50th Anniversary TOS Episode Discussion Marathon

[NAHTMMM]

No, I'm still on "The Naked Time".

Really good teaser. What could possibly have come among these people to cause all this destruction and strangeness?

Tormolen is a jerk for tossing his glove on the dead person like that. Have some respect!

"Instruments only register those things they are designed to register." Some nice scientific sanity to counterbalance the nonsense of a shrinking object invisibly losing mass or gaining gravity.

Watching McCoy and Chapel work on Tormolen, I'm thinking about how something like House or Bones would insist on having the two of them banter about some inane B-plot, rather than risk two seconds of silence.

Sickbay's entrance is not well-designed to get a stretcher into the place.

I see Memory Alpha mentions it partly, but another Trek book talks about Spock's breakdown scene further. TPTB wanted a series of short cuts. Nimoy insisted on attempting the more difficult single long take. It was the end of the production day and they did indeed have just the one shot at doing it the way he wanted. Watching it now I'd say they nailed it.

And I love that, when Spock is so vulnerable as to tell Kirk that he considers Kirk a friend and is ashamed of it, Kirk just slaps him again. Kirk is just not a touchy-feely guy.

Kirk: What's happening? Is it more magic?
Spock: Yes. If you knew the deeper magic, you'd know that when the planet cracked, time itself would start working backwards.

I'm sure this is a reference that I don't recognize.

I do not know what the Pax would be either.

[evay]

Originally Posted by NAHTMMM

And I love that, when Spock is so vulnerable as to tell Kirk that he considers Kirk a friend and is ashamed of it, Kirk just slaps him again. Kirk is just not a touchy-feely guy.

I don't know if it's that so much as Kirk needs his XO and is in a bit of a panic. If they weren't on duty, or if the Plot Crisis de la Semaine wasn't about to hit its third-act peak, he'd have the luxury of letting him express these emotions (see Amok Time, the scene in Spock's quarters), but right at that moment Kirk can't indulge him.

Looking at it through the hindsight of vast character development, we could speculate that Kirk realizes that Spock would/will be ashamed of this emotional display later, so he's trying to help Spock out of this state as fast as possible, and he knows from McCoy/M'Benga that Vulcans need physical pain to focus on to break out of deep meditative states, so he hopes this will work. But that's a bit of post hoc fanwank.

[Nate the Great]

October 6th, 1966, "The Enemy Within"

The Fiver (by Kira)
Memory Alpha Page
Transcript by chakotea.net

The Episode:

* Ah yes, another "this event that is unknown to us" Captain's Log. More proof that these things are recorded after the fact.
* Combine the events of this episode with the Tom Riker and Tuvix incidents and we pretty much have confirmation that the transporter doesn't send your original matter along to be reconstituted.
* That still doesn't explain the delay in the materialization of Evil Kirk. More contrivance. If the ship had a second transporter room, I would've preferred that Evil Kirk had been shunted to said empty transporter room for simultaneous materialization.
* One missed opportunity is having Evil Kirk make his own Captain's Logs to show us what he's thinking.
* Couldn't the shuttle have been used offscreen for budgetary reasons? Sure, the attempt would have to fail to preserve the sense of urgency, but surely just a few shots of Sulu being shaken around by a storm and giving up was within the budget.
* Ah yes, "Hey crew, the imposter has face scars. That's right, the only way to tell us apart at first glance is something that's easily concealed. Good luck!" Don't dermal regenerators exist yet? Surely it would be easier to say "I'm staying on the bridge with Spock. If you see a Kirk wandering around alone it's the imposter, arrest him"?
* (Stolen from the Nitpicker's Guide) Spock considers his Vulcan half the alien one? Huh?
* Even back then I considered "Can half a man live?" to be quite profound. It reminds me of Picard in "Tapestry." We are the sum of our acts, good and bad. Mistakes give us the chance to grow and do better next time.

The fiver:

Captain's Log: Spock forgot to check the weather channel before our away mission, but I'm sure nothing will happen to strand any of us on this frozen wasteland.
Fisher: Ow! My hand! And I'm covered in this weird dust!
Apparently I have a poor sense of pattern recognition.

Don't worry about it, Jim. Starship captains will be making that mistake for centuries to come.

Evil Kirk: Say Bones, have anything to drink around here? Some Saurian Brandy, perhaps?
McCoy: I'm a doctor, not a bartender.

I think Doctor Boyce would claim that the two aren't mutually exclusive, Bones.

Evil Kirk: I must be Good Kirk, right?
Wilson: Hm, there is that evil music playing in the background. And the fact that your speaker credit is "Evil Kirk."

Looking at speaker tags is a common fiver thing, this technique would come in awfully handy during real episodes as well. What a shame.

Spock: Could there be any more plot complications?

When did Spock turn into Chandler Bing?

Memory Alpha discussion:

* Apparently this is the first appearance of Kirk's green wraparound tunic. I always did hate that thing.
* The first appearance of the neck pinch. Can you imagine how the franchise would be different if Nimoy hadn't inspired it's creation?

Nitpicker's Guide notes:

* Apparently this was the first time a keen-eyed viewer could see that James Doohan is missing a finger.
* In the opening scene several characters were missing their chest emblems (I still call them Cochrane deltas for reasons explained elsewhere). Memory Alpha thinks that they had been removed for cleaning and someone forgot to put them back on before shooting. I'm leaning more toward's Phil's theory can removing them lets the production staff flip the camera horizontally to make the planet set look larger.

[Nate the Great]

A video clip of the duplication.

I'm reminded of a passage from the Nitpicker's Guide now. Scotty sent an underling off to get a "synchronic meter" to double-check the transporter after the yellow ore messed with it. Then Scotty proceeds to beam the captain aboard without double-checking it. Huh? Yeah yeah, if he had waited there'd be no episode, but still! The arctic night wasn't imminent, nobody on the planet was in imminent danger. Scotty, it's okay to tell the Captain that there's a hiccup in the transporter and would he mind waiting half an hour!

[Nate the Great]

October 13th, 1966, "Mudd's Women"

This is Take Two due to the server glitch. Hence a bit shorter and less nitpicking.

The fiver (by Derek)
Memory Alpha Page
Transcript

The episode:

* When can I stop complaining about lithium crystals? At least by now we've starting moving away from "crystal as fuel source" and toward "crystal as key engine component."
* I'm interested in the idea that somehow Vulcan hybrids look different enough to normal Vulcans that Mudd can see that. If Spock isn't the first, I'd assume that they're pretty rare.
* Women as "cargo." Um, yeah...
* Silly Mudd trying to claim he didn't know the Enterprise is a starship. Cue rants about energy output profiles, ID transponders, warp field signatures, etc. here.
* I'm sad that the "hypnotic effect" of the women must largely be communicated via Captain's Log because there isn't money for unnecessary extras. I'm reminded of how effectively NextGen did a similar scene in "The Perfect Mate".
* Just three miners? Obviously they can't even have offscreen workers because they'd fight over the women and use up screentime. There are ways to work around this. The three are at a remote outpost and the married guys are elsewhere, the others are too old or young to be desirable, the others are criminals or aliens that would be considered undesirable, etc.
* I do wish that the true nature of the Venus Drug was more consistent. Just a gelatin placebo? Well then you can't have onscreen transformation like that. A real drug? Well then they have to have a Kirk speech convincing them that they don't need it. It was real until the final scene when Kirk tricked them with gelatin placebos? A variant of the Kirk speech.
* I'm still confused about why the women would want to live in this place of complete isolation, constant storms, and constant hard labor. There weren't any transports going in the direction of Earth available?

The fiver:

I get the Powerpuff Girls references, but maybe there were a few too many.

Mudd: Hi, my name is Walsh.
Spock: Your speaker credits say your name is Mudd.
Mudd: Who are you going to believe, the fiver or me?
Spock: Welcome abord, Mr. Walsh.

Zeke, there's a typo there. Anyway, nice dig at the unreliability of the fiving process and the fivist himself (jk Derek )

Memory Alpha notes:

* Harlan Ellison visited the set during the filming. Even though he enjoyed himself, that's still unfortunate.
* I had forgotten about the subspace radio marriage idea. This is a loaded issue worthy of an essay by itself.

[NAHTMMM]

Yeah, "The Enemy Within" has a dumb decision leading to the plot, but the plot is a good one, so it gets slack where so much of later Trek doesn't. It's a good exploration of a sci-fi idea. Spock's first dissertation on the "good" vs. "evil" side was a bit too on-the-nose for me, especially his willingness to label them good and evil -- the two Kirks don't have labels to that effect on them. But even though we follow the "weak" Kirk around as he's trying to solve the plot to everyone's satisfaction, the "dark" Kirk isn't treated as an enemy to be conquered despite the title, and I like that. Shatner did a particularly good job showing weak Kirk's descent into ineffectiveness.

I agree that I don't much care for the wraparound tunic. I thought we already had a neck pinch in "The Naked Now", when Spock gets Sulu with it.

Captain's Log: Spock forgot to check the weather channel before our away mission, but I'm sure nothing will happen to strand any of us on this frozen wasteland.
Fisher: Ow! My hand! And I'm covered in this weird dust!
Apparently I have a poor sense of pattern recognition.

This type of joke always amuses me.

Fisher: Hey! I was already injured once this episode! Don't you have some "one use only" rule for redshirts?
(WHACK! THUMP! THWACK!)
Fisher: Oof....
Evil Kirk: I'll have to get rid of that rule before Chekov comes aboard....

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

* Silly Mudd trying to claim he didn't know the Enterprise is a starship. Cue rants about energy output profiles, ID transponders, warp field signatures, etc. here.

I'm sure he knew it was a proper starship, but given his ineptitude in blowing his ship up, I think anything other than reading the transponder output would be beyond him.

* Just three miners? Obviously they can't even have offscreen workers because they'd fight over the women and use up screentime. There are ways to work around this. The three are at a remote outpost and the married guys are elsewhere, the others are too old or young to be desirable, the others are criminals or aliens that would be considered undesirable, etc.

Well, you can claim that the operation is sufficiently automated that just three people are needed on-planet to keep it running. I find it more concerning that, despite lithium mining supposedly being lucrative (granted, Mudd said that to the women), the buildings were so bare of anything decorative. You'd think the women would have beamed down, looked around, seen nary a vase or Van Gogh, and gotten suspicious.

* I do wish that the true nature of the Venus Drug was more consistent. Just a gelatin placebo? Well then you can't have onscreen transformation like that.

That last transformation, where even Eve's clothes changed, was ridiculous.

* I'm still confused about why the women would want to live in this place of complete isolation, constant storms, and constant hard labor. There weren't any transports going in the direction of Earth available?

Yeah, this is a serious plot hole, combined with the apparent lack of luxury. The women have access to a proper starship now, they can get passage to wherever they like. Nowadays, at least one would probably have decided to forego marriage in favor of a career. Or at least they could have shown actual connections developing between the other two miners and women . . . but I guess Eve was the designated guest star character so she got the airtime.

I have nothing to add about the fiver, it's good.

[Katy Jane]

I forgot what a stinker this one was... you want someone beautiful but you should really want someone like me who will cook and clean for you... Bleh.