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Jul. 7th, 2009 01:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blue_barretteSo, I was shopping (never a good thing) and I've been trying to decide - should I go for the medical tricorder or phaser? It's difficult to choose. I think if I were ever going to make a Star Trek costume (psssssh, yeah right) I'd be really torn between gold and blue.
Hmmmm.
11 and 12. "The Menagerie, Part I" and "The Menagerie, Part II"
...wait, something seems wrong here.
That's much better.
Since in all honesty I don't remember where the episode split (and I watched them back-to-back, thereby relieving the suspense of "Noooo! How could Spock betray the crew?!?") I'm simply going to consider them one very long episode.
This episode is fueled mainly by being very, very cheap. It's a wonder that it turned out as well as it did! The crew we know and love - Kirk and company - are just a framing device in the main story, which revolves around Spock and Captain Pike (yes, that Pike).
Spock diverts the Enterprise to a planet and picks up an old captain of his without/against orders - a captain who has sustained such serious wounds that he's confined to the above wheelchair and can only speak with beeps (one beep = yes, two beeps = double yes). Spock sets a course for Talos IV, the only place where the penalty for going near it is death. He locks their course, so there's no choice but to continue the journey to the planet. (As a side note, it's amazing how no one ever gets punished for anything by Starfleet. No wonder people are always disobeying orders - it's not like there's ever any consequences.)
To pass the time, they hold a court martial for Spock. It's never really convincing. Spock presents as evidence the original pilot episode of Star Trek - not a bad episode in its own right, and Captain Pike is certainly an interesting captain. Much more introspective than Kirk - much more humble, much more... tired. I probably wouldn't have enjoyed Star Trek as much with him, but I do kind of wish Number One had survived the pilot episode. (Dear J.J. Abrams - I'm not picky, even just a cameo would be super-neat! You put in Pike (in a wheelchair, no less!), put in Number One!)
Anyway, the pilot episode is a good episode, unfortunately chopped into pieces by the framing so the pacing is a little weird and occasionally gets boring.
I've never been content with the ending of either the Cage or the Menagerie. You'd think that aliens with the ability to read minds and very good medical skills could... you know, use the whole mind-reading thing for their surgery and such. I don't know, it's all a little awkward for me. And the whole death penalty for going to Talos IV always seemed like serious overkill to me (oh wait, there's no actual consequences because Starfleet does NOTHING.)
Rating: 4/5
13. "The Conscience of the King"
I'll have grounds
More relative than this—the play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
Shakespeare shows up a surprisingly large amount in Star Trek. Do the authors feel it lends legitimacy to their work, or do they just like the playwright?
This episode visits a dark point in Captain Kirk's past - the massacre at Tarsus IV (which, incidentally, I think might make for a good plot in Star Trek 12?). There are only a few eye witnesses left from the massacre, and as the show goes on they become fewer. Someone is targeting the survivors, and it just might be a crazy old man in charge of a theater group that plays a great deal of Shakespeare! Kirk invites them on board the Enterprise in exchange for entertainment. Also to, er, try to out the old man as the one responsible for the massacre. During the play. Yup.
Kirk is kind of a jerk in this episode. Yes, yes, he's always a bit of a jerk, but in this episode I actually noticed.
Rating: 3/5
14. "Balance of Terror"
This is pretty widely considered one of the best Star Trek episodes, and while I like it I'm not sure if it's all the great. Basically, it's a submarine battle IN SPACE, which I... absolutely adore the concept of, but sometimes the execution falls a little flat and rather than being intense it's just... boring. It's also a little distracting that the same actor who plays Spock's dad plays the Romulan commander. Don't get me wrong, I like the actor! But it's still weird.
So basically what I'm trying to say is that I got bored about twenty minutes in, zoned out for a while, and came back at about ten minutes until the end and after checking the Memory Alpha page don't really feel like I missed much.
3/5
15. "Shore Leave"
"That's it.
A little higher, please.
Push. Push hard.
Dig it in there, Mr. Sp--"
You see, this is one of those episodes I heartily enjoyed despite knowing that it's not really a very good episode. I can't really justify it, but I can't help myself! In serious series, the only shows I actually enjoy are the goofy filler episodes, and in Star Trek, which... isn't a serious series, when a very goofy episode like this comes along I love it!
The Enterprise's crew have been working hard, and they deserve a shore leave! So when they find a nice enough planet with no life signs on it they decide it's time for a holiday and have a bit of a shore leave. Everything seems to be going well until Bones starts hallucinating - or is he? Nah, he's not, there really was a big white rabbit running by him followed by a little girl.
Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Bones, and a few other crew members who I've no desire to look up the name of and were mostly forgettable wander around the planet getting accosted by all sorts of things.
Tigers, samurai, WWII stock footage, bullies from the Academy, so on. Whatever the crew thinks of appears on the planet. A few of them get killed by these creations!
And a few of them get costumes, and guns, and all manner of exciting things happen on the supposedly uninhabited planet!
And then everything ends happily!
Rating: 5/5
16. "The Galileo Seven"
Spock, Bones, Scotty and some redshirts crash-land on a planet during a scientific mission. There's not enough fuel to get off the planet - they need to lose at least 500 pounds to get off the planet again (at which point the audience begins to count the number of redshirts on the mission). Spock gets a chance to lead a crew.
This episode made me angry. Star Trek has an... interesting relationship with logic versus emotion. It's pretty hammered into the series that you need somewhere between the cold logic of Spock and the emotionalism of McCoy, but this would be more believable if Spock's logic were ever not the best plan. I wanted the redshirts to die in this episode. This is not a good sign. Don't waste your time and energy having a funeral for the redshirt who died, you dummies! You might never get off the planet if you don't! Stop mouthing back to Spock all the time!
And no, Spock's final decision was not an emotional one. It was the choice between a fast death and a slow one - a change of being rescued or no chance at all (but with a slightly longer lifespan).
Frankly, at the end of this episode I was starting to get a little tired of "being human" equaling "being stupid." No wonder Spock dislikes being called human if this is the way the ones he's in contact with act.
Rating: 3/5
17. "The Squire of Gothos"
Hahaha. I love this episode! This is just like Shore Leave - I know that objectively it's not the best episode - in fact, it's probably pretty terrible - but I can't help myself. It's exactly my brand of silly.
The Enterprise finds a planet and Kirk marks it as interesting but doesn't investigate. Alas, his plans are ruined and he and Sulu are transported to the planet! When the crew (McCoy, others) come to investigate, they find - the Salt Monster! Yay, Salt Monster! Oh, and they also find Kirk and Sulu, frozen in place. Trelane - the Squire of Gothos - wishes for them to talk about military history. He's a little off on the date, though, assuming that Earth is actually in... I'm not sure, somewhere around the early 1800s or so, maybe?
The crew does not take kindly to Trelane, and eventually they breaks his stuff and return to the Enterprise. But he beams Kirk right back down again! And Kirk is awesome again! And it ends awesomely! I love this episode.
Peter David wrote a book called Q-Squared that casts Trelane as a junior member of the Q continuum, which, you know, I had to read, what with the Q and the Trelane and all. It was very confusing, especially to someone who has only watched a few TNG episodes! It's probably best to skip it unless you, uh, know about TNG and all its alternate universe episodes and have watched this episode and "Where No Man Has Gone Before"!
5/5
18. "Arena"
Try searching for "worst fight scene ever" on Google. Go ahead, I'll wait.
That's right. It's intense.
I love this episode, too, although I find the first half a bit tedious. It only really gets good when the Gorn fight starts.
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to the planet expecting a good meal and conversation with a man who lives on the planet. All they find is death, both of the inhabitants of the planet and of the redshirts they brought along! There's a fight, and then the alien ship that attacked the planet runs. Kirk, of course, pursues it.
Unfortunately (both for the aliens and for the Enterprise) they get caught by advanced aliens who beam the two captains to the planet below and make them fight - to the death! So they do. And it is great. Oh man, is it great.
...I'm uncertain if anyone else would find it great, but if they don't think it's great they're just wrong. The ending is like something out of a Sierra adventure game, but I love all the same.
Rating: 4/5
19. "Tomorrow Is Yesterday"
You know how Arena has the worst fight scene? This one has one of the best. It... actually looks like they put effort into it!
The Enterprise goes back in time to 20th century Earth. This happens a lot. They accidentally... kidnap a U.S. pilot of the time. They decide to keep him, since he didn't do anything important with his life and that's better than returning him to his time with the knowledge he has (no, it's not, and that was a totally jerk move to tell him that he does essentially nothing to affect history.)
Alas! They find out he will have a son that's very important to the space mission, so somehow they have to return him, and without the memory of the Enterprise. Another problem is that pictures were taken of the Enterprise, and the crew has to steal them back.
This episode is actually quite good, except the end which makes you go a bit "wait, what? I don't... I really don't think time travel works like that."
Rating: 4/5
20. "Court Martial"
You know how I was being all snotty about The Menagerie's trial not being convincing? This one is... more so. For a brief period of time, I was actually wondering whether Kirk really had done it! I mean, of course he hadn't, I knew that, but there actually was a brief moment of shock that almost got me!
Kirk is under suspicion of killing a crew member when there was no need to do so. He and the crew member had been friends, once, but had a falling out a few years back when the crew member recklessly endangered the crew.
I really liked this episode's reveal ♥ actually now that I think about it I find that a lot of whether I like an episode or not depends on the last ten minutes.
Rating: 5/5
Hmmmm.
11 and 12. "The Menagerie, Part I" and "The Menagerie, Part II"
...wait, something seems wrong here.
That's much better.
Since in all honesty I don't remember where the episode split (and I watched them back-to-back, thereby relieving the suspense of "Noooo! How could Spock betray the crew?!?") I'm simply going to consider them one very long episode.
This episode is fueled mainly by being very, very cheap. It's a wonder that it turned out as well as it did! The crew we know and love - Kirk and company - are just a framing device in the main story, which revolves around Spock and Captain Pike (yes, that Pike).
Spock diverts the Enterprise to a planet and picks up an old captain of his without/against orders - a captain who has sustained such serious wounds that he's confined to the above wheelchair and can only speak with beeps (one beep = yes, two beeps = double yes). Spock sets a course for Talos IV, the only place where the penalty for going near it is death. He locks their course, so there's no choice but to continue the journey to the planet. (As a side note, it's amazing how no one ever gets punished for anything by Starfleet. No wonder people are always disobeying orders - it's not like there's ever any consequences.)
To pass the time, they hold a court martial for Spock. It's never really convincing. Spock presents as evidence the original pilot episode of Star Trek - not a bad episode in its own right, and Captain Pike is certainly an interesting captain. Much more introspective than Kirk - much more humble, much more... tired. I probably wouldn't have enjoyed Star Trek as much with him, but I do kind of wish Number One had survived the pilot episode. (Dear J.J. Abrams - I'm not picky, even just a cameo would be super-neat! You put in Pike (in a wheelchair, no less!), put in Number One!)
Anyway, the pilot episode is a good episode, unfortunately chopped into pieces by the framing so the pacing is a little weird and occasionally gets boring.
I've never been content with the ending of either the Cage or the Menagerie. You'd think that aliens with the ability to read minds and very good medical skills could... you know, use the whole mind-reading thing for their surgery and such. I don't know, it's all a little awkward for me. And the whole death penalty for going to Talos IV always seemed like serious overkill to me (oh wait, there's no actual consequences because Starfleet does NOTHING.)
Rating: 4/5
13. "The Conscience of the King"
I'll have grounds
More relative than this—the play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
Shakespeare shows up a surprisingly large amount in Star Trek. Do the authors feel it lends legitimacy to their work, or do they just like the playwright?
This episode visits a dark point in Captain Kirk's past - the massacre at Tarsus IV (which, incidentally, I think might make for a good plot in Star Trek 12?). There are only a few eye witnesses left from the massacre, and as the show goes on they become fewer. Someone is targeting the survivors, and it just might be a crazy old man in charge of a theater group that plays a great deal of Shakespeare! Kirk invites them on board the Enterprise in exchange for entertainment. Also to, er, try to out the old man as the one responsible for the massacre. During the play. Yup.
Kirk is kind of a jerk in this episode. Yes, yes, he's always a bit of a jerk, but in this episode I actually noticed.
Rating: 3/5
14. "Balance of Terror"
This is pretty widely considered one of the best Star Trek episodes, and while I like it I'm not sure if it's all the great. Basically, it's a submarine battle IN SPACE, which I... absolutely adore the concept of, but sometimes the execution falls a little flat and rather than being intense it's just... boring. It's also a little distracting that the same actor who plays Spock's dad plays the Romulan commander. Don't get me wrong, I like the actor! But it's still weird.
So basically what I'm trying to say is that I got bored about twenty minutes in, zoned out for a while, and came back at about ten minutes until the end and after checking the Memory Alpha page don't really feel like I missed much.
3/5
15. "Shore Leave"
"That's it.
A little higher, please.
Push. Push hard.
Dig it in there, Mr. Sp--"
You see, this is one of those episodes I heartily enjoyed despite knowing that it's not really a very good episode. I can't really justify it, but I can't help myself! In serious series, the only shows I actually enjoy are the goofy filler episodes, and in Star Trek, which... isn't a serious series, when a very goofy episode like this comes along I love it!
The Enterprise's crew have been working hard, and they deserve a shore leave! So when they find a nice enough planet with no life signs on it they decide it's time for a holiday and have a bit of a shore leave. Everything seems to be going well until Bones starts hallucinating - or is he? Nah, he's not, there really was a big white rabbit running by him followed by a little girl.
Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Bones, and a few other crew members who I've no desire to look up the name of and were mostly forgettable wander around the planet getting accosted by all sorts of things.
Tigers, samurai, WWII stock footage, bullies from the Academy, so on. Whatever the crew thinks of appears on the planet. A few of them get killed by these creations!
And a few of them get costumes, and guns, and all manner of exciting things happen on the supposedly uninhabited planet!
And then everything ends happily!
Rating: 5/5
16. "The Galileo Seven"
Spock, Bones, Scotty and some redshirts crash-land on a planet during a scientific mission. There's not enough fuel to get off the planet - they need to lose at least 500 pounds to get off the planet again (at which point the audience begins to count the number of redshirts on the mission). Spock gets a chance to lead a crew.
This episode made me angry. Star Trek has an... interesting relationship with logic versus emotion. It's pretty hammered into the series that you need somewhere between the cold logic of Spock and the emotionalism of McCoy, but this would be more believable if Spock's logic were ever not the best plan. I wanted the redshirts to die in this episode. This is not a good sign. Don't waste your time and energy having a funeral for the redshirt who died, you dummies! You might never get off the planet if you don't! Stop mouthing back to Spock all the time!
And no, Spock's final decision was not an emotional one. It was the choice between a fast death and a slow one - a change of being rescued or no chance at all (but with a slightly longer lifespan).
Frankly, at the end of this episode I was starting to get a little tired of "being human" equaling "being stupid." No wonder Spock dislikes being called human if this is the way the ones he's in contact with act.
Rating: 3/5
17. "The Squire of Gothos"
Hahaha. I love this episode! This is just like Shore Leave - I know that objectively it's not the best episode - in fact, it's probably pretty terrible - but I can't help myself. It's exactly my brand of silly.
The Enterprise finds a planet and Kirk marks it as interesting but doesn't investigate. Alas, his plans are ruined and he and Sulu are transported to the planet! When the crew (McCoy, others) come to investigate, they find - the Salt Monster! Yay, Salt Monster! Oh, and they also find Kirk and Sulu, frozen in place. Trelane - the Squire of Gothos - wishes for them to talk about military history. He's a little off on the date, though, assuming that Earth is actually in... I'm not sure, somewhere around the early 1800s or so, maybe?
The crew does not take kindly to Trelane, and eventually they breaks his stuff and return to the Enterprise. But he beams Kirk right back down again! And Kirk is awesome again! And it ends awesomely! I love this episode.
Peter David wrote a book called Q-Squared that casts Trelane as a junior member of the Q continuum, which, you know, I had to read, what with the Q and the Trelane and all. It was very confusing, especially to someone who has only watched a few TNG episodes! It's probably best to skip it unless you, uh, know about TNG and all its alternate universe episodes and have watched this episode and "Where No Man Has Gone Before"!
5/5
18. "Arena"
Try searching for "worst fight scene ever" on Google. Go ahead, I'll wait.
That's right. It's intense.
I love this episode, too, although I find the first half a bit tedious. It only really gets good when the Gorn fight starts.
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to the planet expecting a good meal and conversation with a man who lives on the planet. All they find is death, both of the inhabitants of the planet and of the redshirts they brought along! There's a fight, and then the alien ship that attacked the planet runs. Kirk, of course, pursues it.
Unfortunately (both for the aliens and for the Enterprise) they get caught by advanced aliens who beam the two captains to the planet below and make them fight - to the death! So they do. And it is great. Oh man, is it great.
...I'm uncertain if anyone else would find it great, but if they don't think it's great they're just wrong. The ending is like something out of a Sierra adventure game, but I love all the same.
Rating: 4/5
19. "Tomorrow Is Yesterday"
You know how Arena has the worst fight scene? This one has one of the best. It... actually looks like they put effort into it!
The Enterprise goes back in time to 20th century Earth. This happens a lot. They accidentally... kidnap a U.S. pilot of the time. They decide to keep him, since he didn't do anything important with his life and that's better than returning him to his time with the knowledge he has (no, it's not, and that was a totally jerk move to tell him that he does essentially nothing to affect history.)
Alas! They find out he will have a son that's very important to the space mission, so somehow they have to return him, and without the memory of the Enterprise. Another problem is that pictures were taken of the Enterprise, and the crew has to steal them back.
This episode is actually quite good, except the end which makes you go a bit "wait, what? I don't... I really don't think time travel works like that."
Rating: 4/5
20. "Court Martial"
You know how I was being all snotty about The Menagerie's trial not being convincing? This one is... more so. For a brief period of time, I was actually wondering whether Kirk really had done it! I mean, of course he hadn't, I knew that, but there actually was a brief moment of shock that almost got me!
Kirk is under suspicion of killing a crew member when there was no need to do so. He and the crew member had been friends, once, but had a falling out a few years back when the crew member recklessly endangered the crew.
I really liked this episode's reveal ♥ actually now that I think about it I find that a lot of whether I like an episode or not depends on the last ten minutes.
Rating: 5/5
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 04:54 am (UTC)And phaser, dude. PHASER.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 06:14 am (UTC)I think lots of people are watching TOS for the first time right now, what with the new movie and all! It's not that weird. I think.
See, the tricorder is goofy looking, but I love the sound effects it has. The phaser looks great, but it's not as interesting as the tricorder. I'M TORN.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 07:06 am (UTC)But I love DS9. Although there's a lot of crossover from TNG, but it's completely different. I think it's my favorite, because it deals with interaction more than missions since they're stationary.
Well if the phaser doesn't make noises, that's not nearly as fun. I would lean towards noises rather than none.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 07:22 am (UTC)The phaser has noises too! There's a stun noise and a kill noise! Maybe I'll just flip a coin to decide.