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50th Anniversary Rewatch Thread

January 12 – Dr. James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with the intent of future resuscitation.

How's that working out for him?
It would be fun if the technology did exist to unfreeze him just to see how he'd react to everything these days. Would he ask to be refrozen? :D
 
The biggest contradictory moment always seemed to me to be when they're all arguing over whether or not to give the giants a bloody nose (I think?). Spock says he's often appalled at the low regard Earth men have for life. A human being then says
"At least we're practical about it!"
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Now, that seemed unintentionally contradictory to me, for decades. Now, though, it seems to me to be the pivotal moment, as far as its overall message. The hypocrisy of that, the 180 degree turnabout on the part of the human crewman, there's where the truth comes out. The humans had been riding Spock for being callous and calculating, and getting them killed, as a result of not empathizing with and protecting them enough. He doesn't feel like we decent folk do, supposedly.
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Then what's-his-name shoots off his mouth about how they've got to kill just to scare the aliens off. Suddenly Spock's the bleeding heart, and it's the good old, right-minded human who doesn't let sentiment get in the way, and is "practical" about death.
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That's actually a really good point.
I guess we'll never know if it was intentional or not(my money's kinda still leaning on not).
 
I think the episode could have worked better if: they hadn't made a big deal about it being "Spock's first command"; Spock himself had been comfortable in his own skin; and they'd just emphasized the angle of how his command methods rubbed emotional humans the wrong way.

The premise as presented might have worked if Spock's background had involved him being a Vulcan exchange officer or somesuch with limited experience on human-crewed starships, but they would have already been in the process of establishing that as definitely not being the case when this episode was in production.

Also, I forgot to mention what a comically futile effort it was for Kirk to send down three whole landing parties when they had no idea where to start searching...how much of that planet could 18 guys cover on foot...?
 
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Also, I forgot to mention what a comically futile effort it was for Kirk to send down three whole landing parties when they had no idea where to start searching...how much of that planet could 18 guys cover on foot...?

It was an emotional decision, that also got one guy killed.

In my head canon they landed on some mountain peaks with some long range scanning equipment that can cover a large area.
 
It really bugs me that lighting the fuel is supposed to be some emotional outburst Spock should be ashamed of. If your other alternative is certain death, it is logical to try something that has a chance to succeed, even a slim chance.
 
So was Kirk in bed with the flu, and then Finnegan came in and said:
"Here's a nice hot bowl of soup, Jimboy"
And then Kirk tasted it.
"Ha-ha, it's actually cold!"

Is that how that's supposed to work? :shrug:

No, I think Finnegan dumps the soup IN the bed, between the sheets. The bed looks perfectly made, Kirk slides his pajama-clad feet into the bed after a long day, and gets yucky cold soup all over his feet, and needs to change his bedding before he can hit the hay. Ha friggin' ha, right?
 
It is interesting to see Boma, McCoy and the other yellow shirt complaining to Spock in such an insubordinate way. It is also interesting to see McCoy and Scotty tell Boma to stand down when Boma insults Spock about how he would insist a decent burial for even Spock. McCoy will always challenge Spock but he will not go that far in insulting Spock, Of course Scotty as a good command officer knows not to be insubordinate to Spock. It is cool the way Spock jettisoned the fuel to signal the Enterprise. A very risky Kirk like maneuver. I also like the fact that Uhura is the second most important person to Kirk on the Enterprise. Good solid episode.
 
It really bugs me that lighting the fuel is supposed to be some emotional outburst Spock should be ashamed of. If your other alternative is certain death, it is logical to try something that has a chance to succeed, even a slim chance.
It wasn't a "nothing left to lose" situation. It meant plunging back into the atmosphere and dying horribly, almost immediately, also losing them more time in orbit during which they might be discovered. All this when there was "no chance", or so it seemed.
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He's supposed to be ashamed of it? Only Spock seemed to feel that way. For about a minute, then they were rescued.
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The others, in the last scene, weren't saying he should be "ashamed". They were poking fun at Spock for taking the emotional route, when he preached against it all the time.
 
The point of the episode is supposed to be that emotion beats logic, but the results of the episode are precisely the opposite. Emotional people make bad decision, like irrationally insisting on "properly" burying the deceased while still under threat, arguing for wholesale slaughter of indigenous lifeforms, and all around not helping at all by being unnecessarily confrontational and offering no helpful alternatives at all to Spocks decision. Scotty is the only one that actually contributes ideas and does his job while others do nothing but complain and rage at Spock for no reason.

I think the "moral of the story" is that you need a balance of logic and emotion. Go too far in either direction, or disregard either option, and bad things are going to happen. Spock could have used some more compassion (which he figures out at the end), and the crew could have used more logic. It's not a lesson of "emotion is better" or "logic is better," but rather it preaches the importance of balancing out the two.
 
I've gone and indexed all the episodes so far in the OP so the individual episode discussions are easier to find. Might come in handy if you notice something during rerun season and wish to revisit a particular episode ;) I intend to add future episodes as they come up.

BTW does the ability to edit posts on these boards expire after some time or is it indefinite?
 
BTW does the ability to edit posts on these boards expire after some time or is it indefinite?
I believe there's a 24-hour window in which you can edit your own posts. After that, they're engraved in stone.
 
That was the old software. These days you can edit your posts into infinity, it seems.
 
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