I have finally finished my epic rewatch of \u201cStar Trek: The Original Series.\u201d (Previous posts here<\/a>, here<\/a>.) The final stretch was defined by my discovery that lots of supposedly terrible episodes are either genuinely good, or better than I\u2019d remembered.<\/p>\n There is one exception. That exception is, of course, Spock\u2019s Brain<\/em>.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s do this thing. Bread and Circuses<\/strong>, infamous for supposedly pushing Christianity with Uhura\u2019s final line, \u201cNot the sun in the sky, Mr. Spock\u2013the Son of God!\u201d, is genuinely excellent. The ex-gladiator, now-Christian, who longs for a return to violence, is a great character; you guys know how I feel about the emphasis on peace; there\u2019s a strong Hunger Games<\/em> feel to the \u201cancient Rome + commercialism\u201d atmosphere. You guys, this episode features a space Romans reality show<\/em>. How does it have a bad reputation?!<\/p>\n Uhura\u2019s line is also somewhat less pushy in context (she\u2019s been listening to the Christians\u2019 underground radio broadcasts, so she\u2019s clarifying for Spock what they believe, based on her investigation) and I seem to recall some fascinating First Things<\/em>-type stuff in which Kirk et al. believe they share the civic values of the Christians (democracy? liberalism? can\u2019t remember) without sharing the belief in their god. ETA: possibly it was, \u201cHow odd that we share a belief in human equality even though we don\u2019t share your god!\u201d Except that they do\/did share that god! \u201cAll men are [redacted] equal<\/a>,\u201d the TV show.<\/p>\n Ahead of its time.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think these two are actually disliked, but Plato\u2019s Stepchildren<\/strong> and The Empath<\/strong> make an interesting pair on one disc. Stepchildren<\/em> affected me a lot as a child and is just as powerful now. Its look is fairly generic ST:TOS but its intense focus on humiliation as a tool of control has not exactly aged. The Empath<\/em> focuses on physical pain instead of humiliation and is therefore proportionately less fascinating to me\/maybe less psychologically complex. Its look is quite distinctive though\u2013theatrical and somewhat surreal. Very artsy. Too bad the empath actress is just a blank face, given nothing to do but look pitiful. I know she isn\u2019t supposed to be an audience-identification character like Alexander in Stepchildren<\/em>, but she\u2019s just very boring.<\/p>\n Let That Be Your Last Battlefield<\/strong>. Okay, I won\u2019t fully defend this preachy race fable, but the actors who play Bele (Frank Gorshin, black on the right side) and Lokai (Lou Antonio, black on the left side) really sell the generations-old power difference. Their body languages are perfect: Bele\u2019s arrogant bearing and assumption of respect, Lokai\u2019s pushy challenges and constant cycle of hope and brutal disappointment. Also I think this is the episode with the gorgeous green and red lighting in one shot. Although it also has the very silly thing where an alarm goes off and the camera zooms in and out because ALARMS ARE SCARY.<\/p>\n How do people feel about The Cloud Minders<\/strong>? It was one of my favorite episodes as a child and on rewatch I can see why: It has more than one woman. ETA: Or more precisely, two women who explicitly parallel one another, who debate political ideals and tactics, and whose intertwining future is imagined not once but twice in the show.<\/p>\n The storyline is a prescient ST:TOS take on environmental justice\u2013there\u2019s a strong flavor of later (?) lead-poisoning controversies\u2013and the planet\u2019s class difference is shown through the two women, Droxine the daughter of the cloud-dwellers and Vanna the leader of the mine rebels. Droxine is paired with Spock and Vanna, clearly the superior female, is paired with Kirk. I think I had a crush on Vanna myself back in the day. Droxine has a dress<\/a> that makes her look like a water fountain (it is glorious<\/em>) and a room<\/a> decorated entirely in different shades of fuchsia.<\/p>\n Speaking of women, the last episode on these discs (other than an extended version of The Cage<\/em>) is Turnabout Intruder<\/strong> aka Hysterical Females Be Murderin\u2019. If you cut maybe five minutes from this episode I think it would be regarded as second-tier at worst, a top-fifteen episode: It\u2019s tense and well-paced, William Shatner is hilarious as a murderous lady inhabiting Kirk\u2019s body, and the crew of the Enterprise<\/em> seriously considers mutiny. The problem is basically the character motivations for Dr. Janice Lester, the villain, which are a gross hodgepodge of feminism + thwarted love for Kirk (of course<\/em>) + hysteria. See, ladies? This is why you can\u2019t run a starship! Anyway I loathed all that stuff and was surprised at how excellent the rest of the episode is. Also they bring back the weird jazzy Vulcan mind-meld music!<\/p>\n (Although they also forget the transporter code words from Whom Gods Destroy<\/em>, which would have solved this episode\u2019s plot very quickly.)<\/p>\n Anyway\u2013these final discs had plenty of lilac, not nearly enough Sulu and Uhura (the first season has most of their good stuff iirc) and way too much Chekov (The Way to Eden<\/em>, in which he flirts with an old Russian flame, is just a painful pile-up of comedy Russkie accents), and fewer real clunkers than I\u2019d expected. If you want a later ST:TOS episode to really dislike go for the one that was supposed to lead into a \u201cGet Smart\u201d-style spinoff. The only good thing about that one is all the \u201960s women\u2019s wear.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have finally finished my epic rewatch of \u201cStar Trek: The Original Series.\u201d (Previous posts here, here.) The final stretch was defined by my discovery that lots of supposedly terrible episodes are either genuinely good, or better than I\u2019d remembered. There is one exception. That exception is, of course, Spock\u2019s Brain. Let\u2019s do this thing. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[230,34,493,85],"class_list":["post-10201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","tag-all-men-are-redacted-equal","tag-humiliation","tag-star-trek","tag-the-retro-future-is-ours-comrade"],"yoast_head":"\n