Two EXCELLENT episodes tonight. First was s01e20: "Court Martial." It's pretty much all Kirk. He gets brought up on trial for having ejected a space pod (space pod!) in an ion storm (ion storm!) with a dude in it -- but wait -- he and the dude have history going back to Starfleet Academy, where the guy, Finney, was his instructor:



That's Finney. Turns out he's not dead and the whole thing is a setup (if I thought anyone else was going to watch the entire series, I might have said "spoiler alert"; also, there's the fact that Kirk is captain for however many years after, so he pretty clearly gets out of "this one" and all subsequent). Best part of the whole thing is that Kirk has previously nailed his prosecutor. Also, the phrase "space-psychology" was used, but Kirk nailing the prosecutor was better. She didn't even recuse herself from the court martial. I guess space-ethics are different.

In the end, Kirk is redeemed and kicks Finney's ass along the way. Even better, it provided another killer reference source, this time for Cannibal the Musical in which Trey Parker absolutely nailed the line, "But that's not the way it happened." Awesome.

If that wasn't enough -- and it probably was -- s01e21: "The Return of the Archons" not only showed me where the band Archon got their name, but looked like everything Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats was trying to write songs about on their record. Dudes in robes, late 19th Century British costuming, weird anti-religious vibing, righteous melodrama. It was excellent.

Some weirdo mind-control robot running a society. It's called Landru (how is there not a band called this?), and Kirk and Bones and Spock and a few other inconsequentials get roped into dealing with it and ultimately "freeing" a society by destroying Landru's robotic heir. They do that, but then they just split out and leave a sociologist to help these people, who've never had autonomy before or governed themselves.

This is Landru:



The mind-melded followers (a precursor of the Borg, maybe?) of Landru, completely without will of their own, were called The Body, and I wondered if maybe that was where the band got their name from. I'd probably ask if I interviewed them at this point, but in any case, it's amazing to think of how simple the view is that they can just leave these people who've never governed themselves before and expect that everything's alright. Think of all the toppled dictatorships in the last couple years and the conflicts that have ensued. Egypt was once the greatest society in the world, and 30+ years of dictatorship, no one knows what the fuck model to follow. Not saying the transition from one to the other was that immediate, but you take my point.

I watched the preview for the next episode, which apparently introduces Khan! Having seen the movies, I'm way stoked for that.

In the meantime, both these episodes killed and I've got more wine and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes on HBO to round out the night. Excellent evening. No complaints whatsoever.

KHHHAAAAAAAANNNNNN!

Yeah, I know Kirk doesn't actually yell it until the second movie, but awesomely-titled s01e21: "Space Seed" is the backstory of that whole thing, where the Enterprise comes on a ship from late 20th Century Earth -- they nail what was then the future; right down to the world wars and planet-dominating eugenically driven dictatorships -- with bodies in suspended animation. Insert minor plot device and, oops, looks like we have to revive one Khan Noonien Singh:



Much as I have enjoyed Ricardo Montalban in his role as Armando in the Planet of the Apes sequels, Khan wins. He's not awake for five minutes before he wants to read the ship's technical manuals, and pretty soon he's space-charmed a space-hottie by doing her hair:



And also threatening her with rape and talking about taking over the universe.

Granted, I had a healthy amount of wine in me by the time we put Star Trek on last night, but I don't know how this show could possibly get better than this episode. It was absurd and it knew it, but deadpan too and dramatic and brilliant. I almost wish I didn't know Khan came back in the movie so I could be surprised when I got there. They should've called it Spoiler Alert: The Wrath of Khan.

It's also probably the best Kirkfight yet in the series. Even better than the Gorn! I couldn't remember the name of the move at the time, but Kirk totally puts a hurricanrana on Khan:



Righteous stunt-doublage.

Hopefully I'll get another episode or two in over the weekend. This is awesome.

Khan is main reason why Kirk > Picard. Khan would eat Picard alive.

Heresey

Awesome trailer

That trailer does totally rule.

I'm obviously not schooled all the way through on the original Star Trek (yet), and I've only seen some of The Next Generation, but I think the Kirk/Picard debate is apples and apples. Fuji and Red Delicious, to be more precise.

I'm pretty sure I've seen Kirk throw more punches in 21 episodes than Picard does in the entire TNG series. Patrick Stewart isn't putting the hurricanrana on anybody. But instead of doing that, he's thinking about it.

Kirk's rough around the edges, but simple and delicious, like a Fuji apple. Picard looks more like you think an apple should, but is a little more bitter and complex.

So it depends on your taste in apples.

So far I'm not only picking Kirk over Picard, but 21 hours into this series, I'm ready to switch my lifetime of affiliation in the great debate from Star Wars to Star Trek. Not only was it there first, its world is more comprehensive, immersive and its characters are better, Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi notwithstanding.

Plus, if you take into account the Star Wars prequels, the original Trek was more racially progressive 30+ years earlier. Jar Jar Binks was a minstrel show, aside from sucking.

I've always liked TNG far more the the original series. Maybe cause I grew up with that show, but it was just a much deeper show that dealt with more meaningful (at least to me) ideas and perspectives.

"The Diplomat" Jean-Luc Picard > James "The Brawler" Kirk.

As far as the SW vs Trek thing... I go for Trek all the way. The best thing about Star Wars is the stuff Lucas wasn't involved in. The Old Republic era stuff is my favourite. Knights of the Old Republic and before are amazing lore/stories.

Points on Picard are well taken and I'm just nerd-shitstormin'. I'm just saying Khan would own Picard. And for the record, I've always been more exposed to TNG than the original so my bias is pretty clear.

Star Wars is more fantasy myth driven than Star Trek. Star Trek can comment on humanity's ethics and morals where Star Wars is more a triumph of good against evil. I will say Star Wars is more "action-packed" if that's your sort of the thing.

In my opinion Picard is the better small screen captain whereas shatner is the best on the big screen. If that makes any sense

I know what you mean, but I disagree. I'm not much of a fan of action sci-fi. I like more cerebral sci-fi stories. Picard is 2001, Kirk is Starship Troopers.

That's a cool way to think of it, and backed up by s01e23: "A Taste of Armageddon," in which Kirk dares two civilizations in computerized war with each other into real war basically to show them the horrors of it. This episode is especially awesome because it introduces a space-hottie, to wit:



...And then completely drops her storyline. Some pretty lazy writing there, but good fun and a totally arrogant show of Starfleet imperialism. Awesome to put it into historical context.

There's more about this one, but I'm watching the next episode now and want to concentrate on it.

Alright. To add onto that point, tonight was s01e24: "This Side of Paradise." Kirk and a team find some reason or other to beam down to a planet and gradually everyone succumbs to the influence of spores that make you feel all happy and provide you with excellent health and make you feel love and like you belong.

Sounds like paradise, right? Hence the title. Spock goes for it too, and in a twist in the formula, it's Spock who contends with a space-hottie this episode, as the spores have him all emotional and whatnot. The whole crew of the ship beams down and Kirk is the only one unaffected. There's an awesome scene of him on the bridge by himself delivering a quintessentially Shatnerian monologue in what I think is the first non-overdubbed "Captain's Log" of the series:



The crazy part about it is that Kirk, as the only one who's unaffected by the spores, is all pissed off about how inauthentic everyone else's happiness is. They're only happy because of the spores, and he knows it, but no one else knows it, and though he eventually gets hit with a bunch, he's so conflicted over his sense of duty to the ship, which he can't bring himself to abandon as everyone else has, that he inadvertently discovers that anger and strong negative emotions kill the spores. But seriously, if there were spores that could make you feel loved and accepted and like the whole world was great all the time, what the hell? Why screw with that?

But no dice. Kirk wants everyone, including the colonists they were there to check on or poke at or whatever the hell, to get back to work. At the end of the episode, Spock says it's the only time in his life he's ever been happy. It's kind of a fucked up way to end the show, but there it is. Everyone's back to being miserable but vaguely productive, which is apparently what God and capitalism and Starfleet have decreed. Fucking bizarre politics on this show -- totally progressive in some ways, but still very much of its era in terms of supporting the basic tenets of the system in which it was produced. Of its era, in that regard and several others.

Still, for the image of Spock laughing in a tree, it's a winner:



I also watched about the last hour of the 2009 Star Trek movie this evening, and that was alright, though I found myself crying foul at the inclusion of Chekov in the movie when I'm literally a day into watching the series and he hasn't shown up yet. Ditto Mr. Scott and I'm pretty sure Kirk wasn't on that ship with Pike initially. Funny too just how much those actors were doing impressions of the characteristics that seemed to just come out of these people and develop naturally over time in the series. I guess that's the hazard of making a movie like that and rebooting the franchise; trying to balance meeting expectations for your well-known characters with pushing them down new and exciting avenues not explored previously.

To boldly go where Gene Roddenberry has gone before...

I was also disappointed they decided to pull a George Lucas and add updated FX to the original series. Seemed totally unnecessary. Part of the appeal of the show is the camp aspect and it's not like the new FX are amazing or anything.

I love the old Star Trek. For all I know the later series were better but I really don't care. I guess the show's age is one of its appeals for me.

A long-enough Wednesday capped with s01e25: "The Devil in the Dark." The Enterprise is called to the mining planet Janus VI because some creature there has killed more than 50 miners. Kirk, Spock and Bones beam down, and what do they find?

KILLER SLUDGE!



The Horta (as Spock finds out it's called when he mind-melds with it) is basically a moving pile of molten but not really molten rock. Sludge. They wind up injuring it with phasers and the whole show, I was making cracks about Take as Needed for Pain and whether Eyehategod or Buzzov*en was the more dangerous kind of killer sludge.

It's not the most action-packed of the episodes I've seen so far, and there are no space-hotties to be had anywhere, but the change of pace was welcome. I kept waiting for one of the miners to have a smoking hot daughter or something for Kirk to hit on while they sorted out the situation, but nope, they kept it pretty dudely. Just about all dudely, now that I think about it. No ladyminers in space, I guess.

The Horta has swiped some vital thing the miners need for their operation, so Spock mind-melds with it again and it tells where the piece of equipment is in this weird vague adolescent poetry about the "Vault of Tomorrow" and the "Altar of Somethingorother." Spock winds up becoming buddies with it, Bones heals its injuries, and in the end, Kirk convinces the Horta and the miners to join forces. As the start of the last scene, there's a call from the head of the miners talking about how rich they're going to be now that the Horta and her (I take it back, there was one lady, but she was made of killer sludge) babies are working for them.

See? All you had to do to make peace was invade the habitat of a native species and force it and its children to work for you.

Lesson learned.

Trekking on, and here's some more killer sludge:

And yeah, this continues to be kind of a bummer in watching. You can pretty easily tell what's been revamped and cleaned up and what's mostly left alone. If I could find a *definitely*not*about*to*say* torrent with the original versions, I'd grab that. Maybe I'll see what I can find when I start up with season two.

A bit ago finished s01e26: "Errand of Mercy." Better in Star Trek mythology context than actually watching it -- Kirk and Spock beam down to a planet that seems primitive to warn them of a coming takeover by Klingons. The planet's leadership council doesn't care, and are promptly conquered. Kirk and Spock hide out but are soon discovered after doing some weirdo terrorizing, etc. Kirk and Yor, the head of the Klingon contingent, soon come to chest-thumping man-boasting:



All well and good. Kirk and Spock are captured, blah blah blah, the head of the planet's leader council frees them, they try to shock the people into rebellion by being dumb, it doesn't work, then it turns out everyone is made of energy and they force Klingons and the Federation to stop their warring and come to a new treaty. Fine, peace, fun, but really, felt kind of rushed and too neat an ending.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I preferred the killer sludge in s01e25.

Not terrible, and cool to see the Klingons for the first time, but not a great episode by any stretch.

Last night was s01e27: "The Alternative Factor." It was probably the most blatantly digitized of the episodes so far, or up there, anyhow. The good news is I went back and found the original versions -- 26 more gigs over the last couple days -- and as soon as I start up season two, I'll be doing so with that. Figured I've come this far, might as well close out in widescreen.

Anyway, kind of a wild episode, and visually too. I went back and skimmed through the original version on my laptop, and some of it is pretty psychedelic, all negative-shot and whatnot.



The ship just happens to be close to the source of something that makes all of existence "blink out." It's only vaguely explained, but they beam down to what seems to be a dead planet and find Lazarus there, who claims some monster killed everyone on his world and he has to chase him down.

It's a lie, of course. Gradually, it's revealed that Lazarus is duking it out with an anti-matter version of himself from another universe. Kirk actually goes through the portal (which looks like the shot above of Lazarus fighting himself), and talks to the other Lazarus, who's much less crazy, as it happens. The other Lazarus explains the deal and says that, since it's the only way to save the universe and stop Crazy Lazarus (who's the one from our regular matter universe) from destroying existence, they'll spend eternity fighting in the between-space that's in neither universe.

Pretty confusing plot, I guess, but it makes more sense on the show. Kirk winds up helping Not Crazy Lazarus trap Crazy Lazarus, and then, by beaming back to the Enterprise and blowing up Crazy Lazarus' ship, the hole between the two universes is fixed and all is well again. The episode ends with Kirk half-mourning for the unfortunate fate of the Lazari.



Good tension, and the science in it was cool too, with the discussion on the theory of multiple universes. I don't know the timeline on when that stuff came about, but it's fascinating, and they put it to quality use here. Some of the science in this science fiction is less about the actual theories than what issues they can stand in for or what they can add to the narrative. This one, the balance was a little bit the other way and it worked really well.

I also dig it when they use time constructs as a theme, which it seems they do again with the next episode.

That's precisely why I loved TNG (yes I'm bringing up TNG again). The final two episodes of the series were amazing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Good_Things...

Shit, now I have to watch those gain.

In the "another reference found" department, watching Futurama tonight, in the episode with the guy who gets unfrozen from the '80s, when they show the intergalactic stock exchange, two of the companies listed are Kirk and Gorn.

Seems I'm not the first to notice, since it was pretty easy to find an image of it, but still fun:



Also, my only regret is that I have... boneitis.

i wanted to post this here because it is derived from the show but ive thought of my new band name and it is going to be v'ger. the intelligent being in the original series that is said to be a precursor for the borg.

Have you seen the Star Trek Wiki? It's full of killer band name-fodder. V'Ger's a good one though. It sounds vaguely sexist but actually isn't, plus you've got a bunch of people out there who are just going to have no idea. I feel like if you're talking to doomers about sci-fi, you're gonna get way more Star Wars heads than Trekkers/ies. Though I guess I don't actually know that. Would be a good poll for someone to set up.

Before I started this whole Star Trek thing with my wife, I had read something (probably in the New Yorker, since that and the crappy raw copy that comes in from Aquarian writers seems to be all I have time to read these days; 1Q84 mocks me from the bedroom floor) that marked s01e28: "The City on the Edge of Forever" as one of the best single television episodes ever of any series. South Park apparently named an episode the same thing in their seventh season, if that's any indicator.

It's a pretty bold claim, and I'd been looking forward to getting to it in the progression of the season so I could find out for myself. Certainly the fact that it was written by Harlan Ellison speaks to its favor as being high-grade sci-fi. And the space hottie? Oh no. They're on earth, so she's a time hottie. They travel back in time, and instead of it being some random chick who falls in love with Kirk while he's like, "Yeah, sure thing baby, whatever, let's bone," it's Joan Collins, and Kirk totally falls for her too:



Awesome. So it's really well written (although apparently Ellison wanted to disown it by the time it hit the air -- go figure), got a killer plot where Kirk and Spock have to go chasing McCoy through time back to pre-WWII earth because he's accidentally injected himself with some kind of crazy juice and gone through a pre-Stargate, and while Spock is trying to build a computer to access the future's memory banks -- still not clear how that works -- Kirk falls in love with Joan Collins. The thing is she HAS TO DIE.

It's actually a really killer read on a political level too, because they work it in that if Joan Collins doesn't die in some kind of traffic accident, she founds some pacifist movement that delays US entry into WWII and Germany takes over the world, essentially fucking history all up. The message: Stupid pacifists ruin everything.

Anyway, this is probably the best episode of this season so far (one more to go). Nimoy is awesome. His character is well established by now and he plays to it really well. Kirk too, and Bones when he's all hopped up on whatever drug it is starts yelling some pretty righteous stuff about everyone being murderers.

In the end, Kirk, Bones and Spock all meet up on one side of the street while Joan Collins -- her name in the episode is Edith Keeler; another pretty good band name -- waits on the other side. She and Kirk were going to go to the movies, and when she walks across the street to meet them, Kirk stops Bones from pushing her out of the way and saving her life as a car comes and hits her, apparently killing her instantly.

So the future is saved, but Kirk is heartbroken, because he's totally fallen in love with her. At the end of the episode, they come back through the pre-Stargate, their future completely restored (which is signified by the Enterprise being back up in orbit above them), Kirk says, "Let's get the hell out of here." Those are the last words in the episode.

Doubtless he says them because he misses the badass flannel he wore the whole time he was in the 20th Century:



Joan Collins noticed for sure.

Of all the Star Treks I've so far watched, this is the only one that signifies any real potential for something that could affect a character for more than one episode, other than when that secondary engineer girl lost her fiance, but even she didn't remember it the next week. I doubt it will have any effect on Kirk when I dial up the season finale, but still.

Great episode, great way to add depth to the characters. Can't wait to watch the finale of season 1.

I had the name gom jabbar that I was trying to use but I found a band named gom jabbar the other day so I ha to think of something new. So I figured that I wanted to come up with something that has to do with the Borg because the thought of a single hive mind that all borg are linked to is also how I feel a band should work. Every member should be on the same page at all times. I love the star trek wiki. I'm more star trek than star wars but I still love star wars. Dune is my all time favorite though although the David lunch movie was horrible. I really like syfy's version of them. They did dune and children of dune really well. I've read most of the books too.

You know, I have never read Dune and put it right up there with books like Catch 22 that I should've spent my time with while I was smoking pot in high school. If only I could go back through the pre-Stargate and tell myself what was up, I'd have spent way more time at Waldenbooks at the Rockaway Mall...

Yeah that is a fantastic episode. I might have to dig that one out and watch it again.

I always thought something along the lines of Edith Keeler Must Die would make an awesome band name.