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Subjectively I never really enjoyed TOS much. It was very rare for any of the plots challenge the beliefs or actions of any of the protagonists. It almost exclusively was "things happen to the cast" instead of "character brings something on themselves"
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Nov 9, 2021 03:50
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ikanreed posted:Subjectively I never really enjoyed TOS much.
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Nov 9, 2021 15:26
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ikanreed posted:It was very rare for any of the plots challenge the beliefs or actions of any of the protagonists. It almost exclusively was "things happen to the cast" instead of "character brings something on themselves" I don't agree. In both Errand of Mercy and Arena, Kirk's kneejerk warmongering (especially in Errand) was challenged and he actually reversed course in both situations. In fact, one of the reasons that Errand is such a great episode is that it spells out that Kirk - the heroic main character we're coded to believe is "right" - and Kor are mirror images of each other. Sure, there may be differences in approach, both the Federation and the Klingon empire were two sides of the same colonialist coin; one was the "good cop" (Kirk with his offer to help the Organians modernize) and the other the "bad cop". I think you could also make the case that Galileo Seven challenges Spock's belief in his command decisions. I don't think he did anything that directly got anyone killed (maybe Gaetano?), but he managed to piss off nearly the entire party save for Scotty.
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Nov 9, 2021 16:36
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so do you think if the dude in man trap had just laid everything down and been honest with kirk and asked him to bring a canister of mortons with him that everything would've worked out, like, except for nancy being dead?
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Nov 13, 2021 04:45
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It's been a while since I watched that episode, but in seriousness I'm not sure what motivated Crater's secrecy. You'd think that if he really wanted to preserve the salt vampire as the last of its kind, he would have been upfront from the beginning. I don't remember that the episode ever explains his motivations that deeply.
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Nov 13, 2021 17:06
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dude claims to want to be a hermit. if that's true I could see being alone on a planet with a love hungry shapeshifter that can be anyone you want it to be as pretty ideal and a secret worth maintaining. that it killed actual nancy would also be a compelling motive to lie. funny that in a hostile universe where every colony is a point of starvation and suffering, carter has found himself an atomized little paradise for two (would be perfect if he just had some salt)and that paradise gets ruined by government interference. ayn rand morality again
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Nov 13, 2021 19:04
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The Balance of Terror and The Enterprise Incident are still marvelous TV and need no defending.
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Nov 13, 2021 22:40
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It's interesting to note how much my opinion has changed about This Side of Paradise since I watched it as a ten year old kid. Up until just a few years ago, I agreed with Kirk's assessment of mankind: "No wants. No needs. We weren't meant for that. None of us. Man stagnates if he has no ambition, no desire to be more than he is." and actually used this as an argument against UBI. Watching the episode now as a left-wing adult, Kirk comes across as a villain; especially when you consider Spock's quiet line at the end: "For the first time in my life, I was happy." The crew was harming no one and living in peace - no matter how artificially produced by the spores - on Omicron Ceti III. Who was Kirk to take that happiness and peace away from them out of a false sense of "duty"?
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Nov 14, 2021 02:02
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At what point would you say being drugged into complacency and docility is no longer a good thing?
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Nov 14, 2021 02:17
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Especially considering that, in an undrugged state, Spock (at least) would never have chosen that life, raising the question of consent?
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Nov 14, 2021 02:19
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Winifred Madgers posted:At what point would you say being drugged into complacency and docility is no longer a good thing? They weren't drugged into complacency and docility. It's true we never got a clear answer about how the spores actually work, though. F_Shit_Fitzgerald fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Nov 14, 2021 |
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Nov 14, 2021 02:19
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Depends if the barn had a toilet
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Nov 14, 2021 02:33
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That farmhouse looked pretty nice; it probably had good facilities, though maybe not the cyborg toilets or whatever else the Enterprise had.
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Nov 14, 2021 02:56
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Not to say that it's impossible, nor that Gene Roddenberry's conduct towards women was good, but I don't recall hearing there's ever been any evidence to that effect. I also don't think it was specifically a Star Trek production person, there were other executives at Desilu Studios. Whitney very specifically said it was a Desilu executive, not someone involved with Trek.
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Nov 14, 2021 03:26
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:They weren't drugged into complacency and docility. It's true we never got a clear answer about how the spores actually work, though. Weren't they?
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Nov 14, 2021 03:29
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Winifred Madgers posted:Weren't they? I don't see much evidence for it, no. e: To elaborate, I guess the question is whether the spores' effect of giving you perfect health and well being caused the crew to be happy, or whether the spores had a dopey, happy effect. I think it's the latter, but even if it wasn't, I still see no problem with that. Sitting at a console and watching blinking lights is less of a life than being happy and fulfilled on Omicron Ceti III. It may not have suited Kirk, who was a man of action, but it was wrong of him to impose that on his crew. F_Shit_Fitzgerald fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Nov 14, 2021 |
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Nov 14, 2021 03:38
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Again it's a matter of consent at the very least. If someone heard about that and went like "yeah sign me up for that" I think your argument would be stronger, but when it's imposed on them unknowingly (even by a seemingly natural phenomenon) you're going way out into a worrisome place imo.
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Nov 14, 2021 05:14
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The Voice of Labor posted:so do you think if the dude in man trap had just laid everything down and been honest with kirk and asked him to bring a canister of mortons with him that everything would've worked out, like, except for nancy being dead? Man Trap makes a lot more sense in the context of Obsession and Metamorphosis, because Kirk’s actual issue is that the alien woman “feeds on love”. Like Caretaker, Vamp-Nancy reads Crater’s mind and provides all that he desires. And, as we’ve seen in other episodes, Kirk believes too much of this comfort will lead to stagnation - ‘spiritual death’ as he calls it. “Has this become Crater's private heaven, here on this planet? This thing becomes wife, lover, best friend, wise man, fool, idol, slave.... It isn't a bad life to have everyone in the universe at your beck and call - and you win all the arguments.” On top of this, Kirk views this kind of alien relationship as not just stifling but parasitic. Vamp-Nancy, in Kirk’s view, is just a salt-digging slut. But, then, he uses the safety of his ship as an excuse to take her out.
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Nov 14, 2021 14:10
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Winifred Madgers posted:Again it's a matter of consent at the very least. If someone heard about that and went like "yeah sign me up for that" I think your argument would be stronger, but when it's imposed on them unknowingly (even by a seemingly natural phenomenon) you're going way out into a worrisome place imo. That is true. It's a shame we never saw the spores again after that episode. It would have been interesting to revisit them in a scenario where someone had chosen to become infected, and how a starship captain might react to that. Plato's Stepchildren came on TV last night, and I will say that I kinda get what the writers were trying to do here. It's a theme addressed continuously throughout TOS: power corrupts, absolutely power corrupts absolutely and intellect without compassion is bad. These themes were expressed far more effectively in episodes like Where No Man Has Gone Before and The Cage than here. Setting aside all the obvious embarrassing moments in this episode, one underappreciated element is how Alexander is treated. Kirk spends the entire episode listening to Alexander complain bitterly about being used as a puppet by the Platonians and how much he resents them for it. So what's one of the first things Kirk does when he gains the The episode undermines everything they were trying to convey to Alexander in the episode's climax, and that - more than "Shatner braying like a donkey" and "Spock singing 'bitter dregs'" - is why it's such a poorly written episode.
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Nov 14, 2021 18:43
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50 minutes of episode for one interracial kiss episode's like a wrasslin' ticket were every fight's trash except the main event which is a title bout. watched naked time. hard to really make any comment on it as it feels like 3 episodes that didn't work out individually or were intellectually too anemic to stretch into a full episode. the venus drug thing, a thing that magnifies the essence of people, is recycled until the writers ditch that idea and agree that the alien pathogen just makes you drunk. probably a good save because we learned that being irish is a personality trait and it's largely indistinguishable from being drunk. spock struggling with his emotions is p' cool, but not enough to carry the episode, kirk admitting that he's in love with rand is a cool reveal, though we know that he's only into the yeoman because she shares the same last name as his favorite philoso-grifter. it's also p' cool that spock and kirk were such machomen in rational control of themselves that they overcame the drunken virus without really needing the serum, just a few exchanged punches, and mccoy's such a badass he doesn't even seem capable of contracting it. accidentally inventing time travel in the last five minutes of the episode is such bullshit though, like it adds nothing the narrative and it fills the time with something arguably way way more important than what the other 90% of the episode is about e: oh, the part I forgot about that makes the episode apropos, a space disease infects the entire crew because absolutely zero containment or exposure common sense is done The Voice of Labor fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Nov 14, 2021 |
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Nov 14, 2021 20:33
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Up until just a few years ago, I agreed with Kirk's assessment of mankind: "No wants. No needs. We weren't meant for that. None of us. Man stagnates if he has no ambition, no desire to be more than he is." and actually used this as an argument against UBI.
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Nov 14, 2021 21:16
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The Voice of Labor posted:accidentally inventing time travel in the last five minutes of the episode is such bullshit though, like it adds nothing the narrative and it fills the time with something arguably way way more important than what the other 90% of the episode is about If I remember right, supposedly there was a thought to rolling directly from that episode into Tomorrow is Yesterday, but that got scrapped for some reason (possibly being that the script just wasn't ready)
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Nov 15, 2021 04:53
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Plato's Mother-in-Law Elon of Troyius The Doomsday Vaccine Wolfshirt in the Fold A Taste of Arm Again, Don?
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Nov 15, 2021 05:45
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re: this side of paradise man, kirk really cannot stand the prospect of his bff getting laid. reused story beats: crew member's exgirlfriend, pathogen ripping through the entire crew because of inadequate safety precautions/quarantine
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Nov 15, 2021 08:07
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:If I remember right, supposedly there was a thought to rolling directly from that episode into Tomorrow is Yesterday, but that got scrapped for some reason (possibly being that the script just wasn't ready) Bob Justman wanted to do that, but the script wasn't there yet, and Justman would have been owed royalties for the story. That wasn't in the budget.
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Nov 15, 2021 08:09
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so sandoval was weeping because for 3 years he and his cohorts had a really good time and felt really good and during this time they didn't alienate any of their labor? I think questions of consent can be ruled out, everyone is already possessed by the brainworms I really like watching the earth and earth like world episodes because I get to see what parks and stuff in southern california looked like in the late '60s...too bad all the episodes are terrible. bread and circuses did have the comment about slaves getting retirement and health care so they didn't care that much about being slaves though. bracing myself to watch the native american episode
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Nov 16, 2021 05:49
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charlie x, balance of terror and what little girls are made of. man that was 3 really good episodes in a row
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Nov 24, 2021 07:32
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The Lights of Zetar isn't a great episode anyway, but watching it last night I was especially rankled by all the instances of Lt. Romaine being patronizingly referred to - even by Spock - as "the girl". It must have been a 1960s thing. I don't remember that particular language being used in TNG or DS9, unless I'm misremembering.
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Jan 9, 2022 15:26
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