Wackiness!
The Empath
There was this one part in "The Empath" where Kirk is all recovering from another shirtless near-death experience so he's practically passed out on the bed-couch thing. Bones checks him out and leaves him to rest, and then Spock sits down next to him and industriously working on the transporter remote device.
The Empath chick starts to look towards Bones, but then pauses as if noticing something surprising. She looks at Spock concentrating on his device and gradually the most beautiful, gentle smile comes over her face.
There! Right there is the MAD CANON LOVE. The Empath is all feeling Spock's love for Kirk, and then her smile expresses it and her own happy reaction to it. I love how understated and without-words that was.
The Trouble with Tribbles
It hit me especially in this episode just how *hot* Scotty is. I wasn't expecting that, having first met Scotty in the movies. But here Scotty was not only attractive, he was all kick-ass attacking the Klingons and then *so happy* when Kirk confined him to quarters, because he could finally be alone and *read* (YAY) his technical journals. He's so adorable.
OMG they're *all* just so darling that I want to bake them into a pie and eat them up! ...But in a loving, metaphorical way, not a Sweeney Todd way. Yes.
BTW Klingons can pass for humans? WTF? I think I need to watch the DS9 version of this episode again to see how they explained that. It's weird that the Klingons here don't seem to have the weird sparkly dark skin and demonic brows of first season Klingons anymore. There's no reason they couldn't have kept doing that makeup except laziness. And well I suppose it would make a dramatic plot device if Klingons could always pass for humans upon cursory visual examination. Except for the fact that they were introduced as not just being a humanoid alien species, but one that also appears physically different from humans (an important distinction in Star Trek).
*Speaking* of human-looking aliens, that whole thing about the weird ancient alien species that transported civilizations it liked (among them, some from Earth) to planets where they could thrive (hence the Native American planet, and presumably the Roman planet) seems very Stargate to me. *Weirdly* Stargate. But I think it would have been fun if later series had taken advantage of that little plot device again. Picture Captain Picard on the Roman planet in a skirt, gladiating his little heart out.
Spectre of a Gun
The western episode! Very strange plot, and it was mostly boring except.
I find myself getting annoyed by McCoy sometimes. Not only is he a bad doctor (even if he doesn't mean to be), but some of his racist crap about Spock really bothers me. Like I know he's crochety and the arguments are mostly just part of their schtick, and most of the time they are really funny.
But sometimes like in this episode I want to smack McCoy, and kind of everyone else too. Chekov "dies" and then is brought back to life because he was concentrating on sex too much to believe more than temporarily in the bullets that killed him... or something. (worst resurrection explanation. ever.)
Anyway, before Chekov is resurrected, he's dead (and his body is where?) and Scotty and Bones and Kirk are grieving in the saloon. Bones gets nasty when Spock tries to change the subject to how they were gonna get out of that death-trap town. He's all Spock you're so unfeeling! Even though you worked closely with Chekov, you have no emotions of grief blah blah. Kirk tries to intercede, and Spock goes "It's all right, Captain. I think the doctor forgets that I am half human." And everyone's reactions seem to indicate that they believe
that's a really good point.
This seems to be the same pattern whenever anyone tries to insult Spock by saying he's machine-like or inhuman or unfeeling. The way the show shows that the insults are unwarranted is to remind the audience that Spock is half-human. Even Spock himself does it here.
What bothers me about this pattern is that it seems to say that if Spock were fully Vulcan, it would be *okay* to insult him in this manner. And that those things would be *true*. Whenever Spock has feelings of friendship or love, they're depicted as *human* feelings, and Spock is ashamed of them. Spock's unique position as a half-breed on Vulcan has certainly shaped his psyche in such a way that he's ashamed of any hallmarks of his human side, but the way the others react to him seems to indicate that Vulcans don't feel love for their friends and family, which is patently ridiculous.
Now, we know that Vulcans have emotions. I don't know if they just suppress them, if they have some kind of learned physiological control to ameliorate or eliminate the emotions when they appear, or if they experience them fully and just learn not to express them or let them influence their judgement. The statement that Vulcans have no emotions is one of those polite fictions that the Vulcan government wants people to believe, just like they pretend that both pon farr and the passionately emotional Vulcan history don't exist. This is the same kind of fiction that Kirk perpetuates on the behalf of the Federation government when he says to the hostile aliens at the end of this episode that the "way of his people" is mercy and nonviolence. That might be what they *want* to believe, but man...
Anyway, that discriminatory crap kind of surprises me in a show that's all about integration and IDIC, etc. You never hear anyone make offensively stereotypical statements about the black or asian members of the crew. (Though Uhura's native language is supposed to be *Swahili*?!) Hmph. But I forgive them because I love them so much. ::squeezes their little fuzzy Starfleet shirts::
PS: Spock acts with his lips a lot. I, uh, kind of really like that.
I'm actually considering vidding Spock to Fiona Apple. Somebody STOP ME. And by "stop" I mean hit me over the head with a better Spock vidbunny, because this is seriously the best one I've been able to find so far. Fiona APPLE. Because everyone knows Spock is secretly a whiny emo chick. God. God.
So there has been DRAMA at Kita lately. At the second-year teachers' post-school-trip enkai, there was flirting and food sharing between Fujimoto, the 22-year-old Assistant English Teacher, and the music teacher, an older woman. Someone took a picture of it and then this other male second-year teacher that sits right behind me mailed the picture out with a gossipy email to ALL the teachers' keitai. The music teacher was so mad that other people besides her year were seeing that picture that she went to the guy-who-mailed-it's PHONE and deleted the email from it. You don't go into someone else's keitai, man. That's like going into someone's diary. Fujimoto has a girlfriend and if she sees it, she will probably be angry. Heh. My English teacher Nakagawa showed me the email. It was *long* and purported to have the スクープ. Hee.
So the man who sent it was complaining to me about the music teacher (who sits across from him). "I have no freedom of speech. I can't write. I can't say. She is strong. I am weak. I am poor boy." Hilarious. So we were all talking in English like superspies to keep everyone from knowing about whom we were gossiping. English as SEKRIT CODE.
I think hearing about this enkai has filled me with inexplicable karaoke fever or something. I can't explain it. I spent hours last night like studying for the karaoke Olympics. WTF. I was like practicing "Kiseki no Umi" and "Suerte" (which is HARD because it's so FAST) among others, over and over again. I don't know what was wrong with me...
Hah Nakagawa was bitching to me later too. She was complaining that she doesn't like the other teachers in second-year. In Higashi and Kita at least, the only schools I've been to so far in the new year, the teachers move up years with the students. So because she was a first-year teacher last year after coming back from study abroad, she is now stuck with a new group of teachers being a second-year teacher teaching the same students. I don't think that keeping the same teachers all three years is beneficial to the students or the teachers, and she agreed. Before class started, as we were walking to the classroom and when we were setting up in front of the students, she was talking to me about how she thought the female second-year teachers were mean, like on the school trip she dropped them off at a restaurant and they didn't invite her to eat with them. I feel like an overprotective mommy or something. Everyone should be invited! Heh. Chief among these women of course is the music teacher, about whom Nakagawa commented that she thinks she likes younger men because she wants to be a "Queen" and have everyone worship her. Haha. I am neutral like Switzerland, but it's still funny to see all this backbiting. And then Nakagawa was like "I'm glad I can talk to you about this in front of the students and they don't understand."
ALT Rap. Hehehehe.
This is your Star Wars on English club. Oh Jim in Japan, I wish I had your fun school!