Amnesia of the Future

Can we just claim that I was abducted by aliens and that’s why I’ve been so delayed in posting lately?  Too busy making out with Vulcans.  Yea, that’s it.

Okay, I wish that were it, but sadly the real excuse is that I got lazy and in a rut because how many time can you say “Kirk is a jerk!!” before it gets old.  Oh, it doesn’t get old? My mistake.

"Sailor Moon's wears shorter skirts! Why can't I?"

Actually, my mistake was constantly calling him a jerk because episodes like Court Martial come along and you realize you’ve been misled – he’s actually a pretty decent guy. He didn’t make one crack about that stupid school girl outfit Jame was wearing.  The rest of us are bad people for thinking she looks like a pathetic knockoff of Sailor Moon.

Further proof that he’s not such a bad dude is that he doesn’t try to get in Areel Shaw’s panties to trying and get off. Get your mind out of the gutter. 

I mean, Areel might as well have jumped in bed with Kirk and releaved some of that obvious sexual tension she’s got going on since it would be about as ethical as telling the defendant how the prosecution intends to approach the case when you happen to be the prosecutor.

The episode is pretty slow, some discussion between Kirk and Cooley on the importance of books* and lots of boring court room scenes. It’s not until Jame freaks out a bit, sorry that Kirk is going to get into so much trouble that things start to pick up.  What does the twerp know?  There’s a mystery going on here, if only those pesky kids and their Mystery Van were around to figure it out!

But it’s not. Instead, for some strange reason, Spock decides that, even though Kirk is about to be stripped…of his duties and Spock most likely made Captain, now is a good time to play chess.  Ah yes, nothing like playing chess with a computer to relax after a stressful day. The problem with three-dimensional chess though is that pieces don’t beat the shit out of one another. Anyway, Spock beats the computer, which he shouldn’t be able to do since it’s was programmed by him, at best he should reach a stale-mate. How he jumps in logic to use this as emphatic proof that the computer is lying and that Kirk is innocent is beyond me.

The obvious conclusion is obvious! Someone tampered with the computer which is why it shows Kirk fucking up!  And we’ve known all along that Kirk doesn’t fuck up. He just fucks. A lot.

I’m not even going to make fun of the stupid “heart beat” monitor that allows the defense to prove Ben Finney is still alive.  I mean, come on!  I’d prefer to end on a none snarky note by saying that I’d love to see Ben Finney in the next Star Trek movie. With the alternate timeline, his anger and resentment have to change since Kirk can’t be an equal peer who costs him a promotion and then receives captaincy first.

*Based on all the technological advances that Star Trek predicted, I’m going to hope that this is a sign the Kindle will not kill traditional books.  They can live happily side by side.

Two for one today.  Mainly because I am behind on reviewing these and would like to get on with the viewing.

Anyway, I’m pleased as punch that we’re on a string of silliness.  Previously with Shore Leave and now with both Squire of Gothos and Arena.  Granted they’re not all silly in the same way – more like Dadaist art, just out there.  And again, these are episodes that make me thrilled the show exists.

It’s interesting to me that two back to back episodes would deal, to a degree, with a similar topic – how distant life might perceive human life - particularly that they perceive us as being perpetually violent.  With the recent rounds that Stephen Hawkings comments on alien life not being friendly or kind to earth should they arrive on our planet, it makes sense that observing us, with centuries of war constantly happening, that they would feel the same about us. We do not come in peace.  

With the Squire of Gothos, I love the attention to detail that the writers were able to recognize. Distant observation would mean no knowledge of things like taste or heat. General Trelane can see earth, he can apparently hear it – but that’s it, limited senses. Discovering he is a petulant child makes his behavior towards the Enterprise crew a little more understandable. He’s probably an only child. And a spoiled one at that. Silly indulgent parents, this is exactly how you end up being the one forced to wake up at 6am to take the dog for a walk.  Or bury the dead hamster. I bet they gave him ice cream to pacify him once he came home.

The Gorn likes it rough, but "No" means No!

Meanwhile, in Arena the missing element is pity and compassion.  In a way this episode reminded me of Lord of the Rings when Gandolf and Frodo have their little man-to-man chat in Mines of Moria about the Bilbo’s pity for Gollum.  Except we’re in the future and instead of some shriveled little man with a thing for shiny jewelry, we instead have a giant lizard whose outfit makes it look like he’s been interrupted from sort of sex slave duties. I bet the lizard is into hardcore S&M…and choking during orgasm. He looks like the type.

What I also see and like is how Kirk is displayed as needing to be versatile in his role as captain. Not only must he be a leader and a figurehead, he is also a negotiator, a fighter; trained in the sciences and diplomacy - sort of a jack of all trades.  Really good diplomacy might have been to kill the Gorn and send him stuffed to General Trelane – you know, sort of a “no hard feelings” gift. It would go nicely with salt eating fishy thing from The Man Trap.

Coming back to The Original Series after having watched the first few episodes of The Next Generation result in the inevitable comparison of the Squire’s family and the Metron’s  to The Q.  Between stopping the ship, transporting crew members to strange places, and a manipulation of matter….They’re all the same beings….right?

I feel so much better after watching Shore Leave  – like, all that crappiness about Balance of Terror was okay, because every television show is allowed to have crappy episodes from time to time.

The great thing about Star Trek is that anything goes. There are no restrictions on what could happen.  Any episode of Bonanza was stuck in a small time frame in the same place every week.  Same with Flipper – you can’t have an episode of Flipper set in the Sahara. Bonanza can’t take place in the year 1215.  But Star Trek – you can get away with anything.

We’ve seen green chicks and alcoholic toddler aliens, the crew has seemingly gone back in time to a planet eerily like Earth’s 1960s and they’ve simply gone back in time.

And then Dr. McCoy met the White Rabbit while Sulu got chased by a tiger. A TIGER?!?!?!

I really love how absolutely absurd the show can be while still being believable.  What’s not believable – that Captain Kirk has some mystery love of his life in his past while Dr. McCoy plays ladies-man.  First he’s all up on the new Yeoman and then he’s walking around with playboy bunnies.  It’s like he’s on the planet ”Hugh Hefner” and he’s not even that good at the pick up lines.  Come on Dr. McCoy, really?  “A princess shouldn’t be afraid – not with a brave knight to protect her.” Or how about creepy? ”My dear girl, I’m a doctor. When I peek, it is in the line of duty.“ Puke.

Someone told me that the Enterprise goes back to the planet from time to time which is cool by me.  I’d have even been happy to have a television series set on the planet – forget the rest of space! Each week it would be a new Wacky Adventure in the Omicron Delta system.  Ninjas! Don Juan! & Alice! I bet someone was really really high when they thought up the idea for Shore Leave. All this episode is missing is a guest appearance by The Monkees.

Star Trek has so much room to be crazy, and I love it.  And I love that William Shatner was sort of just as crazy as Kirk is.  While checking some facts on Memory Alpha, I discovered that Shatner originally wanted Kirk to wrestle with the tiger.  That is INSANE!  Shatner was destined to play Kirk. 

Absolutely nuts and therefore awesome.

I am continually so impressed with Star Trek.  Maybe I’d have a different opinion if I were more familiar with 60s television shows, but I’m pretty sure Bonanza and Flipper weren’t integrating Shakespeare into their episodes. 

In 1963 a song titled “If You Want to be Happy” debuted. The singer encourages men to marry ugly women as pretty women are nothing but trouble, “As soon as he marries her then she start/to do the things that will break his heart.” Kirk never has any intention of marrying pretty Lenore, which is a good thing seeing as she’s a murderess.  In fact, despite her father having killed half the population of a planet, Lenore might be the more evil of the two.  She’s a bit of a hypocrite for getting upset over Kirk using her when she is using him and attempts to kill him. 

This is the episode where Kirk goes from lusty male to full on womanizer.  He’s managed to not get involved with some of the women who’ve made their way onto his ship (including his own Yeoman) until now.  Lenore is brought onto the ship under false pretenses but get fairly steam.  Which leads us to what might be the best line in all of Star Trek:

“And this ship: all this power, surging and throbbing. Yet under control. Are you like that, Captain?”

I believe this is also the last appearance of Yeoman Rand.  If looks could kill, Lenore wouldn’t have been around long to do much damage. 

There are a few things that bother me about The Conscience of the King.  Tarsus IV was facing planet-wide starvation when the governor, Kronos, ordered the execution of half the population – those destined to die were chosen by Kronos’ through eugenics. Aid arrives at the planet shortly after the executions and a body is found which is presumed that of Kronos despite no positive identification as the body was charred in a fire. 

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned...

So what bothers me is that of the nine survivors to have seen Kronos and be able to determine if the man named Karidian is the same, one was approximately five years old.  Captain Kirk, one of the witnesses, was a teenager at the time – old enough to possibly remember what the man looked like twenty years into the future.  But Lieutenant Reilly (who had fun taking over engineering in The Naked Time) was just a toddler at the time.  It’s relatively save to say that he would not be able to accurately compare the two men as an adult and therefore should not have been a victim of attempted murder as he was not a threat to revealing Kronos. 

Sticking with age as a problem, Kronos’ daughter Lenore was born after the events on Tarsus IV and should not have known of her father’s dark past due to his creation of a new persona in Karidian.  How she determined that her father is Kronos and managed to discover who the nine witnesses were while growing up and then traveling and performing with the theater troupe is quite questionable.

Those points are rather moot when you realize how the writers drew inspiration from multiple Shakespeare works while heavily eluding to but not blatantly ripping off any of the plays.  They also manage to keep the viewer questioning whether Karidian and Kronos are the same person despite knowing that they are and feeling pity for Karidian as a broken, forgetful, and ashamed man. 

History is determined by the winner, a point Karidian/Kronos makes when stating that had help not come to the planet when it did, he would have been proclaimed a hero for saving half of the population rather than for killing half of the population. The concept of eugenics is horrible to think about, the atrocities that have continued to happen well into the past century are not pleasant.  There are some who claim killing off a percentage of a population is wrong – most people would agree with this – but there are few who believe it to be a necessary evil under certain circumstances. What those circumstances are can only be determined by looking at them from the future.  Maybe Kronos had a point, had helped not arrived, his difficult decision could have saved a good portion of the starving people on his planet.  As it is, there is no way to properly judge his actions or the man.  Kirk too is placed in a difficult spot in determining if this old man is the same who murdered his family and what to do about it if he is.  Again, despite somewhat obvious deductions, the viewer is left wondering how Kirk will handle the situation.