Party like it's 1966!

That would be "The Jack Benny Hour".

 

I'll try to remember to post the TV listings every week. Not sure if anyone else is interested, but I think it's a cool time capsule! Kinda fun to imagine what you would choose to watch (and which nights you might have read a book instead, haha).

 

Now I'm pretty certain that network programming executives are looney. They expected the same viewers who watched TOS to tune into Jack Benny?!?!

 

Boy, if those former network executives would have used a crystal ball to see how the ST franchise has exploded into a billion dollar ENTERPRISE.

 

I would. The man was amazing.

Ok, I'm catching back up.

What are Little Girls Made Of:

Kirk on the turntable is one of my earliest memories of TOS when I stated watching in reruns in 1975-ish.

This episode feels different from just about any other TOS. It's just DARK. The cave sets might look fake, but somehow they look like someone built a fake set that was three mile tall and two miles underground. Weird. It's very immersive.

I know this is a Robert Bloch story. But this is a creepy episode. I don't think Wold in the Fold or Catspaw are creepy like this. There's something very confining about it. Not much on the Enterprise. A very small cast.

It was interesting to note that the "Corby" uniform shows up four times. Corby, Brown, Andrea, and Kirk. And it's different in all four version. Brown and Andrea wear the same outfit only Andrea forgot the shirt. Corby and Kirk wear the same only this time it's Kirk who forgets the undershirt. (Hmmm.) Theiss was amazing. Except...

The fact that Ted Cassidy manages to be scary in that outfit is a testament to how scary Ted Cassidy could be. He seems to be a fairly charming and dashing man. I can see how he would have been frustrated being The Monster. He had my hands down favorite line in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Ruk definitely reminds me of Marvel comics' The Vision. I gather he made his first appearance in 1968 although the creators apparently claim that they never watched Star Trek. (Certainly a believable claim.)

I love how Corby tries to explain to Chapel that Andrea is nothing more than a machine. That he just happened to make look like that and dressed in 50% less costume. Isn't Corby supposed to be a genius? Chapel's reaction shots are some of the best things in this episode.

The assertion that Corby and Andrea don't have emotions rings even more false than when Data would say the same.

We're MANY episodes in, even in production order and we still have Smiling Spock.

Oh! And this is the first episode with a partial score, right? It's funny how much of The Cage we got to hear before even The Menagerie aired. One of my favorite Steiner scores. His Andrea music is much less embarrassing "Va va voom!" than his score for Mudd's Women. And his Ruk music is terrifying.

 

"Oh, Rochester."
"Yes, boss."

 

"More complex..than Brown!"
JB

 

I was astonished at how little Ruk talks in this episode. And he's in it a lot.

 

He was left by the old ones and boy did he forget the equation!
JB

 

Too bad for Ruk that The Old Ones didn't have an equation to make a formula for Rogaine.

 

Ok, an age where something like Winchester Cathedral could be on the radio kind of blows my mind.

I watched Miri last night.

Watching Miri probably for the first time as a grup I have to admit that I found parts of it surprisingly affecting. The "kid " with the bicycle pleading for it to be fixed almost brought me to tears. (No I wasn't drinking. )

OK, Michael J. Pollard as the oldest "boy" was preposterous. He almost (more than almost ) drags down the whole episode. The casting changes him from a child leading his peers into a creepy young man who had found a bunch of little kids he can control. Plus you never get the idea that he a Miri are contemporaries. But she's getting the disease and he isn't, nor is it ever mentioned that he'd be the next kid to succumb.

There was something very compelling about Spock's line "And I DO want to get back to the ship. " It showed a self interest we don't usually see from Spock.

I'm behind on reading my Blish, but I do recall that he had the planet be an actual Earth colony.

This is the first episode to be scored entirely with music from other episodes , including several that hadn't aired yet. Some Corbomite, some Balance of Terror, some of The Cage There is also some of Joseph Mullendore's library music used here. Someone once said that this was the MISSING music from the TOS box. I'll have to listen more closely, but it's not from Conscience of the King which was recorded after the episode aired, but from Mullendore's library tracks.

Actually it was fifty years ago today that Joseph Mullendore recorded The Conscience of the King. (Apparently he recorded his library cues with Corbomite That must have been a hell of a day!)

This is such a different score. This score relies heavily on the Star Trek theme (as opposed to the fanfare). Mullendore and Wilbur Hatch are the only It would not be heard again until Star Trek : The Motion Picture.

His sound is as different and refreshing as Kaplan's. But Kaplan comes back next season and Mullendore didn't. Mullendore isn't the only Trek composer to do a single episode , but he is the one I wish had done more.

Dagger of the Mind is next. I'll try really hard to watch it on Thursday this week! It's kind of a pain trying to catch up.

 

well, just to mix things up, I watched the episode on time, I'm just writing about it late!

I never noticed the similarities to What Are Little Girls Made Of before. The mood is so strikingly different. WALG feels like it has stakes. It feels dangerous. As fun as this is and as good as all of the performances are I kind of don't see the point. Why is the Barney Miller guy doing what he's doing? Is he just a mad scientist?

At several moments in this episode Shatner and Nimoy reminded me so much of Pine and Qunito is was alarming.

A good solid adventure of the week.

Oh: Without emotion there is no need for violence. I'm still laughing. I think Vejur will tell you otherwise.

Next week: One of the best episodes EVER. But I'm not biased.