Monthly Archives: May 2009

Что извинения моим российских зрителей

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Russian:
Я получаю слишком много спама в моих комментариях, так что сейчас я вынужден удалить все комментарии с российским (или аналогичный) письма без предварительного уведомления. Если вы хотите, чтобы получить возможность отправлять комментарии фактические на русском языке – отправить их без заполнения веб-сайте области. Спасибо за понимание!

English (summarized):
I’m going to delete any comments that are posted in Russian, because 99.8% of it is spam. If you want to make a comment in Russian (which I don’t mind), please do not fill in the website field. Thanks =P

LB-FI: Star Trek TOS — e01s06 “The Man Trap”

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This is Part 6 in a series of incredulously watching the original Star Trek series (for the first time) and providing a heckled summary of the show as it progresses, from a fan who was first familiar with the later shows.

Let’s get started.

The enterprise drifts toward a very muddy-looking planet. Spock is in the captain’s chair, trying it out. Kirk, McCoy and Ensign Expendable beam down to the planet surface to do medical checks on scientist with last name of “Crater.” Audience readies pipewrench to beat writers.

Trio walk into random structure, and holler for people to come out. One of them, Nancy, is an (the?) ex-girlfriend of McCoy. From the perspective of each person, Nancy looks like a completely different person. Audience is reminded of the Pleasure GELF from Red Dwarf. Ensign Expendable is bug eyed, and sent out of the room. Lady Crater mentions a pet name for McCoy, “Plum” and caresses Plum’s head with both hands as if she were going to mind-meld. Nancy scampers away to go get Bob Crater. Outside, Nancy approaches Expendable as a shapely blonde (to Kirk she had gray hair, to McCoy she had black hair) and mentions the weather and walks off. Expendable walks after her. Audience expects him to be dead pretty soon. Cue intro.

Bob Crater enters and is fussy about getting a checkup. After a brief this-and-that, Bob sits and Plum waves a tiny device around him checking for cooties. Talk brings up Nancy, and a gentlemanly disagreement arises about what she looks like. Bob catches himself. “When Nancy lets you.. er.. when you see her again..” and when McCoy tries to check tonsils, a scream is heard.

The trio dash out to find Nancy wailing over a predictably unconscious Expendable, who appears to have large spots all over his face. Kirk pulls a green jelly bean from his mouth with his bare hands. Good thinking there, man from the future.

Kirk interrogates Nancy, who is at a loss for words. McCoy looks at her weird, and she’s like, what, and he’s like, nothing. Kirk decides to leave and resume checkups tomorrow. Camera cuts to exterior shot of the ship and moves toward it unsteadily and zooms in on the bridge.

Uhura tries to flirt up Spock, after approaching the captain’s chair with details. Someone reports the away team is back, with one dead. Spock is like, whatever, but Uhura is like, have you no heart, Spock is like make me a sammidge woman, Uhura is like, Pssh.

In the “dispensary” Kirk and McCoy are relaxed. Spock comes in on the com reporting the plant Expendable ate, the “Borzha” plant (audience thinks of Victor Borge, and associates the plant with a man playing a piano), and that it’s poisonous. McCoy said Expendable wasn’t poisoned, and the two get into a heated exchange. McCoy mentions Nancy’s prior appearance, and the two apparently now agree she looks the same, without saying so. Kirk is like PSsh and storms out.

Back on the bridge, Uhura says they need to go, but Kirk is like, nuh uh. Kirk checks the story with Spock, who is seems to have been cleaning his ear with a metal brush but it got stuck and he’s left it inside. Said everything checks out. McCoy reports finding something, better take a look.

Kid ain’t got any salt, he says. Kirk was like, hmm, they said they wanted salt. Let’s go ask them some stuff.

At the planet, Bob and Kirk get fussy, and Expendable 2 and 3 run off to go find Nancy. Bob and Kirk get whiney again, again about salt. Bob slips out while Spock and Kirk are chatting on the communicator arranging quarters for Team Crater. Bob walks outside and finds Expendable 2 down for the count, and calls out to Nancy, who is over by Expendable 3, also down.

Kirk and McCoy call out for Bob, but he walks off and hides. McCoy finds #2 dead, and they call out for #3. Nancy turns into #3 before the audience’s eyes, and audience wonders if she’s related to Odo. Dead #3 predictably lies there, as Nancy walks over and says, as #3, that Nancy could not be found. McCoy gets all crushy and Kirk is like, get ahold of yourself man. The three beam up, apparently leaving the dead people down there. Apparently the communicators aren’t a locking signal here, because the signal of dead #3 would have been elsewhere and transporter guy would be like.. what?

Party beams up. Kirk walks out the door, and cameraman nearly hits Kirk in the face getting into the turbolift.

Cut to Nancy-#3, who sees Yeoman Rand standing by the turbolift door eating from a tray of food she’s carrying. Apparently you’re allowed to just walk around the ship with a tray of food, and eat from it. Nancy-#3 eyes Rand using a salt shaker from the tray, and reaches for it, but hand gets slapped. Rand gets on the lift as the doors open, and Nancy-#3 jumps in just as the doors close.

Spock gets weird readings, trying to pinpoint Expendable #2’s location for beam up. Expand parameters, Kirk says. Righto.

Audience is surprised anyone aboard the turbolift is alive. Nancy-#2 follows Rand out the lift, uncomfortably close by. She tells him to “go chase an asteroid.” Audience readies crowbar to use on writers (writer?) later. Passersby crewmen eye up Rand, and see Nancy-#3 follow after her. Rand walks into the Botanical study, but pauses at the door because they don’t open for her, yet in the next cut from inside she walks in at regular speed. She calls out for Sulu, who hollers from the back that he’s “cleaning the levers.” Yeah, I bet.

Rand goes over to pet a squealing plant, who responds as if intelligent. Discussion of he/she assignment of inanimate objects. Nancy-#3 walks in and over to Sulu, and stares weirdly at Sulu’s tray of food. Pink plant that Rand was petting earlier begins to squeal loudly, as if it recognizes Nancy-#3 is an imposter, but audience soon realizes plant is actually just a man’s arm with a pink feathery glove reaching up from under a box.

Because it even looks like a hand.

Nancy-#3 dashes away, as Sulu consoles the pink hand.

Uhura comes out of a turbolift, and Nancy-#3 turns into a handsome black dude in blue as Uhura is turned away talking to other people. Nancy-black approaches Uhura and tries to seduce her, talking Swahili, and she talks it back. Nancy-black backs Uhura to a wall and half-makes a choking gesture at her, but Kirk pages for her to the bridge. Rand and Sulu come out a nearby door and board turbolift, and Uhura follows, looking back at Nancy-black weirdly.

McCoy can’t sleep on the wretchedly uncomfortable bed in his quarters, and Kirk tells him over the com to take one of those red pills to help sleeping. McCoy does a tossing motion with a bottle of red pills as if he were Mister Rogers tossing his shoes. Audience shouts, “filler scene!”

Nancy-black strolls the corridors, sees random crewman with long silver evening gloves punching buttons on a panel and walk off. She follows.

Kirk and Spock mumble to each other and leave the bridge.

Nancy-black stops outside McCoy’s quarters, by luck, and the camera zooms in way too close to McCoy’s nameplate, as if we couldn’t read it or realize what she was looking at. Nancy turns back into her gray-haired self, and McCoy exits and sees her. They chat briefly, and Nancy suggests McCoy take the red pills also.

Cut to silver-gloved crewman on the floor, dead, which Sulu and Rand stumble over. After calling for help, Sulu bends down to check the dead guy out, and touches the face-spots with his bare hands. Audience wonders how good the future’s hand sanitizers really are.

Voiceover by Kirk, thinks some weird lifeform killed the crew that died, but offers no other details. Nancy pets a drowsy McCoy lying on the futuristic bed of discomfort. Uhura calls McCoy to the bridge, but he’s conked out. Nancy walks to the door, and looks back at sleeping McCoy. Camera pans away from McCoy, and scans around the room unsteadily, and eventually ends up at Nancy, who has now taken McCoy’s form. Nancy-McCoy exits.

Kirk and Spock beam down and want to chat with Bob. They find him, but he says they should go away. Spock finds #3 dead, and begin to wonder who the #3 they beamed up with really was. They call in a red alert for an intruder to the ship. Walking around hunting for Bob, phaser fire knocks down the center column all of a sudden.

Kirk and Spock yammer on with filler dialogue, as Spock points Bob out on the horizon, off camera. Nancy-McCoy walks on to bridge, with trancelike expression and inquires about the situation. Sulu thinks Nancy-McCoy seems weird.

Back on the planet, people run around ducking behind things. Kirk stuns Bob, takes his phaser, and starts asking questions. Bob speaks in a weird voice, referring to Nancy as “it” and something about buffalos dying out. Reveals Nancy has actually been dead a year or two.

Kirk figures stuff out.

Back on the ship, at a council, and Nancy-McCoy does a bad job trying to imitate McCoy, and repeatedly defends the creature. Bob yammers about how the creature is intelligent and such. Bob admits he can tell who the creature is regardless of its form, and says he refuses to help. Spock suggest truth serum, and Nancy-McCoy reluctantly agrees.

Cut away, and Kirk is called to sickbay. Spock tells about how he was incapacitated by Nancy-McCoy, as Yeoman Beehive finds Bob dead with face marks like the other Expendables. Spock reportedly survived because his “blood cells are quite different” because his “ancestors spawned in a different ocean than yours did.” Way to go, Science officer.

Nancy-McCoy strolls into the Real McCoy’s (har har) quarters, turns into gray-haired Nancy, and asks him to defend her as he wakes up. Kirk enters and confrontation ensues when McCoy defends her. Kirk tempts Nancy with salt pills. McCoy falls down in a scuffle, and Nancy entrances Kirk and makes a mild-meld gesture toward him, as Spock enters, thinking, “Urdoinitrong, woman.”

McCoy has phaser, Spock says to shoot it, McCoy is like NO! and Spock wrestles for the phaser to no avail and tries to fight Nancy. Spock repeatedly beats the woman across the face with a pair of clasped hands to no apparent use, and she knocks Spock down with a single backhand swipe. McCoy is still all, “wha??”

McCoy looks on as Nancy turns into sucker-hand creature, and puts hands over Kirk’s still-entranced face, and Kirk yells. McCoy stands there like an utter buffoon for way too long before finally firing at the creature. Kirk grabs his face and keels over. Sucker-hand creature turns Nancy, but McCoy fires again, and creature turns back into sucker-hand creature.

Later on the bridge, Sulu is ready to get the frack out of there. Spock sports futuristic adhesive bandage, as Kirk ponders the buffalo. Audience gets on the internet and tries to look up the address of the writer (George Clayton Johnson). Audience also wonders why it was called “The Man Trap” since Uhura was tricked, speculates on whether Urhura is secretly a man.

Credits roll with presumably correct cast listing, but the background images are from “The Cage” episode.

WHAT

LB-FI: Star Trek TOS s01e05 — The Enemy Within

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Boring Intro Section: If you hadn’t read the first in this series, check it out here. I’m posing a few comments about how terribly corny ST:TOS is from the perspective of a Trek fan who has seen a bunch of the later series episodes but not really much of the original — and liveblogging my experience, incredulously watching the originals for the first time.

So here we go.

Pan down to a bunch of crew people, including Kirk and Sulu. Sulu is holding a unicorn dog covered in shag carpet, with a spine showing and floppy tail. Ensign Expendable is injured on his hand from some falling gravel, so Kirk tells him to report to sick bay. EE radios to beam up, beams up and stumbles in to the transporter room after the transporters flip out briefly. Scottie tells possibly-gay random black crewman in an orange robe to go fetch a synchronic meter (and perhaps to change into something more resembling a uniform, aside from being the correct color). Kirk beams in, but stumbles in and doesn’t seem his usual self. Scottie escorts Kirk to sick bay. After leaving the transporter room, the control panel works by itself and beams in (without having any sliders slid or buttons randomly pressed) another Kirk, who looks menacing. Light source from beneath Kirk Two’s closeup identifies him as possibly having too much makeup. Cue intro.

Voice over about the captain’s log about Planet Alpha 177 specimen gathering from the Calm Kirk, while Kirk Two explores the console before him, as he makes some peculiar gestures. Possibly-gay black crewman returns, still wearing the same color-accurate bath robe and asks Kirk Two what’s up. Kirk Two gives him the look-up-look-down, and offers a cheesy grin. Cut to Calm Kirk, escorted by Scottie who advises Kirk get his act together. Calm Kirk stumbles into someone’s quarters, currently inhabited by Yeoman Beehive, who leaves as Calm Kirk crashes on the bed which has the approximate squishiness of plywood.

McCoy uses waves a humming cordless blowtorch on a crewman, then uses a squirt bottle to spray windex on EE’s palm, making a witty remark while EE laughs like he just got off the short bus. Kirk Two saunters in, and either asks for “Saurium Brandy” or confesses that, “Sorry, I’m Brandy.” EE departs, and McCoy comes over to Kirk Two who is standing by the wall almost about to strangle it. Kirk Two grabs McCoy and demands the brandy aggressively, and McCoy presses a button to open a translucent sliding door. Kirk Two snatches up a small bagless vacuum cleaner compartment from the now-accessible shelf, uncorks it, and scampers away.

Kirk Two skulks down the corridors, gazing aneath a neaderthal brow, periodically chugging from the bagless vacuum compartment. He stops suddenly at Yeoman Rand’s quarters (which has a nameplate on it as if it were an office) and enters without even a doorbell’s worth of warning. Kirk Two chuckles briefly at a few paintings before whirling cameraward.

Cut to Calm Kirk shirtless, apparently trying to strangle himself with a scarf but on the wrong side of his neck. Spock enters, wonders what’s up. They exchange words, to find that Calm Kirk was not the brandy-demanding person in question, although nothing further is noted.

Cut to Scottie giving the shaggy unicorn dog a tour of the transporter room. Calm Kirk enters, Spock in tow, and Scottie explains that the Real Unicorn Dog (with antennae that I didn’t notice before) was beamed aboard the ship, but later another “opposite” Unicorn Dog Two also arrived, but meaner. Scottie warns about beaming the Sulu and pals aboard, in case the same should happen. Calm Kirk ponders dramatically.

Cut to Rand’s quarters, where Kirk Two lies in wait, peering from behind some lattice, as menacingly as possible as can be mustered from behind some lattice. Oh! I didn’t see you there! she says, as Kirk Two (now with mascara) takes another swig from the bagless vacuum compartment, and takes way too long to say anything.

A wrestling match ensues when Kirk Two violently snatches her up and mushes his face into hers, and in the scuffle she scratches him across the left cheek, as a dramatic way to tell the Kirks apart. Rand foolishly moves herself to the protection of an art easel, before using it as a distraction to little avail, and makes for the door.

A passer-by sees the commotion as the door opens, Rand yells for him to call science officer Spock (instead of security?) so passer-by runs up to a wall panel that apparently requires one to press one’s entire palm over and contort one’s body weirdly to use properly. If you were in a wheelchair, you’d be out of luck. Kirk Two tackles him and throws a single punch off camera.

Cut to Spock talking to Calm Kirk, reporting the Rand Encounter and clutching the vacuum container of mostly-consumed brandy. Calm Kirk denies the tale, and heads to sickbay, so much in a hurry that he doesn’t even bother to wait until the turbolift doors open.

Kirk Two, injured, holds his hand out for the camera to look at, and clutches it as he walks down the corridor. He hears some other doors open and scurries away through a door that will let him in, but not out again. He goes and sits on a convienient bed in the upright fetal position, and smooches onto his wounded hand like as if it were Ensign Beehive.

Cut to Calm Kirk, Scottie and Spock interrogating a mascara-smeared Rand, when they realize Calm Kirk is not scratched. The passerby emerges to the door confirming that it sure looked a heckava lot like Real Kirk, before getting wearing and Scottie piping up with, “Back to that bed, Bucko.” Bucko is led back off stage. Spock rudely tells Rand to GTFO, but this is apparently okay. Spock blurts that there must be an imposter and Calm Kirk mouths something to himself.

The enterprise drifts akwardly away from the planet below, in a non-oribital trajectory, and Scottie is soon seen gently caressing the console with a tender there-there touch. Kirk demands, whilst holding the Real Unicorn Dog, to know when the transporter will be fixed, noting that the landing party will die at nightfall, before a lengthy pause, mentioning that oh, because, the temperature drops sharply after sunset.

Scottie, while doing nothing but looking at Calm Kirk with upturned eyebrows and puppydog eyes, notes, “We’re doing everything we can,” and continues to stand there doing nothing. Spock remarks that maybe there’s a duplicate and that he — probably — needs to be found. Calm Kirk: “men. armed. yes. armed men. with arms. but no killing. and the men. arm the men. men with arms without killing. army men. many arms for the many-man army. mini-men with mini-arms. arm them. those men. without killing.” Spock reminds Calm Kirk he’s supposed to be perfect, but Calm Kirk forgets.

Cut to planet-shot again with Enterprise now orbiting properly (but weirdly) with Calm Kirk voiceover. Calm Kirk does an all-call, but also by way of video screen, mentioning that there’s an imposter of him with scratches, emphasizing the scratches but not the fact that he looks like like Kirk. Kirk Two slaps some books (books?) off a shelf, and knocks the video console over in anger that, *I’m* Captain Kirk! and conveniently locates some makeup to cover the scratches, but is also suddenly not-sweaty now also, somehow. Kirk Two walks up to the door that wouldn’t open before and it opens, sees possibly-gay black crewman still in the orange robe and requests his phaser, before conking him over the head and dragging him into the room.

Cut to Sulu and friends on the planet surface, two of which are moving a big rock. Sulu reports it being 20 degrees below, and shivers dramatically.

Cut to Calm Kirk who receives the message, wonders aloud if anything can be done, but Spock notes that if thermal-somethings are duplicated they wouldn’t work, without even trying it to see if it would. Someone hails Spock on the console, reporting the beating of possibly-gay black crewman, but Spock is all whatev. They decide to search the lower levels of engineering because that’s where Calm Kirk would go.

Cut to engineering levels as Spock and Calm Kirk practically hold hands whilst strolling about. Spock readies his phaser on no-kill mode, and wonders what Calm Kirk is doing without his phaser out. Calm Kirk apathetically unholsters phaser, but holds it sideways, pointing a Spock but apparently this is not important.

The two murmur about being a real captain, and Kirk Two does a Batman routine, sneaking about in the rafters. Nobody bothers to look up. The view doesn’t cut away as Spock moves past it, but a slight positioning change of the camera between takes indicates someone bumped it before they got the next shot. Kirk Two jumps down and Spock doesn’t hear it, despite having traveled no more than perhaps 10 feet off camera.

Apathetic Kirk roams around aimlessly, before sensing Kirk Two behind him. Apathetic Kirk begins briefly to care, and chats just as briefly while backing Kirk Two toward a blind corner, from which Spock emerges and pinches him. Kirk Two gets a shot off with the phaser, but it blasts a hole in a wall panel a good three or four seconds before Calm Kirk is able to care/react. The show is somehow only half over by now.

Cut to sickbay, where Kirk Two is unconscious.

Calm Kirk: What happen to my widdle head.
Spock: You no thinky right.
McCoy: Point being, Einstein?
Spock: Me examine human mind.

Spock rambles about positive and negative being balanced out to be a good leader.

Calm Kirk: Point being?
Spock: No more captain for you, soon.
Calm Kirk: Whatev. How much longer.
Spock: Don’t judge me.

Scottie hails Kirk over the console, noting he found a busted section, which looks remarkably similar to what Kirk Two fired at.

Planet shot shows Enterprise moving past planet, out of orbit again and grazing the northern area. Sulu is shivering amongs random crewmen on the surface, who are wrapping themselves up and calling with an update. Apparently non-mechanical things, like a tent, would also not function properly if beamed down, but nobody even bothers suggest this or even try. Sulu suggests lowering a rope down with a pot of coffee, shaking like he’s got Parkinsons, from behind a terribly ineffective wall of rocks.

Lots of pausing before saying stuff, perhaps to eat up some of the last 20 minutes still to go. Calm Kirk asks Scottie how progress is going, who reports the ionizer will take a week to fix. Cue dramatic orchestra build-up.

Back to planet shot, where apparently the helmsman is bored silly and bringing the ship back into a planetary orbit once again. Captain’s log voiceover from a very apathetic and loathesomely boring Kirk mumbles about not caring. On the surface, Sulu readies his phaser for a triple-beam shot and shoots some rocks, despite the rocks being right there out in the middle of the freezing wind. The trio of landing party people huddle next to the rocks, as the wind blows on them full force. Sulu clearly not the sharpest transwarp manifold in the array, but still cracks jokes. Spock suggests “survival procedures” to Sulu. Sulu secretly wants to punch Spock in the nose.

Cut to Kirk Two writhing on the uncomfortable sickbay bed, but someone else’s voice is used for screaming. Calm Kirk realizes both of them are dying, and they have to reunited, and ponders this out loud for way too long. We knew that already. McCoy brings Calm Kirk a tiny glass of brandy, and offers a Mister Rogers speech, but without the shoe-changing. Spock hails Calm Kirk, saying they might know something.

Calm Kirk visits the transporter room. Spock mentions some random technical details, and Kirk is whatever, beam them both down without really knowing what they’re going to do. Both of the Unicorn Dogs are tranquilized and beamed to transporter buffer land together. Scottie dramatically slides sliders and back comes Unicorn Dog in one piece — but.. DEAD! CUE MUSIC!

Exterior shot, with no planet even in sight, with Spock making a log entry voiceover. McCoy, Calm Kirk, and Spock discuss the Unicorn Dog matter. Science officer Spock unscientifically somehow believes, without research, that it was terror that killed Unicorn Dog, not by anything to do with the transporter or the tranquilizer. String section is almost too loud to hear what they’re talking about, but audience doesn’t really care and just wants the story to move forward somehow. Calm Kirk is like, ok fine, let’s do the transporter thing.

Uhura pages Calm Kirk about a Sulu update. Sulu is now frosted and is suddenly Tarzan: “Me. Cold. Others. Unconscious. Can’t….” Calm Kirk fails to get Sulu to respond again, and saunters over to Kirk Two, unties him as Kirk Two feigns weakness, but instead beats up Calm Kirk. Kirk Two leaves, sees Rand and apolgizes and somehow successfully arranges a date.

Kirk Two goes to the bridge and orders them to move away from the planet. Helmsman, whilst thinking, “We’ve done that and been back a dozen times already,” is like, “Huh? Why?” and Kirk Two says Sulu is a lost cause. Calm Kirk appears and confronts Kirk Two, who now has scratches on his right cheek instead. After a pep talk, the two embrace.

Still embraced, the Kirk twins are now in the transporter room, and Spock beams them into the buffer as McCoy watches.

One Kirk beams back, and staggers briefly and way too long again, before finally saying, “Let’s beam them up now!” Audience is not sure how it was necessary to put the Kirks back together before beaming Sulu and pals back. The party is beamed back, and predictable “how was it?” remarks are exchanged between Real Kirk and McCoy.

Kirk thanks Spock for doing pretty much nothing, and sees Yeoman Beehive briefly — somehow having no recollection of Kirk Two’s actions and still referring to Kirk Two as “the imposter” despite Kirk Two actually being as much the Real Kirk as Calm Kirk as far as memory goes (considering they both opted for the engineering levels as a good place to hide), but nobody really cares. Rand is like, “I.. er.. He.. Well..” and Kirk walks on past, but Spock makes sure to tease Rand inappropriately about Kirk Two’s qualities. As she walks away, he gives her a good look up and down and stifles a lascivious grin. Kirk gives orders to leave planet.

Enterprise drifts away from planet at a really weird pitch, as if it were a motorboat tragging the propeller end in the water with the nose pointed skyward, as the planet is left behind and now blurry for some reason. Ship moves away, from a rear shot, now properly oriented.

WHAT