ST:TAS Season One, Episode One: Beyond the Farthest Star

"Beyond the Farthest Star"
Air Order: 1
Star Date:
Original Air Date: September 8, 1973

And now, a one-act play about how we got an animated series...

(Setting: 1973, four years or so after the end of the Star Trek original series. Characters: Gene Roddenberry, the cast of the Star Trek series, NBC executives, and Star Trek writers. Everyone is seated around a conference table.)
Executives: So your fans still write to us about that show.
Gene Rod: They're cool people.
Executive: Yeah, we were thinking of starting your show back up...
Gene: Sweet!
Executive: ... but it was really expensive.
Gene: Ex-squeeze me? We made that show for pennies!
Executive: How about we do a cartoon?
Gene: Sorry? That's weird. ...Well, maybe we could show some other stuff, because it's animated...                we could do more alien aliens and show some things that we couldn't because the cost of                      filming it was prohibitive...
Executives: We were thinking, because it'll be a cartoon, that we could hook up the characters with                apprentice kids! Like, each character would have a kid that they would mentor! What do you              think of Lil' Spock?
Gene: ...
Gene: ...
Gene: Kindly consume a container of cocks.
Executive: Fine, be that way. We'll take our awesome idea and make a kids in space live-action show.            We're gonna call it Space Academy.
Gene: You do that.
Executives: Okay, so we're gonna bring on The Shat and Leonard and Majel and Jimmy and DeForest            to do the voices, but screw Nichelle and George, because we don't need them.
Leonard Nimoy: Go fuck yourselves. Nichelle and George are important. They lend diversity to our              white-ass cast. Either they come onboard, or I'm gone.
Executives: Leonard, be reasonable. We can have Jimmy and Majel voice their parts as well. We                    don't need to pay more people.
Leonard: Then Jimmy can do my part, too. Scottish Vulcan - sounds legit.
Executives: No, we're not paying more people. This show will already have like, no budget.
Leonard: Imagine the shitstorm of angry nerd mail, raining down on the studio offices again... No                 Uhura, Sulu or Spock...
Executives: Fine, fine. Bring 'em in. (to each other) Let's tell everyone that this was our idea, okay?               People love diversity.
DC Fontana: (to other writers) Let's make sure that history knows that these douchewaffles wouldn't             bring on Nichelle or George until Leonard threatened to quit.
Writers: Agreed.
Executives: Are you sure you won't do the kid show, Gene?
Gene: Yes. We'll do it like always. Same kinds of storytelling, same morals. We're not making                     anything different simply because you want to show it on Saturday morning.
Executives: If you want, we'll buy you out. A crap-ton of money in your pockets, Gene, and all you               have to do is sign over the rights so we can make Our Gang in Space.
Gene: ...
Gene: ...
Gene: ... your mouths are moving, but all I'm hearing is a request for rooster sauce to go on the meal            of man-meat that I offered earlier.

So there it is, friends: Leonard threatened to quit if Nichelle and George were not able to voice their own characters. NBC executives offered Gene Rod a bag full of cash to walk away and let them make a cartoon about the crew of the E hosting little kids. Sadly, there really was no budget to bring on Walter Koenig, so Chekov mysteriously disappeared from the bridge. Worry not, we will see him later! Jimmy and Majel did end up doing a lot of extra voice work, and Nichelle did a few extra characters as well.

I was asked where one might follow along and watch these episodes, and they appear to be on Netflix, Hulu, some episodes (not all) on www.tv.com,  Amazon Prime, and IMDb. In all, a surprising number of places given that there were only 22 episodes made.

*******

So the first noticeable difference between our two shows is that we skip the teaser that typically comes before the credits, and just go straight into our theme. The theme music is the second difference: it's still very sixties-seventies, but it's less exciting. The same: Kirk's intro about boldly going, and shots of the E racing through space. Some of this stuff was even rotoscoped, which is cool. (For those of you not in the know, rotoscoping is an animation technique when footage of live-action film is traced by animators to produce an animated version of live film. My new favorite rotoscoped thing is this Taylor Swift video, which was rotoscoped by first-year animation students.)

Kirk's Log 5221.3: "We picked up some weird radio emissions, and Starfleet wants us to chart the stars in that sector, so away we go!"

When we get to the bridge, red alert is blaring. Scotty reports that they've picked up speed for no reason, so I guess it's just implied that they're being sucked into something? I dunno. I've watched this scene a few times and can't find where they say why they've gone from star-charting to red alert. After the establishing shot of the bridge, we get this one shown from the helm:

So I can't really tell if Sulu looks like Georgie from this shot, or if he just looks vaguely Japanese. When he looks up, it's a better likeness, so we're good. And who is that in Chekov's chair? That's Arax, an Edosian, and dude most definitely has an arm growing out of his chest. He's also got three legs, and I'll go ahead and wait for you to come up with every tripod joke you've ever heard and repeated. 

Actually, email those to me if they're any good.

This is the new Kirk. It does not look like him. It looks like the lovechild of The Shat and a giant sentient beaver. 

Good job on Spock, though. He looks like Nimoy.

Uhura looks close enough to Nichelle Nichols that I'm not going to complain. They made her hair about twice as big, though.

I'm sorry, but on what planet does that look like Jimmy Doohan?

Okay, back to our story: after some scans and stuff, they determine that they're being pulled into a cold star or something, and they have ninety seconds until impact. Uhura reports that the radio emissions that they've been catching are coming from that star. Spock begins counting down the seconds from forty until they hit the surface and disintegrate. Kirk orders Sulu to somehow figure out a way to break the pull while simultaneously bringing the ship into orbit. Spock is now counting down from nine. He gets to four, and Sulu just miraculously puts them into orbit.

Are... you shitting me, Star Trek? I mean, I know you were attempting to build some tension in the first part of your show, but that was seriously the most anti-climatic thing I've ever seen you do.

Who turned out the stars?

Bones magically appears next to Kirk's chair on the bridge without taking the lift. He wants to know how they're gonna get out of orbit, if the pull of gravity is so strong that it pulled them to the dead star. Kirk suggests to Sulu that they do that slingshot maneuver that everyone at every time has always known is bullshit.

The only way this is gonna look like De Kelley is if I drink a whole
bottle of Saurian brandy, then tilt my head and squint.

"I need time to calculate how to do that impossible, improbable thing," says Spock.

Settle in, he's gonna be there for the rest of his life trying to figure it out.

Uhura reports that she's getting that radio emission again, and says that it's actually coming from something other than that dead star.

They turn on the viewscreen, and an alien ship appears, floating in space. This, friends, is why this show works as an animated program. Sure, we can do cool things with CGI these days, but that didn't exist in the same form back then, and this ship would not have been possible in the late sixties. Imagine what the planet killer might have looked like. More terrifying and less... windsock-y.

Uhura says the ship is most definitely broadcasting that signal, but Spock is baffled as to how. He says it's been dead, and there's no life aboard, and nothing works well enough to send any kind of signal. His scans says the ship has been in orbit more than 300 million years.

"They were exploring the stars before life existed on Earth!" exclaims Kirk.

No, Kirk. Life has existed on Earth for 3.7 billion years. Stop trying to science. It's not your strong suit. 

Poll: does Kirk look more like a monkey, or a lemur here?
Also, when did Bones find the time to grow a soul patch?

Kirk decides to board the ship with Bones, Spock and Scotty. Again, Spock and Scotty make sense: we're talking about science and maybe engineering. But Kirk and Bones are not needed here. Kirk is that guy who always takes his friends along for the fun shit, even when someone else is better suited to go.

He orders life belts for the away team, which is something that was invented specifically for the animated series. Remember the ridiculously fabulous suits they wore on "The Tholian Web"? They proved too complicated to animate.

It was far easier to paint white belts and yellow auras on them to indicate life support in an airless environment. Here's the kicker: once they returned to live-action filming, they ditched the life belts, as it proved too complicated to add that yellow aura to every shot in post-production. So the life belts remain an animated-only feature.

Our boys beam down and start taking a look around. Spock says that the design of the ship reminds him of bees and insects, and Scotty notes that they metal used to construct the ship wasn't pounded flat or layered, but spun into filaments and woven. They're pretty stoked about this away mission. Bones notices that every pod has been burst out of from the inside. Spock thinks that the crew destroyed the ship themselves.

Mildly dramatic music...

Commercial break...

Kirk's Log: "Found some alien ship. Recording everything for posterity."

Kirk calls Uhura and asks her if the ship is still transmitting, but she says it stopped when they beamed over. Kirk asks her to beam them someplace else on the ship, which she does. more scans confirm that the ship is designed to draw energy from other things and store it.

"This place is creepy," says Bones.

"Feels like we're being watched," Scotty adds.

"Superstitious crap," answers Spock. "You only feel like that because you're primitive beings in the presence of something smarter."

"Bitch, who you calling primitive?" demands Kirk. "Next to these beings, you're a Neanderthal, too."

They go into some kind of control room, and several things happen at once: the door snaps shut behind them. The equipment turns on. Their life belts, phasers, and communicators cease working. And the air and gravity of the room matches what they are used to.

They find some kind of control panel, but surmise that it's different because the crew slapped it together or altered it in an emergency. Once turned on, every shot begins flashing red, blue and yellow - I guess this is red alert for this ship? (A quick note here: if you get epileptic seizures, maybe don't watch this episode. This scene overlays that flashing for several minutes.) Something is trying to get in through the door in which they came, but an energy field is preventing that from happening. When the viewscreen on the machine clears up, they can see that it's some kind of insect-being. Kirk thinks it might be a captain's log. They don't understand the language, so Spock fiddles with the controls.

Bones yells at Spock to hurry the hell up. Spock barks back at Bones to back the fuck off.

When he finally gets the message cleared, insect-dude says that his ship was drawn into the dead star, and that something (the thing at the door) wants a thing on his ship. Rather than carry the thing into other star systems, the crew elected to destroy their own ship. Insect-dude ends on a dickish note, saying that if someone is getting this message, that they are only protected in that room for the time being. Soooo, you lured another ship here with your broadcast, then you sealed them in the control room, then you told them that they were in danger, and were only safe in said control room. You couldn't have broadcast that out into space? "Hey, future ships that may come by here. Don't get sucked into this dead star like we did. There's an evil thing that wants some other thing, and it's dangerous, so you should stay away."

Maybe the episode wouldn't be as exciting, but the insect-dude would have saved way more lives like that.

Oh, who the hell am I kidding? It's fucking Kirk. Here's how that shit would have gone down:

Uhura: "I'm getting a subspace radio message, sir. It says there's a dead star up ahead that we should avoid so we don't get sucked into. Also, there's some evil thing there. The message says to pretty much give the area a wide berth."

Kirk: "Let's go check it out!"

Spock: "That sounds like a bad time, captain."

Kirk: "The hell with you, Spock. Boldly going, remember?"

I feel like half the time, these episodes are about Kirk engaging in some bear-poking.

This cartoon is the truest thing I've ever seen concerning Star Trek:

So the message ends, and the things manages to break into the control room, only we don't see what it is, because explosions go off everywhere, and Kirk calls for a beam-out.

Remember Kyle, the British crewman that magically seems to serve all positions on this ship, whether science, Ops, or command? He's running the transporter, and he seems to have grown a comical handlebar mustache. He's also voiced by Jimmy Doohan, whose British accent is all over the place, and nowhere near to the one original actor John Winston uses.

So Kyle beams them aboard, then shouts that something else beamed up with them. They see a green glowy thing on one of the pads.

"Beam it off!" yells Kirk, who then leaps from his own pad to try to beam it away himself.

Kirk: when the chips are down, he doesn't trust his own fucking crew to do their jobs. You know what happens? That green glowy thing encompasses the away team, Kirk included, so when he touches the transporter controls, he transfers that glowy thing into the equipment. Good job, you dipshit. The glowy thing then laughs.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Up on the bridge, Kirk asks for stats. Everyone is fine, everything is fine, very little change in how the ship runs. Scotty points out that insect-dude said they had to destroy their own ship, so Kirk tells him to prep the ship for self-destruct, just in case.

Then shit gets real. Uhura says that decks five and six are reporting that life support is down and they can't use manual override, so everyone is walking around in life belts. Red alert goes up, even though Kirk didn't call for it. Spock says that engineering is reporting trouble. He and Kirk go down to engineering after calling Bones. 

They all meet up there to find that Scotty is trapped in a core hatch with the lid partially closed on him. The only thing keeping it from crushing him is the life belt that he's wearing.

Um, why is he still wearing a life belt? And in engineering, which is not near decks five and six? Also, I thought the life belt provided atmosphere - does it also prevent very heavy things from crushing you? It's a bit coincidental that Scotty would be wearing that thing and have it on, even though he technically doesn't need it here.

The mechanism is jammed, so they cut him out. Just when Scotty climbs out, Sulu calls over the comm to say that something has taken over the phaser banks and is firing on the alien ship. Kirk turns on some little viewscreen in engineering, and sees the phasers destroy the other ship. In the next shot, Kirk and Spock are magically on the bridge, despite the fact that we never see them leave engineering. I think I'm most thrown off by this abrupt scene change because the dramatic music that started in engineering continues all the way through - there wasn't a break of any kind to indicate that a bit of time has elapsed, which has to happen in order for Kirk and Spock to move from the very bottom of the ship to the top. So in one instant, Kirk goes from watching a viewscreen in engineering to talking to Sulu on the bridge. You don't get to skip dealing with continuity just because you switched mediums, Star Trek.

So the whole ship is breaking down. Power outages reported everywhere, and cargo decks are losing life support with no way to override. Bones and Scotty hustle out of the lift to report more outages. Uhura reports that the thing is going through their computer storage banks looking for information.

Kirk asks Spock if they can make a low-frequency field around the nav console, like the one on the alien ship.
"Can do," says Spock.
So he sets it up, and Bones asks if it's going to do any good, seeing as how the aliens had to destroy their own ship in order to get rid of the thing. In the time he took to install the thing, the bridge crew has put on life belts.
"I've magically guessed that this thing was pulled into the dead star and needs a ship with a crew to escape it," says Kirk.
There's some studded metal ball on the ceiling that Kirk referred to as bridge protection earlier, and now the glowy green pulsating light comes from it and says, "You are correct, James T Kirk. get rid of the static shield on the nav console."
"Fuck you," says Kirk. "Turn life support back on, and we'll talk."
The thing shots a green laser from the studded ball, and Kirk falls back.
"That's my boyfriend!" yells Spock, and the green laser shoots him down.

"I'll do it!" yells Kirk. "Leggo of Spock!"
So the thing stops shooting at Spock, and Kirk approaches the nav console, but he takes of his life belt, dropping it on the console and hitting a button. There's a crackling, and both the life belt aura and a green aura appear around the console. the thing seems satisfied, and Kirk tells Scotty, on the thing's orders, to repair the warp drive.
Spock goes back to his science station and tells Kirk that the thing is a magnetic entity, that it doesn't have mass, but that it can join symbiotically to something like a ship. So basically, the thing is now the ship, and they're just kind of going along for the ride, like "white corpuscles in a body." Also, the thing is getting stronger.
"Hey," whispers Kirk. "Can you do the stupid slingshot calculations without the computer? Like, in your head? So the thing won't see what we're doing?"
"Yeah, but I gotta work with Scotty," Spock replies.
"Hey, thing," says Kirk to the studded ball. "My first officer has to work with my engineer to fix the ship. Cool?"

 The thing doesn't answer, so Spock and Scotty work together at a console, where they set up manual auxiliary control. They're done after a few minutes, and the thing gives them coordinates to steer to. Okay: Spock is working on those dumb slingshot calculations in order to get them out of orbit, but he's doing it on the sly so the thing doesn't know. But these calculations will get the thing what it wants, which is what the crew of the E wants, which is to GTFO. Why are they keeping this a secret? They technically have the same immediate goal, which is to leave. BUT the insect-dude said they destroyed their ship in order to make sure the thing didn't leave the pull of the dead star, which means that the E should probably not leave with it, either.
So they turn on auxiliary control, and Kirk hits a button on the nav console. The E starts to fall out of orbit and toward the surface of the dead star. Kirk yells at them to turn on the warp engines. The thing is zapping Kirk and yelling "No! Don't! Obey!" but then as they get closer to the surface, the thing begins evacuating itself from the ship. The E is seen in space as though through a water-rippling effect.

The E then disappears from sight, and reappears on the other side of the dead star, which now has a green aura.
Spock helps Kirk into his chair, and explains that the thing left the E when it thought they were going to crash. They fly away from the star, and the thing says pathetically, "No... don't leave... please...sooooo lonely"

Kirk's Log 5221.8: "Exact same thing I said at the beginning of this episode about star charting."

So, when comparing the live action Star Trek and the animated series, we have a few similarities and differences to contend with. Similarities: same cast (almost), same writers, same storytelling. Differences: only half the time allotted for each episode in which to tell a Star Trek-type story. Actual non-humanoid aliens are featured. Cooler alien ship that was not dependent on models. Kind of the same: some of the sets of the Enterprise have been enhanced, enlarged, or just altered slightly to accommodate animation. The budget still sucks.

Lets me get this out of the way - I hate this animation style. I always have.

"Isn't it comparable to Scooby-Doo?" someone asked me.

Yeah, kinda. Scooby-Doo was made by Hanna-Barbera, and TAS was made by Filmation, but each was done cheaply, and it shows. The parts that illustrate this best (in my humble opinion) are when a group of characters are moving through a space, and the speed at which the background moves does not match up with the speed at which the characters move. In essence, the characters appear to moon-walking forward. It just comes off as sloppy to me. I'm gonna try not to complain about the quality of the animation too much, though. Don't need to sound like a broken record for the next six months. BUT a rare compliment for this animation: the backgrounds are great. Some of those outside shots of the alien ship are spectacular. Because they don't move, more time can be spent on them. They're almost on par with some of the beautiful matte paintings that we got from the live action show.

The goofy, cheap budget lead to this whole episode literally being voiced by six people total. (While she appears on-screen for a hot second, Christine has no lines.) Jimmy Doohan did the voice for not only Scotty, but also Kyle, the insect-dude, and the thing. This production was really not hiring anyone unless it absolutely had to do so - everything fell into the laps of Jimmy, Majel, and on occasion,  Nichelle.

In all, this was actually a pretty good episode. Far shorter than usual, but with the same storytelling and characterization. The science sucked, though. Please, no more with that damn slingshot maneuver. And it was never properly explained how they got away from the thing. Sure, it abandoned ship when it thought that Kirk had gone kamikaze, but the E shimmered, disappeared, and re-materialized elsewhere. Seriously, what the hell? Did they warp through the star? And Kirk's final log entry of the episode was "still on our way to chart some stars." Was he not planning on reporting any of this to Starfleet? Seems like a good idea to set up a road-block for future explorers.

I think I would file this under "middle of the road, moving toward better than worse."

*******

Roomie sent me some link to one of those Buzzfed-type link dump articles concerning recipes that use tea. One sounded good, so I decided to road-test it at a gaming party that we were having. I made the spiced blondies with chai-white chocolate frosting. My frosting never really set, and so became more icing than anything else (possibly I didn't quite put enough white chocolate in it), but it was good nonetheless. The blondie part was very spice-y. Not like spicy-hot, but spice-laden.

"Tastes like gingerbread," said Roomie. She's right, it does.

It was also mildly dry, and saved by being too dry from that frosting, which was delicious. That frosting could go on damn-near anything.

In all, I feel like it was maybe a better holiday recipe than an anytime recipe.

Here's the blog where it came from:

http://www.raspberricupcakes.com/2012/08/spiced-blondies-with-chai-infused.html

Tiny-ass Uhura

Star Trek: TOS Series Overview

Roomie and I took a mid-day train going anywhere this weekend, and encountered the collision of the internet with real life. The first guy that we noticed was wearing a Doctor Who t-shirt inspired by the series 8 opening theme; a Doctor Who-Van Gogh baseball hat; a Doctor Who lanyard; and, hanging off the stroller his kid was sitting in, a leather TARDIS knapsack covered in (you guessed it) Doctor Who buttons. Standing between him and us were a pair of girls who could not have been any older than twenty. The first girl was wearing cute kitty tights, a blonde cosplay wig, and black lipstick that clashed horribly with the wig. Her friend has short spiky hair in various shades, a t-shirt from a fandom that I didn't recognize, and quite a few impulse-purchase piercings. The Whovian didn't say anything cuz his kid was throwing a tantrum, but those girls didn't stop talking the whole way. First it was an excited exclamation of how it was "cosplay weather," followed by a list of the cosplay riffs they had done on their favorite characters, none of which I recognized. They switched over to talk of fanfic, mostly concerning Steven Universe and Homestuck, and how they liked to write certain characters as gender-fluid, and how it complicated tagging.
"Oh my God," whispered Roomie excitedly. "It's like Tumblr Live!"
It was indeed. Like someone had staged an art performance of Tumblr conversations, complete with costume.
These are the awesome things you miss when you don't take mass transit very often.

*******

So I started out the Season One Overview with character reviews, so we'll start there again.

Kirk

I'll probably get a bunch of hate mail for this, but Kirk is a bit of a Mary Sue. SorryNotSorry. (WTF is a "Mary Sue"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue)

Turns out other people have written essays about this, so I'm not the only one who thinks that. Also, please notice the modifier "a bit." I don't think he's a complete Mary Sue, but it's enough that I feel like it needed to be said. Just for funsies, and because I was procrastinating, I plugged Kirk into a Mary Sue test in the hopes that it might prove me wrong. Now, to be fair, this test is mostly for people who are writing fanfic and want to make sure that their main character is not a Mary Sue, so I ended up wracking my brain and trying to recall different episodes and scenarios that might or might not fit with his character. There were several hundred questions, and because I didn't think I was checking off that many, that the score over all would be lower. It was not. The judgment was harsh, actually. Checking off fifty or more boxes landed one's character firmly in the "complete Mary Sue" category.

Kirk racked up a score of 149.

Ouch.

The last section of "De-suifiers," or traits that make your character less of a Sue, did not lower Kirk's score much. I actually give Kirk more credit than the test did.

So what makes a Kirk a Mary Sue? Kirk is notably handsome. Kirk is the youngest Starfleet captain in history. Kirk always wins the day, always rescues the villagers, always does the right thing. Kirk only loses a fight when the story calls for him to be overpowered by others for purposes of kidnap or capture. In all other times, Kirk wins the fight easily, often against several others. When he does something against the rules, he gets a slap on the wrist. He always gets the girl. Always.

What makes Kirk not a Mary Sue? Kirk gives a shit about his ship and its crew. He's concerned about casualties, and once, when a crew member is lost, we see him comforting another crew member ("Balance of Terror"). When he genuinely falls in love with a woman, he finds out that she must die, and he must not prevent it from happening ("City on the Edge of Forever"). While he talks and acts big, we actually see some moments where Kirk questions his own actions.

"So what's the deal with Kirk? Why would they write him like that? Didn't they know they were making him a Mary Sue?"

Noop. In actuality, the term "Mary Sue" originated from Star Trek fanfic, where eager fans would insert themselves into the story, and make them perfect and beloved by all of the OG Star Trek characters. In terms of chickens and eggs, the egg came first here. They didn't realize that they had made him such a Mary Sue because the term didn't exist at the time. In my humble opinion, Kirk is a Mary Sue because, once again, Star Trek is a time capsule.

While I've noted that the time capsule thing applies to this concerning costuming choices and topical plots, I feel like it also applies to character development. Kirk is a throw-back to old-school storytelling, where the hero is always heroic, and always saves the day, usually with seconds to spare. Kirk is the space-race version of the cowboy racing his trusty steed against the train, hoping to make it to the spot on the tracks where the villain with the twirly mustache has the girl tied to the tracks. He's old fashioned. A main character like that would not sell well these days, when people want characters to have deep-seated issues and psychological reasons for acting the way that they do. A pristine white good guy and a deep black bad guy no longer fly. This is probably why the anti-hero is so big right now. People are far more interested in following the mis-adventures of a Khan Noonien Singh, than they are in tuning in to watch a guy like Kirk save the day week after week.

My initial impression of Kirk was that I found him annoying, but that I didn't dislike him. That impression still stands, but now it's tempered with the Hmmm Moments I had of feeling like he was a Mary Sue, but really wanting that to not be the case. I still like the guy on some level, but boy, does he drive me nuts.

Spock

Spock will always be my favorite, because I identify with him the most. Leonard Nimoy was absolutely brilliant in this part, building Spock up from Kirk's second in command to a very complicated, nuanced character. In fact, I've become highly selective of who I think makes a good Vulcan based on Nimoy's performances and understanding of the character. (Hint: playing a Vulcan as straight emotionless is never going to work. The people who try it and fail are typically missing the underlying sardonic humor that Vulcans have.) My biggest issue with Spock at the end of season one had to do with the times when some smug, superior race would encounter the Enterprise, and proclaim that humans were just smart Neanderthals, and Spock would agree like some Dickasaurus Rex. That was irritating as hell, but thankfully, he stopped doing that.

Unfortunately, that tendency was replaced by something that I found far more annoying: the various plots in which Spock would do something completely out of character, and they would try to pass it off as Spock being affected or altered in some way. That's right friends, I'm talking about the subject that makes me wants to put on a wolf suit and stab people with forks: Spock romances.

It started with season one's "This Side of Paradise", which featured a colony of people high on the spores of some plant, and carried with it a "just say no" message. Basically, Spock gets high and bangs a blonde. He climbs a tree. He laughs. He tells Kirk to go fuck himself. I hated this episode because Spock high on some substance isn't going to make him act in a Jekyl and Hyde way. In my experience, a person who is altered will not grow a new personality. The substance will probably exaggerate a trait they already possess, and which is seen in smaller doses. (If you want to see "altered Spock" done really, really well, watch "The Naked Time" instead. In that one, the crew is affected by a disease that lowers one's inhibitions. They had Spock doing some dumb thing, and Nimoy broke in with, "No, that's really out of character." His suggestions made that episode far better.) The only time I bought his romance with the blonde in "Paradise" was near the end, where they discuss a time when they had sort-of been together before, and things had fallen apart. But I feel like that was actually due to better acting than the story itself.

In "The Cloud Minders", Spock ends up ruminating over some girl. While they didn't alter Spock's personality for this one, it's annoying that they keep toying with him like, "Wouldn't it be fun if we hooked Spock up with some chick?" No. Knock that shit off.

Three episodes later, we get stuck with another Spock romance, "All Our Yesterdays", in which he tries to get with a girl in a Flinstones costume, because he has de-evolved into an earlier form of Vulcan. 

Looking for episodes where Spock's emotional displays are appropriate and in character? "The Naked Time" was done well, as was "Amok Time", where Spock's blood rage is worked nicely into the canon, and his joy at seeing Kirk alive is appropriate. "Journey to Babel" works beautifully as Spock struggled to interact with his parents. And the only time when a Spock romance has made sense at all: "The Enterprise Incident".

I find it interesting that Spock is the character that seems to have the most varied background, the best fleshed-out backstory, and the most character development. 

 Bones McCoy

I don't feel like my opinion of Bones has changed much over these past three seasons. He's still a lovable curmudgeon. He probably drinks too much. He's a good doctor. He's opinionated. The one thing that he does that annoys the hell out of me, and the character trait that has followed him through all three seasons, is his tendency to yell at whoever is in charge when Kirk goes missing. That gets old. Like Kirk, I feel like Bones is a bit old fashioned as a character. He's a country doctor, out in space, who doesn't like "new-fangled" technology, even though he works with him himself. He's a Southern gentleman who drinks quite a bit. These are not terrible things, just worth noting. Today's doctor characters are not written in the same way as Bones was. 

We received next to nothing about Bones' background. The space hippy episode "The Way to Eden" originally featured his daughter, and how he would have dealt with the situation, but it was later scraped in favor of a focus on the crazy hippy leader, and a Chekov romance was inserted instead. I'm kind of sad. I really wanted to know more about Bones and his situation. 

Scotty

We continued to get surprisingly little of Scotty, our chief engineer. He rarely went on away missions, and sometimes showed up on the bridge to take command when our intrepid trio was gone. Typically, when we did get something of Scotty, he would get the cool shots, in the Jeffries tubes, working on something mechanical. I guess that's pretty awesome. I also enjoyed the fact that Scotty was the only senior officer with a different uniform based on his historical background: everyone else wore pants, but Scotty's dress uniform included a kilt in the Scott pattern. Sadly, when we did get episodes that featured more Scotty, it was crap like "Wolf in the Fold", which was not worth watching. 

Chekov

We didn't get Chekov until season two, when he was added because George Takei was off filming "The Green Berets" and they needed a regular character at the helm. In order to satisfy both schedules, George and Chekov actor Walter Koenig would select which scripts they liked, and scheduling would work around that. It's kind of crappy that Chekov and Sulu might have been seen as interchangeable, especially when you factor in how much stronger those scenes were when both actors were on set and interacting. Koenig reckons that he was brought on to appeal to "the bubble gum set," but Chekov was best as the irritable, brash younger crew mate, riffing off of Takei's more experienced Sulu. We got some weirdness with Chekov - there was a running joke in season two that tapered off after a while, in which Chekov would claim that certain things that were not Russian, were actually Russian in origin (such as the Cheshire cat). This was some kind of joke alluding to the fact that some Russians would claim ridiculous things were Russians. It was kind of racist and endearing at the same time, but I'm glad it faded away. It didn't make a lot of sense.

I thought it was pretty bold of them to put a Russian on the bridge during the Cold War, but that's really how Star Trek rolls. The nice thing about Chekov is how he interacts with his fellow crew members. He's young, short-tempered, and inexperienced, and when he gets reprimanded for the wrong action, he bristles. But he's charming enough that they all nod instead of writing him up for it.

 Poor Walter. He'll probably be saying "nuclear wessel" for the rest of his life.

Sulu

Sulu deserved more screen time than he actually got. He rarely got picked for away missions, and I don't recall any Sulu-centric storylines at all. While I enjoyed him in season one, I feel like he was best when paired with Chekov at the helm, which allowed for some fun moments, and some perspective on what it's like to be very young in Starfleet. My biggest pet peeve with Sulu, though, is that he is constantly being swayed from his post by drugs or hippies or illness. The guy is susceptible to everything. He's a competent officer and seems to enjoy his job, so why does he seem to be perpetually in danger of walking away? It seems kind of out of character to have it happen as often as it does.

Uhura

I really wish they had done more with Uhura. She left the bridge for away mission duty only a few times, and didn't even get that much screen time when she did. We know she's proud of her heritage, we know she sings, and we know she's friends with Christine. but there's not much else to list here, and that's sad. Would it have killed them to do one less Kirk episode in favor of an Uhura episode? Gene Rod fought to keep her on the show, and MLK asked her not to quit, but then she stayed firmly in her chair at the comm panel. Was it, socially, too much to ask that she be given a bigger part once or twice? I guess so.

Nurse Christine Chapel

This one was tougher than anticipated. She got an episode devoted to her, very early on, and that was it. Then she was shuttled back to sick bay to say lines like "yes, doctor" and "right away, doctor." The thing is, I've always had issues with this character. Not because of the way that she was played, but by the societal pressures that brought her about, and how those same pressures continued to shape the character.

So yeah: Majel Barrett was hired to play Number One in the pilot. She did a damn good job, too. But in picking up the show, one of the stipulations given was to get rid of Number One, probably because she was seen as emasculating. "A woman with power? My God!" She was kept on, but given blonde hair and a lesser job, that of a sick bay nurse. She ended up in a little less than half of the episodes, so she was definitely a regular, but most of the time, she got one, maybe two lines per episode. LAME.

Not only did I take issue with this severe demotion, but I struggled with what to call her. There's this weird thing that society has done, and I'm not sure how it came about, but it's persisted forever: the weird situation in which a guy is frequently referred to by his last name, while a female is referred to by her first name. Does this have something to do with the fact that, when married, a guy keeps his last name, while females typically take their partner's last name? Probably. But this isn't always the case, and in military situations, both genders go by last name. Since it isn't mentioned in TOS, Uhura remains a mononym, like Spock. No choice in what to call her. Rand had both a first and last name, as well as a job title (yeoman) and a rank (lieutenant commander), but for whatever reason, I just stuck with Rand. But what of our nurse? She has a rank (ensign) which she never goes by. It felt weird calling her Chapel. I'd backspace every time I typed it out. "Nurse Chapel," which is what many of the other characters called her, seemed too long. I finally just said "Screw it," and went with Christine.

And now, the last of the weird societal things: I couldn't bring myself to refer to her as "the nurse" or just "nurse." Why? Because of the way that society treats nurses like crap. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I have no problem using Bones' title of "doctor" and will sometimes refer to him as "the good doctor." But the word nurse is often barked by busy doctors who need an extra pair of hands and don't want to be bothered finding out a name. And even though they do the vast majority of the work, and get zero credit, nurses are not often looked upon favorably. It seems like every time someone says the word "nurse" there is an unspoken question: "why didn't you become a doctor?" Like doctor is the better profession. "Nurse" is not used to denote a title so much as it is a label ("that nurse over" as opposed to "Nurse Chapel"). Bones often just calls her nurse. He might as well be referring to any nurse in the room rather than Christine Chapel specifically, and it drives me nuts. Have some fucking respect, Bones. Your nurses are running your sick bay while you're out gallivanting with your boyfriends.

Specifically for Christine, we get very little about her as far as character development. We get quite a bit in that early episode ("What Are Little Girls Made Of?") such as the fact that her fiance went off into space five years earlier, and she took a deep-space commission in the hopes of seeing him again, thus putting off a promising career in exobiology. So we know she's hella smart, and she doesn't need a man in her life to tell her what to do. She's friends with Uhura. The only other thing we know is that she has an unrequited crush on Spock. That's about it. Again, we could have ditched a Kirk or trio episode in order to get more backstory on her, but we didn't.

Let's crunch some numbers!

Number of Reds killed in season one: 4

Number of Reds killed in season two: 20

Number of Reds killed in season three: 6

Total number of Red deaths: 30

Number of Golds killed in season one: 5

Number of Golds killed in season two: 6

Number of Golds killed in season three: 0

Total number of Gold deaths: 11

Number of Blues killed in season one: 4

Number of Blues killed in season two: 1

Number of Blues killed in season three: 1

Total number of Blue deaths: 6

Total number of unknown color crew member deaths: 3

So these numbers kind of make sense. Blues have the lowest death rates because they're science and medical. They're not often in danger of being shot. Science goes on fact-finding missions and engage in scanning things, and medical mostly shows up after the fight. I feel like there are still blue deaths owing to the fact that this is the Enterprise, and Kirk is a reckless jackoff. Gold going next also makes sense. Those people are in command, and are more likely to be leaders. Really, it should come as no surprise that those Reds are cannon-fodder. While Reds are Operations like engineering and communications, they're also security. The joke about how Scotty is the only Red left standing is not actually that ironic when you factor in that neither he nor Uhura (also a Red) are Security Reds. Security means "shoot or be shot." 

Still, those numbers are nuts. Season two's Red death numbers almost average out to one death per episode. The advice stands: do not accept a commission with Kirk if you're a Security Red.

Number of times Bones pronounces someone dead (usually to Kirk): 19

Number of times Kirk has declared that he admires someone, only to have that person turn out to be the villain: 5

Number of times when Spock admires the guy who becomes a kind of villain: 1

Number of times when someone they admire actually helps them out: 1

Number of episodes that are meant to reference human wars from the twentieth century: 5

Number of episodes in which Kirk is kidnapped, imprisoned, or held hostage: 26

Number of episodes that feature alien cultures that are suspiciously Terran: 13

Number of episodes where that alien culture is Greco-Roman: 4

Number of episodes that take place in an insane asylum: 2

Number of guest stars that also guest starred on Batman: 4

Love Amongst the Stars:

Kirk romances, whether real or being used as a tool to get what he wants: 9
Times one of Kirk's "old friends" shows up, and you know they were more than just friends: 4
Spock romances: 4
Believable Spock romances: 1
Bones romances: 3
Scotty romances: 2
Sulu romances: none. Sulu is too busy playing with his sword. (In a strange twist of fate, Sulu was originally slated to be Leila Kalomi's lover in "This Side of Paradise," which would have made far more sense than Spock. The script was later changed so that Sulu played a much smaller part in that episode.)
Chekov romances: 3
Uhura romances: none, though she briefly flirts with Spock on several occasions
Christine Chapel romances: 1. She does have a crush on Spock in seasons two and three, though.
Rand romances: none. But she chased after Kirk while that creeper Charlie X chased after her.

Things that Bones is not:
a moon-shuttle conductor
a bricklayer
a psychiatrist
a scientist
a physicist
an escalator
a mechanic
an engineer
a magician
a coal miner
a tea-totaler
Just screwing with you on that last one.

There's quite a lot to be said for this goofy-ass show. The ratings were only ever so-so, but the studios were impressed with the fact that the show drew a "smarter" audience of scientists and professors, and renewed it for three seasons mostly based on that. It then spent years in syndication, drawing in new, younger audiences all the time. Trekkies showed up in droves to sci-fi conventions. Merchandise continues to be made. There have been five spin-off shows, twelve films, and more books than a tribble farm.

The thing is, for all of the late-sixties cheesiness, there's still a timeless quality to the stories presented. These are issues that the human race has always had, and that we continue to work on fixing. The future in Star Trek looks a bit rosier than today, because they predict that by the twenty-third century, humans will have gotten past our petty differences, and found the ability to work together to move out beyond our own boundaries. Unlike quite a few other sci-fi shows and movies, the humans of the Star Trek future have gotten their shit together rather than destroying themselves. On Star Trek, we don't dwell on our failures and wallow in self-pity. We move forward. We boldly go.

Happy Towel Day!

You know where your towel is, right?

Season Three Overview

I met a dude named Kahless last night.

Not this Kahless, but still pretty awesome. This brings the number of people I have met, with nerdy parents who give their kids epic names, up to five: I know a Trillian, a Merlin, a Paul Atreides, and an Elbereth. (Elbereth grew up with a boy whose parents also gave him an esoteric LotR name.)

It makes me sad because my legal name is super common.
Maybe I'll just start telling people that I'm Lady Archon instead. Like, outside of Starschmucks.

*******

So there were two things I was told most definitely would happen in season three, which didn't.

Myth #1: "Season three is absolutely the worst."
Myth busted: Actually, it was probably as balanced as the first two seasons, collectively. There were a few really good episodes, a lot of episodes that were just okay, and some really terrible ones. BUT, the awfulness of the bad ones was such that it ended up coloring the whole season.

Myth #2: "Season three is a blood-bath. Dead Reds everywhere."
Myth busted: Are you ready for those final numbers? Drum-roll, please...
Season one dead crew member count: 16
Season two: 27
Season three: 7
*Pac-Man death noise*
Not even close. Season three actually had the least number of casualties, and nowhere near the number of season two. Still, fifty crew member deaths over the course of four and a half years* sucks. Clearly the message being sent here is "Don't sign up for Starfleet, and if you do, don't get assigned to the Enterprise."

*Yep, you read that right. Three seasons, but five years, give or take a few months. In season one's pile-of-dog-crap "Shore Leave", the stardates reveal that they skipped a year and a half between that episode and the previous one. And the stardate calculator confirms that it was about four and a half years covered by TOS.

So let's get to reviewing season three's episodes.

Episodes that Didn't Suck As Much Award

AKA, The Command Gold Star Award

"The Enterprise Incident". The Enterprise is ordered by Starfleet to get a cloaking device off a Romulan ship. Spock is charged with pulling a "honeypot maneuver," ie, he has to seduce the female Romulan commander. Things go sideways when he and the commander actually fall for one another. 

This is the only "Spock romance" plot that I actually ship, and mostly because it's done well. Spock is not acting out of character at any point in time. It's made clear that he and the commander are both playing each other, but the sexual tension is subtle and well done, and when we reach the end of the episode, they admit that at some point, they each stopped pretending. You can tell they're both disappointed because a romance between a Romulan and a Vulcan (especially one in Starfleet) is just not possible in that political climate. This episode makes me want to slap all of the other episodes that contain "Spock romance" subplots, as this is the only one that works.

 "Plato's Stepchildren". I hated this episode. Like, really hated it. But the weird part of reviewing stuff is when you realize that that thing you hate is actually well-done, despite your hatred of it. For once, Kirk was not a giant douche-canoe, and the acting was pretty good. Also, I like that our intrepid trio stood up for a little person who was being exploited, and that Alexander recognized that gaining powers for himself was not the way to go.

"These Episodes Were Probably The Reason Star Trek Got The Axe" Awards

AKA, "Fuck This Episode"

While it's true that this season wasn't completely shit, the Command Gold Star to Expendable ratio is way skewed towards Expendable, right from the get-go.

"Spectre of the Gun". Episode 57. Fucking Old West planet, and this episode wasn't even fun like the gangster planet episode. Chekov dies, then he doesn't. Our boys dodge bullets like Neo from "The Matrix."

"Elaan of Troyius". Episode 58. The Enterprise has to take a giftwife from her home planet to another so she can heal the rift between their two peoples. Turns out she's a giant bitch. A bunch of the costumes for this episode are made from plastic placemats, I shit you not.

"The Paradise Syndrome." Episode 59. Kirk goes native. This whole episode makes me want to slap someone. Be more racist, Star Trek.

"And the Children Shall Lead". Episode 60. Creepy-ass children form a cult with the holographic image of some long-dead alien. They kill their parents, and bitch ungratefully about ice cream.

"Spock's Brain". Episode 61. This episode is often cited as one of the worst (if not THE worst) episodes of Star trek of all time. Basically, aliens take Spock's brain. Like, remove it completely from his body. But somehow, he's still alive. When they find it, Spock actually walks McCoy through its reattachment. I've tried thinking about where walking someone through your own brain surgery might actually be feasible, and the only thing I could come up with is "MASH." Only MASH would do it better.

"The Empath". Episode 63. Aliens torture our intrepid trio, as well as some woman who can't speak. Turns out they were testing her rather than our boys. Minimal set dressing makes this look like a PBS modern dance program. This is what you make when you are out ideas and money.

"Day of the Dove". Episode 66. The story wasn't terrible, but the Klingon make-up in this episode was atrocious. We finally get a female Klingon, and she spends most of the episode blankly staring at Kirk and Spock. Also, an altered Chekov tries to rape her.

"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield". Episode 70. Two guys are chasing each other across the universe. They clearly evolved from the same race, only one is black on one side and white on the other, and the other guy is the opposite. Star Trek is obviously trying to make a statement about racism here, but it's so heavy-handed, you're just left sighing and bored ten minutes in. There's this horrible montage near the end where the aliens are running through the corridors of the Enterprise, with the images overlaid with footage from WWII London on fire. No part of this episode is good.

"The Mark of Gideon". Episode 72. Kirk and some alien chick wander around an empty Enterprise for half of the episode before we learn that Space Barbie's planet is severely overpopulated, and she actually wants Kirk to infect her with some illness so she can catch it, give it to others, and then die. The mark of Gideon is probably a handstamp that you get from the government saying that they've chosen you to be infected with some plague.

 

"The Way to Eden". Episode 75. Space hippies take over the E in order to get to a mythical planet called Eden. When they arrive, their cult leader is killed because the planet is heavily acidic... he's killed by acid. Womp womp. The episode keeps pausing itself for hippy jam sessions, one of which includes Spock.

"The Savage Curtain". Episode 77. Kirk and Spock duke it out with Genghis Khan and Abraham Lincoln, for the amusement of some alien made of rocks. It's essentially "Arena"... only, you know, not good. 

Interesting Premise Award

(Honorable Mentions)

"That Which Survives"

The E encounters a planet which was run by a long-dead race, whose security system is still in place, and whose computer has used the image of a woman from that race as a means to kill the away team. The woman is revealed later to have been the last survivor of a disease that wiped out her race, and that they were waiting for a medical supply ship that probably never arrived.

"All Our Yesterdays"

An inhabited planet is about to be wiped out as their sun is going nova. They are pre-warp and cannot leave, so they instead create the technology to make it possible to escape back into their own cultural past, where they are able to live and die in peace. The rest of this episode is okay, but I liked the solution that these people came up with in order to escape their own demise. The planet was still destroyed, but all of the people died before it happened.

Creepers of the Universe Awards

These characters made my skin crawl.

Parmen and Philana from "Plato's Stepchildren

AKA "Abusive Boyfriend" and "Sadistic Bitch"

"Things have gotten a bit boring, so let's force these visitors to rape and torture their coworkers."

I may hate them more than I hate Khan.

Runner-Up: Flint from "Requiem for Methuselah"

This beautiful young girl is his adoptive daughter. Wait, he's trying to convince her to marry him. No, never mind. She's secretly an android, whom he has built as the perfect wife. One day, he'll convince her to love him.

So here are those final numbers for season three:

Number of episodes: 26

Number of great/good/okay episodes: 13

number of episodes that should have been left on the cutting room floor: 13

Ugh, half and half. Not a good ratio. I'm not counting season three as a complete loss, because there were enough okay/good episodes to balance it out, but that's awfully close to the tipping point. Plus, Star Trek gets graded on a curve because it's got such a huge following. One would almost call it a cult classic, but there's enough good in it that it doesn't quite reach that same level of so-bad-it's-good that's required for cult status. 

Next week: Series overview. Shit by the numbers, because I love to categorize things.

*******

So I had another one of those Lipton Sparkling teas, this one the peach, and again, it's similar enough to a regular Lipton bottle tea with peach flavor, that I can say confidently that if you like that, you'll like this. It's exactly the same thing as the Lipton bottled peach with carbonation.

http://www.liptontea.com/product/detail/927941/sparkling-peach-iced-tea

The White Menace