Episode 02: Charlie X

Meet Charlie:

Charlie may seem familiar to you. Charlie has trouble dealing with other people, and he has awkward exchanges with the female population; he also tends to shadow the cool kids in a sad, desperate bid for acceptance.

Charlie is that kid from high school.

You know the one. His mother probably still dresses him, bad hair cut, big head, plays Magic The Gathering on weekends. The only difference between Charlie here and Daniel Cochran, captain of the chess team, is that Charlie can melt your head with his mind.

Yee.

We first encounter Charlie in the transporter room as two grinny crewmen of the research ship Antares drop him off as quickly as possible, and right away the "inspiration" for this episode becomes fairly clear. Also, on top of the plot being lifted from "The Twilight Zone" (again), it stands as the fourth episode in a row about telepathy. Come on guys, shake it up! Give me some time traveling alien death lords, or a rapidly exanding sun that's threatening a near by planet populated by eager, green skinned sex wenches. Just chill with the ugly people with telepathy and a God complex.

Charlie becomes particularly smitten with Yeoman Rand's basket hair, begins standardly following her around, coming into her bedroom, giving her things, and--best part--showing off his card tricks.

Jesus Christ, Charlie....

Kirk avoids mentoring on things like how to treat women, social niceties, and physical exercise; understandably as well, because every time Kirk tries to give even the slightest advice to Charlie he just proves that he would be the worst father in the history of history. In fact, every time that Kirk interacts with Charlie he seems seconds away from hitting the boy and calling him a weenie.

As Charlie starts to become more frantic in making friends, the strange incidents occuring throughout the ship begin to increase. But even as the Antares tries to warn the Enterprise about Charlie, only to explode mid-message, Kirk just now begins that something may *may* be up with young Charles. So in effort to give the boy a bit of character, what does Captain James Tiberius Kirk do?

He takes the geeky, short tempered, dangerous, psychic kid to the gym. I'm sure that will work out well, Jim; well played.

Kirk's exploits in the gym send Charlie over the edge, and he goes through the ship making various crew members blink out of existance, while also doing various mean things to random crewmen, like turning a girl into a lizard, transforming one foxy crewwoman into an old hag, and wiping off a girl's face for laughing:

Basically we witness an intergalactic school shooting. The nerdy kid gets bullied about, snaps, and then reigns terror on his oppressors. In a way, I guess it could be called the predicessor to Carrie. I just kept expecting Kirk and Spock giggling to eachother as they dump a bucket of Landarian Swamp-Goat Blood on the kid.

But perhaps the worst part (or best part, depending on your perspective) of this episode comes in the rec room when Uhura serinades Spock as he plays his handy Vulcan Space Harp. Not only does this stir my fears that the producers plan to push a subtle Spock/Uhura fling, but the woman can't sing either. The scene seems to last forever as Uhura flings about Spock, croaking in her deep tuneless voice. Charlie obviously feels the same way because he does exactly what I wanted to do for the entire scene and mentally chokes her just to get her to stop fucking croning.

After taking back control of his ship from Charlie, Kirk shows that little brat who's boss before sending him off to the lonely planet from whence he came:

GIVE ME YOUR LUNCH MONEY YOU FUCKING NERD.

This is Star Trek

Spock and Uhura's sing along:

Charlie catching on to how to exploit Yeoman Rand:

Is... is that a girdle?:

He's Dead Jim:
Production Episode #8
Death Count: 20
Entire crew (20) of the Antares, destroyed by Charlie.


Total Star Trek death toll: 48.

On the next episode...

Spock wraps himself in bubble wrap and giggles for hours.

Episode 01: The Man Trap

Now that the pilots have gotten out of the way, the series seems to have taken a much more recognizable form. McCoy plays a big role in this episode which characterizes him as a bit of a sucker for the ladies, Sulu has a big room of flowers shaped like hands, Spock's eyebrows have been tamed, and... wait, is Uhura hitting on Spock?

You know, I don't think a starship is quite the atmosphere for a Jim and Pam relationship, and I don't think emotionally dead alien and foxy black chick dynamic works quite as well as charming sales guy and cute receptionist. This comparison is a bit of a stretch considering Urhura and Spock's flirtatious interchange lasts for 30 seconds in the first episode, isn't it?

The episode begins with McCoy, Kirk, and Crewman Soon to be Dead venture down to the planet that is apparently barren save for some toppled over columns and a shrub or two. The Enterprise's mission is to check up on the pair of scientists researching the planet (one of which being McCoy's old flame), and re-supply them before setting off and leaving the pair to study, well, toppled over columns and a shrub or two I guess.

When we meet the pair, Dr. Crater goes into standard "Um, hi, nothing's wrong here. Just. Uh. GIVE US SALT. I mean, but we're fine. Completely. As long as you give us salt." I would imagine that Kirk and co. have been doing this whole space travel thing for a while now, and I hope that they would recognize a sweaty, terrified man begging for salt as, I don't know, a red flag? At the very least they may notice the girl they are talking to changes shape three goddamn times within the same conversation. The episode never really makes it clear whether the creature taking the shape of Dr. Crater's wife/McCoy's girl is a telepath or a shapeshifter--the episode implies that it's both, but that just seems fairly redundant. So I'm going to go for another telepath, making this the third episode featuring telepathy in a row. This is getting silly.

At first I thought this episode was going to go for the whole Succubus/Siren route with a shape shifting temptress drawing in men only to suck out their salt (hot), but it turns out to be just a shapeshifter who will shape into anyone and try to suck out everyone's salt (less hot). I calling the episode "The Person Trap" doesn't have much of a ring to it.

Shortly after the opening the inevitable happens:

Crewman Whoever winds up dead in record time, and Kirk and McCoy are just downright clueless about what could have killed him (Hint: It's the space monster, guys. It's never the innocuous thing you think could have done it). In the process the creature, of course, manages to find its way on board of the Enterprise and takes on several forms while killing three more nameless crewmen. At one point it even comes close to sucking the foxy life out of Uhura (it's back to being hot again).

Throughout its various transformations, the creature keeps biting its finger as if the audience needed a sign to know that it wasn't actually McCoy who grabbed that crewman's face and killed him. But just in case you guys needed help getting through this episode, I'll clarify:

McCoy

Not McCoy

Between the monster changing from one dead crewman to another the episode drags a bit. It lacks the action of the second pilot, and the brains of the first. And as Kirk and Spock scramble to figure out what keeps sucking the salt out of their crew members, I found myself dozing..........

Finally, an explosion! Turns out that Dr. Crater has a soft spot for murderous endangered species and tries to keep it from being discovered by the Enterprise's crew. Of course, the monster in the form of McCoy repays him by sucking out all of the salt from his face (and back around to being not hot).

The episode ends with a stand off between the real McCoy (*sigh*) and the creature (as Nancy). After some delay, and getting over the idea of his ex-girlfriend gripping the captain's face in a death lock, McCoy only kills it when it becomes a horrible, green death hag with sucker tentacle-covered kill fingers.

Fucking thing looks like a lamprey crossed with a dead Tina Turner.

This is Star Trek

Sulu begins setting everyone's doubts regarding his sexuality into motion:

Yeoman Rand gets checked out:

Kirk yells... again:

He's Dead Jim:
Production Episode #6
Death Count: 6
4 Enterprise Crewmen Sucked Dry.
Dr. Crater sucked dry off screen.
The creature blasted by McCoy.

Total Star Trek death toll: 18.

On the next episode...

Gerdurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Pilot 02/Episode 03: Where No Man Has Gone Before.

Alright, so despite this airing as episode 3, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" served as the second pilot for NBC, and according to the internet, canonically comes before the rest of the series. So in essence, this episode shows Shatner's first crack at being Captain Kirk which is why I've decided to watch this episode before the rest of the series.

So let’s try this again, pilot #2 is go and right from the bat I feel like I’m watching Star Trek when I’m met with “Captain’s Log, Stardate 1312.4” in an all too familiar voice.

Nice.

It’s amazing how much Shatner brings to this show—and unlike seemingly everything else about the show he comes in swinging as all out Kirk. He doesn’t stumble over the awkward dialogue, his overtly dramatic pauses make an appearance, and the dude hams it up like a mother fucker. That and he can charm the pants off of you.


However, the rest of the cast still isn’t quite up to standard at this point in the show's production. While Scotty and Sulu make their first appearances, the doctor in this episode manages to be even less interesting than the drunken one from the first pilot. Spock’s character remains essentially the same as before except they play up the fact that he’s an alien by giving him hammy lines like “your Earth emotion.” The conversations he has with Kirk feel very much like EXPOSTION CONVERSATION with several awkward lines involving Spock’s half-Vulcan heritage thrown in for good measure. It certainly doesn't come off as natural, as it would be akin to having an Asian friend point out that he’s Asian in the middle of a conversation about the weather or gas prices. To top it off he seems to have a tendency to flatly shout when on the bridge, and even though he's an alien, and aliens tend to look weird, his eyebrows are dumb looking.

The episode begins with Kirk and crew discovering the logs of a destroyed ship (think little black box, except huge and in space. Also, it lights up). After examining the damaged tapes (ha!), they discover that the former captain frantically began to search the ship’s logs on ESP and then orders the ship to self-destruct. Dramatic shit. Then to get things going the ship flies through an energy field that causes the first instance of instrument panels exploding and throwing stunt men around. The instrument panels exploding is something I’ve never been able to understand about Star Trek. You’d think they would put surge protectors on those things or something.

As they fly through the field two crew members, helmsman Lieutenant Gary Mitchell and Dr. Dana, light up quite literally like a fourth of July sparkler before passing out. Lucky for them they survive unharmed—except Mitchell whose eyes begin to glow and becomes an insane telepath with a chronic god complex. He also has this big booming voice that kind of makes him sound like Moses. However, saying that his eyes glow feels like a bit of a stretch, considering that pretty much look like they were turned into balls of aluminum foil. But I guess you do what you can when it's 1965 and you're working on a TV budget.

In any case, after Mitchell starts making cups fly around and shoots Kirk and Spock full of electricity, Kirk (Note: When writing this I unwittingly wrote my own name instead of Kirk’s here. I am deeply bothered.) decides that it might be a good idea to maroon him in a matte painting, where Mitchell and Kirk’s stunt people have their final battle from far away. They flip around a lot though, so it's still pretty rad.

Now from what I understand, NBC turned down the original pilot because it was slow, cerebral, and boring—Roddenbury apparently decided to counter this by making the next pilot involve explosions, telekinesis, and a Captain who isn’t afraid to punch someone in the face. Kirk even carries a huge phaser rifle for no other reason than it being awesome. It should also be said that Kirk has a tendency to be a bit rash with his strategy, considering his secondary solution to killing Mitchell was bombarding the surface of the entire planet.

I agree with NBC. I don’t want to see any more of Captain Pike, I want more of this:

YES!

This is Star Trek:

Kirk and Spock play Space Chess:

BRZZACK:

Behold, ACTING:

He's Dead Jim:
Production Episode #1

Death Count: 12.
9 dead flying through the force field.
Lieutenant Kelso, Telepathically strangled.
Lieutenant Mitchell, Crushed by a huge rock.
Doctor Dana, Killed by Mitchell in telepath duel.

Total Star Trek death toll: 12.

On the next episode...

Something bad probably happens to this guy.

Pilot 01: The Cage.

Alright, time for the pilot and seeing the first adventure of Captain James T. Ki--Wait a second, who the fuck is this guy?


That is not the brave Captain of the starship Enterprise, that is... Who is that? The actor playing the very not Captain Kirk is Jeffrey Hunter. Hunter played several secondary roles throughout the 50s and 60s, appearing in films like The Longest Day with every other actor at the time, and most notably John Ford's The Searchers. If you don't recognize Hunter from The Searchers that's okay, because in the above picture he hasn't been painted a slight shade of brown to make him look half Indian.

In the pilot Hunter plays Captain Christopher Pike, the unremarkable captain of the USS Enterprise whose clean chin and chisled hair leads a team of adventurers you don't recognize to the far end of the Galaxy. Basically the pilot episode feels the same as every other episode of TOS; it has the bad costumes, the poorly constructed sets, the broad technological terms , and most importantly, women painted green. The main difference between the pilot and the rest of the series falls solely on the crew and their lame ability to lull the viewer to sleep. There's the frigid female first officer, the ship's doctor whose only perscription is alcohol, and several young nameless actors who stumble around the set and stiffly say things about technology that they don't seem to understand. It really felt as if most of the cast read their lines phonetically. "Sen-sores read a dis-tress sig-nal from the Tal-oas sys-tem, Cap-tan." At least Spock is there.

In the episode, Pike goes on a reluctant rescue mission for a crashed spacecraft on an unexplored planet where he gets captured and put into a zoo by a race of telepaths with pulsating heads the size of basketballs. What is it with telepaths and pulsating super brains? Last time I checked brains don't pulsate. Look it up for yourself, nothing on that page mentions anything about pulsating.

The episode trudges along with various escape attempts with a couple of crappy looking monsters thrown in to make things interesting. Pike's cell also makes a delightful *boing* whenever he crashes against the space glass. The telepaths torture Pike throughout the episode by surrounding him by beautiful women, sending him to a pleasure world, treating him to a picnic, and having him fight a 7 foot Viking wearing a silly hat and one furry shoe that sounds like a drowning dinosaur. Cruel. Oh, they also send him to a smoldering lava/acid world for a few seconds, but being held prisoner can't always be picnics and sex slaves.

By the end of the episode you find out that the girl prancing around Pike for the entire episode actually is a survivor of the crash, but is actually just extremely busted looking. Which is perhaps the cruelest joke played on Pike by the telepaths--They try to hook him up with an ugly chick. At least they seem to understand how superficial humans can be--but it still basically makes the entire plot of the movie like the 1999 gem She's All That. Save for the fact that there's no prom, it takes place in space, and it doesn't involve Freddy Prinze Jr. Although it might as well with Jeffrey Hunter running around.

I can see why NBC scrapped the pilot based solely on the characters. Captain Pike isn’t so much a character as he is a pretty face. Every so often when a scene changes I think that Pike might actually be Kirk, but then my hopes quickly melted when I saw Pike’s empty stare yet piercingly… hypnotic blue eyes. The entire cast seems hopelessly stiff and they have a complete lack of cheek that the later episodes has in droves. Even Nimoy doesn't seem comfortable in his pointy ears. Pike comes across even worse, and he feels like the antithesis of charisma. He almost seems angry to be in the show--funny considering that his pent up rage ends up saving him from inprisonment. He's reluctant to go on a rescue mission, he isn't interested in the green chick, and he's pretty much just kind of a dick. Captain Pike sucks and I hope something bad happens to him.


.... ooooh.

This is Star Trek:

Lots of dumb things happen in Star Trek, here's a small collection of dumb things that happen in this episode:

When two twentieth century tennis players walk down the coridor of the Enterprise:

When Spock and Pike pick space flowers together:

The back of the telepaths' heads look like butts: