ST:TAS Season One, Episode Fifteen "The Eye of the Beholder"

"The Eye of the Beholder"
Air Order: 15
Stardate: 5501.2
Original Air Date: January 5, 1974

This is my new favorite thing, you guys. I love, love, love when fictional characters and situations are dragged into the "real world" via advertisements, PSAs, travel posters and the like. It's probably because I make my own fan work like this, but it's so awesome when I see it done by others. I was fishing for the artist credit via Google (it's really freaking hard to find artist credits sometimes) when I stumbled upon this one as well:

Check out the Archie comic-styling paired with the WWII poster slogan! Plus, instead of a hapless Red, this crewman is in command gold!

(I'm seriously not about slut-shaming Orion girls here, though. I'm just really digging the fan work with the retro STD PSA vibe.)

*******

Kirk's Log 5501.2: "Orbiting Lactra VII. A six-man science crew is missing, and we beamed some guys aboard the other ship to see if there was anything that could point us in the right direction."

I guess they grabbed the captain's logs because we see our boys of the E gathered around the viewscreen in the briefing room a moment later, watching some logs being replayed. The guy on the screen, Lt-Commander Markel, says that they sent out three guys who never returned, so he and remaining two plan to beam down to the surface to find them. We never learn what happens next, because Kirk switches off the log in the middle of the sentence, and bitches about how Markel went down to the surface against orders, and that one should always follows orders, and blah, blah, blah.

Fuck you, Kirk. You disobey orders constantly. I bet Tiberius is Latin for "screw you, I'll do what I want,"

"Meh," says Spock in response, "Humans don't always follow the rules."

Therein follows a quick tirade from Bones that's mostly insults about Vulcans. Kirk tells him to STFU, because he isn't helping at all.

Spock reports that Lactra VII is very similar to Earth, but what's known about it is what the other ship was able to collect six weeks ago when they arrived. They don't know anything about any possible life forms. He says that Arax is doing further scans and will report on what he finds.

"Naw, that'll take too long," says Kirk. "We should just beam down to the last coordinates they used."

"That's dumb," replies Bones, surprisingly the voice of reason here. "Two parties of people disappeared from there and we don't know why."

Kirk shrugs him off, because again, Kirk does what he wants.

So our intrepid trio beams down to the surface, right after Scotty has let them know that Arax discovered several life forms, but no big groups or cities. They beam down next to several boiling lakes, and Bones complains that they might have been cooked upon beaming. Query: wouldn't the transporter chief see that that was there, and adjust for it? Or is Bones just being his usual dickish self about beaming procedures?

Spock things it's weird that the lake even exists in that climate, but then Kirk notices that they have company, and I have the same reaction here that I did to the space kraken on the Aquaman episode: "Haha, sweet!"

It comes toward them, and Kirk gives the order to stun it. But the phaser fire only seems to irritate it. Rather than being stunned, it dives into the water to get the hell away from the rude little snacks on shore.

A little ways away, Kirk takes out his comm to try to call the crew members of the Ariel, the other ship. They get some static, which Bones takes for an answer, if not a verbal one, and they head off in the direction from which they feel the answer came.

Oops, they encounter another monster. Man, I love these things. They're ridiculous, and I laugh when they appear onscreen, but they're awesome as hell.

This one also appears to be pissed off when they stumble upon it. So what do they do? Shoot it. Does this help? Of course not.

"I think it's feeding off of the energy that we're shooting at it," suggests Spock.

So does Kirk bring a halt to the phaser fire? Noop. 

"MOAR SHOOTING!'

Then there's this weird animation effect thing that they try that could either mean one of two things: 1) the monster was further away from the rocks than we thought, and it moves closer when they continue shooting; or B) the  monster somehow converts the phaser energy over into some kind of growth hormone or movie monster radiation, and it grows to like, double its size.

Anyway, the thing eventually ends up being stunned, only it falls on Bones and they have to dig him out. It's kind of this awesome Wizard of Oz moment.

Spock says they still have 1.1 kilometers to go before they get to the spot where the comm signal originated, and Kirk acts like it's the end of the world, and it's so far, and maybe there are more unarmed monsters to shoot and however will they make it? For those of you not laughing at this already (ie, my fellow Americans who do not use the metric system), Kirk is whining about having to walk a little more than half a mile.

As they go along, Kirk and Spock discuss how the last monster that they fought was very much like a monster-thing on this other planet, light-years away, and how the desert region that they are walking through at the moment is similar to that other planet as well. Bones breaks in with a random comment about how his boots are full of sand.

"Bitch, who asked about your boots?" asks Spock. "We're sciencing over here, and you're talking about fashion."

"Come say that to me in my medical lab," retorts Bones.

They walk into a jungle area, and are confused how the landscape could change so rapidly. Kirk calls Scotty, and the show saves money on animation by showing static shots of the E in orbit while they play a voice-over of the convo. Arax, Scotty reports, has found some kind of city or something 98 kilometers away, in roughly the same direction as the signal came.

Spock is weirded out that the pond they have stopped next to is filled with water that is "too pure." He thinks that a rain forest has no right to be sitting next to a desert, and proposes that the landscapes they have seen so far have been created rather than actually growing that way. There's a brief discussion about terraforming, but Spock doesn't think this fits the bill.

Ugh, we haven't landed on the shore leave planet again, have we? I'm so over that shit.

He and Bones exchange some more barbs, and then they're attacked by dragons.

"MOAR PHASERS!" yells Kirk.

The dragons fly away, but Spock thinks they hit some kind of invisible force field, rather than being driven away by the phaser fire.

They're paying too much attention to notice that they're now being taken hostage by giant slugs or legless elephants or something. Which are pink. Ten bucks says they were supposed to be grey.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

When we return, the elephant-slugs are carrying our boys someplace, and Kirk reckons it's toward the northwest area where the signal was coming from. They've apparently been letting these things carry them for hours, and I guess Kirk hasn't tried to shoot them. So we get to the city, and it looks like a stack of weird pancakes or a peppermint. Not my favorite alien architecture on this show, but they're trying something new, so I'll give them credit for that.

Once inside, our boys are deposited in some building that has an archway with a force field. Spock is pretty sure that they're telepathic. he starts forming a hypothesis of what's going on: the pink elephant-slugs are so advanced and so intelligent, that he can't actually capture their thoughts, because they think too fast. He makes the comparison of humans to ants, with themselves as the ants. Then he goes on to surmise that the monster things they saw earlier are not just really similar to animals that they've seen on other planets, but actually those animals from those planets, in landscapes created on this planet for them.

Bones points out that their tricorders, comms and phasers were taken from them, and it's debated whether they were taken to study or to keep from being harmed. Frankly, if they were watching Kirk shoot at everything under the sun, then my guess is the latter.

After a few minutes of debate in the little cell, the elephants take them to a new enclosure that contains grass and trees and a building. Once again, they're sealed behind a forcefield.

"A human habitat, and now they're safe from us," muses Spock.

A dude approaches them. He's Lt-Commander Markel from the Ariel, and he has Randi Bryce, the biologist, in tow.

Markel explains that they weren't able to beam down in time to save the original three crew members, but the third of their group is in the house, sick. he says they've been expecting our intrepid trio, ever since they heard the comm signal. Apparently, the aliens have taken all of the equipment, and it's sitting on a table outside of the force field, so they couldn't call ahead and warn our boys not to come. He confirms Spock's suspicions that this is a zoo.

Let's pause for a moment and recap, shall we?

A ship is missing, so the Enterprise is sent out some time later to investigate.

The ship is found with just a few survivors on the surface. The captain beams down and encounters hyper-intelligent aliens that communicate telepathically.

The captain is taken prisoner and is tossed into an alien zoo.

Any of this sound familiar?

I'l give you a hint: do you have the strangest feeling that this girl might show up soon, but you're not certain why?

Dingdingdingdingding!

You're right, this is pretty much the same story as "The Cage," later re-packaged as "The Menagerie". I have to wonder how often a script would show up at Star Trek and they'd approve it, only to have someone point out that it's really, really similar to an episode that they've already done (sometimes more than once!), and the Powers That Be shrug and say, "Meh, it's different enough."

Anyway, the aliens come to the forcefield, and our boys walk forward with Markel. Kirk tells Spock to communicate telepathically with the aliens, and he tries, but all they do is shake. Spock reports back that is having trouble communicating with them, and that he thinks the shaking is them laughing at him and his efforts.

They go inside the little house to have a look at the sick Red. Bones is pretty sure she has malaria of some kind, but he can't do anything for her without his medikit, which the aliens have. Kirk asks about food, and Bryce says that they bring some to the table with their equipment about once a week. Bones surmises that if they ask about the medikit, it may be returned to them based on the fact that it would be used to heal one of the "zoo specimens" rather than harming anyone. He concentrates on asking for help with the medikit, but the Lactrans send food instead. Later, they all go out to the forcefield and think real hard about the medikit, which one of the Lactrans hands over.

Bones leaves to treat the sick Red, and Kirk talks to Markel about escaping. Markel says they've tried it all, and Spock butts in to suggest to Kirk that he start thinking about how they are fully trapped here in this zoo, and that every possible escape route will have been thought of and planned for. 

That probably sounds pretty bleak, but it makes sense - if the Lactrans can sense that all of their humans are trying to think of ways to escape, then they'll head them off at every pass.

Later, they are hanging out in the courtyard area of the human enclosure, and they notice that they are getting a large crowd. Bryce asks Spock if he has learned anything about them through telepathy, and Spock replies that they are far too intelligent for the likes of him, but that he's pretty sure the kids are afraid of them, and that the females find them ugly. Important things to know about your captors, I guess.

He brings up the E, and the possibility that Scotty could beam down a rescue party, but Kirk says he told Scotty not to do that. Spock suggests that they get the comm back from the Lactrans, and he puts forth the idea that they do a spin-off of the ol' sick prisoner trick. Has this trick ever worked outside of television? Because I'm thinking that the answer is no.

So Kirk lies on the ground pretending to be sick, and the others think "communicator" real hard at one of the little Lactrans, who approaches Kirk with the comm. Kirk suddenly calls Scotty for a beam-out, and realizing that he shouldn't have given Kirk the comm, the baby Lactran snatches it back.

Oops.

This crappy, unintended consequences. Not only is Scotty left at a loss as to what to do with this baby Lactran, but Spock reports that its parents now blame Kirk for making the baby disappear. They think he harmed it. Kirk crumples to the ground in pain, bombarded with the thought "what happened to the baby?" At first, this sounds like a good idea. The Lactrans can read Kirk's "primitive" mind, and find out where the baby is, and that it's unharmed. But then Spock points out that the Lactrans think too quickly, and that Kirk's mind is overwhelmed, so he tells Kirk to fight the intrusion.

Scotty is hustled onto the bridge by the baby Lactran, and he tells them to clear off. he's decided to let the baby take the helm or something. Yes, you should let the baby steer the ship. Unfortunately, the ship goes wonky and out of orbit, and he shouts at the baby for making it do that.

Downstairs, the Lactrans have decided that they can't break into his mind individually, so a bunch of them are going to tag-team him. Spock suggests that all of the humans think about Kirk, and that way, they can form a mind-shield. Umm, treading close to scientific crap again, Star Trek. Thinking real hard about a guy will keep someone else from breaking into his mind? Really?

Fortunately for Kirk, it doesn't matter either way if it's crap or not, because Scotty and the baby beam down into the enclosure just then.

"This thing made contact with me," says Scotty to his baffled crewmates. "It's only six, but it's IQ is in the thousands, It soaked up the ship's databanks and it took the ship for a joyride. I managed to convince it that I wasn't a cool pet, and we got in the transporter to come back down."

And because these aliens think real fast, the baby has already communicated the entirety of the history of the Federation to its parents. They've decided that the humans are simple creatures now, but evolving, and are where the Lactrans were tens of thousands of centuries earlier. The Lactrans don't want the humans in their zoo anymore, and they're free to beam back up to the ship and leave.

Upstairs, the E is leaving, and Markel is bitching about the fact that he was part of a scientific fact-finding mission that didn't really get any facts.

"Meh, who cares?" asks Kirk. "We learned they're hella smart, and if we got there again, we may get dumped in a zoo."

Spock gets one last telepathic message from the Lactrans, saying that they will be welcome to visit again, in 20 or 30 centuries.

Here comes our closing joke. Ready?

"Is that our centuries, or theirs?" asks Kirk.

"Theirs," replies Spock. "And it's going to take a hell of a long time for me to calculate that difference."

"Either way," says Kirk, "it isn't our problem."

These jokes are terrible, you guys. It's like dads in space. Ugh.

So while this episode kind of blatantly stole the plot from the unaired pilot episode of its predecessor, there were also good parts. I liked the fact that Scotty briefly made a little buddy from the young Lactran. There wasn't enough time in the episode to show it, but it was nice all the same.

I wondered, going into the animated series, how it might differ from the original series. Half the time for the story, and I mused on what might get cut from the scripts in order to make that twenty-five minute run time. As it turns out, a lot of what didn't transfer over, simply because of time constraints, was inter-personal relationships. In the animated series, Spock and Bones trade almost no barbs. They simply don't have time to squeeze those moments in because they have to devote everything to telling the same kinds of Star Trek stories in a shortened time frame. And I'm finding that I've missed it. For all the crappy effects and the budget-cut scenery and the science that's really more fiction, the thing that holds it together are those inter-personal relationships. Here, we get just the tiniest taste of it again. Maybe the plot wasn't long enough and they needed some filler. 

Or maybe they recognized that we needed to see more of it every now and then.

Weird, quasi-trivia: the crew members from the Ariel are wearing arrowhead insignia. In TOS, every ship gets a different insignia, and the arrowheads are designated for the use of the Enterprise. By the TOS films, it had been decided that all ships in the Federation should carry the arrowhead insignia, rather than having different ones for different ships. The guess is that by that later stardate in the first film, they had changed how things were done. But here we have Ariel crew members wearing the Enterprise insignia. Had the writers changed their minds while writing for TAS, and the idea transferred over to the film writers (probably many of the same people)? Or did the animators screw up and paint the wrong ship's insignia on their uniforms?

*******

So I noticed that Jack in the Box has flavored teas now. (Not gonna lie: I now notice when anyone has flavored teas.) If I recall correctly, the flavors are raspberry, peach, and mango. While raspberry is almost cliche in a flavored tea at this point, and peach is generally my tea spirit animal, I decided to be different and get the mango.

A word from the wise: flavored teas are like martinis and must be either shaken or stirred. Seriously. When you get a flavored tea from a restaurant, they tend to pour the syrup in first to measure it in the cup/glass, then fill the rest with tea. Then you know what happens next: you take a sip and get a mouthful of syrup. Somehow, I always forget to mix.

"This tastes like a mango smoothie," I thought on first sip. "How is this tea again?"

It would be nice if Jack in the Box gave their employees long-handled spoons to mix their tea with, but I guess that might eff up their dive-thru and order times, so I just admit that I'm freaking lazy, and let's face it, I can do that shit myself. 

Once properly mixed, the mango tea was pretty good. Sometimes, the syrups in flavored teas overwhelm the tea flavor, and then the tea just becomes a vehicle for the syrup. In those cases, why have tea? You're not getting any tea flavor, and you might as well just have poured the syrup into some soda water. But again, once I had mixed it, the tea was more evident, and it blended nicely with the mango.

The price for what you get isn't terrible, either. It was $2+ for the flavored tea versus the tea you buy as a fountain drink, so you know you're probably paying for that syrup. But the smallest size they offered was at least equivalent to a medium-sized drink, so you're at least getting a good amount. Better value than the $3-4 that Starschmucks charges, anyway.

According to the website, they don't have these flavored teas in every restaurant, so you might want to check ahead to see if they have them before trekking all the way out to one specifically for tea.

Moe in the sun

Season 3, Episode 76 "Requiem for Methuselah"

"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:

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!

https://www.inkostea.com/

Jack

Season 1, Episode 16.5 "The Menagerie, Part 2"

"The Menagerie, Part 2"
Production Number: 16
Air Order: 12
Stardate: 3013.1
Original Air Date: November 24, 1966

I come from a service family, so I'd like to give a shout out to friends and family who have been in the service, have given their lives to the service, or are still in the service.

And a poppy for our mates across the pond

*******

So a lot of people argue whether this two-part episode is one episode or two. The DVD lists both parts as production number 16, which is certainly true, because both halves of the envelope were shot at the same time, and then edited together. But one could also argue that it is two, as together, it is two hours long, and required two one-hour blocks to view on television. Frankly, given that it's one episode, split in two, and enhanced with other scenes, one could also make a decent argument for it being three episodes. But just to illustrate how few fucks I give, and to make the blog easier to access and read in order, I'm labeling this episode as 16.5. Deal with it.
So in case you missed last week's post and are too lazy to scroll down and read it for yourself, here's the low-down:
Gene Rod and Co had a budget so tiny you couldn't find it with an electron microscope, and they were forced to utilize the un-aired original pilot episode, which had a completely different crew, and would make no sense when set within the rest of the series. So they cut it in half, wrote some scenes to go around the old material, and made two episodes very cheaply. It's brilliant in both story and budget.
So for the story, Spock has quasi-kidnapped the previous captain of the Enterprise, who is now a  thinking vegetable after being injured while rescuing orphans from a burning building. Spock has also hijacked the Enterprise to take this captain - Christopher Pike - to the planet Talos IV. To go to Talos IV rates one the death penalty within Starfleet, so dude is risking both his career and his neck by doing so. Kirk and a commodore - Jose Mendez - catch up with him and begin to court martial Spock. Spock's testimony for these deeds is shown on a projector in the make-shift courtroom, and is, in fact, footage from that original pilot. When we left off, the Enterprise was still under Spock's control, still hurtling toward Talos IV, and Spock's fate (along with Pike's) rests in the hands of Kirk and Mendez.
*A side note: the un-aired full-length pilot, "The Cage" was aired on television in 1986 under the production number "episode 0", creating a third chronology within the series... because they really didn't hate me enough.

*******

Kirk's Personal Log (because he's been relieved of duty by Starfleet command) 3013.1: Kirk recaps last week's episode, scarcely believing that Spock would act in that way. Mendez is butthurt because Starfleet has ordered no contact with Talos IV, but Spock tells him to suck it up because the Talosians have control over the screen.

We pick up on the broadcast where Pike awakens to find himself in a glass enclosure underground. An elevator in front of his case opens, and some Talosians get out.

I have to mention here what sound the elevator makes when it opens and closes. Do you remember those storybooks for kids that came with records or tapes or CDs or whatever they come with these days, that would read the story to you as you followed along? Do you remember when, at the beginning, the narrator explains that "You'll know it is time to turn the page when you hear the chimes ring like this"? THAT IS THE SOUND THE ELEVATOR DOORS MAKE. THIS MAKES ME IRRATIONALLY HAPPY, AND I DON'T KNOW WHY. Nostalgia is a powerful drug, kids. Yay, storybook chimes!

Wait, I'm digressing: Talosians approaching Pike in the mime box. He's pretty pissed off, and he tells them who he is and that his ship is on Talos IV peacefully. Instead of answering, they communicate telepathically, calling him stupid, and admitting that they lured him in (like a pike, ha!), and trapped him there under an illusion. Of course Pike can hear all of this, because we're using this convo to establish that the Talosians are douchecanoes. They guess what he'll do before he does it, talking about him as though he wasn't there. Then they mention an "experiment".

In the briefing room, the crew gathers to discuss the situation. The surface of the planet is too barren to support life, so the crew is guessing that the Talosians live underground. They also guess exactly what the Talosians admitted to Pike, about reading human minds and creating illusions from them. A young gold shirt with an engineering badge suggests putting the might of the ship behind them to blast through the door in the mountain. The first officer Number One pretty much tells him to Make It So. Number One is a badass. Did I mention that? Yes? Well, not enough. I would totally follow her on an away mission. I would even wear a fucking red shirt, despite the fact that this crew does not wear red.

Down on Talos IV, the Talosians are watching Pike on a monitor, because Pike must never do anything that isn't witnessed by at least one or more people. So far, this episode is like a living Rococo painting. The Talosians see the recent Rigel VII mission and decide to recreate it. The background shifts behind Pike, and he's back on the surface of Rigel, which is played by this awesome matte painting.

A girl runs up to him, frantic that they need to get inside the fortress, and she tries to pull him there.

"WTF?" says Pike. "This was like, two weeks ago! Am I still in that damn cage?"

We switch briefly back to Spock, who confirms that the Talosians control Pike's brain and can create any illusion they want, using any or all of his senses. Make a note of this, kids: the Talosians run The Matrix.

Thirteen-years-ago Pike recognizes the girl in the Matrix as being Vina, the crash survivor. A giant scary dude in fur comes out of the fortress, and he and Pike engage in hand-to-hand combat. (I don't know why the execs complained that there was not enough action. We almost got Ripped-Shirt Pike here.) So the costumes are awesome, the sets look hella good, and even the music sounds more expensive. I can totally see why the network execs said "This is fantastic, but way too pricey."

The furry dude goes after Vina, and Pike kills it, only to have the Matrix melt away into the cage again. Vina is in the cage with him, wearing this cute-as-hell dress that I'd totally wear. They're being watched by Matrix agents Talosians.

The screen in the Enterprise  courtroom shuts off, and Spock explains that the Talosians can sense that vegetable Pike is tired, and are concerned about him. I'd like to point out that it was mostly just a good place to put a commercial, but they worked it in as motivation in the plot. Slow clap, writers. Slow clap.

Kirk's Personal Log 3013.2: I guess Pike took a nap or something, because he appears rested. Somebody probably watched him sleep, too. Anyway, the Enterprise is only an hour out from Talos IV.

Getting back to caged Pike, he asks Vina if she's real. "As real as you want me to be," she answers, but he calls her on that shit. She continues to try to sell him on the idea of having any dream he wants, as though she's got them all stashed in a giant trench coat that she's wearing. He asks if there's any way he can keep the Talosians from reading his mind, but Vina keeps her trap shut.

Meanwhile, Number One and some crew members are outside setting up a laser cannon. They turn the cannon on full-blast using power from the E, and shoot at the door in the side of the mountain. There's a cool bit of animated effects here, but the door remains intact. Dr Boyce* suggests that they blasted through it, but the Talosians have implanted the suggestion that they haven't.

(* Last week I identified the doctor from The Cage as being Dr Royce, which I got from the subtitles on the DVD. This is incorrect. He is listed on IMDB and in The Star Trek Encyclopedia as Dr Boyce. My bad.)

Pike and Vina strike a deal - if she answers some questions, he might pick a fantasy that they could act out together. Vina reveals that the Talosians can't make him do what he doesn't want to do, and that he can be punished for lack of cooperation. She says the Talosians moved underground hundreds of thousands of years earlier, when the surface was destroyed by war. It was over this time that they developed their mental capabilities. But their own dreams became stale enough to start a zoo of sorts, where they could relive and feel right along with their specimens. Pike correctly guesses that they need a matching pair of humans to start their own family unit. The head Talosian (Agent Smith) comes in as Vina is admitting that she's human, and they are meant to be Adam and Eve. Oops. Said too much. She screams "Don't punish me!" as she disappears.

Pike is trying to figure out how to break out of the menagerie later when a vial appears at his feet. Agent Smith (using his mouth this time) tells him that it's a "nourishing protein complex". He tells Pike to drink up or he'll be punished. Smith flexes his atrophied muscles, and suddenly Pike is surrounded by fire, his arms covered in what is either maggots or cooked oatmeal. Either way, it's pretty clear that it sucks to be him just then.

"I was hoping for the kind in the packets with the freeze-dried fruit!"

Pike grudgingly drinks the substance, then runs at the glass of the cage. Smith jumps back and Pike guesses that primitive emotions block mental telepathy. Smith leaves and the Matrix shifts again. Pike is back home, in a clearing with some horses, a picnic lunch, and a freshly-punished Vina. He keeps trying to wheedle info from her, and she keeps trying to make small talk about the weather and living inside dreams. He asks if primitive emotions block thoughts, and she admits that they do, but that it's not possible to keep it up. Girlfriend has been here for 18 years and tried it all. Now she's totally broken it, saddled and looking for a rider. Whether she's fishing for sympathy to win him over, or she actually does feel badly about it, it's effective. He feels for her, and says he's attracted to her. The thing is, the Talosians read her mind long ago, and selected him based off of her thoughts about the perfect man. Then she wonders out loud if he's not buying into the dream thing because  Rigel VII and home are both "been there, done that" situations for him.

Check this out: detailed foreground, cool painted backdrop, and actual horses. In the series that followed, with it's tiny budget, those horses would have been stagehands in horse costumes.

So the voyeuristic Talosians waves their hands and now Pike is an Orion trader. His fellow traders are skeevy, like casting directors with super-comfy couches. And there's Vina, dark-haired and green, as the Orion slave girl, dancing rhythmically to the music. It's probably one of the most often cosplayed female characters, right up there with bikini-top Princess Leia. Pike clearly wants her, and his fellow traders are pretty much egging him on to give into the Talosians.

He leaves out of frustration, and finds himself back in his cage. Green Vina appears behind him, and her look isn't so much "come hither" as it is "praying mantis."

Upstairs, Number One confidently gathers her team. "This could suck a lot," she says, "so if you want to stay here, no one will give you shit later." She's awesome, so no one backs out. But when they try to beam down, only she and a ginger female disappear. The Talosians have beamed them both into Pike's cage, and left the sausage fest behind on the transporter pads. Vina, now blonde and people-colored again, is hella pissed. She knows what's up. Pike isn't taking to her like the Talosians wanted, so they're presenting him with alternatives. Dude, I'd be pissed, too. "We found you the perfect man, but he doesn't seem interested, so we're giving him to some other chicks instead."

(Side thought: what if Vina had turned out to be a lesbian? "Find me the perfect woman to take as a mate. Then go out and find us the perfect donor man." The Talosians would have been so fucked. This thought makes me laugh so hard.)

Pike rips open the away mission jacket of the ginger girl, and she seems surprised. Don't lie, you were, too. We all thought he was gonna pull a Kirk. But he grabs her phaser instead, which doesn't work. Vina starts a bitch fight with the new girls, declaring the ginger to be stupid, and implying Number One is a computer. The irony of that line is delicious, as the actress playing Number One (Majel Barrett) provided the voice of pretty much every computer on pretty much everything attached to the name Star Trek. Smith comes in and tells Pike that he now has more selection with Number One and the ginger girl.

Smith says that Number One would give Pike super-smart kids, and that the ginger girl has "unusually strong female drives" and has recently decided that Pike is do-able. That must seriously suck for the ginger girl. It is not cool for a telepathic alien to announce to the whole cage that you are DTF. Tact: the Talosians lack it. Pike tries to block his thoughts with hate (probably because he's imaging a four-way), and Agent Smith punishes him. In the corner, Vina facepalms.

I think this might be the first recorded ST facepalm. It has since been perfected over the years...

Later, everyone in the cage is sitting around apathetically when Smith slides a panel in the wall open to collect their phasers. Pike grabs him and tries to throttle him, but Smith becomes what I can only describe as South Park's ManBearPig.

The Talosian threatens to destroy the Enterprise. Pike tries to blast a hole through the glass cage to no avail. He then turns the phaser on Smith and asks if he actually blasted a hole in the glass but Smith has covered it with an illusion. "Maybe," says Smith, and the blasted hole appears. They escape with Smith in tow.

The screen goes unexpectedly blank, and the court decides to take the opportunity to vote Spock guilty. Dramatic music! Commercial break!

The bridge calls Mendez to let him know they are orbiting Talos IV. Spock tells him the Talosians control the ship now. The screen comes on again.

Pike and the others come through the elevator on the mountain, where they now see that the laser cannon worked. Smart, smart Dr Boyce was right.

"Haha! We wanted you up here!" says Smith. "Now pick a bitch, hit that thing, and then get your asses downstairs to bring up plants to reclaim the planet's surface."

Damn. They have to be zoo specimens and help build their own cage.

"That's bullshit," says Number One. She sets her phaser to overload.

"Wow, okay," says Smith. "Hadn't banked on you choosing death over liberty. You're no good to use in our menagerie. GTFO."

"You're shitting me," says Pike. I guess that was all it took.

Smith tries to give him some kind of "you've doomed our race!" guilt trip, which doesn't make much sense to me, but Pike shrugs it off. 

"Let's get the hell out of dodge," he says.

The make-up budget for this episode must have been awesome. The head Talosian had air bladders just under the skin of the "skull cap" (ha!) to inflate and collapse to show that he was thinking very hard.

Number One and the ginger beam back to the Enterprise. Pike offers to take Vina, but she refuses, and time-lapse photography shows us that Vina is old and deformed. She was an adult when the ship crashed, the only survivor, but the Talosians had never seen a human before, and rebuilt her into FrankenVina.

Upstairs, Pike beams aboard. He tells his crew that Vina has a right to stay where she is, with her glamour intact, and they leave.

The screen goes blank. Kirk thinks for a moment, then turns to Mendez, who promptly disappears.

"Dafuq?" says Kirk.

Agent Smith comes onscreen to tell Kirk that Mendez was an illusion both on the Enterprise and on the shuttlecraft. Essentially, Kirk has been talking to himself for two days. That's fucked up. Smith says that the fake court martial seemed like a good enough distraction while they took over his ship.

Kirk is pretty pissed. "Spock, what the hell? You couldn't just explain? I mean, shit - I'm reckless enough to just agree to go along with it!"

"Naw, cuz then you'd be put to death, too," says Spock.

Then, in what can only be described as fucking convenient, Uhura patches through to read off a message from Mendez at Starbase 11. Given the historical information and Pike's current situation, they've decided to okay Pike's transfer to Talos IV, and nobody will get into trouble. Spock receives no court martial, Gryffindor wins the house cup, and the USS Mary Sue triumphs again.

Spock takes Pike to the transporter room, and far too soon for the transfer to have taken place, Pike is shown on the screen as whole again, going into the mountain with with a young, beautiful Vina.

In The Cage, Pike sees Vina go into the mountain with an illusion of himself, which will keep her happy. In this way, kindness is being shown to Vina. In The Menagerie, Pike is beamed down to become an illusion himself with Vina, and the kindness is done to both of them. 

Agent Smith bids Kirk a kind farewell, and all is right in that corner of the universe.

*******

Today's killer artwork is "Vina (The Longing)" by Isabel Samaras

http://astrocat.com/samaras/new_vina.html

I like that she's holding a photo of Pike. 

Can't afford a Samaras painting? You should get her book "On Tender Hooks", then you can have lots of her paintings!

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/listing/2689813795815?r=1&cm_mmca2=pla&cm_mmc=GooglePLA-_-Book_25To44-_-Q000000633-_-2689813795815

Or, if you're stupid-broke like me, you can get a postcard book. Take them out, tack them up on your wall, and when people ask about it say "I'm an art patron."

http://www.amazon.com/On-Tender-Hooks-30-Postcards/dp/0811866254

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And now it's time for a rousing round of "Are You As Awesome As Uhura?"

Champion Uhura

Are you moderately attractive? +1

Are you good at your job? +1

Are you a team player? +1

Do you have a innate sense of style? +1

Do you have a talent? +1

Are you immune to Damsel in Distress Syndrome? +1

Are you sane? +1

The score to beat is lucky number 7.

Challenger Number One

Are you moderately attractive?  Yep. She's a bit like Vivien Leigh - classic beauty, with slight Bitchy Resting Face. Also, Majel Barrett is foxier with dark hair, IMHO. For evidence, please access files for Lwaxanna Troi. +1

Are you good at your job?  Hells yeah! +1

Are you a team player? Runs that shit, but accepts suggestions from other crew members. +1

Do you have a innate sense of style? Rocks those Starfleet-issue pants and cowl-necked sweater. +1

Do you have a talent? Leadership skillz. Pike trusts her to run the ship while he's gone. +1

Are you immune to Damsel in Distress Syndrome? She actually offers her away team an opportunity to back out if they need to, while making it clear that she will not. +1

Are you sane? Absolutely. +1

Congratulations, Number One! You are as awesome as Uhura! Unfortunately your prize, as dictated by television executives, is to be demoted to ship's nurse. *sad trombone*

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This week's tea came from the Adagio Juicy Slices Sampler ( http://www.adagio.com/teabags/juicy_slices.html ). I tried the Citrus Green green tea, which is available on it's own as well.

http://www.adagio.com/teabags/citrus_green.html

So the tea is pretty light, but the citrus is pretty refreshing. It very loudly says LEMON & LIME, but it's heavier on the lime than lemon, which I liked. (I dunno, sometimes lemon seems super-cliche when it comes to tea. Also: lime kicks ass.) Try this if you enjoy green teas, and when you want something a little less delicate than a white tea.