TOS Rewatch

The answer about Cochrane and Alpha Centauri are in Coon's original episode outline.

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Saying he saw the machine come right out of Hell? Clearly Decker needs rest leave. There are things that tip McCoy off that Decker is unfit for command. That's one of them.

 

^^^he did not say he saw the machine "come right out of Hell". He said...

"They say there's no devil, Jim, but there is, right out of Hell. I saw it!"

 

Well, I took him to be referring to the machine; Decker is answering the question of what hit his ship.

 

I guess they are in Star Trek.

I think it was meant as a happy ending, and we are to come away from it feeling like everyone did get what they want, the Commissioner included. We see her sobbing on the bed about the fact that Cochrane has love but is throwing it away. This lets us know that no matter how accomplished she may be in her career, she is desperately lonely. And the illness is going to kill her. At the end she is alive, and she has her man. And the Companion lets us know how happy they both are.

I know a lot of people are uncomfortable with what happens to the Commissioner. I'm saying from a 1960's point of view, this passes as a happy ending for the Commissioner.

 

Decker does not mean that line literally. He does not ACTUALLY think the planet killer is the Devil. He does not ACTUALLY think it came from Hell. He is using a figure of speech to impart the magnitude of the horror and the danger. I can't believe people are taking that line so seriously.

 

Of course Decker is using a metaphor. He's also completely traumatized and, by indulging in his metaphor (along with all the gesticulating he does) instead of directly answering Kirk's question, not responsive enough to represent someone fit for duty. I hope that clarifies what I was trying to say.

 

They were trying to get across the SCALE of this. We are to take for granted that this is a highly trained leader, higher in rank than Kirk, and even a man like this was overwhelmed. As you or I would be, as Kirk would have been.
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What you're looking for would be a Next Gen sort of response, matter of fact. Even Next Gen at its prime would have made a special case for a "doomsday machine" like this, though. Picard probably would not have given way like Decker, but it's possible. With anyone.
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In TOS, we are very often called on to have a "There but for the grace of God go I" sort of response to many events, realizing we're all vulnerable and woundable. Non-judgmental.

 

Dude. I'm not looking for a NextGen anything.

We're talking about an officer who was relieved from duty because he was in fact unfit for command, who had been traumatized because his crew had been killed, who nearly destroyed the Enterprise, who assaulted a security guard who was escorting him to sickbay for medical examination, who stole a shuttlecraft and then committed suicide.

It wasn't about scale, it was about Decker having lost it. Ranting about the devil was one of the early signs presented to us that he had lost it, the very first of which was sitting at a desk with his head down and needing a hypo to be brought around. Kirk had already decided that Decker needed help from McCoy before Decker beamed over to the Enterprise. He'd said so.

ed --- It's easy to surmise what sent Decker over the edge. It wasn't the scale of the machine; that had nothing to do with it. It was because it relentlessly took apart the planet that he'd sent his crew down to, while he was powerless to do anything about it. He must have seen the machine, the weapon as he was finally able to call it, as a representation of pure evil, because it did that, killing his crew. He may have even realized what it was about to do, but only after it was too late to save his crew. He also blamed himself, which made the destruction of the machine something personal to him.

 

Journey to Babel

The dress uniforms are very nice.

That hangar deck makes the Enterprise look really small.

The musical call-back to Amok Time really doesn't fit this scene very well. Well, the second half fits fine, it's just the fight music that's weird.

"Since it [Babel] is in our sector" - kind of sounds like each ship has an appointed sector to patrol. Not really how I imagined the Enterprises voyages being generated, but interesting. (And obviously, it could just be a temporary assignment.

So much talk of 'the council' or 'the previous council'. Was this the original concept of how the Federation govt. worked: just ambassadors coming together whenever a new decision was necessary?

'Still haven't learned to smile'? Amanda should've seen Spock last season. Smiles everywhere.

Teddybear

I like that Sarek feels the need to defend Spock's honor.

Interesting that's there's no security watching the delegates when keeping them from fighting is supposed to be Kirk's central concern.

Well that Andorian fight came out of nowhere.

Spock's talk about how Sarek would feel about risking so much for one man is interesting in terms of where Spock's character ultimately went in the movies. Seems clear how so much of Spock's struggle between 'vulcan' and 'human' was actually a struggle between Sarek and Amanda.

You'd think there'd be more doors between the brig and the open hallway. And that there'd a comm unit in the brig.

The space battle is actually really nicely done. I like the maneuverable little ship sweeping around ahead of the phaser blasts. They should've had a few more shots of the whole Enterprise, though, rather than just the saucer.

The actor playing Thelev actually kind of reminds me of Jeffery Combs' Shran. Which seems like a compliment for Combs, except that Thelev's not actually Andorian.

Overall, I'd say this was an excellent episode with a great mystery plot and very good character moments. I also really love the sickbay scene at the end. Dr. McCoy can finally order the others around for a change.

 

Friday's Child

I like the history of McCoy's service before serving on a ship. So is it Starfleet custom to offer medical services to plainly primitive peoples in this time period? Could be part of how the prime directive came about. It also offers some interesting possibilities for Discovery.

That's possibly the worst-trained security officer ever.

Sulu's line delivery sounded oddly southern for a moment there.

That was a really passive-aggresive display for a warrior people.

So how is saying 'Let that [fighting] be your choice' and then launching a surprise coup in the middle of the night not a lie? Seems like it ought to have been beneath these people's honor code.

I didn't think I remembered this episode at all, but now that I see the mountains and the pregnant woman it's all come back to me. Looking forward to 'The child is yours!'

Spock's face when he catches McCoy and the girl is absolutely priceless.

I like how they use sound as a weapon. I would've liked to see more of that kind of out of the box use of science through the rest of the franchise.

Acting Captain Scott is delivering another excellent Enterprise b-plot. He's actually a very entertaining captain in his own right. It's kind of a shame he never has his own command. Though I think he might've stayed on the first distress call a bit too long and dismissed the second one a tad too easily.

It's nice that Maab does at least own up to his mistake in trusting the Klingons over the Earthmen. Kind of weird that a strength obsessed people would follow a woman speaking on behalf of a baby, though.

Overall, it was a decent episode. Slightly schlocky, more in the funny to laugh at style than anything else (like Shore Leave).

 

Perhaps they honor her because her husband had done a good job, or maybe she was the woman behind the good man. Losing him + the pregnancy hormones + fear of not doing a good job on her own may have contributed to her irrational behavior.

 

Oh, I have no problem believing her behavior. Except maybe that she does outright lie to her people, which is supposed to be a cardinal sin, but even then everything you say applies (and more, as well).

My only thing was that the Capellan culture as presented seemed kind of inconsistent. Which I suppose shouldn't even be a complaint, since real cultures often are self-contradictory. It's just that Star Trek so often tries to present things as a monoculture that it feels weird when people aren't acting the way everyone claims they're 'supposed' to act.

 

^True. Is any other planet but Earth divided into distinct country-based people groups in TOS (and even Earth losing its distinctions somewhat by then)?

 

"Oochie-woochie-koochie-koo, Captain?"


And, Julie Newmar...

 

The Deadly Years

Is six people really a colony?

Shouldn't the human characters all be at absolute max age before Spock even starts to be seroiusly affected?

So in this episode, removing the Captain requires an entire hearing that only Spock can convene (despite Spock also being unfit for duty), yet Commodore Decker could legally take command when he saw fit?

Risking war with the Romulans just to get to a starbase a little faster? I'm beginning to see why Spock didn't want this guy in charge.

The Romulan ship looks gorgeous in this episode. I always loved that design.

It's nice to see Kirk's selfless command instincts surviving even through such an altered mental state.

Also funny how Kirk's solution not only brings up Code 2 again but also calls back to the Corbomite Maneuver. At this point I wonder: are the other species in the AQ all convinced that the Federation actually does have some super Corbomite weapon because of how often Kirk used the same bluff?

Shouldn't the treatment of the others have been taken with a little more care? 1 success story isn't proven safe, after all. And Spock's body shouldn't necessarily even react the same way as a full-blooded human.

It is nice to see an incompetent commander actually learn a valuable lesson and come away better for it.

Overall I'd say it's a solid episode. It didn't really draw me in much, but there wasn't a lot that bothered me either.


Obsession:

Smelling like honey is enough to id a space creature? As opposed to, say, honey (or the millions of other things that smell sweet)?

Kirk's characterization is always a little over the top in the acting dept, but this episode is taking it too far. Not only does he seem highly suspect in the captain's chair, but he's basically ceased to be a likable character at all for the first half of the episode.

Once again removal from command is brought up. It seems to have been a theme for the writers this season. I liked the way it was done here best - with respect and a certain amount of ambiguity - as much a tool to get the captain back on track as to get rid of him.

Logical Spock tries to block a vent that size with his hands? Someone should've calculated the odds of success for him. Although that would've been an interesting opportunity for him to mind meld with the cloud.

Spock setting the trap really would make more sense than two vulnerable humans with no defense capabilities. Kirk came up with the original plan, he could come up with the back up plan if necessary.

Overall, this was an underwhelming episode. It wasn't bad, necessarily. There were some honestly good parts as well (I also liked Ensign Garrovick's story, in general). But I can't call it a good episode, personally.

 

It was Moby Dick, before Wrath of Kahn was Moby Dick.

 

"The Doomsday Machine" owes more than a little to Moby-Dick, too.

 

You'd think Decker would be more like Ahab, but Windom made him more like Lt. Cmdr. Philp Francis Queeg - from The Cain Mutiny -right down to rubbing those two tape decks together like a pair of steel ball bearings. But TOS's Obsession was the most Moby Dick-like story of all the Trek series, wasn't it?

 

Small? I take it you've been watching TOS-R with the digital effects. The CGI hangar deck not only looks small, it looks dark and cramped. Feh.

For that matter, do the crew cabins on the Enterprise really have vents that open directly to space?