List Only! Last Star Trek Episode You Watched

DS9: Siege of AR-558.

that final fight montage was pretty damn good.

 

There Is A Tide... (DSC)

 

Ephraim and Dot. First time watching the new Short Treks after getting the dvd for Christmas. Man this one was adorable!

 

Spending the afternoon binge-watching Season 3 Discovery episodes on Netflix.

Second time through for the majority of them.

 

"There Is a Tide... " (DSC)
"Remembrance" (PIC) --> with DVD/Blu-Ray Commentary

 

#800 -- today!

 

There is a Tide and accompanying Ready Room

 

(streaming) TOS - "Day of the Dove". (full review) A/A+ cusp

 

Patterns of Force (TOS Blu-ray). It's ironic seeing Jewish actors (Shatner and Nimoy) pretending to be Nazis.

 

New Year's Eve watched, Discovery Season 3 Episode 12: There Is A Tide.

 

(streaming) TOS - "The Trouble with Tribbles" B/B+ cusp

Spoiler: why

Trek's humor has always been hit or miss for me and I don't mean the end-of-episode ha-ha-romps that seemed typical for the time.

As far as TOS goes, this episode has the more successful jokes - overt or subtle. The episode also feels more refined than the other contender for "jokiest episode produced" known as "I, Mudd" - not because there's no way to shove in a jibe at McCoy involving beads and rattles this time either. There's a scene in the beginning between Kirk and the station controller that shows Shatner really shines with comedy as well and not in the self-effacing way he's shown in more recent shows.

Stanley Adams (no relation to Don) is perfectly cast as Jones.

The gag where tribbles hate Klingons is rather delightful.

On the down side, Koloth - who comes across as a newly introduced recurring villain (yet isn't) - is played for sheer stage presence by William Campbell, almost forgetting that Koloth != Trelane. Most of this is apparent when Campbell and Shatner are on screen at the same time, as my impression is that they were trying to one-up each other in terms of "hamming it up without going over the top". Can't blame them, as both sell it well and without going out of character.

Taking away the comedic aspects, there is something of a great story underfoot that also continues the Organian peace treaty as set up in season 1 (and referenced again indirectly in "Day of the Dove" from season 3). Had this episode been played out as a straight espionage affair, it might be that much better. But comedy is subjective and a lot more people adore the comedic aspect. Then again, smoking was wildly popular back then too. In other words, I don't what to believe.

 

Fistful of Datas

 

TNG "Conundrum"

 

DS9: It’s Only a Paper Moon

 

The Return of the Archons (TOS Blu-ray)

 

The Q and the Gray. Love the early scene... Janeway, W, and a bright red bed.

 

TNG - Deja Q

 

The Drumhead (ST:TNG)

 

(streaming) TOS - "By Any Other Name" C+/B- cusp

Spoiler: fluffy bunnies

The basic plot is surprisingly generic.and silly. Shatner and Nichols forget that the neutralizer should be affecting their eye muscles. Kirk assumes the belt devices are projecting from a central source, which thankfully is just as impenetrable as it is predictable. There's also a fourth wall joke when Rojan stiffs everybody, with McCoy's mouth open and hand gesture at Spock. It's chuckle-inducing, surprisingly.

For a band of aliens who couldn't survive the barrier and how the Enterprise barely did before, it seems to be a nonissue now - despite otherwise getting brownie points for verbal continuity referencing "A Taste of Armageddon". Other episodes also state the ship can tear itself apart if it goes too fast so just how many improvements would and could be made in such a short span of time to complement the engine modifications?

And for a band of aliens who puked up enough exposition about despising their human(oid?) shells even more utterly than the toddler that hates that broccoli floret for dinner, and the bodies' fragility and whine-whine-whine-whine-whine whine whine, they were all too happy to go Khan themselves back to the very planet they wanted to leave via hijacking any passing-by ship just to (re-)"conquer" it for themselves. Maybe the fish in the lake can pose them a threat that qualifies as a conquering condition more than a colonizing one, I suppose?

Plus, the make-up people forgot to apply the pasty flour tone to the Kelvins. (Only Hanar got pumped from McCoy with drugs, which were nothing more than a ruse to drive up his anxiety level and not to make him look like walking unbaked bread dough. And yet nary a Kelvin wondered about it.)

That said, the planet itself is very nicely realized with the plants and lighting and transcends its studio-bound limitation. The split-up tactics against the Kelvins are mostly fun (if not cheesy regarding Kirk), the continuity in Rojan picking up the psychedelic cubes and crushing the compacted crewmember to death is as spot on as his delivery of the lines of having Kirk watch them die... and it's nice that the Kelvins figured out what Scotty was itching to do since they knew what the energy barrier was about.

Also, the best line of the story caught me rather off guard despite my having seen this episode 4 times in almost as many decades before and never picking up on it:

The story is definitely worth a watch for the enjoyable set-pieces alone, but DC Fontana has definitely penned better. (And worse, but this one isn't worthy of her pseudonym accorded the truly horrid episodes that were rewritten to her dismay.)