50th Anniversary TOS Episode Discussion Marathon

[Nate the Great]

I assume I'm doing Charlie X on Thursday.

[Nate the Great]

September 15th, 1966, "Charlie X"

The Fiver (by Derek)
Memory Alpha Page
Transcript by chakoteya.net

Thoughts on the episode:

* Charlie learned to talk by speaking to the computer? Yeah, no. Maybe if you plunked a kid in a classroom with a computer specifically programmed to teach language skills like in the NextGen episode "Rascals." In the 23rd century, with a computer designed to be used in a colony, a computer even less sophisticated than the Enterprise's? Yeah, no. At best Charlie would babble at it and the computer would respond "invalid command" over and over.
* The bottom slapping bit always seemed out of place. The final punchline needed to be stronger to justify the setup, and it wasn't.
* Since Kirk is from Iowa, the idea that he'd be the one in favor of promoting at least minimal observance of Thanksgiving makes sense.
* Ah, yes, UESPA, the United Earth Space Probe Agency. After this episode and "Tomorrow is Yesterday", UESPA would be relegated to cameos. Some have suggested that any usage of a military rank instead of a naval rank (i.e. Colonel West) marks a UESPA officer, not a Starfleet one. At least this bit of early weirdness hasn't entirely gone away, unlike Vulcanians and lithium crystals.
* I'm still iffy on this whole "Thasians can teach the ability to transmute matter to humans" thing. When it comes to inhuman powers, I don't think they can be "taught." I'd think teaching a human to nerve pinch would be about the maximum possible without outright genetic modification.
* I do like how Charlie admits that the Enterprise is more complicated than the Antares and he outright can't control everything by himself. It calls to mind Scotty's jerry-rig of the ship in The Search for Spock.
* If the Thasians can grant their power without being able to take it back, I guess they're lower on the cosmic food chain than the Q, who can do it with a finger snap. I like that, they're not quite omnipotent. Call it semi-phenomenal, nearly cosmic.

Thoughts on the fiver:

I understand the Star Wars jokes, but reminding me of the prequels isn't very pleasant. Sorry, Derek.

Uhura: (singing) Charlie X, Charlie X, for you that name might vex. But be glad indeed your name's not Malcolm Reed or you'd be called Malcolm X. Ack!
Charlie: I find your lack of good lyrics disturbing.

Classic trilogy jokes, however, are a-okay.

Ramart: (over the comm) Kirk, I wanted to warn you about Charlie X. He's a Q! GAK!
Kirk: What's a "Q"?
Spock: It's a letter of the alphabet as far as I know.

Classic "Gak!" gag. Obligatory "All Good Things" reference, move along...

Rand: Argh! Enough with the Star Wars quotes already! Get out!

I'm with you on this one, Janice.

Spock: I can't believe my ears!
Charlie: I can't believe your ears either.

Okay, is this more Abbot and Castello or Marx Brothers? Decisions, decisions...

Memory Alpha thoughts:

* I wasn't aware that an early title considered was "Charlie's Law", a science joke. I remember covering this in school, but we jumped quickly to the Ideal Gas Law.
* I didn't know that Gene Roddenberry's only cameo (as a voice) was in this episode.
* I've read the Blish adaptations, but it's been a long time. I didn't know that Blish was able to save the disappeared Enterprise crew by saved by the Thasians.
* The article mentions that Charlie and the Antares crew use leftover, outdated uniforms from "The Cage." This makes sense, as when uniforms are updated priority would be given to the starship crews, with smaller ships and outposts lower down in the pecking order.
* Thanksgiving in 2266 would be on November 22nd, giving an exact "real-world" date for this episode.
* I'm amazed that at various points the Antares is called a cargo vessel, a transport ship, a science probe vessel, and a survey ship. Maybe the last two could be considered alternate terms for each other, but in general wouldn't these tasks require different kinds of crews and ship equipment? Clearly the script needed another run-through by an editor.

[Nate the Great]

C'mon guys, fiftieth anniversaries don't come along every year.

[Nate the Great]

Perhaps we need to change the thread title? "50th Anniversary TOS Episode Discussion Marathon?"

[NAHTMMM]

Sorry, I was going to rewatch Thursday but other stuff kept coming up.

From what I remember, there's an undercurrent of Kirk and the crew failing Charlie. Obviously Kirk didn't know at first how special Charlie was, and he had a ship to run and Charlie was just another passenger, but in the context of the episode Kirk doesn't look very empathetic. (In fact, looking at the transcript, Kirk tries to push the task of an initial father figure off on Bones.) I know it was '60s TV, but seriously:

Well, um, er, there are things you can do with a lady, er, Charlie, that you er. There's no right way to hit a woman. I mean, man to man is one thing, but, er, man and woman, er, it's, er, it's, er. Well it's, er, another thing. Do you understand?

No. Nobody's going to understand that.

I wonder (if I may take this into a weird meta space) how a later Kirk might have handled Charlie, during the second season for example, when the character was more familiar to the writers and Shatner. Could the episode have gone in a different direction, with Charlie and the crew finding some understanding of each other, only for Charlie to be taken away at the end despite showing promise? Would that be more or less effective?


Oh, and the fiver is very good.

Charlie: Is that a girl?
Kirk: No, those are the transporter controls. This is your first time around other people, isn't it?

Classic parodic lines. And the Star Wars jokes are wonderfully over-the-top.

[Nate the Great]

September 22nd, 1966, "Where No Man Has Gone Before"

The Fiver (by Zeke)
Memory Alpha Page
Transcript by chakoteya.net

Thoughts on the episode:

* Ah yes, the second pilot. The one that would never have been made in today's television industry. Today "The Cage" would've been rejected and Star Trek never would've happened.
* One of Spock's ancestors married a human? Why wasn't the precise nature of Spock's heritage in the series bible? Sarek and Amanda should've been in the series bible by now.
* Lots of outdated technobabble. I've already preached enough on this topic, I'll move on.
* I always hate it when a show's cast introduces themselves and their specialties in turn. There had to have been a way to do this more organically.
* Like many fans, I interpret the "little blonde lab technician" as Carol Marcus.
* "James R. Kirk." I wonder what name starting with "R" would have been as memetic as "Tiberius".

Thoughts on the fiver:

Kelso: Are you sure? Could be risky.
Kirk: Risk? Risk is our business! That's what this starship is all abou--
Spock: Ahem. Jim? Not till the one where we switch brains with robots.
Kirk: Oh yeah. Sorry.

I always did love the "risk is our business" quote. I remember that the novel Imzadi says that Kirk adopted that phrase as the title of his autobiography.

Kirk: Okay, activate the transporter.
Scotty: You mean the materializer, right?
Kirk: Materializer? Yeesh, even Archer called it a transporter! What kind of losers are we?

Oh yeah, that's a lame name. Even "Vulcanian" isn't that pathetic.

Sulu: Mitchell's powers are doubling every day. Think of it this way, sir: suppose you make one penny today, then two pennies tomorrow, four pennies the next day, and so on. Know what happens after a month? You get busted for forgery.
Kirk: I'm not sure I followed that.
Spock: Try "us good, Gary bad."
Kirk: Hmmm...yeah, that's better. Let's dump him on a planet and run.

Classic twist on the "wheat and chessboard problem" (I remember the rice variant, but whatever Wikipedia says, goes, I guess).

Piper: Mitchell left after killing Kelso and putting you and Spock to sleep.
Kirk: How did he do that?
Piper: According to our security camera, he started reading out the script of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Nobody deserves that kind of torture.

Kirk: Sorry you got, you know, killed.
Dehner: Meh, no biggie. It was... fun....
Kirk: Why do I feel like I just looked into my own grave?

Yikes, Z. How many shoutouts to other episodes and movies can you fit into one fiver?

Kirk: "James R. Kirk."
Spock: Right. What's with that? A god wouldn't make such a grave mistake.
Kirk: What mistake? It was a sentence: "James are Kirk." Which I are.
Spock: Hmm... becoming the brains of this outfit may be easier than I expected.

Was the juxtaposition of a clever pun with a lame pun your intention? Because that was clever if so.

Memory Alpha thoughts:

* I'd forgotten about Sulu's shifting job description in the early episodes. I almost wonder if this is similar to Chekov and Wesley having multiple jobs to better round out their education and training.
* They bring up Kirk and Mitchell's visit to Deneb IV, to be featured in "Encounter at Farpoint." Odd, while watching that episode I got the impression that Deneb IV had only recently joined the galactic community, perhaps wanting to leverage Farpoint Station and its new trading position to increase it's position.
* I knew that Isaac Asimov was a fan, but didn't know that he first encountered the show at a screening, nor did I know that Roddenberry "shushed" him.

[NAHTMMM]

My favorite bit of the fiver is probably:

Kirk: And now, onward! Onward we go, to expand the frontiers of human exploration and become legends!

Spock: Well, that was a bust.
Kirk: Oh, shut up.

The bit where Dehner says "I think I'm some kind of psychiatrist" amuses me too.

I imagine that the series bible simply said "this guy's half-alien, half-human" and left it at that. A lot of Trek just got made up as they went along; it's a big reason why canon is such an issue.