ST:TAS Season Two, Episode Three "The Practical Joker"

"The Practical Joker"
Air Order: 19
Star Date: 3183.3
Original Air Date: September 21, 1974


Hey friends, just in case you're paying attention, yes: this episode does take place more than one hundred years before the previous episode. Doesn't our ships' crew look fabulous for being more than 100 years old?

*******

Kirk's Log 3183.3: "Doing this asteroid survey thing and feeling like hot shit because we're ahead of schedule."

As everyone knows, anytime you've ahead of schedule on anything, something will come along to fuck up all of the shit, and you'll end up late.

For instance, Romulans in Klingon cruisers.

So the Romulans start firing, and Spock guesses that they were waiting behind the asteroid to ambush the E.

"Let's fight back!" says Scotty.

"Naw," says Kirk. "We're outnumbered. Let's just walk away."

Wait, Mr Shoot First and Ask Questions Later wants to walk away? Is it Opposite Day or something?

So they fly in the other direction, and the Roms chase them, and Uhura opens a channel.

"What the hell?" Kirk asks the commander.

"You're in our space," the commander replies.

"We're nowhere near your space!" says Kirk. He threatens to file a complaint in the same sort of voice that bitchy entitled soccer moms use when they ask to speak to your manager.

"Yeah, you forgot that trespassing into our space is punishable by death, huh?" And the commander signs off to fire again.

Scotty says the shields can't take more hits at close range, and Sulu reports some kind of weird anomaly up ahead.

"Not on the sensors," says Spock. No equipment can figure out what that thing is.

"Cool, let's fly into it," says Kirk. "We can lose them that way."

Wow. Really? Getting into a fire fight with the Romulans isn't worth it, but flying your expensive ship and it's 500 crew members into some mysterious space goo is perfectly safe?

Kirk is the kind of guy who will sniff the milk when you offer him the carton and say "Smell this."

Half-way through the cloud-thing, Kirk remembers to ask Spock what their chances are of coming out the other side. Not before. Half-way through. They do come out the other side, and Sulu says that the Romulans wisely turned away and decided not to fly in after the E, so Kirk has effectively lost them. 

I'm not giving him credit for that. That was a dumb move.

They decide to pause there in space for repairs.

Later, the senior crew members are in the briefing room, sharing a meal, and for once, the food is not those weird little colored squares of Jell-o, or whatever the hell those were. It's actual food. 

They talk about repairs, and toast themselves for being awesome. Sulu spills water down the front of himself, and I vow not to make a cum joke. Please feel free to make your own, though.

As turns out, they all spill water down their fronts. Kirk proposes that they have a practical joker on board.

"So what?" asked Bones. "We did that back at the Academy, with trick glasses."

 And Sulu chimes in:

STAHP IT, STAR TREK.

Scotty says it might be problem with the food replicator. Kirk tries to take a bite of his food, and the fork bends away from his mouth. They laugh.

Kirk's Log, supplemental: "Everybody's getting punked. Even Spock."

So Spock finds some new piece of equipment at his station, and instead of one large eyepiece like usual, this one has two eyepieces, like binoculars. You know what's going to happen. Much like Kirk saying, "Let's just fly through that random pea soup in space," Spock decides to put his eyes to the eye-holes of this mysterious equipment. Sometimes, I wonder why any of these people are still alive.

Everyone laughs at Panda Spock, and I guess that scene was not so much a scene on its own as it was a break in Kirk's supplemental log. I kind of like that. Normally we just get some voice over with an exterior shot of the ship for log entries.

More Kirk Log: "It's not as funny now."

Arax and M'ress are eating in the mess hall and invite Scotty to join them. He is busy working, and thanks them, planning to grab a grilled cheese on rye and head back to work. The replicator then drops a crap-ton of food on him, and I'm left to think about how fucking awesome a grilled cheese on rye sounds.

M'Ress and Arax laugh, but Scotty is pissed off, and he ends up blaming them for it, claiming that he's going to report them. The replicator tosses a cream pie in his face.

Kirk's Log continues, saying that everyone is now on edge.

An irate Kirk stomps onto the bridge, yelling about pulling clean uniforms out of the laundry chute and finding this on the back:

I'm sure you can imagine the barking laugh I let out at seeing that for the first time. (I was sitting in the stands at an indoor pool, too. It ricocheted off the walls.)

 A raucous laughter issues from the PA system, but Kirk just thinks it's one of the bridge crew. He's alerted to the fact that fog is seeping in under the door to the lifts, and he and Spock go through the door. I guess that there's another door on the other side of the lift, because they walk through the lift and into the corridor. A scan says the fog is real, and Kirk slips, ending up in Spock's arms. There's a nice little moment for all you Spirk shippers out there. It even comes complete with an Austin Powers-type pick-up line:

"Oh no, I fell over! Oh no, I fell over again!"

They hear the laughter through the PA again and surmise that the practical joker is actually the ship herself.

On another deck, Sulu, Bones and Uhura are taking their down-time together, and enter what is marked as the "rec room." As soon as the door closes, Spock calls a general alert. But they don't hear him because THEY'RE IN THE FUCKING HOLODECK, YOU GUYS! First appearance of holoeck, y'all! They don't call it that, but you know that's totally what it is. The room started out plain and empty with a podium in the center, and Sulu programmed it for the beach.

They decide to take a walk through the woods, and the scene changes to a wooded area. M'Ress pages them over the PA, but the call isn't broadcast in the holodeck.

Uhura remarks that it's nice that they can hang out without having to worry about pranks, and they hear that laughter again. Bones decides that it's just an audio tape rewinding. But further along, a deep-ass hole is being covered up by branches and leaves.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

So they're walking through the forest, and Bones makes his second "just what the doctor ordered" remark in three minutes. Then they fall in the hole, and I wonder if he'll say this isn't what the doctor ordered. Bones starts yelling at the laughing computer, and she twists his words into unclever puns.

On the bridge, Kirk and Spock ask the computer where Sulu, Uhura and Bones are, and she gives them cheeky answers. Kirk asks Scotty to shut down all of the computer's logic functions.

On the holodeck, Sulu and Uhura help Bones out of the pit. I really like that Uhura is shown helping her fellow crew member rather than just standing to the side watching Sulu do it. She may be wearing the world's shortest skirt and a pair of what is essentially go-go boots, but she's perfectly capable of helping a friend. You go, TAS.

Bones makes a vague threat against the computer, who declares that she'll cool him off, and the holodeck switches over to a snow storm. Sulu is concerned that they won't be able to see the exit in all the snow.

Down in the computer room, Scotty tries to shut down certain parts of the computer. The Enterprise retaliates by turning off the gravity. Scotty hits the ceiling, as does the bridge crew.

Arax looks awesome in zero-g. Also, pretty sure that's Scotty on the left.

On the bridge, Spock suggests that the E is trying to protect herself, and that if Scotty leaves the computer room, the E will turn the gravity back on. Kirk suggests this to Scotty, who crawls along the ceiling and into the corridor. He falls to the floor.

Spock, in normal gravity, suggests that something in that mysterious cloud they flew through altered the E, and now she is having the equivalent of a nervous break-down.

"How do we fix it?" asks Kirk.

"Fuck if I know," replies Spock. "Do I look like a mechanical Freud?"

Down in the holodeck, our intrepid trio are freezing their asses off without a solution. Uhura reminds them that they're still just in a room, so if they walk far enough, they should hit a wall. This is smart thinking, and they start walking through the snow.

A search party has discovered that Sulu, Uhura and Bones are trapped in the holodeck, and the door is jammed. They report to Kirk, who calls Scotty for Ops assistance, and they all start laughing. Spock determines that the ship is mixing their air with laughing gas, which apparently sucks for Vulcans. The trio in the holodeck trudge through the snow, laughing their asses off about how they're going to die.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Kirk's Log, supplemental: "Spock managed to get the air thing fixed before passing out. Three cheers for the Magic Vulcan!"

So they've determined that they only have six hours of breathable air left. Seems kind of late in the game for a Disable the Ship plot, but whatever. Six hours of breathable air left, six minutes left to wrap up this episode. I guess the writers set their own timer against themselves to come up with a solution. Though if you're like me, you knew instantly how the plot had to be concluded.

Scotty and his Ops Reds have given up trying to use electronic devices to get the door to the holodeck open, and are now utilizing crowbars. The E has decided that she's tired of snow, and switched our trio over to something more interesting.

It's all good, though. In another moment, the doors of the holodeck are pried open, freeing them. But after almost freezing to death, they're sent back to their stations on the bridge. I hope they called their unions after this mission. That's some straight bullshit.

The computer takes over the helm, and directs them back to the Neutral Zone.

Of course the Romulans are waiting for them.

But then the E stops and poops out this grey thing from the shuttle bay doors.

"The hell?" asks Kirk.

The grey thing morphs into another Enterprise. It looks like they're just flying in tandem, some space apart, but I guess it's meant to be seen as the new Enterprise is three times larger as the original. Oddly, the original looks like CGI here.

The Romulan ships back off a bit, and the bridge crew discuss what might be happening. Spock suggests that the E is getting revenge on the Romulans for firing on her earlier. 

Bones reminds them that the Roms will fire on the fake E, destroy it, and still have the upper hand.

But Kirk says that the Roms are all honor-bound and will find being tricked a worse fate than death.

We get a cool shot from inside the Romulan ship at this point. When they aren't able to contact it through subspace radio, they fire on it. It deflates like a balloon, and we hear the computer laughing. Maybe the laughter is also being broadcast over the PA of the Romulan ships. It's certainly heard when the fake Enterprise deflates, and I guess no one told the E that in space, no one can hear you chuckle.

The Romulans chase the remaining Enterprise.

Kirk decides to trick the computer into thinking that he's terrified of flying back through that intergalactic sludge.

Of course the E finds this fascinating, and flies herself right through the cloud again.

This time, the Klingons follow. We get another shot from inside their ship, only this time, we see it from inside the cloud. It reminds me of the opening scene from "The Magicks of Megas-Tu". All of the drugs were done on this show.

Back on the E, the computer's new personality is shutting down, and helm control is back. Flying back through the cloud somehow reversed the whole thing, even though Spock originally described the issue with the computer being "subatomic particles attacking the ship like bacteria attacking living matter." I guess flying through the cloud again just reverses that. 

Uhura says she hears something over the radio, and puts it on over the PA. It's the Klingon ships, yelling at one another to control the food dispensers. Much like both tribble episodes (here and here), Kirk has decided that, rather than help the Romulans, he'll just let them deal with it themselves, and the bridge crew laughs, and they fly off into space.

This episode was okay. We got some nice moments, like with that Spirk ship moment in the corridor, and when Sulu and Uhura help Bones out of the pit, and later, when he's tired of walking through the snow and they encourage him.

But there were a few unexplained things as well. For instance, how big was the cloud-thing? Was it so big that the Romulans could not have flown around it, and gotten at the Enterprise that way? Was following it their only course of action? While we're talking about the Romulans, what was up with that subplot? How did they know the Enterprise would be at that exact spot at that exact time? Did they infiltrate some information saying that the E was investigating space phenomena in the area? Kirk himself said they were three days ahead of schedule, and he had no idea that he'd be there at that time. How did the Roms know they'd be there? What's more, why were they there in the first place? Both the Romulans and the Enterprise claimed that each one was in their space. If the Romulans were right, why was the E in Rom space? Seems like a pretty big mistake to make, sending the E into Rom territory, especially if the punishment is death. It seems far more likely that the Roms were in Federation territory, but if that's the case, we never find out why.

The plot hole vendor apparently had lots of product to push this week.

A last thing concerning the holodeck, something which I've thought of often, and which is suggested here, but not explained: how does the holodeck work? I mean, I know the main logistics, but if Uhura is correct, and you simply walk far enough, you will hit a wall. I have never seen anyone run into the wall of the holodeck. I know that from the point of perspective, when you journey through the scene presented to you by the computer, the scene will change as you move and present you with different scenery, ie, walking down the street. But if Uhura is correct, you should actually, physically walk forward through the holodeck room and hit that wall eventually. The room is not infinite. I tried looking up the specs and technology for the holodeck, but this one piece of information seems to be missing, like some weird technological plot hole.

*******

So I have this theory, and even though I've had it for a while, I know others have had it, too. It's the theory of _______ Spice. Most of the time, the produce in question is pumpkin, but it can work for many different fruits or veggies. The theory is... that food item doesn't actually taste like pumpkin, or the other produce mentioned. It just tastes like the spice palette used. So pumpkin spice, apple spice and durian spice will all taste similar, because they don't really go out of their way to include that taste of produce. While apple spice is less likely to taste only like the spice palette used, I have encountered some apple spice items that just taste like a combo of cinnamon and cloves and nothing else.

The tea I had this week was like that. I had a mug of Tazo Organic Peach Cobbler, and did not expect it to fall into the realm of (Blank) Spice Theory, but it did. You know what peach tastes like. You probably know what peach cobbler tastes like. This tasted like neither. The box claims that it's made of "black teas with peach notes, apple and cinnamon, and other natural flavors." Wait, did it say apple and cinnamon? It did. And guess what this tea tastes most like? Apple and cinnamon. Any "peach notes" involved were gone with the wind, and while there was some apple, it mostly just tasted like a spice palette. Don't get me wrong, it was good. But it does not taste like peach or cobblers.

http://www.tazo.com/Product/Detail/6

Uhura and Bratty

Season 2, Episode 53 "The Ultimate Computer"

"The Ultimate Computer"
Production Number: 53
Air Order: 53
Stardate: 4729.4
Original Air Date: March 8, 1968

The title of this episode makes me groan, you guys. Typically, Star Trek will choose esoteric or philosophical titles for their episodes, but here we have what sounds like an advertisement gimmick for some product from the fifties. Or it should be the title of the aforementioned late-sixties sci-fi novel with the title in a slime green futuristic font.
Humor me, here: say "The Ultimate Computer" out loud, but don't use the voice of Rod Roddy, the announcer from "The Price Is Right." You can't do it, can you? Because when you say it in that voice, it conjures images of girls in swanky dresses, making a sweeping gestures with their palms up and opening panels on the front of said ultimate computer to show the contestant what could be theirs, if the price is right. But it won't be theirs, because the ultimate computer probably comes packaged with a dining room set, and who wants that when you know there's a trip to Germany and a ski boat or some shit in the next showcase, so they'll pass to the other contestant and no one will win because no one knows how much an ultimate computer and a dining room set costs.

I really wish I didn't suck at Photoshop, you guys. I would love to illustrate this thought with a Barker Beauty gesturing in front of like, Landru.

*******

We start out this week with Kirk in a snit. The E glides up on a space station, and he talks to Commodore Enright.
"Commodore, WTF?" he demands. "You guys paged me here and you won't tell me why."
"Shut your pie-hole," Enright answers. "A dude is beaming onto your ship."
"Bullshit," says Kirk, and he stomps off to the transporter room with Spock in tow.
When they get there, a gold shirt is beamed aboard, and Kirk knows him. He's Commodore Bob Wesley. Kirk tells the red who beamed Wesley aboard to GTFO, then demands to know why he was called to the space station, and why his crew has to leave the ship.
"It's war games time, bitches!" says Wesley. "We're gonna alter your woman with this new computer, the M-5, then we're gonna run it through some tests and do war games. A bunch of ships headed up by me, versus the E and you and the M-5. Your people need to leave because we won't need them. The M-5 runs the ship without people."
"Sweet!" says Spock. "The M-5 is the computer invented by Dr Richard Daystrom, on whom I have a raging nerd-crush."

"So Daystrom will come on board with the M-5, and you get to keep 20 crew members, and your job is easy, because you just have to sit in the captain's chair and look pretty," adds Wesley.

Kirk looks pretty pissed off about this, considering the fact that this is mostly what he does all day anyway. Maybe he's mad because Starfleet found out.

Kirk's Log 2749.4: "Exposition. Shit you forgot over the last commercial break."

Kirk gets into the lift with Spock and Bones. Bones complains that you can't let one computer run a whole starship. The Spock and Bones Odd Couple dialogue here is awesome, so I'm just gonna copy it down verbatim:

Spock: "The most unfortunate lack in current computer programming is that there is nothing available to immediately replace the starship's surgeon."

Bones: "Very funny. If it could, they wouldn't have to replace me; I'd resign because everything else would be nothing but circuits and memory banks. You know the type, Spock."

The trio enters engineering and meets Dr Daystrom, who is played by a giant black man. This is awesome. Dr Daystrom's character is written loosely enough that they could have picked damn near anyone - any white guy you wanted - and they picked a black dude instead to play the smart-as-hell scientist. Probably to piss of the censors in the deep South market. Anyway, this dude is not just black - he's huge. Standing next to Kirk puts one in mind of Cary Elwes standing next to Andre the Giant in The Princess Bride. Let's say you had written a screenplay about John Henry, the railroad guy. This is the dude you would get to play him. Big with a deep voice.

Daystrom is important. He designed all of the computers that are being used on the Enterprise, and the Daystrom Institute, mentioned in future Star trek spin-offs, was named for this guy.

Spock once again fangirls over Daystrom and the M-5, while Bones complains and Kirk sulks. Daystrom admits to the trio that the computer is called the M-5 because M's one through four fell flat on their collective faces. He then suggests that Kirk doesn't like the idea of a computer-run ship because Kirk is fond of the power and prestige that comes with being the captain. Dude, I agree. Kirk likes to whip out his rank as much as he likes whipping other things out.
He and Bones leave, and Bones has another great line here:
"Did you see the love-light in Spock's eyes? The right computer finally came along."
Kirk is troubled. He instinctively feels that the situation is off, but can't give a solid reason as to why. He wonders aloud about Daystrom's suggestion that he loves the power and prestige of being captain.
"Am I that petty?" he asks Bones.
Bones kind of brushes the question off, so I'll give you a definitive answer, Kirk: YES. Yes, you are.

On the bridge, the M-5 has completed the task of taking the E to a set of coordinates, and Kirk switches it off from his chair.

"That was dumb," he says. "We're here, but Sulu and Chekov could have done that just as easily."

"But they didn't have to," says Daystrom."The computer did the work of both."

"Blow me," Kirk replies.

Spock steps down to the dais to talk to Kirk. "You're being a dick."

Kirk shrugs it off.

Chekov turns to tell Kirk that they're approaching the planet that they were headed for. He seems thrilled. You know how, in "Galaxy Quest", Sigorney Weaver's character's job description was pretty much "repeat everything said by the computer"? This is Chekov's job now. I'd be pissed, too.

"Hey, time to turn on the M-5," says Daystrom. "This task will be approaching the planet, setting up a standard orbit, and making landing party recommendations."

"Screw you," says Kirk. "I make the landing party recommendations." But he turns on the M-5 anyway.

Kirk asks Spock to give him info on the planet while the M-5 makes it's recommendations. 

"So I say we should have a landing party of five that avoids the life-forms," says Kirk. "Me, Bones, Spock, an astrophysicist, and a geologist."

They put in the info tape that M-5 spit out. It recommends the same as Kirk, but picks a different geologist, and eliminates Kirk and Bones. Kirk is confused as to why it picked an ensign geologist rather than the head, and when they ask why the M-5 selected personnel the way it did, the M-5 replies that the ensign has had previous experience with similar planets. It then tells them that Kirk and Bones were "unnecessary." How about that. Maybe M-5 writes a Star Trek review blog as well. Or maybe the M-5 possesses some fucking common sense. When the M-5 says that Kirk and Bones were not necessary additions to the landing party, Daystrom gives Kirk this awesome sad trombone look.

Scotty turns and announces that the M-5 is turning off systems all over the ship. We get a camera sweep up to Scotty, with dramatic music and a commercial break, but it's all for nothing, because when we return, Daystrom explains that the M-5 realized that there was no one on decks 4-6, so it shut off power to those decks to conserve energy.

Uhura reports that there are two ships in the vicinity, and Kirk returns to his chair to check it out. Bones is on the bridge because the M-5 cut power to sick bay from lack of patients. Chekov grudgingly reports that the M-5 has determined that these are Federation ships Lexington and Excalibur.

"Too soon for war games," say Spock. "Maybe an unscheduled drill for the M-5?"

It's an unnecessary line, as the commodore calls to say as much.

Out of habit, Kirk starts to order prep stuff for his skeleton bridge crew, but there's no need, as the M-5 has already done it. Now both Chekov and Sulu are playing Repeat the Computer. The M-5 fires phasers at the other ships while Sulu and Chekov narrate. Chekov keeps making these hand gestures like he's over this shit, and I don't blame him: I was once replaced as an art teacher by a fucking Cricut machine.

The other ships move off, and Kirk asks Spock for a damage report so he can enter it into a log. We get a tender Spirk moment here, complete with soft music. Spock tells his captain that he is fine using computers as tools, but wouldn't want to serve under one. (No, really, can you imagine bottoming to a computer? Probably hurts like hell.)

Commodore Wesley calls to say that enough simulated damage was done to the Excalibur and Lexington to award the battle to the M-5. He congratulates the M-5 unit and "captain dunsel."

Everyone on the bridge looks uncomfortable at this comment, and Kirk, who had been smiling after his Spirk moment, now does a Charlie Brown walk back to his quarters.

"Who the hell is Captain Dunsel?" asks Bones.

Spock explains that "dunsel" is a slang term used by midshipmen at the Academy, and it refers to a part that serves no useful purpose. Kirk is not my favorite guy, but that was a super-bitchy thing for Wesley to say.

Like a good friend, Bones goes to Kirk's quarters with cocktails. Kirk admits to feeling useless, but Bones and his drink manage to make him feel better. He waxes rhapsodic a bit about actually piloting a ship through water and navigating by stars, but he's interrupted by Uhura calling him back to the bridge.

It turns out to be an unmanned, old-school ore freighter. The crew shrugs it off, but the M-5 raises shields and charges at it, firing a pair of photon torpedoes and blowing it out of the sky. The frantic crew, who tried to turn of the M-5 and override it's actions, stares at the screen.

"WTF?" Kirk and Bones yell at Daystrom.

"Um, looks like a malfunction or something," says Daystrom. "Good thing the freighter was unmanned."

"Like I give a shit," says Kirk. "And your dumb computer wouldn't have, either. We're shutting that shit down."

He, Daystrom and Spock go down to engineering to shut off the M-5, but Kirk is electrocuted by a force field.

Kirk's Log 4731.3: "The M-5 has taken control of my woman, and Dr Daystrom says he didn't put that force field on it, which means it now won't let anyone shut it down."

"The fuck?" Kirk yells at Daystrom.

"It's a glitch," says Daystrom. "You have to expect some of those during a test."

"Glitch, my ass," says Kirk. "We're shutting this shit down at the source."

Scotty's unnamed Red assistant pulls out a tool and attempts to disconnect the M-5 from its power source and it fries him. Like, the dude becomes startstuff again.

"You killed whats-his-name! You bastard!" Kirk rages.

"That's unfortunate," says Daystrom. "He got in the way."

"That thing tapped into the warp engines," says Scotty. "It has unlimited power!"

While Daystrom babysits his computer in engineering, our boys have a meeting. The M-5 has taken over all systems on the ship, including communications, so Uhura cannot warn the other ships, who are getting ready for the war games. Spock suggests that the computer can be shut off through engineering on deck three, and Scotty agrees that he and Spock can get 'er done within an hour. Spock then notes that the M-5 is not acting logically, as a computer should.

"Don't say it's fascinating!" grouches Bones.

"Okay. It's... interesting," Spock offers.

And Bones rolls his eyes so hard that I'm surprised he didn't injure himself.

We cut to Scotty and Spock in a Jeffries tube, making some modifications to shut down the M-5. I love these shots so much. I know that they had to go to the trouble to build tiny tube sets and put the camera at the top in order to get these shots, but I feel like the trouble was totally worth it. Also, check out the way that Scotty's arms form a hexagon that perfectly frame Spock, whose head intersects with piping that points to him. The ratio of organic and inorganic elements here is nice, too. Mmmmm, composition.

Down in engineering, Bones asks Daystrom if he's figured out how to shut off the M-5. Daystrom starts talking about child development, and about how the M-5 is learning. 

Yeah... I used to teach preschool. Children do not learn by murdering helpless Reds, mmkay?

He then goes on to talk about how men die in space, and he's trying to prevent that by creating starships that run themselves so that the computers and technology can do the dangerous jobs and less lives will be lost.

"You don't understand," he finishes. "We want to save life, not to destroy it."

Who's this "we", Daystrom?

By request, Bones brings an autobiography info tape about Daystrom to Kirk. They briefly discuss the pressures of genius, and how Daystrom hit it big early in his career and is still trying to be brilliant. Bones notes that Daystrom talks about the M-5 as though it were a child. Kirk responds by noting that Daystrom won't let Spock near the computer. Scotty calls to report that they are done with the modifications.

Everyone meets up at the Jeffries tube, and Kirk tells Daystrom that they're shutting the whole thing down. Daystrom yells, "No, you can't!" and tries to lunge into the tube to stop Spock and Scotty, but Kirk, who is a good head shorter than him, easily subdues Daystrom, because... oh, screw it. You know why.

They think they have control of the ship, but nope. That would be too easy. There are still 15 minutes left in the show. Spock suggests that when the M-5 discovered that they were tampering with the system, it rerouted everything and made that particular Jeffries tube a decoy, making it look active.

"Okay, 'fess up," Kirk tells Daystrom. "Your computer is screwy, and you know why."

"Sooo, people kept saying that computers don't act like men because they don't think like men, right?" asks Daystrom. "So I programmed it with human engrams, so now it thinks like a human. Good, huh?"

(I didn't know what the hell "engrams" were, so I've taken the liberty of Googling that shit for you: it's brain stuff, like the thing that records or stores memories or consciousness.)

Uhura pages Kirk and Spock to the bridge. The four Federation ships are assembling for the war games, not knowing that the M-5 isn't actually "playing."

This shot makes me want to pinch Star Trek's cheek and say "Awww, look at you, with your low-budget special effects! You're so cuuuute!" I'm pretty sure they filmed the same model once, then cut-and-pasted it four times onto the same background. It's cheesy, but it gets the job done. I'm still kind of snickering, though. So goofy, Star Trek.

Up on the bridge, Uhura is desperately trying to hail the Lexington, to no avail, as the M-5 has everything on lock, including distress signals. At one point, the Lexington calls the E to announce that they are here for the M-5 drills, and the M-5 responds back.

"It's cool," says Daystrom in that deep, soothing voice of his. "The M-5 knows this is a drill. That thing with the ore freighter was a fluke."

"You're full of shit," says Kirk, as the M-5 raises it's shields and prepares to fire heavy artillery at ships that do not have shields up.

The M-5 sends a full round of phasers at both the Lexington and Excalibur, leaving them limping in space.

"The fuck?" demands Wesley.

It's a tense moment, so Chekov bites his knuckles while reading from the screen.

Kirk grabs a flustered-looking Daystrom. "There's got to be a way to get to the M-5!"

"I can't!" says Daystrom. "It's totally protected itself!"

"This shit is scary," confirms Spock. "It thinks like a human, but acts with the swiftness of a computer. Everyone is screwed."

Wesley contacts the E, yelling at Kirk to call off the fight, as there are 65 dead reported between the Lexington and Excalibur ships. But Uhura can't override M-5, so Kirk can't respond.

The Excalibur tries to turn and run, but the M-5 chases it down and incapacitates it before going after the third ship, the Potempkin. Uhura intercepts a message from the Lexington to Starfleet and broadcasts it.

"Kirk is nucking futs. The captain and first officer on the Excalibur are dead. I think the only way to stop him is to kill him. Request permission to blow his ass out of the sky."

"You have to stop this shit!" Kirk yells at Daystrom. "You gave it your engrams, right? And you can interact with the program, yes?"

"Yes. I'll try," says Daystrom. He goes to the M-5 to talk to it. "Hey, M-5," he coos. "How's it going? So, you wanna not blow those ships up?"

"Those are enemy ships," says M-5. "Gotta protect myself."

"They're not," says Daystrom. "We're kind of murdering innocent people here."

"They attacked us. We have to survive," M-5 responds.

"Daystrom is losing his shit," Kirk whispers to Spock.

"He's going in circles," Spock whispers back. "He made the M-5 a mirror-image of himself, so he's basically talking to himself."

Bones says he's having a nervous breakdown, and Kirk takes the opportunity to tell Daystrom that they need to destroy the M-5. This pushes Daystrom just enough over the edge that he comes at Kirk, giving Spock a reason to pinch him. They send the half-conscious Daystrom to sick bay with Bones and two Reds.

The Excalibur appears to be dead, and Uhura is getting in the return message from Starfleet to go ahead and blow Kirk away.

"Fuck," says Kirk. "They'll attack us, but the M-5 will destroy those ships."

Kirk asks the M-5 about the "why" behind it's self-preservation. The M-5 tells him that it must survive so that it can eventually replace man in space, to keep men alive. You know where this is going, just as I did: whenever Kirk stumbles upon an out-of-control sentient computer, he must give it an identity crisis and encourage it to commit suicide.

An interesting aside here, from the smarty-pantses at IMDB: Kirk asks the M-5 what the penalty is for murder, and the M-5 responds that it is death. But in the Federation, the only crime that gets the death penalty is visiting Talos IV.

Once the M-5 is taken out, the shields drop. But apparently, communications are still out, so Kirk can't call Wesley and cancel his own death. Instead, he climbs on the comm, and addresses the other 18 members of the crew, and tells them that they are about to die at the hands of their fellow officers. It's cheerful.

Scotty calls from engineering saying that he and Spock have got the shields up, but everything else will take hours to bring online. Instead, Kirk gambles everything and tells Scotty to cut all power.

Wesley sees that the E looks dead, and wonders out loud if it's a trap before calling off the other ships. Of course it worked. It was Kirk's plan, and Kirk is the biggest Mary Sue of them all.

Down in sick bay, Bones tells Kirk and Spock that Daystrom will have to be committed for a while. Spock asks why Kirk chose to go with the opossum route, as the M-5 might have set that trap for Wesley. Kirk replies that he was gambling on Wesley's compassion to realize that the E being dead in the water was a surrender rather than a trap.

The trio gets into the lift, and Spock and Bones begin another brief argument about humans vs computers, which Spock ends with, "I'd really like to see a computer imprinted with your illogical engrams."

And Kirk laughs and everything is awesome because he got another computer to commit suicide.

Death Toll:
Red deaths this episode: 1
Red deaths this season: 19
Gold deaths this episode: 0
Gold deaths this season: 6
Blue deaths this episode: 0
Blue deaths this season: 1
Total crew deaths this season: 26
Total crew deaths thus far: 43

Plus, a bunch of people on the Excalibur and Lexington ships, but I can't really count those.

*******

This week's tea is the second to come out of that Celestial Seasonings herbal fruit pack: the Raspberry Zinger. Apparently, the "zinger" part refers to the fact that they mixed hibiscus in with the fruit parts, as I've seen another "zinger" tea and the common thing seems to be that flower. The tea isn't terribly floral, though, mostly just fruity, and it's a good raspberry, like actually eating fresh berries rather than some weird fakey fruity taste. I'd actually like to try this tea as a raspberry Arnold Palmer. You can also buy a version of this tea as specifically an iced tea, but it's one of those "zero calorie, sweetened by creepy fake sweetener" things that I don't trust, so you know I won't be trying that anytime soon. Either way, this version is good.

http://www.celestialseasonings.com/products/herbal-teas/raspberry-zinger

Season 2, Episode 37 "The Changeling"

"The Changeling"
Production Number: 37
Air Order: 32
Stardate: 3614.9
Original Air Date: September 29, 1967

So wandering the webs for a while now has been a brief article that gives one a glimpse into the Star Trek TOS character Bible. As in, the booklet given to people who might be interested in writing episodes. As much as I like the idea of  a group of writers hanging out around a table offering things like, "what if Kirk gets trapped on a some planet and bangs a chick and saves the day at the last minute?", that's not the full story. Sometimes they asked established sci-fi writers to take a crack at it. Sometimes they used unsolicited materials or bought short stories. Either way, the treatment would then go to their head writers, who would edit or change things, or just ensure that it was keeping with the full flavor of Star Trek. The character Bible gives brief information about the characters, situations, sets available, and who to contact in order to talk about science stuff.
Earlier this week, I was randomly telling Roomie and Dubs how I'd like to have a copy, just for funsies. Unbeknownst to me, Roomie then discovered online that she could get PDFs of each page, to be sent to FedEx to be printed and bound. She returned triumphant that night, telling me that having the booklet in her possession had earned her a nerdy conversation with not one, but two, gas station pump jockeys. Handing it to me, she stated, "I'm doing this for blog cred." Okey-doke, Roomie. You get a Command Gold Star.

And I now have the TOS nerd-cronomicon. Mwahahahaha!

*******

We start out with a mystery - the E can't seem to raise any of the 4 million people in the sector where they are currently located, including the Starfleet science team on one of the planets. Oh, no! Maybe it's a zombie windsock!

Sulu reports that they are being fired upon, and the viewscreen shows a wobbly white fireball making its way toward the ship. They take a hit, and the bridge crew does one of their exaggerated tandem tumbles. This time, though, the fixtures seem even more tilted, the falls a bit less rehearsed. I wonder if they've mounted the bridge set on a platform that can shift as needed... that'd be cool.

When they've righted themselves, Spock reports that the bolt of energy that hit them was the equivalent of 90 photon torpedoes, and that it traveled at warp 15. Kirk asks Sulu for evasive maneuvers, but the helmsman can't comply, as Scotty has diverted power from the warp drive to the shields.

They fire a photon torpedo at whatever-it-is that is firing on them, but the thing just absorbs it. Kirk is astonished. Really, dude? You gave it one where it gave you 90, and you're shocked that there was no damage? My 6-year-old nephew could do that math, and he didn't spend years in Starfleet Academy.

They take another hit of 90, and Scotty reports that they're toast if they take one more, so Kirk decides to try talking. You can't run it, outmaneuver it, or outgun it, and now you're going to try talking. Good choice.

While Uhura works on opening a channel, Spock reports that the thing is heavy, but is only like three feet tall.

"What the hell kind of intelligence could you have being that small?" asks Scotty.

"Size is no indication of intelligence," Spock reminds him.

Yeah, no shit. Ever hang out with toddlers? They're ridiculously smart. Good thing they aren't able to learn quantum physics. We'd be so screwed.

After a few bumps in the road regarding translation, Kirk is able to tell the thing that he's Capatin James Kirk of the Enterprise, that they're peaceful, and mean it no harm. It replies back that it is Nomad, and is also peaceful. Nomad asks Kirk if he will step outside to chat.

"Um, no?" says Kirk. "But you can come aboard my ship." 

"Cool," says Nomad, and Kirk grabs Spock, Scotty and Bones to come with him to the transporter room. They beam Nomad onto the E. I think it's a Kirby vacuum cleaner. That hovers.

 Dramatic music!
Nomad asks Kirk where he's from, and Kirk replies that they're with the Federation.
"No, dipshit," says Nomad. "WHERE are you FROM?"
"Come out and talk to us," says Kirk.
"It's not full of tiny people," says Bones. "It's a machine."
Kirk, why are you so stupid this week? Have you been chugging the Saurian brandy in sick bay?
"Lemme see your star charts," says the thing. It keeps ending every few sentences with "I am Landru Nomad." Maybe it's for Kirk's benefit. Maybe, because Kirk is being so unbelievably thick this week, it thinks it might need to keep reminding the captain of who he is talking to.
Spock says that there was a probe sent from Earth in the early 2000's named Nomad, but it was thought to have been destroyed.

Kirk takes the hovering Nomad to a room to look at star charts, dragging Spock and Bones with him. 

Ha! Pluto is listed on that star chart. I'm just gonna go ahead and declare that, in the future, Pluto has been reinstated. Suck it, IAU. Star Trek says it's a planet, so it is.

Nomad asks Kirk if he is from Earth. When Kirk replies that he is, Nomad refers to him as the Creator, the guy who programmed him. Bones asks what Nomad's function is. Nomad tells Kirk that his job is to sterilize things, to destroy imperfections.

"The fuck?" demands Bones. "You killed all of those people?"

Nomad calls Bones irrational. When Kirk replies, "yeah, kinda", Bones gives him a nasty look.

"How come you keep calling me Creator?" asks Kirk.

"Dude, let him," says Spock.

They leave Nomad with a confused Red, and move into the corridor to talk.

"Been looking up stuff in the computer," says Spock. "I think the Nomad was damaged in a meteor collision and repaired itself. It has mentioned an accident, and the Other. Also, I think Nomad thinks that you're the guy who made him, Jackson Roykirk. It's destroyed memory banks probably picked up your name, thinking you were Roykirk, and that's why it stopped firing on us. Nomad was designed to be a thinking machine, and to seek out new life-forms. But now it seems to be seeking out perfect life-forms, and destroying everything that doesn't meet its higher-than-high standards."

"Awesome," says Kirk. "It'll kill us all."

Mr Singh, the Red that was left with Nomad, gets a comm call from Uhura. While he's fetching her information, she sings "Beyond Antares" to herself. Nomad goes off in search of her when Singh turns his back. Can't say I blame Nomad. If you had the chance to hear Nichelle Nichols sing "Beyond Antares" in person, wouldn't you?

Scotty quietly calls Kirk to tell him that that weird vacuum cleaner is on the bridge. The OT3 heads off in that direction.

Nomad confronts Uhura, demanding to know what she's doing. Uhura attempts to explaining singing and music, but Nomad gets impatient, and scans her head instead.

"The fuck?" yells Scotty. And in an action of chivalry and grave stupidity, he grabs Nomad. Nomad then blasts him backward.

A dazed Uhura is hauled off to sick bay while Bones looks over Scotty. Apparently, he's dead, Jim.

"Nomad, what the hell?" asks Kirk. "I needed him!"

Nomad keeps referring to the crew members as "units". It thinks Kirk built his crew, like Dr Korby. Silly Nomad. If Kirk had built his crew, none of them would look like Scotty. They'd all look like Andrea. They'd probably be (un)dressed like her, too. (Although the female crew uniforms certainly look as though Kirk picked them out.)

"I can fix the unit Scott," says Nomad. "It's super out-of-date, though."

They upload all of the tapes on human physiology, and Scotty in particular, to Nomad's memory banks, and it follows Bones back to sick bay.

There's a cool shot here of the camera following Nomad as it follows Bones. I like this. It mixes things up nicely. Always welcome when they take a chance on a new camera angle.

Down in sick bay, Christine scans Scotty while Nomad hovers nearby. She tells Bones that there isn't any change, and he snottily replies that he can see that for himself. Christine treats him to the briefest eat shit look before all of Scotty's vitals shoot up. Scotty wakens and asks how the hell he got to sick bay.

Kirk tells Nomad to repair Uhura, but Nomad replies that she is undamaged. It just "wiped her memory banks".

Spock suggests that Uhura just needs to be re-educated. Kirk asks Bones and Chapel to do it, then tells Nomad to go with the nice Reds to the "waiting area" in the brig. Goodbye, Reds.

Later, Spock is trying to scan Nomad for information, but it refuses to allow him to do so. Kirk orders Nomad to drop it's shields and let Spock look at it. So far, Nomad has told Kirk that all of his biological units are chaotic, irrational and unpredictable. It calls Spock "well-ordered". Spock decides to take the compliment, which is to say that his eyebrows go up. Nomad agrees to the probing.

Meanwhile, Christine is teaching Uhura to read. I like that when Uhura gets frustrated, she lapses into Swahili. But I hate the wig that they put on Majel Barrett. It looks like a ratty tribble, and it's not even the same color as her hair.

Spock isn't getting anywhere with his scans. There's too much buried and inaccessible. He suggests a mind meld. Kirk tells Nomad that Spock is going to communicate by touch. When Spock talks during mind melds, he typically tosses out words or phrases that have to do with the other person. This time he mentions the name Tan Ru, and he struggles to disconnect from Nomad, even when he steps away. Kirk has to bark at Nomad to let go. Stepping out into the corridor to talk again, a shaky Spock tells Kirk that Nomad was damaged in a meteor collision, and encountered another probe (Tan Ru), whose directive was to sample and sterilize soil samples from planets, probably with the idea of colonization in mind. (Yes, Tan Ru is Wall-E. Heh.) Tan Ru and Nomad helped repair one another, merging programs, so that Nomad's new directive was to seek out life, and sterilize "biological infestations".

Kirk compares it to the mythological creature known as a changeling, wherein a fairy replaces a baby with a fairy child, and the new creature grows up as a human. "The only thing that's been keeping us from being "sterilized" is the fact that it thinks that I'm it's mother." They take off down the corridor for no reason other than to progress the story.

Nomad breaks through the force field in the brig and starts to float off down the corridor. When the Reds fire on it to get it to stop, of course it vaporizes them. Two down.

It floats down to engineering, ignoring Scotty yelling at it.

"Your ship is inefficient," Nomad tells Scotty. "I'll fix it." It interfaces with the control system and begins pushing the E to warp 11. The engineers are not able to stop it.

Kirk, who has been alerted to the situation by an engineering Red, strides into the room and demands that Nomad stop. When the robot replies that it is making the ship more efficient, Kirk replies that the E can't take the stress of warp 11 and will break apart. Funny that this stupid machine couldn't figure that out.

Spock comes in and reports that the other Reds from the brig are missing, and presumed dead. Nomad tells Kirk that his biological units are inferior. In his dumbest move of the episode, Kirk shouts back that he is a biological unit, and that he is the creator. Nomad pauses. Kirk makes a great "oh, shit" face as he realizes what he's done. Spock gives Kirk a look that says he'd like to slap the captain upside the head.

"Um, I need to think about some stuff before I return to the launch point," says Nomad.

Kirk orders him to go with another pair of Reds, who are now rethinking their choice to get dressed and report for duty this morning. The camera follows Nomad again as it heads through the engineering doors, toward the waiting Reds, who are backing uncertainly into the corridor.

"That was kind of the dumbest thing ever," says Spock. "It now views you as inferior. Also, it probably figured out how to get back to Earth based on those star charts, which means it'll kill everyone on the planet. Good job, moron."

"Yeah," Kirk admits, "that was a pretty dumbshit move." Knowing is half the battle, Kirk.

Kirk's Log 3614.9: "In my infinite wisdom, I set a killing machine loose on my ship and let it know that Earth is full of innocent people ripe for the picking. It would have been better not to come to work high today."

Nomad gets off the lift with the Reds. It starts to wander off on it's own, and the Reds call it back. When it doesn't respond, they shoot at it. It then vaporizes them. Reds are dropping like flies this episode.

Nomad takes a Jeffries tube down to sick bay. Kirk and Spock are paged there, and when they open the doors, Nomad strolls out, ignoring Kirk's orders to stop. Bones tells Kirk and Spock that it got into the medical and personnel files, and shocked Christine when she tried to stop it.

"It probably looked at your files and figured out that you're full of shit," Spock tells Kirk.

Scotty calls Kirk to report that life support systems are going out all over the ship, and manual override is blocked. Kirk tells Scotty to meet him in engineering with anti-gravs, then high-tails it down there himself.

Nomad is there. It tells Kirk that, by switching off life support, it can get rid of the biological infestation without harming the ship, which is not perfect, but can be made so. It is also refusing to answer to Kirk anymore.

This is, of course, where Kirk gives Landru Nomad an existential crisis, because that is how one handles a sentient machine hell-bent on killing you. Someone should have told Sarah Connor. That would have been helpful.

He says that, as an imperfect being, he created Nomad, but how can something imperfect create something perfect? (Let's hope Nomad is completely unaware of Renaissance art, shall we?) Kirk also reiterates that Nomad must destroy things that are not perfect. Kirk yells that he is not Roykirk the Creator. Roykirk is dead. This means that Nomad made a mistake in identifying him as such, and another in not recognizing it. Two errors makes Nomad imperfect. The fact that he then did not sterilize himself means that he made a third mistake. Nomad loses it's mind, screaming in helium-laced tones that it is in error, and must sterilize, and analyze.

Scotty and Spock rush forward to slap anti-gravs on Nomad, and haul him up to the transporter room. You know, when moving between decks during an emergency, I always wonder about un-filmed scenes in the lifts. 

Spock and Scotty hauled the anti-grav'd Nomad into the lift with them, struggling to keep it centered and balanced. Kirk bounced in after them, barking at the computer to close the doors post-haste.

"Transporter room! Now!"

The computer, sensing the urgency in his voice, propelled the lift in that direction, bars of light sliding past the frosted window panels. The men grabbed the handrails to keep from falling over.

"Error, error!" chirped Nomad. It did not struggle in the anti-gravs, but Scotty could smell a distinct burning scent wafting from the inner workings of the metal beast. He tried to focus on something else other than the impending explosion of Nomad and the possible destruction of the ship and everyone on it. He zeroed in on the music playing faintly through the lift's speakers.

"Which song is this?" he asked, more out of the necessity of having something to do than out of interest.

Spock paused, directing his hearing at the speakers. "I believe that is a slow, instrumental recording of "Carry On My Wayward Son" by the Earth band Kansas. The original is not quite this apathetic, however."

Scotty nodded. The song that he recall included guitar solos that spoke of youthful rebellion rather than a skip through a meadow. There was another pause, long and painful, as the lift made it's way forward, and the air continued to fill with the sound of dying machine and the smell of frying circuit boards.

"Captain," he said suddenly, "have you had your hair cut recently?" 

Kirk touched the back of his head. "Yes, um, last week. A little shorter than usual, but I thought maybe if I cut it shorter this time, it would be a little longer before I had to schedule another."

"Efficient," said Spock.

The others nodded, and time stretched out before them. The bars flashed past the window panels, but they seemed to be no closer. Scotty had decided that he hated this song.

"Soooo..." Kirk fished for something to say as Spock and Scotty shifted Nomad between them. "Spock, have you spoken with T'Pring lately?"

Spock's illogical human half wanted to ask Kirk why the fuck he would ask about the woman who had been screwing around on him and had forced him to kill his best friend so she could get him to divorce her, but his Vulcan half recognized Kirk's effort to pass the time. "I have not," he replied. "I assume she is well."

In another moment, the lift slowed to a stop and the doors opened, the computer announcing the deck. All three tumbled out as though they had been trapped inside with a gaseous Vogon poet.

"Slow-ass fucking lift," they each thought silently.

They haul ass into the transporter room and dump Nomad on a pad. Kirk eggs it on a bit more to commit suicide, and they beam it out into space, where it explodes.

I in no way received deja vu from this scene in comparison with last week's episode, where they beamed Piglet the Ripper out into space in order to keep him from killing everyone on board the ship as well.

On the bridge, Spock congratulates Kirk on his logic of using the same damn plan that he used against Landru. Kirk jokingly suggests that Spock didn't think he had it in him. Spock truthfully replies no, and it takes Kirk a second to realize what Spock just said. Bones enters the bridge to say that Uhura's education just hit college-level, and she should be back to work in a week.

Spock remarks that it's a shame that they had to lose Nomad, which was a cool instrument.

"Meh," says Kirk. "It was going to exterminate us all. Besides, why are you crying? That thing thought I was it's mother, which makes it my son. I should be sadder than you. It showed promise as a doctor when it fixed Scotty. My son, the doctor."

And Spock makes a face that clearly says that he wishes he had gone with Nomad, rather than continue to be trapped on this tin can with these weird-ass humans.

Death Toll
Red deaths this episode: 4
Red deaths this season: 1
Gold deaths this episode: 0
Gold deaths this season: 2
Blue deaths this episode: 0
Blue deaths this season: 1
Total crew deaths this season: 8
Total crew deaths thus far: 24

There were two Reds down in engineering in that last scene, but I'm counting them as knocked out, because when Nomad killed the previous 4 Reds, he completely disintegrated them. Also, Kirk is seen taking one man's pulse, and then other Reds rush in and try to revive them.

*******

Took a trip to a restaurant this week where they served Numi tea, which I haven't found anywhere else. It must be other places, though, as you can order it online. I tried the Orange Spice, but the leaf base was white rather than black. The difference is pretty small, but with the white, which is less bitter, the spice and orange citrus flavors were a little more pronounced. It was nice. Bonus: it was pretty late, and I didn't want to be awake all night, which I would have been with a black base. Also, it's organic. Niiiice.

http://shop.numitea.com/Orange-Spice/p/NUMIS-10240&c=NumiTeaStore@Teabag@White

"I help you iron?"