Episode of the Week : Obsession

[johnnybear]

I gave it a ten because I thought it was a great episode! The only fault is like Crazy Matt has already stated, Kirk is 'obsessed' in destroying the creature and asvenging the crew of his former captain just like Matt Decker was in The Doomsday Machine! Shat should have remembered his lines there, We're stronger with you than without you! Apart from that it's a cracker of a show!
JB

 

[feek61]

Anyone else think the Chapel/Garrovick scene was a De Kelley scene with the name McCoy scrubbed out to get Barrett into the show?

Every word she says sounds like McCoy to me.

I never thought that about the Chapel/Garrovick scene (Chapel was great here) but I do think that about some of Scotty's lines regarding the medicine transfer. It seemed that some of his lines would have been more suited for McCoy.

 

[Harvey]

Anyone else think the Chapel/Garrovick scene was a De Kelley scene with the name McCoy scrubbed out to get Barrett into the show?

Every word she says sounds like McCoy to me.

I never thought that about the Chapel/Garrovick scene (Chapel was great here) but I do think that about some of Scotty's lines regarding the medicine transfer. It seemed that some of his lines would have been more suited for McCoy.

I haven't looked at the various drafts, but I wonder if some of this might be the result of John Meredyth Lucas being fairly new to the staff. He had written "The Changeling" already, of course, but "Obsession" was the first script he did a rewrite on (I think; I'd have to check to be sure).

 

[Timo]

Why move the bomb?

Ignoring the dramatic need to exploit the set and to set up the plot complication, we can play games with the body language. Our heroes beam down, take a casual look around, and then start walking with the bomb towards an arbitrary-seeming direction. They scan a bit to the left and right, but mostly just forward. Then they stop, take a good long look all around, and start arming the bomb.

The intent no doubt was just to show the heroes were afraid of the beast appearing from behind a rock. But it's more consistent with the heroes searching for a direction in which to proceed according to some technical criteria, then deciding that this is the place that fits the bill. Note that Kirk never overtly indicates this should be the way to go - it seems instead that both officers equally probe the terrain for an optimal course.

So I'll go with the "Starfleet regulations call for setting up an antimatter bomb in a fashion that initially channels the explosion suitably, making use of local terrain" excuse; where the bait would lay in respect to the bomb is immaterial, as long as there isn't a hundred-kilometer separation between them. And the cloud just was too quick an eater for our slow-acting heroes...

Timo Saloniemi