Production Order Group Viewing 2018

[johnnybear]

I don't think that the inhabitants of Eminiar 7 are clones at all! Mea seemed quite disturbed that she was to report to a disintegration chamber and told Kirk that her life was as dear to her as his was to him! Although a clone probably wouldn't realise it was a clone it did seem to be a world where families 'did the right thing' like the people enlisting to fight in one of the many ludicrous wars on the earth in the first sixty odd years of the twentieth century!
JB

 

[Mytran]

A clone is still a person, with their own drives and ambitions.
Indeed, it seems that they have quite a large pool of potential clones to choose from, since despite the war going on for centuries they're only up to Mea-3 and Anan-7

 

[Marsden]

A clone is still a person, with their own drives and ambitions.
Indeed, it seems that they have quite a large pool of potential clones to choose from, since despite the war going on for centuries they're only up to Mea-3 and Anan-7

That's a good point but we don't know how long these people live, either. Maybe the normal lifespan is 250 years.

It's great there's still so much to discuss about Star Trek.

 

[The Old Mixer]

That could just be their society's version of a last name. Carry on the parent's name, add one to the number.

 

[Poltargyst]

This Side of Paradise (aka Day of the Triffids)

Navigator of the Week: Mr. Painter! I wonder if some day they'll have a permanent navigator.

Oooh, Spock had a girlfriend. You can tell by the soft romantic music.

Interesting. I wonder how many animals the settlers brought with them and how they did it. Imagine a herd of cattle on a starship for a year.

Actually, Spock's heart is down and to the side. Silly Leila.

So Kirk tells Sulu and McCoy to oversee the landing party's rounding up of the colonists to beam up, but how did they convince the colonists to beam up? If it came to it, would Kirk have the colonists stunned and forcibly removed to the Enterprise?

Huh. McCoy had authority over the landing party. Because he is a Lt. Cmdr? So his rank does extend outside of Sickbay.

Why isn't Kirk affected when Sulu and DeSalle are? Oh! Because he's angry!

How did Kirk get back to the Enterprise? Since he says you can't beam up without someone on the ship beaming you up, there must have been someone left up there to do it. I think communicators should have the ability to initiate the ship's transporter from the planet.

Could Kirk contact Starfleet using a shuttlecraft's radio?

Once again, Kirk resists an alien influence because of love of Enterprise.

Spock: "I have a responsibility to the ship." Not to mention a wife on Vulcan.

Risky plan to get the crew back. Someone could have been killed in all the fighting. I like how the young crewmen are throwing punches left and right, wrestling around on the ground, and the old guys McCoy and Sanduval are impolite to each other and McCoy throws one punch.

McCoy decked someone!

There's that theme again. Humans are not supposed to be happy doing nothing. Humans are supposed to suffer while making progress.

Aw, poor Spock. That last line gets me right here. *putting hand below my left armpit*

Shawnster, be sure to start a Spock Love Meter.

Alien Watch! No new aliens unless I count the Triffids. Should I? I did count Gertrude. Decisions, decisions. Heh.

Talosians
That big ugly Rigellian guy Pike fought in illusion
Vina as an Orion girl in illusion
Glimpse of other aliens captured by Talosians
Ron Howard's brother
That dog from Enemy Within
Salt monster
That hand plant...Gertrude
Spock (duh)
Charlie's parents (Thasians)*
Romulans!
(Ruk)
Miri's planet kids (bonk bonk)
Giant ape creatures of Taurus II
Shore Leave Caretaker guy
Trelaine and his folks*
Gorn
Metrons*
The Lazerii
The remarkably human-looking aliens of Beta 3. (RotA)
The remarkably human-looking aliens of Emineminar VII (AToA)
The Triffids of Omicron Ceti III (TSoP)

*Alien Watch sublist: omnipotent aliens!

 

[Pauln6]

What a shame this episode missed the perfect opportunity for Uhura and Rand to have a brutal pillow fight.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Remarkably human looking aliens should be a sublist.

 

[Poltargyst]

Remarkably human looking aliens should be a sublist.

Hmmmmm.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

I have some confusion about the number of colonists living on the planet in 2267. There were 150 colonists, divided into three settlements, with 45 going to Sandoval's settlement. When asked about the colonists, Sandoval uses the present verb tense, indicating those settlements are still active. Later, we learn later that there are 500 crew and colonists. Assuming there are 430 personnel aboard the starship, there are 70 colonists. What happen to the other 80 colonists? Acocrding to the Star Trek Encyclopedia, the other two settlements did not survive.

 

[Mytran]

This episode is another solid offering. Kirk's non-regulation poetry at the end (Starfleet really have regs for POETRY???) really sums up the message; mankind needs challenge, it’s not enough just to survive.

This episode also sums up just how beholden Kirk is to his ship and to the Star Service: Presented with paradise and while preparing to leave the ship forever, he packs a case of STARFLEET UNIFORMS!

I have some confusion about the number of colonists living on the planet in 2267. There were 150 colonists, divided into three settlements, with 45 going to Sandoval's settlement. When asked about the colonists, Sandoval uses the present verb tense, indicating those settlements are still active. Later, we learn later that there are 500 crew and colonists. Assuming there are 430 personnel aboard the starship, there are 70 colonists. What happen to the other 80 colonists? Acocrding to the Star Trek Encyclopedia, the other two settlements did not survive.

Yeeks, that's a grim interpretation!

Actually, what Spock said is that there were "over 500 crewmen and colonists", so the STE's figures don't add up - the total would be around 485. It would also mean that the spore plants happened to only grow in the exact same spot that Sandoval's colony decided upon, and nowhere else on the whole planet!

IMO, given Starfleet's bizarre insistence that the Enterprise even bother to visit Omicron Ceti III (the colonists ought to have been dead for 3 years) it is not beyond the realms of possibility that several dozen of the less essential crew disembarked on Starbase 27, in order to accommodate the 150 colonists on board.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

This episode also sums up just how beholden Kirk is to his ship and to the Star Service: Presented with paradise and while preparing to leave the ship forever, he packs a case of STARFLEET UNIFORMS!

He doesn't want to remain any longer than necessary, even to replicate casual clothing. Or (which is more likely) he has the "leave the ship temporarily" routine down pat, and does it by rote, taking personal belongings, however tied to his duty that they are, not stripping the ship for useful items the colonists can use, which would have been better in the long run. Some part of him knows he isn't staying, why ever he's even going at all.

 

[johnnybear]

Maybe the cattle were left in the transporter beams? That way they wouldn't have suffered in the ship during the journey although there is some reference to not knowing how long an animal organism could survive as a stream of molecules in such a device!
JB

 

[Mytran]

I doubt that a colony ship 10-20 times slower than the Enterprise would have the resources for such a prolonged and energy intensive task

BTW, the reference you are thinking of is probably from The Gamesters Of Triskelion

SPOCK: They are not within the confines of this solar system.
MCCOY: It's been nearly an hour. Can people live that long as disassembled atoms in a transporter beam?
SPOCK: I have never heard of a study being done, but it would be a fascinating project.

 

[Poltargyst]

Devil in the Dark

One of my favs!

Can't these miners post guards in pairs?

It's a horror story! There's a monster on the loose!

"Schmitter, like the rest of them, burned to a crisp." Yeah, and it's your fault.

"Describe it" "It looks like a shuffling pizza!"

How could the creature possibly know how the plant works well enough to know to take the pump and even where the pump is? How did she take it without hands?

Spock knows the answer as soon as he sees the silicon nodule, but he decides to fuck with us the entire episode and not tell us. It's actually Kirk that finally says it first.

Maybe they should just beam the miners up to the ship until this is over.

Can't Kirk deploy guards in pairs?

Look, I'm sorry, but the Horta is AWESOME. Wah wah wah, poor special effects wah wah wah. I don't care, the Horta is awesome. And so is the Gorn.

"This creature's body secretes an extremely powerful corrosive." (So maybe Kirk shouldn't be holding the part he blasted off.)

Weird how it keeps throbbing while Kirk holds it.

"If it bleeds, we can kill it."

Security DOES have a department chief.

How could Spock possibly calculate the odds of anything to such precision? He doesn't know all the variables.

Kirk, as the Horta approaches: "Oh crap."

Heh. "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer." Is there a list somewhere of all the things McCoy is not?

Great acting by Nimoy. I totally buy that he's in agony. I mean he's playing to a silly prop!

Guess you were wrong about the whole "silicon based life forms are impossible" thing, huh, McCoy?

Dumbass miners assaulting Starfleet officers. I hope charges were brought.

Classic Star Trek message. Usually in monster movies the monster must be killed. This episode turns that trope on it's head. From her point of view, WE'RE the monsters. But we talk to the monster, find out its point of view, come to a mutual understanding. Give peace a chance. Oh, it makes me happy all over.

Am I correct that there is a book in which a Horta serves on a starship? I love Hortas, but I think that's silly. (No offense to the resident authors if that was yours).

Alien Watch! A new refreshingly non-human-looking alien!

Talosians
That big ugly Rigellian guy Pike fought in illusion
Vina as an Orion girl in illusion
Glimpse of other aliens captured by Talosians
Ron Howard's brother
That dog from Enemy Within
Salt monster
That hand plant...Gertrude
Spock (duh)
Charlie's parents (Thasians)*
Romulans!
(Ruk)
Miri's planet kids (bonk bonk)
Giant ape creatures of Taurus II
Shore Leave Caretaker guy
Trelaine and his folks*
Gorn
Metrons*
The Lazerii
The remarkably human-looking aliens of Beta 3. (RotA)
The remarkably human-looking aliens of Emineminar VII (AToA)
The Triffids of Omicron Ceti III (TSoP)
The refreshingly non-human-looking Horta

*Alien Watch sublist: omnipotent aliens!

 

[mb22]

Heh. "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer." Is there a list somewhere of all the things McCoy is not?

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/I'm_a_doctor,_not_a...

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Weird how it keeps throbbing while Kirk holds it.

The same kind of effect was used in "The Cage" to make veins throb in the Talosian's heads. It has to do with a hidden rubber tube and a (probably) hand-operated air pump that's out of frame. I'd love to see the actual thing they used, but such a picture might not exist.

 

[johnnybear]

I think a lot of Star Trek's monsters and aliens were pretty gruesome or at least unsettling to look at when we were children! Unlike the later shows where we know it's just a guy we've seen before with the remnants of a pizza on his head or a ridge or bump on the bridge of his nose!
JB

 

[Pauln6]

This is one of my favorites too. The trope has been used so often since but it was really effective here. I agree that Spock's reluctance to commit himself to his theory with lives at stake drags the story down a bit. I would have liked to see the ship's zoologist or astrobiologist considering the creature's behaviour to pad things out rather than Spock just umming and arring.

The possibility of silicon based life is entirely plausible even if its exact form or ability to produce corrosive acid might be a surprise to them so some of their shock at the prospect feels misplaced .

Nine crewmen and umpteen miners and not a woman among them (except the horta - you go girl)? This is probably my biggest beef with the episode - it underscores the casually blatant sexism of TOS without even trying.

I noticed that we have the security chief, two lieutenants, and three ensigns/enlisted. I assumed the more senior officers would each take a junior in hand but all three officers stick together while letting the others wander off to die. No wonder we never see Giotto again he looks so risk averse he probably never leaves his office without an officer escort.

 

[Roundabout]

I noticed that we have the security chief, two lieutenants, and three ensigns/enlisted. I assumed the more senior officers would each take a junior in hand but all three officers stick together while letting the others wander off to die. No wonder we never see Gaetano again he looks so risk averse he probably never leaves his office without an officer escort.

What I did notice about one particular security officer was his incredible rise through the ranks of Starfleet.

Giotto -- aka Wesley -- went from a red shirt security guy ...

… to a gold-yellow shirt commodore in the span of just one season

.

 

[Pauln6]

What I did notice about one particular security officer was his incredible rise through the ranks of Starfleet.

Giotto -- aka Wesley -- went from a red shirt security guy ...

… to a gold-yellow shirt commodore in the span of just one season

.

Oh ok. He went into the witness protection programme ?