All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
This compilation of Biden’s most crack-brained verbal blunders with classic Star Trek overacting combines to provide four minutes of laughter for those who could desperately use it. The RNC should buy this and make it the basis of their 2022 and 2024 campaign advertising effort.
Camera Girl announced to me this morning that the outside thermometer registered an impressive 2° Fahrenheit. I went to the kitchen porch and duly ventilated my lungs with this arctic air. When the coughing fit subsided, I made a mental note not to do that anymore.
I went through the news today and I didn’t see anything new of value. I guess I will have to wait until something comes along to bloviate about.
Today is a good day for writing and doing some research on local events that might have value as photographic subjects. Yesterday I got out and did some photography in a colonial era cemetery here in Dunwich. Some of the dearly departed were bound to be warlocks and witches and other friends and family of Selectman Cthulhu so I was very conscious of any sounds or vibrations emanating from the ground. I’ve seen enough movies to know that being dragged down into a graveyard is your own fault. Sidestepping that sort of thing is trivially easy. Luckily no such trouble occurred. The dead were slumbering under a layer of fresh snow and the only noises I heard were Camera Girl grumbling under her breath about wasting her time. It was a relatively short outing but it awoke my COVID drugged reflexes to seek out interesting images in the wide wonderful world. However, 2° Fahrenheit is a powerful deterrent to wanderlust. I’m staying put today and planning future treks.
Having finished the Star Trek episodes is a great milestone and a highly encouraging event. Without the horrors of Season 3 shadowing my heart my spirit is buoyant and I can look forward to new projects with renewed zest. I do plan to do some follow up work on the Star Trek project. Some quantitative analysis of my ratings of the episodes might provide insights. But that is for the future. Right now, the attitude is, “Free at last, free at last.”
I’ve been disappointed by the fact that the last few Galaxy’s Edge novels have not been published in paperback. I guess I’ll be forced to get kindle to read them. I sent an e-mail to one of the authors to question if this is a permanent situation but he never got back to me. I also have to catch up on the most recent Monster Hunter book too. And eventually I have some movies to see also.
January 15th! Time is whizzing by and they haven’t quite broken us yet. I’m looking forward to more bright (but warmer) days like this and to getting out and about in the short winter days. If anything interesting catches my eye I’ll be sure to pass it along but for now enjoy your day and stay warm if you’re living in the arctic waste like me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
I have a post queued up for tomorrow at 6 am but I just had to talk about the Star Trek series. I just finished the Lights of Zetar episode and the review will come out at midnight tonight. But I felt I needed to vent about this task I’m completing.
I had forgotten over the years just how awful the Season 3 episodes actually were. I have only six episodes left and two of them I want to review. Requiem for Methuselah I look forward to because I love the pomposity of the line, “I am Brahms and da Vinci.” The other episode is the “space hippies” one which is so awful that I will luxuriate in its goofiness. Spock playing his Vulcan harp shouldn’t be missed. But that still leaves four putrid episodes I’ll have to watch and review.
I am a weak willed individual and my mind rebels at this thankless and painful task. For that reason I felt it was fair to cry out with this whiny complaint. Letting the world know of my anguish makes me feel better. My pain is shared.
I try to psych myself up by thinking that I will be able to start my next review project. I plan to do Jackie Gleason’s “The Honeymooners” series. I’ve always enjoyed most of that series and it will be a pleasant contrast to Shatner and his crew of space losers. Well, thank you for reading this howl of indignant pain. For those of you who read the Star Trek reviews I hope the earlier episodes were more fun for you than these last ones.