50th Anniversary Rewatch Thread

[ZapBrannigan]

It reminds me of why they made the Klingon blood pink in TUC and then removed the scenes that gave sense to that color change...

I'm pretty sure the pink blood was one of the many ad hoc continuity changes Klingons have undergone, as each movie and every TV series has acted like its own thing, in no way obligated to carry on what we've seen before.

I love Star Trek, but the overall franchise has never been respected by its individual productions. The classic-cast movies didn't even respect each other. And while I hate Star Wars in all of its post-TESB incarnations, I have to admit that they did a better job of keeping their franchise cohesive and seamless (at least to the untrained eye, such as mine).

 

[dahj]

Well with all the genetic tampering regarding the ridges and hair situation with the Klingons, it's no wonder that their blood might change colour from time to time...

 

[Discofan]

You know the reason our blood is red is because it contains iron... I wonder what element makes the Klingon blood pink...

Also if the Vulcan blood is green then how come their skin color doesn't contain at least some measure of green in it.

 

[dahj]

Also if the Vulcan blood is green then how come their skin color doesn't contain at least some measure of green in it.

They did slightly green up Spock.

 

[Tallguy]

Depending on the season, Spock was pretty green. (TAS as well.) Someone apparently wrote in to ask if any of Spock's... extremities... might be more green.

 

[GNDN18]

Depending on the season, Spock was pretty green. (TAS as well.) Someone apparently wrote in to ask if any of Spock's... extremities... might be more green.

 

[johnnybear]

Spock has always had a sort of green hue to his skin unless he's back on Vulcan itself where he looks more red than the rest of the Enterprise crew!
JB

 

[Discofan]

I just find it bizarre that when a Vulcan has bruised it looks like he has fresh paint on his face. It would be more natural (looking) if the "blood" were more in accord with the skin. Besides if their blood is based on copper it should be closer to green-gray than green per se. (more gray than green actually). Also, Spock as a mix should have yellowish blood...

 

[Tallguy]

Also, Spock as a mix should have yellowish blood...

Is that how it works when different species have children?

 

[dahj]

Well, that's one episode where the synopsis is shorter than the title.

Speaking of the summary, an asteroid is hurtling towards an unsuspecting colony due to a faulty ancient computer and one of our main cast falls in love and marries a native girl. Where, oh where have I seen this before?

It's an alrightish episode I guess, though I'd say a generational asteroid ship and McCoy's terminal illness could have been done more interestingly. If you start thinking about it, the premise kind of falls apart... Why would someone build a generational ship, a life raft no less for the survivors of a dying civilization and not tell the people living on it? Why construct some weird ass religion to ban the users from reading the manual until after it was no longer needed? They somehow know that they're travelling to another planet but don't know that their planet isn't a planet? Why hide the medical (and other) knowledge? Do people with xenopolywhatchamacallit on Yonada also just die?

As for McCoy, that scene with Spock finding out is a standout one, the rest is kinda bland. When they're getting ready to beam down Kirk asks McCoy if he's really well enough to go on a mission, but the mere fact that he was so eager to use the transporter should have given him a hint Bones is not really himself.

I do like that the solution was for Spock to read the UNIX manual and fix the computer so Kirk doesn't have to talk it to death.

Favourite quote: "I was climbing a mountain to reach the stars, so you might say I was on some kind of Star Trek"

 

[scotpens]

It's an alrightish episode I guess, though I'd say a generational asteroid ship and McCoy's terminal illness could have been done more interestingly. If you start thinking about it, the premise kind of falls apart... Why would someone build a generational ship, a life raft no less for the survivors of a dying civilization and not tell the people living on it?

Story-wise, it makes more sense if the original inhabitants of the multi-generation ship knew they were on a ship and the purpose of its mission -- but at some point there was a mutiny or political upheaval and that knowledge was lost. That was the premise of Robert Heinlein's classic novella "Universe," which I believe was the first use of the generation ship concept.

 

[Discofan]

Is that how it works when different species have children?

Well, normally, different species can't have children, that's in the definition of species...

In a pinch, If the species are close enough genetically, they can have sterile children though... Maybe that's the reason why Spock was so upset for his Pon Farr...

 

[Discofan]

Well, that's one episode where the synopsis is shorter than the title.

Speaking of the summary, an asteroid is hurtling towards an unsuspecting colony due to a faulty ancient computer and one of our main cast falls in love and marries a native girl. Where, oh where have I seen this before?

It's an alrightish episode I guess, though I'd say a generational asteroid ship and McCoy's terminal illness could have been done more interestingly. If you start thinking about it, the premise kind of falls apart... Why would someone build a generational ship, a life raft no less for the survivors of a dying civilization and not tell the people living on it? Why construct some weird ass religion to ban the users from reading the manual until after it was no longer needed? They somehow know that they're travelling to another planet but don't know that their planet isn't a planet? Why hide the medical (and other) knowledge? Do people with xenopolywhatchamacallit on Yonada also just die?

As for McCoy, that scene with Spock finding out is a standout one, the rest is kinda bland. When they're getting ready to beam down Kirk asks McCoy if he's really well enough to go on a mission, but the mere fact that he was so eager to use the transporter should have given him a hint Bones is not really himself.

I do like that the solution was for Spock to read the UNIX manual and fix the computer so Kirk doesn't have to talk it to death.

Favourite quote: "I was climbing a mountain to reach the stars, so you might say I was on some kind of Star Trek"

Maybe the people who conceived the plan suspected that the people on the ship were so stupid that if left to their own devices they would have ruined everything and caused the generational ship irreparable damage... kinda like what we're doing to OUR generational ship, IE Earth...

 

[The Old Mixer]

Star Trek
"For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"
Originally aired November 8, 1968
Stardate 5476.3

The Enterprise must deflect an asteroid on a collision course with an inhabited planet, but discover the asteroid is a spaceship with a population unaware of the outside world.

What was going on the week the episode aired.

Well, that's one episode where the synopsis is shorter than the title.

QFT. This is maybe where Season 3 starts getting so-so for me...I always found this one to be a bit of a snoozer. Bringing down computerized rulers with god complexes just seems old hat at this point. As noted, there is a good understated moment between Spock and McCoy when the doctor comes to.

It seems more contrived than usual that McCoy gets a cure for his Situation of the Week terminal illness and an out from his Situation of the Week marriage in the same last five minutes. Continuity point: For those trying to factor in how the three years of the series fit into the five-year mission, the end implicitly establishes that they're scheduled to still be on that mission a bit over a year after this episode.

Speaking of the summary, an asteroid is hurtling towards an unsuspecting colony due to a faulty ancient computer and one of our main cast falls in love and marries a native girl. Where, oh where have I seen this before?

That ties in with a thought that I had...that had the Creators been so inclined, this could have been woven into a meaty two-parter with "The Paradise Syndrome," with Spock and McCoy investigating the asteroid while Kirk's on the planet being Kirok. With enough smoothing out, the parallel situations could have played into one another thematically rather than just being repeated story elements in separate episodes.

Story-wise, it makes more sense if the original inhabitants of the multi-generation ship knew they were on a ship and the purpose of its mission -- but at some point there was a mutiny or political upheaval and that knowledge was lost.

That doesn't work here, though, because the withholding of knowledge from the people is so thoroughly baked into the computer's programming, such that it's being maintained as the planet's religion.

Historical note: The 3-billion+ population of Daran V was roughly equivalent to that of Earth in 1968.

Yeah, we've got a blatant example of realtime communications with Starfleet here. That sort of convenience makes the final frontier feel unfortunately smaller.

I was looking up what other episodes the transporter operator may have been in, as he had a familiar face--I had no idea he'd been in 53!

Next week: Maybe I'm a bit late in making this observation, but there sure are a lot of things in space that drive men mad, aren't there?

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[dahj]

Story-wise, it makes more sense if the original inhabitants of the multi-generation ship knew they were on a ship and the purpose of its mission -- but at some point there was a mutiny or political upheaval and that knowledge was lost.

If that sort of thing, or some other explanation, was a part of the script that would have been better, it would have given the Yonadans some flavour, this way they're just your run of the mill "Society Run By a Computer no.23"
Having a generational ship begs for a story of what happens over the millennia, how the society drifts and changes, so going for another simple "we must fix the broken computer" plot just feels lazy and not taking advantage of a unique situation.

Maybe the people who conceived the plan suspected that the people on the ship were so stupid that if left to their own devices they would have ruined everything and caused the generational ship irreparable damage..

Presumably people who built the ship got on the ship, and then why wouldn't they have taught some in the next generation how to run, or at least fix the ship.

Yeah, we've got a blatant example of realtime communications with Starfleet here. That sort of convenience makes the final frontier feel unfortunately smaller.

Also it felt like a really unnecessary time-wasting scene, they're just told to go away and then a second later McCoy calls them to come back.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Having a generational ship begs for a story of what happens over the millennia, how the society drifts and changes, so going for another simple "we must fix the broken computer" plot just feels lazy and not taking advantage of a unique situation.

QFT again. In an '80s issue of Fantastic Four, John Byrne did a story in which the generational ship gets to its destination and the people can't bear the strangeness of standing in a planet's great outdoors, so they retreat back to their ship.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

QFT again. In an '80s issue of Fantastic Four, John Byrne did a story in which the generational ship gets to its destination and the people can't bear the strangeness of standing in a planet's great outdoors, so they retreat back to their ship.

Interesting. If the idea is to get everybody off the ship eventually, that might be an example of why you don't tell the people on the ship that they're on a ship and instead make them believe that they're on a planet, and preferably make the artificial world resemble the planet that they will eventually colonize.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Byrne being a well-known Trek aficionado, his story was doubtlessly a response to this one.

 

[dahj]

Was the title of comic story "Untouchable sky is overrated?"

 

[The Old Mixer]

"Quest," actually.