Episode 10: The Corbomite Maneuver

Despite airing later in the season, episode 10 was the first episode to film with all of the regular characters in place. Production wise, this is Uhura and McCoy's first appearance, and also Sulu's first appearance as helmsman. It also marks the first and only appearance of this guy:

Durheeee

In this episode the Enterprise encounter a strange object floating through space that simply won't leave them alone. To make matters worse, it turns out the object on the screen is, in fact, a Windows 95 screen saver:

Terrified that their systems was working on a 200 year old operating system, Kirk and company blow it right the hell up. Suck on that, Bill Gates.

Unfortunately for them, and expectantly for us, another object that looks like a massive space disco ball appears to terrorize the crew. The ABBA ship locks the Enterprise into a tractor beam and the ship's captain, identifying himself as Balok, threatens to destroy the Enterprise in a big booming alien voice. Disco aliens tend to be touchy, apparently. Balok appears on the viewscreen as a wavy looking rubber alien remniscent of the Wizard, except with much less expression, movement, or any sign of life. Being compassionate, Balok decides to allow the crew ten minutes to pray to whatever deity they may or may not believe in before he blows the ship up while listening to Meco.

After Lieutenant Baily flips out and cries (it's okay Dave, I would cry too), we find out that Kirk is a big fan of World Poker Tour. He doesn't quite pull out the reflective glasses and cowboy hat, but he does bluff his way out of being dead by basically telling Balok that the Enterprise was rubber and that his ship was glue, and if they blow up his ship would too. I came up with that myself, I would make such a kickass Starfleet officer. In essence the episode should have been called "Captain Kirk has Balls the Size of Softballs," or at least "Kirk's Huge Balls Maneuver."

After being Balok bails and drags the Enterprise along with him, Kirk manages to break free by having the entire crew shake and run around the set as if the ship were moving. After breaking away, the Enterprise picks up a distress signal from Balok's ship claiming that his life support had depleted. Kirk then has his Star Trek Captain moment of sympathy when he orders an away team to transport onto the alien ship in order to save Balok. Kirk being Kirk, opts to go on the away team and chooses McCoy and Lieutenant Baily. Guess who isn't coming home?

When the away team transports aboard the untastefully decorated ship, they discover that the alien they were talking to before was just a puppet (Nooo.), and ten round the corner to discover...

God. Fucking. Damn it.

Of course it was a super-smart space baby. Of course it would be. Why wouldn't it be a super-smart space baby? Shit.

As the episode ended I started wonder what could have become of the kid who played Balok, thinking I would look it up on imdb later to find out that he was never in anything else, became addicted to coke, has three kids and lives in Tulsa but still shows up to the occasional convention to sign pictures of himself from when he was seven.

Wait a second, Clint Howard?! Ron Howard's brother? Get the fucking fuck out of here. Well I guess it's nice to see that Balok went on to have a career of being in his brother's movies as the weird looking guy. That and he was in Ice Cream Man.

And Silent Night Deadly Night 4.

This is Star Trek.
Kirk's work out on the wall Stair-master.

TECHNOLOGY

Gyee...
On the next episode...

Ohhh no. Nononononononono.

Episode 09: Dagger of the Mind

It’s funny how things can connect in life.

When I was in high school my city had a program called Mayor Youth Day where teens from local schools got to follow around city officials for a day on the job. I knew people who got to sit in the city treasurer’s office, who rode around on the back of a fire truck, one girl even got to fire a police officer’s gun. But being generally unfortunate, none of my friends got to do anything even close to as exciting as sitting in a city treasurer’s office. My friend Michael received probably the worst position of the day; for that day, he acted as the assistant to the city’s planetarium director.

Michael being Michael, the boy actually felt somewhat excited by this so he donned his best bow-tie and took his 17 year old self to city hall, happily telling people that he would be tending to the school children coming to see him for the day. But I think that it had mostly to do with the fact that a then fairly recent episode of “South Park” covered what fun could be had on a trip to the planetarium.

In the episode, the boys visit the Tantalus V Observatory and meet Dr. Adams—a scientist with a rather bizarre bone disease that cripples his ability to pronounce the “T” in the word planetarium (Plane-arium). Once inside, the boys meet Dr. Adams’ peculiar assistants whose empty expression and robotic claims of “I love my work” immediately throw them off. When Dr. Adams turns on the machine, he shows the boys various constellations like The Big Dipper, Roger Ebert, and the two stars that depict the Crusades lulling the children into a bored stupor. Then Dr. Adams activates his machines and begins implanting thoughts into their minds insisting that they love the planetarium and thinking otherwise will cause them enormous pain.

Where am I going with this? Well, I basically just described “Dagger of the Mind” and this season 2 episode of South Park riffs on it down to Mr. Mackay performing a guidance counselor mind meld on one of the planetarium’s escaped assistants. Even the logo on Dr. Adams’ jacket matches the one in South Park. Bunch of nerds run that show I tell you.

Aside from being the influence for a South Park episode, “Dagger of the Mind” also manages to milk a more bombastic performance out of Dr. (NAME) than Shatner ever could. It would seem that NAME comes from the prestigious Clammy Skinned, Goofy Face Shouty School of Acting:

But watching this series just goes to show you how everything can just connect sometimes. Had it not been for Star Trek, then my friend Michael would have never enjoyed Mayor’s Youth Day that day. Then again, he may have anyway—the Chesapeake City Planetarium does have a life sized R2D2 in the lobby.

This is Star Trek.

That can't be regulation attire. It just can't. If she showed up to my high school wearing that she would be sent home for improper attire.

The Captain's Log is apparently a vintage 60s tape recorder.

One bit of technology they managed to predict: Text messaging!


He's Dead Jim:
1 Fried Security Guard
Dr. Adams' brain blanked out by his own machine

Total Star Trek Death Toll: 60
... and 5 Androids. I still am not sure if they count or not.

On the Next Episode...

The crew of the Enterprise can't get rid of their Windows screen saver.

Episode 07: What Are Little Girls Made Of?

Now I know I’ve only seen seven episodes of Star Trek so far, and I don’t want to be pessimistic about the whole thing, but it seems that story ideas are already running just a little bit thin. But just stop me when this concept sounds familiar: An insane scientist creates a duplicate android Captain Kirk. Sound familiar? It should, because they used it two episodes ago.

Of course there’s enough elementary difference here to keep viewers on their toes, but Goddamn, do I really need another episode with Shatner acting with himself already? I wonder if he had it in his contract that he needed to act against himself at least twice every ten episodes. I also wonder if his contract stipulates that he will always have at least one romantic scene whenever there is a remotely attractive girl involved. I don’t remember anyone else getting this much action in Star Trek, but it seems that some strangely dressed alien tries to jump his bones at least once per episode.

In this case the lady in question is an android with what I would call a rather unfortunate fashion sense.

Meet Andrea. Since Andrea is an android she has no emotions, and apparently a complete lack of shame as well. Dr. Korby created Andrea and a handful of other androids while marooned in the caves of a remote ice planet, and feels that he’s solved this whole “mortality issue” that seems to plague us organic beings. The androids look flawlessly human (unless you shoot them, of course ), and in fact Kirk’s reaction to finding out that Andrea is a machine can only be read as “Can you… have sex with an android?” As it turns out, the answer is no.

The episode takes on the issue of whether or not a sentient machine can be considered alive, but is rather poorly handled when compared to something like 2001 or even the TNG episode "The Measure of a Man." Although, I will admit that those titles have significantly less skin and don’t have a scene as well crafted as the one where Kirk tries to convince Andrea that she has emotions by forcing himself on her, which ultimately just feels like a disturbing scene of molestation. Whatever gets the job done, I suppose.

The ingenious way in which Kirk foils the construction of his doppelganger works out beautifully in an odd sort of way. While strapped to the mad doctor’s wheelie-go-round-replicator-of-death, Kirk influences his clone’s mind by shouting insulting bigoted epithets about Spock—successfully creating a perfect clone that also happens to be a giant racist douchebag. So keep this scene in mind if you ever find yourself being replicated, and remember to think nasty racism thoughts about your best friend—unless of course you actually are a racist, it wouldn’t really work if that were the case.

The design of the caves in this episode is probably the best set design I’ve seen so far in this series, and it manages to accurately re-create the dark, yet mystical atmosphere given off by real caves. The designers capture this majesty by making every stalactite and stalagmite look like a giant, pink, throbbing penis. I don’t know about you, but apparently I’m not the only person that thinks caves are funny because penis shaped rocks are everywhere. I’m not just making this up, see for yourself:

Heh heh heh.

This is Star Trek:

whoawhoaWHOAWHOAWHOAWHOA

*sigh*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

He’s Dead Jim:
2 Security guards killed in the caves
5 androids. Do.. wait do androids count?

Total Star Trek Death Toll: 58, or 63, I haven't decided yet.

On the Next Episode...

We find out just what the fuck Infra-sensory drugs do.