Production Order Group Viewing 2018

[Pauln6]

Kirk also says that he senses that the dikronium cloud creature is "evil" and that he senses an intelligence about it. I have no problems with its elimination.

Yeah, I have no problem where they end up - we don't want them to retread the same ground but the episode is called Obsession. The point is meant to be that Kirk's reasoning is skewed by his past experience. His past experiences of not jumping to conclusions in Corbomite or Devil or Arena could also have been brought in by interaction with other characters.

 

[johnnybear]

The differences are that the Cloud Creature had murdered the crew of the USS Farragut including Kirk's Captain, a man he looked up to as a young Lieutenant! The Gorn had destroyed the outpost at Cestus Three and Kirk did pursue the vessel into uncharted space for revenge as Spock said but events turned out that it was all a mistake and not an invasion of Federation space as had been originally thought! The Devil in The Dark was also a problem solved by Spock's mind meld but even before that Kirk couldn't bring himself to kill the Horta, maybe he could sense it's great pain and predicament as well?
JB

 

[Phaser Two]

Yeah, I have no problem where they end up - we don't want them to retread the same ground but the episode is called Obsession. The point is meant to be that Kirk's reasoning is skewed by his past experience. His past experiences of not jumping to conclusions in Corbomite or Devil or Arena could also have been brought in by interaction with other characters.

Hmm, not sure. I think JB has it right. Kirk absolutely does jump to conclusions in Arena; it takes the Metrons' entire play to convince him otherwise. He shows more restraint in Corbomite and DITD as you point out, but an entire colony is destroyed in Arena and he's after revenge of a sort in Obsession.

 

[Pauln6]

Hmm, not sure. I think JB has it right. Kirk absolutely does jump to conclusions in Arena; it takes the Metrons' entire play to convince him otherwise. He shows more restraint in Corbomite and DITD as you point out, but an entire colony is destroyed in Arena and he's after revenge of a sort in Obsession.

Yes I agree. But what I mean is, in Arena, his pre-conceptions are challenged by others, leading to an epiphany. There is an epiphany of sorts in Obsession, but it's only, let's find a different way to kill it. It would have been cool if they had considered a few more alternative non-lethal options even if they failed or were rejected for valid reasons. They tried to capture the Salt vampire before being forced to kill it for example.

Admittedly, in TNG, they would have come up with some techno-bull half way through which went wrong somehow and led to disaster, while TOS was techno-lite. Maybe that's what I'm thinking about.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The epiphany in "Obsession" is when Kirk stops punishing Garrovick and himself for failing to destroy the creature.

 

[johnnybear]

I wonder if Kirk really did put Garrovick on report when they got back to the Enterprise later on?
JB

 

[Poltargyst]

The Immunity Syndrome

As a kid in the 70's, I loved monster movies. I watched all the Godzilla movies I could, all the horror movies, all the Sci Fi movies, all the monster movies I could. I love Doomsday Machine, Obsession, and Immunity Syndrome, three "monster" episodes that have similarities including the musical score. Each gives us edge of your seat action. It's exciting!

And Kirk is wearing the wraparound! I swear, gun to my head, prior to this rewatch, if you had asked me in how many episodes does Kirk wear the wraparound, I would have said no more than a few.

Spock feels a great disturbance in the Force, as if 400 Vulcans suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Did Lucas steal from this scene?

Interesting directoral choices, the reaction shots we keep getting of everyone. But do we need to keep seeing that Uhura is tired?

Nice to see other blue-clad medical personnel. Sometimes I wonder if McCoy and Chapel are the only ones working in Sickbay.

Didn't Spock make some comment about a conqueror of Vulcan at one point?

It's a giant ameba! With Doomsday Machine music! That is awesome! You know when they bust out the Doomsday Machine music, it's serious.

11,000 miles long. Day-um.

A 2 hour deadline? They keep writing these little (often unnecessary in my opinion) deadlines into these stories to build the drama, but it can also feel unrealistic that so much happens in so little time.

This week in McCoy is a Dick: "You're determined not to let me share in this." Leonard. Spock, for all you or he knows, is going to his death. This isn't about you. McCoy really irritates me this rewatch.

Like last week we must kill the monster before it reproduces. Then we'd have hundreds of little thousands-mile-long tykes running around, and they're not as friendly as Hortas.

Must be so hard for Kirk to be sitting there going about his duties knowing that he's just sent Spock to die.

"An-ti-bod-ies", while slapping McCoy's face is funny.

Kirk: "Point blank range." (I'm going to ram 'er right down that thing's throat). Kirk likes to get up close and personal with the space monsters he's going to blow up.

What is with Kirk repeatedly calling Kyle "Cowl"? It's like he's affecting some kind of southern drawl or something.

Clever idea using antimatter to destroy the thing. That's about as tecnobabbly as TOS gets. See, this is another reason I like TOS more than TNG. In TNG Data and Geordi would be like "Captain, we could reverse polarity of the positronic wave disruptors and send a stream of tachyon particles through a non-linear matrix stream, and..." Holy crap. Kirk would be like "what the hell are you guys talking about?" In TOS, we shoot the thing with antimatter and run away. Simple!

Everyone loves this exchange, and I do too:

"Shut up, Spock, we're rescuing you."

::McCoy and Kirk give their head nods::

"Why thank you, CAPTAIN McCoy."

Too fun.

It must have been a riot to film these scenes of something rocking the ship. "Okay, on three, everyone fall all over the place!" At one point, Chekov falls out of his seat, gets back up, almost gets back into his seat, then falls away again. Nice ad-libbing, Koenig.

So the reason the Intrepid died but the Enterprise survived is dumb luck? The ameba happened to be hungry when the Intrepid came along, but having already munched on it, the ameba wasn't as hungry when the Enterprise came along?

Too bad we couldn't have seen life aboard the Intrepid. Maybe an episode where Kirk, or, God forbid, McCoy have to spend time on the Intrepid with the Vulcans. Oh what they could have done with a bigger budget.

Fun episode!

Alien Watch! Do I need to say it? IT'S A BIG FREAKIN' AMEBA!!!!!!!!

Season 1
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
Organians*
Klingons! (Remarkably human looking).
(The Guardian of Forever)
Flying pancakes

Season 2
Sylvia and Korob
The Companion
The remarkably human looking (though tall) Cappellans.
Native Pollux IV-ians (Apollo and his gang)
Full-blooded Vulcans
The remarkably human looking citizens of Argelius II (WitF)
Redjac
The People of Vaal (Gamma Triangulians)
Crew of the ISS Enterprise
The remarkably human-looking** (except for maybe a dot on their forehead) Halkans
Tribbles (not at all human looking)
The remarkably human-looking citizens of...892-VI. Is that what they call this planet? (The Roman one.)
Tall guys, short guys, Andorians, Tellurites, purple lady, Orion made up like an Andorian. (JtB)
The remarkably human-looking people of Neural. (APLW)
The awesome Mugato!
Shahna, Lars, Tamoon, Kloog, Thrallmaster Galt, and the Providers
The Cloud from the Tycho system.
The BIG FREAKIN' AMEBA!!!!!

*Alien Watch sublist: omnipotent aliens!
**By request

 

[Pauln6]

I love Immunity Syndrome. I agree McCoy crosses the line a few times but I love it when he wishes Spock luck only after he's left the Turbolift and when Spock refers back to it later. It's a curious series of exchanges and I still can't work out exactly what it says about their friendship.

The space amoeba is a nifty weird life form, albeit I think it's unnecessary to claim it might come from another galaxy.

I know it was risky but I would question the wisdom of sending only one person on the shuttle. If Spock had suffered a head injury in the turbulence, mission over. I would have thought an engineer, astrobiologist , and medical Technician should have gone with him.

 

[Mytran]

I'm a week behind so I'll just share a few thoughts and try to catch up

OBSESSION

A good episode - others have commented on similarities to Doomsday Machine but Kirk is a different kind of man to Decker; Shatner plays his obsession in a mostly quiet restrained way, while being totally single minded in his purpose. Unlike Decker, he sees the folly in blaming himself for events beyond his control and is able to grow & move on.

• Mr Lesley is dead! I guess his identical twin brother will have to carry on the family legacy. I wonder if it was Connor or Randy who died here?
• I see the good Doctor took a souvenir from Mudd’s android planet – the gizmo that Scotty was so enthralled with stands now in the medical lab.
• The Enterprise has some unpleasant sounding radioactive components. I always assumed that the propulsive power of the future would be somewhat cleaner.
• And what’s with all the talk of vents? Even the cabin set has an air vent now! I hope it’s lead lined, what with all the radioactive waste floating around the ship’s ventilation system!!!
• Last week, the suggestion of a mutiny was treated as a joke. Here, the mere use of the word “conspire” gets the full dramatic treatment.
• McCoy serves as an excellent counsellor in this episode. Sure, there’s some fun with Spock but he always maintains his professionalism in this episode. And it's a great scene when Spock & McCoy confront Kirk in his quarters.

The Cloud might have been one of many or another of the last of it's kind or even the first but it obviously had other ways to nourish itself on certain elements or maybe the cattle of a distant primitive planet but it hadn't attacked any other Federation ships or colonies in that time or we would have heard about it in the episode!
JB

It's a strange omission. Unlike the Salt Vampire (explicitly the last of it's kind) or the Doomsday Machine (a one-off construction) or the vomit pancakes (a whole species) there's no reason given why Kirk is so convinced that this is the same creature that attacked him 11 years ago. Does he really see it as a single entity, rather than part of a species? They have met non corporeal creatures before this season (Metamorphosis, Wolf In The Fold), are each of them considered unique freaks of nature?

And Kirk is wearing the wraparound! I swear, gun to my head, prior to this rewatch, if you had asked me in how many episodes does Kirk wear the wraparound, I would have said no more than a few.

I shared your misconception. could probably count on one hand the number of times he’s worn his gold tunic this season. In Obsession it's the second week in a row that he's worn the standard uniform, and the first time in ages that the tunic has survived the episode intact!

I’m just going to assume that were no lifeforms on Tycho other than the plants? Because that planet is now dead, Dead, DEAD!!! The remastered effects hammer this home by showing a massive crater on the planet surface as the Enterprise leaves

 

[johnnybear]

Spock did ask Kirk if he believed he is was in telepathic communication with the Cloud entity! Maybe that's how he was able to tell the crew where the thing was going?
JB

 

[Pauln6]

Spock did ask Kirk if he believed he is was in telepathic communication with the Cloud entity! Maybe that's how he was able to tell the crew where the thing was going?
JB

Spock's telepathy does seem to work differently to other Vulcans e.g. V'Ger contact. I wonder if contact with the barrier affected his human half, making him more sensitive in som ways?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Spock's telepathy does seem to work differently to other Vulcans e.g. V'Ger contact. I wonder if contact with the barrier affected his human half, making him more sensitive in som ways?

Well.... I'd say no, because Spock wasn't zapped the way the affected crewpeople like Gary and Elizabeth were.

 

[Pauln6]

Well.... I'd say no, because Spock wasn't zapped the way the affected crewpeople like Gary and Elizabeth were.

Just because there were no visible immediate symptoms doesn't mean he was completely unaffected. He is psychic and half human...

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The fact that Spock didn't sparkle implies that his ESP was unaffected by the barrier. We already saw what a lack of immediate symptoms looked like in Elizabeth. She still sparkled. Vulcan ESP must be of a different kind from the human ESP trait.

 

[johnnybear]

I doubt Spock was affected, Heney! But it's a good theory for a What If? scenario of Where No Man Has Gone Before!
JB

 

[Henoch]

I doubt Spock was affected, Heney! But it's a good theory for a What If? scenario of Where No Man Has Gone Before!
JB

You must be reading my mind! I was just thinking on replying to your posts. Did you have an encounter with the barrier, too?

 

[Mytran]

THE IMMUNITY SYNDROME

For the second week in a row, the Enterprise finds a spacebourne organism that threatens life in the entire galaxy, just as it is about to reproduce. Luckily, they can use antimatter to destroy it in time.
The actual story they tell in each episode has a sufficiently different focus to make them both entertaining, with one a deep character focus and the other a more ensemble effort.
However, can we please have something different next week?

Other thoughts:

• Kirk seems in the same mood as the end of last week – tired, but content with life (and perfectly happy to ogle his Yeoman, even if he’s not going to act on those impulses).
• I wonder what “exhausting mission” the Enterprise has just completed? Although they always seem to get involved in shenanigans, their actual missions for the last few episodes have consisted of routine maintenance and ferrying cargo!
• Chekov scans the Gamma 7A system from (presumably several light years away and determines that there is absolutely no life there whatsoever, all within a few minutes. That’s impressive tech!
• McCoy gets pwned by Spock during their exchange in Sickbay. Spock does seem unusually grumpy though (but completely understandably)
• McCoy’s solution to unexplained tiredness? Pump ‘em full of stimulants!
• There’s 3 new extras in the Briefing Room scene. That and all the people in Sickbay really help convey an entire ship full of crew.
• Kirk orders a magnetic bottle of antimatter to be loaded onto a probe. This makes it pretty obvious that a photon torpedo is something very different, at least in the TOS era.

A manned exploration vessel is required to study the creature further – even though it is incredibly risky, sacrifices must sometimes be made to advance science. All this is an excellent mirror to the space race going on at the time the episode was filmed.

PROP ALERT
The Emeniar-7 battle computers make a reappearance on Spock's shuttlecraft.
Useful machines, those!

Didn't Spock make some comment about a conqueror of Vulcan at one point?

No, that was McCoy in Conscience Of The King claiming that the reason Spock's race was conquered was due to the lack of alcoholic beverages on planet Vulcan. Or was he just teasing the first officer?

What is with Kirk repeatedly calling Kyle "Cowl"? It's like he's affecting some kind of southern drawl or something.

Either that or it's Mr Kyle’s identical cousin Mr Cowl manning the helm console this week! In a similar vein, I see that Mr Leslie has mourned the loss of his twin brother who was killed by the Cloud Creature in Obsession and returned to duty on the Bridge (he’s the one who attempts to stand and falls over)

I know it was risky but I would question the wisdom of sending only one person on the shuttle. If Spock had suffered a head injury in the turbulence, mission over. I would have thought an engineer, astrobiologist , and medical Technician should have gone with him.

Indeed, Kirk spends several precious moment agonising over the decision, but no reason is why he can’t just send them both. You are correct that a full science team would be better, though. Remember Galileo Seven?

 

[Henoch]

THE IMMUNITY SYNDROME

For the second week in a row, the Enterprise finds a spacebourne organism that threatens life in the entire galaxy, just as it is about to reproduce.

Gamesters only gave us a one episode gap between space monsters. By airdate, five episodes between space monsters.

Spoiler

I think you are okay for next week, no monsters.

 

[Henoch]

In a similar vein, I see that Mr Leslie has mourned the loss of his twin brother who was killed by the Cloud Creature in Obsession and returned to duty on the Bridge

Eddie Paskey said in an interview that it was not his twin brother, but the one and only. He said that Dr. McCoy (after declaring him dead) was able to revive him later in an experimental procedure.

Spoiler

Remember when Kirk was "killed" in Return to Tomorrow (coming up soon) and Spock "killed" in Spock's Brain, McCoy kept both of their dead bodies "alive" for an extended period. Same with Lt. Leslie; a lot of blood transfused and brain cell's re-stimulated brought him back to us. Now Lt. Galloway's upcoming disintegration, that's another story.

 

[Pauln6]

THE IMMUNITY SYNDROME
Indeed, Kirk spends several precious moment agonising over the decision, but no reason is why he can’t just send them both. You are correct that a full science team would be better, though. Remember Galileo Seven?

There is a massive plot hole: they don't explain how Spock is able to turn on his tricorder without a yeoman on board the shuttle.