Series Overview for Star Trek: The Animated Series

This week in Trek news, The Shat has his knickers in a twist because the 50th anniversary for Star Trek is coming up, and the people at Paramount and CBS haven't announced plans for anything or contacted him at all. He wants to do some kind of musical. Anybody else see him suddenly trying to snuggle up to Georgie again?

*******

So here we are, doing another series overview, and it seems like that took no time at all. Probably because it didn't. Back in the day, a season was 26 episodes or there abouts, running on approximately the same schedule as the average school year. Then I found out that cartoon shows have a sixteen-episode season, running September through the end of December, and then January through whenever.

In the last few years, a season runs for however long the maker decides it should run, from the traditional 26 episodes, to three episodes. (Seriously: WTF, Sherlock?) Here, we got one and a partial seasons. And that partial season only existed because the show won a Daytime Emmy. 

(TOS won two Hugos and an NAACP award, but the first Star Trek Emmy went to TAS. By contrast, TNG won 19 Primetime Emmy awards over the life of the show, and was nominated for another 39. The comparison I'm giving here is not so much about the qualities of the shows, but an illustration of what happens in the earlier years of a fandom. By the time TNG arrived on the scene, the fandom was fully established, and had received multiple films, as well as having a good presence at conventions. The franchise was doing well, and CBS was willing to throw money at the new show, as opposed to TOS, which kept having its budget cut.) 

So we got 22 episodes, which is less than a typical season of Star Trek, but more than your average Saturday morning cartoon show. We've talked a bit about how we got this show ("kids in space"? whut?), what got nixed right away (Jimmy Doohan doing pretty much all of the voices, Chekov) and what became the status quo (Jimmy Doohan doing all of the voices, Arax at the helm).

Let's look at the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Animated Series, shall we?

First up: the animation

Gonna be blunt: the animation sucks. It suffers from low cell count, which is not just a medical issue. When I talk to people about TAS, they either have never heard of it, or didn't bother to watch, because they heard it was terrible. What's terrible is the animation. It was done by the Filmation animation house, which was known for uber-cheap Saturday morning shows (mostly animated, but some live-action as well). There were often times when they recycled shots. For instance...

This is the most common shot of the series. How do I know? It generally shows up once during each episode, sometimes multiple times. Basically, most times when Kirk is talking to Spock on the bridge. 

The second-most common shot?

It's the same shot, with Bones added in. On occasion, someone else will be standing there instead of Bones, but generally, it's Bones. If the trio is chatting on the bridge, this pops up without fail. It was even used in an episode where Spock passes out, and they removed Spock from the extreme left and placed him along the bottom edge. 

The motto at Filmation seems to have been "quantity over quality," though there were definitely times when you can tell that they were trying harder to make better quality stuff. They rotoscoped some parts, which is an inexpensive way of getting decent animation quickly and easily. (Quick description of rotoscoping: tracing. No, I don't consider this to be cheating. Frankly, I don't consider tracing to be cheating ever, but no one needs to know my strong opinions on tracing. They got the job done quickly and cheaply, so I'm not gonna throw stones at it.)

Kirk and Spock's swimming scenes from "The Ambergris Element"
were rotoscoped from episodes of Aquaman, which was also made
by Filmation.

Something else Filmation was known for: long, panning sweeps across terrains or landscapes. There was no actual animation involved (just moving the camera over a static image), so it was inexpensive and killed some time. This absolutely happened in TAS. Often, shots of the Enterprise were used as a background while someone else gave a log recitation, or to just kill time between scenes. More than once, a scene on a planet surface would end, we would go to commercial, and return from break to a shot of the E... sometimes several long seconds of the E. Then we would go right back to the planet again. Sometimes we would get a tiny bit of animation, where the starburst patterns on the front of the engines would spin, but a lot of the time, it was just static shots of the ship.

The places where the animation would be redeemed were definitely the background and establishing shots. I was floored by the artistry of these shots, and often asked myself if I was watching the same show.

"The Ambergris Element"

"The Lorelei Signal"

"Once Upon a Planet"

"The Pirates of Orion"

"The Practical Joker"

"Yesteryear"

Whoever was doing the background and still shots on this show clearly had some skillz - the kind you pay bills with. This was not unusual for Filmation, who seems to have made a regular habit of pairing lovely backgrounds with crap movement. A lot of the credit for that was given to background department head Erv Kaplan, who worked as color director on TAS. (Another TAS alum, as layout artist, is Glen Keane. I'm sure the average reader doesn't care, but I had a squealy fangirl moment when I saw him listed under Mr Kaplan. For those less obsessed with animation than I am, Glen Keane is a lead animator for Disney, and probably animated your favorite Disney film characters.)

The difference between the animated and live shows

There were two things I wondered about going into this series: How would the stories change, and how would the visuals change?

In the first case (story), I wanted to know how a typical Star Trek story could be pared down from 60 minutes to 30. While there is such a thing as a 60-minute animated show, it's not a weekly thing. They generally exist as 30 minutes (weekly show), 60 minutes (holiday specials), and 90 minutes (theatrical release or made-for-tv movies). Why are they always 30 minutes for weekly shows? Because it takes months to produce a hand-drawn, animated show. Theatrical films like Disneys take four years, pre-planning through finish.

So you know that CBS and Filmation were not going to just take whatever completed scripts they had lying around and just animate the action instead. They were also concerned because in moving Star Trek from prime time to Saturday morning, they were banking on an audience of only children. This was not the case, as adult fans of Star Trek were continuing to watch, but now that it was considered to be more "family friendly" certain things were not going to fly.

They could not have Kirk bed every cute alien that came his way.

In the case of Kirk and his extraterrestrial affairs, this went out the window and stayed there, with the exception of one episode: "The Jihad." In the final episode of season one,  a human huntress named Lara suggests to Kirk that they hook up and "make some green memories." Despite her aggressive flirting, Kirk turns her down, and it's actually pretty tame compared to some other Trek fare.

In fact, the only other romantic moment I recall from this series is in the final episode of season two, when Robert April kisses his wife, and it's pretty chaste.

So TAS is TOS minus the overt sexuality.

Okay, what else?

Well, with half the run-time, we missed out on a lot of interpersonal relationship moments. I didn't realize how much I missed the Spock-Bones ribbing until it showed up again, fifteen episodes in, on "The Eye of the Beholder."

Also missed and rarely addressed: the relationships of the bridge crew. There were small moments in TOS where we got to see the others relating to one another without the help of the Golden Trio, and you know they genuinely cared for one another and worked well as a team. There really isn't much of it here, which is a shame, because I kind of liked Arax and I wanted to see how he might have formed friendships with the others. 

Surprisingly, the remainder of the stories stayed intact. They all struck me as very Star Trek, and the plots themselves did not seem to suffer from a lack in time in which to tell them. Some of the unused TOS scripts were even rewritten to fit within the construct of the animated series ("More Tribbles, More Troubles"). True to form, a few of these episodes were fantastic, some really just sucked, but most were okay.

"More Tribbles, More Troubles"

And how about them visuals?

We made out like bandits on the visuals. Because we essentially nixed being uncomfortably close to Kirk's love life, we also ditched most of the ridiculous outfits that the Girl du Jour wears. That's a bit of a mixed bag for me, because while I hated so many of those costumes, I did enjoy making fun of them. But in exchange, we got those gorgeous backgrounds that I was raving about earlier, plus our storytellers were allowed to pretty much write whatever the hell kind of story they wanted, based on the fact that drawing complicated alien cities (and the people that inhabit them) is quicker, easier and cheaper than building the sets and costumes. The Boldly Going was made all the more believable because none of the aliens needed to be humanoid. They didn't even need to breathe air.

Freed from the constraints of a live-action show, Star Trek lost no time in replacing the navigator with an alien with six appendages.

And adding another communications officer.

The very first episode  ("Beyond the Farthest Star") featured not only Arax and M'Ress, but also a ship that could not have been easily produced with models, and a non-humanoid alien.

And they just kept getting better...

"Albatross"

"The Infinite Vulcan"

"The Jihad"

"The Slaver Weapon"

And can we just talk about some of these Gojira-type monsters? Feels like Gene Rod was standing in the background saying, "Can we get bigger? Scarier? More teeth?"

"The Ambergris Element"

"Eye of the Beholder"

"Mudd's Passion"

Variations on this dragon-thing showed up in multiple episodes

"Once Upon a Planet"

"How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth"

"Yesteryear"

Let's take a look at some actual episodes...

Command Gold Star Awards

"Yesteryear"

Kirk and Spock discover that something has been changed in Spock's timeline, so he uses the Guardian of Forever to go back in time to fix it, posing as his own older cousin. When little Spock runs off in the wilderness to prove himself, his pet sehlat is fatally injured and he makes the tough decision to put him down. The network thought the outcome was too dark and wanted to change it to a happier ending, but Gene Rod put his foot down. He felt to alter it would cheapen the episode and insult the intelligence of the audience. He was right. The episode, though feelsy, is excellent because the ending was allowed to stand.

"The Slaver Weapon"

This is the second time that an episode of Star Trek has felt like a good science fiction story was translated into Star Trek terms (the first being a TOS season one flop, "The Alternative Factor"). The earlier episode felt as though the story existed by itself, and Trek characters had been slotted it. It also translated to a live-action show in the worst way possible. Here, the feeling of solid, non-Trek science fiction is the same, but a better job was done in making the two mesh. Writer Larry Niven had a series of stories with characters similar to Spock, Sulu, and Uhura, and simply altered things to make them fit. In the episode, our trio encounters a hostile race that takes them hostage, and a mysterious weapon with a mind of its own. Three of my favorite characters get to take center stage in an excellent story.

"The Ambergris Element"

This one was not quite as good as the previous two, and it did have some issues, but I like the fact that Star Trek decided to do an episode that featured an underwater environment. It lent itself nicely to several special effects lenses that have been used in other episodes with less success. It has a large monster, a sunken city, and some sketchy surgery that leads to Kirk and Spock living in a large water tank on the E. It ends with a bit of interplanetary politics and some iffy science, but there were more things that I liked about this episode than not.

"Are You High, Star Trek?"

The episodes that I hated the most in this series all seemed to surround stories too off the wall to work, or visuals that looked like bad acid trips.

"Bem"

Some a-hole alien is onboard the E, observing how Starfleet operates in action. He gets them kidnapped by hostile Prime Directive aliens, and is later revealed to be a "colony creature" or, lots of dudes stacked one on top of another, like Vincent Adultman from Bojack Horseman. From the start, I hated Bem. Not only is he a complete dick from the start, but them he breaks into different parts to pick-pocket Kirk and Spock, setting them up to fail in the freakiest way ever. I wanted to punch Bem the whole time. Even at the end, when he suggested that he commit his people's version of suicide.

"The Infinite Vulcan"

I really tried to like this one. I really did. It's written by our beloved Chekov, and it starts out pretty good. But it was plagued by constant rewrites, and Gene Rod bugging Walter Koenig to include things that he wanted. What we ended up with was two stories stitched oddly together.

The E ends up on a planet inhabited by plant people. They have mostly died out due to plague, but were rescued by some human dude who turns out to be one of those meglo-maniacal assholes from Khan's sleeper ship. He intends to use the plant people as his army, and will wage war over the galaxy. But first he kidnaps Spock and makes a giant copy to use as some kind of general or some shit. This episode was a mess. I look forward to getting Chekov back and never having to watch "The Infinite Vulcan" again.

"The Magicks of Megas-Tu"

This is my least favorite episode of this series. They wanted to do a story about the E meeting God, which had been pitched to TOS and nixed by the network, so they tried it again for TAS. Also nixed. But the network said they could meet the Devil. And thus did this episode become "the one where they meet the Devil." So why do I hate this episode? It's ridiculous, start to finish. The E encounters some hole in space or something, which is then followed by several minutes of visual vomit that probably are really cool when viewed on mushrooms. The crew meets the Devil. Then it turns out that his people are aliens who went to Earth a long time ago, and were then put on trial in Salem for witchcraft. The E crew is then put on trial as well. The whole thing is just awful.

So what's the bottomest of the Bottom Lines?

Again, when I mention this show to people, they either don't remember it, or think it's awful and don't bother to watch the whole thing. It could for one of many reasons, or it could be all of them. Its differences to TOS and its descendants may point to the reason why no one watches this series:

- It was relegated to Saturday mornings, so unless you were a fan of the original, were a kid at the time, or made the time to tune in then, you probably didn't see it.

- The animation sucks. Like, a lot. Trust me, I do not watch shitty animation, and if your show boasts a low cell count, I will turn it off. So I understand that complaint.

- The animated series was denounced as canon at the end of season one TNG, despite the fact that some of that TAS canon was cherry-picked to keep. However, in 2006 it was reinstated as canon. The idea doesn't seem to have taken right away, but things mentioned in TAS started showing up in Voyager and Enterprise, and it is considered canon by Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki.

"Soooo, should I watch this, or what?"

YES!

Despite the shitty animation quality, the stories are just shorter Star Trek faire, often with the same kinds of themes and campiness. Guest stars from TOS episodes pop up from time to time, including Mark Lenard as Sarek and Roger Carmel as Harcourt Fenton Mudd, There are some irksome things (why does Spock become the Magic Vulcan?), but it retains most of the charm of the original series,  is good for a few laughs here and there, and includes some scenarios that would not have been possible on TOS.

If you want to skip the crap and just view the best of the animated series, check out "The Slaver Weapon" and "Yesteryear," as those seem to get the best reviews across the board. Everything else gets mixed reviews at best, and be sure to check out my votes for worst if you're in the mood to scream "WTF, Star Trek?" at your viewscreen.

Next week we start films, so grab your popcorn, because that shit is a roller coaster.

*******

So a few weeks ago when I bought that first Teas' Tea, I bought another flavor, the green tea. I was excited. I love green tea. Much like "The Infinite Vulcan," I wanted to like this tea. I really did. But it was not good. Being that it was unsweetened, I added sugar. That did not help.

"Oh, that's my favorite tea," said Roomie cheerfully.

"It's gross," I reported.

"I'll take the rest," she volunteered.

She took a pull... then she pulled a face. "That doesn't taste right. Maybe it's a bad bottle."

Bottle looked fine. She drank the rest and did not get sick, so we guessed it had not gone bad.

This week I bought another bottle from a different store entirely.

I took a sip. "Same. Not good."

"Bad batch?" suggested Roomie. "New recipe?"

"Possibly," I replied. "Either/or. Do I keep buying bottles at different stores, hoping that someday it'll taste better?"

"Dunno," said Roomie.

So, I don't recommend this week's tea. Maybe it is just a bad batch and I'll get a good bottle later. I really don't have a good answer.

http://www.teastea.com/

Uhura and Bratty

ST:TAS Season One, Episode Seven: The Infinite Vulcan

"The Infinite Vulcan"
Air Order: 7
Star Date: 5554.4
Original Air Date: October 20, 1973

Roomie found this short article the other day about how scientists are using 3D printing machines and techniques to make food (for the most part, it's chocolate, because chocolate is easy). She was kind of excited because, hooray! food replicators! Now, I hate cooking a lot, and anything that makes food prep easier than even the humble microwave sounds good to me. But remember, this is what TOS says "food" is in the replicator-fueled future:

Can we just skip straight to TNG-replicated food? Because that's food that isn't colored cubes and mutant celery. kthnx.

(Just in case you want to read that little article: https://creator-space.basf.com/content/basf/creatorspace/en/blog/2015/03/3d-printed_food.html#WT.mc_id=US200000139 )

*******

Kirk's Log 5554.4: "Kickin' it at the edge of explored space again, and Starfleet wants us to check out this new planet."

So our intrepid trio beams down to the surface with Sulu. They start scanning, and Sulu immediately comes across this thing that is essentially a plant-based tribble with root-legs. When he moves away, it gets up and follows him, re-rooting in a new place next to him.

Spock says that they are being scanned by one of the buildings nearby, and the trio moves off toward the building, leaving Sulu behind. He's left to ponder how Kirk, Spock and Bones are probably some kind of away-team clique, and he wasn't invited to go with the cool kids. Sulu foolishly decides to pick up the tribble plant, but promptly drops it, figuring it had thorns or something.

The boys are in the building checking out some computerized equipment when they hear Sulu yell outside. They find him unconscious on the grass.

A quick scan reveals that he's got some unknown toxin in his system. Bones gives him a hypo-spray of something, but it won't work quickly enough, if it works at all. Sulu has about a minute to live.

Well, that escalated quickly. Three and a half minutes in, and Sulu is dying.

And now, to the rescue, come a bunch of talking people-sized plants.

"Welcome to Phylos. I'm Agmar," says the head plant. "I can cure your friend." And he produces a drop of some liquid from the end of one of his finger-things.

Bones sort of loses his shit here. "No way you're injecting him with some kind of... of... dewdrop!"

I don't know what the hell Bones' problem is, because if my friend was dying in a very short period of time, and some stranger came upon the scene, announcing that he could save my friend, I'd let him take a stab at it. To fully grasp the oddness of Bones' anger here, you have to imagine him yelling the word dewdrop with all of the fervor and rage of Samuel L Jackson screaming motherfucker. What does he have against someone helping his friend? What does he have against dewdrops?

You're a weirdo, Bones. On a planet full of talking plants, you're the biggest weirdo here.

"Bones," says Kirk. "Don't be a douche. Let them help Sulu."

So he steps back and Agmar gives Sulu the dreaded dewdrop, and Sulu is groggily sitting up within moments. Suddenly, Bones is full of praise for these people who have better tech than he does.

"We've been watching you," says Agmar. "We're a peaceful people, but we're afraid of strangers. Your friend was bitten by the retlaw plant. We knew the antidote would work on him because we have had other humanoids here before."

Kirk asks where the rest of Agmar's people are, and the plant-dudes lead them back into the building, and into a hall where some giant Phylosian husks are lining the walls. Agmar says that this is the previous generation of people, but a humanoid showed up and brought some disease with him. It killed off a bunch of the people, but the human dude was determined to find a cure.

Once again escalating quickly, the air in the air is suddenly filled with like, dragons or something. Dragons with tentacles instead of legs. A quick scan reveals that these are also plant-based, then the dragon-things grab the away team. The Phylosians don't seem all that fussed. Then Kirk notices that once the dragons have grabbed Spock and flown away, they drop the rest of the away team and vacate the hall.

"The hell?" he demands. "Did you guys just kidnap my first officer?"

"So... yeah, sorry about that," says Agmar. "We've been searching all over for the perfect specimen for the Master's plan, and Spock fits the bill, sooooo..... yeah."

A door opens at the end of the hall, and a giant walks in. All of the plant guys genuflect and murmur about him being "the Master."

Just so you guys are keeping up, we're seven minutes in, and already, Sulu has almost died, we've met talking plants, the away team was attacked by dragons, Spock was kidnapped, and now the away team is being stared down by a giant called "the Master." Shit escalates every minute and a half or so.

"I'm Stavos Keniclius 5," says the giant. "I'm keeping Spock. Now get the fuck off my planet before I squish you between my toes."

And he tries to set the dragon things on the remaining away team again. Kirk opens his comm and reluctantly calls for a beam-up.

Kirk's Log 5554.8: "Recap for everyone who was in the bathroom for the last ten minutes."

Oh hey, look. It's Spock, sitting at the science station. Okay, never mind. Problem solved. We can all go home now.

Kirk's crew has not been able to find any info on the giant human Keniclius. Sulu also can't find him or Spock on the surface. They surmise that there are shields in place to keep that information away from the E crew. Sulu attempts to use phasers on the building with the computer, but it is shielded. They will have to go down and rescue Spock in person. Kirk calls Scotty, and they briefly discuss the progress being made on some super-secret weapon that Scotty is making. Bones enters the bridge to talk about his great-granddaddy's garden, and how he has "something cooking" in sick bay.

Uhura says she has found something on Keniclius in the history tapes and puts it on the viewscreen. Keniclius was a scientist during the Eugenics War. (Oh, yay. You remember the Eugenics War, right?)

So Keniclius proposed that humanity start a Master Race with clones of perfect specimens, which made him unpopular, and he disappeared. There is no record of his death or where he went. Bones says he's heard of a myth of a modern Diogenes who searches the galaxy for "someone special." Kirk says he's also heard of that.

"Um, can't be the same dude, cuz he'd be like, 250 years old," points out Bones.

"Yeah, but he was all into cloning," reasons Kirk. "And he did introduce himself as Keniculus 5. Maybe he's a clone."

So remember before when Kirk put very few puzzle pieces together without knowing what the picture looked like, and was correctly able to solve the mystery, and I bitched about it because Kirk should not be able to just randomly throw the solution together that quickly? This episode illustrates how to allow one's characters to arrive at a conclusion the natural way. The information was given (just enough but not all of it) so that Kirk, with the help of his friend Bones, could connect the dots. And none of this is taking place with five minutes left in the episode, so the revelation doesn't feel forced or hurried.

(Also, that last Kirk dialogue wasn't a typo. While the rest of the cast is pronouncing it correctly (Ken-ick-LEE-us), The Shat keeps saying Ken-ick-You-lus. Hey, Bill - say "nuclear" for me. Go on.)

The rest of the original away team gathers in the transporter room with Scotty. He gives them the super-secret weapon thing that he's been working on and prepares to beam then down. Kirk tells him to take the ship and get the hell out of Dodge. He agrees reluctantly.

"Sorry, but it's necessary," says Kirk. "If they think we left, they won't scan for us on the surface, and we can pull out some ninja rescue moves."

Our boys beam down again, and determine that they haven't been detected. More dragon things fly overhead. They decide to go into another building nearby, and find two long rows of space ships, covered in plant growth.

(Sooo, I'm curious. If the Phylosians are the higher life-form here, is moss like apes, or something?)

A few Phylosians are clearing ivy from the ships, and the boys try to determine if they were actually the peace-loving people they said they were.

"Maybe they had something planned, but were unable to complete it because of that disease that Keniculus brought to the planet," reasons Kirk.

They sneak outside and manage to kidnap Agmar, bringing him back into the hangar and demanding an explanation.

"Yeah, you guessed right," sighs Agmar. "Spock is the right blend of human and Vulcan qualities that the Master was looking for. And we did have some grand plans that came to a halt when the rest of us died out. But we're the last generation. We can't reproduce. I know you're worried about Spock, so I'll take you to him."

"That was kind of too easy," mutters Sulu.

"Yeah," Kirk says quietly. "Keep our secret weapon at the ready."

Agmar takes them to a lift platform, which drops them down into some tunnels. A quick scan from Sulu reveals that the tunnels are heavily fortified, which is why they weren't picking up life signs of Spock or Keniclius. They're gliding along on that same lift pad when the lights in the tunnel go out, and some unnecessary drama is added in the form of those plant-dragons. So our boys end up running through the dark, trying to avoid being dragged away, and heading for the light at the end. Of course, none of the dragons swoops for them.

In the room at the end of the tunnel, they find Spock lying on a bed-machine thing. A scan reveals that his brain activity is slowing down, and he'll be dead soon.

"You're too late!" bellows Keniclius. (Seriously, who wrote that contrived bit of dialogue?) "Soon, he will be gone, and in his place, Spock 2!"

And the giant gestures to another giant, who is indeed, Spock.

Okay, can somebody please tell me why clones are huge? Is Keniclius altering the genes of the original person to make the close that big? Is it some weird unintentional part of his cloning process? I'm really not getting why he's cloning giants. Also, given that he and Spock 2 are the same size, it is clearly not a case of "they just get bigger with each successive generation."

Anyway, our boys gasp because "ermagerd, giant Spock!" Then we get some dramatic music and a commercial break.

When we come back, the away team quickly slaps on some breathing masks (they put one on Spock.1 as well) and they get out some sprayers. Because of the shields, their weapons don't work on this planet. So they elected to spray the fuck out of everything with Round-Up. The dragons start dropping out of the sky, and the giants make a run for it.

When the spray clears, the giants are gone and the dragons aren't moving. Bones reveals that the spray was his great-granddaddy's weed killer. That's what he was cooking in sick bay: insecticide. Sounds safe, Bones. Good job mixing that up around the patients.

Kirk tries to call the E, to no avail. Why does he think that would work? Nothing else he has on him has worked so far.

The Keniclius giant comes back and says that Spock.1 is being sacrificed to bring about Spock.2. Basically, dude uploaded all of Spock's brain into the clone.

"That's such bullshit," says Kirk. 

They take Spock's body and try to leave, but giant cloned Spock is standing in their way. He kind of cocks his head at them in confusion when Kirk tries to order him to move.

"I don't think he's finished uploading," says Bones.

Upstairs, Uhura reports that none of her hails are getting through to the surface. Scotty orders that all power except environmentals should be routed to communications so they can reach the away team.

"Um, that'll drain our power," Uhura tells him.

"I know," he admits. "But we have to talk to them."

Back on the surface, Kirk is asking the giant Spock clone why he thinks it's logical for Spock.1 to die so that the clone might exist. He points out that Vulcans do not condone meaningless death, and it's pretty meaningless that Spock might die so that a giant version of himself could live. Keniclius laughs and says that Spock.2 is not just a giant clone, that he is the first in a long line of the Master race.

Kirk's comm chirps, and he decides that Spock.2 should answer. Now fully conscious, the clone answers the hail.

"I have more info on Keniclius," Uhura says through the comm. "His later papers talk about cloning a master race of people to be used as intergalactic peacekeepers."

Then she has to hang up, because the dilithium crystals are damn near depleted.

"Hey, wait," says Kirk. "We've had peace in this galaxy for more than one hundred years. Do you think we're still at war?"

"Of course we are!" says Keniclius. "A race of giant Spocks will bring about and enforce peace for everyone."

"Um, no," says Bones. "You've been out of touch, cloning yourself for two hundred years or more, passing down the same outdated information. We're at peace."

"And why are you guys going along with this?" Kirk asks Agmar. "You guys keep calling him Master."

"Well, yeah," replies Agmar. "Before we were mostly wiped out, that was our big plan: to use our space fleet to enforce peace in the galaxy. But then Keniclius came, and our people started dying, and we couldn't finish the project. Luckily, he had the same plan."

"Dude, nobody has to force peace on anyone," says Kirk. "We already have it, and it was agreed upon. Let's be done with this crap."

"Screw you," replies Keniclius.

Kirk appeals to Spock.2: "Dude, you have Spock's mind. You know about the Vulcan philosophy of the IDIC, right?"

"Yeah, infinite diversities in infinite combinations," the clone answers. "It symbolizes the elements that create truth and beauty."

"Can an army of giant Spock clones enforce peace on the galaxy that gels with the IDIC philosophy?" asks Kirk.

"Nope," says Spock.2.

"This is crap!" yells Agmar. "We have to be able to assert peace!"

He tries to attack Sulu and fails. Keniclius swings his giant pimp cane, destroying the bed-machine.

"You killed Spock!" Kirk howls.

"You bastards!" adds Bones.

"Chillax," says Spock.2, literally stopping Kirk's charge forward with his hand. "This is an easier fix than you think it is."

And he uses his big-ass fingers to mind-meld with Spock.1. This should really not be possible, as it's been demonstrated multiple times that one must place one's fingers in a specific configuration on the participant's face in order to achieve a lock between the minds. Giant clone Spock's fingers are just too big. This show just keeps messing with the mind-meld, attempting to have it fix things that it should not be able to fix. Like Spock melding with a freaking space cloud. 

So here's how this goes down: Keniclius set it in motion that he should make a giant clone of Spock, then somehow (it's never explained) uploads Spock's brain into the giant Spock. So Classic Spock is dying because his brain has essentially been transferred to New Spock. Like his brain is a glass of water that was poured into a different glass. Now New Spock is transferring the consciousness back into Classic Spock, only somehow, the full volume of the water is in both glasses.

Classic Spock gets up, right as rain.

"It's all good," clone Spock tells Kirk. "Nobody is starting an army of giant Spocks."

Keniclius objects, because he's been working very hard for the past two hundred years, and now he's out of the job. Has actually been out of the job for the last hundred or so.

"No, we're still good," says Spock.1. "I say we leave Spock.2 here to work with you, and together, you guys can figure out how to bring back the Phylosian race."

"Oh, that's good, actually," says Keniclius. "I like that."

Giant Spock agrees, and Kirk says he'll report back to the Federation that Keniclius is working to restore the plant race from certain space buffalo status.

"Hey," says Kirk to Sulu. "That move you used to deflect Agmar was pretty freaking awesome. Teach it to me?"

"I dunno if I can," says Sulu. "You have to be kind of inscrutable to do it."

"Inscrutable?" asks Kirk. "You're the most scrutable man I know!"

And Sulu winks to let us know that that crappy bit of dialogue was the closing joke.

Man, this episode is all over the place. It feels like multiple episodes squished into one. So we have our throwback to Khan and the Eugenics War with Keniclius, a guy who wants a master race of peacekeepers. This part is fine. But then they teamed him up with a race of talking plants, and that's where the story falls apart. Instead of matching Keniclius with the Phylosians, they should have put Keniclius on his own class M planet with a handful of giant clones, maybe harvested from other races across the galaxy. make him a sort of anti-Khan, in that he wants to use eugenics for good rather than evil. Then show how messing with eugenics always seems to go sideways either way, by pointing out that peace forced on people never works as well as peace that is agreed to.

The Phylosians need their own story, rather than one wrapped up with Keniclius. Keep their big plans, but make it not about enforcing peace. Maybe their planet is dying, and they needed to evacuate? Go ahead and keep them being mostly wiped out by disease. That works just fine. Now they have even more reason to leave, but maybe they need the E's help to do so?

Also, while I'm thinking about it, did anyone else notice the weird thing about the husks of the dead Phylosians? They're giants. Clones. It's never mentioned in the episode at all, which makes me think that part of the script included an explanation, which was then scrapped. My guess? The "disease" that Agmar talked about, which killed most of his people, was actually the cloning process. He attempted to clone the Phylosians, killing the originals in the process, and then the clones ended up dying. Maybe they weren't good cloning stock. Maybe the process works best on humans or part-humans. This was why he selected Spock. Agmar admitted that the disease killed most of his people when he was very young. It's possible that Keniclius tried his cloning process on the Phylosians, that something went wrong, that he claimed that it was a disease, and that he was working on a cure. This would paint him as the good guy in the eyes (or whatever they have) of the remaining Phylosians. Then they'd go along with his plans.

I dunno.

Just a fan theory, I guess.

Either way, this episode is weird. I'd rate it like a 6 out of 10. Not the worst thing ever, but you could easily make two eights out of the episode if you split it between the two ideas rather than attempt to mash them into one.

Some (sort of) fun facts about this episode:

"The Infinite Vulcan" was written by Walter Koenig. He was offered the chance to write more scripts for TAS, but was pissed off about not being included as a cast member, so he wrote this one episode and no other. What's more, it doesn't sound like it was fun at all. Walter had to do a bunch of re-writes because Gene Rod really, really wanted an episode that featured plant people, something that they couldn't do in the live-action show. Koenig wasn't feeling the plant-people, but went along with it anyway. The retlaw plat was named after Koenig. It's Walter spelled backward.

*******

So Roomie and I have a picnic coming up, and I made my way to the grocery store buy ingredients for my famous brownies.

Roomie called. "Hey, are you near the store across town that sells that fancy sauce?"

"Not even a little."

"Okay, wait, I'm online. There's another store nearby that sells the fancy sauce. It's Hella Pricey Organic Store, ten minutes away from Moderately-Priced Store where you are now."

So I picked out a tea at Moderately-Priced, bought my brownie supplies, and headed over to Hella Pricey. 

You know how it's hot right now? Like hotter than the core of the sun? I'm pretty lazy when it comes to preparing food, and there was no way that I wanted to go home and brew a bunch of tea. If I had to trek to Hella Pricey for sauce, then I was gonna buy something that I could drink now.

I spotted a bottle of Hubert's Half&Half Lemonade Tea in Peach.

"These are all things that I enjoy," I thought, dragging my tea and sauce to the check-out.

So here's the thing I found out while driving home: Hubert's is known for making lemonade. It's pretty good lemonade, but their Half&Half (just another word for an Arnold Palmer) tastes like lemonade rather than half tea. I didn't actually taste any peach, either.

So, yeah. Tastes like good lemonade, tastes nothing like peach or tea.

Roomie and Rumor bought a lizard. Bratty and Uhura are fairly
certain that it's a snack.