TOS - 0.1 - THE CAGE (...Cont)
Okay, so I change my mind. I don't find this Captain better than Shatner. The more he acts, the more I find he can't.
There are also a few technical slip-ups in this episode (like when Vina is transformed to an Orion and does her little dance for our Captain Pike, someone forgot to color the bottom of her feet green. She gets on her tip-toes a few times and you can see her natural skin shine like a spotlight
) but still, especially for the time and budget, this was a very well put together hour os sci-fi goodness.
One thing I did notice this time however, and I am shocked I never noticed it before, was the fact the Tolosians had made an image of Pike to go back below the surface with Vina in this episode. I had always thought, for some reason, that the actors got back together for THE MENAGERIE episode to film him happily going down the elevator. Not sure why my mind eliminated that Pike doppelganger from this episode.
How's about a trailer ?!?!?!
One thing that really bothered me about this episode was that when Vina is revealed to be disfigured and her beauty an illusion, she states the reason as the Tolosians didn't know how to put her back together as they had never seen a human before. Well shit, could they have not at least looked in a mirror and made her face similar to their own?
Bottom line this pilot is still better today than a lot of those being pushed out. And even though I will miss Majal as "number one" (I thought that character was a great part of this episode) I can at least hear her again soon as the ships computer ... in another 80 years or so
Star Points - 8 outta 10 Spock smiles
(also gonna try and keep a log on how much "trekking" this show actually does. I mean it's mission was to seek out Strange NEW worlds, yet I remember a lot of revisiting planets and colonies going on. Gonna try and remember to keep a tally of when a world is new
)
SNW - +1
TOS - 1.1 - THE MAN TRAPEven though this was the "first" Star Trek episode of the on-going show that aired (Sept 8 1966) it is actually the 5th episode in production number (how they are supposed to be watched). Again, like Firefly, episodes were not aired in order originally and you can tell by costumes that suddenly change in the fourth episode, WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE (which should have been the first Star Trek episode aired, after the CAGE pilot, but was actually the third one aired). Confused yet? Well let me stop worrying about when they were aired and when they should have been aired and get on with the episodes themselves !!!
SALT MONSTER !!! That was the name of this episode for me. For years. I had no idea it was any other name and I still like man bestest
We start off early in this episode with Kirk being a real dick-head to McCoy. McCoy states that this woman he has not seen in years, looks like a very beautiful woman, not older than 25 (thanks to the Salt Monsters ability to make people see what they want to see). Well our dear Capt puts the kabosh on that by telling McCoy that this girl he sees as a young 25 year old, while being a "handsome woman ... is hardly 25"
Dick
Anyway, this episode is almost the perfect Star Trek episode if for nothing else for having that damn alien that no-one could ever forget. That damn thing looked awesome. Part sea-monster, part leech, part Edgar Winter (with that long gray hair ... look him up kids), that will suck the salt from your body until you die!! Hell yeah!!
Spock, still showing a lot of emotion in this episode however. When McCoy will not save Kirk from being sucked on by the Salt Monster (I mean really Bones, I know you love the girl, but ...) and Spock starts yelling at McCoy to shoot the damn thing and then starts beating the shit out of it, I just get all fuzzy inside. This is the Vulcan that will later become an emotional void?
Just freaking love this episode. Maybe that is why the big wigs aired it first. To show that the damn Salt Monster would stay in my nightmares until I was about 7 and in my memory until I was about 97
Star Points - 9 outta 10 women that should marry Ray Rice
SNW - 0 (total = 2 eps -1 Strange New World)