Month: January 2010

A so-so episode – there isn’t really much suspense or unexpected development. It’s pretty clear who the villain is early in the episode. There’s almost no sexual tension between Kirk and the doctor. And there isn’t anything very interesting done with the reprogramming of Kirk. Still, I did enjoy the part about Captain Kirk falling…

A slow episode, but some good SF, and a really nice use of unusual elements in the children. But there are some strange missteps on the way. The most obvious: why would you make this an exact duplicate of Earth? It serves no plot purpose, other than to try and justify exactly why the culture…

Ladies and Gentleman, we have the first official Red Shirt death: 309 minutes in to Star Trek as aired. And Red Shirt #2 at 11 311 minutes, just for spice. A really good SF tale. It’s the ‘mad scientist’ well, which is well explored. But it’s nicely put together, and it’s nice that the story…

This episode flirts with completely awful, but manages to redeem itself a little in places. The basic premise is irredeemably sexist and dated, the actor playing Mudd has to spit out scenery between takes. Plus the men of the Enterprise wandering around panting after the women is pretty awful. The entire first half of the…

Another solid episode. I find it interesting that Trek so far is consistently taking the more ‘character’ based approach. The simple way to do this episode is to have the ‘evil’ Kirk wander around for the whole episode fooling us. But instead he’s captured and secured for most of the episode, and instead the focus…

The first episode to really suffer due to the existence of the other series: I can’t help but think about the TNG episode (only a bit over a month away) when seeing this one. It’s a pretty fun episode, with some good (if a teensy bit overwrought) character development for Spock. There’s a level of…

Episode three, actually the second pilot for TOS. It shows, in the missing characters (Bones, most notably), the different uniforms. But what’s strangest is the overemphasis of the two guest stars: Gary Lockwood and Sally Kellerman seem to get most of the screen time, and certainly most of the interesting lines. The regular cast outside…

Episode two of The Original Series really raises the ante. It takes an idea that’s been used a few times in different media (the all powerful young child), but uses it in a stronger way than most other attempts. What really makes this episode is Shatner’s acting. The episode hinges off his relationship with Charlie…

“Captain’s Log …” And so it begins. *The Man Trap*, the first aired episode of TOS. I’m going to be doing this by original air date, which means that I’m not actually going to get to *The Cage* until after the first season of TNG. Impressions? After a slow start it’s a good little SF…