Season 3, Episode 68 "Wink of An Eye"

"Wink of An Eye"
Production Order: 68
Air Order: 66
Stardate: 5710.5
Original Air Date: November 29, 1968

Oh, Star Trek. Just when I'm pretty sure I want to unfriend you, you suck me right back in with a ridiculous plot and terrible costume choices. Let's be social media acquaintances with a three-like-per-month minimum.
Speaking of which, I made a Tumblr. It's stayinalivejim and you can follow it if you want. Or not. I'm not here to make your social media choices for you.

*******

See Chekov in his chair on the right? Walter Koenig didn't actually
shoot any scenes for this episode. Wherever he appears in  "The
Wink of an Eye," it's stock footage. Also, check out that fabulous
matte painting behind the Scalosians. I think it's a re-use from a starbase?

Scotty-as-captain Log: 5710.5: "We got a distress call from a city on the planet of Scalos. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and some random Reds beamed down to check it out. The thing is, there's no one actually in the city where they beamed down."

Kirk calls Uhura to ask if they beamed down to the correct coordinates, and she confirms that they did. He's baffled, as the city is deserted. Bones takes some scans and says that there are no animals or people. Kirk bats at a buzzing insect. Behind them, a Red takes a water sample. (Shouldn't a science officer be doing that? Oh, wait. He'll probably be dying later. Never mind. As you were, Reddy.)
Spock approaches to give his report.
"Wherever these people are, they're hella smart. They left behind all kinds of awesome cultural stuff. I can see traces of them living here recently, but there are also places that have been abandoned."

Check out this yummy three-tiered fountain with the bronze Scalosian
statue on top. Don't know where they got the money for this, but it
was worth it.

Behind Bones, the Red has finished his sample-taking, and proceeds to wash his hands in the fountain, then wipe his mouth. I facepalm. Okay, I don't science for real very often, but even I know that that was a dumb move. You don't wash your hands in a substance that you're sampling. Never send a Red to do a Blue's job, kids. It results in shoddy science like this.

Sure enough, there's that insect buzzing sound, and the Red vanishes. Bones kind of loses his shit like Reds don't just randomly disappear every day.

Dramatic music! Credits break!

This is an interesting special effect: they traced the dude's outline,
filled it with an abstract pattern, then vanished it.

Kirk strolls onto the bridge to relieve Scotty. Seems as though there have been some malfunctions happening all over the ship. Little ones that have been corrected quickly or have just corrected themselves. Kirk and Spock re-watch the distress call with Uhura. A blond Scalosian dude explains that their people have been disappearing, that they were once a population of nine hundred-thousand but they're now down to five, and that they've taken refuge in the city. Uhura says that the distress message was pre-recorded and is probably set to broadcast to passing ships. Sulu reports that his station has now ceased to function, and Kirk tells Scotty to get his ass in gear fixing things. Bones pages Kirk to sick bay because Kirk ordered him to have the away team checked out. Kirk tries to worm his way out of it, but Bones reminds him that it was his idea to check them over.

In sick bay, Christine's pre-requisite two lines are used to tell Kirk that someone got into the medicine cabinet and put stuff back in the wrong place. Bones begins his examination, and says that everyone else has checked out fine, and he still has no answers as to why Compton (the sample-taking Red) vanished. Kirk hears the insect buzzing noise and wonders if he is hallucinating. He then says that maybe something followed them onboard when they beamed up. 

Spock tries to call him on the PA in sick bay, but it's garbled. Uhura breaks in to say that the comm system is messed up. Kirk tells her to alert the crew to use hand-held comms and to arm themselves. He then asks Spock to repeat his message. Spock says that he has detected something alien in life support. Kirk agrees to meet him there.

Spock and two Reds catch Kirk coming out of sick bay, and Spock hands Kirk a phaser. Spock scans the area and says he is picking up traces of alien life, but he can't pinpoint where. The Reds run into a force field and get knocked back. They set the phasers for stun, and all four fire at it. It's supposedly gone, but those Reds get knocked back again, where Kirk and Spock seem to be allowed to move forward.

Could be wrong, but I think they filmed sparklers for this effect.
It's cool.

Kirk and Spock enter Environmental Engineering (they zoomed in on the name plate as the boys passed), and are shocked to see -- I dunno, what? I see one of those standard Star Trek cardboard box computer units, with some silver exhaust tubing and another little computer box on top. I'm briefly confused as to why we're getting dramatic music and surprise from the boys. I guess the little box and tubing are alien installations added to the life support machine. Spock says the installation seems incomplete. They attempt to touch the box and get electrical shocks. Then they try to shoot it with phasers, but their weapons vanish. They are physically pushed back against the wall by something invisible. They hear the insect buzzing again. Kirk yells at thin air.

"Who are you? Get off my ship!"

Now our boys do something stupid. You know the experiments that have been done where scientists attach some kind of electrodes to some small mammal, and then they offer that mammal something awesome like a treat, but then the scientists fry their nads every time that mammal reaches for the treat, and eventually their nads explode or something because they just keep going for the treat anyway? This is like that. Spock and Kirk reach for the alien attachment again, and are shocked again. I mean, come the fuck on. I expect this out of Kirk. Kirk is a dumb mammal. But Vulcans are supposed to be smarter than this. Go to your room, Spock. 

Back on the bridge, Spock talks to the computer. They now have Majel Barrett using a super-fakey "computer voice" instead of the smoother one she was using earlier when she would answer back as the computer. I don't like this new stilted voice. It's annoying. Anyway, the computer confirms that the E has been invaded, and that the invaders' ultimate goal is to control the Enterprise, but it doesn't seem to have enough information yet to form more conclusions about the situation.

It tells them that they are not in a position to resist the take-over at this stage, and recommends negotiation.
"Psshh, yeah right," says Kirk. "I don't negotiate."
"Well then, what the hell are we doing?" asks Spock.
"Dunno," he replies. "I'll pull something out of my ass that will totally work. Don't worry."
He grabs a cup of coffee from the tray of a passing yeoman then flops in his chair to form a plan. But he can hear the insect buzzing again, and the camera tilts at funny angles as the rest of the bridge crew slows way, way down around him, and finally stops.
And now there's a girl on the bridge.

Kirk walks up to her and starts to ask what the hell is going on, but she plants a giant smacker on him instead.

"The fuck?" he demands. "Who are you?"

"Deela, the enemy," she replies.

Oh, good. That clears things up. Always nice when your enemy identifies herself right off the bat.

Me, I'm an enemy of her outfit. Once again, we're treated to what can only be described as "female character on Star Trek." It's the traditional all-or-nothing combo, a bathing suit that's open on the right side, but turns into a full-bodied costume on the left. A sort of skirt-cape thing covers her bare ass in the back, and the whole thing is made from a fabric that appears to be illustrating cell mitosis. She's wearing a brooch at her collar that seems to be made from pony beads and oven-baked plastic. Hair is big and fake but okay. Make-up is long, dark lashes and mod nude lipstick: okay. But costume is standard TOS fair: weird as hell.

When we come back from commercial break, she admits that he was correct in guessing that he beamed her aboard when they returned to the ship. He asks her what she's done to his crew, and she replies that she hasn't done anything to them. They're moving at a normal rate of speed, and she has changed him to move at an accelerated speed. Now he sounds like an insect to them as well. She says that she is the queen of her people, who are on the ship making some changes, and that she is going to make Kirk her king. He asks what will happen to his ship.

"They'll notice that you're gone," she says. "Because now you move so quickly that they can't see you anymore. You can't ever go back to being with them, but they'll move on and so will you."

Kirk pulls his phaser on her, which is interesting, because it vanished in the life support room. She just laughs, but she can out-move the phaser's line of fire. When he tries to stun her, she steps out of the way.

Okay, Star Trek, you're doing iffy science again. Kirk and Deela and her underlings all move at the same accelerated pace, which is faster than "the wink of an eye." Phaser fire moves at the speed of light. Are you really trying to convince me that Deela and her cohorts move quicker than light? How the hell does that even work? But throughout this episode, Kirk will use equipment that works just fine for crew members, and it'll move at the same pace for him as well. Like the lift doors. They move at the same pace whether he or Spock is stepping from them. Also, seriously, he just shot a phaser on the bridge. You're telling me that no one is going to notice that?

Deela reveals that she also has a weapon like his, which moves at her pace (which is still the speed of light). She manages to shoot the phaser from his hand. Then she pretty much tells him to suck it up, because "they always react like this at first, and then they learn to like it." He pushes around her and gets on the lift. She pushes the brooch thing and tells someone that Kirk is on his way to see him. So the ugly brooch is a comm device.

We return to normal speed, and Uhura gasps that Kirk is gone. Sulu agrees with her story that Kirk was kicking it in his chair drinking his coffee when he disappeared. Spock decides that the coffee is the culprit.

Kirk goes back to the life support room and runs past those two security Reds who were barred from entering Environmental Engineering with himself and Spock. Why are they still there? Were they assigned to stand guard just outside the "force field"? Because they look like they did when Kirk and Spock first entered that room: surprised because they couldn't get around the "force field." 

Kirk encounters Compton, the Red who disappeared next to the fountain. Compton has been left to guard the door, I guess. He tells Kirk that he's not allowed in, that he fought the speeding up thing until he met this super-awesome girl, and now he's on their side. He has a Scalosian weapon. Kirk fakes him out by agreeing to back off, then he does this round-house kick thing and knocks Compton out.

Kirk runs into Environmental Engineering, and he's immediately dropped by a Scalosian weapon being fired by some guys in more ridiculous Star Trek couture. Compton recovers and stumbles in.

"WTH?" he demands. "That was my captain!"

He runs at the Scalosians, but then one steps forward and there's a brief tussle. Compton falls to the ground with a small-ish cut on his neck.

"Ooh, damn," says a Scalosian to the others. "Dead man walking." He turns to the girl and tells her that he'll buy her a new one later.

After Dorothy left Oz, the Tin Man joined a cabaret in an iffy
neighborhood in the Emerald City. It was the sort of place with
a $2 all-you-can-eat buffet and sketchy bathrooms.

Back on the bridge, Spock examines everyone's coffee. Scotty and Sulu are freaked out that they might disappear after having coffee too. Spock decides to take it to the lab, and leaves Scotty in charge. 

Down in EE, Kirk is sprawled on the floor, while Deela talks about how sad it is when "one is damaged." The guy with the short blond hair, Rael, is annoyed with her for forming an attachment to Kirk. She tells him not to be jealous, and that she'd like to keep Kirk for a long time.

Kirk wakes up and demands an explanation. He is invited to check out the mostly-operational add-on to the life support machine, but he is warned not to touch it. Guess what he does? I swear to Zod, this guy should be smacked with a rolled-up newspaper. He then grabs it and hangs on for dear life. Bad Kirk! No!

Deela pulls his hands off the machine and chides him like the child he is. He then spots Compton on the floor, very old and very dead.

"When you got into the fight in the corridor, you scratched him," lies Rael. "When people like you are sped up to the same level as people like us, you become susceptible to cell damage. Then you age rapidly and die."

Kirk storms out, and Deela gets all up in Rael's face for lying about who damaged Compton. She says that she likes Kirk and the human race. She touches her brooch, and somehow information comes to her that we can't hear, but now she says that he has gone to the med lab to try to talk to Spock. Maybe it's telepathy that she knows that. Maybe she planted something on Kirk that allows her to read his thoughts. Maybe other Scalosians overheard him in the corridor talking to himself about his plans, then contacted her, and it's broadcast into her ear or brain or something. Maybe it's just a quick, easy way for her to know where he's gone, and the writers can claim that it's the future, or she's an alien, as to why she magically had that information. Rael kisses her. She smiles and tells him not to be jelly before she saunters out.

Deela finds Kirk in the med lab. Spock, Bones and Christine are working there in their own time, which means that they are standing still here. Kirk makes a sort of captain's log in a recording device, telling his crew or whoever hears it that the Scalosians have taken over the ship and installed a machine that cannot be uninstalled. He thinks it is putting the ship into a deep freeze, but he doesn't know why. He also says that both he and Compton were taken, and that it seems like after being sped up, that newcomers become docile and go along with the Scalosians, but then he explains what happened to Compton. He recites all of this with Super-Deluxe Dramatic Pauses. Deela then explains that  these things are happening because the water on Scalos became polluted and sped everyone up there. It also made them sterile (towards each other, anyway) and killed the children, so now they trap passing ships, speed up a few of the crew members to their own speed, and take those people as breeding studs. They're deep-freezing the Enterprise so that they can "save them for later." Yaaaay, sex slaves.

He tries to convince her that, if they let the E go, then their scientists will figure out a way to fix the situation and move them back into regular time, but she says that they tried, and those people died. Don't worry, lady. This is the USS Mary Sue, and even though everyone else who has tried it previously has died, we'll do it with no problems.

Rael calls Deela on her Easy-Bake Oven brooch, and we hear him to tell her to go to the transporter room with Kirk so they can beam down. But Kirk has put the tape he recorded into the computer next to Spock, and slipped out. Even though she's supposedly queen, and he's just the chief science officer, he orders her to go after him. I'm pretty sure that Deela is not so much royalty as full of shit.

She finds him in the transporter room, where he just barely has the time to remove a part from the transporter before hopping up again. She tries to transport him to no avail, then she calls Rael to report a malfunction. He accuses Kirk of sabotage, but she insists that he didn't have time. 

In slow time, Spock and Bones hear the buzzing sound in the med lab. Spock says that he has been hearing it since they came back on board, that he knows what it is, and that he is now going to the bridge.

Deela and Kirk are now in his quarters. He's clearly decided that it would be best to just seduce her like always, so he's playing nice. At one point, he tries to kiss her, but she cottons on that he was going for her weapon.

"Oh, well," he fake-laments. "You caught me."

They make out some more. She notes that he ships Kirkerprise.

Spock returns to the bridge to re-watch the distress call. He speeds up the recording until there is no picture, and the sound becomes the insect buzzing noise. Then he compares it against footage from the away team, and the sound is heard there as well.

Again, Star Trek: who took this video? Did you set up a tripod to record your away mission? Was it that other Red that we've never heard or seen again?

Down in the lab, Bones has found the tape that Kirk made. He puts it in and gets that whine, then takes it to Spock. On the bridge, they watch what turns out to be a tape, which is actually just footage of Kirk talking to that recording device, and Deela supplementing information off-screen.

Star Trek: WHERE THE HELL IS THE CAMERA?

Spock asks Scotty to go down to the transporter room.

Scotty does, and he's shown as being frozen in the doorway. The Scalosians walk around him. Rael is angry because he's found where Kirk has removed a piece from the underside of the transporter. He tries to call Deela several times, but she is not answering.

Why is she not answering? Because she's brushing her hair while Kirk re-zips his boots. Now, there are a number of reasons why Kirk could be re-zipping his boots while sitting on the bed in his quarters while a girl brushes her hair. Maybe she wanted to try his boots on. Maybe she asked how high the quality was on Starfleet-issued socks. Maybe he had a space rock in his boots. Maybe... no, No, that's it. There is no other way for you to explain to your space-enthusiastic kid that Kirk did not take off his boots to have ball-slappy sex with Deela. 

Rael busts in (I guess Kirk forgot to hang a tie on the doorknob), and he tries to attack Kirk with what I can only guess is a bobbing pool thermometer. Kirk defends himself with a pillow, then a chair. Surprisingly, they cut to commercial then, in the middle of the fight, which I haven't seen on this show before. When we return, Rael appears ready to bash Kirk's face in with that thermometer, but Deela zaps him in the back with her weapon.

Subdued, he starts a lovers' spat, and she barks at him that she's allowed to like her selected sex slave if she wants to, despite how he feels. She tells him to get the hell back to work and fix the transporter. Once he leaves, Deela apologizes to Kirk for Rael's behavior, and he decides that it's best to play dumb and obedient.

"That's awesome that you're onboard with all of this, even if I did like you better when you hated it. Rael and I were in love before, and your real personality reminds me of him." A sex slave owner with a type. Okay.

She calls Rael on her Dollar Store comm to tell him that Kirk is totally down with being her consort. I'm sure Rael is thrilled.

We go back to the med lab, where the Blue Brigade has found out what to add to the Scalosian water to make it like Kirk's coffee. It's untested, but Spock takes a swig anyway. It elicits a raised eyebrow and the word "stimulating," and I can't help but wonder if these two things comprise his O face.

There's the buzzing sound, and he notes that Bones and Christine have frozen. He walks away. As soon as he is out of frame, the buzzing stops and Christine grabs Bones' arm. "He's gone!"

Down in the transporter room, Rael has finished the repairs and beams down the other Scalosians. Scotty is still standing in the open doorway. He lets Deela know that she can beam down at any point, and that he is going to EE to turn on the freezing device. She apologizes for being a giant bitch about her sex slave. He says it's kind of okay.

Kirk and Deela go down to the transporter room, but Kirk manages to snake her weapon away from her and escape. She warns Rael that he's loose and armed. That's actually a great description for Kirk - "loose and armed."

Anyway, Kirk encounters Spock in the corridor outside of EE, and gives him the briefest of smiles before they set to work defending themselves from Rael's gunfire. Rael takes a hit and collapses because apparently, he's a Stormtrooper. Another shot, and the freezing device melts. This shit is too easy, but I suppose they only have five minutes left to wrap this up, so we'll let it slide. Deela runs in and goes to Rael.

"You tricked me. You were clever," she tells Kirk.

I can't believe she fell for that crap.

"What are you going to do with us?" she asks.

"I could put you in suspended animation," he muses. Then he asks what she thinks he should do with them.

"You could leave us alone," she suggests. "But I think you'll tattle on us to Starfleet, who will quarantine the area so we can't trap passing ships anymore. So then we'll die, which will solve both of our problems."

Kirk considers this. "Yeah, I'm okay with that."

In the transporter room, Deela says she is concerned about them.

"Bitch, worry about your own damn business," says Spock.

She tries to convince Kirk to come with her, as he can't get back to his own speed. Kirk glances at Spock, who looks away. This is apparently code for "My giant brain has figured out in a few hours what their fairly advanced society has missed for years."

"No thanks," says Kirk. "You're cute and all, but I'm in love with my ship and I'm having a torrid emotional affair with my first officer."

Spock beams down Deela and Rael, then presents Kirk with a little vial of yellow liquid.

"We didn't have time to test this first, so I guess you're guinea-pigging."

Kirk throws it back, and starts to move more slowly as the buzzing noise comes up. He pops into reality just as Jimmy Doohan finally, finally walks through the door to the transporter room. (I didn't show it, but dude has been standing mid-step with his foot raised this whole time. That's dedication, yo.) Kirk and Scotty rush to the bridge.

Kirk's Log 5710.9: "We didn't discuss it at all, but Spock has stayed behind in accelerated speed to carry out repairs so we can get underway sooner."

The lights on the bridge flash, and everyone reports that things are being fixed very quickly. Spock pops back into existence and returns to his station.
The Scalosians are on the viewscreen, most likely live this time. They don't actually say anything, but they look super pissed off. Uhura apologizes and says she must have turned the recording back on, but Kirk says that it's not a recording.

He says "Goodbye, Deela," and the E leaves orbit, and Kirk is smiling because his science officer figured out how to get them back to normal speed, but he didn't bother to give it to the Scalosians because... I dunno, skewed Prime Directive?

Also, if it's not a recording, and just a live shot of Deela & Co, then does that mean that they have been "fixed"? How else can we see them unless they've slowed down or everyone else has sped up? Is that why they don't talk? So we're left wondering whether or not it's a recording or a live feed?

This episode has all kinds of problems. Supposedly, the Scalosians are so sped up that no one can see them, yet they are able to use machinery and other tech just fine. They should be living several days to one of the Enterprise's, yet this all seems to take place in one time frame. Scotty spends the last half of the episode trying to put his foot down in the transporter room, but in that same amount of time, Spock and Bones figure out what is going on and develop a drinkable cure. Even if he stopped to boink Deela and fight with Rael, they still should have left the ship long before our boys in blue figured out how to fix everything.

I also want to know why there are still five Scalosians. Do they have more someplace else on the planet that weren't showing up on scans? Because it sounds like they've been doing this siren distress call thing for a while, and they seem pretty practiced at it, which means they've done this before. Sooo, they're stealing random ships' crews, supposedly pairing them off for mating, and then what? Does it work? Presumably it does, or they wouldn't keep trying. Where are all of the half-alien kids? The other ships that were being held in stasis? It's an interesting idea, but the plot has more holes in it than your average block of Swiss cheese.

Death Toll:

Red deaths this episode: 1
Red deaths this season: 4
Gold deaths this episode: 0
Gold deaths this season: 0
Blue deaths this episode: 0
Blue deaths this season: 0
Total crew deaths this season: 4
Total crew deaths thus far: 46

*******

I've been trying to drink more water lately, which is not my thing, because it doesn't taste like anything. Like I know it's good for me, and vital to my well-being and all that jazz, but it's bland. I like the flavored ones, but not the ones that are just watery juice. The actual water with flavors, like lime and grapefruit and crap. They're usually carbonated. I also really like black cherry so I decided to try this one. Why was the Arrowhead Black Cherry Sparkling Water on sale? Because it tastes like cough syrup. It's not thick like cough syrup, but it tastes just like red Nyquil. "Hey, friends! Do you want the nasty taste of cough medicine without the benefits of it soothing your throat and stopping your cough? Drink this!"

No. No thank you.

Dear Tanner,

You started out in an abusive home, and when your first mom moved out, she took you with her, and found you a good foster home with two moms who loved you very much. Though that first mom didn't return, she had left you in good hands. You were kind to people and other dogs, enjoyed the outdoors and water play, and were kind enough to stop barking when told to shut your yap. You put up, and made friends, with the other dog in the family, who is an asshole. You were unfazed by two cats, and when your moms opened a cat rescue, you remained unfazed by twenty cats. When you got sick, your moms were determined to make your last weeks good ones. You'll be missed by your human friends, your cat friends, and that other asshole dog.

Good boy, Tanner. Good boy.

Season 1, Episode 28 "The City on the Edge of Forever"

"The City on the Edge of Forever"
Production Number: 28
Air Order: 30
Stardate: Not given
Original Air Date: April 6, 1967

This show has made me an armchair philosopher. I was at the pharmacy today, waiting for a prescription, when an older gentleman approached the counter to pick up meds for himself and his wife. I found myself wondering what kind of meds they were, if they were life-saving pills they need to take to stay alive, or if it was something minor, like antibiotics to fend off an ear infection. If they were life-saving pills, how long had they been keeping this couple alive? This line of thinking lead me down a rabbit-hole of other thoughts, about how modern medicine has now extended the life expectancy of the human race, saving the lives of people whose diseases and injuries would have been fatal a mere hundred years ago. Are we tempting fate? Could we one day end up like Miri's people, attempting to extend life to much greater proportions, only to fall ill and basically destroy ourselves? Are we pissing off nature, who has created natural enemies and illnesses for humans, in order to control the population?
"Knock it off," I told myself, as I signed for my prescription. "You're being paranoid."
Then I opened the bottle and discovered that natural selection intended for me to choke to death on horse pills. Apparently, I will be restoring the balance myself.

*******

This week we open on the bridge. The E is orbiting a planet, and moving through rifts in time, which is causing turbulence. Apparently, something or someone on the planet's surface is causing those disturbances in time. The helm blows up, knocking Sulu out. They go to autopilot and Kirk asks Uhura to send his logs from that week to Starfleet, just in case. Kirk, you get a Command Gold Star for thinking ahead. Good job, buddy.

Bones gives Sulu a hypo of something temperamental to fix him up, and Kirk briefly questions whether or not that's a good idea. But Sulu is now fine, and Bones says, "You went to medical school right, Jim? No? Then shut your pie-hole."

Suddenly, the ship rocks forward, and Bones stumbles, accidentally injecting himself with the rest of the hypo.

Uh-oh. Bones has become a raving, paranoid lunatic. He runs off the bridge screaming that everyone is a killer, and disappears in the lift.

Kirk's Log, supplemental: Two drops of that stuff given to Sulu was enough to save him, but a full hypo induces madness. And now McCoy is loose in the ship.

All decks are on alert, and everyone is searching for him, but the transporter tech is not paying attention, and Bones takes him out with ease, transporting himself to the surface.

"Fucksocks," says Spock. "He beamed into the middle of that temporal disturbance."

"Gonna be dangerous," says Kirk. "I better head up the away team myself."

He's taking, Spock, Scotty and Uhura (plus two Reds), so I guess the recently-injured Sulu is in charge? Honestly, I can't think of another organization where the leader puts himself and his command chain in so many precarious positions. I totally understand why the first conversation that Riker has with Picard is "Your ass doesn't leave the ship. Ever."

The away team beams into some ruins and they explore, looking for Bones. He comically pops up from behind a rock, but no one notices.

Spock and Kirk scan a round-ish thing, and Spock says that it's "10,000 centuries old" (you mean, 1,000,000?), that it's neither being nor machine, and that it's the cause of the time rifts.

Anyone else think the Guardian of Forever looks like bohemian jewelry?

"Sweet!" says the round thing in a James Earl Jones voice. "Been hoping for someone to talk to. I'm the Guardian of Forever, and I'm both the beginning and the end."

"Why you gotta talk in riddles?" demands Spock.

"I'm phrasing it in a way that you can understand," the Guardian replies. Every time it speaks, it flashes light.

"Oh. Courteous," says Spock, because he too believes that humans need to have things dumbed down for them.

"Here's some of your history," says the Guardian, and scenes from Earth's past flash by.

"Oh, it's like a time portal," says Spock.

"To put it primitively," the Guardian replies, which ruffles Spock's feathers.

"Ha!" crows Kirk. "Welcome to the Dumbfuck Table, Mr Spock."

Not gonna lie. After all of Spock's speeches about how stupid humans are, I had to snicker at his being lumped in with us idiots.

No one is paying attention to Bones, who jumps out at them and declares them to be murderers. But it's six against one, and they easily overpower him and knock him out.

"Hey," says Kirk. "Could we go back in time and prevent Bones from getting hypo'd?"

"Nope," says the Guardian. "This is all I got, like photo slides. I can flip through them from the beginning, but you can't pick a place and time."

Bones comes to suddenly, and hops through the portal. The guardian must be pissed that Bones didn't even buy it dinner first.

"Um, my comm isn't working," says Uhura. Scotty's isn't, either.

"Your friend changed something," says the Guardian. "So now your ship doesn't exist. Butterfly wings and shit."

Well, fuck. Now our intrepid explorers are trapped in BFE: Space, and nothing as they know it exists, and their ship is gone, and no one knows that they are there. You want to know the saddest part? Wherever and whenever they are, there is no George Takei. How terribly unfair.

Kirk's Log, no stardate because time is all FUBAR'd. McCoy has effed things up.

"We can't survive here... we're all wearing red!"

Spock was recording the images when Bones jumped, and he thinks he can get an approximate handle on where he and Kirk should follow. The Guardian says that if they are successful, they will be returned like nothing happened.

"You should try it too," Kirk tells the others. "If you get trapped, make yourself a nice life in that time."

Really? So if Uhura lands herself in the South during the Civil War...?

Then Kirk and Spock jump. They land in the US during the Depression, about a week before Bones is due. Unfortunately, people on the street notice their Starfleet jammies and Spock's ears.

Kirk spies laundry drying on a fire escape and steals the clothes. When they're caught by a cop, Kirk stupidly starts trying to talk his way out of Spock's appearance rather than the fact that he's brazenly stealing shit. Here is the actual story he tells the cop while clutching a bundle of someone else's clothes:

"My friend is... Chinese. He was in an accident as a child, where he got caught in a mechanical... rice picker. And an American missionary nearby happened to be a plastic surgeon."

"I think he's buying it."
"Are you high, Jim?"

Oh, man. Too many jokes. Should I go for blatant racism? Sheer ridiculousness? The fact that he can't process that what the cop wants is an explanation of why he's stealing clothes?

Despite the fact that there were a number of people watching, Spock pinches the cop, and they bolt with the clothes, ending up in the basement of a building. Coincidentally, there's a beanie in that pile of clothing for Spock to hide his rather prominent Legolas implants.

Spock tells Kirk that he needs to build a computer of sorts to hook up to his scanner, but this time in history really sucks for tech.

The upstairs door opens and a woman comes in. She's gets a bit of the old Girl-O-Vision when she asks what they're doing there.

"Baby, it's cold outside," says Kirk.

"BS," she counters. I like her.

"Okay. We were being chased by the cops. We stole some clothes because we don't have any money," Kirk offers.

"I'm Edith Keeler," she says, "and I run this mission. If you help me clean it, I'll pay you 15 cents an hour for a 10-hour shift."

There it is, you guys: proof that at one point, full-time jobs existed! And they paid better, too!

The boys go upstairs to the soup kitchen, and when they sit down, the guy sitting next to them tells them that they'll have to pay for their soup by listening to Edith yak. He starts to say that he'd rather Edith sucked his dick, but Kirk tells him to shut the fuck up. I'm having this weird feeling, you guys. It's new and different. I think it's respect for Kirk.

So here comes Edith with a book, and she hops onto a small stage, and I groan inside, because here comes the religious lecture. But it's not. Instead, she talks about science and space travel, and things of that nature to look forward to in the future. I damn-near fall out of my chair.

Here's the thing: having Edith give a religious lecture is appropriate for that time and setting, which is why it didn't surprise me when she appeared with her book. Especially in a missionary. And I was shocked when it wasn't that. When you offer hungry people soup there's a trade-off. It should be "I will give food to this hungry person, and while they receive nourishment, I will get the warm fuzzies that come from helping my fellow man, and become a better person." It's a bit of the old Golden Rule. But all too often that trade-off is "I'll give you this bowl of soup if you convert to my religion." I have zero respect for that. Dangling a desperately-needed thing over someone's head, and then adding that the price is their immortal soul, is a scummy thing to do. Edith side-steps this conundrum by talking instead about how there's hope for the future. I like this chick. Kirk does too. Only not in his skeevy Zapp Branningan way.

Later, Edith tells Kirk that he and Spock did a killer job cleaning, and that she knows of a place where they can rent a room to sleep.

Some time has passed when we next see our boys. Spock has partially built a radio. Kirk returns to their domestic bliss with groceries, and Spock says that he needs some platinum.

"Seriously?" asks Kirk. "Why don't you walk into the middle of the bubonic plague and request a vaccine?"

"These materials suck," pouts Spock.

Edith enters without knocking. Rude - what if she had interrupted their Alone Time? Anyway, she has a job for them. She notices Spock's "mnemonic memory device" and he sarcastically says that he's making a gadget with stone tools.

The next evening while they are cleaning at the mission, Spock spies a guy fixing a broken chair using tiny tools for fine work. He picks the combo lock on the mission's tool box and takes them, but Edith confronts him. Kirk assures her that Spock really needs them for his project, and that the tools will be returned the next day. She agrees to look the other way if Kirk will walk her home.

"Sure, I'll walk you home. But I'd like to sell you some paper towels first."

Outside, Edith says that Kirk and Spock don't fit in and she guesses that Kirk is his CO. He admits that they serve together, but he refuses to say where.

Back at the room, Spock gets his thingy to work for a few seconds, and the screen shows Edith Keeler's obituary. Oops.

Kirk comes back from his quasi-date, and they take another look. This time, it shows them a newspaper article saying that Edith will meet with FDR.

"So there are two possible futures," says Spock. "Either Edith will die this week, or she'll have some sort of historical significance in the next few years. Only one of those things will happen, and we have to figure out which one will set us back on the correct timeline. I'm sorry, Jim. You're dating Schrodinger's cat."

Unfortunately, the machine blows a fuse, so there's no way for them to know. Spock tells Kirk that he'll need two days to fix it.

Out on the street, Bones hops out of the Guardian of Forever. I kind of expected to hear the TARDIS noise, but I didn't, so I'm a bit sad about that. Holy crap, does he look like shit. Kudos to the make-up team this week. He scares the holy hell out of some hobo, and the guy takes off with certifiable Bones at his heels.

Kirk walks Edith home again, and gives her some shit about man landing on the moon. She laughs and says they think alike.

Meanwhile, Bones has decided that they're in some alien museum that's set up to look like old-school Earth. He gropes the hobo to be sure. Then Bones collapses, and the hobo returns the favor by stealing his phaser. Too bad he doesn't know what it is, and he accidentally sets it to "kill."

The next morning, Bones stumbles into the mission. He looks like death warmed over, and Edith helps him onto a cot in the office.

That night, Spock pulls a Scotty and has the machine running well enough to give them the whole story: Edith leads the pacifist movement, which delays the entry of the US into WWII. The delay is just long enough for the Axis Powers to finish developing the A-bomb, and Germany wins the war.

"Edith was right about people using money and resources to help their fellow man," says Kirk.

"Yeah, but at the wrong time," says Spock. "She has to die."

"That sucks," says Jim. "I'm in love with her."

Bones wakes up lucid, but because he can't remember how he got there, he tells Edith that he's pretty sure that she's a hallucination. Being a good serviceman, he gives her his name and rank.

Back at the boarding house, Kirk and Edith are flirting on the stairs. She stumbles and starts to fall, but he catches her. Edith thanks him with a kiss. When she goes back to her room, Spock points out that she might have died falling down the stairs had Kirk not stopped it.

"Just fuck off," says Kirk, who is already aware that he really doesn't have it in him to let the little space girl die.

Edith checks on Bones and finds that he's much better. During a friendly exchange, she remarks that it's funny that he doesn't know who Clark Gable is. In their last encounter, she noted that she kept meeting men who referred to Earth in strange ways. Edith has the puzzle pieces, but can't figure out how they fit together. Anyway, she has to go, because she has a date.

Edith is played by Joan Collins, who can't seem to recall if the part she's
playing is English or American, as her accent keeps slipping. She sounds
like a Companion every time she calls Bones "Doctah".

Kirk and Edith leave the mission, and Edith says she's looking forward to the Clark Gable movie. Kirk says "who?" and she laughs and says that Doctah McCoy said that, too. She says he's at the mission, and Kirk gets all excited, running across the street yelling for Spock. Bones come out of the front door just as Kirk and Spock reach that point, and there's an OT3 reunion with hugs and shouting.

Edith steps off the curb into the street toward them. Both Bones and Kirk see the truck that she doesn't see, and they start forward, but Kirk grabs Bones at the last moment and holds him there.

A screech of tires, a scream, some bystanders gathered around Edith's body.

Kirk clutches at Bones, who does not understand. Just to pile on the guilt, Bones hisses that he could have saved Edith if Kirk had not deliberately kept him from it. Kirk literally goes into a corner to cry.

Ow, my feels.

The boys come back through the portal, and Scotty tells them that they just left a moment ago.

"You solved it!" says the Guardian. "Everything is back to normal. Want to play again?"

The Guardian of Forever is an insensitive dick, you guys.

Kirk clearly wants to tell it to get fucked, but he's quiet until Uhura reports that the E is back. 

Then he requests a beam-up.

Aaaargh! Fuck you, Star Trek! You finally wrote a character that I could reasonably ship with Kirk, then you killed her off. She wasn't a whiny, bitchy damsel like Rand, and she wasn't some girl of the week like Lenore Karidian. She was strong, goal-oriented, and kind. What's more, she called Kirk on all of his BS, and didn't bother in inflate his already gigantic ego.  She wins "Are You as Awesome as Uhura?" without even having to play. This girl was actually suited to him, but you made it so that she had to die in order for history to proceed as usual. You killed Edith - you bastards!

This is another one of those heavy "thinking" episodes. Last week we got "war is kind of stupid" where the federation and the Klingons were insisting that they be able to fight one another, to the point where it became ridiculous. This week we got "war is sometimes necessary". Was that intentional? Oh my God, yes. This episode was meant to be a counter-point to the peace movement during the Vietnam war. It kind of surprises me that during the 1960's one was not allowed to talk about the war or equality movements on tv, yet both of those topics were regular contenders on Star Trek. "No, it's okay. It's just science-fiction. No one is paying attention." Sometimes I wonder if television executives can find their asses with both hands.

*******

I keep ending up at Starschmucks, you guys. This in itself is unusual, because coffee hates me, but it seems like all of my friends want to meet there to hang out, and there are only so many "hang outs" where one can get away with paying less than $10 rent on a table to stay all day. Ever the multi-tasker, I've been ordering tea so I can then report back on it and scratch something else off my to-do list.
I walked in and asked the guy what kind of tea they have, because my glasses broke nearly a year ago, and I haven't had the money to replace them, and I can't read the freaking menu.
 All of their teas are Tazo, and included Calm (chamomile), the Vanilla Rooibos that got such mixed results, and Passion (passionfruit and hibiscus). There were some others, but I was distracted, and don't recall what else he said they carried. I walked in upset, and probably should have gotten Calm, but Passion sounded better. It was about $2 for the oddly-named "tall" size.
I'm not certain of the base, but it was red like a rooibos, and I was once again shocked by the ginormous size of the Tazo tea bags, which are like knapsacks of dried leaves. I swear half of that "tall" cup is filled by the teabag.
Passion is pretty good, mellow and fruity, though not as fruity as that Adagio Fruit Sangria. It has some notes of the hibiscus, which is also good, though I'm always weirded out when I admit that flowers taste good. Seems like they shouldn't, seeing as how perfume tastes like Lysol.
And now I have PTSD from that last Sherlock episode. *shudder*
I think I prefer the Passion as part of their PassionTea Lemonade, which is a guilty-pleasure drink for me, and one which I typically only buy if someone has given me a Starschmucks giftcard. Overall, though, it's a nice herbal tea.

Blog Buddy Oscar Wilde