50th Anniversary Rewatch Thread
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An anomaly inside an impossibility! Now what's that from?
JB
JB
Star Trek
"Return to Tomorrow"
Originally aired February 9, 1968
Stardate 4768.3
What was going on the week the episode aired.
Hey, Sulu's back!
Three weeks to get a message to Starfleet...that's how it should be. That's when space felt big!
Shatner gets a lot to chew on here while possessed by Sargon...the perfect role for his exaggerated acting style. Then of course there's Kirk's famous speech...
(Dammit, there's the joke I didn't come up with for last week's next week blurb...!)
Nimoy also gets a lot to do, too, playing the creepy villain. It's hard to invest in Muldaur, she does a good job but she's the Guest Object of the Week regardless of who's inhabiting Mulhall's body.
Sign o' the times: TV shows in this era love to reference the moon program, and here we get mention of the first Apollo mission to reach the moon. We'll be doing a manned orbit for the first time at the end of the year; and landing the middle of the next. One could pick nits with the phrasing, as neither was the "first" Apollo mission.
Henoch does the Vulcan Mind Trick: "This is the injection you're looking for." You'd think that Spock's injection would be different anyway, since it needs to keep a substantially different type of body alive...which would make it harder for Chapel to distinguish the difference in Kirk's injection, if each of the three was different.
Another nurse, and with a speaking role--can't say I ever noticed her before. This is the only role listed for Cindy Lou on IMDb. Oddly, her IMDb bio consists of TMI about one stage production that she was in, listing its cast and crew in minute detail.
It's odd that the default appearance of Thalassa's body is male. If the details are to be changed later, you think they'd start with something a little more neutral and go from there...or just create a female-shaped body for her in the first place.
We're getting some good little Chapel/Spock moments lately.
Next week...I don't know about the rest of you, but I hate these guys:
"Return to Tomorrow"
Originally aired February 9, 1968
Stardate 4768.3
MeTV said:
What was going on the week the episode aired.
Hey, Sulu's back!
Three weeks to get a message to Starfleet...that's how it should be. That's when space felt big!
Nimoy's doing Spock's greatest hits.Spock said:
Shatner gets a lot to chew on here while possessed by Sargon...the perfect role for his exaggerated acting style. Then of course there's Kirk's famous speech...
You could say...that's why we're a board here!That's what this forum is about, that's why we're aboard it!
(Dammit, there's the joke I didn't come up with for last week's next week blurb...!)
Nimoy also gets a lot to do, too, playing the creepy villain. It's hard to invest in Muldaur, she does a good job but she's the Guest Object of the Week regardless of who's inhabiting Mulhall's body.
Sign o' the times: TV shows in this era love to reference the moon program, and here we get mention of the first Apollo mission to reach the moon. We'll be doing a manned orbit for the first time at the end of the year; and landing the middle of the next. One could pick nits with the phrasing, as neither was the "first" Apollo mission.
Henoch does the Vulcan Mind Trick: "This is the injection you're looking for." You'd think that Spock's injection would be different anyway, since it needs to keep a substantially different type of body alive...which would make it harder for Chapel to distinguish the difference in Kirk's injection, if each of the three was different.
Another nurse, and with a speaking role--can't say I ever noticed her before. This is the only role listed for Cindy Lou on IMDb. Oddly, her IMDb bio consists of TMI about one stage production that she was in, listing its cast and crew in minute detail.
It's odd that the default appearance of Thalassa's body is male. If the details are to be changed later, you think they'd start with something a little more neutral and go from there...or just create a female-shaped body for her in the first place.
We're getting some good little Chapel/Spock moments lately.
Next week...I don't know about the rest of you, but I hate these guys:
Henoch was not only the bad guy but also an enemy from the other side in Sargon's conflict! It makes you wonder why his essence was stored in the chamber along with Sargon and Thalassa's!
JB
JB
Sargon covered that briefly when he introduced the Receptacle Formerly Known as Henoch. Sargon was obviously more of an idealist, while Henoch was an opportunist.
Of particular note was how Kirk and the others couldn't communicate while in the receptacles, but Kirk had the opportunity to go back to his body to help the others make their decision after touching Sargon's mind and knowing his sincerity...but Spock had no such opportunity after Henoch took his body, and must have been stewing there in that globe unable to tell anyone what bad news the guy in his body was.
Of particular note was how Kirk and the others couldn't communicate while in the receptacles, but Kirk had the opportunity to go back to his body to help the others make their decision after touching Sargon's mind and knowing his sincerity...but Spock had no such opportunity after Henoch took his body, and must have been stewing there in that globe unable to tell anyone what bad news the guy in his body was.
Return to Tomorrow is a good episode. For some reason, it is not one of my favorites, though. I do like Kirk's speech. "Risk is our business "always brings a smile to my face. I like Scotty smile at the end of the speech. I also like McCoy saying that he does not peddle flesh. Didn't James Doohan do the voice of Sargon? Sounds like it could be his voice. Diana Mulder is good in this episode. I would have liked to have seen her character return.
And Leslie. Which is worth noting as this is a post Obsession episode...
And had crap wi-fi...
Who else had crap wi-fi? Sargon's people, because if this is the first ship they've been able to reach in millennia, how did they communicate across interstellar space in the before times when they were planting turnips and Vulcans all over the Galaxy?
I like that the episode starts with the ancient aliens premise, but then immediately undercuts it with Mulhall saying that life on Earth evolved independently, though skeptical Spock isn't too sure about the Vulcans, showing first symptoms of his fascination with New Age mysticism which surely won't involve any jamming with hippies later on...
I guess for all the good guy act, Sargon was kind of racist since he picked the first two guys on the bridge, and then skipped over Uhura, and went all the way to the lower decks to pick Mulhall as an appropriate vessel for his wife. Also he picked Kirk for himself and the devilish looking Spock for his former enemy? Coincidence?
He clearly meant the first Apollo program, but got confused since it was a long time ago...
I think that was just Henoch making his point to steal the regular bodies to Thalassa, because what would be worse than being trapped in an android body for an eternity? Being trapped in an ugly dude's android body, obviously.
McCoy's generally pretty great in the episode, except the bit when he's "Jim's dead, he!" one second, and then the very next one it's "Not!"
Overall, it's an okay episode, decent, not great, it suffers a bit from Kirk's flailing pain-acting and absolutely no ambiguity about Henoch's nature, but evil Spock is fun so that's okay I guess.
Aside from the classic speech there's also the standard warning of "don't nuke yourselves, yo!", and the most important lesson of all being "a quick roll in the hay is better than an eternity of thinking about it while trapped in a glowing sphere."
Yeah, that was Jimmy as Sargon. He was a very good voice actor.
So, when Sargon and Thalassa go off into 'oblivion' together, is that the oblivion of non-existence, or just a incorporeal energy state?
The writer took his name off the script because of Roddenberry's negation of life after death. 'Oblivion' trashed his original message, but S&T didn't seem to mind the thought of it 'together'.
The writer took his name off the script because of Roddenberry's negation of life after death. 'Oblivion' trashed his original message, but S&T didn't seem to mind the thought of it 'together'.
I think the idea was that it was a Thelma & Louise type ending... going out together, not going on.
Star Trek
"Patterns of Force"
Originally aired February 16, 1968
Stardate 2534.0
What was going on the week the episode aired.
That's an unusually low Stardate for this season.
I have to wonder about a "beam us up at a certain time no matter what" order and the Prime Directive. To say nothing of the compression of events if going through the trouble of taking the transponders out to escape was the more practical option than waiting for the time limit to expire and letting themselves be beamed up.
The chances of the Ekosians developing to be so much like Nazis are fantastically slim? Yet they handwave away the Roman planet and the Yang/Kohm planet as "parallel development". This one and "Bread and Circuses" always reminded me a lot of each other, too. I always thought they were too close together in production order, and they're even closer in airdate order.
Granted, Gill's speech isn't terribly stirring, but it follows no logical pattern? Or were they simply trying to say that his (non-existent) lip movements didn't match what he was saying? The whole portrayal of drugged-up Gill always bugged me. They could have used a mannequin, he had so little movement and expression.
Next week...now there's a plan when most of the crew is scattered around the decks of the ship as easily crushable polyhedrons: Get Scotty raving drunk!
_______
"Patterns of Force"
Originally aired February 16, 1968
Stardate 2534.0
MeTV said:
What was going on the week the episode aired.
That's an unusually low Stardate for this season.
I have to wonder about a "beam us up at a certain time no matter what" order and the Prime Directive. To say nothing of the compression of events if going through the trouble of taking the transponders out to escape was the more practical option than waiting for the time limit to expire and letting themselves be beamed up.
The chances of the Ekosians developing to be so much like Nazis are fantastically slim? Yet they handwave away the Roman planet and the Yang/Kohm planet as "parallel development". This one and "Bread and Circuses" always reminded me a lot of each other, too. I always thought they were too close together in production order, and they're even closer in airdate order.
Granted, Gill's speech isn't terribly stirring, but it follows no logical pattern? Or were they simply trying to say that his (non-existent) lip movements didn't match what he was saying? The whole portrayal of drugged-up Gill always bugged me. They could have used a mannequin, he had so little movement and expression.
Next week...now there's a plan when most of the crew is scattered around the decks of the ship as easily crushable polyhedrons: Get Scotty raving drunk!
_______
It wasn't mentioned in the episode, not sure what the source for it is.
So Federation's most brilliant historian figures that the best thing for the universe is more Nazis in it? Spock even praises him for his focus on "causes and motivations" rather than "names and dates." Now I don't know what education was like in the US in the 60s, or on Vulcan in the future, but names and dates weren't the focus in elementary school history even when I went to school. Anyway, for a guy with a deep understanding of causes and motivations he really had a blind spot for Nazis apparently...
Speaking of history, Spock also goes through a long list of wannabe rulers of Earth there, no mention of Khan, instead the fictional future conqueror Lee Kuan is mentioned.
Chairman Eneg is obviously Gene backwards, and he turns out to be a "good guy" in the end, but for most of the episode he's a mini-Hitler, so I'm not exactly sure what comment was being made on the character of our beloved creator.
It's a somewhat tone-deaf episode, it's mostly comical in nature, with Kirk and Spock getting captured and escaping MacGyver style while they play Pokemon with collecting all the Nazi uniforms, it just pays lip service to the Holocaust which is here just as a cheap peril element, and is concluded with a comment that the "good" Nazis will be a fine addition to the Federation.
Since it's probably for the best not to overanalyze this one, I think the most important question would be... is this the only episode where Spock is topless?
Good question. I got it off Wiki and hadn't noticed it wasn't in the episode. Memory Alpha says that it came from the Star Trek Concordance.
IIRC, it was in the context of Earth's history being bloody and violent, so that kind of makes sense, as they'd said that there'd been no massacres under Khan's rule. Lee Kuan could have been one of the other supermen who was known for massacres (as Khan was being sold as an exception in that department).
To be fair, WWII shows and films had been pretty popular in the '60s (though that was changing by this point, along with public perception of Vietnam)...and a popular sitcom that was also on the air at the time was about the wacky antics of a bunch of POWs in a German prison camp. In any discussion of the appropriateness of such depictions of WWII, it's worth noting that the TV of the time was being made by people who actually lived through the war.It's a somewhat tone-deaf episode, it's mostly comical in nature, with Kirk and Spock getting captured and escaping MacGyver style while they play Pokemon with collecting all the Nazi uniforms, it just pays lip service to the Holocaust which is here just as a cheap peril element, and is concluded with a comment that the "good" Nazis will be a fine addition to the Federation.
Yes, at the time of this ep, WWII was more recent for everyone than, say, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait is for us now.
[QUOTE="dodge, post: 12370744, member: 2385"
Since it's probably for the best not to overanalyze this one, I think the most important question would be... is this the only episode where Spock is topless?[/QUOTE]
It was - so unfair.
Even in the TAS episode where he was turned into an amphibian he was still fully dressed.When he got shot in the chest or stabbed with thorns he still kept his shirt on. Shatners top was off at the drop of a hat.
Since it's probably for the best not to overanalyze this one, I think the most important question would be... is this the only episode where Spock is topless?
[/QUOTE]It was - so unfair.
Even in the TAS episode where he was turned into an amphibian he was still fully dressed.When he got shot in the chest or stabbed with thorns he still kept his shirt on. Shatners top was off at the drop of a hat.
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