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WTF moments in TOS...

^I considered it, but one could make a case that it's central in a more literal geographic sense, and I was looking for examples that demonstrated that "Central" was not always used in the sense of physical location.
 
Shatner gets a bad rap. If you look at first-season TOS, and much of the second season -- and just about everything he did pre-TOS -- his work is very subtle, understated, and naturalistic (at least by the standards of a stage-trained actor). I tend to suspect that changed as a result of the accident he suffered during the shooting of, I believe, "The Apple," when an explosion went off too close and gave him a bad case of tinnitus. After that, his performances began to get broader. I imagine it can be hard to gauge the level of your performance when there's a loud ringing in your ears driving you nuts.

FYI - The accident you are refering to happened during the filming of Arena - he got too close to one of the rigged charges in the bombed out Starbase set.
 
FYI - The accident you are refering to happened during the filming of Arena - he got too close to one of the rigged charges in the bombed out Starbase set.

That must have been the take they used - you can see he takes a hell of a blast, and it's really him.
Nimoy and Shatner both did really impressive stunt work in this one - which is funny, since they usually used really obvious stunt men.
 
FYI - The accident you are refering to happened during the filming of Arena - he got too close to one of the rigged charges in the bombed out Starbase set.

If you'll look above, you'll see I already responded to that. It's generally reported as "Arena," but Nimoy has described the event in a way that's only consistent with "The Apple."
 
My WTF moments seem to be constant:

1) For a Vulcan with 'no' emotion, Spock has probably done more women on Trek then anyone else.

2) In some of those early episodes, Spock seems to have the need to shout what he has to say on the bridge when everyone can clearly hear him.
 
However, today it is fairly common knowledge (partly thanks to the abundance of sick porn, aka hospital/medical shows) that a perfectly well-working mind may be deprived of the ability to use language altogether. Pike might understand speech perfectly well, and be capable of forming an intelligent response, but be incapable of turning that response into a string of words. Even if he were given a voice synthesizer, all that he could manage to express through it might be "Yeah yeah yeah" or "Nono badbad nono notwanna"...

But I still wonder, how did anyone know (after the accident) that Pike's mind was still active, if he couldn't communicate that?
 
But I still wonder, how did anyone know (after the accident) that Pike's mind was still active, if he couldn't communicate that?

That'd be through the wonder of 23rd century technology! They just look at the medi-scanner:

brainscan.jpg
 
When someone would die in sickbay, Kirk's sister-in-law, the camera would do a close up on this panel as all the indicator pointers dropped. The body temperature would drop too, shouldn't that take minutes or hours?
 
I think it's just that the computer shuts down because it recognizes that there's no longer any need to give readings.
 
...Which, considering how fuzzy and even reversible death is in Star Trek, is a bit funny. I mean, yeah, perhaps the flatlining is a fancy style of alarm or something. But surely McCoy would still want to know a few key blood values, so that the most profitable organs of today's stiff could be properly extracted?

I wouldn't mind it if only people like Gary Mitchell did the complete flatline trick. Trek is perfectly justified in showing exotic alien ways of dying. But nothing of the sort should have been involved in the death of Aurelan Kirk, for an already mentioned example.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Leonard McCoy's medical panel doesn't show remaining medical insurance like Beverly Crusher's does.
 
Another WTF moment would be Kirk going accepting McCoy's death so casually in "Shore Leave". One minute McCoy's been killed, then next Kirk is running around looking to get in a fist fight. He didn't seem to mourn the good Doctor's passing for long.
 
You know what they say -- it's very cold in space.

Jeff

>>When someone would die in sickbay, Kirk's sister-in-law, the camera would do a close up on this panel as all the indicator pointers dropped. The body temperature would drop too, shouldn't that take minutes or hours? <<
 
^Ever heard of a nickname? Maybe "Space Central" is shorthand the characters were using for something like "United Earth Space Probe Agency Central Headquarters." It's not like you saw it printed on a sign somewhere, it was just something a character mentioned in dialogue.
Speaking of Space Central, I think "Amok Time" in season two gives us a way to explain those early references. Uhura mentions a Space Central on Vulcan. It's possible Starfleet makes use of Vulcan's Space Central to coordinate some of its activity.
 
My vote for WTF — the whole festival/red hour thing in "Return of the Archons". Kind of like the duplicate Earth idea in Miri, it is a plot point that is introduced early in the show and is seemingly a big deal, but then is dropped for the remainder of the episode which ends up being about something else entirely.

I later read somewhere, I guess it was MA, that the festival was some kind of population control mechanism. But none of that is in the episode (or anywhere in canon), which ends up being a big WTF when you first see it without that background.
 
^I always interpreted it as a release valve -- Landru keeps everyone's natural drives controlled and repressed the rest of the year, and this is the one opportunity they get to let them out and burn them off. In that interpretation, it fits pretty neatly into the whole of the episode, I think. It shows the other side of the coin that's represented by "the Body"'s highly controlled, restricted existence the rest of the time.
 
Another WTF moment would be Kirk going accepting McCoy's death so casually in "Shore Leave". One minute McCoy's been killed, then next Kirk is running around looking to get in a fist fight. He didn't seem to mourn the good Doctor's passing for long.

Well, it's rather likely that the planet was spraying the visitors with all sorts of happy chemicals, now isn't it? That would be in keeping with its purpose. And our heroes accept with amazing ease the idea that the uninhabited planet has lawns and parklands! If they aren't more alert about something as suspicious as that, something that could threaten their own lives, it's unlikely they would care all that much about the lives of others...

Speaking of Space Central, I think "Amok Time" in season two gives us a way to explain those early references. Uhura mentions a Space Central on Vulcan. It's possible Starfleet makes use of Vulcan's Space Central to coordinate some of its activity.

I'd very much like to think that these Space Centrals are local space traffic control hubs, and that every inhabited system worth anything has one. But that doesn't explain the "Miri" reference.

Timo Saloniemi
 
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