ST Recap: The Consicence of the King
People. Do you realize the importance of this episode? No, it has nothing to do with Star Trek lore as it were, but the fact that this episode was the first time I wrote the recap immediately after watching and reassessing it with Bill. That means I am all caught up.
Picture me now doing the Happy Dance. It looks a lot like the Happy Dance from Perfect Strangers, the one that Balki and Larry did all the time, and which I've never been able to find on YouTube, which is a shame, because I would totally embed it about twice a week, especially on mornings when Andrew's slept through the night. (And that includes today, actually, because that kid is still asleep like gangbusters, and he didn't cough once all night, so I have high hopes for his health today.)
Anyway, I had to make note of that, and thus, on with the show!
*
I had high hopes for this episode - I don't know why, exactly. Maybe there was something about the summary that intrigued me.
Summary: When a number of crewmembers and planetary personnel are found dead or poisoned, the visiting playwright Anton Karidian is put in the frame for mass genocide on Tarsus IV.
Well, okay, not that summary. Which isn't even really right, come to that. No, the summary I was excited about was the one on NetFlix's description.
Kodos, a fugitive wanted for mass murder, is allegedly living as a 23rd-century Shakespearean actor. Kirk's friend tips him off about Kodos and is murdered. When Kirk brings a Shakespearean acting troupe aboard to investigate, the body count grows.
Well...reasonably better, although Kodos isn't so much a fugitive wanted for mass murder as he faked his own death 20 years previously, and the 14 or so people who can positively identify him have been mysteriously dying one by one. What's more, the last two are on board the Enterprise - and one of them is Kirk.
So what does the captain do? Well, obviously he brings the man onto the ship because he's got the hots for the guy's daughter. Duh.
No One Ever Expects the Spanish Inquisition
I thought it was a pretty interesting twist that the episode, which is essentially about this man Kodos and how he's been hiding in plain sight for twenty years, never actually had Kodos appear until the last ten minutes or so. Of course, that left a good half hour to fill with all sorts of mystery-building. And in Star Trek, nothing builds mystery like Kirk flirting with a lady.
(Or something like that.)
It almost made me wonder - did Kirk bring the acting troupe aboard so that he could investigate the identity of its lead actor? Or so that he could *ahem* investigate the lead actor's daughter? Because I'm kind of leaning the other way.
In a way, the delay of Kodos' appearance sort of parallels Hamlet (the play the actors put on for the crew). Kodos is the threat hanging over Kirk and the Enterprise, but he doesn't appear until the end. Whereas Denmark is under threat of invasion, but the invading forces are mostly off-stage and don't appear until everyone's dead.
Bill: I had an epiphany about Hamlet while watching this episode.
Sharon: ....
Bill: I mean, Fortinbras shows up at the end of the play after everyone's dead because he's spent the whole time invading Denmark, right? Well, if Fortinbras is on his way to take over, WTF is the King doing watching a play while there's an invasion pending? That guy must have really been out of it.
Sharon: ....
Bill: I like Fortinbras, okay???
First, as always, the costumes.
It's so odd, but I'm so used to seeing Shakespeare done in time frames other than the 16th century, it strikes me as unusual that in the 23rd century, the Shakespearean actors are all dressed as though they're in the 16th century.
Well...their version of the 16th century, anyway.
I'm fairly sure that 16th century sleeves were not covered in pink fur.
And I have absolutely no idea what's going on with her shoulders. Did she run into a piece of installation art or something?
But of course some things never change with time: the propensity of actors to wear ridiculous clothing, even when they're not on stage.
Sharon: What is it, a burkha?
Bill: Even better, it's a burkha with a miniskirt.
The Shippiness of You
OMG, the love triangles going on in this episode. Let's see, where do we begin?
First, we have Kirk/Lenore the Daughter of the Despot...
Countered by the old standby, Kirk/Janice Rand.
Sharon: Did you see the look on Janice's face when she saw the other woman on the bridge?
Bill: No lines, but she's still totally catty. You can hear her yelling "SKANK!"
Next, we have Uhura, forlornly caressing Spock's lyre in the rec room...
Countered by the uber-jealous Spock watching Kirk flirt with another woman. Person. Whatever.
SPOCK: It was illogical for him to bring those players aboard.
MCCOY: Illogical? Did you get a look at that Juliet? That's a pretty exciting creature. Of course your, personal chemistry would prevent you from seeing that. Did it ever occur to you that he simply might like the girl?
SPOCK: It occurred. I dismissed it.
MCCOY: You would.
Sharon: That whole conversation between Spock and McCoy was overwhelmingly Spock/Kirk.
Bill: See, what I noticed was that McCoy was all by himself in Sick Bay, doing alcohol shots.
Sharon:....OMG, you're right.
Bill: Explains a lot.
Yeah. Like, maybe McCoy noticed Lenore the Daughter of the Despot flirting with Kirk, and he's drowning his own unrequited love sorrows in alcohol. Hmm.
The Life of Riley
Okay, a word about Riley, our erstwhile man in yellow. Riley has no luck whatsoever. First, he's nearly killed in The Naked Time (only to be saved by the rest of the ship), and now it seems he's the other crew member who can identify Kodos so he's up on the chopping block for that as well.
And, for some reason, because Riley can identify the mass murderer, instead of stashing Riley in a nice, safe, guarded location - Kirk demotes him and sticks him on solitary duty in the far reaches of the ship where he's all alone and security sucks.
Which is why someone poisons the milk that was brought to him with his dinner (an oh-so-appetizing array of colorful cubes, yay). Better yet, they poison him with...a squirt bottle.
Bill: Who uses a squirt bottle, honestly? I mean, you use the same kind of bottle to discipline the cat.
Riley, it should be noted, survives, although I'm not sure why, because the actor playing him left the show after this episode to take on a job teaching at the University of Minnesota, and later starred on Broadway. (Or so says the pop-up video versions that Bill's watching; Memory Alpha has a different story.) Yay for him, I'm sure, but I have to admit I'm disappointed. How many more times could we have had Riley almost dying? It could totally have been a thing.
What's more, Riley had the makings of a seriously interesting backstory. He couldn't have been more than ten or twelve when his family was killed by Kodos, which makes me wonder what happened to him in between that time and his arrival on the Enterprise.
Anyway, I rather liked Lieutenant Kevin Thomas Riley, and so while this recap is already photo-heavy, I'm giving you one more:
The Last Two Things:
It may be the 23rd century, but apparently we haven't heard of cosmetic reconstruction.
Apparently, Nichelle Nichols can sing. That's actually her singing in the episode; according to Bill's handy-dandy pop-up videos, she had quite the career as a songstress, even sharing the stage with Duke Ellington, which is just cool. And the song she sings is just lovely - sure if Riley had to die to anything, don't you think this would be at the top of the list?
And with that, I leave you. Not quite the episode I'd expected, but entertaining nonetheless. Next time, we'll recap Episode 15, "Balance of Terror," in which we learn why it's never a good idea to declare something on a sci-fi show.
Summary and screencaps from TrekCore.
Picture me now doing the Happy Dance. It looks a lot like the Happy Dance from Perfect Strangers, the one that Balki and Larry did all the time, and which I've never been able to find on YouTube, which is a shame, because I would totally embed it about twice a week, especially on mornings when Andrew's slept through the night. (And that includes today, actually, because that kid is still asleep like gangbusters, and he didn't cough once all night, so I have high hopes for his health today.)
Anyway, I had to make note of that, and thus, on with the show!
*
I had high hopes for this episode - I don't know why, exactly. Maybe there was something about the summary that intrigued me.
Summary: When a number of crewmembers and planetary personnel are found dead or poisoned, the visiting playwright Anton Karidian is put in the frame for mass genocide on Tarsus IV.
Well, okay, not that summary. Which isn't even really right, come to that. No, the summary I was excited about was the one on NetFlix's description.
Kodos, a fugitive wanted for mass murder, is allegedly living as a 23rd-century Shakespearean actor. Kirk's friend tips him off about Kodos and is murdered. When Kirk brings a Shakespearean acting troupe aboard to investigate, the body count grows.
Well...reasonably better, although Kodos isn't so much a fugitive wanted for mass murder as he faked his own death 20 years previously, and the 14 or so people who can positively identify him have been mysteriously dying one by one. What's more, the last two are on board the Enterprise - and one of them is Kirk.
So what does the captain do? Well, obviously he brings the man onto the ship because he's got the hots for the guy's daughter. Duh.
No One Ever Expects the Spanish Inquisition
I thought it was a pretty interesting twist that the episode, which is essentially about this man Kodos and how he's been hiding in plain sight for twenty years, never actually had Kodos appear until the last ten minutes or so. Of course, that left a good half hour to fill with all sorts of mystery-building. And in Star Trek, nothing builds mystery like Kirk flirting with a lady.
(Or something like that.)
It almost made me wonder - did Kirk bring the acting troupe aboard so that he could investigate the identity of its lead actor? Or so that he could *ahem* investigate the lead actor's daughter? Because I'm kind of leaning the other way.
In a way, the delay of Kodos' appearance sort of parallels Hamlet (the play the actors put on for the crew). Kodos is the threat hanging over Kirk and the Enterprise, but he doesn't appear until the end. Whereas Denmark is under threat of invasion, but the invading forces are mostly off-stage and don't appear until everyone's dead.
Bill: I had an epiphany about Hamlet while watching this episode.
Sharon: ....
Bill: I mean, Fortinbras shows up at the end of the play after everyone's dead because he's spent the whole time invading Denmark, right? Well, if Fortinbras is on his way to take over, WTF is the King doing watching a play while there's an invasion pending? That guy must have really been out of it.
Sharon: ....
Bill: I like Fortinbras, okay???
First, as always, the costumes.
It's so odd, but I'm so used to seeing Shakespeare done in time frames other than the 16th century, it strikes me as unusual that in the 23rd century, the Shakespearean actors are all dressed as though they're in the 16th century.
Well...their version of the 16th century, anyway.
I'm fairly sure that 16th century sleeves were not covered in pink fur.
And I have absolutely no idea what's going on with her shoulders. Did she run into a piece of installation art or something?
But of course some things never change with time: the propensity of actors to wear ridiculous clothing, even when they're not on stage.
Sharon: What is it, a burkha?
Bill: Even better, it's a burkha with a miniskirt.
The Shippiness of You
OMG, the love triangles going on in this episode. Let's see, where do we begin?
First, we have Kirk/Lenore the Daughter of the Despot...
Countered by the old standby, Kirk/Janice Rand.
Sharon: Did you see the look on Janice's face when she saw the other woman on the bridge?
Bill: No lines, but she's still totally catty. You can hear her yelling "SKANK!"
Next, we have Uhura, forlornly caressing Spock's lyre in the rec room...
Countered by the uber-jealous Spock watching Kirk flirt with another woman. Person. Whatever.
SPOCK: It was illogical for him to bring those players aboard.
MCCOY: Illogical? Did you get a look at that Juliet? That's a pretty exciting creature. Of course your, personal chemistry would prevent you from seeing that. Did it ever occur to you that he simply might like the girl?
SPOCK: It occurred. I dismissed it.
MCCOY: You would.
Sharon: That whole conversation between Spock and McCoy was overwhelmingly Spock/Kirk.
Bill: See, what I noticed was that McCoy was all by himself in Sick Bay, doing alcohol shots.
Sharon:....OMG, you're right.
Bill: Explains a lot.
Yeah. Like, maybe McCoy noticed Lenore the Daughter of the Despot flirting with Kirk, and he's drowning his own unrequited love sorrows in alcohol. Hmm.
The Life of Riley
Okay, a word about Riley, our erstwhile man in yellow. Riley has no luck whatsoever. First, he's nearly killed in The Naked Time (only to be saved by the rest of the ship), and now it seems he's the other crew member who can identify Kodos so he's up on the chopping block for that as well.
And, for some reason, because Riley can identify the mass murderer, instead of stashing Riley in a nice, safe, guarded location - Kirk demotes him and sticks him on solitary duty in the far reaches of the ship where he's all alone and security sucks.
Which is why someone poisons the milk that was brought to him with his dinner (an oh-so-appetizing array of colorful cubes, yay). Better yet, they poison him with...a squirt bottle.
Bill: Who uses a squirt bottle, honestly? I mean, you use the same kind of bottle to discipline the cat.
Riley, it should be noted, survives, although I'm not sure why, because the actor playing him left the show after this episode to take on a job teaching at the University of Minnesota, and later starred on Broadway. (Or so says the pop-up video versions that Bill's watching; Memory Alpha has a different story.) Yay for him, I'm sure, but I have to admit I'm disappointed. How many more times could we have had Riley almost dying? It could totally have been a thing.
What's more, Riley had the makings of a seriously interesting backstory. He couldn't have been more than ten or twelve when his family was killed by Kodos, which makes me wonder what happened to him in between that time and his arrival on the Enterprise.
Anyway, I rather liked Lieutenant Kevin Thomas Riley, and so while this recap is already photo-heavy, I'm giving you one more:
The Last Two Things:
It may be the 23rd century, but apparently we haven't heard of cosmetic reconstruction.
Apparently, Nichelle Nichols can sing. That's actually her singing in the episode; according to Bill's handy-dandy pop-up videos, she had quite the career as a songstress, even sharing the stage with Duke Ellington, which is just cool. And the song she sings is just lovely - sure if Riley had to die to anything, don't you think this would be at the top of the list?
Click to viewAnd with that, I leave you. Not quite the episode I'd expected, but entertaining nonetheless. Next time, we'll recap Episode 15, "Balance of Terror," in which we learn why it's never a good idea to declare something on a sci-fi show.
Summary and screencaps from TrekCore.