Just preparing for the second season, as there's only a few discs left in the first. And I couldn't resist throwing in a reference to the website where I got my start in contributing to the Internet.

Cats Paw:

Thanks to the "volume" setup, I got a sneak peek at season two before returning for the rest after season seven of The X-Files.

Having first known Walter Koenig as Bester, it's pretty amusing to see the role that trapped him for so long. It seems his being Russian is one last touch by Roddenberry to show that in the 23rd century, we'll all be getting along. Yes, he's living in a magical fantasy world with fairies and leprechauns and talking frogs wearing little hats.

He also really seems to love his aliens with omnipetent powers. Unfortunately, these two don't quite measure up to some of those in the past, rendering this a bit of a subpar outing. And the final reveal of their true form is pretty laughable.

The early segments, with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy trying to figure out what's going on, work much better. Plus, that stunt of Jackson falling over and rolling down the stairs really had me wincing.

Looking over this season, it appears to have the most episodes that have entered general pop culture, like The Changeling and Mirror Mirror. Very excited to get to those.

Is this your first time seeing TOS? If so, great - there are some real classics in season 2. Mirror Mirror and The Trouble with Tribbles especially, but also The Doomsday Machine, A Piece of the Action, and Assignment: Earth.

While season 1 had more of my favorite episodes, I'd say season 2 was better over all.

Hey everyone, I'm back. Now let's get this show on the road properly.

Metamorphasis:

The godlike alien plots are getting a little old by now, but this one has some nice twists to it. I didn't see the ending coming, though I'd guessed that Cochrane wouldn't be leaving.

We get a nice look at the history of the Trek universe here; 150 years before (ie 50 years after the show was made, a point we're getting close to) warp technology was invented and humans could travel the stars. Also, judging by Cochrane's reaction to Spock, humans and Vulcans had already made contact at that time.

Unfortunately, this is a case where the series is a little too idealistic for its own good and goes past optimistic to deluded. So they'll just find another woman who can stop that war, it's just that easy? Did Roddenbery actually buy this stuff, or did he realize it was total fantasy?

Friday's Child:

Why can't every episode have Spock finding someone in what looks like an illicit tryst? Nimoy's reaction is awesome again.

And so the Klingons become the first repeat baddie of Trek. Though the one here seems to have much lighter makeup; every time he appeared I had to remind myself he wasn't human. They do seem a big one-dimensional though; just facists who want to conquer the universe just for its own sake. They do appear to have some diplomatic skills for use in pulilng the wool over people's eyes, though, which could make them pretty interesting if developed further.

Neat to see Scotty as the captain; he fits the role quite well as it turns out. I imagine after this five year mission he'll get his own ship.

The Doomsday Machine:

A very scary "monster" in this one. The worm-like design gives the planet killer a very unsettling feel even besides its destructive ability, and also is functional given its purpose. Of course something that destroys planets would have a "mouth" big enough to do it, then petering out until the debris is pushed out its back end.

Decker was a pretty neat character, with a futuristic take on Captain Ahab. That allusion also caught me off guard at the end; I was sure that, just like Ahab, he would end up killing his own white whale, and kill himself in the process. Instead, his death simply serves to give Kirk the idea on what to do. A nice twist that allows Decker to go out with some dignity, and still lets Kirk be the hero too.

Wolf in the Fold:

The first half was pretty good, with some nice acting from James Doohan. It functions a lot like Court-Martial: we know that Scotty can't be guilty, but the evidence against him sure looks foolproof. Unfortunately, the solution wasn't anywhere near as clever. "The ghost of Jack the Ripper did it" sounds like a parody of the out-of-nowhere twist endings some mystery shows would have; seeing it treated seriously was just bizarre.

At least it has a nice spot for the late, great John Fiedler. He didn't get to play many sleazy roles like this, being mainly stuck with the image generated from his voicing Piglet. But between this and A Raisin in the Sun, he seemed pretty good at it. The sight of his stunt double drop kicking Kirk was also wonderfully weird.

As well, seeing the crew hopped up on goofballs was hysterical, and almost redeemed the whole twist. "Whoever he is, he sure talks gloomy!"

I'm strangely obsessed with "Friday's Child". I can't ever put my finger on why. The costumes are just wretched but I love them anyway. They look like the were put together from the remnants bin - and the hoods with hair coming out the top! Ugh! Yet I can't look away. "I'm a doctor, not an escalator!" Bones is such a proud papa.

I should also note that volume 17 is also not available from Netflix for whatever reason. The two episodes on it, Who Mourns for Adonais and Amok Time, look very good from the Wikipedia pages, so I'm a little more depressed about this one.

The Changeling:

Suddenly that MST3k skit makes a lot of sense. Nomad is a pretty interesting baddie, and offers another nice view into the show's future history. It predits Carl Sagan's probes quite well, even though it's a couple decades off.

I could see the ending coming for a while, with Nomad making such an obvious mistake itself. However, Kirk being the one to defeat the computer with logic makes for a cool twist, and Spock's note of the danger his impeccable logic has put them in is pretty funny.

So someone can go through Starfleet training in a week after having their entire memory erased? Also, Nomad's description of her mind could be taken as pretty offensive, given that it's the black character he's talking about. I don't normally notice these sorts of things, but that jumped out.

The Apple:

Like in the previous episode, the same attack that disintegrates Red Shirts only causes fixable damage to a main cast member. Here it's even worse as Spock isn't even rendered only mostly dead by the lightning. A little effort, guys?

This one also treads the same ground as the episode about the happiness spores in the first season, and even includes killer flower thorns so we can't possibly miss the similarity. However, it does follow up nicely from that one with Spock taking the view to leave things as they are, after the destruction of his chance for happiness last time.

The episode also wraps up way too neatly, pretty much ignoring the philosophical quandaries presented earlier. At least it features a fun nod to the network's concern about Spock's "Satanic" appearance when the series was first presented to NBC.

I, Mudd:

So of all the great guest characters in the show's history that could have made a second appearance, we get Harry Mudd? At least this improves on Mudd's Women, and the story isn't nearly as mysoginistic. Only Mudd himself displays those attitudes, and he's clearly not someone meant to be emulated, so it works out okay.

The opening scene between McCoy and Spock is one of the best yet, with a great dig by Spock allowing himself some personality when he feels insulted enough. The climax also shows him lying again, though there's certainly enough impetus as everyone will be trapped forever if he doesn't.

That climax is also hilarious, owing much to the fact that all the jokes come naturally from the situation, and serve an important plot function. We also discover the source of a certain Simpsons deleted scene ("I am lying!"). I bet there's some really killer outtakes from this whole sequence, as everone seems to be having a blast.

Seeing as Nichelle Nichols is now on Heroes still looking smoking hot, maybe she really does have an android body.

The Trouble with Tribbles:

And so we come to perhaps the most famous Trek episode of all time. Another program on that screensaver system that included the Horta was one of tribbles dropping from the top of the screen and piling up, while occasionally a Klingon opened a window and made them all shriek. Nice to see the origins of another one of those.

I was surprised to see that the tribbles were actually a pretty minor part of the story, even if they were instrumental to the ending. Still all those shots of the tribble-infested Enterprise had me laughing for a while, and Kirk's face while they just kept dropping on his head from the storage bay was hysterical. Maybe a hint of the Denny Crane in him.

I recently watched the whole series of The Time Tunnel, so I whooped a little upon seeing Whit Bissell. Shame he didn't have a bigger role with that awesome voice of his, plus on TTT his character's name was General Kirk, so you could say he outranks Shatner!

I'm now pretty sure that the bar fight is where Joss Whedon got the idea for Kaylee's defensiveness of Serenity; Scotty keeping his cool until the ship was insulted really reminded me of her.

If you haven't seen it already, watch the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribbulations".



Heh, I loved After Dark (the screensaver set). The tribbles one was my second favorite, after the flying toasters.

Win 3.1 had such awesome screensavers.

You mean "Trials and Tribble-ations." Quite possibly the best "love letter to the fans" ever made. Made that much better after having seen "Trouble with Tribbles." Definitely worth a (re-)watch now.

Unfortunately, I'm anal enough to view the whole franchise in order, meaning there's quite a bit to go before I even get to DS9.

Bread and Circuses:

This one gets by mostly on the coolness of its premise; the extrapolation of ancient Roman society in the 20th century was quite inventive and eerily plausible. Gladiator fights were the mass entertainment of their time, so why not put them on television once it's invented. Though I wonder how they handled chariot races.

The fight scenes were very exciting, and quite a bit more violent than usual, kind of like a live action Jonny Quest. The sight of Kirk stabbing someone, and that bloody knife pulled out of Merik''s back must have been pretty shocking at the time.

Unfortunately, the involvement of the prime directive brings the whole thing down. It really doesn't make much sense to me; wouldn't they be violating it every time they land on another planet? It seems to have been thought up just to artificially put the crew's backs against the wall in situations like this one.

As well, the true nature of the "sun" worshippers was very predictable, though thankfully the historical context of the Roman empire having been brought down by Christianity stopped it from feeling too preachy.

Journey to Babel:

This was one of the best episodes yet until its somewhat limp conclusion. All three storylines worked very well together, and the relationship between Spock and his parents added quite a lot of development for him. I recognized the actor from having played the Romulan commander in Balance of Terror, and he was even more memorable here.

The Vulcan execution method is a nice development too, and fits in well with the nerve pinch we've seen several times now. They seem to have quite an understanding of that area.

Unfortunately, the very exciting climax is marred by the culprits being a race that had never been mentioned before.

Mirror, Mirror:

Another nice "so that's where that comes from" episode, and bigger than most. That TWoP for movies website I write for, created by a big Trek fan, is called The Agony Booth, and all of the recappers' avatars at the start of reviews were one of the evil crew members from this episode, until they ran out (mine is Chekov). We even have a section of smaller reviews calkled The Agonizer.

While I wish we could have seen more of evil Kirk and co. on the good Enterprise, this was a very entertaining and suspenseful episode that deserves its reputation. A very creative idea, and Spock in particular is pretty interesting as an "evil" version, since he's still motivated by logic and so is willing to help our guys out on that basis. I wouldn't mind seeing him again some day, and finding out what became of him.

The MST3k episode Last of the Wild Horses is still on Youtube; I'm going to check that out again now, to see just how many references to this episode there are.

Plus, Uhura in that bare midriff suit-yowza!

The Deadly Years:

"Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are no good at everything." For all its progressive ideals, this show often falls short when it comes to female characters, and here the treatment of old people is similarly eybrow-raising.

Still, I did think this was a pretty good episode, and it's neat to draw parallels to the similar story from The X-Files. I half-expected someone to say "I think I just passed George Burns." And old McCoy reminded me quite a bit of Doc Cottle from BSG. It's also rather amusing in retrospect how none of the actors look anything like they do now, when they actually are in their 60s and 70s.

The reintroduction of the Romulans is pretty good too, and I really like how they remembered the "neutral zone" from Balance of Terror. It creates a feeling rather like the then-recently created ceasefire in Korea, where it seems like any moment there could be war again, which is a nice piece of Cold War tension in a show that took pains to insert a character who credits everything to Russia this season.

A Private Little War:

Did Alan Alda ghostwrite this one? Horribly preachy diatribe about the arms race, something even Dr. Seuss was able to make a better statement on. Even the rare for this show depiction of a morally complex situation with no easy answer wasn't able to overcome the feeling that I was being talked down to the whole time. Really, I can't think of anything else to say.

The Gamesters of Triskelion:

Though we recently already had an episode about gladiator fights with Bread and Circuses, I thought this was a very exciting one, and features yet another "so that's where that came from" moment for me, with a certain scene from the Simpsons episode Deep Space Homer.

Uhura almost being raped was incredibly disturbing; our only seeing the shadows as she tried to fight the guy off put us right in Kirk's shoes, wanting desperately to know what was going on. And thinking that the original viewers would have to spend the whole commercial break wondering if it actually happened made me very impressed with how far the director was willing to go with it.

The climax was a bit disappointing in how it completely boiled down to Kirk fighting his way out of trouble, something the show typically avoids even in action-heavy episodes like Arena. The fight where everyone has to stay on their color is pretty cool though; if only Shatner (or his stunt double) hadn't tromped all over the wrong color at multiple points!

Obsession:

This one risked coming too close to repeating The Doomsday Machine with its Moby Dick inspired plot, but the fact that Kirk is the obsessive captain rather than someone we barely know gives it greater emotional depth. It seems Roddenberry's rule about no internal conflicts among the characters was put aside here, and it's quite interesting to see Spock and McCoy so set against Kirk.

Ensign Garrovick, though his presence is insanely coincidental, was a surprisingly engaging character too for someone who seemed to just be another Red Shirt at first. His "split second" of indecision could have been played less broadly, but otherwise I was pretty caught up in his story, and actually hoped he would survive. Not bad for this kind of character.

Unfortunately, Shatner gave some of his broadest acting yet; it seems this kind of emotional role was a bit beyond him. He honestly resembles Kevin Pollack's Kirk impression more than Kirk himself.

The Immunity Syndrome:

Many Trek episodes so far have been suspenseful, but generally in a fun way where I was never quite put in the characters' shoes. This, on the other hand, was actually scary in the fashion that Doctor Who did so well. The amoeba was a formidable villain which also didn't suffer at all from a cheap rubber suit like the Gorn, which adds quite a bit to how effective it is.

Shatner again shows some unexpected serious acting chops (especially given his crappy portrayal of Ahab-like obsession in the last episode) while making the log entry wondering who to send to their death. You can feel every bit of the pressure bearing down on him, and even though I knew no one would die, I still got caught up in the decision. The "Wish me luck" scene was also quite touching.

The method of killing the amoeba is one of the more creative yet seen, and the metaphor of viruses is pretty cool and makes perfect sense. What if we are just living inside some gigantic being, who thinks of us like we think of bacteria? Think about this stuff long enough, and you can feel your brain start to melt.

Again, once you get around to the DS9 series, you'll get an answer to that - not, in the opinion of many, a very good one. Oh well!

Return to Tomorrow:

Some of Shatner's worst acting yet; his monologue about the need for risk was just cringe-worthy. However, Nimoy was awesome as a more emotional guy. He seems to take after Orson Welles' performance from The Third Man, acting just like a regular person despite the horrible things he's saying. It has quite a chilling effect in the right actor's hands, like here.

It offered some nice moral ambiguity too; what would you be willing to do if the alternative was to never feel anything again? That theme of sacrifice made the ending quite touching despite Shatner's hamminess.

As well, the aliens "seeding" lots of worlds is a nic explanation for why so many aliens look so much like humans. I don't know if that was the intent, but it's pretty cool regardless.

Patterns of Force:

Like Mudd's Women, there was real potential here but the story is so offensive (and was probably considered so even back then) that it's all squandered. Did the writer honestly think that Hitler started out with good intentions until he was corrupted by power? That seems to be the message here, and it couldn't be more wrong.

Plus, it seems like a ripoff of the recent Bread and Circuses in someone ignoring the Prime Directive and creating a place like an Earth society. And it's decidedly the weaker of the two.

The Ultimate Computer:

The first half built pretty well, and offered some good psychological depth on Kirk. His issues with being made obsolete are quite touching, particularly when he quotes the poem over drinks with McCoy. I could have done without his supposed friend calling him useless in so many words, though. There was already plenty for Kirk to feel bad about without that low blow.

The omniscient computer also provided some good suspense, but the method to defeat it lacked much cleverness. Why didn't anyone even try to tell it the other ships weren't really trying to destroy it, if it's capable of thinking like a human? Overall, some more good potential squandered.

The Omega Glory:

Didn't we just have an episode where Kirk and Spock remark on how insanely coincidental it was to have a planet evolving a culture identical to the Nazis? Yet here that same premise is played straight complete with copies of the American flag and the Constitution. I know people didn't care much about continuity back then, but is a little effort too much to ask? It's not quite at Odd Couple territory yet, but things like this don't help.

At least it avoids that episode's offensiveness, and ends up being pretty compelling despite being so derivative. The science behind the virus was not just technobabble for once and made perfect sense, something I've gathered is pretty rare for this franchise in all its incarnations.

With "Miri," you could (kind of) make the case for parallel evolution, or at least not lose your lunch while thinking about it. "Omega Glory" was abuse of the concept at the highest (lowest?) level. Just thinking about the Yangs carrying the American flag makes me nauseous.

The one part of the episode I liked. McCoy's summation of the situation always makes me laugh.

A Piece of the Action:

There have been a few of these episodes where a planet's culture is patterned after one from Earth, but none quite took the premise and just ran with it like this one does. Consequently, it's a blast from start to finish.

Shatner again really Denny Cranes it up with his gangster accent, and though the general concensus is that Trek almost never does comedy well (aptly supported by dreck like Profit and Lace) this gag never really lost its spark despite going on for quite a bit longer than I was expecting. His explanation of fizzbin also had its moments; I imagine quite a few people have actually tried to play the game since the episode aired.

Spock also got a few nice moments, though he did seem to adopt the gangster persona a bit too easily. At least he got a hat that didn't actually hide his ears this time, saving us from the old standby where it's pulled off and everone gasps or something to that effect.

Kirk learning to drive was also pretty funny, and given the setting rather reminiscent of the hilarious driving lessons sequence from Road to Perdition.

By Any Other Name:

So is there any meaning to that title besides the Shakespeare quote Kirk uses? Even though this one didn't tread any new ground for the series (it really came off like a mixing of the usual godlike alien story with I, Mudd) it still moved at a good pace and I found a lot to like in it.

I believe this is the first time we've seen Scotty's quarters. The bagpipes on the wall were certainly never seen before. And now I'm curious, just what was he saving that scotch for? There's probably all kinds of "Scotty's a virgin" jokes descended from this scene, though given all the hoyay that's popped up around the series since the '70s, it now comes off a bit more "naughty" than that.

Of all things, the second half really reminded me of the schlock classic Robot Monster. "To be like the hu-man, to live like the hu-man!" The aliens all getting their freak on was a lot of fun, even though a lot of it did come across as filler (particularly Scotty's drinking binge) since the jealousy stuff by itself solved the problem.

As well, I'm now taking a management class, where one of the main lessons is the fallacy in doing things just because "that's the way they've always been done." This episode could really serve as an object lesson there.

Assignment: Earth:

The first season ended with Kirk's brother being killed, and the audience being briefly teased that Spock was needlessly blinded. How to top that? Having the Enterprise crew play second banana to a new guy they're clearly hoping will have a show of his own. Maybe this episode could have worked if Roddenberry had been a little less obvious about his intentions, but as it is that's a mighty big hurdle to get over, particularly in a season finale.

It was nice seeing Teri Garr, though, and her character might have been really interesting if the show had been picked up. Kind of an American version of a Doctor Who companion, and the closest thing to that series an American show would probably ever get.

They don't even bother to explain why Seven is immune to the Vulcan nerve pinch, despite being a regular human in every other way, and Isis' transformation at the end being treated as a tag joke is far too light a treatment for such a huge reveal. Season two was overall an improvement, but it ends on a real dud.

I'm curious, did you already know "Assignment: Earth" was intended to be a pilot going in or could you just tell?


Interesting. I didn't remember that tidbit but I may have to re-watch. I really like the TNG episode that also deals with "seeding" the galaxy. I wonder how much it owes to this one, if anything.

TNG also brought back a great line from Scotty's drunken binge during "By Any Other Name" - something to watch for.

I hate "The Omega Glory" more than any other TOS ep.

I knew about it; given that I contribute to a website whose creator is a huge Trekkie, or Trekker, or whatever the hell the word is, a few tidbits like this have come up in the forums. Though I'd like to think I would be able to figure it out on my own, especially with Spock's line at the end. Just one step removed from "Oh, I figure I'll be seeing him again, each and every week."

Eegah writes:


You're not alone; the writers of print Trek spinoffs couldn't resist the possibilities of exploring him further, and different versions of the adventures of mirror-Spock were prominently featured in the mid-'80s Trek comic (as collected in The Mirror Universe Saga), and in the recent Mirrorworld anthology Glass Empires.

I've actually got a great deal of fondness for Assignment:Earth. Yes, the plot's got the consistency of a souffle and the whole thing collapses if you try analysing the individual parts in any detail. But this is the sort of campy romp that TOS could do so well, the performances are good throughout and Teri Garr's adorable. Interesting thought that it was intended to get a spin-off - it explains a lot about the way the story's structured.

Well, a fan of Assignment:Earth may wish to read the two-volume series "The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh" - unless you're deadly allergic to continuity porn.

As for "The Omega Glory" it was one of the scripts considered for the second pilot (and there was I think one other besides "Where No Man..."), so it appears they were reaching for scripts toward the end of the second season.

The third was "Mudd's Women," I believe.

dbrugg writes:


So it appears (there were, what, five or six other episodes that season about primitive cultures being contaminated by Earth exploration?).

It was apparently regarded as a stinker internally as well; the Justman/Solow book quotes a politely scathing memo from the NBC executive assigned to the show, who, upon finding the script on his desk again, insisted that it needed to be rewritten.

After all these years, I have finally seen Assignment Earth, which for some reason was one of the very few episodes in the whole of Trek that I always missed (another, oddly, is Mudd's Women). I loved it! I'm genuinely sorry that there was never to be a spin-off series. Of course as a Trek episode it's terrible, because our heroes are alternately indecisive, useless and absent. But I would really have liked to see Seven and Roberta's adventures, or more of mysterious Isis. The awesome 60s style set in Seven's office made me giggle each scene, Teri Garr was totally cute and STILL looks and acts much the same, plus some wonderful "whatever!" dialogue which made me crack up, like Kirk's initial log randomly saying "la la la, we did some doohicky and went back in time, so anyways - " or Seven explaining to Roberta that "don't you see, hugely advanced aliens would OBVIOUSLY decide to kidnap humans and train them for thousands of years".

But, corny or not, I thought the episode was genuinely intriguing and entertaining, while the politics of it were interesting - a complete rejection, in scathing terms, of the idea of the balance of power. And a hero who is basically an undercover agent working against the American military.

I couldn't at all work out what Gary Seven's background was. First he said he was from the 20th Century, then that the aliens had taken people from 6,000 years ago and trained them over generations. Was he the descendant of them, or what?

I did try reading the Khan Singh books once but having not seen this episode they were hard to get into, must try and find them at the library again.

Hee, so funny to have seen a "new" Star Trek episode.

The Khan books are OK but have many many flaws. First they try to fit any and all Trek (of all series) episodes that happen between 1967 and 2001. Now a heck of a lot of these storylines are to be kind very mutually contradictory. Also they try to fit in real world events. So we have Janeway's ancestor show up but the Eugenics War is ignored. Changing the timeline of a fictional series to fit into real world events to me at least causes the worst of both worlds. It shows lack of faith in your writers but keeps most of the logical flaws that were there in the first place.

Another must-read in connection with "Assignment: Earth" is "Assignment: Eternity", which is a direct sequel to this episode. What's intriguing is that it kind of flip-flops the time-travel aspect, in that this time, Gary and Roberta travel to the 23rd Century in order to stop a political assassination there that is intended to derail reunification efforts between Vulcan and Romulus in the 24th Century. One of the highlights for me is a part where Roberta hijacks the Enterprise using old-fashioned civil-disobedience tactics ("In my day, we called this a sit-in.") Another high point for me is when she allows Spock to mind-meld with her, and in the process, they both learn that they have more in common than they would ever have imagined.

The novel also seems to confirm that, if the series had been picked up, Gary and Roberta would most definitely have been an American version of Doctor Who and Rose, as they have exactly that kind of relationship in the novel (well, minus any hint that they had any kind of romantic attraction for each other.)

Incidentally, this is the only episode of the entire original series that is not currently available for viewing on the CBS official website. For some reason, it has never been put up online there, although all of the other 78 episodes are available for viewing (in the original, not the remastered format.) It is, however, available for free viewing through AOL video, which is where I saw it last night for the first time in several years, and it still holds up well, in my opinion, even 40 years after its original air date.