These Are The Voyages-Star Trek TOS Remastered and Reconsidered

Yeah, I forgot to talk about the fist fight as well. It was interesting to me that Kirk pretty much got his ass handed to him repeatedly. In the end he started doing well because he can keep taking a punch. He’s got resilience. In the beginning Finnegan just kept winning and winning and winning. And then he started getting tired from kicking so much ass. That’s when Kirk started getting his licks in as well.

As a kid, I loved that fist fight to death; the idea of beating the hell out of one of your old bullies b/c you could take a punch was inspiring to grade-school-me. I have not re-watched the episode in a very long time so perhaps I need to do so. I wonder if the episode holds up for me?

I say jump in, this episode needs a defender and doesn’t look like we’ve found one yet.

All right kiddies, it’s that time again! This week we’re watching Galileo 7, or as we’ve remarked earlier, the introduction of the shuttlecraft. Good thing somebody invented those! Otherwise we’d never have this thrilling adventure of a confused Vulcan, given his first command and utterly perplexed that the universe doesn’t conform to his expectations of completely logical actions, and his loyal crew of backbiting officers for whom the burial of a dead coworker takes all precedence, even over the continued survival of the remaining crew.

All right, first off, this episode was really hurt by the budget of the show. I started out watching with the enhanced effects but noticed they really stood out in this episode, much moreso than in earlier ones I thought, so I figured I’d bop back to watching without and I’m not sure which is worse, really. I liked what they tried to do with perspective to present the alien bear-apes as huge, but then in the scene where Gaetano is menaced by one they show them together in a shot and it’s just a pretty big guy holding his arms aloft in the classic “I’m going to get you” pose that every kid knows.

Also, just in case you forgot, Spock is a logic-driven person. Figured that was due for reminding, because I’m starting to think the show has a dim view of the average viewers’ memory, given how they make sure to hammer that point home each week. And since this episode is pretty much the Spock Show, they make sure to hammer it home after every commercial break. I also learned that starship crew get really pissy when they aren’t allowed to have a funeral for dead crew members.

I’d rate this one as average. I hoped for more, it’s an interesting idea, but sometimes (like in Mira and Dagger of the Mind) it seems a little wobbly about the execution. Especially at the very end, when the bridge crew decides to gather around Spock and needle him about his use of the last of the shuttle’s fuel to signal the Enterprise. I guess being on the bridge is a lot like being a fifth grader, sometimes you just have to take your lumps.

Hey everybody, I just wanted to do a little temperature check, if you will. It looks like participation in the thread is starting to slow down - and that’s natural, not to mention what we’ve set up here is a long-term commitment. At least for me, because I do intend to continue viewing and then commenting on episodes in Star Trek TOS until I run out of them.

But I’m no autocrat, nor is this actually my thread. @Navaronegun dreamed this whole thing up and got it going, and he asked me to set the pace, which I’m doing because I’m enjoying it. I could happily go on even if I’m the only person posting in the thread, I’m bull headed like that. A girlfriend once told me I’m a prototypical Aries, if I see a problem I put my head down and charge. But I’d prefer to have the dialogue, the give and take, so let me ask if the pace is appropriate. I figured one episode per week gave everyone a chance to catch up at their own pace. Certainly there’s no obligation here, you don’t have to watch every episode like I’m doing, you can pop up if one of your favorites turns up in the rotation. I’m not taking role. Just wanted to check how this is working for everyone before I put my head back down and go full steam ahead.

I’ve watched the first 20 minutes or so of this week’s episode. I’m enjoying it a lot so far. When Spock announced that he would be the one choosing which 3 people got to go on the shuttle, I thought McCoy and others were being a little unfair. That’s not an easy decision, but if he makes the right choice, odds are that if the 3 on the shuttle survived and got help, then they would come back for the others. So I was just impressed that Spock took on that responsibility so unflinchingly, you know? But not these others.

I like the leisurely pace. It let me skip a few weeks a while back, and then catch up quickly. I’m pretty sure I’ll unsubscribe from Netflix in December, and maybe not be subscribed to anything, so I’ll have to catch up in January.

I appreciate your commitment to be the pace setter even when everyone else gets on and off this train. It lets us know that it’s still in motion.

Well, that’s the intention, that I set a steady pace, and people are free to jump in and out as they please. I’m just doing a spot check to see how that’s working for everyone who isn’t me so far.

I haven’t gotten into any re-watching of my own yet but I do enjoy the periodic write-ups. I will also likely contribute to the discussion more once we get to the some of my Sacred Cow Episodes. So my view: keep on truckin’ divedivedive.

Also, although I suspect that although active responses may be down, the lurker-train is still chugging along.

I wish I could contribute more. Work got busy (end of the semester stuff is creeping up). But I’m enjoying any and all activity in the thread. Hopefully once finals are over I can step back in.

Please continue. I have gotten busy with: Rehab, getting better, my war-game design picking up steam and needing deadline attention, Movie Club. In no particular order. I have been a bad thread-starter. You @divedivedive, have been a rock. And I enjoy every post made here.

I resemble this remark

Moving right along, this week’s episode is “The Squire of Gothos”. I admit I didn’t have particularly fond memories of this one, I found it quite boring but it’s been a very long time since I last watched it. And I find that it holds up better than I thought, given that it is basically another of the Vastly Overpowering Alien Entity tropes we’ve seen so much of. I like the way Trelane is characterized, he seems curious and exuberant, but he clearly is lacking in understanding of how people relate and, as Kirk points out, makes several very basic errors for what appears to be a superior being. I had also forgotten the reveal of Trelane as basically a child, which was parodied in the episode “Where No Fan Has Gone Before” in Futurama.

I went into this episode with the knowledge that Trelane has been retconned as a Q entity, though of course the concept of Q didn’t exist until the pilot episode of The Next Generation. But he does work as a Q, toying with the crew and delighting is expressing his superior powers over the puny humans, as well as not really having malevolent intentions but being mostly capricious. I haven’t read the novel “Q-Squared” by Peter David where Trelane is revealed to be a Q, so I can’t speak to the quality.

Anyway, I remember why the episode bored me so long ago, with the whole “we’re on the Enterprise, wait we’re in a weird castle on an alien planet, no we’ve escaped again, oh crap we’re back at the castle, no we’ve escaped once more, no now Kirk is on trial” thing. But I liked Trelane better this time, and thought the back and forth was more fun this time around. I guess I don’t need every episode to be a two-fisted action packed adventure anymore.

Last, I thought it was kind of fun that Trelane keeps salt vampires as trophies in the castle. Would that indicate that he’s been keeping an eye on the Enterprise, and its adventures? Though Trelane indicated surprise that humans were capable of traveling through space, so I guess not. Maybe Trelane just really likes salt vampires, except he used DeSalle’s phaser to zap them and - ok maybe this doesn’t bear that much thought.

I liked it a lot.

How odd. This episode was on the H&I Channel last night. Trelane is pretty much a baby Q.Paul Schnider could see the future!

Star Trek’s arguably best episode (CotEoF) was pretty much all Paramount/Desilou backlots. Gene Coon was amazing at saving money.

All right kids, it’s Wednesday so time for another episode of Star Trek! And this week it’s a classic - Arena! Now I’ve seen a lot of lists out there on the world wide crazytown and this episode is listed as one of the worst episodes of Trek just as frequently as it is the best. I guess it’s a polarizing episode? But from the early days of my interest in Trek, I’ve loved Arena. It’s a simple episode, not a lot going on, and it’s seriously hampered by budgetary constraints, but I like it.

A brief recap - the Enterprise is tricked into landing on an outpost that they immediately discovered has been destroyed, and get attacked by bottle rockets by unseen assailants. They lob explosive blue nerf balls back at the assailants, which causes them to retreat to their ship. The Enterprise gives chase, both ships are stopped by a disembodied voice, and the captain of each ship is left on an asteroid to fight to the death to determine the victory. Kirk takes the opportunity to monologue endlessly while a big lizard listens in (dude, they told you it was a two way translator, what were you thinking?) and the two throw rocks at each other until Kirk builds a diamond bazooka and wins. Everyone’s happy.

The Gorn scared me as a kid, in much the same way Clint Howard’s ventriloquist dummy scared me in The Corbomite Maneuver. But watching it again, I see there’s a bit of complexity I didn’t notice as a kid - the Gorn aren’t unreasoning villains, but we find that the outpost the Enterprise was visiting had been established in Gorn space, and the Gorn were just defending themselves against intruders! OK sure, they decided to just blow up the outpost without every trying to talk to anyone and sure, they lured the Enterprise into a trap so they could blow that up too, but maybe blowing things up is just how conflicts are resolved on Gorn world! Hey, you just ate the last slice of pizza! Well how about I bash you over the head with this big friggin’ rock? Bet you won’t do that again.

I like the Gorn though. It’s clearly a pretty cheap costume, the face, jaw and eyes don’t move - though I did appreciate that one of the added effects in this episode was a computer assisted blink effect on the eyes, which did look pretty decent. The Gorn were also the bad guys in the most recent Star Trek video game, which I enjoyed though I will admit it’s not a very good game, just a bog standard third person cover shooter in the Star Trek universe. Also it’s peopled with characters from the Smokin’ Aces, Lord of the Rings and Sean of the Dead franchises for some reason.

Oh man, now I really want to catch up to you. I only saw that episode once, and don’t remember much, but I want to see it again!

This might be my favorite episode:it had it all: ground combat (with space mortars), space combat, super powerful aliens, an alien that didn’t just look like a human with makeup, Spock-McCoy bickering, and Kirk martial arts. The only problem was that the Gorn was so slow it didn’t appear threatening enough, and the one-on-one combat over-relied on the Gorn being slow.