TOS S01E23, S01E24

All of the Trek I watched today:

Star Trek: The Original Series, S01E23: "Space Speed"
Star Trek: The Original Series, S01E24: "A Taste Of Armageddon"

Things:

• TOS Season 1 has some pretty silly episodes in it, but it also has some of my favorites.  "Space Seed" is definitely among them, and not just because it sets up my favorite film of all time.
• "Care to join the landing party, Doctor?"  "Well, if you're actually giving me a choice.."  "I'm not."  :TROLLFACE:
• Bones has steel nuts in "Space Seed".
• Here's something I hadn't really noticed before:  Khan is supposed to be charming, if dangerous.  But--and maybe this is just watching "Space Seed" from 40+ years after it was written--his character is almost totally objectionable from the very beginning.  The only people prone to be swayed by such a man would have to be pretty weak-willed to begin with, in my not-so-humble opinion.  His treatment of Lt. McGivers is particularly egregious, and her response particularly pathetic.  I'll just say it--I'm glad she died on Ceti Alpha V :P
• The plot of "A Taste Of Armageddon" is an old story--the society which develops advanced technology coupled with a sense of duty, and all violence becomes sanitized and regimented.  In this case, this process occurs to an extreme--the execution of an interplanetary war by computer.  It's a common science fiction theme, but it still makes for a pretty interesting episode.
• "Sir, there is a multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder."  I forgot how funny Spock can be.
• In "A Taste Of Armageddon", Scotty states that they can't fire "full phasers" while their defensive screens (which I've always assumed were synonymous with shields) are activated.  This limitation is either overcome at some point after this episode, or--more likely--the writers simply discarded it :)
• "The haggis is in the fire now" <-- Totally stealing this line.

TOS S01E19, S01E20, S01E21, S01E22

All of the Trek I watched today:

Star Trek: The Original Series, S01E19: "Arena"
Star Trek: The Original Series, S01E20: "Tomorrow Is Yesterday"
Star Trek: The Original Series, S01E21: "Court Martial"
Star Trek: The Original Series, S01E22: "The Return Of The Archons"

Things:

• "Arena" features the first appearance of three classic Star Trek weapons systems:  "Type 1" hand phasers, photon torpedoes, and the first mention of disruptors (although in this case, the "disruptors" being fired at Captain Kirk and his landing party are more like modern mortars than direct energy weapons).  We also see a "grenade launcher" used by Kirk on the surface of Cestus III, which--like the disruptors--is more like a mortar.
• We also see the Gorn for the first time in "Arena".  Although the species will make only two more on-screen appearances in Trek (TAS and ENT), it becomes a fan favorite and features in multiple Star Trek computer games.
• Incidentally, those hissing/growling/grunting noises the Gorn makes during the entire fight?  Tooooootally what I sound like when I wake up in the morning.
• Ah, "Tomorrow Is Yesterday".  Star Trek's first foray into time travel, the old sci-fi trope that will eventually become the bane of many a Trekkie.
• "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" is the first time we get an explicit mention of the rough size of Starfleet (12 Constitution-class starships in service, as of the that time) and the USS Enterprise's operating authority (United Earth Space Probe Agency).  Both factoids will become fodder for debate amongst Trekkies.
  
  - http://ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/ship_classes.htm (section "Constituion Inflation")
  - http://ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/history-other.htm#uespa
  
  (Correction:  the UESPA is mentioned as an acronym in "Charlie X", but this is the first episode in which it's spelled out.)
• The pouty female computer voice they made Majel Barret-Roddenberry do for "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" is pretty insulting, even if it was intended as a gag (and was probably fairly amusing in the late 1960s).
• Best part of "Tomorrow Is Yesterday"...
  
  Kirk:  "Now you're sounding like Spock."
  McCoy:  "If you're gonna get nasty, I'm gonna leave."
• As silly as the plot of "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" is, I really enjoyed this episode.  It's fun to see a depiction of the US Air Force during the Cold War that was actually filmed at that time, and the CGI graphics in the remastered version (especially the shots of USS Enterprise hurtling toward Sol to achieve the slingshot effect and subsequent time warp.
• Avocado Kirk Shirt (AKS)! (in "Court Martial")
• Although the commodore / admiral guy is wearing a different insignia, it looks like many of the other Starfleet officers in "Court Martial" are wearing the distinctive "arrowhead" insignia of USS Enterprise, that eventually becomes the emblem of Starfleet as a whole.  This may have been intentional, but personally I think it's probably just more likely that they already had tunics with the arrowhead insignia on them that could be used for the other Starfleet officers.
• "Court Martial" fixes both McCoy's and Spock's ranks as Lt. Commander as of TOS Season 1.
• They must've been running low on production funds when they wrote "The Return Of The Archons"--another episode in which much of the action takes place on an Earth-like planet.
• "The Return Of The Archons" features the first on-screen reference to the Prime Directive, although Spock simply states that it means "non-interference" (and he refers to it as "our prime directive", so it possibly wasn't envisioned as The Prime Directive as we know it at the time of the writing of this episode).  The term "prime directive" is also used in another context in this episode, when Kirk and Spock are speaking with the computer Landru...so I'd tend to think that this concept of a capital-P "Prime Directive" has its source in this episode, but isn't fully formed.
  
  

TOS S01E17, S01E18

All of the Trek I watched today:

Star Trek: The Original Series S01E17: "The Galileo Seven"
Star Trek: The Original Series S01E18: "The Squire Of Gothos"

Things:

• I can only assume that "Galactic Commissioners" were such gigantic pains in the neck that they were done away with by the 24th Century.
• The launch of Galileo and the shuttlecraft itself are the first of the "remastered" CGI that I found a little jolting.  Most of the rest of it has blended fairly well with the original footage.
• Now we know the potentially catastrophic consequences of permitting Sasquatch to develop spear technology. 
• GREETINGS & FELICITATIONS!

TOS S01E16

 

All of the Trek I watched today:

Star Trek: The Original Series S01E16: "Shore Leave"

Things:

Actual, "thing" singular this time.  I watched this episode because I had to, but it's crap-filled crap.  

The best part of this episode?  Spock's ruse where he tells Kirk about a crewman who's fatigued and grouchy and refuses to take leave, and Kirk's all like "Who is this jackass?  He'll go on shore leave, and he'll like it!" And then Spock's like "It's you, bro."  :TROLLFACE:

TOS S01E15: "Balance Of Terror"

"In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets.  And in all the Universe, three million, million galaxies like this.  And in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us.  Don't destroy the one named 'Kirk'." - Dr. McCoy

Well, we've rather quickly arrived at my favorite TOS episode:  "Balance Of Terror".  It's got it all...

• Great Star Trek history:  Not only is it the introduction of the Romulans (my favorite Trek aliens), but it's also the introduction of the Earth-Romulan War (my favorite part of Trek history that we never got to see done properly on-screen grumble grumble grumble).  Along with this come many of the established bits of Trek canon that sometimes provide fodder for nerd debates--When did Romulans acquire warp technology?  How much was known of the relationship between Vulcans and Romulans, and when was it known?
• Starship combat!  In what mimics a confrontation between a surface ship and a submarine, USS Enterprise is pitted against a Romulan Bird-of-Prey, which is equipped with another piece of Treknology that we're seeing for the first time--the cloaking device. 
• Kirk almost gets to perform a wedding!  I'm kidding.  That part is stupid.  And what, no one puts on their dress uniform for a quickie starship wedding?  Not even Kirk's wicked awesome avocado number?
  
  
  
• The remastered version of this episode rules, mainly because of the more-detailed CGI used for the BoP.
• Also, Mark Lenard (who we later come to know and love as Sarek) is amazeballs in this episode.
• The Romulan commander toooooootally talks about pulling a Crazy Ivan.  But Kirk's too smart for him.
• We see some interesting things in USS Enterprise's weaponry, which--to my memory--are all unique to TOS:  Her phasers are controlled by a "phaser crew" from a separate location on the ship from the bridge, although some control seems to still be possible from the bridge (and in later series/films, tactical control is exercised entirely from the bridge).  And the phasers are shown to be able to fire a fixed distance and "detonate" in a burst-like pattern.  My memory is a little fuzzy on exactly when photon torpedoes make their appearance in TOS, but my guess is that once those weapons were introduced the phaser no longer needed to have this functionality.
• Ha!  We also get the "jettison debris out the torpedo tube" trick.  This is a straight-up submarine movie in space.  The "sub battle in space" motif will be used again for the starship combat portions of The Wrath Of Khan, although in that movie it's more like two submarine stalking one another (USS Enterprise and USS Reliant in the Mutara Nebula).
• There's an incredible scene in this episode between Kirk and McCoy where Kirk bears his soul about the burdens of command, and McCoy responds with the quote at the top of this entry.  Pretty touching dialog for a 1960s pulp sci-fi series.
• This is the second episode where we see Uhura take over the navigation station.

I love this episode for all of the reasons above and below.  There are two kinds of Trek that I really, really enjoy:  honest-to-goodness sci-fi stories, and thrilling allegory for struggles in our own time.  "Balance Of Terror" is the later, with the commander of each vessel struggling over the decisions they have to make that could lead to war.  The episode also touches upon prejudices from conflicts long past.  And yeah, I make fun of the wedding...but that's mainly because the scene itself at the beginning is goofy.  It's actually a wonderful way of framing the rest of the episode.  While those commanders are struggling with their decisions, and the men and women in service of their governments struggle with their prejudices and duty, we see on either end of that a couple in love, impacted by the conflict.  It's a pretty classic way to tell a "war" story, and it works well in this episode.

And "Balance Of Terror" does all of this while also delivering some quality suspense and action.

Those same qualities are what I find myself responding to time and again in some of the best of Trek.  They're some of the reasons why DS9 remains my favorite series, and they're the reasons "Balance Of Terror" is my favorite TOS episode.

TOS S01E14

All the Trek that I watched today:

Star Trek: The Original Series S01E14: "The Conscience Of The King"

Things:

• This is the last time Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney) will appear on Star Trek until they brought here back for The Motion Picture.  I won't weigh down my little blog post here with an editorial about why she was fired from the show, but it's sad stuff if you want to read up on it.  Suffice it to say that I'm happy that she was able to overcome everything in the 1980s and we got a chance to see her in several of the films, a VOY episode and even some fan productions.  She provided one of my favorite one-look performances in all of Trek--the scene in The Search For Spock when USS Enterprise is entering Spacedock after being heavily damaged during the battle with USS Reliant in The Wrath Of Khan, and Rand is in an observation lounge and stands up with a shocked look on her face when she sees how badly damaged the ship is.
• This was apparently Ronald D. Moore's favorite TOS episode.  There's some fun background info in the episode's Memory-Alpha entry (linked above), if you want to check it out.
• I <3 Nichelle Nichols, but we really don't need the 23rd Century harp ballads.  I think this is at least two in one season (there was one in "Charlie X" as well).  There really should be a one-per-season limit, I think. 

Edit:  I said that that "The Conscience Of The King" is the last episode for Grace Lee Whitney, but I should clarify that this is only true for production order.  In airing order, she appears again in "Balance Of Terror" (and possibly elsewhere).

TOS S01E12, S01E13

All of the Trek I watched today:

Star Trek: The Original Series S01E12: "The Menagerie, Part 1"
Star Trek: The Original Series S01E13: "The Menagerie, Part 2"

Things:

• I don't know why it never dawned on me before that Jeffrey Hunter doesn't reprise his role as Captain Pike for this flashback episode (except in the flashback sequences where they use footage from "The Cage", of course).  Apparently they couldn't afford to pay him, especially just to put him in a chair, cover him in makeup and not let him talk.
• It's somewhat interesting that, at least at the time of this incident, the Federation* still has the death penalty on the books--and that its only application is for the violation of the quarantine of Talos IV.
  
  * - I suppose this could be a military penalty enforced by Starfleet and not the civilian government of the Federation, although the nature of USS Enterprise's operating authority was still pretty foggy as of "The Menagerie".  The distinct relationship between the Federation and Starfleet is just starting to come into focus.
• "The Captain is responsible for everything that happens on his ship", which would come back to bite Kirk in the butt in The Undiscovered Country, is first mentioned in Trek canon during Spock's court-martial hearing in this episode (of course it has a long-standing tradition in real-world navies).

'Star Trek' by the numbers, Part Deux

If you're a crazy person and want to actually try watching all of the Star Trek episodes by their in-universe dates, my buddy Peter Bauck from Ars has you covered.  He put together a handy spreadsheet, which I've copied into a .csv and placed here for your perusing pleasure.

I'm not crazy though, or at least not that kind of crazy.  So I'm going to continue watching these roughly in the order in which they were aired :P

TOS S01E11

All the Trek that I watched today:

Star Trek: The Original Series S01E11: "The Corbomite Maneuver"

Things:

• "Raising my voice back there doesn't mean I was scared or unable to do my job.  It means I have a human thing called an adrenaline gland."
  "It sounds most inconvenient, you should consider having it removed."
• Who wants some tranya?

(I'm only doing the one episode today.  The next episode in airing order is the flashback episode "The Menagerie", and I'm sure that I'm going to want to watch both parts back-to-back.  I'm not sure if I'll get to do that tonight after work, so here's my one episode for the day--with more to come later tonight...maybe.)

TOS S01E08, S01E09, S01E10

All the Trek I watched today:

Star Trek: The Original Series S01E08: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"
Star Trek: The Original Series S01E09: "Miri"
Star Trek: The Original Series S01E10: "Dagger Of The Mind"

Things:

• Somehow I missed the news that the episodes of TOS on Netflix are the remastered editions with some of the exterior shots of the ships, planets, etc. replaced with modern CGI.  I'm seeing some of these episodes in their remastered form for the first time, and it reminds me what a great job they did with them.
• The "make an X out of the cloth and cover the boobs" thing must be the 23rd Century equivalent of the tube top. 
• Why didn't anyone tell Noonien Soong that all you needed to make an extremely human-like android is a fancy lazy susan?
• Also:  What's with Trek and the name "Noonien"? 
• MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS MR. SPOCK, I'M SICK OF YOUR HALF-BREED INTERFERENCE!
• For anyone who didn't already know, the infamous "Kirk holding a big foam schwanz" picture comes from "What Are Little Girls Made of?".  See? 

  

• I've never cared for "Miri", or really any of the "Oh, it's another Earth!" episodes.  I know they had budgetary restrictions on their production, but those episodes always take me out of the illusion of being in space, in the future--even when that illusion is cardboard-and-posterboard like it is for so much of TOS.
• Speaking of things I don't like about "Miri", Kim Darby is almost as annoying in this episode as she was in True Grit.
• Goofiness of the Earth-like planet cliche aside, the actual plot of "Miri" is fairly original and engaging.  I don't think I ever noticed that before, what with my distaste for the cop-out of writing an episode so that you could film it on the Paramount backlot.
• I don't know what the age of consent is in the Federation, but I'm pretty sure it's not 15 or whatever.  Stop hitting on the jail-bait, Kirk.  And yes, I know she's actually like 300.  It's still creepy.
• I think "Miri" is the first instance of the ever-popular "Everyone is infected/impacted by a disease/crazy-space-particle/whatever, but not our favorite non-human character!"  They would go on to repeat this trope many, many times with Spock, Data, Odo, The Doctor, Dr. Phlox, etc.  They also used the inverse a lot, where the favorite non-human's uniqueness makes them susceptible to something that puts the ship in danger.
• BONK BONK ON THE HEAD.
• "Penology" is a hilarious word.
• It's good to know that in the 23rd Century, the boss still inappropriately nails one of his subordinates at the Christmas party.
• First mind meld = spotted.

Trek By The Numbers...

I meant to post this a couple of days ago.  "Captain Riker" over in the Ars OpenForum Lounge posted this screenshot with a good estimate of the total time involved in watching all six series and eleven twelve films of the Star Trek franchise.

Of course, everyone knows that there's no such thing as a real Captain Riker on Star Trek, but the Captain Riker on Ars is a quality Trekkie and a pal.

Still, though...

 

;)

TOS S01E07

All the Trek I watched today:

Star Trek: The Original Series S01E07: "Mudd's Women"

Things:

• LOL "Lithium Crystals"
• They really played fast and loose with the planetary naming conventions
• Majel Barrett-Roddenberry got ripped off in TOS.  Pilot?  First Officer.  Re-vamped show that NBC actually bought?  Dye-job blonde nurse.

TOS S01E05, S01E06

All of the Trek that I watched today:

Star Trek: The Original Series S01E05: "The Naked Time"
Star Trek: The Original Series S01E06: "The Enemy Within"

Lessons Learned, Questions Asked:

• When you go on an away mission that requires the use of awesome 23rd Century bubble-wrap hazmat suits?  Yeah, don't take your glove off and scratch your noise, numbnuts.  'Cause that's how the whole ship gets space cooties and we end up with  a shirtless, swashbuckling Sulu. 
• Did the Enterprise really have a bowling alley? 
• I totally need a fluffy dog with a unicorn horn, antennae and a spiky tail. 
• I know the real reason is that he's not from the Mirror Universe, but I still think Evil Kirk should have gotten a goatee. 
• Apparently they hadn't yet established/decided that the ship would have shuttlecraft as of the writing of "The Enemy Within".  In that episode, several of the crew--including Mr. Sulu--are trapped on a planet with a rapidly dropping temperature because of the transporter malfunction that creates Evil Kirk (they can't risk transporting them back up to the ship until they identify what caused the duplication of Kirk and fuzzy-hate-dog, and fix it).  They're all like "Hey, we gotta get these guys up here, it's freezing down there!", but no one's all "Well, the transporters are all bollocksed up--but we could just send a shuttlecraft." 
• I've officially experienced the first "It's dead, Jim". 

TOS S01E01, S01E02, S01E03, S01E04

All of the Trek that I watched today:

Star Trek: The Original Series S01E01: "The Cage"
Star Trek: The Original Series S01E02: "The Man Trap"
Star Trek: The Original Series S01E03: "Charlie X"
Star Trek: The Original Series S01E04: "Where No Man Has Gone Before"


Observations: 

• Holy crap--and I know this isn't something I'm just noticing, and I know it won't be the last time I notice it--but for a fairly progressive science fiction program, TOS was soooooooper sexist.  In these first four episodes, the women are basically set-dressing--often manipulated by an alien power into behaving in a way that they wouldn't have been able to get away with writing otherwise in the conservative TV atmosphere of the late 1960s.
• They really liked the "make a young person look old" effect back then.
• TIGER TIGER BURNING BRIGHT IN THE FOREST OF THE NIGHT 
• Shout-y Spock is the best Spock.
• They definitely bet big on the "stuff on the bridge will burst into flames for, like...no reason at all" thing early and often.
• Not gonna lie...kinda wish I had silver eyeballs.
• JAMES R KIRK

A note on episode numbering...

My notations on which episodes are which (e.g. "S01E01") are based on the episode numbering as the series are presented in Netflix.  I realize that "The Cage" isn't generally considered a part of TOS S1, for example; or that many of the episodes were aired out-of-ordered compared with when they were filmed (e.g. "The Man Trap" is listed as the 5th episode of TOS S1 on Memory-Alpha, because of when it was shot).  For simplicity's sake, I'll be sticking with Netflix's numbering which is--more or less--the order in which the episodes were aired. 

Welcome to ALL THE STAR TREK!

This is the inaugural update of Sam Trek*, the blog where I will chronicle my one-year mission to watch every STAR TREK episode and feature film ever released.  From 1965's "The Cage" to 2009's Star Trek reboot (and, by the time I'm all done, the latter's 2013 sequel), I'm going to watch it all.

* - Sort of.  I actually watched and posted about "The Cage" in the wee hours this morning.

You can read more about me and Star Trek in "About Sam Trek".  Now if you'll excuse me, I need to boldly go...into ALL THE STAR TREK!

Edit:  In my video there, I said that there are "approximately 450 hours of Star Trek".  This number is off by quite a bit.  At last count, doing a bit of Googling, there is something like 550+ hours of Star Trek.  Still though, totally doable at a rate of 1-2 hours per day for a year--especially if I toss in a few marathon sessions on lazy weekends, etc.

TOS S01E01

Star Trek 0x01

"The Cage" (pilot)

I launch my mission tonight with the pilot of the original Star Trek series, "The Cage".  

Most Trekkies will remember this mainly for featuring USS Enterprise's first captain, Christopher Pike (played by Jeffrey Hunter).  But it's also a fairly decent pulp sci-fi story, very much in style of stories from the 1950s and 1960s.  An advanced alien species kidnaps the captain and experiments on him.  And naturally, there's a hot blonde.

We see the first iterations of Treknology that will evolve in name and function as the franchise progresses:  "Lasers" rather than phasers, the faster-than-light propulsion system is referred to as "Time Warp", and thrusters are called "rockets" (which is really all thrusters are, I suppose).

"The Cage" is also notable for the not-yet-fully-formed concept of the Spock character--alien, but not yet a "logical" Vulcan (in fact, they don't even name his species in this pilot).

Sam's score for "The Cage":  6.5/10.0