Of course I won’t be covering all of the episodes, just those where I have something to say.
Denotes a well-known Trek episode, the kind Tom Hanks blurts out during interviews at late night talk shows, or parodied in shows like Family Guy.
Denotes a favorite episode of mine. Doesn’t have to be the best in everyone’s eyes.
Denotes a weirdass episode. Full of the psychedelic shit of the 1960’s.
Season 1
Season 1 of Star Trek was Trek trying to find its groove. Characters shifted around, people’s jobs were shifting around like Sulu, and there were a number of inconsistencies from episode to episode. Despite that, a lot of classic episodes came out of the series, including the episode considered as the series’ best.
Episode #3: Where no Man has Gone Before
Kirk and company pass through the Great Barrier, which totally mindfucks one (and later two) of his crewmembers, turning them into really, really powerful beings. Unfortunately, their EQ isn’t up to par for being able to make mindbullets, so Kirk faces them down. What a badass.
Essentially the second episode created for the series, this episode has a smiling Spock (maybe he was just smug) old uniforms and mention of ESP among Starfleet personnel. They didn’t revisit that in later series IIRC, unless there was some kind of Section 31 shit that I didn’t know about.
Episode #4: The Naked Time
Kirk and company get a virus that makes them act like a bunch of drunk or high teenagers. Shit ensues. Oh, and Sulu is fencing. I originally saw that as kind of lame. Being asian, I wanted him to weirld at least an asian sword, going batshit around the Enterprise with a katana. They did manage to do that in the new movie, however, so it’s all good.
Episode #5: The Enemy Within
Kirk gets split into goody goody Kirk which is like Jean Luc Picard with slightly less spine, and 100% Bad Kirk. (note bad, not badass.) He totally makes out with the girl and shit. The moral lesson of this? We are the sum total of our good and bad selves and one cannot exist without the other. Not bad.
Oh, and what was up with that “alien?” It was a dog dressed in pink fur with a plastic horn. I mean what the fuck.
Episode #7: What are Little Girls Made of?
Kirk and company go to this planet where Nurse Chapel’s fiancee is stationed. They go in and realize that they are all ROBOTS. Most notable is Kirk’s babe of the week, Sherry Jackson, who shows up as pleasure robot Andrea. Lol Roger Korby is cheating on Nurse Chapel hahaha.
Anyway, Korby is actually batshit insane and kills himself, Kirk makes out with the babe of the week and all is right with the world.
Episode #8: Miri
Kirk comes across a near duplicate of earth where kids are the only surviving individuals. Star Trek will revisit this parallel earth scenario again and again throughout the series. IMO it’s infinitesimally rare to have a parallel earth but the episodes with parallel earths usually had a point to it, especially as a mirror to our own contemporary culture. Here it was about growing up and the divide between generations. In the 1960s the people who grew up with WW2 and this growing peaceful generation that would later have this peace revolution hippie shit was experiencing such a divide.
Oh, and Kirk’s babe of the week is either Janice “I always wanted you to look at my legs but not now, deadly pathogenic organism causing skin lesions kthxbye” Rand or Miri, who is like 13 years old. Granted, it’s not technically so but. DUDE. Kirk hitting on a 13 year old. Chris Hansen would be all over his ass now.
Episode #9: Dagger of the Mind
Kirk has a stowaway from a prison, returns said stowaway, shit hits fan. Anyway the only person I wanted to talk about in this episode was Kirk’s babe of the week, which IMO was one of the best babes of the week in the first season. She was Marianna Hill, who played Dr. Helen Noel. She was cool in that she was not only Kirk’s kissing target, she also hauled ass and kicked it just as well as the captain. Damn it, Kirk gets the best girls.
Episode #10: The Corbomite Maneuver.
Basically this is just a long drawn out game of bluff, which is what the “Corbomite Maneuver” was. Kirk was like totally shouting loud within the Fesarius’ ears, “Okay, destroy us, but we got this really powerful weapon that does over 9000 damage everytime we get hit. So yeah, go ahead. Not like we care.” What a badass. Of course now that would only be loled at, but this is the 23rd century we’re talking about.
Episode #13: The Conscience of the King
It’s Shakespeare in space! Surprisingly without Klingons! Also throw in some sort of good old murder mystery. Not much to say here, because it would spoil it. The lines at the end are pretty apropos considering the circumstances of the ending and the parallels to Shakespeare.
Episode #14: Balance of Terror
One of the best Trek Episodes, Kirk gets into a submarine type tussle with the Romulans, headed by Mark Lenard, who we all know as Spock’s father Sarek. Although the recent style of fast paced Star Wars fighting is being considered more positively, the slow Wrath of Khan type battle was always a favorite of mine. These ships I consider as capital ships, the Galaxy class of their day. What’s nice about the episode is that it portrays both parties not as stereotypes, but as opposite sides, both with good and bad, fighting a war.
Episode #15: Shore Leave
After one of the best, follows one of the trippiest Trek Episodes. Hopping people in bunny suits, assholes named Finnegan (lol at “Jimmy Boy “ being a total nerd before becoming the galaxy’s greatest badass) and Samurai. Fuckitty fuck shit, this was certainly high on the weirdo scale.
Episode #18: Arena
KIRK VS. THE FUCKING GORN, BABY. It eclipses the rest of the episode, literally. Who cares about the fucking “Metrons” and the other shit that was destroyed when the Gorn attacked? This was all about Kirk vs. the Gorn. He beat the Gorn with a makeshift rifle out of bamboo and some chemicals. Kirk was fucking channeling McGyver even before there was a McGyver. That’s how badass he was.
I guess there was something in the episode about how war was bad, and how conflicts can be borne out of misunderstanding, and how people should look at both sides of a confliWHAT THE FUCK, LOOK AT THAT, KIRK VS. THE FUCKING GORN
Episode #19: Tomorrow is Yesterday
Kirk and company accidentally go back in time and screw up the timeline. Eventually they make everything right again. Notable are the action scenes in this film, as we see the origins of the patented Kirk jump kick. Also we see the warping around the sun time travel thingy that we will see reused in a Season 2 episode and in Star Trek IV The Voyage Home.
Episode #20: Court Martial
I always find Star Trek court based episodes very interesting. This one implicates Captain Kirk in an administrative complaint that claims the life of his crew. He meets a lawyer who stays true to the method of reading law books instead of keeping those books all inside one computer. The lawyer is pretty badass too. While Kirk is getting pwned by the prosecution (who turns out to be the requisite Kirk babe of the week - damn, this guy is more prolific than Wilt Chamberlain) Spock, his bestest friend in the world is… playing… 3D chess. Don’t worry, there’s a reason.
The mystery is pretty nice and the payoff was pretty unexpected. All in all good shit.
Episode #21: Return of the Archons
At first I thought that this was one of the crappy episodes, but it turned out to be one of my favorites. So I have to give a rundown of everything I find awesome about this. Basically, Kirk and co. come across a planet whose history and/or architecture parallels (again with the parallel earths WTF) depression-era America or something like that. The people are unreasonably catatonic, but once the bell rings, people go totally apeshit into an uncontrolled orgy of violence, sex, fistfucking and probably gerbils. They learn that Landru, some computer thing, is controlling the civilization as logically and soullessly as possible, for peace. Kirk no likey, so Kirk decides to totally fuck Landru up and bust a cap in its ass.
Now, generally, under the Prime Directive, since this is a primitive, non-warp capable civilization, the Federation shouldn’t be fucking with this society. In later series, all the captains would probably go, “okay, let’s not interfere, let’s just go to Something IV, warp seven engage.” Or at least they should tiptoe around the planet, interfering with the civilization as little as possible, if there was prior interference. The TNG Episode ‘Who Watches the Watchers’ is an example. Picard and co. may not always like the Prime Directive, but it was a Directive they would not fuck with. That’s why it was Starfleet general order number one.
But Kirk? Fuck no. He’s too badass for the fucking Prime Directive. I paraphrase this exchange between Kirk and Spock.
Spock: Captain, I must remind you of the non interference directive…
Kirk: Fuck Prime Directive! Onward hooooooooooo!
This also starts one of the Kirk vs. Computer scenes seen everywhere in the series, where Kirk totally fucks up a computer and causes it to go into error just by arguing with it in a brilliant display of logic. The producers may have thought it meant that man has the passion and the drive over any computer, no matter the superior mental processing power. I just think it’s badass.
Kirk – 1 Computer – 0 bitches.
Episode #22: Space Seed
No, the title does not imply bukkake in space.
Here we see Khan (the late, great, buff Ricardo Montalban) for the first time. He begins to out-badass Kirk himself, by stealing what was supposed to be Kirk’s babe of the week and claiming it as his own, and taking the entire Enterprise and claiming it as his own. But Kirk manages to outwit him enough and end up offering him his own kingdom. Of course, we all know what happened after that.
I wonder if Kirk knew what would happen. Like if Spock told him Ceti Alpha VI would explode but he care to tell Khan because he stole his babe of the week and tried to kill him/take over his ship.
Episode #23: A Taste of Armageddon
Alien guy: We have this great simulated war! Real casualties though.
Kirk: *Destroys computers*
Alien guy: WTF did you do? Now there will be war for real!
Kirk: lol
That’s pretty much it.
Episode #24: This Side of Paradise
Kirk and co. comes to this planet that turns everyone into pussies except Kirk, who is too badass to be turned into a pussy. Disturbed that everyone in the Enterprise has deserted him, even the redshirts, he calls up Spock to the Enterprise and totally flames him.
Spock lashes out at the trolling Kirk and realizes that strong emotions break the pussyfying agent. So they all return to normal. Happy ending for all.
Episode #25: Devil in the Dark
One of my favorite episodes, without spoiling the plot, I think this episode stresses the importance of understanding between two individuals or groups of individuals. To understand something or someone, one must look at their motivations. You can argue that it doesn’t excuse the action itself, but that’s a debate we can talk about another day.
Also, brownie points to McCoy for curing anything, probably even a rainy day.
Episode #26: Errand of Mercy
Klingons: WAR!
Federation: WAR!
Organians: we’re a bunch of cockblockers. Therefore, NO WAR!
HAPPY END
It was nice to see old school Klingons in TOS. Interesting to note that in the series that chronologically follows this, I have not seen any planet under Klingon rule. There have been Klingon colonies or settlements populated by Klingons, but planets populated by another alien species, ruled by Klingons? None. Feel free to correct me though.
Episode #28: The City on the Edge of Forever
Best episode of the series, according to many critics and fans of the series. It defines high quality Space Opera in a time when Sci fi was generally treated with stereotypes of little green men and B-movies. You really have to watch the episode by itself. Kirk and co. happen upon the Guardian of Forever, and McCoy accidentally goes back in time and changes history. So Kirk and Spock go after him but find that it isn’t as easy as they think.
Episode #29: Operation: Annihilate!
It’s Kirk vs. Space Pancakes! When I was a kid I was awed at the sight of futuristic looking buildings. There weren’t a lot of people though (even though the episode points out millions of colonists inhabiting the planet… maybe they just stayed in the shadows.) Great drama ensues when Sam Kirk and his wife fall victim to the attack. I always wondered what happened to Kirk’s nephew afterwards. Oh well. One question though, where was Sam Kirk when Kodos the Executioner did his shit in Tarsus IV? I’ll have to look that up.
So it turns out UV light kills the Space pancakes, and so Kirk and co. go on an ecstasy fueled rave into the night. Just kidding.
That pretty much wraps up my thoughts on the season. All in all a good season. Don’t worry, the shit only gets better from here – the second season improves by beginning to focus on the ensemble cast as well.
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