January 2012
1 post
5 tags
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
So that’s what an invisible barrier looks like
Star Trek V (Netflix; Amazon; Memory Alpha) is somewhere between “not as bad as I remember” and “offensive and hurtful”.
On the one hand, they start out with beautiful spots in Yosemite and have a terrific time playing with the characters: Kirk, Spock and Bones get to be grumpy old men together; Sulu and Chekov get...
December 2011
1 post
5 tags
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
“Hello, Computer”
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Memory Alpha) is the funny one. Where they go back in time. With the whales. Where Scotty says “hello, computer” into the mouse.
And it’s great. It is legitimately fantastically good. It manages to take a plot about extinction and make it light and interesting and a little bit alarming without bludgeoning you with...
November 2011
1 post
7 tags
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Leather Jackets for Everybody
I watched Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (Memory Alpha) nearly a month ago. Some of the lag time is due to life taking more time than I had, but a lot of it is due to my not having much of anything to say about this movie. I will now spend a few hundred words telling you all about it.
The Good
Let us talk as men do: in dramatic lighting.
This movie marks...
September 2011
2 posts
7 tags
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
KHAAAN!
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan feels like “the Star Trek movie”, as if it were the film that took the successful, beloved franchise and put it in all its glory on the big screen. That it is not that movie but is rather the sequel to it is both the most interesting and least interesting thing about it: most because it gets so much right where The Motion Picture got wrong, and...
5 tags
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is too many things at once.
The whole cast, in ridiculous 70s costumes.
It is, first and foremost, a return. It brings back the Star Trek universe after a decade off the air, and the requisite pomp and circumstance for the occasion is all over the film. It drips with the excitement of the people who got to make this thing and celebrate together their love of the...
August 2011
6 posts
4 tags
Series Roundup: Star Trek
I’ve now completed Leg 1 of this epic journey: I’ve seen every episode of TOS. And I’ve got to say I liked it rather a lot more than I expected to. I thought it’d be good, and interesting, and have a few nice episodes, but it’s damn good, it’s got a ton of really great ideas, and it has some fantastic episodes.
Favorites
My favorites are the ones that...
1 tag
6 tags
Turnabout Intruder
TOS’s final episode, Turnabout Intruder (Netflix; Memory Alpha), gives the whole crew a chance to go out acting, and all but the most important role does great.
The Enterprise finds a decimated colony whose lead scientist is Janice, an old Starfleet flame of Kirk’s (who isn’t, right?). She’s still mad because women can’t be captains and she wanted Kirk’s life,...
1 tag
4 tags
All Our Yesterdays
All Our Yesterdays (Netflix; Memory Alpha) finds the crew of our favorite starship beaming down to a planet whose star is about to nova and whose inhabitants have vanished. There, in a library, they find an old man who seems to teleport around the room. As one does.
It quickly becomes apparent that the people of the Sarpeidon have invented a time travel device they call the Atavachron....
April 2011
14 posts
5 tags
The Savage Curtain
The Savage Curtain (Video; YouTube; Memory Alpha) is an episode where the crew meets Lincoln, is imprisoned by rock aliens, is challenged on the differences between Good and Evil, and fails to mount even a cursory defense of their ideology.
Interesting Bits
Kirk explains how the teleporter works. We meet Surak. They miss an opportunity to discuss labels by instead saying that they don’t...
8 tags
Requiem for Methuselah
Requiem for Methuselah (Video; YouTube; Memory Alpha) gives too much away in the title, but is otherwise excellent.
The crew is suffering from Rigelian Fever, which will kill them all in a few days. They need ryetalyn quickly to make an antidote, and when they land on the only planet within range that’s got it, they’re shot at by a robot drone and threatened by an old guy who owns...
1 tag
9 tags
The Cloud Minders
The Cloud Minders (Video; YouTube; Memory Alpha) brings us to Ardana, the only known source of zenite, needed to stop an agricultural plague. But when they get there, the crew is attacked by the miners!
The local government (played very well) is hush-hush about why the miners are upset, and try to play it off as a simple uprising. But it soon becomes evident (in multiple ways, including a...
1 tag
6 tags
The Way to Eden
The Way to Eden (Video; YouTube; Memory Alpha) is full of hippies. Clad in even-more-graish-than-usual and slightly-more-revealing-than-usual attire, sporting lots of hair and odd medallions, the Space Hippies are following Dr. Sevrin and looking for Eden. They’ve hijacked a space cruiser and the Enterprise is hot on their tail; quick work is made of the chase and they’re brought on...
1 tag
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The Lights Of Zetar
The Lights Of Zetar* (Video; YouTube; Memory Alpha) takes the crew to Memory Alpha, namesake of the Star Trek Wikia. But before they get there, a mysterious storm of lights crosses their path and makes the obligitorily beautiful visiting expert feint!
And wouldn’t you know it but the storm did a number on Memory Alpha, too. And it’s gonna come back to finish the job on the Enterprise...
8 tags
That Which Survives
That Which Survives (Video; YouTube; Memory Alpha) is the episode where Mr. Spock is as annoying as he actually would be if you knew him, and you want to punch him in the face. Sadly, no one in this episode does so.
Begin Spoilers
There is, though, a holographic woman who kills by touch, an artificial planet, a black second-in-command in sickbay and a woman helmsman. There’s the...
1 tag
4 tags
The Mark of Gideon
The Mark of Gideon (Video; YouTube; Memory Alpha) finds our favorite starship visiting the planet Gideon, who is petitioning the Federation for membership but refuses to let Federation delegates visit or scan their planet. Until now, when they’ve requested Kirk come alone. And when he tries, he ends up on an empty Enterprise, all alone. Oh, no!
This episode is profoundly confused over what...
January 2011
4 posts
1 tag
7 tags
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield (Memory Alpha; Video) is that episode with the people who are half-white and half-black that’s all allegorical.
I don’t really know what to say about this episode. The allegory is so naked, so unsubtle, so ham-fisted that what could be an interesting way to tell a story you couldn’t otherwise tell instead becomes a monotonous slog through an...
2 tags
7 tags
Whom Gods Destroy
Whom Gods Destroy (Memory Alpha; Video) is a great little episode filled with crazy people. It’s fun and smart and damn hilarious.
Kirk and Spock beam down to Elba 2, where the last fifteen criminally insane people in the galaxy are housed in an asylum. They bear medicine to cure their insanity.
Begin Spoilers
But as you would expect, the asylum has been taken over by the madmen....
November 2010
6 posts
5 tags
Elaan of Troyius
Elaan of Troyius (Video; Memory Alpha) is a mediocre episode with one awesome scene. In a disputed star system on the border between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, two warring planets are ready to forge a peace with a marriage.
There’s some stuff that’s supposed to be funny with the bride not wanting to go and being a savage barbarian and Kirk telling her what-for, but it...
7 tags
The Empath (Video; Memory Alpha) is terrible. It’s the old away-team-captured-by-aliens-on-a-planet-that-they-thought-was-abandoned schtick, complete with big-headed aliens performing a mysterious experiment.
Added to the boring retread is the fact that they use the term “empath” completely incorrectly. The titular empath doesn’t feel others’ emotions, but instead...
2 tags
9 tags
Wink of an Eye
Wink of an Eye (Video; Memory Alpha) finds Scotty in charge of the ship with Kirk in an abandoned city that the sensors say doesn’t exist. When suddenly, a redshirt disappears!
The crew goes back to the Enterprise, but a lot of crazy stuff is going on. Systems are turning off and righting themselves, things are being moved around by no one, and everywhere there’s a weird buzzing...
October 2010
4 posts
3 tags
7 tags
Plato's Stepchildren
Plato’s Stepchildren (Video; Memory Alpha) are immortal humanoids who have built Plato’s Republic after visiting Earth millennia ago and settling on a rogue planet that escaped the nova of its star. They need a doctor and McCoy fits the bill.
This episode has a whole lot of good in it, and a sizable dosage of silliness. On balance it works, but only just.
Thirty-one of the...
2 tags
8 tags
The Tholian Web
The USS Defiant is missing, and in an attempt to rescue her Kirk is lost and the Enterprise is snared in The Tholian Web (Video; Memory Alpha).
This episode is interesting because Kirk is absent almost the entire time. He’s trapped in “interspace” and the action is all with McCoy and Spock on the Enterprise. Without Shatner hogging the spotlight, it’s nice to see everyone...
September 2010
6 posts
2 tags
7 tags
For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky (HD Video; Memory Alpha) is an awesome name, and a nearly awesome episode.
It starts out, as is the show’s wont, in the middle of a crisis, with chemical missiles hurtling toward the Enterprise. Phasers make quick work of them, and they are traced back to a generation ship built inside of a massive asteroid, aboard which the last remnant...
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10 tags
Day of the Dove
The Day of the Dove (HD Video; Memory Alpha) starts with Kirk getting punched in the face by a Klingon, and quickly goes downhill from there.
Best part
The Klingon Captain Kang is played by the Technomage from B5.
Worst part
Basically everything else in the episode. There’s some terrible sword fighting, Klingons in blackface, a being that’s crazy powerful but stupidly scared, a...
6 tags
6 tags
Specre of the Gun
Spectre of the Gun (HD Video; Memory Alpha) is like distilled TOS. There’s a new civilization to contact, a warning ignored, a confounding obstacle involving godlike powers, and a simple solution waiting to be found that makes everything all better just in time for the closing credits.
Awesome Dialog (Part I)
[Checkov is making out with the illusion of a girl] Kirk: Uhm… Mr Checkov?...
August 2010
2 posts
1 tag
8 tags
Is There In Truth No Beauty?
Is There In Truth No Beauty? (HD Video; Memory Alpha) starts right out by telling you that Medusans will make you crazy if you look at them.
Spock, of course, is exempt. He’s a Vulcan, so a snazzy visor will protect him from the crazy. And Dr. Miranda Jones is human and a telepath, but she’s exempt because… well, that’s part of the mystery.
This is a good episode. It’s...
June 2010
2 posts
1 tag
6 tags
And the Children Shall Lead
And the Children Shall Lead (Video; Memory Alpha) is a neat idea that runs out of steam before the credits and then flails about being boring for forty more minutes.
The nugget of goodness is that an evil spirit has convinced the children on the new colony of Triacus to kill their parents and then take over the galaxy, using the Enterprise as their transport. The spirit gives the kids powers and...
March 2010
10 posts
1 tag
