The Corbomite Maneuver: Season One Episode Ten

So we've got a pretty big problem here. This episode has far more Uhura than we've had in recent stretches, but she says almost NOTHING but "Hailing frequencies open," and she says it more than five times. They may as well have just reused the clip of her saying it. Very disappointing.
Uhura aside, however, this episode was actually completely awesome. It had most of the things I look for in Star Trek: everyone hanging out, McCoy cracking wise, and Kirk erratically shifting between obnoxious anger at his subordinates and eerie, heroic calm. Just give us more Uhura, already. The people demand it!
So the gang is exploring a previous-unexplored part of the galaxy when they suddenly come upon an enormous screensaver. The navigator, a frustrated dude/humor columnist named Dave Barry, tries to maneuver around the cube, but it keeps following them! It keeps getting closer and closer, and Spock decides he needs Kirk's help with this one. But where is Kirk?
Oh, just being shirtless in another room, whaling on his glutes with McCoy. No, seriously, he's having his physical, and obviously he's in perfect health, except that he could stand to lose a few. But no time for that now, he's gotta go deal with Rubik and his Kube. Also, McCoy cold drops a "I'm a doctor, not a..." bomb, which was exciting. On Kirk's way out, he throws a towel over his towel, which, paging Xzibit.
On the bridge, tensions are running high as Dave Barry is campaigning to be Barry Goldwater's running mate, which is to say, he wants to explode things first, ask questions later. Spock makes Vulcan fun of this brash young paduan, and Sulu cracks up laughing, probably because he just read Dave Barry's column about this experience ("Dave Barry Does Star Trek"). Kirk decides to call a meeting in the War Room.
I don't think we've seen the War Room yet, but I think Thomas Schlamme got here first because we have an awesome tracking shot around a long table with technology and seriousness. Kirk decides to try to evade the QB, which Dave Barry doesn't like, but eventually the kewb begins emitting so much radiation (!) that either Kirk will need to explode it or Erin Brockovich will need to get involved. So they explode it.
Spock is like, "Hey Kirk, you think that cube thing is something to worry about?" and Kirk's like "Nah. Fuck it, dude. Let's go bowling."
Kirk is chilling in his quarters, letting McCoy yell at him about how chubby he's getting lately ("At this rate, by the time we get to the movies, you'll be completely bald!"), when we reach another Workplace Inappropriate Situation. Yeoman Rand (Rand is my Norm - when she shows up, you just want to shout her name) walks in and serves Kirk a salad (because of his health). I want you to look at this picture and tell me what you see:Now, I ABSOLUTELY do not want this to get inappropriate. I promise Rand is not serving Kirk an HJ. It looks like that, and that's funny, but we're here to be serious and talk about Issues. According to Wikipedia, "In the United States Navy and United States Coast Guard, a yeoman is a rating usually with secretarial, clerical, payroll or other administrative duties." The act of serving salad and placing a napkin in the captain's lap (which is what is happening in this picture) does not strike me as secretarial, clerical, payroll, or administrative. Am I wrong here? I'm not saying Rand needs to call Jackie Chiles and file suit against the Federation, but at the very least she should be able to say, "Sorry, Peter Sagal, that's not my job." Right?
Anyway, salad be damned, because now the Enterprise is coming up on a new foreign object - an enormous glowing death star. Looks like Spock was right, AGAIN. They try to communicate with whatever this thing is, but Dave Barry is having bluetooth problems, so they finally settle on asking Uhura to do her job (just step back, guys, stop asking Dave Barry to do what you know Uhura can). Finally they get through and get threatened like crazy by Balok, who is kind of upset with them for destroying his Rubik's Cube before he could solve it. Kirk attempts to explain that they didn't know what its deal was, and radiation, but Balok is having none of it and decides to scare them even harder by showing them his most recent Halloween costume.
Seriously, when I saw this, I was like, "Come on, Star Trek, this thing is obviously rubber." This episode has some really stellar effects (see: the cube, and the death star), and I was surprised that they would show us an alien that looked like this. But it does make some sense that in a galaxy where interplanetary travel is common, it would be considered pretty rude to accuse an alien you've never seen before of being a Halloween costume. I get why no one brought it up. But eventually they would wish they had!
Balok tells them that he's gonna kill them in eight minutes. Things get extremely tense, no joke. Kirk wastes some time trying to talk Balok out of it, and wastes even more time delivering extemporaneous speeches to his crew on teamwork and responsibility and winning one for the Gipper. Eventually Spock mentions chess to Kirk, which gets Kirk thinking about games, then he talks about poker with McCoy, then he thinks about bluffing and decides to give it a shot. He tells Balok that his ship is made of corbomite, which will kill Balok if Balok tries to kill them. A risky move, since everyone knows that corbomite is just a mispronunciation of the material you freeze Han Solos in, but Balok seems to buy it. He says they're going to tow the Enterprise to a nearby planet to check out this corbomite situation. Kirk has the Enterprise resist, eventually breaking Balok's ship, meaning it will just sit in outer space until its crew dies. Problem solved, right?
WRONG. Kirk decides they need to save the people onboard this hostile ship. Look, we all kid Kirk here, and he's a good sport about it, but this was the most Hawkeye Pierce-ish I've ever seen him. Because you know what? They SHOULD help this crew. Teamwork. Responsibility. Let's win one for the Gipper.
Kirk, Dave Barry, and McCoy beam aboard Balok's ship, and something's fishy. Scotty tells them that based on his readings, they will need to duck a little bit in the transporter. They comply, and look hilarious, and Scotty definitely takes a picture with his cell phone while they're not looking. They beam aboard Balok's ship, and pretty much the very first thing they see is Balok -- OR IS IT? It isn't. It's a rubber dummy, just like we suspected all along! When your show occasionally uses fairly low-tech special effects, you can always keep your audience guessing about whether or not what they see is meant to look cheap or not. As it turns out, Balok is not a terrifying green monster at all! Balok is actually a small child who looks a little bit like Andy Taylor's son. The idea of Balok being a child is definitely scarier than this cloaked Roger Smith. Balok offers the boys a drink, and it turns out this whole thing was kind of a test (hardcore test, dude), and now he wants to initiate a cultural exchange with the Enterprise. "I want to learn how to grow hair on my face, and you want the secret to eternal youth" is not how it is phrased but it is definitely what everyone was thinking. Before Baclintok can even finish the word "exchange" Dave Barry says, "Hey, can I live with you guys forever? I kind of hate Kirk and Spock and want to party with babies forever." You just know he's planning his next hilarious book ("Dave Barry Takes On Adult Alien Babies"), but he doesn't say so. Kirk thinks, "Yeah, maybe I'll replace this guy with a boyish Soviet," and everyone decides it's cool. The end.
This is actually a really boss episode. It is tense, and reveals a lot about the characters, and it has a very hopeful end about a world that can work without war. It just needs at least one party to be populated only by babies. And considering the life expectancies in some nations today... (DARKEST JOKE IN THIS BLOG SO FAR). But seriously, we needed MUCH more Uhura, but otherwise I have zero complaints.

The Enemy Within: Season One Episode Five

I'll be honest from the start here: this is not my favorite all-time episode. I'm sorry, but you cannot keep me from Uhura this long. In fact, I'm going to have a comment on this subject later. Don't let me forget!
The situation is that some of the gang is on a planet, just looking at rocks, when jackass Fisher cuts his hand pretty bad and has to get beamed back and is covered in ore and whatever. More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that the gang finds a cute hilarious dog/unicorn hybrid, or a unicanine.
Scotty gives Fisher a once-over with his weird-substance-detector, and decides Fisher's cool, don't worry about it. You guys update your software please.
But we're missing the main point here, which is that the ore that Fisher's covered in causes Kirk to split into two dudes: Good Kirk and Evil Kirk (or "Krik," as I have just decided to call him). The primary distinction between the two is that Krik totally wears eyeliner (how is that evil Star Trek what are you trying to say just kidding you're cool) and also staggers around like a freaking troglodyte. He can totally talk, but does so very rarely, like Frankenstein in the original book, and in this example I am that asshole who read the book and is a dick about how Frankenstein's monster can talk.
Kirk goes to take a nap in his quarters, where Rand was just chilling while he was gone, because it's totally normal for yeomen to hang out in a captain's quarters when the captain's not around. Krik, on the other hand, immediately begins causing trouble because the dude does not know who his parents are, or something. He wanders over to McCoy's office and immediately acts like he's about to make out with McCoy because this is a slash fiction episode:

But no Krik just demands booze instead, which luckily the always-drunk McCoy keeps right next to the examination table. Krik begins to wander the halls sipping on bourbon like Ulysses S Grant, until he comes across Yeoman Rand's quarters. He totally TOUCHES a painting she has placed in her room, maybe she was even painting it herself, whatever, dick move, and decides to settle in.
Over in Kirk's quarters, Spock drops by to be like "Bro I heard you almost kissed McCoy and then grabbed his Southern Comfort. This is all plausibly Kirk behavior but certainly seems a bit X-treme. You cool?" Kirk has no idea what he's talking about, so the ever-loyal Spock decides that McCoy, the doctor, is going insane and they shouldn't stress over it. They almost decide to worry about this idea, when they get a call from Scotty, who has discovered a weird thing about the unicanine clone that popped out of the transporter: It is the exact opposite of the regular unicanine. Instead of saying, "Scotty, it is crazy to claim you can tell the difference of personalities between two alien pooches you just met, have you been stealing liquor from the doctor too?" they just say, "Oh, that's weird. Good thing it DEFINITELY DIDN'T HAPPEN TO KIRK." and also realize they can't beam back Sulu and the gang from the planet they were on, which sucks because the planet's getting crazy cold at night. Here's a pretty unnecessary picture of this scene, just because I love almost everything in this picture:

Seriously, Kirk is wearing his leisure shirt, and a worried Scotty is holding that kooky dog, which has definitely been sedated, because the personality differences between the dogs is that one is docile and one is barking like crazy. Sorry, I don't usually use this blog to make fun of Star Trek, but this episode was not my favorite so, sorry.
Next, we head over to Rand's room, where TENSION has been building. I want to comment quickly on the decor. She has a wall that, when you touch it, slides open to become a dresser/makeup table. Why not just have a dresser/makeup table there? The reason is that it was 1966, and as fucking genius Natasha Vargas-Cooper writes, this was an era of clean lines. This was the era that Stanley Kubrick defined the antiseptic future. WHOA. Sorry. On the story, which is awful. Krik tries to rape Rand. She calls out for help, and that JACKASS FISHER pushes the intercom button and wastes so much time identifying himself that he doesn't even get a chance to say "Krik is trying to rape Rand you guys" before Krik incapacitates him. Damn it Fisher, you're terrible at everything. I'm glad you got your hand cut. Krik returns to Kirk's room to hide and nurse his wounds.
Now comes the worst part of any workplace ever. Rand has reported to her direct superior (Spock, maybe?) that the ship's captain attempted to rape her. Spock responds to this officially filed accusation by having Kirk, himself, and McCoy yell at her until she agrees it wasn't Kirk, and that he must have a double running around the ship. As I mentioned earlier, the Enterprise has a serious protocol problem with sexual harassment, and this is definitely a nadir in Human Resources management. They leave Rand to deal with her ladyproblems on her own, and try to combine the two unicanines. They become one dead unicanine, so no luck, Kirk.
Also, Kirk is weakening and can't make any decisions and is markedly un-Kirk-like. He asks Spock to make a decision for him, and Spock gets furious at him and says a captain must appear perfect or the crew will hate him. Spock, stop working for the Kim Jong-Il administration. Meanwhile, Sulu is getting colder! He claims it's 10 below, which maybe they don't use the same measurements in the future that we do now, because 10 below could kill you (I think?).
Kirk and Spock have an idea of where Krik might be, so they go searching for him in the coolest room ever:

Just to drive this point home: Significant portions of the crew are slowly freezing to death, the transporter's busted, AND an evil guy who looks like the captain is wandering around attempting sexual assault. Clearly you need the captain and the first mate on guessing-where-the-bad-guy-is-and-tryin'-to-catch-him duty. You know where Uhura almost certainly was for this? Doing. Her. Job. Checking on communictions, translating things from Romulan, and decoding incoming transmissions. STOP PLAYING ADVENTURE-SPIES, KIRK AND SPOCK. Get security to look for Krik.
Anyway, after that some stuff happens and things move pretty slow. Krik and Kirk end up on the bridge, and they have a "which one of us is the real Kirk???" moment, but nobody has to choose because the Krik tries to beat people up and they get him to get back into the tranporter, which is fixed now so don't worry Sulu.
My significant other, who is super Jewish, suggests that this is a very Jewish episode. According the Judaism, every person has the Good Inclination and the Evil Inclination in them. And you need both. The Good Inclination helps you, you know, not be a jerk, and the Evil Inclination helps you get things done. Krik is evil, but proactive. Kirk is basically good, but super wishy-washy. When we combine the two, we get the decisive, powerful Kirk we all need. That's a pretty cool analysis. But beyond it, this episode wasn't thrilling. Oh, and the editing was great. Considering it was 1966, they did a great job of showing Kirk and Krik in the same scenes. They used the Stop Trick, invented by Georges Méliès in - wait for this - 1896! So I guess it had been 70 years, which is not incredible, but it's well-executed here. Not Ernie Kovacs-well, but it was good. Sorry for all of these qualifiers. Fuck, whatever, here's the Smug Mug:

The Naked Time: Season One Episode Four

So far this is my favorite episode of Star Trek ever, and probably the best episode of any TV series in history. This episode has it all, you guys, and more. That's why Star Trek was immediately canceled following the airing of this episode; they knew they could never top this (I have no idea yet if they top this. I'm very excited to find out).
The episode begins in the pre-naked time, or "Stardate: The Clothed Time." Spock and a jackass named Joe are asked to land on a planet where some people recently died, wander around, check out the sights, and watch the planet crumble. This seems like a pretty cool mission, and ideally every mission for the whole series. "Okay, next you have a planet thirty light years away that's gonna die. Go watch that."
Spock is the very model of competence, AS PER USUAL, but Joe is so stupid that he removes his glove so he can wipe his nose (!) and forgets to put it back on before he goes and touches everything. Looks like Joe might get sick, no surprises and really good riddance. You need to thin the herd, Enterprise, if you've been hiring morons like this:
They get back on the ship, and Spock has no idea what killed the people, but a quick checkup on him and Joe reveals that both are pretty healthy (OR ARE THEY?). McCoy uses the opportunity to make fun of Spock for the way his body works (come on, you're a doctor, cut it out), but it's probably just jealous over Spock's hot bod in a t-shirt (this episode includes a lot of hot bods, spoiler alert).
A little while later, Joe is having lunch in the recreation room, where people are playing awesome outer space games, which is swiftly in my top five Things To See on Star Trek. Sulu walks in with his boyfriend, Kevin Riley, having a discussion over whether or not fencing is awesome (Sulu is pro-fencing, obvi). Joe is feeling weird, and flips his shit when Sulu talks to him and SO BEGINS THE NAKED TIME. Joe foolishly challenges Sulu to a knife-fight, but Sulu was just talking about how awesome fencing is so who do you think ends up stabbed?
Later, the gang is watching the planet fall apart, which as you may remember was their mission, and they realize it's falling apart wayyyy faster than expected, and maybe it's taking them with it? Everyone gets pretty bored, especially Sulu, who is coming down with NAKED TIME'S DISEASE, as indicated by being covered in sweat. He leans over to Kevin, and invites him to go hang out at the gym (it's not clear if Sulu is out on the Enterprise, but it is clear that he is out to the audience). He insists they do some fencing, but Kevin wants to stay at his post, because Naked Time's Disease hasn't taken hold on him yet. So Sulu peaces out. (Worth noting, briefly: in this scene, and basically throughoutt the episode, Kirk is a total jerk to everybody and yells at them about how to do their jobs while doing basically nothing on his own. It's annoying. Example: McCoy says "I don't know what happened to Joe. I did all the possible medical tests on him." Kirk goes "TRY THE IMPOSSIBLE" which is absolutely not helpful, Kirk.)
Once he realizes that nobody cares that Sulu's gone, Kevin starts yelling at Spock and talking like an Irish cowboy and leaves. This. Is. Awesome. It made me want a spinoff that takes place on an Old West planet where Kevin (who starts calling himself O'Riley, btw) has to be the new sheriff but maybe nobody respects him because prejudice against Irish? I don't know, I'm just the idea man. But look at this:

Riley checks in at sick bay, where he infects the nurse with Naked Time's Disease, whose character name is ACTUALLY "Christine Chapel," and who is played by Gene Roddenberry's then-girlfriend, later wife. But nobody cares, because the greatest thing in history occurs right after this:
Yes, Sulu has taken off his shirt, and he. is. ripped. He is brandishing a fencing-sword (rapier?) and looking for trouble. He straight up tries to duel everyone he meets, and is generally causing problems and is wonderful. True story: the original draft of this episode had him turning into a samurai, but George Takei was like "No racism pls" so they said "How about a musketeer?" and MAGIC HAPPENED.
Meanwhile, back on the bridge, in the absence of Sulu and Kevin, Uhura has been asked to do their job as well as her own, yet another reminder of her overwhelming competence and another chance to wonder why she doesn't demand a promotion or something. Go get it, girl.
She stands up for like two minutes and is taken captive by Musketeer Sulu (quit this job, Uhura). Sulu is felled in like two seconds by Spock. The ship is close to getting eaten up by the falling-apart planet, but they can't do anything because Keltic Kowboy Kevin has taken over the ship from another room, and is singing Irish ballads over the PA (stay a while, Uhura, this job is ridiculous) and demanding that women wear their hair down (Kirk: "Turn off the PA, Uhura." Uhura: "I can't. He's locked it." Kirk: "TRY HARDER."). Keltic Kowboy Kevin's holing up in this control room is another opportunity for a crewmember (in this case, Scotty) to try to do his job, and for Kirk to YELL at him to just forget safety protocols and shoot lasers directly at the wall as hard as he can. Who will take the fall if this backfires, Kirk? You?
Then comes another awesome setpiece. Nurse Chapel and Spock, who both have Naked Time's Disease, share a moment of wanting to make out, Chapel especially basically ripping off her clothes right there, but Spock is all, "I am a Vulcan. I don't wanna do it." Then leaves the room and starts crying. It is awesome, and amazing, and supposedly increased Leonard Nimoy's fan mail to the max.
Kirk sees Spock crying, and decides an appropriate response is FRIENDSHIP SLAPS. Unfortunately, Naked Time's Disease is passed by violent contact, so when Spock slaps Kirk back, he gives it to Kirk, and Kirk realizes he might be in love with Rand (?!). Luckily, McCoy has the cure to Naked Time's Disease, but whoops has to rip Kirk's shirt to dose him. Brief emotional outbursts aside, everyone gets back on track and solves their problem of the planet trying to destroy them, but for some reason they travel three days back in time, which is completely awesome. Everyone's like What Does This Mean, and Kirk's like, "I guess we're gonna find out," and then they all ZOOM off into space, and you in the audience are so excited you can not stand it.
This episode was directed by Marc Daniels, an extremely prolific TV director of the time, who directed a ton of I Love Lucy, and did the scene where Spock has an emotional breakdown so well you guys. And what post would be complete without one of these: