Star Trekkin'
I stumbled onto Star Trek TOS episodes on the web, which almost completes my online review of everything I ever watched after school as a kid.
Watched Trouble With Tribbles, The Empath, City on the Edge of Forever, and part of Tomorrow Is Yesterday while continuing my homebuilding projects.
Trouble With Tribbles: GREAT episode. It's a fantastic collision of humor and excitement: a tense conflict with the Klingons meets a ridiculous infestation of tribbles. Every character interaction is funny, but never at the expense of the drama. Kirk is openly snarky, Cyrano Jones and the bartender haggle like two Shakespearean jesters, and even Uhura gets in a few funny lines. Plot details start with excitement and become funny or vice versa. So easy to screw up the balance with this kinda thing, but it works wonderfully.
Sci-fi shortcut: to make something sound futuristic, just put "Tri-" in front of it. Tribble, Tricorder, Quadro-triticale. (Triticale is a real grain, but the rule still applies; "quadro" just raises the stakes.) In the future, everything will be three or four times cooler than now. This is also the key to the appeal of Costco multi-packs.
The Empath: I've seen every episode of Star Trek dozens of times, except this one - my mom hated it. Wondered in adulthood if that was a reflection of the role empathy played in my upbringing. Turns out the episode was just sucky sucky sucky. The dialogue is cumbersome and pretentious, the plot and character details are clunky and the central idea doesn't really work. This is one of the few episodes to rely on a standard Forbidden Planet echoey soundscape in the background to remind you you're watching science fiction. Plus those superior species borrows the crew of the enterprise to run a few tests episodes are bad enough when the superior species smiles a lot and lets everybody go; when they're mean and brutal, I just want them to get it overwith and move on to the next adventure.
City on the Edge of Forever This is usually considered the best episode, because it is. Several reasons I loved it:
Every character radiates contradictions. Kirk is suave and awkward, Spock is disciplined and sarcastic, McCoy shows both raging paranoia and skeptical congeniality. And Edith Keeler is so seductive and charismatic I never noticed how insufferable and disconnected she would seem to the people of her time. And that's another of the episode's triumphs: while the romance is tragic, it's subtly but enormously encouraging to be reminded that a strong, ambitious vision of hope is the most realistic - if not always the most practical - view of mankind's future.
This episode is a fantastic argument for series television. Introducing a romance between two characters from different centuries, and whose destinies will require them to part, is challenging enough without the obligation to introduce every character and relationship along the way. With a good series, the groundwork is done and we can move right into the story.
The audience is never told any more than they need to know. The first two minutes are spent in tense moments on the bridge - some kind of turbulent conflict becomes some kind of storm, which becomes waves of time dilation that injure crew members, which combine to lead the story in another direction. At every moment of the first act, the story could go to a thousand different places. As with Tribbles, two unrelated ideas combine to take the story where neither idea would have led by itself.
The most basic element of a dramatic story is a moral dilemma, and this episode focuses on one very simple and powerful one. Every scene builds toward it, and many small details are executed beautifully to make it work. The scene where McCoy and Kirk collide in the middle of the street is utterly graceful - the whole dilemma played out in one moment of action.
I love that Kirk and Spock become an old married couple, with Kirk as the breadwinner and Spock as the wife at home with an electronics hobby and a strong sense of entitlement. It wouldn't work if Spock's work wasn't vital to the story, but as it is it adds a layer of comic tension to what might otherwise be a very somber story.
Great sitcom: this episode meets Three's Company. A captain and his first officer are stranded in a time and place where they have to live together, disguised as a gay couple, as they plan their return.
Also, great detail I never noticed before: when Kirk enters their small apartment, the light socket by the door has half a dozen electrical plugs coming out of it. Spock's work is pushing the limits of 1930's technology at every level.
I love The Guardian of Forever - it's both a character and a plot device. Although it doesn't seem to do much guarding of anything. I wanted to hear him say "I am The Guardian of Stock Footage!". Whenever I see a wheel of industrial cable big enough to jump through, I think of the ol' Guardian of Forever.
Tomorrow is Yesterday was the night's second time travel episode. It's a fun story, but amusing how the crew's adventures often take them back to the actors' hometown. Our three-year mission: To boldly go wherever elaborate sets have already been built.
Watched Trouble With Tribbles, The Empath, City on the Edge of Forever, and part of Tomorrow Is Yesterday while continuing my homebuilding projects.
Trouble With Tribbles: GREAT episode. It's a fantastic collision of humor and excitement: a tense conflict with the Klingons meets a ridiculous infestation of tribbles. Every character interaction is funny, but never at the expense of the drama. Kirk is openly snarky, Cyrano Jones and the bartender haggle like two Shakespearean jesters, and even Uhura gets in a few funny lines. Plot details start with excitement and become funny or vice versa. So easy to screw up the balance with this kinda thing, but it works wonderfully.
Sci-fi shortcut: to make something sound futuristic, just put "Tri-" in front of it. Tribble, Tricorder, Quadro-triticale. (Triticale is a real grain, but the rule still applies; "quadro" just raises the stakes.) In the future, everything will be three or four times cooler than now. This is also the key to the appeal of Costco multi-packs.
The Empath: I've seen every episode of Star Trek dozens of times, except this one - my mom hated it. Wondered in adulthood if that was a reflection of the role empathy played in my upbringing. Turns out the episode was just sucky sucky sucky. The dialogue is cumbersome and pretentious, the plot and character details are clunky and the central idea doesn't really work. This is one of the few episodes to rely on a standard Forbidden Planet echoey soundscape in the background to remind you you're watching science fiction. Plus those superior species borrows the crew of the enterprise to run a few tests episodes are bad enough when the superior species smiles a lot and lets everybody go; when they're mean and brutal, I just want them to get it overwith and move on to the next adventure.
City on the Edge of Forever This is usually considered the best episode, because it is. Several reasons I loved it:
Every character radiates contradictions. Kirk is suave and awkward, Spock is disciplined and sarcastic, McCoy shows both raging paranoia and skeptical congeniality. And Edith Keeler is so seductive and charismatic I never noticed how insufferable and disconnected she would seem to the people of her time. And that's another of the episode's triumphs: while the romance is tragic, it's subtly but enormously encouraging to be reminded that a strong, ambitious vision of hope is the most realistic - if not always the most practical - view of mankind's future.
This episode is a fantastic argument for series television. Introducing a romance between two characters from different centuries, and whose destinies will require them to part, is challenging enough without the obligation to introduce every character and relationship along the way. With a good series, the groundwork is done and we can move right into the story.
The audience is never told any more than they need to know. The first two minutes are spent in tense moments on the bridge - some kind of turbulent conflict becomes some kind of storm, which becomes waves of time dilation that injure crew members, which combine to lead the story in another direction. At every moment of the first act, the story could go to a thousand different places. As with Tribbles, two unrelated ideas combine to take the story where neither idea would have led by itself.
The most basic element of a dramatic story is a moral dilemma, and this episode focuses on one very simple and powerful one. Every scene builds toward it, and many small details are executed beautifully to make it work. The scene where McCoy and Kirk collide in the middle of the street is utterly graceful - the whole dilemma played out in one moment of action.
I love that Kirk and Spock become an old married couple, with Kirk as the breadwinner and Spock as the wife at home with an electronics hobby and a strong sense of entitlement. It wouldn't work if Spock's work wasn't vital to the story, but as it is it adds a layer of comic tension to what might otherwise be a very somber story.
Great sitcom: this episode meets Three's Company. A captain and his first officer are stranded in a time and place where they have to live together, disguised as a gay couple, as they plan their return.
Also, great detail I never noticed before: when Kirk enters their small apartment, the light socket by the door has half a dozen electrical plugs coming out of it. Spock's work is pushing the limits of 1930's technology at every level.
I love The Guardian of Forever - it's both a character and a plot device. Although it doesn't seem to do much guarding of anything. I wanted to hear him say "I am The Guardian of Stock Footage!". Whenever I see a wheel of industrial cable big enough to jump through, I think of the ol' Guardian of Forever.
Tomorrow is Yesterday was the night's second time travel episode. It's a fun story, but amusing how the crew's adventures often take them back to the actors' hometown. Our three-year mission: To boldly go wherever elaborate sets have already been built.