50th Anniversary TOS Episode Discussion Marathon

[Nate the Great]

There was an art exhibition for the 50th anniversary consisting of 50 artists giving their version of a series, cast, episode, etc.

Of course, one of them is the Dusty Abell group shot of all TOS characters that I love so much. This is one I'll have to buy when I can actually afford it.

Homestead by Amir Abou-Roumie. George and Gracie in San Francisco Bay, the Vulcan ship from First Contact, a Q judge puttering around in an aircar, Geordi and a Klingon on a hoverbus, Picard enjoying some tea, and so forth. Many vignettes, very fun.

The Bridge by Glen Brogan. Just another day on the bridge of the Enterprise, with each crew member either fantasizing or ranting about what they're known for. I don't like being reminded of Uhura's fan dance, but Chekov's "V and W aren't the same" dictionary is funny.

Fifty Aliens by Derek Charm. Just for fun, I'm going to see if I can name all fifty races from memory:

First Row: The dog creature that was split into good and evil back in "The Enemy Within", Klingon, Horta
Second Row: A member of Darmok's race (I confess that I had to look up "Tamarian"), Vulcan, Romulan, Cardassian
Third Row: Son'a, Balok's illusion (First Federation), Andorian, Reman, Tribbles
Fourth Row: Tribbles, Breen, Gorn, Ferengi, Tholian, Orion, Tribbles
Fifth Row: Benzite, Borg, Q, Salt Vampire, Lurian
Sixth Row: Tribbles, Don't know (I think he's found in DS9 and isn't one of Worf's holodeck monsters), Species 8472, Vorta, Mr. Homn's race (never given)
Seventh Row: Don't know (the mandrill-looking one), Hirogen, Don't know (the slug/blob one), Founder, Jem'Hadar, Charonian
Eight Row: Xindi Insectoid, Don't know (I've seen that race around, but the name isn't coming to me), Deltan, Future Guy?, Talaxian
Ninth Row: Mugato, Tellarite, Don't know (the short guy), Kazon, Bolian, One of those guys from Miramanee's planet?, Don't know (the green guy, I want to say the race begins with "S")
Tenth Row: Crystalline Entity, Antedean, Don't know (the dog guy, wasn't he in one of the TOS movies?), whatever race the Federation President from Undiscovered Country is, Tribbles, Bajoran

Star Trek Inception: The Cage by Paul Shipper
A poster for the nonexistant movie version of "The Cage"

Klingons by J.K. Woodward
A celebration of all of our favorite Klingons. My only problem is that Chang's smile twists his face in a Uncanny Valley sort of way.

[NAHTMMM]

Great pictures!

I'll get to the episode this Monday.

[Nate the Great]

Monday? The next episode is "The Enemy Within" on Thursday.

[NAHTMMM]

No, I'm still on "The Naked Time".

Really good teaser. What could possibly have come among these people to cause all this destruction and strangeness?

Tormolen is a jerk for tossing his glove on the dead person like that. Have some respect!

"Instruments only register those things they are designed to register." Some nice scientific sanity to counterbalance the nonsense of a shrinking object invisibly losing mass or gaining gravity.

Watching McCoy and Chapel work on Tormolen, I'm thinking about how something like House or Bones would insist on having the two of them banter about some inane B-plot, rather than risk two seconds of silence.

Sickbay's entrance is not well-designed to get a stretcher into the place.

I see Memory Alpha mentions it partly, but another Trek book talks about Spock's breakdown scene further. TPTB wanted a series of short cuts. Nimoy insisted on attempting the more difficult single long take. It was the end of the production day and they did indeed have just the one shot at doing it the way he wanted. Watching it now I'd say they nailed it.

And I love that, when Spock is so vulnerable as to tell Kirk that he considers Kirk a friend and is ashamed of it, Kirk just slaps him again. Kirk is just not a touchy-feely guy.

Kirk: What's happening? Is it more magic?
Spock: Yes. If you knew the deeper magic, you'd know that when the planet cracked, time itself would start working backwards.

I'm sure this is a reference that I don't recognize.

I do not know what the Pax would be either.

[evay]

Originally Posted by NAHTMMM

And I love that, when Spock is so vulnerable as to tell Kirk that he considers Kirk a friend and is ashamed of it, Kirk just slaps him again. Kirk is just not a touchy-feely guy.

I don't know if it's that so much as Kirk needs his XO and is in a bit of a panic. If they weren't on duty, or if the Plot Crisis de la Semaine wasn't about to hit its third-act peak, he'd have the luxury of letting him express these emotions (see Amok Time, the scene in Spock's quarters), but right at that moment Kirk can't indulge him.

Looking at it through the hindsight of vast character development, we could speculate that Kirk realizes that Spock would/will be ashamed of this emotional display later, so he's trying to help Spock out of this state as fast as possible, and he knows from McCoy/M'Benga that Vulcans need physical pain to focus on to break out of deep meditative states, so he hopes this will work. But that's a bit of post hoc fanwank.

[Nate the Great]

October 6th, 1966, "The Enemy Within"

The Fiver (by Kira)
Memory Alpha Page
Transcript by chakotea.net

The Episode:

* Ah yes, another "this event that is unknown to us" Captain's Log. More proof that these things are recorded after the fact.
* Combine the events of this episode with the Tom Riker and Tuvix incidents and we pretty much have confirmation that the transporter doesn't send your original matter along to be reconstituted.
* That still doesn't explain the delay in the materialization of Evil Kirk. More contrivance. If the ship had a second transporter room, I would've preferred that Evil Kirk had been shunted to said empty transporter room for simultaneous materialization.
* One missed opportunity is having Evil Kirk make his own Captain's Logs to show us what he's thinking.
* Couldn't the shuttle have been used offscreen for budgetary reasons? Sure, the attempt would have to fail to preserve the sense of urgency, but surely just a few shots of Sulu being shaken around by a storm and giving up was within the budget.
* Ah yes, "Hey crew, the imposter has face scars. That's right, the only way to tell us apart at first glance is something that's easily concealed. Good luck!" Don't dermal regenerators exist yet? Surely it would be easier to say "I'm staying on the bridge with Spock. If you see a Kirk wandering around alone it's the imposter, arrest him"?
* (Stolen from the Nitpicker's Guide) Spock considers his Vulcan half the alien one? Huh?
* Even back then I considered "Can half a man live?" to be quite profound. It reminds me of Picard in "Tapestry." We are the sum of our acts, good and bad. Mistakes give us the chance to grow and do better next time.

The fiver:

Captain's Log: Spock forgot to check the weather channel before our away mission, but I'm sure nothing will happen to strand any of us on this frozen wasteland.
Fisher: Ow! My hand! And I'm covered in this weird dust!
Apparently I have a poor sense of pattern recognition.

Don't worry about it, Jim. Starship captains will be making that mistake for centuries to come.

Evil Kirk: Say Bones, have anything to drink around here? Some Saurian Brandy, perhaps?
McCoy: I'm a doctor, not a bartender.

I think Doctor Boyce would claim that the two aren't mutually exclusive, Bones.

Evil Kirk: I must be Good Kirk, right?
Wilson: Hm, there is that evil music playing in the background. And the fact that your speaker credit is "Evil Kirk."

Looking at speaker tags is a common fiver thing, this technique would come in awfully handy during real episodes as well. What a shame.

Spock: Could there be any more plot complications?

When did Spock turn into Chandler Bing?

Memory Alpha discussion:

* Apparently this is the first appearance of Kirk's green wraparound tunic. I always did hate that thing.
* The first appearance of the neck pinch. Can you imagine how the franchise would be different if Nimoy hadn't inspired it's creation?

Nitpicker's Guide notes:

* Apparently this was the first time a keen-eyed viewer could see that James Doohan is missing a finger.
* In the opening scene several characters were missing their chest emblems (I still call them Cochrane deltas for reasons explained elsewhere). Memory Alpha thinks that they had been removed for cleaning and someone forgot to put them back on before shooting. I'm leaning more toward's Phil's theory can removing them lets the production staff flip the camera horizontally to make the planet set look larger.

[Nate the Great]

A video clip of the duplication.

I'm reminded of a passage from the Nitpicker's Guide now. Scotty sent an underling off to get a "synchronic meter" to double-check the transporter after the yellow ore messed with it. Then Scotty proceeds to beam the captain aboard without double-checking it. Huh? Yeah yeah, if he had waited there'd be no episode, but still! The arctic night wasn't imminent, nobody on the planet was in imminent danger. Scotty, it's okay to tell the Captain that there's a hiccup in the transporter and would he mind waiting half an hour!