Demon Lung wrote:
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.