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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 3:12 pm 
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I'm glad I waited until I was in my late 30s to read Dune (as in last summer late 30s). The teenage me wouldn’t have had the patience for it.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 3:40 pm 
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Arzgarth wrote:
I'm glad I waited until I was in my late 30s to read Dune (as in last summer late 30s). The teenage me wouldn’t have had the patience for it.


Thread hijack:
I know this is off topic; but I never had a problem with Dune as a lonely young freshmen in high school, but the sequels on the other hand were snooze-ville at the time.

My question to you sci-fi nerds: Is it worth to try those volumes again now that I'm older and "wiser"?

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 Post subject: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 4:07 pm 

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I like most of them but I always have. Frank herberts are the best. His sons first couple of books were meh. Chapterhouse and heretics are the most boring ones. All of the house books and the legend of dune books are ok but dune and children of dune are by far the best ones

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:07 pm 
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I got through three or four of the sequels. Definitely the ones written by Frank and not the kid. Diminishing returns, for sure. It dragged. And I kind of got the feeling either they assumed I knew more than I did about the back story or I missed an important part. A shame, really, because Leto II (the character, not the Dinger revival) is a really interesting character.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:18 pm 
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Also, I just discovered that the entire original series is available on Netflix. So there's that.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:43 pm 

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Arzgarth wrote:
I got through three or four of the sequels. Definitely the ones written by Frank and not the kid. Diminishing returns, for sure. It dragged. And I kind of got the feeling either they assumed I knew more than I did about the back story or I missed an important part. A shame, really, because Leto II (the character, not the Dinger revival) is a really interesting character.

if i remember correctly the house books tell the story of the houses

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:45 pm 
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Demon Lung wrote:
Arzgarth wrote:
I got through three or four of the sequels. Definitely the ones written by Frank and not the kid. Diminishing returns, for sure. It dragged. And I kind of got the feeling either they assumed I knew more than I did about the back story or I missed an important part. A shame, really, because Leto II (the character, not the Dinger revival) is a really interesting character.

if i remember correctly the house books tell the story of the houses

That sounds like it makes sense

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 12:31 am 
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Well, s01e29: "Operation: Annihilate!" wrapped the season tonight. 29 full episodes later, it's been a hell of a ride, and after the glory that was "The City on the Edge of Forever," this one ended season one on a note that's pretty typical of what I've come to expect from a Star Trek episode -- the Enterprise comes upon some outside element that presents a danger, ultimately triumphs and everything is put back where it belongs. Nobody important dies or is altered in any serious way, space hotties abound, and the story always gets back to point A, from which it will resume next week as though unlocked from a time capsule.

Oddly enough, that's not a complaint. Through this entire season, Star Trek has done this really, really well. It's been a lot of deus ex machina. A LOT. Two lots, even. But it's also been a lot of fun to watch and I've grown to really like these characters. Much as I was familiar with them before -- and I was, apparently more than the average person, at least according to several awkward conversations I've had over the last few years -- I feel like I've encountered them on a different level watching them develop over the course of the 29 (so far) episodes.

It's been an enjoyable process and I'm looking forward to continuing with the next season, especially because I found and downloaded the original versions and won't have to deal with the added CGI anymore.

But anyway, "Operation: Annihilate!" is so named for the prospect of Kirk having to destroy an entire planet to kill off a kind of space-parasite that's actually single cell organisms acting individually but also as part of some larger, unknown whole. They never get into that, but when Kirk & Co. beam down to the planet, they find Kirk's brother, who's stationed there as a biologist with his wife and son, dead. The kid's unconscious and we never see him, but they beam him and Kirk's brother's wife up to the ship to see what's going on.

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The answer: Brain slugs. Another of the many things Futurama took directly from Star Trek. They can't be killed by conventional means, and one gets Spock, so he's in agony the whole time despite claiming to manage it with Vulcan badassery.

Kirk's brother's wife dies, the kid's in a coma or something and we never see or hear from him again, even though they eventually figure out how to kill the slugs with bright light. They blast Spock with "a full spectrum" and he goes blind.

That's actually toward the end of the episode, and they figure out shortly thereafter that they didn't actually have to blind him. Whoops. Bones feels all bad, but they proceed nonetheless with freeing the planet -- Deneva is the name of it -- from the brain slugs by setting up satellites and setting loose whatever kind of light it is that will kill them. Hooray for Starfleet, everyone's saved, but what about Spock? He's still blind!

Yeah, he pretty much walks onto the bridge like he's hot shit, talking all about some instinctive second eyelid Vulcans have to keep them from harsh light. The blindness was temporary. Banter ensues, course is set, warp one, season over. No more ceremony than that.

Space hottie of the episode is Kirk's yeoman, who apparently has a bit of a cult following in the online Trek community. No surprise there either, I guess. Anyway, it was a cool episode. Not as in-depth emotionally as "The City on the Edge of Forever" or as action-packed as some of the others, but a decent example of what a lot of season one was all about.

Onward.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 7:59 am 
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Ah, the killer pancakes episode. I always liked that one.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 10:02 am 
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The Bluray collections are fantastic.
Beautiful picture and sound. You can choose the surround mix or original mono.
You can choose the new FX or original.

Here's the only problem: For whatever reason, they didn't clean up the original FX shots.
So you're watching a gorgeous restored picture, then it cuts to a shitty blurry scratchy faded shot of the ship/planet.

I cannot believe they didn't go all the way with it.
So, like Star Wars, you will never see a full clean, restored, original.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 4:51 pm 
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I've more or less decided to skip this generation of physical visual media. The Bluray thing seems to temporary for me to really invest, especially after amassing a respectable and now obsolete DVD collection. I guess the same could be said for audio CDs, but they lasted 20+ years (including my most formative ones), where DVDs seem not to have made it half that long. Maybe if something great comes along after Bluray, I'll pick it back up, but until then, downloads have that added element of danger anyway, thinking the gubment is tracking my every move.

Which I'm sure would get boring after about 20 minutes. Unless you like Star Trek and stoner rock, anyway.

We wasted no time starting season two last night. S02e01: "Amok Time" is a classic I've seen before. It's the first time Spock does the "live long and prosper" thing and the first appearance of Chekov -- whose name they say like 50 times as if to be like, "Hey, did you catch the new guy yet? He's new!" -- who looks like they just hired him away from the Monkees:

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Bones also got billing out front in the show's opener, but that's less exciting than the episode itself, which pits Spock and Kirk against each other in a fight to the death. Spock's Vulcan biology means every seven years he's got to go back to Vulcan and get it on, but it's this whole ancient ceremony that happens on the planet with his wife from an arranged marriage.

The Enterprise, meanwhile, is supposed to be headed somewhere else for some bureaucratic obligation -- man, Star Trek REALLY hates bureaucracy -- and Spock averts the course to Vulcan, resulting in much banter between newbie Chekov and Sulu on the bridge. Kirk finds out and gives Spock the hands on the hips treatment, like so:

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Confined to his quarters and apparently a hornball mess (it's called "Pon Farr," if you're looking for an interesting Star Trek-related Google Image search) Spock gets all emo and hits on the nurse who brings him Vulcan soup, after first rejecting said soup (playing it smooth, no doubt -- the nurse, incidentally, is played by Majel Barrett, who was married to Gene Roddenberry and who is the only actor to appear in all five Star Trek live-action series and was the first officer in the original pilot, only to be pushed down in rank to Bones' mini-skirt nurse on the show itself). Nothing comes of it, because Spock's wife comes on screen while she's there and whoops, sorry baby, that's my hottie Vulcan lady who I gotta go try and get wif." Spock gets to bring two friends to, uh, watch (?), and chooses Kirk and McCoy. Off they go, the three top billers, beaming down to Vulcan.

The ceremony is headed by T'Pau, who Kirk explains to Bones (and the audience) is kind of a big deal. She has many leather-bound books. Her apartment smells of rich mahogany. She's friends with Merlin Olsen. He comes over, on occasion. Because Spock's wife wants to get with some other Vulcan stud, she tells Spock she wants to have him fight someone to the death, and chooses Kirk, who has no idea what's going on, but still says yes, because I guess he's always up for a fight.

He thinks he can lose on purpose or forfeit, but T'Pau is like, "No dice, chief," and tells him it's to the death. Epic, Cable Guy and Futurama-referenced battle ensues (the music IS awesome), and Bones injects Kirk with a paralytic that mimics death while telling everyone it's an oxygen compound that will help him breathe in the thin Vulcan atmosphere. So Spock wins the fight and thinks Kirk is dead, tells his wife to go off with the other Vulcan guy and goes back to the Enterprise, ready to turn himself in for murdering Kirk.

Kirk, of course, is not dead. Spock goes to Bones and gives him control of the ship (because I guess the doctor is third in command and people who actually steer the thing or operate its communications like Uhura are small potatoes, despite rank) and Kirk comes around the corner behind him all surprise-like. If a happy Star Trek ending (as opposed to a happy massage ending) looks like anything, it looks like this:

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Kirk and Bones make fun of him for having and showing emotions and it's the Trekkiest Trekky Trek finish ever.

This one's a classic, and it's fun to watch having seen these characters grow into what they essentially are at this point in watching, which is the established tv icons they'll become. The dynamics are set, and all Star Trek has to do now is continue to refine its formula on a per-episode basis. I'm waiting for Scotty to come more into focus, but I imagine there'll be some more Chekov before that happens.

Anyway, you know this was a good episode because it got three pictures, and that's the most yet.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:08 pm 
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Chekov

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 8:34 pm 
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Clearly the hair just gets better:

Image

A Giuliani-worthy comb-over.

Image

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2012 12:54 am 
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Good fun last night with s02e02: "Who Mourns for Adonais." My wife and I have a running gag that, as the spiritual head of the family (that being me, her and the little dog Dio), I have decided that our religion is ancient astronaut theory. As luck would have it, this episode pretty much predicts that whole phenomenon when the Enterprise encounters the powerful alien who was once Apollo on earth.

There's some pretty righteous sexism at the start -- I know you have to take these things in context, but man, this show was so progressive racially and it's like all of that came at the expense of women -- I guess someone had to get thrown under the Dominant Culture Express -- although at one point as Uhura is soldering something on the ship, Spock tells her there's no one else he'd want for the job. That was something.

But meanwhile down on the planet where Kirk, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov and Bones (the gang's all here) are, Apollo's getting all rapey with some space-hottie lieutenant:

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Scotty's all pissed about it too, because he totally had eyes for her. Whatever. They figure out how to beat him by firing phasers on his "Mount Olympus" temple, and then when he's gone, Kirk is all like, "I don't know, maybe slavery to an ancient god wouldn't have been so bad," totally undercutting his position the whole episode.

Actually, there was a pretty telling moment where Kirk is yelling at Apollo and he says, "We have no use for gods!" and I got a big ol' atheist boner, soon to be undone by, "The one will do just fine" or something like that. I guess you couldn't get away with saying there's no god on tv. They did it like 17 times on Colbert tonight, so I guess that's progress.

Not a bad episode, all told. As I'd hoped for, we got a lot more Mr. Scott this time around, and that was cool. And they stuck to their guns on making Chekov a major character out of the gate, so that was good to see. Wasted no time with him, and at one point, when Kirk is trying to talk his space-hottie lieutenant out of being in love with Apollo, he asks Chekov how old he is. Chekov says he's 23 and Kirk says, "Better let me handle it," because he's master of handling the ladies. James T. Smooth.

I'm also really glad to be watching the original versions of the episodes. Those remastered ones were way less fun.

I've noticed in finding pictures for these episodes that there's like a whole genre of those fake internet "de-motivational" posters about Star Trek. Here are a few of the better ones I've seen for the last few episodes:

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Image

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Image

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Yeah, I know those things are old memes, and I should be doing this:

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Call me old fashioned.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 6:29 pm 
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Last night was s02e03: "The Changeling," which, among other things, was the basis for the South Park episode (which was on not too long ago, though it's on like five times a night, so I guess that's not really a surprise) with the Funnybot in it. The robot in Star Trek was called Nomad:

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It's sentient and because it got hit by a meteor and merged with another probe (because that's how computers work, right?) thinks it has to destroy everything that's imperfect, i.e., everything living. It gets the idea Kirk is its creator and chaos and hilarity both ensue until Kirk finally gets tired of it and kills it (how else?) with a logic loop. "I'm your creator and I'm imperfect, therefore you're imperfect, therefore you have to destroy yourself." Reminds me of the family picnic.

Heyo!

Nothing?

Anyway...

Among other shenanigans, the robot completely wipes Uhura's memory clean. This seemed really fucked up to me. They had her reverting to speaking Swahili and learning to read, doing "See Jane run" and all that stuff. I said to my wife that when they said "Cut!" she must have gotten up and punched someone in the face. It was, as the kids say, problematic.

Kind of a middling episode, but enjoyable as they usually are. Notable in that it featured both a "He's dead, Jim" and a "I'm giving her all I've got" from Bones and Scotty, respectively. Catch phrases abound.

Onward.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Sat Mar 03, 2012 9:18 am 
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s02e04: "Mirror, Mirror" is pretty much a classic and a 4th of July marathon must. Spock's goatee alone is the stuff of legend:

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Pretty easy to imagine there was a moment in there when Shatner was like, "Let's just make the costume sleeveless."

Actually, the switch in clothes was probably the least believable part of it, as Kirk, Scotty, Uhura and McCoy are accidentally beamed -- damn ion storms -- to an alternate universe, where they're in a brutal empire about to kill a planet we just seconds ago saw them negotiating with at the start of the episode. Chaos ensues and they have to find their way back to their dimension, and meanwhile, we get a glimpse of Spock throwing "brutal" Kirk & Co. in the brig because he's not buying any of their shenanigans.

Evil Chekov (no goatee, unlike Evil Spock) tries to kill Kirk and fails and Kirk goes to his quarters and finds a space-hottie in his bed who winds up conveniently telling him about the device he has that will let him make all his enemies disappear. It's like, "Hey, remember all the good times you had killing people with this?" and he's like, "Uh, totally." Way to pull it off, captain.

Meanwhile, Mr. Scott and McCoy are trying to rig the transporter to send them home and Uhura has been charged with "creating a diversion" by letting Evil Sulu, who's the head of security and just waiting to assassinate Kirk and Spock so he can be captain, put the moves on her. Evil Sulu has a scar on his face and it's probably the worst make up job yet on the show, but it doesn't matter. He's no match for Uhura's bare midriff:

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Evil Spock gets orders to kill Kirk, adding a race-against-time kind of element, and they fight, with Kirk cracking a skull over the back of his head. They go to leave, and McCoy says he wants to heal him, but they're pressed for time because the universes are moving farther apart -- OR SOMETHING -- and need to go. Space-hottie wants to go with them to the non-evil universe, but Kirk tells her no dice.

Meanwhile, Evil Spock woke up and mind-melded with McCoy to find out the deal and comes into the transporter room and beams everyone out, Kirk telling him he should overthrow the empire with the machine he has and set up a federation. You don't really find out what happens with that, but the impression is Spock is going to think about it.

Pretty arrogant of Kirk to just assume the federation is better, but that's the whole sci-fi space-battle-as-Cold-War thing, so it's at least in line with that. Anyway, the whole party, Uhura too, gets back to the right Enterprise just in time to laugh it off on the bridge when Non-Evil Spock calls the evil landing party more human for their barbarism. Space-hottie, the non-evil universe's version, walks onto the bridge to deliver the captain a report, totally unaware that he made out a little bit with her evil-universe counterpart, and Kirk is all like, "Hey Spock, check it out, I'm gonna go get laid," and the episode ends with him getting up and going to talk to her.

Again, this is a classic, and I'm pretty sure the goatee thing has been referenced everywhere. South Park did it, I know -- watching Star Trek has given me a whole new appreciation for that show -- and I think Ren and Stimpy did something back in the day, the Simpsons, etc. Maybe one or two shows that wasn't a cartoon (god I'm lame).

This one was fun, though. Kind of a crazy weekend, but I hope to get the next in there somewhere.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Sat Mar 03, 2012 12:29 pm 

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I have never seen this episode. Ill have to rectify that.


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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Fri Mar 09, 2012 1:08 am 
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The other night (was it last night? I don't think so. Hard to remember) we did s02e05 and s02e06 in rapid succession. Here's a quickie recap of each:

s02e05: "The Apple"

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The above sexless weirdos worship a machine called Vaal, that in exchange for being "fed" to continue its battery power, allows them to live forever unchanged and unaged. Hence, apparently, why they have no sex or development and it's not until they see Chekov putting the moves on some space-hottie redshirt that they're like, "Or we could screw." Good times. Vaal's got the ship held in a kind of tractor beam, and there are some decent scenes of Scottie trying to fix it down in the tubes (the Enterprise runs, from my understanding, on similar principles to a Sunn Beta Lead), so it's a race against time and exciting on that level, but nothing really landmark actually happens and it winds up being more interesting on the level of the media politics of its day than anything else. They literally couldn't say "sex," or so it seemed, so they have to find all sorts of childish ways around it that, were they actually scientists on a mission in space, would be completely ridiculous. Seriously, they like said "it" and giggled and that was supposed to signify fucking. Hard to believe conservative American politicians could want to return to an era so inhumanly stupid. Simpler time indeed.

And awesome to know that 40+ years from now, some insolent shit will think of us the same way as regards gender politics, gay marriage legislation, women's health, etc. Future jerks.

This wonder was followed almost immediately (the decadence!) by...

s02e06: "The Doomsday Machine"

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Speaking of gender politics, what we seem to have here is a giant killer space vagina of unknown origin that goes around destroying planet systems. Seems just about ripe for a, "Am I right, fellas???" Seriously, I get press releases from a sex toy company called Fleshlight, which is basically like a flashlight with rubber labia that you can bone, and they look just like this thing, perhaps minus the psychedelic insides (though that's something they might want to consider for future models). What made the episode interesting was it was the first escape pod launch shown, to the best of my recollection -- there may have been one in that episode where Spock leads a landing party and it gets set on fire; I fell asleep during that one -- and they pick up a Commodore, unfortunately NOT Lionel Richie, who takes control of the Enterprise because he's all PTSD after the spacegina has killed his entire crew that he gets it in his head that he needs to destroy it. In the end, Kirk "kills" it with Crazy Commodore's personnel-free ship and is beamed out in the nick of time. Maybe this was the episode with Scotty in the tubes. Or maybe it was both. Either way, doesn't really matter. Somewhere in there, Mr. Montgomery Scott reckoned himself with a Matamp Green head and won. The rest is incidental to that.

The thread between the two episodes, I guess, is a distrust of machines. I don't know too much about the history of sci-fi in film and TV, but from Gort to flying saucers to the Terminator series, I suppose that's been a theme all along. Fair enough.

I was hoping to watch s02e07: "Catspaw" already, since it seems rife with voodoo and psychedelic awesomeness, but no such luck as yet. Hopefully over the weekend.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Sun Mar 11, 2012 12:27 am 
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s02e06: "Catspaw" was everything I hoped for and more. Watched it the other night. Perhaps best described by the images themselves, since the visuals were so much of the thing. Totally horror psych and fantastic.

First Kirk and Spock and McCoy beam down to a planet to find Sulu and Scotty. They're soon beset upon by three witches that look like this:

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The witches warn Kirk to get away, but they press forward. Meanwhile, on the ship, Mr. Scott's assistant engineer is kind of a jerk who keeps bossing Chekov around. No wonder, since Chekov's hair looks like this the whole time:

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I don't think I'd be able to take him seriously either. Anyway, Kirk & Co. soon find a space-hottie and a dude in a SunnO))) robe who have a magic control over everything with space-voodoo. Perhaps some of the series' most righteous costuming yet:

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The space-hottie is mad with her power. She threatens the Enterprise because she wants to know all about humans and take over the galaxy or something. Of course, she's totally undone by Kirk's dudeliness, and while kinda-sorta late-'60 tv making out, she spills the beans on the whole thing, while also getting all desperate and offering him all kinds of knowledge and earthly pleasures and whatnot while changing her outfit several times, I guess just to show she can:

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But wait! She soon realizes he's just using her for information, and so she makes the black cat that's been following them around -- the whole thing is that the projections the world is made of are real, but drawn from some kind of universal human terror subconscious; it's vaguely explained -- and makes it a giant. There's an awesome shot of what's clearly a normal-sized cat running down a tiny hallway:

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Kirk gets a magic wand from robe-guy, who's all like, "Space-hottie has gone nuts, take this magic wand!" and smashes it and all the illusions disappear. We get to see robe-guy and space-hottie in their real form at the very end, and they are awesome looking, as you can see:

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And the episode ends when they die and, for no apparent reason, smoke starts coming off their bodies. It was a fantastic moment in psych-pop history.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 11:55 pm 
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I guess it was Saturday night we did two episodes in a row? Wasn't Sunday, because Sunday I spent making the podcast. So yeah, Saturday.

Wow, glad I got that worked out. Off to a tremendous start here.

Coming soon: who farted.

Anyway, in s02e07: "I, Mudd," we're reintroduced to Harcourt Fenton Mudd, aka Harry. He was in one of the early episodes of season one, running a scam with mail-order space-wives on some remote miners, which I think was only a scam because he was selling space-hotties under false pretenses. Kind of a scummer, is the point. Now he's got his own planet.

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He's got a whole league of androids -- and they call them ANDROIDS; how did George Lucas get the trademark on this shit again? -- some are space-hottie clones and one's the wife he left who he keeps around to tell to shut up, but he's tired of being on the planet and so wants to trap someone else there so he can leave. Just so happened the leader of his cyborgs infiltrated the Enterprise and brought the ship to Mudd's planet. Quite a coincidence.

Some good Chekov lechery here, and some astoundingly sexist shit you'd never get away with these days between Mudd and his robo-wife. The whole plot's pretty thin, but Mudd's fun anyway, and in the end he gets trapped on the planet as punishment with an army of 500 of his robo-wives to nag him and basically the whole bridge cast -- Uhura got to come along on this one too -- has a good laugh, and then the episode's over. Silly but enjoyable.

s02e08: "Metamorphosis" was more complex, structurally. Kirk and Spock and Bones are out on an escort mission in a shuttle that gets pulled onto a mysterious planet by an ion energy field thing, only to meet Zefram Cochrane, a human from earth and the inventor of the warp drive, presumed dead for 150 years but who's apparently been living on this planet the whole time, kept alive and young by something called the Companion, shown as basically a cloud of color, which he joins with in kind of psychedelic union:

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The ambassador that the trio were escorting (it was not, contrary to what you might think a mission to find escorts) was trying to stop a war between two civilizations and has some kind of fever and will die if they can't get her back to the ship, but the Companion is keeping them there and it's not until Spock rigs up the universal translator to speak Electricity Cloud that they can communicate with it. Turns out it's a lady and it's in love with Zefram Cochrane.

Cochrane isn't cool with it though, I guess because in the 2200s they still weren't cool with dudes marrying collections of ion particles. No one else seems bothered. Meanwhile, ambassador lady is dying and then dies, shortly beforehand saying that she never knew love and Cochrane should be happy with his ion cloud because at least that's something. She'd been kind of bitchy -- or, you know, professional -- earlier, so it's supposed to be a tender moment.

Next thing you know, the ion cloud has taken over her body -- zombie ambassador! -- and is a mortal woman. They're all set to leave the planet, everyone, but she's like, "By the way, I'll die if I leave," and Cochrane decides to stay behind too, even though he'll grow old and die now, because she's a proper lady with proper ladyparts.

But the really fucked up aspect of it is that ambassador is dead, and at the end, they're like, "Yeah, whatever." Kirk literally says, "I think they'll find another woman to stop that war." Their mission was a total failure and they were like, "Fuck it, let's get this dude who invented the warp drive some ass." Kind of a weird feeling when the episode was over.

I guess it's an important one in the Star Trek lore though, since I remember from like the 20 minutes of the First Contact movie that I saw on HBO that they meet the guy who invented warp travel, and at least according to Google Images, it's the same character, so good to know he comes up again:

Image

A good episode, but a bit of kitchen-sinkery going on and the whole thing with the ambassador dying was weird.

Still, onward.

Also notable: on Saturday I watched the Next Generation episode "Darmok," and it was cool, but I don't think I have 178 episodes of that show in me. "Watching every episode of every Star Trek ever" wasn't exactly in the five-year plan.

I... I don't have a five year plan.

Just 41 episodes to go. By my count, I'm 39 in, so next one is the halfway point.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 1:38 am 

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h.p. taskmaster wrote:
but I don't think I have 178 episodes of that show in me.


I actually just sort of did this... I skipped a lot of them because I had remembered that they were boring, or they were just mediocre.

I watch/enjoy TNG for the episodes that deal with morality, the Borg, Q, and time continuum ass slapping.


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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 2:29 am 
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AresOnasis wrote:

I watch/enjoy TNG for the episodes that deal with morality, the Borg, Q, and time continuum ass slapping.


And the one where Data is kidnapped by Saul Rubinek (sp?).

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 11:07 am 

Joined: Sun Dec 19, 2010 7:26 am
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Crutch wrote:
AresOnasis wrote:

I watch/enjoy TNG for the episodes that deal with morality, the Borg, Q, and time continuum ass slapping.


And the one where Data is kidnapped by Saul Rubinek (sp?).


Yeah that's a good one. That episode would fall under the moral/ethical topics brought up though.


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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 12:04 pm 
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Quote:
I guess because in the 2200s they still weren't cool with dudes marrying collections of ion particles.


Goddamn that's a good line. Sig-worthy, if I didn't have the more pressing need to go poop.

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 Post subject: Re: The original Star Trek
PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 12:18 pm 

Joined: Wed Dec 08, 2010 5:52 pm
Posts: 153
Location: North-Central Massachusetts
AresOnasis wrote:
Crutch wrote:
AresOnasis wrote:

I watch/enjoy TNG for the episodes that deal with morality, the Borg, Q, and time continuum ass slapping.


And the one where Data is kidnapped by Saul Rubinek (sp?).


Yeah that's a good one. That episode would fall under the moral/ethical topics brought up though.


The Worf/discommendation stuff is great too.


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