Tag: Reviews

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 12 – The Empath

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This episode involves aliens torturing the Enterprise landing party.  And I feel as if I were being tortured just by having to watch the episode.

Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down to planet blah, blah, blah to evacuate scientists that were observing a star that is about to nova.  The scientists have been abducted and almost immediately so are the landing party.  They find a pretty girl with way too much make-up and a sensible short hair style, the sort to be found on women playing nurses on soap opera series.  She is a mute and it turns out she is a “total empath” which McCoy explains means she can heal other’s injuries by transferring them to herself and then healing herself.

The aliens, called Vians, that have captured Kirk and company have already tortured the scientists to death and placed their dead bodies in clear cylinders so that Kirk and company can see their tortured expressions and become outraged.  Now they start torturing the landing party starting with Kirk.  This involves taking off Kirk’s shirt and suspending him with manacles and chains by his wrists and then beating him.  We can’t see what they are hitting him with.  But I imagine it’s either an energy weapon or a sack full of oranges.

The empath that McCoy has nicknamed Gem heals Kirk’s injuries.  Next the Vians tell Kirk he must choose whether their final victim will be Spock or McCoy.  McCoy tricks Kirk and Spock by sedating them with his hypodermic needle.  The Vians beat him with the sack full of oranges to the brink of death and then Spock and Kirk witness Gem hesitantly trying to heal McCoy.  We find out all of this is a test to see if Gem’s people are worthy of being saved from the nova by the Vians.  If she possesses the “instinct” to sacrifice her own life to save another then she passes and her people will be saved.  After some diffidence over whether her efforts were sufficient the Vians end the test and save McCoy.  Then they scoop up Gem and leave.  The episode ends with the landing party back on the bridge and trading witticisms about “Gem” being a pearl of great price.

As you can probably tell by the summary this is a weak episode.  A shirtless Shatner suspended by the wrists and writhing in pain has some comic value no doubt.  But this is very thin gruel.  The Vians are funny looking with their bony skulls and silver dishdashas but other than a slight amount of sympathy for the dying McCoy what are we looking at here?  Season three strikes again.

I’ll give it a 5 // 5.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 11 – Wink of an Eye

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I know this is hardly an earth-shattering revelation but watching this episode has crystalized a theory about Star Trek third season episodes.  The basic idea is that the producer must read the script and depending on just how bad it is he decides how close to naked his female guest star has to be to distract the viewers from the awfulness of the plot.  In the case of “Wink of an Eye,” even full-frontal nudity would not have been enough.  The femme fatale in this episode is an alien named Deela from planet blah, blah, blah.  She must be wearing a bikini with some gauzy tie-dyed scarf draped over most of her bathing suit.  She and her fellow aliens have sent out the obligatory distress signal which lures the Enterprise to send out Kirk and McCoy with some rando red shirt who almost immediately vanishes in the wink of an eye.  There are no people to find but they hear a buzzing that they assume is insects.  Returning to the ship the buzzing follows them and strange things start happening.  Some kind of HVAC hosing is attached into the Enterprise’s life support system and a force field keeps the crew from tampering with the modifications.

Eventually the aliens dope kirk’s coffee and suddenly the crew of the Enterprise slows down almost to statues and suddenly he can see Deela.  The big surprise is that the aliens move at such a hyper fast speed that they cannot be seen by normal humans.  And their speech is so rapid it sounds like mosquitos buzzing.  Deela tells Kirk that she is the queen and Kirk will be her love slave so that she can produce children.  Her race became accelerated by a release of radiation on her planet.  The whole species is down to five individuals, two women and three men.  And the men are sterile so they need to capture men to use as fathers for the next generation.  After putting the moves on Kirk, he escapes and tries to interfere with the HVAC hoses but is zapped by one of the eunuch aliens who are sore at Kirk for being virile enough to mate with Deela.

Kirk in desperation leaves a recording explaining what is going on and of course Spock has already figured out that the buzzing is rapid speech.  He slows down Kirk’s recording and orders McCoy to make an antidote for the accelerator drug and once that’s been done, he drinks the rest of Kirk’s coffee and becomes hyper-Spock.  He joins Kirk and they turn the tables on Deela by stealing her hyper-blaster.  They send Deela and company back to planet blah, blah, blah and drive off in the Enterprise with Kirk looking lustfully at a photo of Deela on the bridge main viewing screen.

This is awful stuff.  Whereas the idea of the accelerated creatures is kind of interesting the way it’s handled is pathetic.  At one point Kirk fires his phaser at Deela and she just slowly moves out of the way to avoid the slow beam of light.  Apparently, she moves faster than the speed of light.  This show must have been written by idiots for idiots.

And how exactly can five people maintain a society?  They call Deela the queen but what kind of monarchy can rule over four subjects?  She’s more like an annoying neighbor with delusions of grandeur.  At one point Kirk pretends that he has gone along with Deela’s plan and placidly talks about not offending her and doing the right thing.  It’s really kind of creepy and made the episode even more unpleasant to watch.

This episode sucked.  It only gets a few Shatner mockery points and Deela’s costume doesn’t warrant much credit either.

I rate this a 2  //  3.

Knights of the Round Table (1953) – A Movie Review

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Here’s a costume drama in Cinemascope with a good cast and a decent scripting of the Arthur legend.  Robert Taylor is Lancelot and Ava Gardner is Guinevere.  Their star-crossed love dooms Arthur and Camelot as it always does and Mel Ferrer does a serviceable job in the role.  Felix Aylmer is a welcome addition as Merlin.  I greatly enjoyed his performance as Polonius in Olivier’s Hamlet.  This is a much lesser part but he still makes it an enjoyable character.

This production is a spirited melodrama that spins the story pretty well.  The battle scenes are well staged and sizable and the sword fights are pretty good.  In this version Lancelot is given extra scope.  He is even allowed to kill Mordred or Modred as he is called in this version instead of giving that honor to Arthur.  The ending has an angelic vision of the Holy Grail given to Percival which also announces that Lancelot’s son Galahad will be the perfect knight and then for good measure the celestial voice also tells Lancelot that his sins are forgiven.  Alright, so this is a bit much for a costume drama.  And it sort of oversteps the bounds of this kind of adventure story, I think.

But it’s a fun movie with plenty of sword fighting and really bad villains and very likeable good guys so it gets the job done.

As far as a recommendation, this movie falls into the same category as a good “cowboys and injuns” shoot ’em up.  If you’re in the mood for one it’s harmless fun but if you’re not don’t bother.

The Naked City (1948) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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In this movie the star is New York City at the height of its prominence as the largest city of the most powerful country on the planet.  The tagline of the movie is “There are eight million stories in the Naked City.  This is one of them.”  And almost every shot of the film highlights the sights and sounds of New York.  Everything from the crowded subway cars and crowded streets to dizzying vistas on the tops of buildings and the towers of the Williamsburg Bridge.

The story begins with the late-night murder of Jean Dexter, a pretty blonde model.  It is followed by one of the two murderers killing his partner for being too soft-hearted.

The murder of Jean Dexter falls into the lap of police Lt. Dan Muldoon played with his best Irish brogue by Barry Fitzgerald.  Assisted by detective Jimmy Halloran played by Don Taylor they run down leads until they find Frank Niles, played by Howard Duff.  Every word coming out of Niles’ mouth, including “and and but” is a lie.  And when they find out that he is engaged to Jean’s close friend Ruth Morrison but that Ruth doesn’t even know that Niles was a close friend of Dexter they know they’ve found their connection.  At every step Niles shows himself to be tied to the murder and to a jewel robbery ring.  But at the same time all evidence clears him of Jean’s murder.

Finally, the clues add up to the fact that Jean Dexter and Frank Niles were the brains behind the jewelry theft ring.  They hired two burglars and used information from the husband of a society matron to rob the houses of the wealthy when it was known that they would be at a party.  But finally, the burglars decided to cut Jean out of the picture by murdering and robbing her.  Under threat that he would be indicted as an accessory to murder Niles confesses and provides the names of the two burglars.

The climax of the movie is a manhunt and a shootout between the police and the murderer while he is cornered at the top of one of the towers of the Williamsburg Bridge, hundreds of feet in the air.

In a lot of ways, the movie is a standard police procedural.  But there are enough secondary players to round out the story in a satisfying way.  We meet detective Halloran’s wife and young son and hope with him that he won’t have to obey his wife and spank his son for crossing Northern Boulevard by himself.  We meet Jean Dexter’s parents and watch as the mother goes from declaring her hatred for her prodigal daughter to crying over her “baby” and hugging Jean’s cold dead body in the morgue.  We even meet the murderer’s Lower East Side neighbors who know him as the friendly harmonica playing guy that all the kids like.

This is not a great movie.  It’s a good one.  I recommend it as what it is, an interesting police story.

Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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This must be Charles Laughton’s most unusual role.  As the eponymous Marmaduke Ruggles, he is a gentleman’s gentleman in the employ of the Earl of Burnstead, (played by Roland Young) until his lordship loses Ruggles in a poker game with American cowboy millionaire Egbert Floud played by Charlie Ruggles (there’s that name again).  Egbert’s wife Effie (played by Mary Boland) is attempting to give Egbert and by extension, Red Gap, “tone.”  And her ace in the hole is Ruggles by whose knowledge of etiquette and propriety she hopes to reform Egbert and instill snobbish manners in the Old West town.  And with Effie’s annoying brother-in-law Charles Belknap-Jackson (played by Lucien Littlefield) as the villain and ZaSu Pitts as Ruggles’ love interest the movie is an absurd farce.

The plot of the movie, such as it is, revolves around Ruggles becoming an American.  The movie gets endless mileage out of the contrast between Ruggles’ proper English manners and the rough and ready ways of the residents of Red Gap.  But the movie is really a panegyric to normal good-hearted people regardless of their stripe or fortune.

I realize this sounds like a whole lot of nothing.  But the movie has great good humor and human warmth.  And any movie that has Lucien Littlefield getting kicked in the pants can’t be all bad.

I’m guessing that opinions on this movie will vary greatly.  All I can say is that it’s one of my favorite comedies.  Others will have to take their chances.

Sergeant York (1941) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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“Sergeant York” stars Gary Cooper as the eponymous WWI hero.  The story relates his pre-war life and shows how he overcame a wild youth to “find religion.”  He lives in a log cabin with his mother and younger brother and sister.  Being hillbillies, the soil of his family land is very poor.  When he finds a girl, he wants to marry he sets his mind to buying some “bottom land.”  But a rival in love frustrates this ambition and it was when he was set to settle this feud with his rifle that divine intervention steps in.  Lightning knocks him off his horse and damages his rifle and Alvin ends up at the church where Pastor Rosier Pile played by Walter Brennan, welcomes Alvin back to the Lord’s flock.

But when America enters World War I Alvin York has to somehow square his biblical aversion to killing with his duties as an American citizen.  This conflict and how the reality of the modern battlefield affects him is the climax of the film.  As was stated in his Congressional Medal of Honor citation Alvin single-handedly killed 28 German soldiers with his rifle and pistol and in doing so forced the surrender of 132 Germans and 35 machine guns.  In the movie York explains to the investigators of his actions that he killed the Germans to stop the guns.  As he explains it his actions were meant to save lives.

After the war Alvin returns home and to his great surprise a grateful nation hails him as a hero with a ticker tape parade down Wall Street in New York City.  But even more importantly his home state of Tennessee presents him with a beautiful house on fertile land in his hometown.

Sergeant York was made on the eve of America’s entry into WW II.  In fact, Pearl Harbor was attacked while the movie was still in the theaters.  It is claimed that thousands of young men went directly from the movie theater to the enlistment station.  It could be defensibly claimed that it is a propaganda film for the war effort.  Nevertheless, York’s war time actions were not exaggerated in any way.  Obviously, the supernatural basis of his religious conversion is pure Hollywood but doubtless the portrayal of Alvin York as a simple backwoods man was quite accurate.  The reality of poverty in the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee was real and the importance of family and religion was true.

Gary Cooper’s portrayal of York is somewhat broad and even comical at times but I find that is one of the charms of the film.  The other actors in the Tennessee scenes equally play up the hillbilly stereotypical behaviors.  But recognizing those characteristics I still recommend this movie as a fascinating personal story that shows the collision of an older world with the 20th century.  Sergeant York was an American original.

Room for One More (1952) – A Movie Review

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A couple of weeks ago I reviewed “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” and said at the time that it was Camera Girl’s favorite movie.  Well, her second favorite movie is “Room for One More.”  And years ago, as a husband, this was a cause for concern because it gave her ideas about fostering orphan children.  Now I have great respect for folks who bring homeless children into their lives.  It’s an enormous accomplishment.  But we were up to our elbows in family and I just thought it was too much for me!

Nevertheless, it is a very appealing movie and well worth reviewing.  The plot revolves around George and Anna Rose (played by real life husband and wife Cary Grant and Betsy Drake).  The Roses have three children, Teenie and Tim and their sister Trot.  Anna lost her fourth child at birth and has wanted to adopt.  When she goes to the orphanage the Director Miss Kenyon puts in a strong pitch to foster an older child rather than adopt an infant.  And being a good-hearted woman, she agrees to take one of their least adoptable children, Jane.  She’s an adolescent who’s been abused and has grown surly and embittered.

George is dead set against the fostering even as a two-week trial and his antagonism doesn’t smooth Jane’s arrival.  There are a number of incidents that flare into crises when Jane’s easily offended feelings are triggered into anger by innocent remarks.  But Anna goes above and beyond to sooth Jane and make her feel welcome and loved.  At the end of two weeks Jane has learned to love her new home and the whole family is plunged into sadness when Miss Kenyon arrives to pick up Jane.  As Jane says her sad but polite good byes Miss Kenyon asks where Jane’s suitcase is and the camera cuts to George heading up the stairs to return Jane’s suitcase to her now permanent room.

Next Anna decides to adopt another problem child.  This time the problem is an adolescent boy named Jimmy John.  He has braces on his legs from polio and he has been back and forth between hospitals so often that he hasn’t even learned how to read.  Jimmy John is even more of a challenge than Jane.  He has a bad temper and proceeds to sucker punch Trot while the family is driving to a vacation at the beach.  Other incidents include Jimmy John trying to ride Tim’s bicycle.  But after falling he becomes so frustrated that he smashes the back wheel completely with his heavy steel brace.  By the end of the vacation Anna wants to extend Jimmy John’s stay with her family but George insists that the four other children “vote” on his fate.  The children write down their votes and after seeing that all four say, “leave” Tim gives the votes to Jimmy John to read.  But Jimmy John sadly admits he can’t read.  Overwhelmed by that revelation Tim tells Jimmy John that the decision was unanimous for him to stay.

The rest of the movie chronicles the evolving happiness of Jane and Jimmy John as members of the family.  Jimmy John battles mightily against his physical disabilities to become a boy scout and at the end of the movie he achieves his ambition to be an Eagle Scout.  Jane wants badly to go to the school formal dance but the family hasn’t the money for a formal dress until all the children tell their parents to return the Christmas gifts they just received to pay for the dress.  But when the night of dance arrives Jane’s date is “sick.”  Actually, it’s known that his mother has ordered him not to go because she considers Jane’s background too questionable.  George responds by going to the boy’s house and appeals to the parents to think of the broken heart of a young girl.  The father orders his son to go to the dance and shouts at his wife to shut up.

The movie ends with George and Anna granted a night of blessed solitude while the children are staying with friends.

As I’m sure you can tell from my description this is a wildly sentimental movie.  But if this doesn’t terminally violate the viewer’s notion of what a movie consists of, then it is also an entertaining feel-good movie.  Seeing good intentioned adults helping neglected and troubled children and reclaiming them from loneliness is pretty bracing stuff, especially if it’s done with humor and at least a little indication that problems will exist.

Well, if it’s good enough for Camera Girl then I’ll recommend it for good-hearted women and their much suffering husbands.  Definitely a good husband-wife date movie.

Gaslight (1944) An OCF Classic Movie Review

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“Gaslight” is a thriller based on a stage play of the same name.  And in fact, our term “gaslighting” is based on the psychological abuse that is featured in this story.

Ingrid Bergman is Paula Alquist.  As a girl she lived with her famous aunt Alice Alquist, a diva of the Opera stage.  But when her aunt is murdered Paula is sent away from her aunt’s home in London to study music in Italy.  As a grown woman she falls in love with a pianist who plays for the maestro that Paula studies under.  Charles Boyer plays her lover Gregory Anton.  He convinces Paula to marry him and then to move back to London and take up residence in her aunt’s former home.

But once they settle into the house Gregory begins a concerted campaign to undermine Paula’s sanity.  He engineers situations where she seems to lose things or moves things without knowing that she’s done it.  And Gregory conspires with the maid Nancy (played by Angela Lansbury) to undermine Paula’s standing in the home by treating her like a feeble-minded invalid.  And she is isolated from the outside world under the pretext that she has become erratic and would embarrass herself if others witnessed her mental decline.

But one person exists who is aware of Paula’s return to London and is interested in her situation.  This is a Scotland Yard detective, Brian Cameron played by Joseph Cotten.  As a boy he had met Alice Alquist and now he is determined to solve the old murder case.  He suspects that Gregory is up to no good.  Cameron employs the local constable whose beat includes the Alquist home.  He encourages the constable to date Nancy the maid and find out what is going on inside the house.  And Cameron directs him to follow Gregory Anton and find out where he goes every night.

And through Cameron we learn from his superior at Scotland Yard that there were missing jewels that belonged to a foreign king who was a lover of Alice Alquist.  He had given them to her but they disappeared after her murder.  Now Cameron has the motive he has always lacked for the murder and soon he’ll have more.

One of the recurring nightmares that Paula experiences is that every night after her husband leaves the house to go to “work” the gas in her room would go down as if someone had turned on another light in the house.  And at the same time, she would here noises from above her room.  But the attic was boarded up so no one could enter it and no one else ever notices the gas change but her.

Eventually Cameron figures out that Gregory enters the vacant house around the block in order to climb on the roof and enter the attic of his own home from the roof.  There he searches for the jewels of Alice Alquist.  Once Cameron figures this out he barges into the Alquist home while Gregory is in the attic and he confronts Paula with the information.  While Cameron is searching Gregory’s locked desk for his gun Paula notices a letter that Gregory had claimed that she had imagined.  This note was written by an admirer of Alice Alquist named Sergis Bauer and had been found in Alice’s papers when she died.  After examining it and comparing it to an example of Gregory’s handwriting Cameron informs Paula that Gregory and Sergis Bauer are the same man.  Now it is clear that Gregory is her aunt’s murderer.

Meanwhile Gregory has finally found the jewels in the attic and Cameron notices the gas light rising meaning Gregory is coming home.  Cameron rushes out of the house to catch Gregory on his way home.  But Gregory no longer needs to keep up a pretense of working outside his home so he comes through the boarded-up attic door inside the house.   When Gregory discovers his desk has been rifled, he accuses Paula.  She declares that a man did it.  When Gregory demands to know what man was in the house the cook lies claiming that no one has been in the house in order to stall for time.  But hearing this Paula begins to doubt her sanity again.   She is just about to collapse into despair when Cameron shows up and confronts Gregory.  A struggle ensues and after a stray shot Cameron disarms Gregory.  Gregory bolts up into the attic and Cameron follows.  Meanwhile the cook has summoned the constable from the street and he bounds up the stairs and the two policemen subdue and tie Gregory to a chair in the attic.

For the finale Cameron agrees to let Paula talk alone to the securely bound Gregory.  Gregory begs Paula to take a knife out of a cabinet drawer and cut him free to allow him to escape.  But now Paula taunts him with his own words.  She says she’s insane so she can’t trust her own senses that something is actually a knife.  Then she throws the knife away and says, “But I seem to have lost it.”  Then by chance she finds a piece of jewelry that Gregory claimed she had lost and she becomes agitated and she declares her hatred for him and her joy at seeing him being brought to justice.  And she opens the door and demands that Cameron take Gregory away to his fate.

Right up front in the discussion I have to state that listening to Charles Boyer’s voice in this movie annoys the hell out of me.  The combination of his accent and his constant hectoring of Paula makes me want to punch him in the nose.  But at the same time Paula’s inability to stand up to Gregory’s bullying is also very annoying.  I want to shake her and slap her in the face and tell her to snap out of it.  Interestingly, Camera Girl has claimed in the past that I employ gaslighting against her.  But I claim it’s just a combination of bad memory and growing insanity on her part.  Silly woman.

Beyond those visceral feeling I enjoy this movie, especially the ending where Joseph Cotten sets things right.  Ingrid Bergman is a very good actress and even in this exaggerated atmosphere of emotional turbulence she provides a very convincing performance.

Highly recommended.

Rio Bravo (1959) – A Movie Review

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“Rio Bravo” is supposed to have been made in reaction to the movie “High Noon.”  In that movie Gary Cooper is a sheriff who can’t find any townsmen to help him stand against an outlaw gang gunning for him.  Howard Hawks and John Wayne were so affronted by what they saw as the whiny, “woe is me” feel of that movie they decided to make Rio Bravo as an alternative.  Wayne would play the sheriff but with no angst.  Basically, he refuses to deputize a large number of civilians to stand down a gang of outlaws who threaten to kill the sheriff if he doesn’t release the gang leader’s brother.

Wayne is Sheriff John T. Chance.  His sometimes deputy but mostly just alcoholic friend is Dude, played by Dean Martin.  They’re joined in their desperate but light hearted stand by Stumpy, a gimpy and hot-tempered old man played by Walter Brennan and Colorado, a resourceful young cowboy with a fast gun hand and a guitar played by Ricky Nelson.  And finally, Angie Dickinson is a professional gambler who will be the love interest for Chance.  For whatever reason the only name we’re given for her is Feathers.

The setup is as follows.  While involved in an altercation with Dude in the saloon Joe Burdette (played by Claude Akins) kills a man.  Chase arrests Joe and has Stumpy keep guard over him basically for the duration of the movie.  Meanwhile an old friend of Chance’s, Pat Wheeler (played by Ward Bond) arrives in town with his crew and supplies.  When he hears what is going on with Chance, he offers his associate Colorado as a deputy to help Chance hold off the Burdette gang that numbers in the dozens.  Chance declines because he doesn’t want to involve Wheeler in the trouble.  But Wheeler is murdered that night.  After some back and forth in which members of the gang take Chance and Dude hostage more than once, Colorado comes aboard as a deputy.

As a side story Feathers arrives in town to play poker in the saloon but when a wanted poster shows up that seems to implicate her as a card cheat Chance tells her to leave town.  But Colorado defends her saying that another player in the game was cheating.  After catching the cheater with several aces up his sleeve, Feathers tells her side of the story.  The poster was about her and her late husband.  He had gotten into a crooked card game and paid for his crime with his life.  For the rest of the movie whenever Chance and Feathers are together, they maintain an odd and annoying sort of awkward bickering cum flirting.

Meanwhile the climax of the movie arrives when Dude is taken hostage by Burdette’s gang and they demand a swap of Joe for Dude.  The transfer involves the two men crossing a clearing in opposite directions.  Joe is walking away from the barn where Chance, Colorado and Stumpy are holed up and Dude is walking away from the commercial building where the whole Burdette gang is arrayed.  But when they reach each other in the middle Dude tackles Joe and forces him into some cover that is somehow much closer to Chance’s building than Burdette’s.  After subduing Joe, Chance and his deputies begin a lively gun battle with Burdette’s gang.  Eventually Chance’s side gets ahold of some dynamite and he does some fancy shooting to set off the explosives as Stumpy hurls it across the clearing toward the Burdette building.  And finally Stumpy ties several sticks together and the final explosion takes most of the building down and the surviving gang members stumble out of the wreckage and surrender.

All that remains is for Chance and Feathers to complete their awkward courtship and declare their weird and annoying love.

So, this is a strange movie.  It’s part western, part buddy movie and I guess a love story.  Mixed into this is the fact that Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson are allowed to sing a few songs.  I know I haven’t made it sound like a conventional western but the main story around the Burdettes is done extremely well, especially the action scenes.  Wayne, Martin, Brennan and Nelson make for a very interesting team.  I have seen this movie many times and still consistently enjoy this part of the plot.  Now as for the “love story” I don’t know what to say.  It’s just so out of place and unconvincing that I can’t even dislike it.  It’s just this bizarro incursion into an otherwise normal movie.  All I can do is hope that sometime in the future, technology will allow it to be excised from the movie.

I can highly recommend this to fans of westerns and John Wayne.  Even the songs were very much in the tradition of the Roy Rogers, singing cowboy style.  A good western.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 10 – Plato’s Stepchildren

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In the immortal words of the inimitable Dr. Zachary Smith, “Oh, the pain, the pain.”

It is difficult to write this review.  It is painful to have to think about this episode.  I feel those responsible should be punished.  And even if most are already dead, I feel something must be done to punish them.  Perhaps grave robbery might make sense.  I don’t know, maybe that’s too much.

The general sense of the plot is that Kirk, McCoy and Spock visit planet blah blah blah where people dress as ancient Greeks who have enormous telekinetic powers but need a doctor to cure gangrene caused by a paper cut.  Once McCoy does the trick, the toga people want to keep him permanently.  The Enterprise landing party refuses and the toga club starts messing with them to make them change their minds.  They have Kirk and Spock reciting lines from Alice in Wonderland (Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee).  Kirk is forced to slap himself silly.  They make a dwarf ride Kirk like a pony.  Spock does a flamenco dance around Kirk’s head.  Spock and Nurse Chapel and Kirk and Uhura are forced into a make-out session.  And as the finale Spock and Kirk are getting ready to put on some kind of torture session with the girls using a bull whip and a branding iron.

Of course, the brilliant counter-plan gives Spock and Kirk even greater telekinetic powers than their tormentors in the nick of time and they turn the tables on the “Platonists.”  They give the kooky supermen a stern warning about bullying spacemen.  And then just to show they mean business they take away their dwarf.

This has to be one of the bottom three episodes in the whole series.  It has to be.  The dialog between Spock and Nurse Chapel and Kirk and Uhura is beyond embarrassing.  The ham acting by Shatner and Nimoy is startling.  The only decent performances are by the lead male and female Platonists.  Their cool detachment and excellent enunciation were the only parts of the episode that weren’t awful.

Of course, all this also means this episode has the highest Shatner mockery factor imaginable.  I’m tempted to give it an eleven in that category but that would be wrong.

I’ll call this episode and 3 // 10.