit with the full force of the machine. His mind is emptied, but there is no one there to fill the void. This kills him. We get another very nice "he's dead captain" from Bones.

Bones says that it is hard to believe that he would be killed from this machine, Kirk responds "not when you've sat in that room"

Characters

Spock: We learn about the mind meld. It's pretty cool to see the first instance of something that wound up being so iconic. As the writing in these seems to be pretty "seat of their pants", I imagine it was just thrown in without much thought for the convenience of this episode and it just became a mainstay later.

Kirk: The scene where Kirk first realizes that Dr. Noel was going to accompany him was pretty amusing. He seems like a ladies man as he has clearly at least flirted with her in the past, but he is also somewhat embarrassed by her being there.

Bones: Dr. McCoy was the first to think that something was up with Dr. Adams, and he stuck to his guns even when everyone else seemed to think he was wrong. It was really great to see him stand up to the challenge.

First time

In addition to the mind meld which I mentioned above, they mentioned that they can not beam through shields. It makes me wonder if the very idea of beaming produces some clear writing problems and they decided to make the rule that they can't beam through shields to set limits to transporting.

Themes

Obviously the big theme of this episode was prison. Bones was against the very idea of prison, no matter how nice things are. Kirk was more focused on the fact that the prisons are very nice and not the cages the we all imagine as a typical prison. I think Kirk was more focused on the practical implications (we need to do something with criminals) while Bones was being more idealistic.

Rating

8/10

Very enjoyable, and I love that I got to see the first instance of a few things that became prominent later in the Star Trek universe.

Intense Debate Comments

I've decided to remove intense debate and go back to the default blogger comments. Of course, ID holds your comment threads hostage so you will stay with it, but luckily I don't have too many. I have taken screenshots and edited them into the bottom of their posts so they won't be lost.

Miri: TOS Season 1 Episode 8

Sorry for the late update. Lately I have been busier during the first half of the week than the last half, so I'm going to start pushing these posts live on Sunday instead of Wednesday.

Plot Synopsis

The episode opens with the enterprise getting an "Earth style" distress signal, but there are no colonies or vessels out this far. They get to the planet and the topography is exactly like Earth (it shows Africa and North America). Kirk says "Not our Earth, another Earth. It seems impossible, but there it is." It seems like a really weird choice to me. Why not just say it is a planet with an Earth-like atmosphere? Unless I missed it, they never explained why this planet is so much like Earth. For practical reasons, aliens basically look like humans and it's no big deal, why not just do the same thing and say this planet looks like Earth?

They beam down to the planet and realize the similarities to Earth continue, Kirk estimates that it is equivalent to approximately early 1900's Earth, Spock says he thinks it looks more like the 1960s, except the level of general decay suggests that there have been about 300 years of natural deterioration of anything human made. Again, to suggest that this is happening in this alternate Earth's equivalent decade as when they are filming seems like a peculiar choice. Especially with the decay it could have been any time. Perhaps they are trying to shine a light on the fact that everything looks like Earth and this is just a smirk at the audience.

Anyway, it appears that the planet is deserted, Spock points out that the distress signal is likely automated, but it is too soon to know for sure that there are no people remaining. As they are looking through a pile of junk Bones moves a tricycle and a somewhat disfigured guy runs out of a nearby building. He complains that it is broken and they say they will fix it, then he dies. 

They then search for additional people and come across Miri hiding in a closet. She is very afraid at first, but they eventually convince her that they are not going to hurt her. We soon learn that all of the grown ups (grups) got sick and died, and it seems they went somewhat insane and violent in the end (which is why Miri was so afraid of them at first). It turns out that 300 years ago the people of this planet were creating viruses intended to prolong life, it worked on children (making them age about a month  for every 100 years of real time passing) but it killed any adult. It is guessed that some hormone change in puberty is what makes the virus act differently in adults. Unfortunately, the away team is infected

The away team determines that they have about 7 days to find a cure, so they set up a lab and Bones and Spock work together finding a cure. In addition to the work they were doing on the planet, people on the enterprise were using the computer to help them solve the puzzle, but the kids on the planet distracted them and stole their communicators. Why would they do this? Miri's jealousy! She was very taken by Kirk, and he somewhat took advantage of this to get information from her. But when Janice showed some affection for Kirk, Miri riled up the kids and while they were taking Janice captive they also stole the communicators. All because Kirk was toying with the emotions of a young girl.

What he was saying made this scene creepy

While Kirk is rescuing Janice and convincing the kids that they will eventually grow up and die from the disease as well, Spock and Bones continue working on the cure. They have something that seems like it will work, but without the computer they can't know for sure. Spock says that it could be a vaccine or "death in a beaker". Bones figured they will die anyway if they don't take it so they might as well give it a shot (I'm with him). He takes the medicine and the scabs simply disappear before our eyes. A very star trek style effect, but really stupid looking in this case. Why not peel off the scab to show healthy skin underneath, having them disappear is just silly.

Anyway, now they have cured the disease and are free to beam back up to the enterprise. The episode ends on an amusing little interaction, Janice tells Kirk that Miri really loved him. Kirk responds that he never gets involved with older women.

Unnecessary Shirt Ripping

I don't know why this cracks me up so much, but Kirk's shirt get ripped again in a way that didn't seem necessary at all.

Episode Themes

Insufficient information: I really like the dilemma near the end where they potentially have a cure, but they don't know if it is instead deadly. Logically it is easy, you either take the medicine and potentially die, or don't take the medicine and surely die. But that doesn't mean it would be easy to up-end that thing.

Dangerous Technological Advancement: Obviously the people of this planet tried to extend their lives with Technology and they wound up dying because of it. This is a theme I typically enjoy.

Characters

We see more Spock and McCoy sniping at each other, but it has definitely turned into friendly banter rather than what appeared to be disdain the first time this came up. When they first were discovering that they were infected with the disease they discovered that Spock was immune, the following conversation took place

Kirk: Why is Spock immune?
Bones: They must not have an appetite for green blood.
Spock: Being a red blooded human has obvious disadvantages

Janice says she's always trying to get Kirk to look at her legs. She is distraught that he legs are now covered in scabs. This incident is what sets Miri off.

Rating

8/10

Overall I quite enjoyed this episode

Mudd's Women: TOS Season 1 Episode 6

Plot Synopsis

This episode starts with the enterprise chasing an unknown ship. It wasn't responding to any transmissions and tried to get away. It fled into the asteroid belt of whatever solar system it was in at the time, with so many asteroids in one place one eventually hit and destroyed the ship, the enterprise crew had trouble beaming them out in time and even used up most of their lithium crystals to do it. Two things here, why lithium instead of dilithium? I'm curious to see if this is something they later change and say that the ships were always powered by dilithium, or if the switch from lithium to dilithium is an upgrade at some point. Second, asteroid belts don't work that way! They might be close together on a map of the solar system, but they are really far apart at the scale of a starship.

Anyway, they beam off the people on the ship, who were Mudd and 3 beautiful women. The women had a very strong effect on all of the men on the ship, they want these women and can be very easily manipulated. We knew something was up pretty quick when Mudd quietly told the women to make sure they wouldn't get a medical scan, but the stopped himself and just said that it was sure not to happen, the expectations was that even if it comes up, they would have no trouble distracting the doctor and convincing him not to do it.

The crew really wants to find out what is up, and they interrogate Mudd and find out who he is. With the use of a lie detector they find out he is a criminal and keep him confined to his quarters, the women however are permitted to wander around. No problem, the girls should be able to take over the ship in no time, the problem is the one who was supposed to take control of Kirk couldn't go through with it. But Mudd is a resourceful man, he found out that the ship was heading to a mining planet to get some replacement crystals. He made contact on his own and told them about the women that they could potentially have for wives. This will make a quick acquisition of new lithium crystals difficult.

So they barely get to the planet, they even have to put themselves in a decaying orbit, it was the best they could do. They have a limited amount of time, and although Kirk tries to be tough, he really had no choice but to let the girls and Mudd go down to the planet to be with the miners. But in the meantime we have learned what is up with the girl's beauty. It turns out that they have been taking some illegal drug that makes them beautiful, and I guess gives them power over men (unless the power is simply a direct result of their beauty, I wasn't clear on that).

On the planet one of the girls (the same one that didn't want to betray Kirk) wasn't interested in the miners anymore, and didn't take her drug. She became plain looking and then the beauty drugs are revealed to the man she was meant to marry. He was pissed about it, but before he can say much the woman says he's not really looking for a wife, but for "this" and she grabs the drug and takes it. She becomes beautiful quickly. The miner complains that she is only beautiful because of the drug, and Kirk reveals that he had replaced the drug with a placebo. She's beautiful again be she has confidence, it was in her the whole time. Can I vomit now? Anyway, the two of them are happy and the enterprise gets its crystals.

Characters

McCoy and Spock: I've been talking about their interaction a bunch lately. In the past I have said that they seem to hate each other. At the end of this episode they snipe at each other a little bit but it seems to be more in fun than previously. Perhaps the actors are hitting a stride.

Enterprise: While not exactly a character, it is a fact about the ship so I figured I'd put it here. We learn in this episode that the enterprise runs on lithium crystals as I mentioned above.

Rating:

5/10

I thought this episode was only okay, I was debating between a 5 and 6. The asteroid thing and the annoying ending with the "it was just your confidence" pushes it down to a 5 for me. What do you think?

The Enemy Within: TOS Season 1 Episode 5

Plot Synopsis

While down on a planet a crewman hurts himself and has to beam back up to the ship for some medical attention. He was covered in what appeared to be dirt, but it turned out to be some mysterious substance that screwed up the transporter. Kirk beamed up shortly afterwards and Scotty (who had beamed him up) walked off with him leaving the transporter room unmanned. While no one was there to see, an evil Kirk materialized on the transporter pad

Of course nobody realized there were two Kirk's at this point and mischief can easily be had. Evil Kirk went to sickbay and insisted on getting some booze from Bones. He then headed off to Yeoman Janice's quarters and waited for her to finish her shift. When she came in he attacked her and tried to rape her. She defended herself quite well and scratched his face, at one point they were close to the door, which opened, and someone outside was able to see what was going on and helped her. Evil Kirk then proceeded to beat the crap out of that guy. This scene was intense.

Meanwhile, good Kirk was coming across confusing situations where people were claiming he did things he hadn't done and been places he hadn't been. Then Scotty shows Kirk and Spock the dog who had beamed up and was doubled, one very docile and the other aggressive. We then see a scene where Janice is explaining what had happened to Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Kirk obviously denies that any of this took place, and uses the fact that his face isn't scratched as evidence. Janice was very obviously traumatized and confused that Kirk would do this to her, it was a really powerful scene to watch, and excellent performance. My only real issue was that they should have been able to piece things together at that point, they shouldn't have been so hard on Janice. It actually made me wonder if the duplicated dog scene was supposed to have taken place after this scene.

But they did eventually put the pieces together, partly due to the corroboration of the crewman whose ass was kicked by evil Kirk. They soon realized that good Kirk was also having problems. Without his dark side he was a poor leader and was unable to make decisions. They realized they would need to capture evil Kirk alive and find a way to merge them back together. After some hijinks they are able to capture evil Kirk and it is just down to getting them put back together with the transporter. They try first with the dog, but it doesn't work and the dog dies. They think Kirk could survive a similar trip, but they can't be sure until they do some lengthy study of the dog. Ultimately, Kirk decides to take the chance and try the trip sooner rather than later and he is obviously okay.

Why was he so eager to do this now rather than wait? There was a side plot running through the episode that a team still on the planet needs to get back up to the ship before it gets too cold during the planet's nighttime. (-140 degrees if I recall correctly) Obviously once they realized the transporter was doubling it was out of commission. I don't really understand why they couldn't send down a shuttle craft, maybe they haven't decided that the Enterprise has shuttles yet. Also, they were also just hanging out in the cold, you would think they would find a cave, or at least sit in some sort of tent for a little bit of protection. Not that this would solve the problem, and it probably was easier to get the point across this way, but it still made me laugh

Characters

Yeoman Janice: She was amazing in this episode. When she was attacked she was very strong in the moment and was able to fend off her attacker. Later on she was very vulnerable emotionally and showed that she felt very betrayed by Kirk. Great stuff.

McCoy and Spock: In the comments of previous episodes, Troubleshooter has mentioned that Spock and McCoy sometimes represent logic and emotion respectively. With this in mind, I couldn't help but notice that they seemed to epitomize those things in this one shot

Also, I would argue that they still seem to hate each other. Even when he is agreeing with McCoy, Spock can't just say that, he has to say "For once, I agree with you"

Spock: Apparently they haven't worked out the details yet about what he is. At one point in the episode he mentioned that he is half human and half alien. You would think he would have said half Vulcan.

Quotes

I just had one, it was from Dr. McCoy. When the dog came back on the transporter pad and was dead, he delivered the line

He's dead Jim

This is one of those simple lines that gets repeated over and over. I'm guessing McCoy says it many times in the series as it is something people seem to reference quite a lot. This was either the first instance, or I just didn't notice it before.

Rating

8/10

I liked this episode quite a lot. I was deciding between putting it at 7 or 8, I  think Janice's performance pushes it up to 8 for me.

How would you rate it?

The Naked Time: TOS Season 1 Episode 4

Plot Synopsis

The Enterprise is orbiting Psy 2000, a planet which is about to die. They are there to pick up a science team that was there to observe the planet near the end of it's life, unfortunately when they get there they find the team dead under mysterious circumstances. The environmental system settings are all out of whack, and the engineer died sitting in his chair, frozen, like he didn't care what was happening. Spock and crewman Joe Tormolen beam down in environmental suits to investigate, and apparently Tormolen is an idiot because he took off his glove while he was down there and was infected with something.

When they get back to the ship they are checked out by sickbay and the contagion is not seen, at the end we find out that it looks like water to the scanners or something. Anyway, if you are infected you feel like you are drunk, one of the things that happens is you sweat a lot which is apparently why the science team on the planet had changed the environmental setting to such low temperatures. The pathogen is also spread through skin to skin contact via sweat. But whatever, the whole point here is to get a bunch of drunk people running around the enterprise and for hilarity to ensue. We get random crewmen challenging Spock on the bridge

We get a shirtless Sulu challenging random people to fencing.

Another (or the same?) crewman takes manages to lock himself alone in engineering and take over the ship remotely.

Wait a minute, that could be a problem. Remember the planet that was going to explode? Yeah that could be a problem. It could go at any minute and we need to be able to run away at a moments notice, but he has transferred all control from the bridge. This seems like a pretty serious security problem to me! Anyway, with a backdrop of more and more craziness on the ship, Scotty manages to get back into Engineering and take control back. But the low level crewman has completely powered down the engines and it will take a half hour to warm them back up again. The planet is going to blow up in less than that much time.

It turns out that there is a way to pump matter and anti-matter into the engines cold, but no one has ever tried it before. Spock to the rescue! He gets the mixture just right and they get away just in time, but it turns out that they have discovered how to time-travel! Spock says that they can now go anywhere they want at any time. How much you wanna bet they use it to go to mid-twentieth century Earth? Seriously though, the implications here should be pretty huge, from now on in this series and in future series time travel should always be an option. I wonder if they deal with that at all? What might be neat would be if they use it willy-nilly for a while and discover problems inherent in it. Who knows, maybe they won't even share their findings with star fleet. By the way, if you know how this works out please don't tell me. I'd like to find out naturally as it comes up.

Unnecessary shirt ripping

I don't know why this cracked me up so much, but when Bones gave Kirk the cure, he ripped his shirt in a way that seemed totally unnecessary to me. In the last episode Kirk also had his shirt ripped too. It almost seems like they are just looking for ways to show off.

Notable Quotes

When Spock had just gotten to the planet and he had told Kirk that everyone was dead, Kirk asked what had caused it. Spock replied with a super intense tone and said

I don't know captain. It's like nothing we've dealt with before!

It might have been all about the delivery, but it sure made me laugh while I was watching it. Perhaps along the same lines, when Sulu was running around the ship challenging people to fence he said

I'm sweating like a bridegroom

Is that an old saying I've just never heard of or just a weird quirk of this character? Either way I love it. One final quote, which was actually an interaction between Bones and Spock. Spock was fine but Bones had to dig into him a bit

Bones: You're blood pressure is practically nonexistent, assuming you call that green stuff in your veins blood

Spock: The readings are perfectly normal for me doctor, thank you. As for my anatomy being different from yours, I am delighted.

Whoa, do Bones and Spock hate each other? Which brings me to my next section

Characters

Bones and Spock hate each other! They didn't seem to be playfully jabbing at each other like long time pals, they really seemed to be going at it. I'll have to see if this keeps up.

I guess we learned that Sulu likes to fence.

Also Spock told us that his mother was human on a world full of unemotional Vulcans. I'm pretty sure this is the first time we learn this. In episode zero he said one of his ancestors was human, but of course it is not uncommon for things to change between the pilot and the normal run of a show.

Connection to The Next Generation

The second episode of the next generation did a version of this episode called The Naked Now. In that episode, Riker even makes a reference to the person who died fully clothed in their shower at the beginning of this episode. Even though I haven't seen that TNG episode in years I remember that reference from Riker,  I have never seen the episode it was referencing until today, so that was kind of neat. I wonder if this episode was always a favorite of Roddenberry's, or perhaps of the writers of TNG. It's interesting that they did a version of it so near the beginning of that show's run.

Great Stuff I don't know how to Categorize

There was a scene with some younger people playing 3D checkers next to a 3D chess board. Awesome

Rating

7/10

Let me know how you would rate it

Where No Man Has Gone Before: TOS Season 1 Episode 3

Plot Synopsis

The Enterprise is planning on leaving the galaxy, which is something no one has ever tried before as far as they know. Right before hand they see the wreckage of an old ship the Valiant that went missing 2 centuries ago and they recover it's black box. It turns out the captain use the auto-destruct, which is troubling as it makes them wonder what happened to make him want to go to those extremes. They try to leave the galaxy anyway and they encounter a lot of flashing lights, and in particular something happens to a few of the bridge crew. It also blew out the warp drive.

The guy who got hit was Mitchell, and he immediately has fancy blue glitter eyes, so he is obviously taken to sickbay.

While he is in sickbay he develops some really cool powers, he reads half of the ships library while he's there, he can make himself appear dead for a while, he can read minds, he saved the ship from losing it's impulse drive by reading the engineers mind and seeing that he was careless in his last inspection.

Spock says that as Mitchell gains more power he will become more than human, people will be an annoyance to him and he wouldn't hesitate kill us all if it suits him. His solution is to kill him, or perhaps maroon him on the nearby planet Delta Vega. Kirk is upset as he has been friends with Mitchell for 15 years, but ultimately seems to conclude that this is likely going to be a necessary outcome.

It turns out that there is an abandoned base on Delta Vega. I'm not sure why there is an old base so close to a place no one has ever gone, but it's a good thing it's there, because they can use the facilities to repair their warp engines.While they are there the doctor's powers eventually kick in, and Mitchell's power grows to the point that he breaks out of the cell. The two of them run off into the desolate wilderness. He turns a wasteland into a lush area with water and plants and whatnot.

Kirk feels he is responsible and chases after them, he gets in a fight with Mitchell and the doctor sees the bad side of what could happen so she helps Kirk by sapping some of Mitchell's power away. Then Kirk and Mitchell get into a pretty epic fight which eventually leads to Mitchell's death. In the fight Kirk's shirt gets ripped and he gets to show off his manliness for a while. I don't know why but this really cracked me up.

Notable Quotes

There were three quotes from this episode that I liked, the first two were about Spock's lack of emotions. In the first, Kirk asked Spock if he found something irritating and Spock responded

Irritating? Ahh yes, one of your earth emotions

The other was right after Spock suggested that the most logical course of action was to kill Mitchell before his power was so great that it would be impossible to deal with him, Kirk yelled at him

Try for one moment to feel, or act like you have a heart!

 The last quote was from Mitchell near the end when his powers were God-like. Kirk was trying to reason with him that he shouldn't abuse his power, and he said

Morals are for men, not Gods

Interesting Ideas

One of the things I love about science fiction generally and Star Trek specifically is that they use a specific and fanciful setting to tackle ideas that come up in my different setting in real life. Of course things are taken to ridiculous extremes, but that is part of the fun. In this episode there were three things that stood out to me as interesting ideas that they were playing with, the first is the idea that power corrupts. Mitchell was friends with Kirk, and presumably other people on the enterprise, for a long time. And yet, when he was significantly more powerful than them and his interests were very different he became less concerned with their perspective. I think we all like to think that we would not do this in the same situation, but it's hard to not be self-interested.

The next idea is that you should take care of a difficult problem before it gets worse. Obviously killing Mitchell was a terrible thing to do, and yet if he is likely going to get more powerful and try to kill everyone perhaps it is the right move. It turned out that Spock was right here, even though his course of action was something that we would hate to do, it ultimately would have been the right move.

And on the same topic, what lengths would you go to in order to protect those you care about? Would you do something you found deplorable if it meant you would protect your family (or crew)? Kirk found the price too high, Spock did not. Was it worth the risk if it meant giving Mitchell the chance to be good?

Seat of Their Pant Writing

Something else I was thinking about a lot while watching this episode was how the writing is a bit more loose than the Next Generation writing, which I watched a lot when I was growing up. I think in the Next Gen era they had a lot of details worked out before hand, in this series I think they were focused on the core story and just let the rest of it fall together as was necessary.

This episode started with them leaving the galaxy, obviously from the later series we see that we are restricted to the alpha quadrant, so this wouldn't be possible there, but in this earlier time it was no big deal. There also seems to be no explanation as to what happened to them when they tried to leave the galaxy. If this were a later series I would expect some explanation like there was an alien species who were trying to contain us in our own galaxy or something. Here it is just "this happened, now let's deal with it" rather than telling us why it happened.

Another thing that I found amusing was that they lost there warp engines near the edge of the galaxy, which is a place that as far as they knew no one had ever tried to go that far. And yet there was an old abandoned base on a nearby planet. It seems to me that if there was a base so old it has since been abandoned, they would have explored outside the galaxy while they were there at some point. And if people had tried that and were eventually destroyed (like the Valiant) there should be a record of it. Not that I think that is much of a knock on the series, it just shows that their writing was more focused on the broad ideas instead of the details.

One final thing that amused me, the Valiant went missing 2 centuries before, but I think the original series only happened about 3 centuries in the future. I suppose that could be optimism on Gene Roddenberry's part that we would be at the edge of the galaxy in 100 years, but I'm guessing it is more than the actual date that this is supposed to happen was not decided on at the time. In fact, I bet that's why they used star dates. "What year did this happen?" "I don't know, really far into the future, so we can do whatever we want, just make up a fake dating system". While I'm on that, at one point in the episode Kirk said it was stardate 1312.9, perhaps this was supposed to be thirteen hundred years after starfleet was founded or something. Who knows.

Characters

Something that really stood out to me was that the doctor wasn't McCoy. I think that perhaps the only true main characters at this point are Kirk and Spock. There are several other characters that recur, but those 2 are the only ones that always seem to be there. I wonder if they are trying to give the impression that it is a big ship with rotating crews for different times. It makes sense that there would be multiple people in every important role. On the other hand, the doctor had to die, so maybe that is why there was a new person there.

Spock: We see more attention given to the fact that he is logical and not emotional. He's cold and calculating, will to do the lesser of two evils which would make most of us at least hesitate.

Kirk: He demonstrates his good character. He wants to give Mitchell every chance to do the right thing, but ultimately takes responsibility for not acting sooner.

Rating

7/10

Do you agree with my rating or any of my analysis? Let me know in the comments.

Charlie X: TOS Season 1 Episode 2

Plot synopsis:

The episode starts with the enterprise bringing aboard a child (Charlie) from another ship, the Antares. Apparently they found him alone on a planet. 14 years ago there was a crash and he was the only survivor, he was 3 years old at the time. Obviously this means that he will be socially a little bit off, since he grew up alone. Two members of the crew from the Antares beam over with Charlie and talk with Kirk in the transporter room before they leave in somewhat of a hurry. It seems like they are going to tell Kirk something about Charlie, but he uses his mysterious power and they just say how great he is or something like that. 

At one point Charlie interrupts the conversation of the others and Kirk tells him that it is not the way people act. Kirk wasn't mean to the kid, but he does make it clear he doesn't take shit from anyone. Kirk asks Yeoman Janice to take him to his quarters and he asks if she is a woman. This is the second episode in a row where she had to deal with a creepy guy, I think that might be her purpose in this show.

We later see Charlie getting checked out by Dr. McCoy, he is in good health. He then tells the doctor that he  wants people to like him. I'm sure anyone who can remember being 17 can relate. The then runs into Janice in the hall and has a short conversation with her, as he walks away he slaps her on the ass. Anyone who can remember being a 17 year old boy can certainly understand the impulse.

There is an argument between Spock and McCoy as to whether it was possible that Charlie was really all alone on the planet. Spock doesn't think it was possible, as the ships stores of food would have ran out after a year or so, McCoy says he could have started eating food from the planet but Spock doesn't think that seems likely. 

The next scene was great, it was in a mess hall or cafeteria or something. Spock was playing some type of futuristic stringed instrument, my guess is it is a take on a lute. Anyway, he's playing and Uhura starts singing along with him. It was a fun little scene, and everyone was enjoying the music. But then Charlie came into the room and tried to talk to Janice, she nodded at him but then motioned for him to be quiet and enjoy the music. He then used his power to break the instrument and mess up Uhura's voice, he then got Janice's attention and showed her some pretty impressive card tricks. Like, turning an ace into a picture of Janice.

In the next scene we see Kirk talking to the ships cook telling him that for thanksgiving the crew would eat meatloaf, but it better taste like turkey. I found this scene hilarious, partly because I just love the idea of passing meatloaf off as turkey, and partly because it is amusing to think the captain of the ship would be dealing with this. It is also interesting that they celebrate thanksgiving, apparently the united federation of planets is american (not that they've mentioned the federation yet, for all I know in Gene Roddenberry's head at this point the ship is an american ship, although I'd guess he just didn't think about this point much if at all). Charlie overheard this conversation, and later we find out that the meatloaf that got put into the ovens actually turned into turkeys.

From there Charlie follows Kirk onto the bridge where they are having trouble contacting the Antares, Charlie seems to know something is wrong with the ship before anyone else, we find out later that he actually caused the ship to blow up, of course he claims it would have happened anyway. He never seemed concerned that he had killed 20 people, just that those people had made him feel bad. Teenagers with super powers is a really bad idea.

After that Charlie has a few more failed social interactions. He loses to 3D chess with Spock, after which Spock leaves and Charlie melts his pieces. Janice tries to introduce him to someone his age but he's not interested. Then he tries to learn to fight from Kirk but expects to be perfect the first time out and of course that doesn't go well. Another guy in the rec room laughs at him and his makes him disappear, the extent of his powers are now evident and the fun and games are over. Kirk calls in security and Charlie makes their phaser disappear, we later learn that all phasers on the whole ship are gone. 

Kirk tells him to go to his quarters, but he doesn't listen and pretty much has control of the whole ship. He goes to Janice's quarters and gives her a flower, she's not interested and he gets upset and makes her disappear. He roams the ship a bit getting into some more mischief, for instance, making some poor girl's face disappear.

We cut to the bridge, Kirk notices that no one has disappeared since the kid has taken over the ship (he either didn't know about Janice, or I got the order of things slightly wrong). Kirk decides that they will overwhelm him by turning on everything on the ship "every light". I found this absolutely hilarious, as if the displays are what matter, presumably all of these functions on the ship still need to be going on in the background whether there is a display on the bridge or not. Anyway, Charlie comes on the bridge and McCoy and Spock turn on all the displays. It seemed to be working that he was overwhelmed, but it didn't matter, a Thasian ship showed up. They are energy being who had taken care of Charlie as a kid, they gave him powers so that he could survive. Kirk tries to say they could teach him to not use his powers, but they said it was impossible for him to not use his powers (ask Riker about that) and want to take him back. Charlie complains as they are immaterial and he can't feel them like he can feel people on the Enterprise, but he is ultimately taken by the Thasians and all of their people who were disappeared were given back. It actually wound up being a fairly sad ending, Charlie got totally screwed.

Characters:

Yeoman Janice: So far she seems to be a lightning rod of sorts for creepy guys. I wonder how long she'll be part of the show, I don't remember ever seeing her in the movies.

Kirk: We see that he cares greatly for people, but he also runs a tight ship and won't take crap from anyone.

Spock: We see Spock playing his lute-like instrument, which is cool. My mental picture of his is the epitome of cold hard logic, but he is clearly having fun here. He is also very involved in solving mysteries of the ship.

Dr. McCoy: He seems to be around more than I would expect. I would think the doctor would be in sickbay more often, but he seems to be on the bridge a lot, for example the discussion with Spock over whether Charlie was really alone on the planet. Nothing wrong with this, just surprised be a bit.

Rating:

6/10

I had a lot of trouble rating this one. There were certainly some enjoyable moments. And I feel like I'm getting to know the bridge crew a bit which is great. On the other hand, Charlie's powers and the story line around him was a bit goofy. I certainly felt sorry for him, he had to deal with the terribleness of being a teenager pushed to the extreme. It would have been nice if there was some payoff at the end, maybe the Thasians could have taken his powers away and he could go on to starbase to try to live a normal life, him just being taken away was a pretty big bummer. I think that is what made me decide between a 6 and a 7.

Please feel free to tell me what rating you would have given this episode in the comments