50th Anniversary Rewatch Thread

Romulan Kirk begs to differ>

 

Shhhsh... spoilers.

 

For Amok Time? He dies in that one, right?

 

In case you don't know, Trek was preempted 50 years ago this week, instead you would have seen this:



I would have flipped over to another network. Just saying...

 

The closest Trek equivalent to that would be Voyager's The Thaw...

 

I have been following the Avengers series 5 too, have not heard much attention given to it despite it being the 50th Anniversary of the best series of the Avengers, Emma Peel and in Colour

 

Yep, that's the plan.
That also gives plenty of time for people to catch up through "reruns" if some want to join in on the fun next season

I'm toying with the idea of doing a rerun binge at some point during the hiatus myself, maybe in production order and with remastered effects(heresy, i know) just to mix it up.

 

"Errand of Mercy", Episode 26, March 23rd

Tonight's Episode: War is declared! The Enterprise encounters another crappy "alien of the week" species intent on starting a conflict with the Federation, with a bunch of primitives stuck in the middle of the escalating hostilities. Cling-on? That will never catch on...

 

This episode ranks pretty high as both my favorite and least favorite Star Trek.

It's a terrific yarn, entertainingly told. Obviously Colicos knocks it out of the park. He's a full on mustache twirler, but there is something frighteningly real about him. He's ruthless, but never against his own aims. He's certainly not a Bond villain. I don't believe he's ever stupid. And (most interestingly) he doesn't consider himself at the top of the heap.

Here's the thing: The moral of the story is that the war is bad, just as a thing. If the Klingons and the Humans (Federation) would just put down their guns then everything would be fine.

The problem is (and this is where Star Trek and I apparently part ways) is that the Klingons will apparently continue to take over planets. What Kirk describes as Klingon subjugation is quickly demonstrated to not be mere propaganda or hyperbole or even a misunderstanding. It is exactly as Kirk described it.

We can (and do) debate what Kirk means in A Taste of Armageddon by General Order 24. But Kor literally has at least two hundred people killed to quell dissent. The Organians get to be OK with the Klingons because they can't be harmed. It's OK, because they're super intelligent light bulbs. But there are other worlds where the hostages killed by the Klingons and put into camps are not hyper intelligent shades of the color blue. They're now in a bad spot.

But hey, we're all just two sides of the same coin and the sooner we realize that then the sooner we'll all get along.

Spock has his clever line at the beginning of the episode when Kirk says that they don't want war. "Curious how often you Humans manage to obtain that which you do not want." (Again, why is Vulcan not a part of this? Or the other not yet created races of the Federation? I know, I just answered my own question.) What would be the consequences of not having the war? (For that matter what ARE the consequences of not having it after the Light Bulbs mess with them?) Who will suffer for it? Have we gotten to City on the Edge of Forever yet?

But like I said, it's one of the more entertaining episodes. If Star Trek has to be preachy (and it does, it's Star Trek) then it needs to be entertaining. If only more of it was as good as this.

 

My thoughts on "Errand of Mercy"

I like this episode. One of the better shows of the season.

Next week: A not so good episode...

 

To play the Klingon devils' advocate here, they didn't actually do anything against the Organians until they were attacked. Sure they occupied the planet and posted their rules punishable by death, but the Federation was planning to do the same thing, the only difference is Federation used the carrot, and the Klingons used the stick.

Kirk isn't exactly an innocent party here, he repeatedly tries to draw the Organians in a conflict with the Klingons against their express wishes all for the benefit of the Federation because they need Organia for their war against the Klingons.

When it comes down to it both were willing to let the Organians die just for being in the way of their conflict...

While we're on the subject of Organians, some stray observations...
Organians have evolved beyond physical bodies, but not beyond the patriarchy, considering all the ruling council members are old men.

Spock rates them as D minus on a cultural scale, which I guess means "totally lame".
He does not offer a revised grade once they reveal their true form (A doubleplus?)

They stop the war by heating everything up, if only the secret of making oven mitts survived World War III...

Oh, and Kirk says "I'm a soldier, not a diplomat", does that mean Starfleet is military?

I wouldn't jump to conclusions, I'm sure they used the extra time in post production to really make the episode shine and be the bestest possible!

 

More likely an assessment of his own personality/preferred way of handling things. Kirk'd rather knock aliens/ships into next week with weapons/fists/feet than throw paperwork at them.

 

If there was just one slightly more heat tolerant officer like Data on one of the fleet ships, he could have single-handedly annihilated the entire Klingon fleet right then and there.

 

But remember the episode is a product of and commentary on its own time: Yes the "other side" was totalitarian, inhumane and all that, but the choice for war was a choice to wipe out most human life and civilization on both sides.