50th Anniversary Rewatch Thread

Catspaw. An ok episode. Funny to see the Davy Jones wig on Checkov. I wish Desalle would have appeared in more episodes. He was a good character. Theo Marcuse and Antoinette Bower were good guest stars. Interesting fact that I did not know until this year; Theo Marcuse died shortly after making this episode, car accident. He was only 47 years old. This is kind of similar to actor Frank Overton who appeared in This Side of Paradise dying shortly after making that episode earlier in the year. I always get a kick out of Spock telling Kirk to not let Antoinette Bower touch the wand. "Don't let her touch the wand, Captain." Sounds like a Roddenberry suggestion.

 

"I, Mudd", Episode 37, November 3rd

Tonight's Episode: A timely sequel to Discovery's "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad".

 

Watched Amok Time last night. One of my favorites. However, did you ever wonder why Spock's parents aren't present at his koon-ut-kal-if-fee? Shouldn't they have been there?

 

Real-life reason: "Journey to Babel," the episode that introduced Sarek and Amanda, was filmed more than three months after "Amok Time."

The in-universe reason can be . . . whatever you want it to be.

 

Well, there is that of course but you'd think it would have been handled a little bit more logically by the producers. On the other hand, the original series placed story higher in importance than continuity, which is why stories often featured things in one episode and never seen again. You have to wonder though if anyone on set ever mentioned the oddness of an episode featuring Spock's potential wedding and his parents weren't even there.

 

It's quite possible they thought about it, but decided not to cram another thing in the episode and save it for later instead, because if you do have Spock's parents there, then you kinda have to spend some time on them, and that way there wouldn't be enough time for Kirk to get his shirt torn

 

Maybe parents don't attend. I didn't see T'Pring's parents there either.
Just because parents attend Earth weddings doesn't mean its a Vulcan ritual. They're supposed to be alien and different.
Spock is also estranged from his parents, so maybe that another reason they don't attend.
Also if fights to the death may happen or other suspect behaviour you wouldn't want to be a parent looking on.

But I agree with you probably the real reason is there isn't time

 

Hey, don't compare me to that Charlie wimp.

 

"I, Mudd" has Harry try to steal the Enterprise, and let the androids take over the galaxy. Discovery had him try to steal the ship and sell it to the Klingons, who want to take over the galaxy. Seems likes he's up to his same old tricks no matter which way you look at it.

 

That makes some sense. It's a reasonable explanation

Yeah, probably too much for a single episode. Would have made an interesting two parter.

All of that is also reasonable as speculation. Still doesn't explain why they never even address the absence of parents. It's like Vulcan parents don't even exist for the purposes of this episode. Certainly, McCoy would have looked around and said something to the effect of, "Are your parents here? Point them out to me." That would have been in character but they simply ignore all of that. That just reinforces to me that the story in TOS trumped any type of continuity considerations.

 

Harry Mudd... if only he'd been born a century later, he would have made an excellent Federation ambassador to the Ferengi Alliance. Alas, he's reduced to life of petty crime, and the honored distinction of being the first recurring character on Star Trek(outside of crew bit parts, of course).

Chekov got a haircut since last week, and reminisces about Leningrad, proving that the future belongs to communism, comrades!

This is the second planetful of androids, making Data's uniqueness decidedly un-unique.

They're also "from another galaxy"... did they have some sort of mandate to use the word galaxy often because it sounds spacey? Because from other episodes it's very obvious that our very own galaxy is still severely under-explored, so I'm puzzled by how many times this very improbable and completely irrelevant to the plot statement is made.

As opposed to the usual "pure logic" approach to blowing up a computer, Kirk opts for Monty Python's "confuse a cat" method this time, to hilarious results.

Overall a very fun episode, with snappy dialogue and fun hijinks, and yeah, like the previous Mudd installment, this one also keeps the sexism on baseline '60s levels with the shrew wife and appeals to eternal beauty that are meant to be an incentive for Uhura to stay, while Bones gets a lab FOR SCIENCE! (women get to look pretty, men get science, it is known!) but at least this time it's the funny sexism, so... yay?

Mudd's Women was bleh, but this episode made Mudd way more entertaining. Still, when it was announced that Mudd would be appearing on Discovery my initial reaction was "Really?", but I've enjoyed both episode he was in, so Discovery has improved his batting average even further, at least in my book.

 

"I am not programmed to respond in that area."

 

I Mudd is a fun episode. It has the light airy music that tells us that it is a comedy episode. It seems that the writers finally got how to use Roger C. Carmel as Harry Mudd. Go all out in the comedy arena. Mudd's Women is a little more serious. I like this episode much better. I speculate that George Takei was filming the movie The Green Berets this week. He briefly appears at the beginning of the episode and then mysteriously is the only one of the big seven who is not chosen to go down to the planet.

 

The androids beamed the entire crew down, maybe Sulu was keeping an eye on the other 400 of them

 

Don't forget that she played an alien to Jason Evers' human in Code:Red, the second season opener of The Invaders as well!
JB