ST:TOS: The Enemy Within

It's been quite a long time since I posted a review here, but I think it's about time that I get back on track (feel free to keep track of how many times I say that). A few months ago after I made my last entry I decided to begin a full-fledged rewatch of all of star trek. Yes, that's around 700 episodes and 11 movies. At a reasonable rate (about one per day), I worked out that it would take at least until the next star trek movie comes out to finish everything, except for The Animated Series, whose existence I try not to acknowledge. As a result, I'll have to put all the other shows here on hold at least until I get caught up with the star trek reviews.

But enough babbling; let's get on with the review. Although Kirk pretty much demands full attention towards him in every scene that he appears, partly due to how he is written and mostly due to Shatner's peculiar acting, but this episode really takes the time to flesh out his character. The Enemy Within does this in a rather straightforward manner: by splitting Kirk into two people. One Kirk embodies all of his negative, primal, and aggressive tendencies, and the other contains all of his positive qualities.

Not even Spock could resist the attraction of Unicorn Dog

The trouble all begins on a geological survey when ensign blue shirt slips on some rock and injures himself. He is beamed aboard and carries a plot device with him, some strange type of magnetic ore, that does something to the transporter. However, he and Kirk beam back fine, so Scotty doesn't recognize anything out of the ordinary. To close off the teaser, we are introduced to evil Kirk, not to be confused with Mirror Universe Kirk, who conveniently materializes after everyone leaves the transporter room.

This is yet another prime example of how TOS pushes the envelope when it comes to its sci-fi story elements. Ultimately I'm willing to suspend my criticisms when it comes to the imaginary physics that star trek presents, because the genre is science fiction. I have no problem with transporter technology, regardless of whether or not it would work in real life, because TOS has established it as a critical part of the series, and there is a reasonable explanation of how it's supposed to work. However, I do have a problem with the transporter suddenly being able to split a person into two different beings that are polar opposites in terms of personality, which as far as we know isn't explicitly determined by some structure in the brain, or something simple like that. The only reasonable explanation that I can come up with is that the ore is magical, and if I'm willing to admit that, then I might as well be watching Harry Potter (yeah, I went there).

If there's one thing I have to say about evil Kirk, it's that Shatner sure enjoyed playing the role. The many moments that displayed evil Kirk lurking around the ship with a menacing look on his face merited more than a good laugh from me. However, most of his outbursts are so over-the-top that he doesn't bring very many serious feelings to the table, except for maybe when he tries to assault Janice Rand. He doesn't have too many lines of dialogue, so he acts as more of a foil for the good Kirk to realize the flaws he has as a captain.

"I can't believe I let Scotty install Windows Vista on this thing!"

And that's where the real story of the episode lies. Janice swears she saw the good Kirk, who was actually the evil Kirk, trying to assault her, which has most of the crew believing that the good Kirk really did do that. To make matters worse, evil Kirk has covered up the scratches on his face that Janice gave him using makeup, which only has me wondering why Kirk stores makeup in his quarters. On top of that, the transporter is now officially broken, so the landing party must be rescued before they freeze to death. Even Sulu can't cuddle up with somebody for too long.

As the episode nears its conclusion, good Kirk realizes that without his evil, aggressive side, he is incapable of commanding the Enterprise. As he loses his ability to make decisions, a situation that would have had Freud jumping up and down with excitement, his confidence weakens. Just as his evil side lacks intelligence and skill, his good side lacks the authority to make command decisions. Neither can live without the other. Eventually, Kirk is re-integrated and the landing party is rescued.

On the surface, this episode is littered with campy acting, mostly on Shatner's part, but it works brilliantly on a deeper level. Although there are quite a few plot contrivances, especially for TOS, The Enemy Within shows significant character growth for Kirk as well as offers an interesting look into the human psyche. These two points come together in the quote near the end, "I've seen a part of myself no man should ever see." The question is, was he referring to the good Kirk, or the evil Kirk?

Score: 8

Best Quote: "I've seen a part of myself no man should ever see."

Best Moment: Evil Kirk yells "I'MMMM Captain KIIIIIIRK!"

Red Shirt: 2 (+1)

TZ: Walking Distance

This episode revisits some of the themes presented in the last one, The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine, without having to resort to annoying and unrealistic characters. Walking Distance essentially takes TSMS and brings it up to a relatable, thoughtful, and even emotional level. Comparing the two is like comparing the Star Trek: The Original Series episode Space Seed to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The former is pretty good, but Khan is so much more effective and recognized as Kirk's villain in the film than he is in the TOS episode. When I think of 'Khan', I think about Kirk waging this epic space battle against an enemy who won't surrender even if it means giving up his life, and not the brief TOS fist fight.

"You know, you'll never have to use cursive again after 5th grade..."

Speaking of characters, right off the bat the protagonist of this story is instantly likeable. His name is Martin Sloan (Alright, when I think 'Sloan', I think of the Section 31 leader from Star Trek: DS9), and although he isn't the most exciting character on the show, he does have qualities that make him relatable. He's a fairly stern guy who doesn't really like how things are going for him in his life at the moment, but he isn't necessarily grumpy. He walks toward his home town which is within walking distance of a gas station, longing for the good ol' days like we all do sometimes.

The episode plays on this idea, and the Twilight Zone spin on it is that Sloan has actually traveled back in time to when he was just a kid. He gradually notices this as he wanders through the town: the ice cream sodas that taste just like they used to, kids playing in the streets, people who have long been dead in perfect condition. He is still his adult self, so his parents obviously have a difficult time believing his story when he confronts them, especially since the young version of himself is right there with him.

"Walking distance, yeah right."

The realization finally hits that Sloan has somehow missed out on his childhood, and runs to tell his younger self to enjoy himself while he is still young, but only succeeds in pushing him off a carousel and injuring his leg. However, the most important portion of the episode hits when Sloan sits down and has the inevitable father-son chat. His father believes that Sloan has really come from the future, and tells him that everybody has their time as a kid, when life is simple and worries are few, so Sloan should be looking towards the future instead of burying himself in the past. Finally taking this to heart, Sloan finds himself back in the present, and limps off to actually live his life.

This episode has a simple message, but it carries through surprisingly well. It's a prime example of the dreamlike storytelling that The Twilight Zone does so well, and in combination with the enthralling music really places the viewer at the heart of Sloan's unwillingness to let go of his past. If written better, I would have given this episode a 10, but some of the dialog seems just too straight forward, like this moment:

"Sorry I yelled at you, but you see... I'm a city man in search of myself. I've come back to my hometown to find a piece of my childhood. Maybe I'll find that it was here with me... all along."

This sounds more like something you would say around a campfire at 2 AM.

Score: 9

Best Quote: "You've been looking behind you, Martin. Try looking ahead."

Best Moment: Sloan's chat with his father.

Cheesy 60s Moment: Young Sloan falling off the carousel.

ST:TOS The Naked Time

I don't know who came up with the title for this episode, but I can't think of any other episode off the top of my head that has a more misleading title than The Naked Time, or a funnier one when taken out of context. Sure, at one point Sulu takes his shirt off and chases men around with a sword, but it doesn't get as bad as the title would suggest. In reality, the title refers to the crew's inhibitions being stripped rather than their clothes, but let's move on, shall we?

The Enterprise approaches the planet that sounds like a bad sci-fi movie, 'Psi 2000', and the crew takes note of its impending disintegration. Spock takes an away team to the planet's surface, and discovers some frozen scientists who bear evidence of killing each other. Unknown to himself or the rest of the team, Tormolen catches supposedly what is some sort of virus in classic TOS fashion and brings it aboard the ship.

From there, we see the disease spread from person to person, as noted by suspenseful sounding music and the infected crew members furiously rubbing their hands. After feeling intense dread about the Enterprise's mission and saying things like "we shouldn't be out here", Tormolen falls ill and soon dies. McCoy is confused about the whole ordeal, and can only conclude that he has gone the way of Padme Amadala and simply lost the will to live.

What makes this scene even weirder is that this is supposedly Takei's favorite episode

But before anybody thinks of washing their hands, the disease gets out of control, and soon all heck breaks lose on the ship. This begins the most entertaining part of the episode, as we see crewman after crewman falling to the disease and Kirk trying to remain in control of the situation. After Sulu and Riley struggle to maintain orbit and are shoved off the bridge, they begin to create problems of their own. Their inhibitions have been lowered, so naturally Sulu appears topless in the corridor with a sword and starts chasing people around, and Riley locks himself in Engineering and starts singing an annoying tune over and over again. I half expected Kirk to insert a statement in his captain's log saying, "Note to self, remove all alcoholic beverages from the mess hall."

The Enterprise begins to fall closer to the planet, and after some time Scotty is able to retake engineering. A cold restart of the engines is the only possible way to escape in time, but it requires Spock, whom is now incapacitated, to perform some calculations. Kirk manages to make him regain control of his emotions, and by now Sulu has been cured by McCoy, so they barely manage to escape, as Kirk himself begins to fall victim to the disease and longs for a woman in his life.

As if we haven't had enough crazy things going on in this episode, the cold reboot actually goes better than expected, so much so that it actually knocks them three days back in time. I'm still trying to figure out how that one works, but at least they didn't evolve into salamanders.

"Dang, this is not looking anything like Nevada."

The thing I like the most about this episode is that it doesn't need a guest star villain or a subtle political statement to be full of value. It's just a simple story about the crew getting infected by an alien pathogen, and yet we see some classic character moments here. McCoy facing something he doesn't quite understand, Scotty running out of time and power, Spock struggling with his human half, Kirk trying to maintain command and save his ship, Uhura...monitoring stuff. There's so much going on here without the episode losing integrity that I have to give this one a high score.

Score: 9

Best Quote: "It is like nothing we've dealt with before."

Best Moment: Sulu chasing crew members with a sword.

Red Shirt Death Count: 1 (+0)

LOST: White Rabbit

I've decided to do something a bit different in the reviewing of further Lost episodes, mostly because by now the show has fully immersed itself into the flashback/island format. I'll simply be splitting up each of these reviews into two parts: the events that take place on the island, and the events that take place in flashbacks. The format will stay the same, although I'll be able to draw greater conclusions from looking at the flashback and island stories side by side, and hopefully unveil some things I missed the first time around.

Flashback:

This portion of the episode, in itself, contains two stories. The first one involves Jack as a kid. He is threatened by school bullies, but his father offers little consolation for trying to stand up against them for the sake of his friend. In fact, he does the exact opposite. His father, Christian Shepard, tells young Jack that he can do the difficult job of a surgeon because he "has what it takes." He has the ability to make decisions that determine whether a patient lives or dies, and claims that Jack ultimately does not.

"I know this airport gets crowded, but I really don't think you need that many escalators."

Despite this, it's clear that Jack cares for his father anyway. Years later as an adult, he travels to Australia to retrieve Christian, who died from alcohol poisoning(that is, severe levels of alcohol in his blood, not his drink being poisoned). He argues to get his coffin on the plane, so that he can take Christian's body back home and bury it.

Although we know what Jack was doing in Australia, the question this part raises is what caused him to argue for his father's proper burial in the first place. We will see on the island that this flashback works well for the episode, and it's certainly written well because of how well the kid and adult roles tie together, so I think this part was successful. Whether or not Jack's character appeals to you at this point, there's still a lot to ponder.

Island:

On the island, we see Jack's uncertainty with his leadership abilities be reinforced with "visions" of his father, being unable to save a woman from drowning, and some of the people in the group questioning his decisions. At various points throughout the episode he runs off chasing a "white rabbit", or sight that he's not even sure is real, and once nearly gets thrown off the edge of a cliff before Locke steps in to save him.

It's also noteworthy to point out the first time references to Alice in Wonderland. Obviously the title is a glaring one, but other instances include Sawyer reading the actual book(Not sure, but it at least it has a rabbit on the cover), Locke calling Jack's "hallucination" a "white rabbit", and Jack almost falling off a cliff while following the white rabbit. And we will see many more instances of these, especially in Jack's episodes.

Unfortunately, Jack couldn't see that his father was just trying to do his business

I really enjoyed the conversation between Jack and Locke in the middle of the jungle. It's the establishment of the "man of science, man of faith" debate that goes back and forth throughout the series, with Jack trying to explain away the sightings of his father as a hallucination, and Locke countering by saying things like "we all know that this island is special." I'm getting pretty deep here, but I think that almost falling off the cliff was sort of a halfway "wake-up call" for Jack. Synonymous with almost falling down the rabbit hole, he realized that something bigger was going on, but didn't want to deal with that at the moment. He needed to stop chasing white rabbits and memories of his father in order to deal with the rest of the Losties and the freshwater caves that they had just discovered. This mini revelation culminated in his speech at the end, where he finally let his leadership qualities shine through; "If we can't live together, we're going to die alone."


This might sound like I'm trying to analyze what happened to Jack's character in this episode, but that's only because there wasn't much to criticize. The episode's effectiveness may come down to your feelings about Jack or the way he's acted, but for me this episode has stood the test of time well even with a somewhat weak B plot about the water shortage.

Score: 8

Best Quote: "If we can't live together, we're going to die alone."

Best Moment: The conversation between Jack and Locke.

WTF Moment: Jack almost falling off the cliff.

B5: Born to the Purple

This week on Babylon 5, Londo falls for a slave girl who turns out to be after more than his sideways mohawk. I'm pretty sure that every single sci-fi show has this exact story at some point during their run, and well, I'm personally sick of it. The plot is very poor excuse to try to usher in some character development by having a character be seduced by someone who seems nice at first, but has an unseen evil side. All you need to do is change a few words to fit the context and the story is the same. For example:

Star Trek Voyager, "The Disease": Harry Kim gets seduced into forbidden sex with an alien and contracts an STD.

Lost, "Stranger in a Strange Land": Jack sleeps with a woman in Thailand and gets in trouble over a tattoo she gives him.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Game": Riker is given a "game" by a woman on Risa that brainwashes the entire Enterprise crew.

So, although the intentions of the women in these episodes may differ, the story is almost always predictable. It sometimes works, but this is not the kind of story I want to see in a show that's supposed to be about humans desperately trying to make peace with interplanetary powers.

"I told you, world 8-3 is impossible."

Now, back to the show. There is really not much to say about the A plot. As said before, Londo falls for a girl who turns out to be a slave working for some evil dude who wants him out of the picture. Londo eventually figures this out, denies it for a bit, and the rest of the episode follows the formula we've already seen. Namely, "Let's go find the evil guy hiding somewhere on the station." Most of the humor is worthy of a smile at best, such as the joke where the ambassadors in the council room are playing some future version of a gameboy while waiting for Londo to arrive. It was funny, however, when Talia found out where Adira, the slave, was by telling the evil guy not to think of her location. She should use that tactic every time someone is concealing something.

There isn't too much to say for the B plot, either. Garibaldi is looking for a comm signal that seems to appear and then disappear, which Ivanova refers to as a gremlin. After trying time and time again, he eventually tracks it to none other than...Ivanova herself. Apparently her father that we didn't know about before is dying, and we learn a little about her history.

"Finally, a chance to cut this ridiculous hair off."

But do we care at this point? Not at all, because the episode is almost over, and this was a subplot. This one was a slight improvement over the previous episode, but really only because I could tell it was trying to develop its characters a bit without bringing on boring guest stars like the soul hunter.

Score: 3

Best Quote: "You have kissed far worse things in your time, Mollari."

Best Moment: The computer calls Londo's personal files "purple files".

Best Race: Narn. G'Kar has some cool scenes.

nuBSG: 33

Generally, the pilot of a serialized sci-fi series is pretty dull. This is mostly due to the fact that all the characters need to be introduced, the plot needs to be established (and possibly the framework for some story arcs), and we need to get a taste for what the show is to become. Oh, and the audience has to be entertained throughout all of this.

The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica has a significant advantage in this area. It already had an entire miniseries to do all this, so the actual pilot has no problem on the entertainment side. The show loses absolutely no momentum in this transition, and if anything it slows down to focus more on the characters and their actions in the face of the impending Cylon threat.

Steve worked diligently to plan bathroom times to account for the 33 minute cycles

Except, in this episode, it's more like the continual Cylon threat. For some unknown reason, the Cylons are jumping to hyperspace every 33 minutes to meet up with the Galactica and its fleet. Not a moment too soon, not a moment too late. By that time, every ship in the fleet must jump to hyperspace or risk further damage by the Cylons. It appears to be an effective strategy, as the crew on board the Galactica is tiring more and more with each jump, and systems begin to fail, causing them to lag farther behind on the 33 minute cycle.

Meanwhile, Baltar is having issues of his own. The consciousness of Number Six is still inhabiting his body and pushing him to accept that God exists and has a plan for him, and he is constantly haunted by the fact that it was him who let the Cylons infiltrate Caprica's defenses. There were actually some enjoyable scenes with him in this episode, such as when he is trying to carry a conversation with Roslin and others, but Six is posing questions of her own. He is forced to phrase his responses in a way that will work for both parties, while trying not to sound crazy.


Eventually, it is discovered that one of their own carriers is leading the Cylons to attack them at the end of each cycle, so Apollo and Starbuck reluctantly destroy it. You would expect an episode like this to occur somewhere in the middle of a season, and not at the beginning of one, but this episode is still solid. The plot continues to be entertaining and engaging, although there are still some things to be worked out. I can't entirely feel sympathy for the characters at this point, and there were quite a lot of trips into Baltar's head. (They were okay scenes, but the constant bantering got old pretty quickly)

Score: 8

Best Quote: "Well, I'm sure someday if you're a good Cylon, he'll reward you with a lovely little walking toaster of your very own."

Best Moment: The crew being forced to destroy the carrier.

TZ: The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine

If you follow my blog, you know that I have reviewed some of the older sci-fi series like Star Trek: The Original Series and the Twilight Zone almost as much I have reviewed shows that have aired within the past ten years. I don't claim to be a huge fan of this type of nostalgia, but isn't it kind of ironic that I have only reviewed three episodes so far for this series, and there's already an episode on the dangers of investing one's self in the past? I would find that to be creepy, if only the episode itself was halfway decent.

Oh, if you don't know the plot behind this one, then don't worry. It's pretty straight forward. We are introduced to a woman by the name of Barbara Jean Trenton. She's an aging film star, and her life would be pretty fantastic except for the fact that she can't let go of her past fame. She spends most of her time in seclusion watching her movies from 20+ years ago, which as you might have guessed isn't exactly conducive to her social life.

Imitation is the sincerest form of arrogance

Throughout the episode, Barbara longs for this seclusion, but she is continuously interrupted by people close to her that know better and just want her to move on with her life. Eventually she actually gets to meet the man she once acted with, before realizing that he does not even resemble the person that she remembers and sees on her screen every day. In the end, though, she actually gets her wish, and her agent finds her "trapped" inside the film. Yeah, that one has to be seen to be believed...

A typical reaction to seeing the Lost series finale

Although this episode, like the others, had a good message to send, I think it pretty much failed in doing so. The whole point, in my opinion, was supposed to be that Barbara was too caught up in her nostalgia to care about things happening in her real life, but as soon as she got her wish she found that it wasn't what she actually wanted her life to be. The problem with this episode is that there is no indication that this was actually the case. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Barbara actually rejects her friends when they call out to her from beyond the screen, and simply happily goes on with her life. So what we get is just a somewhat creepy, but mostly laughable ending to close off an "I could care less about the plot" episode. This doesn't really feel like a Twilight Zone episode, and the only really redeeming value to it is how the Barbara character is portrayed. The depiction of a self-absorbed movie star is fun to watch, but the story is a let-down.

Score: 3

Best Quote: "Picture of a woman looking at a picture."

Best Moment: The maid uttering an ear-piercing scream upon seeing Barbara on the screen.

Cheesy 60s Moment: Barbara sees her previous co-star in his aged state, and her eyes widen on an overly dramatic note.

-Patrick D