ST:TOS: Man Trap & Charlie X

[mizkit]

At the beginning of July all the Star Trek episodes became available on Netflix. I let out a squee heard ’round the world (it was, too, thanks to Twitter), because I’ve been wanting to watch it with Indy; I was a little younger than he was when I watched pretty well the entire original series (the, er, only series, at that point), and I think it’s

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[pers1stence]

What I wrote on FB during a sort-of-recent rematch of the ep: I love Star Trek (the original). I can roll my eyes at the green dancing girls, and Kirk sweeping every woman in range off her feet. But last night, I watched an episode (Shore Leave) that was even more terrible than usual. In the episode (written by Theodore Sturgeon, not some nameless studio hack), the crew lands on a planet that seems to be uninhabited, but which keeps manifesting people/characters/objects out of their thoughts. First, McCoy idly contemplates how the setting might be ideal for Alice in Wonderland, when lo, here comes the White Rabbit and Alice herself. Then Kirk remembers a bully/nemesis from Academy Days, who promptly appears and who punches Kirk to the ground. Shortly thereafter, the Yeoman-du-jour (who had started the episode giving Kirk a backrub but ends up being all girlfriend-y with McCoy by 15 minutes in) is off by herself and imagines running into Don Juan. She shrieks, then Jim and Bones run up to find her shaking, with the bodice of her mini-dress torn strategically. Kirk asks her what happened. When she tells him, he says "are you sure? you didn't just imagine it?" To recap: she's a responsible crewmember; there is physical evidence of an assault on her person; and Kirk just got socked in the jaw by his own "imagination." WTF? So many layers of wrong here...... *sigh* I still love the show, but golly....