Yeah, the Gorn was a bit silly. No budget for good makeup effects, I know, but frozen plastic alligator head plus hissing plus wooden movement that really makes you wonder how the Gorn survived long enough to become a spacefaring species. It takes a lot away from this episode, makes it quite hard to take very seriously.
In a possibly misguided attempt to participate in this thread, I watched this episode last night. It’s probably been thirty five years since I last saw it, but it was a favorite of the younger me, mostly because of the ending moral of mercy and solving problems though empathy and listening to the other side before acting rashly. Plus, you know, wrestling Sleestacks and doing chemistry.
There was lots of stuff I forgot - or more likely never noticed - in my childhood viewings.
Noted above was the Gorn’s fairly belligerent response to encountering a new race. You could argue that the fairly extensive Federation outpost was pretty militaristic – after all, it apparently included a sizable armory with nerf-ball ordinance that could wipe out large numbers at a good distance – but that rationalization kind of falls apart when you realize that the Gorn must have learned a great deal about humans if they were able to fake a transmission from “The Commodore” and lure Kirk and his “tactical team” down to the surface for one of the most inept ambushes ever televised.
I was struck by the voice of the Metrons telling the crew of the Enterprise that they control every aspect of the ship’s operation; the term they used sounded like the intro to The Outer Limits. Glancing at IMDB, that’s no accident since the voice of the Metrons is the same actor as the Outer Limit’s “Control”. For that matter, the voice of the Gorn is Lurch from the Addam’s Family.
Man, the scenery-chewing in the first act is astounding. The rescued crewman demanding that the universe (and Kirk, apparently) give him some answers was particularly bad. “Why did they do it? Why? WHHHHHYYYYYYYY!!!” I can only assume that the silly-putty makeup meant to show scarring was really itchy.
I didn’t mind the horrible Gorn costume or the ridiculously-slow movement. They showed fairly convincingly that as slow and cumbersome as the Gorn was, it was also effectively impervious to harm and would kill Kirk if/when it ever caught up to him. Apparently in Coon’s original script the fighting area was supposed to be enclosed in a force-bubble (thanks again IMDB) so Kirk couldn’t just jog away… I wish they would have had time to show that little tidbit.
The final theme was something that is shown in TOS many times: Everyone justifies violence as a reasonable thing to do, but when “the adults” sit the antagonists down and ask them to justify their actions, they reluctantly/sheepishly admit that beating each other up was kind of silly. The Metrons seem a little more hard-hearted about it than the Organians, but I guess even post-corporeal beings can be dicks.
More trivia courtesy of IMDB: This was the first episode where the term “Federation” was used with respect to Kirk’s organization; it was the first time the term “Starfleet” as used; it was the first appearance of “photon torpedoes”.
Hey I didn’t know that, pretty cool. Oh and also:
Agent: Ted I have a role for you in Star Trek.
Ted Cassidy: That’s great!
Agent: You’re an alien.
TC: I can do that.
Agent: They don’t show your face.
TC: It’s a speaking role, right?
Agent: Mostly grunting and hissing.
TC: …
TC: I need the cash.
“You people sure do have interesting problems.”
Hello again folks, and let’s move ahead with our next Star Trek episode - this time it’s “Tomorrow Is Yesterday”. I’ll admit I wasn’t really looking forward to this one, I’m kind of like @krayzkrok in that any episode not exploring strange worlds or struggling against crazy alien beings feels like a waste of an episode. But this one turned out to be interesting for a couple of reasons that I had completely forgotten or disregarded from earlier viewings.
There’s not a lot to recap here, an incident with a “black star” sends the Enterprise into the past, to the 60s conveniently enough, hovering over the United States. They’re intercepted by an Air Force reconnaissance plane, which they accidentally destroy while trying to prevent it from firing missiles at them, and are forced to bring the pilot aboard. You’ve got your kind of bog-standard “fish out of water” plot with the pilot aboard the Enterprise, who understandably wants to get back to his family, his job and his life, and of course the conflict is that Kirk and the gang now have a guy from the past who knows about their existence. Hijinks ensue.
I won’t belabor the whole “sneaking into command to get the tapes/film/photos” or the drama around getting the pilot back to his own life. You know that’s going to get sorted out. What’s interesting is that I totally forgot that this episode is the origin of the “slingshot” method of traveling through time, which was probably most famously utilized in Star Trek IV to get back to our “present” of the 80s to rescue whales. I had not made that connection before, but I bet it was probably pretty cool for long-time viewers to see the callback in the movie.
Also, and I am willing to bet I’m alone in this, but I found the tone of the episode helped. Everything was played lightly, and though the stakes were fairly high - would the pilot get back to his family? Would the Enterprise be stuck in the past forever? Nothing felt heavy or portentous. Even the interrogation of Kirk by the Air Force base security people had a comedic tone: “I’m going to lock you up for 200 years.” “That ought to be about right.”
I even thought the weird little subplot about the overly familiar computer was kind of funny. The fact that the Enterprise put in for repairs at a station that was run by a female society who then programmed the computer with a female personality has a certain logic, and sets up a situation that’s goofy but amused me all the same.
So I’ll chalk this episode up as “a pleasant surprise.” I didn’t expect much, and got a little more than that. Good enough for me.
Maybe I should use @Pod’s method and just skip some episodes. Every time I get back into that shuttlecraft episode, I think “this is boring, I should watch something else”.
That one’s not a lot of fun. I’d say just skip it if it’s getting in the way of enjoying yourself. I think we’ve already established I have a completionist streak, so I’ll be watching and commenting on them all. Besides, someone has to keep the train rolling.
Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you need to skip some episodes to keep the whole train rolling, skip away.
“Mr Spock, you are the most cold blooded man I have ever met.”
“Why thank you, doctor.”
All right folks, it’s a new week and time for a new episode! This time around it’s “Court Martial”, the one where Kirk gets drummed out of Starfleet in disgrace and becomes a hobo. Or something like that anyway.
I find this episode strange, as I do with lots of the episodes that purport to show us the inner workings of Starfleet. Apparently the service is full of back-stabbing, embittered also-rans who hold grudges for extremely long periods of time. Some of them long enough to become completely insane and develop weird plans to fake their own deaths for reasons? Profit, I guess, somehow.
Anyway, as we’ve seen in some other episodes like Galileo 7, it takes very little for a crew of officers to completely turn on each other and if they smell blood in the water, they’ll torpedo your entire career. The Commodore can’t get rid of Kirk fast enough once he decides that it looks like he might actually be guilty of causing a crewman’s death. Everyone assumes Kirk has just buckled under the stress and ejected one of his people without cause. Side note: I really love that the button for “eject pod” is right next to the yellow and red alert buttons on the captain’s console. I can only imagine some upper Starfleet command people meeting about all the pods they keep having to replace. “What is happening? Why are we losing so many pods?” while their design team just sort of whistles and looks off into the distance.
I like Kirk’s old-fashioned attorney who loves texts of law but only if they’re written in books! You put that same information into a computer and it’ll steal your soul, or something. I enjoyed the casual way the defense attorney decides no, we don’t really need any defense, and then looks completely flabbergasted when visual proof is shown of Kirk hitting the “eject pod” button before calling red alert. “well gosh, might as well hang it up I guess!” until Spock comes along and saves everyone’s ass yet again. I imagine Spock makes mental note of the defense attorney’s rates, for the next time he decides to go AWOL with a Starfleet ship.
Then we find out that dude totally faked his death, and sabotaged the Enterprise because that’s a thing people do when they get passed over for promotion. Or maybe he was just crazy all along and Starfleet is really bad about weeding out the unstable ones? The Doomsday Machine is coming up soon, isn’t it?
Anyway, I wouldn’t call this a bad episode but I couldn’t really say it’s good either, it’s just passing time until we get to something awesome. It’s always fun to see Captain Kirk get to be all righteously indignant and then doesn’t even bother being all, I told you so! Nope, just ahead warp factor one, Mr Sulu. Till next week.
I did finish the Galileo 7 episode. Overall a good episode. I especially liked that Spock learns some things through mistakes upon his first command. I also liked the fact that in the very next episode, Spock gets to take command of the Enterprise, and once again has his orders questioned right away by the crew and has to remind them that he’s in command. That’s some nice continuity in Starfleet behaviour. And it sounds like this Court Martial episode has more of that! :)
It’s not a Spock-focused episode, he just shows up and does some Spock things. He does seem to be having an especially difficult time this episode not just calling everyone out for being an idiot, though.
That’s Elisha Cook Jr, a great character actor who goes all the way back to The Maltese Falcon. He’s good in everything he ever did.
He was Icepick on Magnum P.I., right?
He was. Also was in The Big Sleep, Shane, you name it.
I forgot to mention that, thank you - yes it’s Elisha Cook Jr., and I spent the entire episode trying to place him! Yes, pretty sure he was on Magnum P.I. as well.
I neglected to mention it this morning, but this was extremely funny. Well done Sir.
Not Wilmer!
Well I ain’t no Kelly Wand, but I do my best.
Everyone knows about the gunsel=slang for gay issue with The Maltese Falcon, right?
As far as the episode, I never liked it. Even as a kid. The whole big jettison pod button on the arm of the chair bothered me even then. I really cared about realism (yeah I know). That button had never been there before. I was positive that the captain of a damn starship had better things to do than push a button that Sulu or Scott could push. Total dealbreaker.