Operation Annihilate

[Trekfan12]

I decided to watch this episode, it's one of my faves. But there are some holes in it (like I think most episodes have) Like just prior to Spock being attacked by the creature, he suggested they risk taking a specimen on board so they could analyze it on the ship. Kirk says it could be a trap and they leave and Spock is attacked. Later, when Spock is in the transporter room, he said they didn't get an opportunity to collect a specimen. I thought "well yeah, you did. Just before you were attacked."
with 14 science labs on board, none of them could have determined that one property the sun has is light. That light could kill them. And then when Spock is subjected to the full spectrum of light and is blinded, why did they not take the time to wait until the specimen was examined and determined to have died from a light we can't see (like ultraviolet) Of course this episode gave us the chance to discover that due to the brightness of the Vulcan sun, Vulcans have developed an inner eyelid to protect them from bright light.
It's still one of my fave episodes. This is just some of my pet peeves. I only wish they had shown Kirk's nephew, that they interacted and found out where he was going to live. maybe find out about other relatives that Kirk has out there.

 

[Trekfan12]

oh yes, and why was anyone surprised that Spock was blinded by that bright light? Kirk got mad at McCoy but Spock agreed to it and so did Kirk, that Spock should be put under that bright light. With no protective goggles.

 

[Spock's Barber]

I watched it again just a few days ago. It's one of my 50/50 episodes. I don't love it, nor do I hate it. The location shooting at the former TRW headquarters and UCLA campus was cool.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Like just prior to Spock being attacked by the creature, he suggested they risk taking a specimen on board so they could analyze it on the ship. Kirk says it could be a trap and they leave and Spock is attacked. Later, when Spock is in the transporter room, he said they didn't get an opportunity to collect a specimen. I thought "well yeah, you did. Just before you were attacked."

No successful opportunity. No chance when the things were not attacking.

with 14 science labs on board, none of them could have determined that one property the sun has is light.

Dismissed for being too obvious? Everybody has a blind spot, sometimes we miss what's right in front of us.

This is just some of my pet peeves. I only wish they had shown Kirk's nephew, that they interacted and found out where he was going to live. maybe find out about other relatives that Kirk has out there.

Maybe they could have done a better version of the deleted scene. One with Kirk visiting his bedside as he recuperates, or actually showing the people who came to take him in beaming off the Enterprise after meeting Peter.

@1001001 the TOS rewatch thread is also discussing this episode now, maybe merge this with it...

 

[scotpens]

I watched it again just a few days ago. It's one of my 50/50 episodes. I don't love it, nor do I hate it. The location shooting at the former TRW headquarters and UCLA campus was cool.

There wasn't any actual location shooting at the UCLA campus -- just one brief stock shot of the music building.

 

[Spock's Barber]

There wasn't any actual location shooting at the UCLA campus -- just one brief stock shot of the music building.

Schoenberg Hall

 

[Pauln6]

It's all Chapel's fault. She's the bio-medical researcher but she left an old country doctor in charge.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

She's the bio-medical reacher ...

No wonder Spock was uncomfortable around her.

 

[Pauln6]

No wonder Spock was uncomfortable around her.

Autospell will probably be the cause of world war three the way Trump is going.

 

[Timo]

The reason McCoy and Spock agreed to testing the full range of parameters all at once without pre-filtering anything was because Kirk told them they were in a hurry. But why did Kirk think there should be a hurry?

The people down below weren't in any sort of escalating distress: they would only be in pain if they tried to resist the flying pancakes, and surely they would have learned not to do that by then. Kirk could just stop provoking the pancakes until he had a working weapon against them - say, a few years from now.

Kirk also seemed to fear the pancakes would build ships and escape Deneva that way. Surely that's nonsense. Even if the planet did have appreciable building capacity (and indications were it was a has-been world, all but forgotten by the Federation and only doing some sustenance mining at the local asteroids) Kirk would be eminently capable of shooting down any escaping ships, or bombarding the shipyards in all sorts of manners nonlethal to the slaves building those ships. Although he did say he was ready to kill millions (which is more than the total population of the planet).

On the other hand, if the Denevans could build ships, why was Kirk worried about them? The pancake plague had been spreading from world to world already, and every single planet along the route would be a potential brancing point for the expansion. Surely warning Starfleet about the far greater danger of Ingraham B, under pancake control for two years already, should be a priority beyond watching over Deneva?

No actual harm in hurrying, of course. Beyond making your XO blind, that is. Perhaps Kirk indeed was minding the problem of pancake-built ships already littering the universe, and the need to go chase after all of them ASAP?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

Prior to the movie ALIEN--the parasite is one of the sicker things we see in space.

 

[Commander Luskeen]

sub-par episode that tries to one-up the tragedy of City on the Edge of Forever but fails

 

[IMC Headquarters]

They close the episode with a joke about Spock's ears, but completely ignore young Peter Kirk's recent status as orphan. Does Uncle Jim show him around the galaxy? Or drop him off at earliest opportunity?

 

[Steven P Bastien]

How does the bright sunlight get into a person's body to kill the organisms inside the body?

 

[johnnybear]

Light is a form of radiation and as we know radiation can penetrate the human body, Bas!
JB

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

The organisms left their SPF 500,000 sunscreen at home.

Perhaps the Vitamin D production stimulated by the light also helped?

 

[Steven P Bastien]

So, I guess it's X-rays or gamma rays, or maybe a high-frequency UV. This makes Bones look really stupid. If that first guy who crashed into the sun was cured by the solar radiation, it would have to be radiation that penetrates the ship and human tissue. Clearly, the blinding white light was not needed from the very first.

Well, it's the usual problems with some sci-fi, It's more fi than sci, and a lack of deep thinking by the writers.

 

[Herbert]

So, I guess it's X-rays or gamma rays, or maybe a high-frequency UV. This makes Bones look really stupid. If that first guy who crashed into the sun was cured by the solar radiation, it would have to be radiation that penetrates the ship and human tissue. Clearly, the blinding white light was not needed from the very first.

Well, it's the usual problems with some sci-fi, It's more fi than sci, and a lack of deep thinking by the writers.

To quote, Admiral Aaron in the Next Gen episode, Conspiracy, "more dramatic that way, don't you think?"

 

[Timo]

So, I guess it's X-rays or gamma rays, or maybe a high-frequency UV. This makes Bones look really stupid. If that first guy who crashed into the sun was cured by the solar radiation, it would have to be radiation that penetrates the ship and human tissue. Clearly, the blinding white light was not needed from the very first.

But surely "blinding white light" is the very definition of "radiation that penetrates the ship"? That is, it's likely to be one of the very few things that would. McCoy is looking for something that is nonlethal to humans, but is still lethal to at least the creatures; starships would tend to keep basically everything outside in case it happens to be a hazard to humans, but visible light is an, ahem, glaring exception.

The mechanism by which the light evicts the pancakes is ultimately indirect anyway. It's not the energies of hard UV that burn the beasts away, because that would mean turning the host to crisp first. Most probably, a harmless stimulus the host body receives (via the eyes, apparently) is transmitted to the parasite and irritates it to an early grave - and the specific irritant happens to be a certain band of UV light that has no lethal qualities to humans in itself, and may in fact be harmless to the bodies of the pancakes as well (even though they additionally fry in direct sunlight).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Perhaps UV fries the connection between the creatures and their hosts and make them unable to do so - a pancake EMP of sorts.