#Anyway‚ I remember I was like 15? When I first saw a McCoy episode on screen and he just felt off

[castrovulcant]

1, 4, and 15 for the Doctor Who ask game! :D

I'm sorry for taking so long to answer, Anon, I hope you don't think I was ignoring you.

1. what was the first episode you watched/remember ?

This one is always slightly fuzzy for me. It was either Resurrection of the Daleks or The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. I remember my brother watching RotD on VHS and I remember my mum watching TEC/TDD. I'm not sure which episode got me watching Doctor Who, but I remember telling my brother that one of them was popping bubble wrap. Throw Storm Warning in there and it gets a tad bit more confusing.

4. who is your least favorite doctor ? why ?

Oh no. Seven. Sylvester McCoy. I don't hate him. But I just don't vibe with him, which is odd considering the amount of him I've listened to of the main range.

He's just, there's something about him that bothers me that I can't put my finger on. It feels harsh to say that considering how hated he was during his run, I think some of it is from just how secretive he is, and the sheer amount he hides from people. Especially as so much of what's happening can be resolved just by communicating. I know his R rolling was so excessive in one audio that I just switched it off and didn't go back to it for a few days, which feels really petty to say but it's true for me. And he's just so hammy, so over the top, I know that's like the general standard/on par for old who but again, sometimes it's just so excessive.

It doesn't help that I'm not much a fan of Ace either.

15. what is your favorite companion outfit ? why ?

Okay, I don't really have a favourite, maybe if you combine a few outfits together and I'd have a favourite? I like bits and pieces of an outfit but never the entire thing. Maybe Dan's pirate get up in Legend of the Sea Devils.

[kinetic-elaboration]

August 15: 2x03 The Paradise Syndrome

I have seen this episode once before and I remember it being pretty awful... but tbh, I didn’t think it was so bad this time around. Maybe that’s just because my expectations were, like, Spock’s-Brain low. It definitely had issues but there was stuff I liked too!

Hmmm, that’s not the bridge. It appears to be... California?

Wondering what people might be so “blessed by this environment”--what a manly he-man action/adventure guy thing to say, amirite?

How does Spock know the significant markers of all the Native American tribes at a distance, off the top of his head?

(Answer: he doesn’t; all of this information is wrong and also one of those tribes is completely made up lmao.)

Honestly, who’s to say these people aren’t advanced? How do YOU know?

“Just so peaceful... no command decisions.” Oh no, Jim’s feeling Romantic again.

Honestly, imagine this characterization in AOS: overworked starship captain think he wants a break (but is wrong). Beyond made a vague attempt but missed what it is that Kirk finds stressful about command--it’s not that it’s boring, it’s the weight of the responsibility and the inability to find love.

Although funnily enough, even on his Native American Vacation, he still finds himself in a command position. He just can’t be stopped. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Oh no, the obelisk ate him.

Maybe these people specifically built the obelisk so that they could return to this idyllic ““primitive”“ state, hmm? Maybe they like their lives this way. Maybe they experienced "progress" and then decided that whatever era of their development looked like indigenous American peoples had it right. (This is not correct but it roughly is the plot of Errand of Mercy so I’m not without precedent.)

Spock’s using simple tools to explain his point to Bones lol. “Here, let me dumb it down for you, lesser man of science.”

“Who am I? What are these?” Cpine morning voice: “This must be a dream!”

Kirk looks so confused. The god from the obelisk.

“The engines are showing signs of stress.” Seems to me like SCOTTY’S showing signs of stress.

And yet the music is so whimsical.

Honestly Kirk’s expression here = Denny Crane’s when in a meeting

White man brings CPR, is hailed as god. (I wish I were making this up.)

Damn, Salish has been demoted. How embarrassing for him.

This is a VERY interesting Spock. He does all his calculations, but the he takes all the risks. He’s very certain and single-minded, almost obsessed, not afraid of anything. I think it’s IC but I also think you can see some Kirk influence, perhaps... You can see how Spock has grown in his command abilities since The Galileo Seven.

The wise ones = the aliens.

“He died before he could tell Salish the secret” to opening the Obelisk and stopping the asteroid. That IS unfortunate.

“How does this shirt open?” Lol.

“Your name is Kirok?” “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

“I’ve never been this happy and peaceful.” Funny how he looks neither happy nor peaceful. Maybe it’s something like “I’ve never been this happy and peaceful...and I don’t like it.” Or “I’ve never been this happy and peaceful... there must be something wrong.”

“Here there is much time. For everything.” No there isn’t, there’s an asteroid coming.

Kirk’s cottage core fantasy.

Poor Scotty, so stressed out. Maybe he needs some time with the indigenous aliens.

The Joining Day? Lol okay.

Kirk has no chill, at all. “Oh, you want to get married? Tomorrow? Okay!!” Is this how Gary was able to successfully distract with him the blonde lab technician?

The “stardrive.”

“Estimated repair time?” “FOREVER.”

“And you lost Jim.” Cool it Bones, there’s no need to be cruel. Spock’s already in his thinking pose so you know he’s taking this seriously.

Love Spock’s chair. That’s not Starfleet regulation.

“I have found paradise.” Is he high??

Requisite highly choreographed fight scene.

“You’ve barely eaten or slept for weeks.” That’s because he’s worried about Jim. And the giant asteroid. This is a great Spock and McCoy scene though.

I can’t believe this. Spock lies down (barely!) and McCoy just leaves like he actually thinks he’s won, and then Spock immediately gets up again to go back to work.This guy is even easier to fool than Sarek.

You know Spock spent his whole adolescence going "Sure, I'll do the thing" and then just not doing it.

“A strange lodge that moves through the sky...” Well okay.

Okay I’m sorry, is he sensing the enterprise or is he sensing SPOCK? Because most of this dialogue might just imply he’s generically remembering his old life... but he also specifically says that the “flying lodge” was farther away and now it’s closer again, and how he could he know that otherwise?

She’s pregnant? That’s not good lol. AWKWARD.

Also the closest that TOS will ever come to acknowledging people have sex.

Omg he made a lamp. He made a lamp on his first day there. Does this imply that Captain Kirk had an arts and crafts phase?? Like CPR I understand him knowing--I’m sure everyone in Starfleet does. But hand-carving a lamp? That’s a whole other skill.

Various cultures including “certain Vulcan offshoots” use music notes as words omgggggg I love this information PLEASE tell me more.

“The Preservers” is a good concept imo. Nifty sci fi innovation: taking aliens from endangered places and giving them a new place, then setting it up nicely for them.

Stop throwing things guys! It’s not helping!

“I need Nurse Chapel.” Damn right you do.

Spock really doesn’t like that “wife.” He sounds like “Wife?? How dare??”

Then he suggests it’s a hallucination even though there’s a woman right there.

"Naturally, since he did not come from there. He's my man, get your paws off him."

Vulcan mind fusion? What the heck is that? How is it season 3 and they still don’t know what to call it?

“He is an extremely dynamic individual.” Spock was really taken for a ride in that brain.

“The landing party is expendable.” There’s the Captain.

“I have an excellent eye for musical notes.” Brag.

“Just press the right button.”

Looks like Spock was the god they wanted all along.

Okay, that was an uncool ending though. I know they basically had to kill Miramanee as soon as she was pregnant but like, there was also no reason for her to be pregnant??? I would have preferred if (1) Miramanee hadn't been pregnant, (2) Jim got over her as soon as he regained his memory and (3) she lived and they just parted awkwardly.

Also I think it would have been nice if they had ended with the Enterprise explaining to Salish how the obelisk works, and then maybe even a hint that he and Miramanee will get back together. Like, maybe not that, since I’m not a fan of women just being used to, like, make men feel better--though I’m also not a fan of them being fridged because of Inconvenient Baby--but he should have at least gotten his position back and, more importantly, the knowledge he was always entitled to. Also, the very existence of an asteroid deflector, along with the people’s extensive knowledge of what weather signifies Oncoming Asteroid, implies this happens to them with some frequency. So in other words, the threat will return.

Plus Salish never got enough credit for being right, which he was! The whole time!

Oh and also I would have liked some acknowledgement that Jim does like being Captain. If you watch the whole show, you know that he occasionally bemoans the stress and his inability to maintain a romantic relationship, despite his love of long walks on the beach, but that he’s also ambitious, he loves exploration and adventure, he gets bored if left in one place too long, and he believes in the necessity of progress and discovery to keep not just individuals but societies from stagnation. But if you just watched this episode, you’d think he’d never been happy in his entire life, and that returning to command makes him miserable.

Aside from the Native American stuff--which was awkward and rather unnecessary and has aged, as you might imagine, very very poorly--I actually didn’t hate the episode. It had some VERY interesting Spock stuff, which I think is within a reasonable Spock characterization, and some great Spock and Bones moments. Kirk’s story line was surprisingly engaging for him being completely separate from the crew, and the general theme that he sometimes needs, or thinks he desires, a break from command, is definitely in keeping with other episodes. I liked the asteroid as the Big Danger, which was surprisingly dynamic--by which I mean, it did a good job of connecting the very disparate story lines on the Enterprise and on the planet. I also liked the Sci Fi Concept of the week in the Protectors. And it was interesting to see an ep take place over a longer period of time.

None of this is to downplay how awkward the Native American elements are--incredibly fetishistic, and also lazy--like, “I want to show something Simple and Idyllic...I know! Indians!” There was no reason they should look like American Indians. In fact, it makes no sense that they do: the Protectors take peoples from planets that are about to be destroyed and (somehow) discreetly move them somewhere else, but Native American peoples still.... very much exist? And so does Earth as a whole. So obviously these aliens weren’t transplanted from Earth. So why should their culture resemble some awkward mishmash of Native American cultures?

So overall I’d say, the ideas of the episode, the structure, the characterizations (mostly), and the overall ideas were good, but it was just very awkward and unfortunate that it chose the... aesthetic that it did--especially because it was very much an aesthetic choice and not a well-thought-out, culturally sensitive one. Gonna be honest and just chalk that up to it being 1968 though.

Next is And the Children Shall Lead, which I actually think was one of the first TOS eps I ever saw... But I don’t remember it at all.  So we’ll see!

[kinetic-elaboration]

December 28: Star Trek TMP

Just watched The Motion Picture for the first time in....uh, a long time. Too long. I’d only seen it once before. A few thoughts:

I remember there being long sequences of space in the beginning but those seem to be cut from the version on Prime. I guess I could be remembering wrong, but the run time is almost 15 mins shorter than what google says it should be, too. (ETA I guess what I saw today was the director’s cut, and the stars are from the theatrical release...)

Overall, this is a good sci fi story, and even though it’s really REALLY reminiscent of The Changeling, it’s different enough to warrant its own movie. BUT--the film could and should have been at least a solid half hour shorter. In other words, the sci fi conceit was cool, but it wasn’t that complicated. By itself, it could have fit in a 50 minute TOS episode.

The rest of the time, what makes it a movie, should have been focused on the Enterprise crew: most of the best scenes are the reunions, the re-introductions, seeing people advancing in rank, getting hints of what they’ve been doing...

It’s not that I need more information in all instances; I mean, I rather like not knowing how McCoy became a disco hippie, for example. But we could have gotten more scenes of just the crew doing...literally pretty much anything lol.

Instead of long shots of the inside of V’ger or that scanning sequence or that 100 year long wormhole scene.

Basically what I’m saying is that there’s a lot of good stuff in this film, but the pacing is SUPER weird and the emphasis is in all the wrong places, at least per my personal taste.

Every time I see Stephen Collins I think “Reverend Spice Boy.”

Anyway the most important part of TMP is of course its place in the Kirk/Spock story. I actually legit don’t know how people can watch this without looking at it through a K/S lens because first of all, I don’t think it makes sense, and second of all,  it’s so much less interesting.

I definitely read the sequence of events like this: right after the 5YM, Kirk and Spock return to San Francisco and hook up. Spock freaks out, leaves Starfleet, and returns to Vulcan. Kirk doesn’t entirely get what happened but he moves on with his life. The first time they see each other after that is TMP itself. That’s why Spock wanted to purge emotions in the first place, why he’s so awkward with the whole crew, and why he’s extra awkward with Kirk. Also, Bones knows about all of this.

The ‘this simple feeling’ scene is the Pinnacle. Of Everything. This is such an important step in Spock’s individual journey, but that journey is so clearly tied up in Jim and his feelings for Jim. Why did he want to purge his emotions? It HAD to be something pertaining to Jim--he lived among humans for his entire adult life and it’s only NOW that he’s like ‘nah, gotta peace’? He feels the machine consciousness and thinks ‘this is the perfect mind, I have to learn about this exactly logical mind’--and what he finds is a machine wanting what he already has! Purpose, meaning, connection, feelings. LOVE. That’s why he’s laughing when he’s in sickbay. He should have known. What he was running from is exactly what he was also running toward, and it was Jim the WHOLE TIME.

I’m sorry but this is a queer love story I don’t even know what else to tell you.

I headcanon that the phrase “this simple feeling” actually came up between them before. It just has that ‘callback’ feel. I think Kirk said it to Spock during the hook up scene, like ‘you have to trust this simple feeling between us’ or something.

Other great parts of that scene: Kirk just pushing Bones away when Bones tries to get him to step back from Spock; the expression on Kirk’s face (the man invented love, okay); the hand holding and arm grabbing, obviously.

I also liked Spock’s line, later on, about V’ger “It is searching, but like many of us, it doesn’t know for what.”

Completely forgot there was another Vulcan science officer in this film. Poor guy didn’t last long. Also, I can’t believe Kirk LITERALLY manifested a new Vulcan Science Officer. The skill. Your fave could never.

The more I think about it, the more fond I grow of this film. There are parts where I spaced out, for sure. But when it’s good, it’s so good. All the crew getting the Enterprise ready. Spock’s arrival in that cloak. Kirk recommissioning McCoy. Kirk being kind of rusty at captain-ing but ultimately getting it together to save the day. The softness and beauty of our own explorer probe finding a family of machine-aliens and going off in her own ship to search out all the knowledge of the universe--then coming home to tell us what she learned. The triumvirate reunited again. Janice Rand returning as an engineer. Those truly awful uniforms (with the matching shoes that make them look like they have little feeties) that nevertheless have a fond place in my heart. Etc., etc.