Saturday, May 30, 2009

TOS #22: Space Seed

This is, of course, the episode where Khan is introduced.


He's frozen in a deep sleep, and if it weren't for Bones, he probably never would have thawed out.


The crew would be fine, because they are on to Khan's personality as soon as they have this dinner party, but the ship's historian (left), gets seduced by Khan and helps him.


His seduction of her is brilliant, because it relies on all the tendencies women are afraid to admit in themselves.

TOS #21: The Return of the Archons

This one starts out with Sulu in costume, getting zapped by some zombie people in western clothes. He gets really spacy and confused.
These guys, though, betray their weird God and help Kirk and Spock.
Once they escape from their stone jail, Kirk and Spock seek Landrew, who appears like this:
But of course, when the curtain is pulled back, they find Landrew to be a computer. He's like a cross between the Wizard of Oz, Skynet, and Hal. In a possible precursor to 2001, Kirk and Spock trick the computer.

TOS #12: The Menagerie (Part 2)

In order to get Pike back from his captors, the Enterprise sends down this "laser." Sadly, it's unable to penetrate their superrock fortress.




Meanwhile the aliens are trying to make Pike fall in love with their captive earth woman, so they can breed a human slave population. But that's OK, because Pike eventually outsmarts them, but not before they send him into his own dream worlds. Naturally, he outwits them long enough for Spock to figure out how to help him.





This is another definite precursor to the Ngillum episode.

TOS #11: The Menagerie (Part 1)

Spock "exaggerates" a communication from the planet where former Captain Pike happens to be hanging out. After a radiation accident, he's kind of a cross between Christopher Reeve and Stephen Hawking.


Spock mysteriously then fakes new orders for the Enterprise to go to some unknown place, where these guys live. Only it turns out Spock and Pike have been there before, 13 years earlier.
At the end of Part 1, it's still not clear what the hell Spock is up to, but it's clear he'll need Kirk's help.

TOS #19: Tomorrow is Yesterday

The enterprise has an accident with a black hole and goes back to the early 1960's. Once there, they try to clean up the timeline accidents they've caused. They end up with a fighter pilot and then an MP on the Enterprise.
The captain gets captured at one point, but Spock and Sulu use their martial arts to free him.
Then, for the first time in Star Trek, they use the "slingshot around the sun" method to travel through time to get back to where they're supposed to be.

Monday, May 25, 2009

TOS #18: Arena

This episode has a familiar plot: the Enterprise is going to visit some friends, who turn out to all have been slaughtered, and the crew discovers it was a trap. They chase the offending slaughterers for a while, until they run into people who talk like this:



These psychedelic aliens suggest that the Enterprise and the Gorn settle their dispute by 1-on-1 combat between the captains. Both captains are transported to a neutral planet and start battling it out.



Obviously, Captain Kirk wins in the end, but not before ingeneously figuring out how to make a diamond bamboo pipe bomb.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

TOS #17: The Squire of Gothos

This episode starts out with two crew members (Sulu and the Captain) suddenly vanishing from the bridge while in the presence of a weird planet or small moon.

The others find them unwittingly playing exhibits in a wax museum of sorts in a castle on the planet:

Obviously, a pre-cursor of both Q and Ngillum, the guy who owns this castle is obsessed with the Earth of 900 years earlier, because he's 900 light years away. He plays the pianoforte and studies the classics. He wants to know about the Enterprise's battles and conquests. He operates the castle as a little oasis in an otherwise hostile environment.

Kirk challenges the guy to a duel to buy time while Spock figures out the source of Trelane's power. Kirk shoots his mirror, which is one of the sources of his power, but Trelane still has his mojo, so he puts Kirk on trial.

Kirk convinces Trelane it would be more fun to have another duel. Trelane wears his sword and his Marshall Ney boots and chases Kirk around the forest. Finally, Trelane's parents come and recall him, allowing Kirk and the others to escape.