"Requiem for Methuselah"
Production Order: 76
Air Order: 74
Stardate: 5843.7
Original Air Date: February 14, 1969
Just realized that this episode aired on Valentine's Day. Extra Creepiness level: unlocked.
Kirk's Log 5348.7: "So we got Rigelian fever on board. It's killed three people, and another 23 have it. If we can get our hands on some ryetalyn, then we can get rid of it completely, but it's hard to come by. We found some on a nearby planet."
Our boys beam down to get some. Bones says they better get it quick, because they only have four hours before everyone on board is gonna die of the fever, and he still has to process it. Spock's scans are showing life forms nearby, even though their initial scans said the planet was uninhabited. They start to search for what they need, but are overtaken by a flying machine that shoots at them. I think this machine has bits from the Romulan cloaking device and Nomad. A command gold star to you, Budget.
Our boys try to shoot back, but their phasers have been rendered inoperable. A man's voice commands the machine not to kill the away team, and then a dude walks up from out of nowhere. He says he is Flint, and that he bought the planet and moved there a few decades earlier to get away from the crappiness of humanity. He's been monitoring the E, knows who they are, and wants them to leave. Kirk protests that they won't have time to get to another planet, and that they desperately need the ryetalyn.
"We'll take it by force," Kirk warns.
"Fine," says Flint. "And I can kill you for trespassing."
When we come back from the credits break, Kirk calls Flint's bluff by comming Scotty and asking that he lock onto their coordinates. At Kirk's command, he will kill both Flint and the away team, then take the ryetalyn once Flint is out of the way.
"So we all die," says Kirk.
Seeing this pissing contest for what it is, Bones reasons with Flint, saying that Rigelian fever is similar to the bubonic plague. Flint stares off into space and talks about the plague for a moment. Spock asks if he is a history scholar.
"Yeah, kinda," says Flint. "You have two hours to get your stuff, then get back on your plague ship and GTFO. My robot, M-4, will collect the ryetalyn for you."
M-4 scoots off to find the ryetalyn. Some people have flying monkeys. This guy has flying robots. He invites the away team to kick it with him at his fucking castle, which - sweet! It's the matte painting from The Cage!
Flint lets them in, and he has some cool stuff, like Renaissance paintings. He tells our boys that his shields make it look like the planet is devoid of life, so that he doesn't have to deal with solicitors and people passing out religious pamphlets. He excuses himself, and Spock and Bones marvel at his Gutenburg Bible, and his Shakespeare script.
In another room, a blonde girl has been watching the visitors on a monitor. Now we know two things: 1. Flint lied when he said he lived here by himself, with no one but M-4 for company; and 2. this guy has some serious paranoia issues. Two people and a robot, and he still has some kind of Big Brother system in place? Holy shitsnacks.
Flint enters the room with the girl, Reyna. She's kind of excited because she's never seen other people before, and she wants to discuss sub-dimensional physics with Spock.
"Naw, don't," says Flint. "Vulcans are smart, but they're not as smart as we are." He doesn't want her to meet them.
Then he tries to kiss her, and it's the most awkward thing ever. She just kind of stands there, and he moves back again, as though her personal shields went up and he bounced off of them.
"Please?" she asks.
He's surprised, because she's never asked him for anything before, which seems weird, because how old is this chick? She's never seen other people before and she's never asked him for anything? Does she do nothing but sit in a chair facing the corner all day?
He acquiesces.
Back in the front room, Bones is stoked because he's found the bar.
"Rad! Hundred-year-old Saurian brandy!" He begins pouring a round. Now, I don't drink a lot, but it seems like bad form to walk into someone's house and pour yourself a tumbler of their top shelf shit.
"I won't bother pouring you some, Spock," he adds. "I know you think drinking is a human vice."
"No, give me a brandy," says Spock, who is scanning the paintings.
Bones then gets a pretty funny line here, as spoken to Kirk: "Do you think the two of us can handle a drunk Vulcan?"
"If I was emotional," says Spock, tossing back his liquor, "I'd be envious of Flint right now. All of these Leonardos are authentic and unknown, which makes them priceless. The funny thing is, they're all painted with contemporary materials. but they're not fake."
Surprisingly, neither Kirk nor Bones makes the obvious joke about Spock being quick to get his drunk on.
"Maybe this whole place is an illusion," suggests Kirk.
Bones seems to think that this idea is a viable one. Kirk asks Spock to discretely scan Flint thoroughly when he gets the chance, and then he comms Scotty to ask the engineer to Google Flint for his history.
M-4 returns with a baggy of crystal meth ryetalyn, which Bones scans and declares to be good. He says he will take the crystals back to the E to process them into antidote, but then Flint reappears and says that M-4 can do it faster in his own lab. Bones can supervise, and everyone can join him for dinner.
"I thought you told us to get our shit and get out?" says Kirk, still sucking down brandy.
"Yeah, well, I was a dick earlier. Now I'm making up for it." Flint gestures, and Reyna walks in.
For some reason, Dramatic music! Commercial break! There's randomly another person on the planet!
Costuming aside: I like Reyna's dress. The neckline has an interesting architecture, as does the bolero that she's wearing. The fabric is okay, and mostly screams, "I'm at the fabric store and searching for something futuristic." But that cape: why? And why the hell does she have two ponytails? No, not pigtails on the sides, two ponytails, stacked one on top of the other, and wrapped in long coils. Flint is dressed alright in a dark paisley tunic. I guess I could take or leave the colored tights, which seem super-Shakespearean, but Flint is wearing a cape as well. His feels less ridiculous than hers, for some reason. Still:
Flint introduces Reyna to our boys, and she says she would like to have a scientific discussion with Spock, who says he would like that as well. When Kirk asks Flint about his earlier insistence that he lived alone, Flint replies that Reyna's parents were employees of his, and were killed in a plane crash when they arrived, leaving him to raise their infant daughter, and he's basically her father and NOW WE KNOW WHY SHE SHIED AWAY FROM THAT CREEPY-ASS KISS, YOU PERV.
WTF, Star Trek? Did you just go all Woody Allen on us?
Anyway, Reyna is smart. Like 17 university degrees smart, or so Flint says. He gives the ryetalyn back to M-4, and tells Bones that he can supervise the making of the antidote, while everyone else plays billiards. Bones follows M-4 back to the lab, but the robot disappears behind a locked door to do it's thing while Bones waits and fiddles with stuff in the lab.
What follows next is a series of awful shots that are just awful, but get a thumbs up for trying. They're overhead shots of Reyna playing billiards, and while it's awesome that the camera crew were trying to mix it up and prove that Reyna is a billiards expert, it's the shakiest shaky cam ever. We're talking Blair Witch caliber shaky cam.
Anyway, Kirk is all impressed with the shot she made, and she offers to show him how to do it. You know how when a guy offers to show a girl physically how something is done, and he takes the opportunity to stand close behind her and actually adjust her movements, that it's supposed to come off as flirty and kind of sexy? This doesn't. She's clearly more interested in setting up the shot than in being sexy, and even when she reaches around his back to guide his cue, it's still weird. When he takes a second shot a few moments later, she sets it up again without him asking. She's just performing a task. Meanwhile, Kirk and Flint are discussing why Flint left Earth, and he declares that it was to get away from how awful and violent humanity was. Kirk argues that it isn't that way anymore, but that man has always had a violent streak that will pop up from time to time, blah, blah, blah. I kind of like that Star Trek has philosophical discussions about human nature, but here it doesn't really pertain to the story, so let's just skip it. Here's Reyna awkwardly helping Kirk line his shot up:
Spock sits down at what might be a grand piano, but what could be a similar kind of instrument, I don't know, I'm not really good with those kinds of instruments. He starts to play the waltz that's set up in front of him, and Flint suggests that Kirk dance with Reyna, because she's awesome at dancing as well. So they do.
In the lab, M-4 brings Bones three vials of blue liquid. The sound guy went to the trouble to overlay the waltz music in this scene, but muted it a bit, so that it's obvious that the lab is in the same building, and nearby. Good on ya, sound guy.
Flint watches Kirk and Reyna closely while they dance. Kirk obviously likes Reyna, and she seems to like him as well. Too bad the camera guys attempted to get those up-close shots with that same shaky cam again.
Bones comes in looking like thunder. "The ryetalyn is contaminated with this other chemical that makes the antidote completely useless."
"Oh, that sucks," says Flint. "I'll go with M-4 to get some more and we can try again."
he leaves, and Bones remarks that with two and a half hours to go until they all drop dead, he guesses they will have just enough time to get more ryetalyn and process it. But he's concerned that all of the ryetalyn on this planet may be contaminated. They kind of don't have a choice either way. The nearest planet that has it is too far away, so if it is contaminated, they're screwed. Kirk tells Bones to go with Flint and watch him.
"Hey, this waltz is by Brahms," Spock tells Kirk. "It's written in his own hand, but it's unpublished."
"Like I care," says Kirk. "I'm gonna go poke around in the lab. Give me the secret whistle if Bones and Flint come back."
Random Kirk Log 5843.75: "I might have screwed us over by coming here."
Kirk is wandering around the lab when Reyna comes in. She doesn't see him at first, so she goes straight to a some yellow door and just stands in front of it.
"What's back there?" he asks her.
"Dunno," she says. "Flint told me to never go in there. He gives me anything I ask for, so it seems like NBD to not go through that door. But sometimes I come here to think."
Oh, honey. If history has taught me anything, it's that a guy who forbids you to go through a certain door has something specific kept in there. It's either dead bodies, dead bodies, an enchanted rose that indicates how much longer he'll be some kind of man-monster, his crazy first wife, or dead bodies.
"Hey so, are you happy here with Flint?" Kirk asks her.
"He is the greatest, kindest, wisest man in the galaxy," she replies. Okay, not only is that not an answer to the question he just asked, but it sounds like something Flint told you to say.
He tells her not to be afraid, then he tries to kiss her, but she reacts the same way that she did when Flint tried to kiss her: she blinks in confusion.
Oops, now they're being cock-blocked by M-4, which has entered the lab and caught them smooching. Well, it caught Kirk smooching, anyway.
Dramatic music! Commercial break!
Kirk pushes Reyna out of the way and squares off against M-4, but again, his phaser doesn't work. Reyna tries to call off the robot by yelling commands, but I guess it doesn't work for her, only Flint. M-4 is about to take Kirk down when Spock enters the lab and zaps the robot from behind.
"Ha! It was looking at you, so it didn't fuck with my phaser!"crows Spock.
All three go to confront Flint about the robot nearly killing Kirk.
"Yeah, sorry," says Flint, who doesn't actually sound sorry at all. "It thought you were attacking Reyna. It's a good thing you didn't attack me. I'd've kicked your ass." Um, that last remark had nothing to do with anything.
"Yeah, you said something when we met to that extent," Kirk replies.
"A-ha! See, Reyna?" asks Flint. "Man is still violent. Is Kirk brave, or a fool?"
The fuck? You started this pissing contest, dude. You can't turn around and accuse someone of being violent because he pointed out that you threatened him earlier.
A new and improved M-4 comes into the room.
"The hell?" asked Kirk. "You have another one of those?"
"Yeah, they're cool," says Flint. He sends the robot back to the lab to help Bones, then exits, commanding Reyna to come with him.
"That guy treats her like shit," Kirk remarks to Spock.
"So what?" asks Spock. "He has something that we need. Keep in your pants for once, and quit hitting on his daughter-girlfriend so we can get our medicine."
"That's so gross," says Kirk. "But he was totally trying to get us to hook up, too!"
"What can I say?" asks Spock. "Some humans are just fucked up like that."
Kirk calls Scotty, possibly to see what the engineer thinks of this crap.
"Pretty much everybody is sick now," says Scotty. "And I tried to Google Flint, but it's like he doesn't exist. A rich recluse with another name bought that planet thirty years ago."
"Okay, run a Google search on his legal ward, Reyna," Kirk tells Uhura before signing off.
"Scanned Flint," Spock says. "He's human all right, but the tricorder says he's like 6000 years old. We have a little more than two hours to get those meds and inject everyone before we all die. Also, Flint being a weirdo, I think it's safe to assume that he's watching us."
"Yeah, I feel like he's keeping us here for some reason, even though he wants us gone," says Kirk.
These last few sentences are watched by monitor by Flint and Reyna in another room. Flint turns off the screen. Reyna asks if he sent M-4 after Kirk.
"Naw, it just malfunctioned," says Flint. "I've never lied to you, right?"
No, only about your Dead Body Room.
"What did you feel?" he asks, which is a weird question.
"Are you going to give them their medicine?" she returns.
He replies in the affirmative and tells her to go say good bye to Kirk and Spock before they leave.
Scotty calls Kirk. Reyna doesn't exist on file, either.
"Well, fuck me," says Kirk.
"Open pants," Spock instructs him. "Remove hand. We're getting our medicine, let it go."
But Kirk doesn't want to let it go, because he has a thing for Reyna now.
She comes in to say goodbye, and Spock says he is going to the lab to help Bones, knowing full well that the last time that Kirk and Reyna were left alone together one of Flint's floaty robots attempted to kill Kirk.
Kirk doesn't want to say goodbye to Reyna. He kisses her, and she reacts as she did before, by blinking confusedly. But when he kisses her a second time, she gets the hint and she kisses him back. Of course Voyeurism Vick is in the other room, watching all of this on his secret monitor. When Reyna pulls out of the kiss, she looks mildly terrified.
"I hope that was good for you," Flint tells the screen as he turns it off. "Cuz I'm done with your ass."
"Come with me," says Kirk. "You love me, not Flint!"
Reyna runs away in fright.
Down in the lab, M-4 has taken off with the ryetalyn. When Kirk shows up looking all emo, Bones informs him that their meds are gone, and they're totes screwed now. Spock does some scans and finds that the ryetalyn is behind Door #2.
Kirk goes all conspiracy theory, and "how do we open this?" and "set phasers to stun" when the door just slides open. Then there's a brief, pointless argument, where Spock insists on going in himself to get the ryetalyn, and then Bones says he'll do it, and again, everyone is over-thinking this danger and espionage shit because when they finally walk in, the medicine is sitting on a table just inside the door.
But they can't just leave, because we've 15 more minutes of this crap before things are resolved, and Kirk & Co have to finish playing detective.
So what else was in the dead body room?
Dead bodies.
No, just kidding. But if you guessed androids, you're correct! Congratulations, I'm sending you a box of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat, ding-ding!
There are several tables with bodies covered in sheets, marked Reyna 14, 15, and 16.
Dramatic music! Commercial break!
When we come back, Flint is entering the room to confirm that these androids are earlier versions of Reyna, and that he made them all. So of course Spock has already figured out this shit: he talks to Flint about how he has authentic Leonardos that were made recently, and that waltz by Brahms that was never published.
"Yeah, you caught me," says Flint. "I'm Leonardo and Brahms, and Solomon, and Methuselah, Alexander, Lazarus, Merlin. Also, a bunch of other names."
Merlin. This guy is Merlin. This is getting to be as stupid as "Wolf in the Fold" where Jack the Ripper was an alien. Typically, Star Trek likes to take some historical person or thing and say "Maybe it's aliens." Doctor Who likes to do that as well, but we know they're just fucking with us. Although there are plenty of goofy, funny moments in most episodes of Star Trek, we're expected to take the story itself seriously. So here, they want us to believe that this guy, a human, discovered that he was immortal (no real explanation as to why), and that he's been living bits of lives, and then pretending to die and moving on to another life... for the past six thousand years.
"You're rich and smart because you're fucking old," says Spock. "Like, literally older than dirt."
"Yeah, I was BFFs with like, Galileo and Socrates. Also, I was married like, a hundred times," says Flint. He gives the old Highlander speech, about how much it sucks to be married to someone, only to have them grow old and die on you, and you have to pick up and carry on, and all that crapola. So he figured, why not just make a new girlfriend? One who doesn't die on you. Also, he made her brilliant like himself. I'm reminded of The Nightmare Before Christmas, where the mad scientist doctor makes a companion for himself and actually gives her half of his brain.
Now here's the thing: he went to all of this trouble to build himself a bride, and he's totally in love with her, but now Kirk is in love with her too. And Flint is not in the mood to share his toys.
"Then why the fuck were you keeping me here?" Kirk demands.
"Because you drew out her emotions," says Flint. "I loved her, but she didn't understand. Now she understands, but she loves you. Not okay."
Okay, so she's not his daughter, or his legal ward, and he didn't raise her. He built her to be his wife. Then why the bloody hell did he tell them that she was his wife? Why not just say, "This is my wife?" Creeper Flint. And creeper Star Trek for not making up a good reason why he'd tell them that.
So now, of course, he can't let them go, because they'd tell his secret, and then people would come looking for them, so he's going to kill them, or lock them in some dungeon or some shit.
"No, fuck that," says Kirk, and he whips out his comm to call Scotty.
Only now Flint has whipped out some remote control, and with a flick of a button, the E disappears from orbit. Then he presses another button, and a very small E has appeared on a table in the lab. Let's just re-cap here, shall we?
A dude who is six thousand years old, who was once Leonardo and Alexander, and Brahms and Lazarus, has built himself an android wife, and because he is angry with Kirk because she's in love with the captain, he has built some kind of thing that makes ships disappear from orbit, and then reappear, very tiny, on the planet's surface.
"The hell?" demands Kirk.
"Haha, I'm more powerful that you!" crows Flint.
There's kind of a funny shot that they do that shows Kirk looking onto the bridge from outside the ship, and they show him huge on the front viewscreen. I don't think that's how it works, but if that were the least-believable thing going on this episode, I'd take it.
"Chillax," says Flint. "I'm gonna shrink you guys down, too, and keep you in that little ship. Everyone on board will be suspended in time. I'll keep you that way for maybe two thousand years? You've kind of done me a favor, Kirk. You fished Reyna's emotions out of her, and now that she has them, when you are gone, she'll bestow them upon me."
Oops, he didn't see Reyna come in.
"You can't harm them!" she says.
Bones asks what everyone is wondering: "After we leave, how will you feel about him?" She doesn't answer, so Bones fills in the blank. "Flint, you a-hole, you didn't understand that she could feel any emotion. So once you harm us, she'll hate you."
Clearly, Flint had not realized this. Resignedly, he presses the button to make the E big again, while putting it back in orbit and unfreezing the people onboard. (Seriously, it was one button. When he designed this thing, whatever it is, did he really think he would only need one button for everything? He needed two buttons to get the E out of orbit and shrunk into miniature, but only one "restore" button?)
"That's why you were keeping us here!" yells an angry Kirk. "You knew that I was arousing her feelings, and figured you could step in when I left! You knew what was going on the whole time!"
Flint says two things that are distinctly creepy by themselves and more so in conjunction: "I'll take what is mine!" (meaning Reyna) and "We're alike! We're both smart and immortal!" No and no, you bastard.
They suddenly go at each other, and now's the time for Flint to pull out that awesome strength that he was bragging about earlier. Spock separates them.
"Don't be a dumbass," he tells Kirk.
And then Kirk comes back with one of the dumbest lines ever: "Get out of my way! We're fighting over a woman!"
No shit, Sherlock.
"Dude, she's not a woman, she's an android," Spock reminds him.
Too late. Flint comes at him, and they roll around on the floor some more, Flint flipping him across the room.
Reyna sees that two guys are fighting over her, and rather than being pleased like some basic bitch, she's kind of freaked out by it. She yells at them to stop, and surprisingly, it works. Girlfriend has finally decided that she's going to be her own person and assert herself. She yells at them that no one will command her, that she has a choice, and only she will make it. Kirk excited says that she she has free will. Flint dickishly takes credit for it. But she is still saying that the choice is hers.
This is promising, Star Trek. Don't blow -- oh.
Now Kirk and Flint are standing apart, and calling her like a fucking dog. Like, I'm not even kidding with this shit. And who does Reyna go to? Nobody, because this is bullshit. Instead, she breaks down. She drops a tear, which is pretty freaking advanced for an android. Then she collapses on the ground.
Bones puts a finger to her neck, but I don't know what the hell he's checking for. If she's an android, then she would have shorted, or her system would have become corrupted. She didn't have blood, or a heart to create a pulse, so Bones would not have come up with anything by putting his hand there, anyway.
"What happened?" Kirk asks.
"She loved you both," guesses Spock. "She loved Flint like a father or mentor. The joys of love made her more human, but she was overwhelmed and unprepared for the terrible things that love can bring, like jealousy and hatred. It was too much for her system."
Later, Kirk is in his quarters when Spock enters. Spock says that everyone on board has gotten their shots and the plague is subsiding. Kirk nods numbly.
He mumbles about Flint being a very lonely man, then says "We put on a pretty poor show, didn't we?"
Yes, Kirk. This episode was terrible. How fourth wall of you. He then lays his head on the desk and mutters something about wanting to forget.
I'd like to take a moment and point something out: Kirk fell completely in love with Reyna over the course of four hours. Like, he was asking her to run away with him. And he didn't spend the entirety of that time in her presence. He spent some time dicking around with his friends, talking to Flint and wandering the house. It's always weird when you put time perspectives on things, right? Romeo and Juliet takes place over the course of a week. Of Mice and Men: a weekend. "Requiem for Methuselah:" four hours. Now, I'm not saying that some people don't fall in love that quickly. I'm sure that it does happen sometimes. But I'm saying that for Kirk, it happens all the time. If he meets a girl near the beginning of the episode, he wants to run away with her at the end. This is a bit much to take in, with everything else in this episode.
Bones enters and sees that Kirk has his head on the desk. "Oh good, he's sleeping at last." Yes, Bones. He laid his head on the desk and instantly fell asleep. This show sometimes, you guys.
"So I checked the tricorder readings," Bones tells Spock. "Looks like Flint is dying. Whatever made him immortal on Earth remained there when he left the planet. So he'll live the rest of his life, then die. I let him know. He says he intends to devote the rest of his life and abilities to 'improve the human condition.'"
What the hell does that even mean? It's so super vague that dude could claim he was doing just that while sitting on the couch in his underwear, eating Cheetos and watching reruns of Judge Judy.
"You know, I pity you, Spock," says Bones, launching into a bullshit tirade. "Being a Vulcan, you don't know or understand love. You don't know what it means to feel those high highs and low lows." He goes on like that, and Spock just kind of stands there, listening to that crap.
Clearly, the good doctor doesn't know jack shit about Vulcans. It's not that they are emotion-less. It's that they feel those emotions so deeply that to engage with them constantly would possibly drive them mad, as it does when it builds up every seven years and they enter Pon Farr. Spock knows what the fuck you're talking about, Doctor. He's just not sharing that shit with you.
Bones adds one last, "I do wish he could forget her, though," before wishing Spock a good night and exiting.
And just because Spock knows what Bones is talking about, he walks over to his friend, places his fingers on Kirk's forehead in the mind-meld configuration, and whispers, "Forget."
Is it possible for Vulcans to erase bad memories from someone else's brain? I have no idea. But this episode has asked us for some huge suspensions of disbelief, so why the fuck not?
What the hell is up with this episode? It's like story ideas were tossed into a hat, and they just decided to pull them all. "Androids? Okay, we haven't done androids since season one. How about that thing where we make something historical into an alien thing? Oh, I know! Let's make it one long-lived human, and make him all of the historical figures! Fun, right? Ooh, let's give him powers! Like, he's smart enough to know how to shrink shit like the Enterprise! Okay, and Kirk falls for his girl, because Kirk needs to fall for someone in every episode, and we'll have a plague. Yeah, that sounds good. Somebody make this cohesive, we'll start filming after lunch."
Sometimes, friends... sometimes this show makes me want to kick puppies.
Death Toll:
Air Order: 74
Stardate: 5843.7
Original Air Date: February 14, 1969
Just realized that this episode aired on Valentine's Day. Extra Creepiness level: unlocked.
*******
Kirk's Log 5348.7: "So we got Rigelian fever on board. It's killed three people, and another 23 have it. If we can get our hands on some ryetalyn, then we can get rid of it completely, but it's hard to come by. We found some on a nearby planet."
Our boys beam down to get some. Bones says they better get it quick, because they only have four hours before everyone on board is gonna die of the fever, and he still has to process it. Spock's scans are showing life forms nearby, even though their initial scans said the planet was uninhabited. They start to search for what they need, but are overtaken by a flying machine that shoots at them. I think this machine has bits from the Romulan cloaking device and Nomad. A command gold star to you, Budget.
Our boys try to shoot back, but their phasers have been rendered inoperable. A man's voice commands the machine not to kill the away team, and then a dude walks up from out of nowhere. He says he is Flint, and that he bought the planet and moved there a few decades earlier to get away from the crappiness of humanity. He's been monitoring the E, knows who they are, and wants them to leave. Kirk protests that they won't have time to get to another planet, and that they desperately need the ryetalyn.
"We'll take it by force," Kirk warns.
"Fine," says Flint. "And I can kill you for trespassing."
When we come back from the credits break, Kirk calls Flint's bluff by comming Scotty and asking that he lock onto their coordinates. At Kirk's command, he will kill both Flint and the away team, then take the ryetalyn once Flint is out of the way.
"So we all die," says Kirk.
Seeing this pissing contest for what it is, Bones reasons with Flint, saying that Rigelian fever is similar to the bubonic plague. Flint stares off into space and talks about the plague for a moment. Spock asks if he is a history scholar.
"Yeah, kinda," says Flint. "You have two hours to get your stuff, then get back on your plague ship and GTFO. My robot, M-4, will collect the ryetalyn for you."
M-4 scoots off to find the ryetalyn. Some people have flying monkeys. This guy has flying robots. He invites the away team to kick it with him at his fucking castle, which - sweet! It's the matte painting from The Cage!
Flint lets them in, and he has some cool stuff, like Renaissance paintings. He tells our boys that his shields make it look like the planet is devoid of life, so that he doesn't have to deal with solicitors and people passing out religious pamphlets. He excuses himself, and Spock and Bones marvel at his Gutenburg Bible, and his Shakespeare script.
In another room, a blonde girl has been watching the visitors on a monitor. Now we know two things: 1. Flint lied when he said he lived here by himself, with no one but M-4 for company; and 2. this guy has some serious paranoia issues. Two people and a robot, and he still has some kind of Big Brother system in place? Holy shitsnacks.
Flint enters the room with the girl, Reyna. She's kind of excited because she's never seen other people before, and she wants to discuss sub-dimensional physics with Spock.
"Naw, don't," says Flint. "Vulcans are smart, but they're not as smart as we are." He doesn't want her to meet them.
Then he tries to kiss her, and it's the most awkward thing ever. She just kind of stands there, and he moves back again, as though her personal shields went up and he bounced off of them.
"Please?" she asks.
He's surprised, because she's never asked him for anything before, which seems weird, because how old is this chick? She's never seen other people before and she's never asked him for anything? Does she do nothing but sit in a chair facing the corner all day?
He acquiesces.
Back in the front room, Bones is stoked because he's found the bar.
"Rad! Hundred-year-old Saurian brandy!" He begins pouring a round. Now, I don't drink a lot, but it seems like bad form to walk into someone's house and pour yourself a tumbler of their top shelf shit.
"I won't bother pouring you some, Spock," he adds. "I know you think drinking is a human vice."
"No, give me a brandy," says Spock, who is scanning the paintings.
Bones then gets a pretty funny line here, as spoken to Kirk: "Do you think the two of us can handle a drunk Vulcan?"
"If I was emotional," says Spock, tossing back his liquor, "I'd be envious of Flint right now. All of these Leonardos are authentic and unknown, which makes them priceless. The funny thing is, they're all painted with contemporary materials. but they're not fake."
Surprisingly, neither Kirk nor Bones makes the obvious joke about Spock being quick to get his drunk on.
"Maybe this whole place is an illusion," suggests Kirk.
Bones seems to think that this idea is a viable one. Kirk asks Spock to discretely scan Flint thoroughly when he gets the chance, and then he comms Scotty to ask the engineer to Google Flint for his history.
M-4 returns with a baggy of crystal meth ryetalyn, which Bones scans and declares to be good. He says he will take the crystals back to the E to process them into antidote, but then Flint reappears and says that M-4 can do it faster in his own lab. Bones can supervise, and everyone can join him for dinner.
"I thought you told us to get our shit and get out?" says Kirk, still sucking down brandy.
"Yeah, well, I was a dick earlier. Now I'm making up for it." Flint gestures, and Reyna walks in.
For some reason, Dramatic music! Commercial break! There's randomly another person on the planet!
Costuming aside: I like Reyna's dress. The neckline has an interesting architecture, as does the bolero that she's wearing. The fabric is okay, and mostly screams, "I'm at the fabric store and searching for something futuristic." But that cape: why? And why the hell does she have two ponytails? No, not pigtails on the sides, two ponytails, stacked one on top of the other, and wrapped in long coils. Flint is dressed alright in a dark paisley tunic. I guess I could take or leave the colored tights, which seem super-Shakespearean, but Flint is wearing a cape as well. His feels less ridiculous than hers, for some reason. Still:
Flint introduces Reyna to our boys, and she says she would like to have a scientific discussion with Spock, who says he would like that as well. When Kirk asks Flint about his earlier insistence that he lived alone, Flint replies that Reyna's parents were employees of his, and were killed in a plane crash when they arrived, leaving him to raise their infant daughter, and he's basically her father and NOW WE KNOW WHY SHE SHIED AWAY FROM THAT CREEPY-ASS KISS, YOU PERV.
WTF, Star Trek? Did you just go all Woody Allen on us?
Anyway, Reyna is smart. Like 17 university degrees smart, or so Flint says. He gives the ryetalyn back to M-4, and tells Bones that he can supervise the making of the antidote, while everyone else plays billiards. Bones follows M-4 back to the lab, but the robot disappears behind a locked door to do it's thing while Bones waits and fiddles with stuff in the lab.
What follows next is a series of awful shots that are just awful, but get a thumbs up for trying. They're overhead shots of Reyna playing billiards, and while it's awesome that the camera crew were trying to mix it up and prove that Reyna is a billiards expert, it's the shakiest shaky cam ever. We're talking Blair Witch caliber shaky cam.
Anyway, Kirk is all impressed with the shot she made, and she offers to show him how to do it. You know how when a guy offers to show a girl physically how something is done, and he takes the opportunity to stand close behind her and actually adjust her movements, that it's supposed to come off as flirty and kind of sexy? This doesn't. She's clearly more interested in setting up the shot than in being sexy, and even when she reaches around his back to guide his cue, it's still weird. When he takes a second shot a few moments later, she sets it up again without him asking. She's just performing a task. Meanwhile, Kirk and Flint are discussing why Flint left Earth, and he declares that it was to get away from how awful and violent humanity was. Kirk argues that it isn't that way anymore, but that man has always had a violent streak that will pop up from time to time, blah, blah, blah. I kind of like that Star Trek has philosophical discussions about human nature, but here it doesn't really pertain to the story, so let's just skip it. Here's Reyna awkwardly helping Kirk line his shot up:
Spock sits down at what might be a grand piano, but what could be a similar kind of instrument, I don't know, I'm not really good with those kinds of instruments. He starts to play the waltz that's set up in front of him, and Flint suggests that Kirk dance with Reyna, because she's awesome at dancing as well. So they do.
In the lab, M-4 brings Bones three vials of blue liquid. The sound guy went to the trouble to overlay the waltz music in this scene, but muted it a bit, so that it's obvious that the lab is in the same building, and nearby. Good on ya, sound guy.
Flint watches Kirk and Reyna closely while they dance. Kirk obviously likes Reyna, and she seems to like him as well. Too bad the camera guys attempted to get those up-close shots with that same shaky cam again.
Bones comes in looking like thunder. "The ryetalyn is contaminated with this other chemical that makes the antidote completely useless."
"Oh, that sucks," says Flint. "I'll go with M-4 to get some more and we can try again."
he leaves, and Bones remarks that with two and a half hours to go until they all drop dead, he guesses they will have just enough time to get more ryetalyn and process it. But he's concerned that all of the ryetalyn on this planet may be contaminated. They kind of don't have a choice either way. The nearest planet that has it is too far away, so if it is contaminated, they're screwed. Kirk tells Bones to go with Flint and watch him.
"Hey, this waltz is by Brahms," Spock tells Kirk. "It's written in his own hand, but it's unpublished."
"Like I care," says Kirk. "I'm gonna go poke around in the lab. Give me the secret whistle if Bones and Flint come back."
Random Kirk Log 5843.75: "I might have screwed us over by coming here."
Kirk is wandering around the lab when Reyna comes in. She doesn't see him at first, so she goes straight to a some yellow door and just stands in front of it.
"What's back there?" he asks her.
"Dunno," she says. "Flint told me to never go in there. He gives me anything I ask for, so it seems like NBD to not go through that door. But sometimes I come here to think."
Oh, honey. If history has taught me anything, it's that a guy who forbids you to go through a certain door has something specific kept in there. It's either dead bodies, dead bodies, an enchanted rose that indicates how much longer he'll be some kind of man-monster, his crazy first wife, or dead bodies.
"Hey so, are you happy here with Flint?" Kirk asks her.
"He is the greatest, kindest, wisest man in the galaxy," she replies. Okay, not only is that not an answer to the question he just asked, but it sounds like something Flint told you to say.
He tells her not to be afraid, then he tries to kiss her, but she reacts the same way that she did when Flint tried to kiss her: she blinks in confusion.
Oops, now they're being cock-blocked by M-4, which has entered the lab and caught them smooching. Well, it caught Kirk smooching, anyway.
Dramatic music! Commercial break!
Kirk pushes Reyna out of the way and squares off against M-4, but again, his phaser doesn't work. Reyna tries to call off the robot by yelling commands, but I guess it doesn't work for her, only Flint. M-4 is about to take Kirk down when Spock enters the lab and zaps the robot from behind.
"Ha! It was looking at you, so it didn't fuck with my phaser!"crows Spock.
All three go to confront Flint about the robot nearly killing Kirk.
"Yeah, sorry," says Flint, who doesn't actually sound sorry at all. "It thought you were attacking Reyna. It's a good thing you didn't attack me. I'd've kicked your ass." Um, that last remark had nothing to do with anything.
"Yeah, you said something when we met to that extent," Kirk replies.
"A-ha! See, Reyna?" asks Flint. "Man is still violent. Is Kirk brave, or a fool?"
The fuck? You started this pissing contest, dude. You can't turn around and accuse someone of being violent because he pointed out that you threatened him earlier.
A new and improved M-4 comes into the room.
"The hell?" asked Kirk. "You have another one of those?"
"Yeah, they're cool," says Flint. He sends the robot back to the lab to help Bones, then exits, commanding Reyna to come with him.
"That guy treats her like shit," Kirk remarks to Spock.
"So what?" asks Spock. "He has something that we need. Keep in your pants for once, and quit hitting on his daughter-girlfriend so we can get our medicine."
"That's so gross," says Kirk. "But he was totally trying to get us to hook up, too!"
"What can I say?" asks Spock. "Some humans are just fucked up like that."
Kirk calls Scotty, possibly to see what the engineer thinks of this crap.
"Pretty much everybody is sick now," says Scotty. "And I tried to Google Flint, but it's like he doesn't exist. A rich recluse with another name bought that planet thirty years ago."
"Okay, run a Google search on his legal ward, Reyna," Kirk tells Uhura before signing off.
"Scanned Flint," Spock says. "He's human all right, but the tricorder says he's like 6000 years old. We have a little more than two hours to get those meds and inject everyone before we all die. Also, Flint being a weirdo, I think it's safe to assume that he's watching us."
"Yeah, I feel like he's keeping us here for some reason, even though he wants us gone," says Kirk.
These last few sentences are watched by monitor by Flint and Reyna in another room. Flint turns off the screen. Reyna asks if he sent M-4 after Kirk.
"Naw, it just malfunctioned," says Flint. "I've never lied to you, right?"
No, only about your Dead Body Room.
"What did you feel?" he asks, which is a weird question.
"Are you going to give them their medicine?" she returns.
He replies in the affirmative and tells her to go say good bye to Kirk and Spock before they leave.
Scotty calls Kirk. Reyna doesn't exist on file, either.
"Well, fuck me," says Kirk.
"Open pants," Spock instructs him. "Remove hand. We're getting our medicine, let it go."
But Kirk doesn't want to let it go, because he has a thing for Reyna now.
She comes in to say goodbye, and Spock says he is going to the lab to help Bones, knowing full well that the last time that Kirk and Reyna were left alone together one of Flint's floaty robots attempted to kill Kirk.
Kirk doesn't want to say goodbye to Reyna. He kisses her, and she reacts as she did before, by blinking confusedly. But when he kisses her a second time, she gets the hint and she kisses him back. Of course Voyeurism Vick is in the other room, watching all of this on his secret monitor. When Reyna pulls out of the kiss, she looks mildly terrified.
"I hope that was good for you," Flint tells the screen as he turns it off. "Cuz I'm done with your ass."
"Come with me," says Kirk. "You love me, not Flint!"
Reyna runs away in fright.
Down in the lab, M-4 has taken off with the ryetalyn. When Kirk shows up looking all emo, Bones informs him that their meds are gone, and they're totes screwed now. Spock does some scans and finds that the ryetalyn is behind Door #2.
Kirk goes all conspiracy theory, and "how do we open this?" and "set phasers to stun" when the door just slides open. Then there's a brief, pointless argument, where Spock insists on going in himself to get the ryetalyn, and then Bones says he'll do it, and again, everyone is over-thinking this danger and espionage shit because when they finally walk in, the medicine is sitting on a table just inside the door.
But they can't just leave, because we've 15 more minutes of this crap before things are resolved, and Kirk & Co have to finish playing detective.
So what else was in the dead body room?
Dead bodies.
No, just kidding. But if you guessed androids, you're correct! Congratulations, I'm sending you a box of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat, ding-ding!
There are several tables with bodies covered in sheets, marked Reyna 14, 15, and 16.
Dramatic music! Commercial break!
When we come back, Flint is entering the room to confirm that these androids are earlier versions of Reyna, and that he made them all. So of course Spock has already figured out this shit: he talks to Flint about how he has authentic Leonardos that were made recently, and that waltz by Brahms that was never published.
"Yeah, you caught me," says Flint. "I'm Leonardo and Brahms, and Solomon, and Methuselah, Alexander, Lazarus, Merlin. Also, a bunch of other names."
Merlin. This guy is Merlin. This is getting to be as stupid as "Wolf in the Fold" where Jack the Ripper was an alien. Typically, Star Trek likes to take some historical person or thing and say "Maybe it's aliens." Doctor Who likes to do that as well, but we know they're just fucking with us. Although there are plenty of goofy, funny moments in most episodes of Star Trek, we're expected to take the story itself seriously. So here, they want us to believe that this guy, a human, discovered that he was immortal (no real explanation as to why), and that he's been living bits of lives, and then pretending to die and moving on to another life... for the past six thousand years.
"You're rich and smart because you're fucking old," says Spock. "Like, literally older than dirt."
"Yeah, I was BFFs with like, Galileo and Socrates. Also, I was married like, a hundred times," says Flint. He gives the old Highlander speech, about how much it sucks to be married to someone, only to have them grow old and die on you, and you have to pick up and carry on, and all that crapola. So he figured, why not just make a new girlfriend? One who doesn't die on you. Also, he made her brilliant like himself. I'm reminded of The Nightmare Before Christmas, where the mad scientist doctor makes a companion for himself and actually gives her half of his brain.
Now here's the thing: he went to all of this trouble to build himself a bride, and he's totally in love with her, but now Kirk is in love with her too. And Flint is not in the mood to share his toys.
"Then why the fuck were you keeping me here?" Kirk demands.
"Because you drew out her emotions," says Flint. "I loved her, but she didn't understand. Now she understands, but she loves you. Not okay."
Okay, so she's not his daughter, or his legal ward, and he didn't raise her. He built her to be his wife. Then why the bloody hell did he tell them that she was his wife? Why not just say, "This is my wife?" Creeper Flint. And creeper Star Trek for not making up a good reason why he'd tell them that.
So now, of course, he can't let them go, because they'd tell his secret, and then people would come looking for them, so he's going to kill them, or lock them in some dungeon or some shit.
"No, fuck that," says Kirk, and he whips out his comm to call Scotty.
Only now Flint has whipped out some remote control, and with a flick of a button, the E disappears from orbit. Then he presses another button, and a very small E has appeared on a table in the lab. Let's just re-cap here, shall we?
A dude who is six thousand years old, who was once Leonardo and Alexander, and Brahms and Lazarus, has built himself an android wife, and because he is angry with Kirk because she's in love with the captain, he has built some kind of thing that makes ships disappear from orbit, and then reappear, very tiny, on the planet's surface.
"The hell?" demands Kirk.
"Haha, I'm more powerful that you!" crows Flint.
There's kind of a funny shot that they do that shows Kirk looking onto the bridge from outside the ship, and they show him huge on the front viewscreen. I don't think that's how it works, but if that were the least-believable thing going on this episode, I'd take it.
"Chillax," says Flint. "I'm gonna shrink you guys down, too, and keep you in that little ship. Everyone on board will be suspended in time. I'll keep you that way for maybe two thousand years? You've kind of done me a favor, Kirk. You fished Reyna's emotions out of her, and now that she has them, when you are gone, she'll bestow them upon me."
Oops, he didn't see Reyna come in.
"You can't harm them!" she says.
Bones asks what everyone is wondering: "After we leave, how will you feel about him?" She doesn't answer, so Bones fills in the blank. "Flint, you a-hole, you didn't understand that she could feel any emotion. So once you harm us, she'll hate you."
Clearly, Flint had not realized this. Resignedly, he presses the button to make the E big again, while putting it back in orbit and unfreezing the people onboard. (Seriously, it was one button. When he designed this thing, whatever it is, did he really think he would only need one button for everything? He needed two buttons to get the E out of orbit and shrunk into miniature, but only one "restore" button?)
"That's why you were keeping us here!" yells an angry Kirk. "You knew that I was arousing her feelings, and figured you could step in when I left! You knew what was going on the whole time!"
Flint says two things that are distinctly creepy by themselves and more so in conjunction: "I'll take what is mine!" (meaning Reyna) and "We're alike! We're both smart and immortal!" No and no, you bastard.
They suddenly go at each other, and now's the time for Flint to pull out that awesome strength that he was bragging about earlier. Spock separates them.
"Don't be a dumbass," he tells Kirk.
And then Kirk comes back with one of the dumbest lines ever: "Get out of my way! We're fighting over a woman!"
No shit, Sherlock.
"Dude, she's not a woman, she's an android," Spock reminds him.
Too late. Flint comes at him, and they roll around on the floor some more, Flint flipping him across the room.
Reyna sees that two guys are fighting over her, and rather than being pleased like some basic bitch, she's kind of freaked out by it. She yells at them to stop, and surprisingly, it works. Girlfriend has finally decided that she's going to be her own person and assert herself. She yells at them that no one will command her, that she has a choice, and only she will make it. Kirk excited says that she she has free will. Flint dickishly takes credit for it. But she is still saying that the choice is hers.
This is promising, Star Trek. Don't blow -- oh.
Now Kirk and Flint are standing apart, and calling her like a fucking dog. Like, I'm not even kidding with this shit. And who does Reyna go to? Nobody, because this is bullshit. Instead, she breaks down. She drops a tear, which is pretty freaking advanced for an android. Then she collapses on the ground.
Bones puts a finger to her neck, but I don't know what the hell he's checking for. If she's an android, then she would have shorted, or her system would have become corrupted. She didn't have blood, or a heart to create a pulse, so Bones would not have come up with anything by putting his hand there, anyway.
"What happened?" Kirk asks.
"She loved you both," guesses Spock. "She loved Flint like a father or mentor. The joys of love made her more human, but she was overwhelmed and unprepared for the terrible things that love can bring, like jealousy and hatred. It was too much for her system."
Later, Kirk is in his quarters when Spock enters. Spock says that everyone on board has gotten their shots and the plague is subsiding. Kirk nods numbly.
He mumbles about Flint being a very lonely man, then says "We put on a pretty poor show, didn't we?"
Yes, Kirk. This episode was terrible. How fourth wall of you. He then lays his head on the desk and mutters something about wanting to forget.
I'd like to take a moment and point something out: Kirk fell completely in love with Reyna over the course of four hours. Like, he was asking her to run away with him. And he didn't spend the entirety of that time in her presence. He spent some time dicking around with his friends, talking to Flint and wandering the house. It's always weird when you put time perspectives on things, right? Romeo and Juliet takes place over the course of a week. Of Mice and Men: a weekend. "Requiem for Methuselah:" four hours. Now, I'm not saying that some people don't fall in love that quickly. I'm sure that it does happen sometimes. But I'm saying that for Kirk, it happens all the time. If he meets a girl near the beginning of the episode, he wants to run away with her at the end. This is a bit much to take in, with everything else in this episode.
Bones enters and sees that Kirk has his head on the desk. "Oh good, he's sleeping at last." Yes, Bones. He laid his head on the desk and instantly fell asleep. This show sometimes, you guys.
"So I checked the tricorder readings," Bones tells Spock. "Looks like Flint is dying. Whatever made him immortal on Earth remained there when he left the planet. So he'll live the rest of his life, then die. I let him know. He says he intends to devote the rest of his life and abilities to 'improve the human condition.'"
What the hell does that even mean? It's so super vague that dude could claim he was doing just that while sitting on the couch in his underwear, eating Cheetos and watching reruns of Judge Judy.
"You know, I pity you, Spock," says Bones, launching into a bullshit tirade. "Being a Vulcan, you don't know or understand love. You don't know what it means to feel those high highs and low lows." He goes on like that, and Spock just kind of stands there, listening to that crap.
Clearly, the good doctor doesn't know jack shit about Vulcans. It's not that they are emotion-less. It's that they feel those emotions so deeply that to engage with them constantly would possibly drive them mad, as it does when it builds up every seven years and they enter Pon Farr. Spock knows what the fuck you're talking about, Doctor. He's just not sharing that shit with you.
Bones adds one last, "I do wish he could forget her, though," before wishing Spock a good night and exiting.
And just because Spock knows what Bones is talking about, he walks over to his friend, places his fingers on Kirk's forehead in the mind-meld configuration, and whispers, "Forget."
Is it possible for Vulcans to erase bad memories from someone else's brain? I have no idea. But this episode has asked us for some huge suspensions of disbelief, so why the fuck not?
What the hell is up with this episode? It's like story ideas were tossed into a hat, and they just decided to pull them all. "Androids? Okay, we haven't done androids since season one. How about that thing where we make something historical into an alien thing? Oh, I know! Let's make it one long-lived human, and make him all of the historical figures! Fun, right? Ooh, let's give him powers! Like, he's smart enough to know how to shrink shit like the Enterprise! Okay, and Kirk falls for his girl, because Kirk needs to fall for someone in every episode, and we'll have a plague. Yeah, that sounds good. Somebody make this cohesive, we'll start filming after lunch."
Sometimes, friends... sometimes this show makes me want to kick puppies.
Death Toll:
Red deaths this episode: 0
Red deaths this season: 6
Gold deaths this episode: 0
Gold deaths this season: 0
Blue deaths this episode: 0
Blue deaths this season: 1
Total crew deaths this season: 7
Total crew deaths thus far: 49
So three Mystery Crewmen died. Well, that we know of, anyway. It was maybe more in the meantime, but Bones didn't mention that in his final report at the end. So let's stick with three. Also, Reyna. Does she count? I dunno. I think I counted Andrea, so we'll count Reyna too.
This episode is shocking similar to: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" Man, why are androids only made for dubious, creepy reasons?
I tried another one of those Inko's teas, this time White Tea Blueberry. It was really good, and because of the underpowering flavor of the white base, the blueberry was really prominent. It was a little on the extra sweet side, but that's kind of to be expected with bottled or canned teas. I would definitely drink this again. Bonus points: no scary sugars!
Red deaths this season: 6
Gold deaths this episode: 0
Gold deaths this season: 0
Blue deaths this episode: 0
Blue deaths this season: 1
Total crew deaths this season: 7
Total crew deaths thus far: 49
So three Mystery Crewmen died. Well, that we know of, anyway. It was maybe more in the meantime, but Bones didn't mention that in his final report at the end. So let's stick with three. Also, Reyna. Does she count? I dunno. I think I counted Andrea, so we'll count Reyna too.
This episode is shocking similar to: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" Man, why are androids only made for dubious, creepy reasons?
*******
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| Jack |
