"The word is given. Warp speed."

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the planet.  And NO, Sam Trek most definitely has NOT been aborted.  It's just bee a crazy week at work, and my post-work time has been spent decompressing, for the most part :)

I've finished "This Side Of Paradise" and most of "The Devil In The Dark", and will be posting about them soon.  Plus, I've purchased a very modest TV this week for my living room and have a WD TV Play on its way that should arrive tomorrow.  So my weekend (otherwise pretty barren, schedule-wise) can be spent streaming TOS via Netflix to my TV :)

So, you know.  Stay awesome, Trekkies.

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).