@krayzkrok, @Gordon_Cameron, @Pod, @Rock8man and all other potentially interseted parties. The final poll for the Week 9 Guest Star Death Match is about to close in 3 Hours. I changed my vote to Gary Lockwood.
My Amazon page suggests I get this for my 4-year-old daughter. I’m inclined to take them up on it.
Get a two-fer. She deserves it!
Why not? It is her birthday tomorrow!
The Spock author sounds like a kick-ass lady:
ELIZABETH SCHAEFER lives and works in New York City. As a child, she spent hours imagining stories about daring adventurers, kick-butt princesses, and strange new worlds. Remarkably, she grew up and found a job where she could keep doing exactly that. When she’s not writing, she can be found reading great literary novels, composing classical symphonies, or playing video games. (Usually that last one.)
Your little lady might dig that bio blurb. :)
The People Have Spoken
Season 1 Week 9 Guest Star Death Match Winner
Gary Lockwood as Gary Mitchell in Where No Man Has Gone Before.
Spoilers for this week’s episode follow. Read after you’ve seen it.
The Corbomite Maneuver
So the Enterprise is out there, taking screenshots of the viewscreen to map the stars, presumably, when it encounters a vessel. It won’t respond to hails, and it looks like a spinning cube. It’s blocking the Enterprise from going anywhere. They say the got past the deflectors, so the deflectors are normally supposed to keep objects away from the Enterprise? Spock orders red alert.
Meanwhile the Captain is getting his physical. When he leaves sickbay there’s a really crowded hallway, presumably full of people getting to their posts, maybe? There’s one guy who is hilariously checking the hull integrity of the ship with his hands.
What follows is an episode that’s equal parts intriguing and slow. Bones’ teasing of Kirk is in full swing here. The helmsman is strangely the focus of this episode. Even when the crew is under threat later and they’ve got 2 minutes to live, Dr McCoy is telling Kirk he shouldn’t have pushed the boy so far.
The boy, as it were, is frustrated that the ship is in dire straits, and the crew is acting as if they can sit around all day and discuss the weather. The reason I mention this is because later in the episode, he overcomes his fear and asks permission to come back to the bridge. And what’s going on? Why, Yeoman Rand is up there serving the Captain some coffee. Because what life threatening emergency can’t wait when you have a good cup of Joe handy? My eyes turn to the helmsman. Is he going to freak out over this irresponsibly casual behavior by the crew? No, it seems he took some chemical help, perhaps some Mary J, and he’s all mellow now.
The ending of this episode is just ridiculous. I’m usually a big fan of child actors, but this hideous child they found is only there to make us laugh. And it doesn’t work, because the HD version of this episode does a lot to improve the special effects, but the one thing it can’t do is replace this hideous child alien.
So, the episode starts with an intriguing premise: a dangerous voyage into the unknown, an encounter with a hostile lifeform. The episode is very slow, and yet it maintains it’s tension well. The young helmsman does a good job as the weird focus of the episode. The alien threat was convincing, but ultimately laughable. It feels like I enjoyed myself and yet somehow, at the same time, I felt like I just wasted my time. As Spock would say: Intriguing.
All right, here we go again! As Rock8man says, it’s time for a little Corbomite Maneuvering. And we’ve finally reached an episode that might reach for classic status. We still have even better ahead, in my opinion, but this is Trek, distilled and pure. A lot happens in the episode, and yet it’s also kind of a bottle episode - it takes almost entirely on the Enterprise’s bridge. But it shows you what you need to know about what the Federation is all about, and how Kirk and the Enterprise’s crew work to represent the Federation. But first a few details -
Just about everyone gets a little quip! McCoy gets his first, “I’m a doctor, not a …” and then as Kirk leaves sick bay in annoyance for an emergency, McCoy grumbles to himself that if he jumped every time a light flashed on the Enterprise, he’d end up talking to himself. Then Bailey tries to correct Spock that raising his voice doesn’t mean he’s scared, just that as a human he has an adrenaline gland. To which Spock retorts that this sounds inconvenient, he should consider having it removed. There are more, but those cracked me up the most.
But what stands out to me is that this episode shows the ship and its crew at its best. Bailey’s problems serve as a good counterbalance to this, he’s allowed to be the impulsive one this time around while Kirk provides the steady hand and wise leader as the other side of the coin. Kirk is firm when he needs to be, such as when Bailey suggests just blasting the cube with phasers, and Kirk replies that he’ll take that suggestion under advisement when the ship becomes a democracy. But he’s patient with Bailey’s failures, possibly as McCoy points out, because he sees a lot of himself as a younger man. And his patience is ultimately rewarded as Bailey does collect himself and recognizes that maybe the unknown isn’t to be feared, but to be embraced.
Also, while to the best of my recollection this is the first time the Enterprise fires on another vessel, it’s obviously a last resort option for them. Kirk goes out of his way to seek options around the probe, only destroying it when the lives of the crew are at stake. And when at the end, when Balok is (he believes) floating powerless and losing life support, he extends mercy and tries to board to rescue the being that threatened the Enterprise with destruction just moments before. Kirk is practical but believes in ideals, and he lives them. These are the reasons Kirk has always been my favorite captain.
So yeah, great stuff. It’s not difficult for me to say this is my favorite episode so far. But only for a few more weeks …
edit: forgot to mention, I liked how Balok’s testing of Kirk and the Enterprise somewhat mirrored Kirk’s testing of Bailey. Each is pushing the other into stressful territory to see if they will rise above the circumstances, and it pays off with both of them. Good ol’ 60s optimism! Probably won’t see stuff like that on Discovery.
Oh hell yes! Now we’re cookin’.
Although this was clearly shot very early in their production run, The Corbomite Maneuver is a fantastic episode. I can even forgive the “What were they thinking” opening shot on the bridge that goes from Spock’s Console allllll the wayyyy over to the helm’s console.
What we get here is a surprisingly tense episode of Kirk and crew dealing with the unknown, contemplating their options, taking chances, and generally behaving how I imagine the crew of the Enterprise would.
There are also great moments between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. And this is what I like most about TOS. There’s something very genuine about how these characters relate to one another. It’s a believable mix of the personal and the professional.
As mentioned before, the wife has been watching along with me and for the last couple of episodes, her attention has kind of wandered. Not so with The Corbomite Maneuver. It’s that good.
As silly as Clint Howard appears as Balok, I still love the whole damn episode.
Notes:
- Excessive Shirtless Kirk!
-
Bonus tracking Kirk butt shot as he leaves Sick Bay.
-
I love how the Alien totally looks like a puppet. And then it turns out to be a puppet.
-
Beautiful shot of the giant alien ship dwarfing the Enterprise as it approaches.
-
Clint sure loves his Tranya
-
“We think much alike, Captain. You and I.” That just perfectly sums up the interplay between them in this episode.
-Greg out!
Great reviews by all, but especially this @GregB! I am taking a break from a magilla (this one gets a magilla, of course.) and I read this. 100%.
They both play poker.
This thread has been pretty quiet. Some big episodes coming up.
I was thinking the same thing, odd that there was so little discussion over Corbomite. Well, I intend to watch the next episode later this morning and have notes up as soon as I can.
There wasn’t much to talk about in Corbomite. Except the alien at the end being played by a kid, and I was the only one who wanted to ridicule that apparently. :P
OK everyone - I’m going to move forward with comments on the next episode. As we’re no doubt all aware, we’ve reached the point of watching “The Menagerie”, which is a two-part episode. Personally, I made the decision back when we started this thread that I would, as best I could, replicate the viewing experience of someone watching these on air. So I’m only going to comment on the first episode, and complete the viewing experience next week. I certainly don’t expect everyone to follow my lead on this, if you prefer to watch and write about the whole two-parter by all means do so, just being up front with my viewing choice.
I’ve always liked The Menagerie, for two main reasons. First, I love a puzzle, and a mystery, and this episode has a great one: Spock is completely upfront about committing mutiny by taking control of the Enterprise to get Captain Pike back to Talos IV. But his reasons are inscrutable, at least in the first episode. We start putting it together, but we’re left hanging by the end. Why would the completely logical and loyal Spock act in such a bizarre manner? Now of course I know how this turns out, but it’s fun for me to imagine watching this back when we didn’t know as much about Spock as we all do now. Could he have nefarious goals? Could he be a traitor? We’ll have more suspicion cast on Spock in future episodes, they really play up his half-Vulcan status for that kind of thing a lot early on. But I’m curious what an original viewer must have thought about all this.
Secondly, I like how they took the aborted original pilot of Star Trek and turned it into something new. It’s kind of funny how they lampshade the fact that the court martial trial attendees are basically watching that original pilot. But there’s also an effective shock in seeing the damaged Pike initially and then seeing him in action later on, as captain of the Enterprise. Kind of funny to see Majel Barrett again as Number One, I wonder if that confused anyone who had already seen her a few times as Nurse Chapel.
Anyway, I guess I’m a little light on content this week because I’m only talking about the first half, but I do really like the way this started out. You can see the first draft of McCoy in the original pilot’s doctor, and seeing Nimoy take Spock into a little more robotic, less sardonic area then makes me feel like maybe the younger Spock grew into a man more comfortable around humans, at least (or maybe I’m overthinking it). Still, good episode and I’m anxious to talk about its conclusion next week.
Well, I have let the TOS thread down this last week. The curating and poll opening and closing and linking &etc. with the Movie Club really ate into my Corbomite time. So this week I will post my Corbomite impressions and next week do a full impression of both Parts of The Menagerie.
This is one of my favorite episodes. First of all, because (as you say) there is a genuine mystery. Why has Spock kidnapped Pike and stolen the Enterprise, where is he taking him, and why? Of course you know on some level there will be a logical explanation for it, and that Spock hasn’t become evil Spock or lost his mind, but still, it works.
I’m also a sucker for a flashback story frame, going all the way back to Citizen Kane and so many good noir films of the 40s. The production values of the flashback story itself are very good because it was shot as a pilot. Hunter makes a good starship captain, and the scenario of his story is, from the standpoint of today’s Starfleet, exotic. Orion slave girls? Fighting with axes? Things were tough in them olden days!
I really enjoyed The Menagerie Part 1. I guess here we have our first two part Star Trek episode with a cliff hanger. The setup for the episode is really well done. The stakes are appropriately high, and they set everything up just so. The audience is left leaning forward, wanting to know what happens next.
My only real complaint in this episode is with how they ended it. I think they kept going a little too long. They setup a really compelling mystery, and I think if they had ended it just a bit sooner with Captain Pike helping those stranded colonists, that would have made a more interesting cliff hanger. Instead, they showed their hand already. They showed the aliens, they showed that the colonists were just an illusion, and they showed that Captain Pike was captured by the aliens. It deflates some of the curiousity I was feeling throughout the episode. It would have been better to keep that curiousity level high during the whole week that I was waiting for a new episode.
Now things seem to be fairly predictable. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but presumably the aliens can help Captain Pike in his current state, and I’m not all that curious anymore about the interaction they had back in the day.
Going back to my favorite scene: I love Captain Pike’s doctor/bartender scene. This is presumably the Captain feeling burnt out after the war with the Klingons we saw in Discovery, though he doesn’t state that directly. It looked like a pretty traumatic conflict so I don’t blame him. I just love how his doctor/friend gets him out of his funk by talking to him.
That scene is phenomenal. They lost 3 killed and many wounded in that mission that predates what we see. Really sets the tone.
It’s hard to watch The Menagerie without concluding that Pike’s galaxy was quite a bit more dangerous than Kirk’s is.
That is a really good scene. I liked how in the scene just prior, they pick up the distress signal from Talos IV and Pike is all, “Nope. Not checking that out without proof of survivors, waste of time.” My first thought was, wow Kirk probably would have gone. Then we find out that Pike is carrying wounded and lost crew in a battle and it comes together. Makes sense that he’s a burn out, but can’t talk to anyone about it because he’s the captain. And then the doctor makes it easier for him. Really nicely done.
Much as I love Kirk and the gang, I’m sorry we didn’t get to spend more time with Pike and his crew.