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

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

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

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

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

*******

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"MOAR SHOOTING!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"MOAR PHASERS!" yells Kirk.

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

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

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Any of this sound familiar?

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

Dingdingdingdingding!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oops.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here comes our closing joke. Ready?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*******

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moe in the sun

Happy Birthday, Walter Koenig!

Nobody mutters the word "wessel" quite like you, sir.

ST:TAS Season One, Episode Fourteen "The Slaver Weapon"

"The Slaver Weapon"
Air Order: 14
Stardate: 4187.3
Original Air Date: December 15, 1973


My sister got me this Star Trek lunchbox for my chronological leveling up, and when I opened the box, I couldn't stop laughing. Everyone is smiling and happy, except for Spock, who is his usual stoic self, and Kirk, who looks baffled as hell in his Casual Friday Wrap-Around Blouse.

Also included in the lunchbox: a $25 gift card to Chipotle.
I could get 12 portions of guac, you guys. 12 fucking portions of guac.

*******

Spock's Log 4187.3: "Traveling on the Enterprise shuttle Copernicus to starbase 25 with a slaver stasis box, which archaeologists found on the planet Kzin. The slaver box is a weird and cool thing because time stands still inside of one. Plus they're like Cracker Jack prizes, because you might get something extra, only better because it's not going to be some piece of crap cardboard thing." 

Uhura and Spock have a conversation that exposits that the slavers were a race that enslaved all other races in the galaxy a billion years earlier, that one race revolted against the slavers, and that everyone was killed in the war following, and life had to evolve from the beginning again. The boxes are all that is left of that earlier race.

Uhura notices that the box is glowing, which is new.

"Whoa," says Spock. "That means another stasis box is nearby."

They are close to Beta Lyrae, and they decide to check it out.

As they head off to Beta Lyrae, Spock does more voice-over about the boxes: some of those Bonus Prizes included a gravity belt that was the basis for starship travel, and a disruptor bomb with the pin pulled. This is why stasis boxes are so valuable: they lead to awesome stuff, but also scary stuff, and the ones that have been found tend to be heavily-guarded.

They land on the surface of Hoth  some little ice-covered planet that's part of Beta Lyrae, and they hop out of the shuttle with their yellow-aura'd life belts.

They locate the new box some ways under the ice, and Sulu says all they have to do is melt the ice with their phasers. Easy-peasey. Only the less-dramatic music swells, and we see cats pop up over some ice hills. Humanoid cats! Cats with phasers! They take out our intrepid trio fairly quickly.

Those uniforms are pink because of Hal Sutherlin's pink-grey
colorblindness.

In the next scene, we see that the alien cats' spaceship is parked in some cavern underground on the little ice planet, and that Sulu, Uhura, and Spock are being kept in what Spock calls a "police web." He does some logical version of Kirk's Hamletting, where he gets on his own case for being so dazzled by the thought of another stasis box, that he let it overtake the possibility that someone else might be looking for it as well. Basically, he feels dumb that they got captured, and blames himself. Also, the cats have their box, so that sucks.

Sulu talks about how the police web thingy is holding them there, like a cell-less cell.

This is driving me nuts, you guys. I swear I've seen this again in TNG, like Picard is captured by some alien group, and he and two others are held prisoner in a shape on the floor similar to this. But no amount of Googling could find the thing that I was thinking of.

The cat people are called the Kzinti, and according to Spock, they're not supposed to have weapons, except for police. I guess these Kzinti have no fucks to give for treaties.

Two younger Kzinti come in with a third, older cat guy who looks like Grizabella the Glamor Cat. Spock says this ratchet Kzinti is the mind-reader of the group, and says the way to keep them from reading your mind is to imagine the thing the Kzinti hate the most. As the Kzinti are strict carnivores, this means you're supposed to think about eating raw veggies. That's kind of dumb, but the rest of this episode is awesome, so we'll let it slide.

He then says that the Kzinti will probably only talk to Sulu, because they hate Vulcans. Then he advises Uhura to say nothing and act stupid, because Kzinti females are dumb animals, and they just assume that all females are as well.

"Fuck you very much," she replies, pissed off.

"No, it's cool," he says quietly. "We know you're smart, but it's better if they forget that human females are intelligent. Then we can spring some shit on them."

I really like this exchange. Uhura gets angry for being told to play it dumb, because she clearly is not. But then Spock assures her that the Kzinti are dumbshits for thinking human females are less intelligent. If you're a little girl watching this on Saturday morning in 1973 (or anytime at all), it boils down to "girls are smart, and we can use that to our advantage." I'm counting that shit as gender equality. Go, Star Trek!

Uhura is having none of your gender role bullshit.

The Kzinti ask Sulu who they are, and Sulu tells them, introducing Spock as well. Kitty #1 tells them that's they're now prisoners of space pirates, and that they are on a stolen police ship, which at least explains how they got weapons. They then admit that while Kzin archaeologists found both stasis boxes, they got the empty one. But they knew they could use it to lure the shuttle in, and get the other box. They think it might hold some bad-ass weapon.

"Dude, you guys started four wars with humans," says Sulu. "You lost them all. I guess you haven't learned anything."

Kitty 1 threatens to eat them. "You guys always have better weapons than us. But now we're gonna see if Box #1 has a slaver weapon, which has gotta be way better than anything you have now."

They open the box with a laser beam, which seems excessive, but whatever. The first thing to come out of it? A picture of a big green cyclops thing. Sulu thinks it might be a picture of a slaver, but since nobody knows what a slaver looks like, it's anybody's guess. That could be a slaver's dog, and no one would know.

Next to come out of the box... a steak. No, seriously. Some slaver put a selfie and a steak in one of these fancy-ass boxes a billion years ago. Uhura comments that that billion-year-old steak looks fresh. What's up with the pic and the meat? Spoilers: we never find out. Because this is Kzinti Christmas, and the next thing out of the box is a weapon.

Or maybe it's a watermelon... on a steeek.

Or they think it is, anyway. They tell Sulu that they're gonna use it to end humanity, but wouldn't it be fabulous if they started a war, pointed it at some high-ranking official in Starfleet, and it turned out to be like a Windex dispenser or something?

"Die, human!"

*pulls trigger*

"What did you just spray me with?" *sniff* "Is that window cleaner?"

Kitty 1 tells the other non-mind-reader Kzinti to move our intrepid three up to the surface, cuz he wants to try out the weapon on them. Kitty #2 calls him "Chuft Captain" so I guess our boy One is in charge.

Captain then asks the ratchet cat if he is reading the minds of the shuttle crew. He replies that he can kinda-sorta read Sulu, but that it's beneath him to read Spock ("the pacifistic herbivore") and Uhura, the lowly female.

"Do I really have to?" he asks, making big, sad eyes.

No, seriously.

Up top, they lay out the police web again and force our heroes to stand on it. The Kzinti are decent enough to turn their life belts back on, but not so decent as to point the slaver weapon away from them.

Nothing happens.

The captain asks Grizabella the mind-reader if anything is happening to Sulu. Mind-Reader Cat says no, and then sobs because Sulu is thinking about eating vegetables.

Kitty #2 suggests that moving the toggle on the handle to another setting will produce a weapon that does something. So Captain moves the toggle, and the gun-thing changes shape. He aims at Sulu, pulls the trigger... nothing.

The Captain takes a guess that maybe the setting once stunned or killed some race that doesn't exist anymore. Or something like that. He's trying to save face because the damn thing doesn't work.

The next switch gives him a telescopic view.

Bond. Chuft Bond.

He tries a bunch of the settings, with no success. At one point, it shoots a laser, but Sulu declares that the Federation has had better weapons than that for more than a century. Chuft Captain switches it over to something that shoots flames out the back, and holding down the trigger causes him to fly all over the place.

His biscuits are burnin.'

In the commotion, the Captain damages the space suit of the mind-reader, and Uhura gets knocked out of the web. She takes off at top speed, but when the captain gets the gun turned off, he remembers that human girls are not stupid, and he yells at Kitty 2 to go get her. She's captured and returned to the web. The telepath is taken back to the ship to have his suit repaired. When things settle down, Kitty 2 suggests that the flame-thrower setting isn't a weapon, but a transportation device.

Uhura laments that she used to be able to run the hundred-meter dash in record time, but that she seems to be slowing down. You know it's gotta be those Starfleet-issued go-go boots, but all the same, I'm glad we get to add a talent to her roster. Excellent officer, fantastic musician, athlete.

The next setting on the weapon is one of those spinny-launcher toys that always gets fashioned into some kind of helicopter for boys, and fairies for girls, despite the fact that it's the same damn toy doing the same damn thing no matter which gender you buy it for.

"What's wrong, honey? Was that not what you asked for for Christmas?"
"Well, yeah, but... I wanted the blue one."

Chuft Captain pulls the trigger, and the light in the cavern behind him goes off. The police web also powers down. Our heroes realize this even though the Kzin do not, and Spock surmises that it must be an energy absorber. How lucky for them that the absorber did not power off their lift belts, or you know, they'd be dead by now. They make a break for it. Uhura and Sulu take off for the shuttle, but Spock doubles back and pulls out his best karate move on Chuft Captain, knocking both kitties over and stealing the gun-thing.

The kitties fire regular weapons at the fleeing Starfleet officers. Uhura is once again taken, but Spock and Sulu get away.

"What happened?" Kitty 2 asks the captain, despite the fact that he was standing right fucking there the whole time.

"Mind your own beeswax," grouches Chuft Captain, who would rather not admit to getting his furry ass handed to him by a pacifist.

Spock joins Sulu behind an outcropping of ice, and even though Sulu is glad to see that Spock has the weapon, he is concerned because the Kzinti have Uhura, and the means to call their people for back-up.

"Noop," says Spock. "I bought us some insurance and beat the crap out of Chuft Captain. The thing about the Kzinti is, I'm someone unworthy to beat him up, in their eyes. I'm a vegetarian and a pacifist. The other part is, Chuft Captain has to seek revenge on me before he can call for reinforcements. I left him alive. It's an honor thing."

"Sweet," says Sulu. "So hey, I think that multi-use weapon was owned by a slaver spy. It seems to have a lot of doodads that a regular soldier-type wouldn't need."

"I'll defer to you on that point," says Spock. "You're the weapons expert."

(Yep, he is the weapons expert on the E. Not only does he have an interest in antique weaponry, TOS happened to have combined tactical and helm positions, which he, Chekov, and Arax filled. In TNG terms, he held the equivalent positions of season one's Geordi LaForge and Tasha Yar, only at the same time.)

"If it's a weapon of espionage," muses Spock, "maybe it has a self-destruct. We have no idea what that first setting does, if anything."

There's a rumbling, and the Kzinti ship breaks free of the ice to hover over the surface. Chuft Captain calls to Sulu over the PA that he wants to trade the weapon for Uhura. At least, I think he's calling over the PA. It certainly appears that way. But when Sulu answers back, he uses his comm device, which somehow taps into the system of the stolen Kzinti police cruiser...? I dunno. Either way, Sulu asks what will happen to Spock.

"We have to engage in combat to the death," admits the captain. "He broke two of my ribs, which I haven't set or taken care of in any way. He has to either finish the job, or let me kill him."

"Yeahhh, no," says Sulu. "Not doing either of those."

Chuft Captain turns to Uhura, and the exchange here is great:

Chuft Captain: "They think very little of you."

Uhura: "Wrong. They don't think much of you."

And Chuft Captain is rushed to the burn unit. Bye, Felicia!

Sulu and Spock are still trying to figure out the weapon settings, looking for a self-destruct button. They set it for one of the settings that didn't seem to work before, and Sulu fires into the distance. There's a boom and a huge freaking mushroom cloud appears.

"Well, fuck," says Sulu. "So not given this to them."

"Dude, that's matter to energy conversion at a distance," says Spock. "We don't have anything that powerful in the Federation."

When the explosion catches up with them, it knocks them out. The weapon changes back to the original setting.

The Kzinti, safe in their ship, collect our boys and their toy from the surface. Spock and Sulu wake up in the web with Uhura. The Kzinti are screwing around with the weapon again. This time, it turns into some kind of communications device, which answers back. Spock is amazed that a super-computer would fit into something that small.

You heard it here, folks - i-Phone technology comes from slavers.

The Kzinti are a bit taken aback when the comm device turns on and talks to them, as they apparently have an ancient superstition about weapons being haunted by previous owners.

"How long have you been off?" Chuft Captain asks the weapon.

"Dunno," it replies. "I don't know how time passes when I'm off."

"What were you doing before that?" asks Chuft.

"We were on some mission," says the weapon.

"What mission?" asks the captain.

"Do you have the code words?" asks the weapon. "Unless you know the code words, you can fuck right off."

"How about," suggests Kitty 2, "you tell us the positioning of the stars in your time, so we can figure out where you were."

"How about," suggests the weapon, "you fuck right off? I told you I'm not doing anything without the codes."

"Okay," says Chuft Captain. "We saw an energy converter earlier. How do we get back to that setting?"

"Cool," replies the weapon. "This is how you do it." And it gives them directions for finding that setting.

But what the weapon morphs into is not what Sulu fired earlier.

"The hell?" asks Sulu.

The Kzinti take the new weapon and exit the ship, leaving the old mind-reader behind as a guard.

"So that's us screwed," laments Uhura.

"Naw," says Spock. "Think about it: if you were that weapon, and you had been turned off for who knows how long in the middle of a war, and the next person to talk to you doesn't hardly know anything about you, you'd assume they were the enemy. So when they ask you how to get to your most powerful setting, what do you do?"

Chuft Captain fires the weapon, and there's an explosion. It blows a giant hole in the ice where he and Kitty 2 were standing, and takes a large chunk of the Kzinti ship, killing Mind-Reader Cat in the process. Somehow, even though they are now exposed to space, none of our heroes is sucked out of the hole, and Spock has time to calmly voice-activate their life-belts.

The setting the weapon activated was for a disruptor field, meaning that the only technology it had that the Federation didn't was that energy-converter.

The weapon is gone, and Spock is satisfied, because that weapon in the wrong hands could have fucked up all the shit.

Back in the shuttle (minus both stasis boxes) Spock muses that the old war of slavers vs everyone else in the known universe almost sparked another war between the Kzinti and humans. Uhura brings up the haunted weapon thing.

"At the rate they're going," she jokes, "they'll never get over those old superstitions!"

And I think about how often Star Trek ends on a joke that doesn't really make sense.

You guys. YOU GUYS THIS EPISODE WAS SO GOOD.

It's Star Trek, but not so much Star Trek storytelling. It does, in fact, remind me of season one's "The Alternative Factor".

"Why?" you ask. ""The Alternative Factor" kind of sucked, and this did not."

Here's the thing, Trek fans: both this episode and that one struck me as hard-core late-sixties/early-seventies science fiction, which was later altered slightly for Star Trek. In the case "Factor", I could never find concrete evidence of it, except for a weird feeling that it had been written as a short story, and Star Trek components were added later, making their parts feel pasted on top of the episode. 

In the case of "The Slaver Weapon," I know this to be true. Author Larry Niven had a series called "Known Space" and he adapted the story to fit Star Trek requirements. The reasons why this episode are unusual are the same reasons why it's so good. Niven had characters that were similar to Spock, Sulu, and Uhura, and he could adapt the story to fit them. He could not easily adapt any characters to fit Kirk, so he was excused from including him, making this the only TOS-based production to not include Kirk. ("The Cage" does not count, as it was never aired in its entirety before TOS was canceled.) Another bit of trivia: this is the only TOS-based production to not include the Enterprise. 

In short, this episode was excellent because the science fiction was excellent. We got a great new enemy that has supposedly engaged the Federation four previous times, but which cannot be produced outside of animation. (Well, it can now, anyway.) We also get a cool new weapon, and a mysterious set of boxes.

And can I just say how awesome it is that we got a story that features three of my favorite characters? Sulu and Uhura never get enough screen time, and when they do, it's short and duty-based. I much prefer them like this, more in the spotlight with better lines and background information. The characters standing behind Kirk are just as interesting, and deserve far more screen-time than they actually get.

Other trivia tidbits: 

-Jimmy Doohan doesn't appear onscreen as Scotty in this episode, but he did play the Kzinti characters. This means that Jimmy and Leonard are the only cast members to have parts in all 22 episodes of the animated series.

-In some additional digging concerning Sulu being a weapons expert, I found out that the official canon reason given for Chekov's replacement on the bridge during TAS is that he returned to the academy for further officer training.

*******

I was in a Chinese fast-food joint this week, and the thought of soda was gross, so I opted to get a Sobe tea instead. This one in particular was a Sobe Tea Infusion, green tea that features vitamin c, ginseng, guarana, and rose hips.

What does it taste like? Minty liquid sugar. Like, I enjoy a sweeter tea, but this was a bit overwhelming on the sweet. I could taste a bit of the green tea under everything else, but the mint flavor was really strong.

Not gonna, this was not my favorite. I will probably avoid it in the future. It's not awful, but it's really, really sweet.

Neighbor dog Zoro meets tiny kitten Torchwood