The Star Trek TOS Project – Week 18

An on-going series of Star Trek: The Original Series episode reviews

Hi!  I’m Sue!  I can recite Ode to Spot but not that poem about how many days are in each month, and I am an Anomaly.  You may have noticed that I took last week off from the Star Trek TOS Project while I was out of town.  But now I’m back and putting on the finishing touches.  Without further ado, Herbert…

3×20 The Way to Eden
Summary:  The Enterprise is in pursuit of the Aurora, a stolen ship, and beams aboard the thieves right before the ship is destroyed.  The leader enters a bit of a power struggle with Kirk, and the space hippies try to gain support/trust from the Enterprise crew, eventually taking control of the ship.
Thoughts:  Oooh, space hippies.  I liked some of the music…  I really don’t know what else to say about this.  Even keeping in mind Jen and Angela’s hilarious review of this episode, I could barely stand watching it.

3x21The Cloud Minders
Summary:  The Enterprise arrives at Ardana to pick up a shipment of zenite that can stop a botanical plague on a nearby planet.  But “disrupters” among the mining culture of Troglytes are preventing the shipment, causing strain on the cloud city Stratos, and making the landing party aware of the political situation on this world.
Thoughts:  From the very beginning, I just help thinking about “The Time Machine” and the Eloi and Morlocks, so I’m assuming that’s intentional.  If the Troglytes built the cloud city, though (before the classes, or whatever, evolved apart), they should have a decent scientific understanding of gasses.  So it was a little frustrating that they didn’t want to believe Kirk’s solution.  But I do feel that the leader wanting to retain the status quo was pretty accurate, because the status was not quo.  Also, Spock’s voiceover thing was very weird.

3×22 The Savage Curtain
Summary:  Kirk and Spock, along with Abraham Lincoln and Surak, and forced to fight on the side of “good” against the evil – Genghis Khan, Kahless, Zora, and Colonel Green – by a rock-alien who wants to learn more about these “concepts.”
Thoughts:  This was ridiculous.  Lincoln?  Really?  Also, Lincoln uses some language that definitely made me doubletake.  Oh, and more blackface Klingons.  Yikes.  The message I got from this episode is that the only difference between good and evil is someone’s endgame/desire.  But Kirk makes a pretty valid point that the rock-alien didn’t allow for methods other than combat, which makes that message come across as somewhat flawed to me.  But I did enjoy the “full presidential honors” for Lincoln, and I always enjoy the super shiny dress uniforms.

3×23 All Our Yesterdays
Summary:  Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to a planet’s surface to warn its inhabitants of their sun’s immanent supernova, only to find that they’ve already evacuated, except for the Librarian.  While they are looking around, trying to figure out what happened, they are transported to different points in that planet’s history, and seemingly trapped.
Thoughts:  Mr. Atoz, the Librarian?  Really?  Okay, fine.  I suppose this is a creative way to avoid a global extinction incident, but thinking too much about it brings up quite a few concerning time travelly questions…  But the thing that really gets me is that Spock is “regressing” because Surak doesn’t exist yet.  WHAT?  Spock has still lived his his own person timeline, and has studied mental discipline.  By that reasoning, shouldn’t McCoy be speaking Middle English?

3×24 Turnabout Intruder
Summary:  Janice Lester wants to captain a starship so badly that she hatches an elaborate plan to switch bodies with Kirk, and take command of the Enterprise.  Because, you know, nothing in the universe is worse than being a woman.
Thoughts:  In the first 4 minutes of this episode we have:  1) “Your world of starship captains doesn’t admit women.”  2)  “Now you know the indignity of being a woman.”  3)  “It’s better to be dead than to live alone in the body of a woman.”  You know what?  Imma let Theresa (Real Housewife of NJ, my home state) do my talking for me…

And that’s it!  All 80 episodes (including the original pilot)!

I am going to take a brief hiatus from constant Star Trek viewing, but I will return after the winter holidays to post about each of the first 6 Trek movies.  Those posts will be a little bit different – a bit more like a delayed live-blog with timestamps, I think.  And then I’ll move on to the Animated Series sometime in the spring, just for good measure.

Until then, peace and long life.

~s