Sue watches Star Trek: The Animated Series – Week 2 (The TOS Project)

Real talk:  It is the busiest two weeks of the year for me at my Real Job.  But I am also a person who needs deadlines, and if I decide a deadline doesn’t matter, I’ll just ignore the project for months.  So, knowing that about myself, I stayed up until almost 3am watching bad episodes of animated Star Trek so that I could make fun of them on this blog today.  All for you.  Let’s see how coherent I can be on minimal sleep…

The Survivor
Someone who’s been missing for 5 years is miraculously found, and the crew automatically trusts him, and this does not go well. And McCoy wants to believe him so badly that he just hand-waves weird medical readings.  You’d think they’d know better.  (Also, for the number of shape-shifters the TOS/TAS crew encounters, Starfleet officers are sure stumped by Odo for no apparent reason.)  Also, Ann Nored’s fiance has been missing for 5 years, but says neither she nor her feelings have changed,  and I just don’t believe it.  Can anyone in the universe say that they are exactly the same as they were five years ago?  Can you still be ready to marry a person you haven’t seen or spoken to in 5 years?  And then this being uses that undying love to manipulate her when he’s trying to escape, because he “looks and sounds just like Carter.”  Oy.  (Also, “ugly” things aren’t deserving of love, apparently.)  But I did enjoy the Romulan commander and how over Kirk he was: “It was not deliberate” / “It never is.”  High five, Romulan Commander.  But no worries, because love saves the day.

The Infinite Vulcan
A planet of intelligent plants.  Cool.  (Will there be doo-wop style production numbers?)  But why do plants (who presumably need sunlight for photosynthesis) have buildings?  Also, why do the the pterodactyl-like plants have teeth?  Anyway, these plant people want “peace and harmony” for the galaxy (isn’t that a little on the nose?), and then we find out that they’re controlled by a scientist who disappeared after the Eugenics Wars and wants to build a “master race” to use as a “peacekeeping force.”  Yikes.  Also, whoever was supposed to keep an eye on the evil geniuses after the Eugenics Wars did a really bad job.  Anyway, Spock is chosen by this leader as a “perfect specimen” to help build his master race, and another culture is suddenly after Spock’s brain.  And suddenly, there’s a giant Spock.  And then, somehow, Spock’s brain is working in both Spocks – I didn’t really follow what happened and decided I didn’t care enough to rewind.  So Kirk and the crew decide to leave Giant Spock there on that planet (sure, why not?) to educate the inhabitants about what peaceful strides have been made over the past several hundred years, and then Sulu ends the episode by winking at the “camera.”

The Magicks of Megas-tu
I don’t remember taking any psychotropic drugs before watching these episodes last night, but boy-howdy do things get weird.  Once again, the Enterprise is going to the center of the galaxy because scientists believe it “might still be creating new matter.”  There is so much wrong with this premise that I can’t even stand it.  They’re then pulled “out of time and space” where they mean Lucien and visit Megas-tu, a planet that is governed by magic(k) all the women are young and beautiful “so as to ensnare the man of her dreams.”  There is no emoticon for the face I am making.  The crew experiments with the magic, and draws unwanted attention, causing them all (including Lucien) to be put on trial.  It feels eerily similar to “Encounter at Farpoint” at times, but waaay more ridiculous.  Lucien defends the positive qualities of humanity, and then Kirk, charges dropped, defends Lucien for bringing them to the planet. Even after learning that Lucien is better known on Earth as Lucifer.  Yep.  Kirk saves the devil from exile.  Except that it’s all a test of human compassion!  What. The. What.

Once Upon A Planet
It’s time for some R&R, so Kirk decides to revisit the “shore leave planet.”  Great idea.  Instead of contacting the planet’s caretaker or anything, they just beam down.  And things go immediately wrong.  Apparently, the caretaker has died, and the “thought duplicator” computer that controls the planet wants to start a robot uprising because it doesn’t want to serve the people visiting the planet any more.  It captures Uhura and calls her a “slave” and claims that the sky machine (the Enterprise) is her “master.”  No.  Just no.  This computer wants a life, so it plans to “turn off” the rest of the crew and take over the ship, and starts using anything the Uhura’s rescue party can imagine to fight against them – giant cats, pterodactyls, the Queen of Hears…  And then Kirk out-logics the computer, once again, and it decides that it’s happy to cater to the needs of visitors.  Cut to a picnic with Sulu, Alice, and a two-headed dragon.

Mudd’s Passion
This guy. Selling snake oil love potion that actually works, if you’re heterosexual, that is.  Kinda.  And once they get Mudd on the Enterprise to try him for something or another, he convinces Christine Chapel to try a love crystal to make Spock fall in love with her.  He explains that it makes you irresistible to someone of the “opposite sex”, but just very good friends with someone of the same sex.  Chapel goes as far as to fall into Spock lap.  Yeah.  Of course, it’s not as simple as locking Mudd up – he escapes, Chapel goes after him, and then a bunch of capsule break near the ship’s ventilation system, so everyone on the Enterprise is affected, and the women are all desperate and then men are all players (and that scene between Spock and Kirk down on the planet is totally hetero, FYI #sarcasm). On the plus side?  We get to see Arex’s three arms and M’ress’s paws.  Oh, and the rock monsters.   And Spock saying “That is an oustandingly stupid idea!”  Anyway, the “love” potion wears off, the crew beams up (I don’t even remember why they beamed down), they put Mudd in the brig, and the side effect of the potion is that now they’ll all hate each other for a couple of hours.  How cute…