s03e17: That Which Survivesaka: "The Search for a Less Likable Spock."
I guess somewhere along the line someone in the writer's room -- because back then WRITERS COULD AFFORD TO HAVE WHOLE ROOMS! -- decided to make Spock less likable. "You know, Spock's been kicking a lot of ass lately with his double-neck-pinch and figuring stuff out. Let's have an episode where he's the biggest douche on the Enterprise."
And so it went.
Also a bunch of inexplicable new/different characters in this episode and everyone's a different race.
An Italian chief geologist?
A Subcontinental Asian helmswoman?
And when Bones beams down, not only is the guy who takes over the medical bay a black dude, but they also mention another medical officer named Sanchez, though he's never shown on camera.
It's like Star Trek got some press off the race episode and decided to start parading out different ethnicities all at once. "Holy shit, find me an Indian woman!"
The space hottie -- WHO WAS THE DEADLIEST OF THEM ALL -- was of indiscriminate race:
I only really bring it up because of that episode with the Riddler a couple back, and because all these characters were new and introduced at the same time. No more Chekov, wherever he went. He got replaced by this generic looking white guy:
See you at the convention, bro.
Sulu, on the other hand, beamed down with Kirk and Bones and the geologist, which seemed like a promotion.
Also, between those four in the landing party YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHO DIED FIRST. Yup, the character who's never been seen before. Way to nail it.
So they're at this planet and they're like, "Well there's no life, but it looks interesting." Spock's got a science boner for it, but he doesn't beam down. He takes command of the ship. Meanwhile, before Kirk, Bones, Sulu and the geologist, whose name is D'Amato -- which they pronounce as "dee-amato," because there's never been an Italian on the Enterprise -- leave the Enterprise, the DEADLIEST SPACE HOTTIE just magically appears and goes, "Yo you shouldn't go down there because you're like gonna die and whatever."
But they're already beaming down. She kills the redshirt working the transporter though, just so you know shit's for real.
There's like an earthquake on the planet or something and then the ship is thrown SOME RIDICULOUS NUMBER OF LIGHT YEARS away. Sulu's all like, "Stupid conjecture, Captain!" and Kirk goes, "Man that's why we haven't taken you anywhere since the first season," and then the space hottie shows up and kills the geologist by touching him and de-SOMETHING-OR-OTHERING his cells.
Back on the ship they're like, "Damn we gotta get back and see if the captain's alive," and Spock who's a dick now is like, "Logically speaking, all you emotional bitches are a pain in my rational ass." Scotty says something about how he'll get the ship back to the planet as fast as he can and Spock just lays out some shitty comeback on him:
Cue crickets.
So they're warp speeding it back on the quick and shit's getting dire on the planet. Space hottie shows up on the ship again in the engineering room, kills another redshirt and then puts the engines into about-to-burst-apart overdrive OR SOMETHING and Scotty's all, "Dude we're fucked" and Spock's like, "You suck for letting the fact that you're going to die bother you," and then they decide to fix it or whatever.
Meantime, on the planet, space hottie's there again and is like, "YO I WANNA KILL JAMES KIRK" and Kirk's like, "I'm too much of a man for that shit so I'm not gonna let you touch me and I'll put Bones and Sulu in the way since you're not here to kill them now even though you were a bit ago."
They start asking her questions and FOR WHATEVER REASON she actually answers them, talking about who she is or whatever. I don't even know, it's pretty thin at that point. It's actually kind of like someone decided the episode had enough plot and wasn't going to bother seeing it through until the end when they could reveal it all at once.
The ship's rushing back though and the engines are about to blow up. Spock's still in MEGADICK mode and he goes, "Yo Scotty fix that shit, logically speaking," and then Scotty's all, "Dude I can't" and Spock's like, "Dude I'm so fucking sick of listening to human beings whine about shit. Logically speaking, go crawl in the fucking tube thing."
So Scotty mans up and crawls in the tube thing. He's like, "Yo I'll be a real man like Jim Mahfuckin Kirk and it doesn't matter because I'm dead either way." He gets two redshirts to lift him into the tube thing where he needs to override the overdrive.
I don't know if those lightning bolts were in the original version, but they were in the crappy digital redux version and that's what I watched. Whatever.
ANYWAY, Scotty can't fix it but then he does fix it. Spock's even a dick about that. The ship doesn't blow up. Bones, Kirk and Sulu are in some room they found or something and it turns out there's a big computer in a cube that's generating deadly space hotties to kill them all.
They're cornered by a trio of space hotties and Kirk's like, "Yo if we survive this shit I'm gonna have a wicked four-way with these space hotties" and Bones goes "Yo I fucking hate you but not really." Then Spock beams in with some bulky redshirt whose pants are up way high and has him shoot the cube-puter and then the space hotties disappear and some video of the space hottie comes on to give THE ENTIRE EPISODE'S WORTH OF EXPOSITION: Blah blah defense system, dead planet outpost, blah blah blah some disease whatever whatever I'm the last and I'll make projections of myself to guard this planet because NO REASON AT FUCKING ALL.
Bones is like, "Damn she was pretty hot" and Spock is all "Whatever who cares?" and Jim Kirk is like, "Yo Spock cool your shit space hotties are awesome." Then they beam their shit out of there and I guess whatever they went down there for in the first place they just figured screw it. One geologist, a couple redshirts, and five or six new characters who may or may not ever show up again later, the credits roll.
I guess it veered away some from the formula, but I wasn't really feeling it. Spock is like the best character on the show. Why screw that up?