Amph Beam me up, Scotty! Star Trek: The Original Series.

322: The Savage Curtain:
-Premise: Kirk and Spock meet Abraham Lincoln and Surak of Vulcan and must do battle with some of history's most terrible villains.
-T2Q Comments: Yes. Space Lincoln. Followed by the ominous end-of-teaser music. dunt-dunt-dahhhh! "Do you still measure time in minutes?" "We can convert to it." and what have you've been using...
[image=http://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/nakedtime/chronometer_old.jpg]
"more THAT direction" line by Spock pretty funny; the whole "to beam or not beam" dillema is silly- why not either beam a probe down to test conditions on the surface or use a shuttlecraft?; Cool rock creature though; lots of reset button dialogue at the end though. Overall the episode has an "Arena" redux feel to it, but it's executed better, and normally I'd probably give this a "good episode" ranking, but...it's Space Lincoln. It can't get that high a ranking. However the evil characters here are mentioned later on, so this decent-to-good episode will fall into the "Potentially Essential, But Not Ncessarily Good" category. Space Lincoln.


323: All Our Yesterdays:
-Premise: Kirk, Spock, and McCoy become trapped in the past of another world.
-T2Q Comments: This episode actually had some great ideas- escaping the destruction of a planet by traveling to it's past, etc. And, for the msot part, it's executed well but certain aspects really detract from the episode severely. The 3 musketeers history setting is way too earth-like to not be distracting, especially with all the talk of witches. The devolution of Spock due to timeframe he's in is really stupid- he wasn't "prepared" so no changes should happen. Never happens in other time travel stories, and even if it did happen- why wasn't McCoy affected? In the end these aspects distract enough to lower an otherwise god episode to "average" status.

[image=http://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/yesterdays/new_yesterdays_01.jpg] [image=http://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/yesterdays/new_yesterdays_02.jpg] [image=http://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/yesterdays/new_yesterdays_03.jpg]
[image=http://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/yesterdays/new_yesterdays_04.jpg] [image=http://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/yesterdays/new_yesterdays_05.jpg] [image=http://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/yesterdays/new_yesterdays_06.jpg]

This episode also provides us our final TOS entries in the Time Travel Log:

-TOS: All Our Yesterdays (2700 BC, Sarpedion Ice Age; NCC-1701 crew; from 2268)
-TOS: All Our Yesterdays (Undefined 17th Century-esque Sarpeidon; NCC-1701 crew; from 2268)
-TOS: The City on the Edge of Forever (1930: NCC-1701 crew; from 2267)
-TOS: Assignment Earth (1968: NCC-1701; from 2268)
-TOS: Tommorow is Yesterday (1969: NCC-1701; from 2267)
-TOS: The Tholian Web (2154 (Mirror Universe): NCC-1764 Defiant; from 2268)
-TOS: The Naked Time (2266: NCC-1701 goes back in time 3 days; from 2266)




324: Turnabout Intruder:
-Premise: The Enterprise is in danger when Janice Lester, one of Kirk's former lovers, steals his body.
-T2Q Comments: Alright! Vice Versa 2! Awesome! I hope they still have Fred Savage in this one...
The feminine delivery by Shatner is really not needed and makes no sense; episode tries to have a strong sense of continuity by referencing several previous episodes, but then drops the ball when Spock says they haven't encountered life transfer capabilities before, when, yes, you have- in "Return to Tommorow". Another annoying thing about this episode is that the whole problem has a very easy solution: have them reveal info that only Kirk would know which is not public record. Sulu's refusal at the execution notion is a very good scene. Shatner's expressions during seizures- priceless, gotta put that on the horsey reel...; Overall, a strangey sexist themed episode about women being terrible captains and being reinforced by Janice's temper atntrums and ruthlessness.
"Average".



The human adventure continues...up next: Star Trek: The Motion Picture[/b

 

Shatner on Conan last night, the conversation that starts about half way through about speeding, leads to an amusing revealation

 

That interview wasn't that bad- it was pretty funny, at least. Conan in general, though silly, is quite entertaining (he's had some great bits since he relaunched). He's not quite as good an interviewer as, say, Letterman, but he comes across as a much more likeable person, and he's far funnier than Leno's middle-of-the-road safe schtick. He doesn't have the biting satire of Colbert or the pointed discussion and influence as Stewart, but they're different types of shows.

 

And a moment of TOS levity: Star Trek Tik Tok

 

It's definitely not something I'd intentionally listen to outside of that context, no.

 

Here was my review entry for that one- to me, in general, Trek (up to DS9/late TNG) just tends to have a lot of problems doing a good court story. I tend to find those episodes poorer, on the whole, and Court Martial was no exception.

 

Yeah, we joke that it's actually Star Trek VI: the Apology.

 

When I was doing the movie reviews in the Trek film thread, after V I joked "Up Next: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country aka "We Are Damn Sorry."".

VI is an effective epilogue to the events of the trilogy- tying in the tensions with the Klingons, Kirk's son, and various other elements well, or at least touching upon them.

 

Plus, it was a pretty decent allegory for Chernobyl & Perestroika.

 

So, one subject briefly hijacked the Clone Wars Continuity thread over in Lit earlier in the week, and it's an interesting timeline-related one to bring up- of TOS, what years of the 5 year mission is it showing us?

Some possibilities/claims that were brought up:

-The three seasons are Years 2, 3 & 4, with the Animated Series being 5.
-"Where No Man..." is Year 2, the three seasons are 3, 4 & 5 (stated by the Star Trek Chronology (which apparently bases it on a reference in the Menagerie that means it has to be a Year 3 framestory), though it was apparently outdated by an episode of Voyager that had Year 5 happen a year later than the Chronology assumed).

Thoughts?

 

One of the video games,Shattered Universe, had a plot where the Excelsior accidentally crossed over into the mirror universe, where he encountered an Enterprise-A commanded by Mirror Checkov, but that's the only thing that comes to my mind (but then I haven't read any of the books and such).

That was actually a very cool game production- not only did they have Takei and Koenig reprise their roles for the voices, but they opened it up as if it was an Excelsior-centric Star Trek TV show, complete with it's own spin on the opening narration (instead of "Where no man..." or "Where no one..." they instead use "Where nobody...") which I thought was a very neat little touch.

 

Wait, Chekov is alive in TNG-era?