Tag: sci-fi tv review

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 19JAN2026 – Star Trek Decline

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I’m an old line Star Trek fan. I remember it live on TV when I was a kid. I was young enough that when it went to Friday night at 10pm in the third season I had to get a bedtime dispensation. Luckily, it was Friday night so leniency prevailed. I then watched them repeatedly out of WPIX from NYC who ran them twice a day 5 days a week

Recently we’ve been watching Enterprise Honestly, it is pretty good (although I think they abused the T’pol character and being first officer/XO gets her compared with Spock)
Strange New World was also not half bad although it plays havoc with continuity and characters from Star Trek and Next Generation. I tried Discovery and Picard and disliked both. Lower Decks is a gem and cleverly makes many things from the original animated series, particularly the Caitian and Kzinti species canon. It always feels like the best of the humorous original Trek (e,g, A Piece of the Action) episodes. I was hoping for a Horta crew member but no such luck.

You say they spent $100 million on the Starfleet Academy series? Well they probably gotten a better return if they had taken that to Vegas and bet it on roulette or simply just burned it. Other than Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks the Modern Treks haven’t gotten much attention with occasional exceptions (Picard’s Ending). The recent movies (Kelvan time line) varied from meh to worth watching at home (and #4 apparently justifiably gone into permanent development hell).

Like Disney with Star Wars they seem to have gone out of their way to find a producer that dislikes the original material. This never works well as seen by Kathleen Kennedy wrecking the Star Wars movies and then moving on to wreck the Acolyte when the TV side had been showing her up. Honestly there are a WHOLE bunch of Scifi properties that could be acquired and developed for say 20 million each. that’s five of them and I bet 2-3 succeed at some level maybe even take off. Thats not something that this 90120 in space series is going to do. Who was the target? Young teens? Are you even going to get them to watch something based on a 60 year old premise? 20-30 something affluent women (the Karen/AWFL Demographic, I want that watching my show)?They’re busy picking on various folks Throwing it into the weird far future of Discovery which had pretty dismal numbers just baffles me. I can tell you the target demographic ISN’T me.

Critical Drinker Discovers Firefly

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It’s been over twenty years since Firefly was even a distant memory of a television show.  That excellent sci-fi series that struck a decidedly anti-elitist, pro-freedom, anti-“surveillance state” chord with its rag tag crew of space smugglers and other nonconformists in their chronically malfunctioning space ship Serenity.

I’m glad to see that the next generation is coming to recognize what a great show it was and just how much better it was than the current crop of fantasy and science fiction shows that have not a hundredth of its creativity and heart.  Kudos to the Crtical Drinker for saying so.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 24 – Turnabout Intruder

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Great Caesar’s ghost!

If there had been no other reason to cancel the Star Trek series, this episode, in and of itself, would provide that rationale.  But it is the last episode so here we go.

Kirk, Spock and McCoy, the holy trinity of landing parties, arrive at planet blah, blah, blah where Dr. Janice Lester, an old flame of Kirk’s from his Starfleet Academy days, is sick with radiation poisoning.  Dr. Coleman, her private physician,  informs McCoy that she needs space medicine or something.  But when they leave Kirk alone with Janice to tend to a patient who’s already dead, Janice shoots Kirk with a petite phaser that she had hidden in her purse.  Then she drags him to a wall full of lights and standing next to him pushes a button that exchanges their personalities.  Now Janice in Kirk’s body (JIKB) carries Kirk in Janice’s body (KIJB) over to the bed and starts strangling KIJB with a stylish pastel scarf.  But the others return before JIKB can get the job done.  Coleman is in cahoots with JIKB and is given medical authority over KIJB by JIKB, much to the chagrin of McCoy who feels his authority has been trampled on as ship’s physician.

Coleman keeps KIJB sedated to keep up the charade but KIJB fools dim-witted Nurse Chapel into leaving the room and smashes a drinking glass that the sedative was in, to provide a tool to cut through her restraints.  But JIKB happens to see KIJB running by and punches her out, which raises eyebrows on both McCoy and Spock.  And as you know both characters love raising their eyebrows.  At this point everyone in the crew has noted the highly emotional, annoying and sometimes hysterical actions of JIKB.  Spock is so suspicious that he interviews KIJB in the holding cell.  And he uses the Vulcan mind meld and learns the truth of the personality transfer.  When Spock acts on this knowledge he is accused by JIKB of mutiny and is court-martialed.  JIKB’s bearing and words during the trail soon raise doubts in the minds of all the officers.  When Scotty and McCoy discuss in the corridor outside the trial the outcome if Spock is acquitted Scotty states clearly that they will have to commit mutiny.  But they were recorded secretly by JIKB.  Now Spock, McCoy and Scotty are declared mutineers by JIKB and he declares that they will be executed.  Sulu shouts out that the death penalty is forbidden and JIKB flips out and has a hissy fit.  Now Sulu and Chekov as the most senior remaining officers decide to defy JIKB and when this occurs on the Bridge JIKB spazzes out and we see the personalities reverse for a brief moment before reversing again.

Now JIKB freaks out and runs down to Coleman and says he’s afraid he’ll lose the Kirk body.  Coleman tells JIKB that he must kill KIJB right away to prevent permanent reversion.  But when they go down to do this KIJB attacks Coleman and suddenly the reversion happens spontaneously.  Now we have Kirk and Janice back in their own bodies and she wails and moans about losing the Enterprise and being just a poor weak woman being discriminated against by strong cruel men.  Kirk says some incoherent things about coulda, woulda, shoulda and the thing mercifully ends.

Just to put it right out there this episode broke the Shatner Mockery Index Meter so it gets an 11 for that.  JIKB snapping at everyone in the crew and behaving like a refugee from the tenth-grade mean-girl’s lunch-table is something to behold.  It makes me wonder if Shatner was given a course of estrogen injections before the filming began.  But my favorite scene is where Spock informs JIKB on the bridge that the same star course he had ordered could be made in less time by going faster.  She flounces off the bridge with her nose in the air.  In other words, he was attacking her driving skills.  Well, what can I say?  It’s finally over.  Free at last.  Free at last.

Score:  4   //   11

Note:  this is the last episode.  When I have recovered sufficiently from the strain, I intend to do some follow-up posts on the whole series, but not right now.  Oh, the pain, the pain.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 23 – All Our Yesterdays

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Kirk, Spock and McCoy visit planet blah, blah, blah that is about to be destroyed by its sun going nova.  The whole population has used a time machine to escape into the past.  But one librarian is sticking around to handle any late arrivals.  He tries to convince the Enterprise crew to use the time machine to escape.  Kirk accidentally goes through the portal and ends up in an analog of 17th century England.  And McCoy and Spock follow him and end up in an Ice Age hellhole.

Kirk is accused of witchcraft when he is heard talking to Spock and McCoy when they are in a different time through the portal.  He finds a fellow time traveler and convinces him to help him escape back to the future.  When he gets back, he has to violently convince the librarian to help him find Spock and McCoy.

Meanwhile Spock and McCoy are found by another time traveler.  It is a woman named Zarabeth who has been sentenced to the Ice Age prison by an evil dictator.  But because they are now 5,000 years in the past, Spock reverts to the emotional condition his ancestors existed in at that time.  He becomes quite belligerent when McCoy calls him a pointy eared Vulcan.  And, of course, he falls in love with the pretty woman (played by very pretty and very young Mariette Hartley) in the skimpy cavegirl outfit.  When McCoy accuses Zarabeth of lying about whether McCoy and Spock can get back to the future Spock becomes enraged and starts choking McCoy.  McCoy brings this to Spock’s attention and he realizes that he is acting like a primitive.  Zarabeth clarifies that she knows she can never return to the future alive but she doesn’t know whether Spock and McCoy can.

The two men decide to try to find the way back and with just minutes to go before nova Kirk has the librarian open the path to the Ice Age time portal.  After Spock paws at Zarabeth for a few moments Kirk successfully urges the two men to return.  McCoy talks to Spock about how he feels about leaving Zarabeth in the past and Spock says some Vulcan jazz about her being dead and buried but it sounds more like bitterness than lack of emotion.  The librarian quickly makes his escape to his own time destination and the Enterprise beams the landing party back just in time to escape the nova.

This is a pretty good episode.  Sure, it’s silly and set up as a thriller with the clock running out on the nova.  But the story moves along and watching Leonard Nimoy act almost like a human being is amusing.  I especially liked when he had McCoy by the windpipe.  Even Kirk avoided his usual histrionics.  And the funny little bald librarian provides some humor to the proceedings with his bureaucratic fussiness.  And Mariette Hartley is a charming looking woman and did the best she could do with the lines she was given.

With the series all but over and faced with the reality of transgender Kirk in the final episode I feel extremely generous.  I’m going to award this episode with a 8 // 2.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 22 – The Savage Curtain

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Ah, the last three episodes.  The light at the end of the tunnel.  Must stay strong.

The Enterprise is investigating signs of life on a planet whose surface is covered with molten lava.  Suddenly the viewscreen on the Bridge is filled with an image of Abraham Lincoln sitting in a leather chair in his usual coat and stovepipe hat.  He explains that he is on the planet’s surface and would like to come aboard the Enterprise.  Suddenly an area of earthlike environmental conditions appears on the planet’s surface.  Kirk orders full presidential honors to be extended to this inexplicable appearance of an historical personage.  This occasions Scotty to assume the kilt.  Lincoln displays a charming personality and obvious ignorance of the modern sociological conditions when he describes Uhura as “a charming negress.”

Despite strong opposition by McCoy and Scotty Kirk and Spock decide to transport down to the planet’s surface with Lincoln.  There they meet up with another historical personage, Surak.  He was the founder of modern Vulcan culture and revered by all Vulcans including of course Spock.

Next, they meet up with a native of the planet.  He looks much like a giant steaming cow-dropping with eyes.  He informs us that the Enterprise crew have been selected to instruct the natives with a demonstration of the relative strengths of good and evil.  Kirk, Spock, Lincoln and Surak will represent good and Genghis Khan, Kahless the Klingon, Zora and Col. Philip Greene will represent evil.  If you don’t recognize any of the names other than Genghis Khan the reason is because they’re made-up conquerors from pseudo future history.

The Cow-Pat declares that the winning side gets to live and the losing side will already be dead.  But to make the deal more persuasive to Kirk it is revealed that the Enterprise is being held captive in orbit and will also be destroyed if Kirk’s side loses.  The bad guys fake a parlay then attack.  They are driven off by our heroes in whom the force is strong.  While Kirk attempts to convince everyone to build spears for a battle to the death.  Surak declares that he will attempt to negotiate a peace with the enemy.  Spock declares that this is an honorable position.  But he continues to build weapons with Kirk and Lincoln.

Shortly after he leaves for his peace mission Kirk, Spock and Lincoln hear a scream followed by a voice that supposedly sounds like Surak repeating over and over, “Help me Spock!”  It is in reaction to this that Spock declares, “A Vulcan would not cry out so.”  But Kirk and Lincoln want to attempt a rescue.  The plan is for Kirk and Spock to perform a frontal attack on the enemy base while Lincoln circles behind their position and frees Surak.  But when he reaches Surak, he finds him already dead and his entry discovered.  Then we find out that Kahless was mimicking Surak’s voice and now shows how he will mimic Lincoln’s cry for help.

But suddenly Lincoln staggers toward Kirk and Spock to warn them of the trap.  After warning them he falls forward and we can see he has a spear planted in his back.  He dies there and the battle is joined between Kirk and Spock and the four evil warriors.  When Kirk manages to kill Col. Greene the other three evil fighters run away.

At this point Road Apple declares Kirk and Spock winners and sends them home.

This episode is the source of a quote that has echoed down the decades with my brothers and me.  At any random time since its inception in 1969 any one of us might exclaim in “Spockian” tones the seemingly meaningless sentence, “A Vulcan would not cry out so.”  The question of why we would say this is open to psychological or maybe neurological debate.  But suffice it to say that mocking Star Trek could be boiled down to mocking that one line.

I assumed this episode would be as aggravating as many of the season three installments.  But I actually enjoyed it.  Sure, it was absurd but the extra characters added some much-needed novelty to the overdone interactions between Kirk and Spock.  Once again, the guest stars were much better actors than the crew of the Enterprise.  Even the oversized cow chip had more panache than Kirk and Spock.  Although I did enjoy one comment by Scotty where he mentioned something about haggis in the lunch room.

I’ll be magnanimous and give this a  7  //  4.

A Vulcan would not cry out so.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 21 – The Cloud Minders

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For the second episode in a row, the Enterprise needs to get a mineral to cure a plague.  Go figure.  The planet with the mineral has an elite that lives in a city floating in the sky called Stratos.  The common people are called troglytes because they work in the mineral mines.  Kirk and Spock beam down to the mine entrance to pick up the mineral but the troglytes are in revolt and they try to capture Kirk and Spock for hostages but Plasus the leader of Stratos saves them and brings them to the city.  Plasus’ daughter is this incredibly skinny blonde model-looking girl who has the hots for Spock.  Anyway, we find out that the trogs are angry and stupid because the mineral they dig gives off stupid gas.  The rest of the episode is about Kirk trying to convince the cloud people and the trogs to wear masks in the mines.  Finally, Kirk traps Plasus and the head of the trogs in a mine and when they all start becoming homicidally angry, they finally realize the truth about the stupid gas.  Kirk gets the mineral.  The trogs and cloud people continue to hate each other but with a little more clarity and Spock and the emaciated blonde agree that she should go down to see the mines for some reason.

This is a social justice episode.  The poor oppressed masses are being held down by the fat cats living in Stratos.  How original.  But it wasn’t as bad as some other episodes I’ve just watched.  Kirk is kind of amusing when the gas made him irritable.  I think he yelled at Scotty at one point so that was good.

Point of interest.  Plasus is played by Jeff Corey who was the outlaw that Rooster Cogburn is hunting in the original version of True Grit.

I’ll call this a 5  //  5.

I apologize for the brevity of this review.  But I’m really running out of patience with this series as it runs out of merit.  The least they could have done was blow up a planet or something to keep my interest.  But all we get are whiny aliens and social justice.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 20 – The Way to Eden

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It goes without saying that I will mock the “space hippies” episode mercilessly.  The plot is that Dr. Sevrin, a bald-headed space hippie with c-shaped ears and his five disciples are looking for the planet Eden where all proper space hippies should live.  He steals a star cruiser but the Enterprise catches him and his merry band.  Sevrin has space plague so he needs to be isolated.  But the disciples help him to escape and he uses ultrasonics to disable the crew and the hippies steal a shuttle craft to land on Eden.  But the plant life is full of acid and poison and so the hippies burn their feet.  When Kirk and company come to rescue the losers, they find one of the hippies named Adam dead through eating an apple (how ironic).  And when Kirk tells Sevrin that he is being rescued he follows Adam in eating a poisoned apple and dies.  It’s a ridiculous plot but the details are even worse.

The hippies are always protesting against the military authority that Kirk represents.  They call him “Herbert” which Spock explains is an uncomplimentary comparison to a character who was a small-minded bureaucrat.  Kirk takes offense when told this.  That I found funny.  Adam and one of the girls are some kind of pathetic rock music duet.  They sing a few songs that are very awful to hear.  And another one of the girls is an old girlfriend of Chekov.  So, we have to listen to the ex-lovers bickering over their lost love.  And finally, Adam strikes up a friendship with Spock based on their mutual love of music.  This forces us to listen to Spock and one of the girls playing a duet on space harps or something.  And during this shindig we see random crew members rocking out by spastically moving their arms and legs in time to the beat.

But the worst thing of all is just seeing these rejects.  Adam is some kind of pop-eyed freak dressed in a tie-dyed loin cloth and go-go boots who spouts synthetic hipster lingo.  One of the half-undressed girls is way too out of shape to be showing so much skin.  And the third male hippie has nylon purple hair and is wearing what looks like a dress.

I feel if they wanted to do this episode correctly, they should have hired the fake rock and roll group the Monkees to appear on the show painted green or something.  That at least would have shown the right attitude toward bad music of the time.

Just for the sake of fairness, Adam did say one witty thing in the show.  After having his physical examination, he recited:

“I’m gonna crack my knuckles and jump for joy

I got a clean bill of health from Doc McCoy.”

With that deathless couplet I’ll end this review by kindly rating it a  5 // 4.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 19 – Requiem for Methuselah

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The Enterprise is infested with Rigellian Fever which is like COVID only dangerous.  Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down to planetoid blah, blah, blah to get unobtanium which will cure the fever.  There they meet the robot guard of the planetoid’s owner, Mr. Flint.  After some posturing Flint agrees to help McCoy make a serum from the mineral.

In his home, Flint has rare masterpieces of art by Leonardo da Vinci and Johannes Brahms.  And it turns out he actually is those two men and many other like Alexander the Great, Solomon and perhaps the greatest of all, Donald Trump.  He was a Mesopotamian soldier from around 4,000 B.C. and after being stabbed through the heart he discovered that he was immortal.  And he has a mate named Rayna who wears the form fitting silvery dress that is the true mark of an android woman, which they determine she is.  Of course, Kirk falls in love with Rayna and Flint and Kirk do battle over her.  But when she has to choose between these two manly men her circuits burn out and she dies.  When they return to the ship to save the crew with the cure, McCoy reveals that he has determined that Flint’s immortality was voided when he left Earth and he will die after the rest of a normal life.

This is a very unique episode.  The concept of the immortal human who has been so many famous men is brilliant.  What they do with this concept is not so brilliant.  Having Kirk go through all his typical libido exercises is embarrassing.  But we do get to reach the heights of the Shatner Mockery Index.  I think the best examples of this are:

  • When Flint shrinks the Enterprise to a model about a foot long, Kirk stares into the bridge viewport and we see his huge head looking anguished in the bridge screen.
  • When Kirk first declares his love for Rayna, he makes all the spastic Kirk faces he’s so famous for.
  • When Rayna declares herself independent of Flint’s orders, Kirk starts crowing about how she’s “human down to the last blood cell!”

It’s probably only my subjective enjoyment of the concept of a science fiction story with a man that has lived through all of our history and been so many famous men that saves this episode from my scorn.  Objectively it has many of the same weaknesses that the season three episodes suffer from.  But I’m fond of it for the reason I’ve stated.  So, I’ll mark it as a 7  //  9.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 18 – The Lights of Zetar

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With these incredibly bad episodes it’s hard to marshal the will to even write the summary of the plot.  After all they took almost no effort in writing the damn thing.  Why should I have to waste time repeating it?  Well, c’est la vie.

Scotty is in love with a Lt. Mira Romaine who is on a mission with the Enterprise to visit “Memory Alpha” which is the equivalent of Wikipedia.  But a giant cosmic plastic bag full of Christmas lights attacks the Enterprise and invades Romaine’s brain.  Then the bag of lights goes to Memory Alpha and erases the memory and kills the nerds working there.  Then it comes back to get Romaine on the Enterprise.  When it enters into Romaine’s body Kirk has her put into the hyperbaric chamber and apparently forty or fifty atmospheres of pressure destroys this enormously powerful bag of lights without killing Romaine.  Finally, there is a laugh filled moment when Spock, McCoy and Scotty all agree that Romaine is well enough to go back to work.  Kirk yucks it up over this unanimity and exclaims, “Can I stand the strain?”

Whoever wrote this thing must have spent fifteen minutes thinking it up.  This must have been after they knew the show was doomed and they were just killing time until they started looking for new jobs.  Scotty drooling and pawing at the girl is creepy and off-putting.  It somewhat reminds me of the behavior of Gollum when he gets his hands on the One Ring.  There was a scene when the bag of lights was taking over Romaine and she started making a gargling noise.  It reminded me of the sound one of my dogs makes when he is about to throw up.  It was the high point of the episode.

The dialogue is vapid.  The plot is non-existent.  I’ll be kind and give it a 2 // 2.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 17 – That Which Survives

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Here is one of the flimsiest episodes in the series.  Kirk, McCoy, Sulu and a red shirt transport down to a planet that seems to have been artificially constructed.  But as they are being transported a woman appears and kills the crewman operating the transporter.  Then she “transports” the Enterprise almost a thousand light years away from the planet.

Back on the planet the woman reappears and kills the red shirt just by placing her hand on him.  Then she goes back to the Enterprise and sabotages the engines so that they will explode through excessive speed.  Back on the planet she attacks Sulu but before she can kill him Kirk gets between her and Sulu.  Apparently, she can kill only one victim at a time.  To others her touch is harmless.

Scotty has to climb into an access shaft to get at the antimatter feed stream with a magnetic probe.  He complains about the magnetic force feeling like ants crawling over his body but Spock chides him to stop making subjective remarks and get the job done.  With no time left and after being told to “reverse the polarity” of his magnetic probe by Spock, Scotty “fixes” the antimatter stream and the Enterprise is good as new.

Back on the planet the woman whose name we learn is Losira returns looking for Kirk this time.  McCoy and Sulu act as blockers preventing Losira from touching Kirk.  When she is prevented from doing her job, she contracts to a line then collapses down to a point and disappears.  Next the landing party find a hidden cave where there is a computer shaped like a cube that is the source of Losira.  But now there are three Losiras and each one is selected for one of the three landing party members.  Just when it seems our heroes are doomed Spock and a red shirt beam down into the cave.  Kirk shouts for them to destroy the cube.  The cube being hit by a phaser, the Losiras disappear and a message starts playing explaining that Losira was the last of a group of guardians who were tasked with guarding this new world for her people.  But both these new people and the guardians succumbed to a virus that they accidentally produced when the created the planet.  The Losira they saw was just a computer construct to protect the planet from intruders.  McCoy says something about Losira being beautiful.  Spock says beauty doesn’t last.  Kirk says beauty survives.  Whatever.

This is one of the least meaningful plots ever used on this show.  To me it seems completely contrived and pointless.  The only amusing dimension is the bickering between Spock and Scotty.  With Scotty in a panic over the problems he encounters trying to repair the overloading engines Spock constantly chides him to dispense with emotion and keeps up a veritable countdown on the moment of destruction for the ship which Scotty finds maddening.  And this little scene is amusing.

Losira is played by Lee Meriwether who was an attractive young woman who played one of the Catwomen on the 1960s Batman show.  But her part in this drama is extremely limited by the simplistic plot.

So how do I rate this mostly pointless episode?  I’ll give it a 5 // 3.