Podcast 2: We Have Romulans (TOS 10-19)

space the final frontier these are the

voyages of the Starship Enterprise its five-year mission to explore new worlds to seek out new life and new civilizations to boldly go where no man has gone before hello this is John matson in salt lake city utah this is

roy fillmore in hallelujah ye ooh changing up the name on it that's your job anyway this is episode 2 of junior watches Star Trek for the first time we're video broadcasting live but no one cares no one cares no one cares except

for the people who boot off anyway but last week we went over the first nine episodes first nine episodes of the first season so hopefully you know we were hoping to finish the the first season today but I don't know if we do

nine episodes a day a week or you know a show what I should be saying it's going to take 3 episode just to get through the first season yeah oddly nazli hurrying and oddly enough even though we went to the first nine episodes we still

haven't seen the pilot but we'll talk about all day and now yeah that's true that's true okay ah first episode well first episode this week episode 10 the corbomite maneuver yeah one of my least favorite episodes of the entire season

really yeah now I mentioned I talked to you about this a little bit last week but I remember really liking this episode I thought it was kind of cool but that was a long time ago well because they the enterprise bumps into

like a big blockade in the middle of space and they can't figure out how to get past it because it just follows them around or something like that yeah I guess you can call it a blockade but really it's just inside it's a giant

beach ball it may be a little more QB but um yeah it's it's a giant budget wasn't very high that week special effect and they not only can they not get past it they and shoot it and they can't even back up

from it because well they're just going nowhere did would it help you think if they actually turn the ship around in terms of dead of just backing up you think the speed of the ship backing up wouldn't really be that fast yeah I

don't know i mean it it does the way they do it on the show is like they can go just as fast and reverses and forward but as we've all tried in our car which reminds me that i reversed in a car with you in a once and I blinded you for a

solid 20 hours I think oh yeah that was good time formaldehyde in the sandia yeah so I don't know so it didn't work but so the problem is what this cube thing is uh it is the cube itself actually a ship I I think it is I don't

know but it's this alien being who you only see through fuzzy images and he's got this weird-lookin blue face and after this episode it's in all the credits for future episodes which is my favorite it's awesome yeah and also i

may add and i'm gonna make you watch this but in the star trek futurama episode it was also in the credits to that oh there you go which was pretty awesome so what I just had the biggest macaroni burp so what happened that this

alien tells him that he's going to destroy the ship right ik members his reasoning for wanting for deciding to destroy the enterprise but he's just gonna do it was he like you're trespassing is that a no I don't know

it's one of those lesser organisms sort of things I think it it's we've stumbled upon you and we've researched you in you guys are all you do is destroy things and kill other people so to prevent you from killing other people we're going to

kill you I think it was one of those sort of deals you know one of these days a higher race than that ought to say to them all you guys do is take races that kill people and then you kill them and so for that reason we're going to kill

you yeah yeah so yeah so what so what happens is Kirk comes up with a brilliant plan now this is a this is interesting because it introduces a new human game to spot can all i'll let you explain to I he says

Spock you know being the logical person he is he goes the game is over the game is chess he has all the pieces there's nothing we can do and then Kirk says oh you stupid logical alien game is never over for us humans because the game

isn't poker it's I'm hahaha ah I gave it away really I should have let you handle it the game is intense ogre right game isn't chess it's poker so yeah and we can Bluff our way out of the Kirk because we're awesome coker place yeah

Kirk's bluffin so what's the bluff the bluff as he says if the ship is filled with corbomite which is a fictional material that any ship that destroys the enterprise will be destroyed by the corbin like a doomsday device right now

is it that the corbomite will destroy everything in the galaxy or just the ship attacking I don't remember but the point is you can't you can't destroy the enterprise yeah okay well that's good times good good to know but it's in the

blood and you know kind of relating to the plot of dr. Strangelove yeah a little bit which is a great weapon you know they they say in dr. Strangelove that's a really great weapon provided you tell everybody about the whole point

of the weapon yeah and so the fact that people are you know that this alien is told about it after they're in that desperate situation is kind of you know for the aliens should be skeptical but it makes no difference anyway because it

turns out alien is just a really really creepy looking chef with really bad pee really bad teeth is a far scarier than the puppet the child was recording that was controlling yeah that's supposed to look really scared possibly the ugly

brother of the creek be twin girls from the shining I don't know yeah yeah yeah definitely just a really creepy kid one of those kids that you you know if you if you met in real life you're you're urged is just too

it's just taken down for the sake of all yeah so what but they don't do that I guess the more you know they're more enlightened in this in the future and they leave some guy with that creepy kid yeah in fact it was a guy that kind of

got himself in trouble on the ship for I don't know for I don't know did you get confined to his quarters at one point for something i don't know so he was no good they were pawning him off on the kid right and it kind of in every

episode there is the one guy there's got well first of all there's the red shirt who dies mm-hmm and there's also the one guy who has all this all the steps about him yeah and he knows exactly what's going in he's just the perfect plot

device for what's going on in the show because it's either some guy or some girl who knows you've studied specifically what they're dealing with or someone who emotionally is tied to what they're dealing with for some

reason in that enzyme that week kind of drives things yeah ok so when there's the court might renew right you know to be honest I guess story-wise it's a better show I think I just I watched the first 15 minutes of it now and I just

kept thinking you gotta be kidding because of the big glowing beach ball cube and so it's probably better show better episode than I give it credit for well I hear it's really really grand on the on the remastered ones which I can't

rent on Netflix which really bothers me ah that's right they just dropped HD DVD yeah it's kind of really I mean they could have just let us rent of leftovers that they have well let's see okay so so there's that now I'm the next episode I

think we're going to take two episodes at once because it's a two-parter right yeah yeah and there was a lot of filler in this although is a very good episode there was a lot of filler in it yeah and so it also should be mentioned that this

so it is basically the original the original pilot more or less it basically uses the original pilot for most of the episode and the original pilot Captain Kirk wasn't in the picture it was a captain pike right Captain Pike kick

okay so having watched the special features of season one I learned that Captain Pike did not return for episode two because he thought he was worth more money than they were willing to pay him eleazar that's the case and so his

punishment is he gets to come back in the two-part episode of the menagerie with no speaking parts doesn't get to move around and he looks uh looks like you've been put through the paper shredder well it was a different actor

who played him in the International was it it did was it you sure different actor for 3 i'm pretty sure it was I heard that's one of the purposes of his having the huge accident that messed up his face and head and hair and

everything and so that they could get a different actor and make it possible ok but so but the when it shows the images of him in in previous time that's got to be the same actor that's the same footage of the pilot right hey yeah it's

just the same footage of the pilot ok but I don't think he filmed anything additional to ok well so they ok well that makes sense alright so we're we're getting a little ahead of ourselves here so the menagerie this is kind of at

least according to the video that i read from blockbusters it seems to be the the episode of the season right big two-part episode and so what's going on is spot Spock has more or less hijacked the enterprise and is taking it to is it

fallows for something what's the name of the planet I think talents for that's right okay take oh man i'm a nerd okay taking it to Thalos for i shouldn't know that without looking at something so take

coming so anyway taking the starship to a thought or which is forbidden you're not allowed to make contact without swear you're not allowed to land there nothing it's forbidden in the penalty your penalty of death death yeah which

that's kind of crazy so what I can't even can't even look at what's down there yeah they don't give a good know what could possibly be so bad they don't give a good reason through the whole episode so so the whole T part episode

is basically Spock's his court-martial while the ship is is I guess they have no way of changing the course of the ship that she's heading to Thalos for whether they like it or not because because box sabotage the ship should go

there yeah so he's under court-martial and this is kind of what bothered me the entire court-martialed spot kept saying I can't tell you you just have to see I can't tell you just have to see well the very end after everything was revealed

all I could think was why did you just say it but what why couldn't you just explain it so I guess if you just explained it it would only be for one part episode yeah they needed to extend it out to the two-parter him they wanted

to get their money's worth there and they also wanted to have the longest first season of every any television show in history totaling 29 episodes and they couldn't live at just 29 so I guess what the story is on Dallas war before

when Spock was there with a with pike that it's this planet where the inhabitants there can make you see anything they want you to see right right and so it's not a real reality but I mean it I mean it's you're more or

less like living it it's like the ultimate virtual reality whatever it's way better than afterburner in the mall arcade so right yeah so no just this is reality it's not video games you know if as real as it can get yeah so what

Captain Pike while he was there met an alien woman and I believe her real visit just kind of plain but but what he sees of her and of the place around it's it's something really inviting and it would be really great now that he's older and

beat up and can't can't walk can't talk can't nothing well it's Spock manages to get him back to this planet he will be able to live or a real life again and it would be his ideal life even though it's it's all

just more or less in his mind but it's real enough to him right right okay so which is yeah okay go ahead go ahead oh god that is how many pet him there in and the Federation is extremely lenient and they like we're not going to kill

everyone on this ship you've got according to our own law yeah I mean this is the first episode where this there's a situation like this but there's several like this and the first two seasons and then in the end of

Federer's ended it's always the situation where if you do this you're in really big trouble to Federation and either Spock or Captain Kirk goes ahead anyway and in the end the Federation sends a message saying you know we

understand perfectly and no one is in trouble and so it's very forgiving of them yeah that's pretty nice of them so what did you think of did you ever bother to watch the cage then I clearly the episode that this is based on the

episodes what footage comes from no I mean I saw parts of her from the from the special features and for some reason it was all in black and white and Spock seem to be much more emotional character in that pilot than his the spot were

used to in the show but I haven't seen it all the way through okay that's fine I don't know if I've ever seen it all the way through but I mean the cage is my understanding is Captain Pike he's on the planet he has anything he wants the

aliens provide it for him but he doesn't he doesn't agree with it because it's not real he's unsatisfied and so he leaves and in and that's the end of the cage right um humanity isn't what we isn't what we visualize humanity isn't

isn't you know in our perceptions you know it's something more real and more you know tactile than that and in and that's like the theme of that episode so do you think there's kind of a kind of ambiguity and what is you know

being trying is being said now that you can't feel anything isn't it kind of isn't that kind of an empty message just say okay go and and and just live your life in this dream world then because you're useless now haha now the year of

paraplegics you might as well go back i I don't know John but I've noticed through other star trek up so this theme comes up a lot where the crew or crew members find themselves in a situation where their every need is met and

they're living in a paradise but it's not real or their kind they would have to kind of be controlled by the alien race even though they're being given everything they want and Kirk always gives it a big thumbs down because it's

just not right because it's just not real and I'm I don't know i'm thinking you know if it's enjoyable and if everything's the way you want it to be and you know and i don't think there's anything wrong with that is it can be

plenty real what you wanted to be so you probably take the other pill in the matrix then like when you were offered a choice well i don't know if i was if I was living Neos crappy life who knows but if I was living the life that some

of these people get offered like like pike you know I mean oh he's a paraplegic and so nothing can be crappier than that sorry to any paraplegic people that I've just offended and then if I'm him I I'll stay

there on that was for and enjoy the extremely attractive female companion has been provided for me yeah well it would be nice also you think you know he'd get a better wheelchair than they gave him I mean all I could do is blink

for crying out loud it kind of looks like you just stuck in a washing machine yeah just stuck in a washing machine like okay we'll give you will give you a button you can hit once or twice but you can't do anything else that'll teach him

yeah yeah that's that's totally rude a ton of fun okay so episode 13 the conscience of the king one of my more favorite episodes yeah I'm glad you liked it I thought it was pretty good yeah so you got to the the the plot here

is the Kirk is watching a Shakespeare presentation with one of his old friends on the McMahons planet and the guy points out the main actor at the troupe and said don't you recognize him and he thinks that it is this man and can you

remember the guys name the character's name CODIS kowtows governor kodos right so hello SN Kang and kodos yeah so so kowtows apparently was this man who was a governor of sorts of some planet where in order to save the rest of the planet

he had I meters either hundreds or thousands of people were were executed 4,000 people that yeah they're thousand people were executed that I think there were eight thousand people total and they without starving all starving four

thousand people were executed so the rest could survive but what kodos didn't know was that food supplies would have arrived on time to save everyone correct no that's right which which is pretty bleak and you know I kind of felt sorry

for Cotto because you know he did what he thought he had to do yeah and so again there's no other character besides him who kind of who kind of feels for him in how heavy a decision you know was made even though I think most people

wouldn't make that decision because you have to you have to you have to be pretty in moral to make the decision but you have to make it under moral you know under some kind of moral guide line you know for a higher purpose which is kind

of weird yeah so I mean while I was watching it everyone was condemning whata terrible decision it was he made and then I agree you probably don't incentive 2,000 people to death over this you just kind of hold on and hoping

and you know I to be honest as soon as people start dying of starvation then you're going to have less people to feed anyway but the truth is it would have been a very tough situation to deal with and what do you do and you have to make

a tough choice and he did make the choice that he thought was right and so so I think that's why I liked this episode that I mean it's really a tough questioning a tough choice and they're painting him as a murderer but but he

thinks that what he did was the right thing which kind of brings up the idea that you know we think there's evil world leaders today arrived but I'm pretty sure none of them think of themselves as evil Ryan might be really

warped and twisted but yeah obviously they're not going to be they're not going to call themselves i am the evil saddam hussein even though he is obviously or he was obviously yeah but you know i mean they may be they may be

deluded and that they you know and this guy wasn't one of those he was he was a little bit more in the grey area yeah so what happens is there were like three or four people who back in the day of this all the people being executed saw him

and nobody looks like one is Kirk and one is Kirk's friend and one is someone else I don't know so Kirk's friend is murdered while the acting troupe is there and then they look back in history and all the other people who could have

ID'd him were always murdered at the time that this acting troupe was on their planet and so this acting troupe comes on board the the starship enterprise and Kirk falls in love or I can never tell when Kirk's falling in

love he he becomes enamored anyway with a coat of poker you know you can never tell ya with co doses daughter right and so they're hitting it off and what's the big surprise John when when that what we learn about all the people that are

getting killed they're not killed by kowtows to cover his tracks they're killed by co doses daughter to her her father's tracks exactly in co doses and kodos when he learned this even though he had 2,000 people executed Koto's is

just shocked and accord by the fact that his daughter has been assassinating the people that it could ID him so i mean i guess the guy still he's obviously still got some humanity and some ideas of right and wrong otherwise he probably

was it oh well and I appreciate that and thanks and can you take care of Captain Kirk I think he's the last one right right yeah III guess you know he's not complete um you've been on the run for

20 years and you know he's carrying this burden he obviously doesn't want to you know face up to everything that he did yeah but I think he's comforted in knowing that you know all this weight is strictly on him and no one else and in

the people he actually cares for you know they can be left out of it and it was so the the horrifying revelation to him about his daughters but you know she would have to bear the same things that he would bear yeah yeah that's true

exactly that that he realizes he had to do something terrible and then he doesn't want his daughter to have to be any part of that he's never told her because he doesn't want her have to deal with it and now he finds out that she is

also become a murder and and it's and well it's kind of sad what can you handle but now all in all Adam preventatives pretty pretty darn good episode yeah I like just just a few other things maybe some more

lighthearted things that I think need to be mentioned what did you think of her fur mini dress that she wore oh I'm having a hard time remembering and picturing it I'll send you a picture of it but I think you'll understand what

kind of a cold heartless person because someone who wears a fur many dresses probably it is probably kind of pretty heartless I would say it's a pretty interesting costume i think i'm going to probably start a gallery of the crazy

costumes now this this this is tops for the you know this current you know crop of episodes that we're looking at of course last time is that that halter overalls that before the android but android lady war and what little girls

are what are little girls made of so yeah also in this episode we found mccoy drinking a lot he seemed pretty in a couple scenes he's just just knocking them down which i find it interesting you won't find this interesting yet but

by the time we get to next generation there's no alcohol and you know I think there's some kind of new prohibition going on you know in the deep future see there's some TV stuff that Kirk sensor who has a

harp song kind of flower power age of the 60 blah blah blah q that'd be that seemed to be bigger in the earlier episodes and it is it's be Anna many episodes I've seen it it kind of stopped with that the ugly Kirk has a really

great line when he's confronting kodos toward the end because it's it's really funny because it's very obvious that co dose is kodos I can't remember the name he goes by but it's not kodos obviously but Kirk says are you kodos and he gives

this huge speech about humanity and you know I played several parts in my life and I've done all this and does it uh making it really really obvious that he's kodos like yeah there's no way you know you'd say that if if he wasn't he'd

just say I have no idea what you're talking about and just leave it at that but he gave like a five-minute speech talking about humanity when he asked him that question and and when Kurt confronts him he said because he makes

him read the execution lines that he that he would read the people who are about to be executed for the for the greater good yeah I mean Kirk said are you sure you didn't act these words in front of a more captive audience there

was a really clever wordplay and also in the lounge in this episode they were playing the Star Trek theme song how meta how meta is that did you notice that they were playing this lounge version of their own Star Trek theme

song kind of like kind of like in Simpsons when Nelson is frying a carrot he's singing The Simpsons theme song I'm like what did you pick up that theme song because they know the Star Trek theme song in Star Trek did they wash

themselves on TV you know or is or is the Star Trek theme song is it like you know before it's like their national anthem that they seem to themselves every morning you know or revelry or whatever I don't know that that

interesting is interesting when films and and TV shows kinda crossed the boundary like that when there's something that only the audience should know about the show and all of a sudden maybe apparently the people in the show

become aware of it as well craziness right okay are we done with that one I want to put that on my top that's that's close to the top of the ones we're talking about but the next one is really really good too I really like the next

one yeah let me review some balance of terror right let me review the episode summary i have here because kirk pits the enterprise against an invisible spaceship testing the Federation's defenses now i would say that that that

some reef it's maybe a full third of the of the star trek episode of day but this is a very important episode because it's the first time we meet the Romulans and i think in our probably at about this point and season one where I start

realizing that the Creator Star Trek must have had a whole lot of backstory going in as opposed to kind of riding as we go along and so I mean maybe I'm just I'm giving you too much credit at this point but we start getting into this and

we start getting into some other things it just feels like there's kind of a deep back story that's being revealed so we got the Romulans we meet him for the first time it was the problem with the wrong islands and why does it cause so

much conflict on the ship John well the thing is they don't even know what the Romulans look like all right for all they know they all have togas and stuff because you know they're there apparently descended from Romulus and

Remus somehow yeah but somehow they're able to get some some kind of camera inside the Romulan ships yeah I doing something they did something I don't understand but they were able to get a visualization on the Romulan bridge to

see what they actually look like because you know they've known about it for a hundred years but they haven't had contact with them they just had war with them and lo and behold those Romulans they look exactly like Spock

they're like Vulcan yet yes they do they look a lot like Vulcan so Spock kind of has a rough time of it on the ship a little bit of distrust from some other people but it's not like it's Spock's fall it's so what can you do another

episode another instance of trying to battle racial stereotypes and prejudices through through Star Trek so Spock looks like the Romulans the Romulans will peg Vulcans so why not what's the deal here now there's these two planets one zone

by the wrong Island and one is run by someone else and there's a neutral zone between them and if anyone answers the neutral zone then it's an automatic declaration of war right right ok now the Romulan it's tricky because their

ship can do what John this is the first time and it appears that this is the first time that the Starship Enterprise has ever encountered the ship that can do this video ship it has a special device I have a special cloaking device

that and so this is the first instance so much this this show this part this particular episode is so pivotal because you know they really hit on something really cool now the enterprise pretty much every ship they come across is

going to have some kind of cloaking device that they can't see but at the same time this role this Romulan ship can't it's not very fast it they don't have likely I don't think they have warp speed and so they can't quite fly in the

speed of light and so their life rip it takes a lot take much longer or something like that right and they cannot attack while being cloaked they have because the cloaking it takes a lot of power yes and one more thing they

can't win their cloak they can't see the other ship it kind of goes both ways it takes up their cloaking thing it takes up so much energy and it's nice because you know no one can find them but they can't see anybody else while they're

cloaked it's like now can-can they raised their shields while their clothes because it seems like the enterprise kind of fires blindly in the eye the direction of where they think the ship is and it seems like they get a few

lucky kids right I can but I imagine they can't raise their shields another quote okay otherwise the his wouldn't have really done as much so and so that's you know air the title the balance of terror because there are all

these different factors you know it's kind of like a a night peace going up against a rook they both ships have different abilities and they have different speeds and you can travel different distances and they have

different methods of attack yeah so now we're in a situation here where the Romulans have seen something that if they make it back to their home planet they will certainly declare war on the the planet across from the neutral zone

and so Captain Kirk is Clinton situation where basically they have to destroy the Romulan ship right right right well the way I understood it is is they had to the wrong ones if they if they destroyed all those outposts and they made it back

they would have made it back scot free because you know it couldn't really be proven that it was them because they're invisible and anybody can get on that and I guess the idea is that the the Romulans if they is it is it if they if

they notice weakness from the other side then they jump on I don't know why but the idea was as soon as they get back to the Romulan planet that they're they're coming in force yeah because well yeah I think because they know that thinks they

were successful a kind of kind of like the arms race I suppose since since they had more since they were more powerful it would be it would be logical to strike while they could take over with little resistance and so

that's why it's so important to stop them to make sure that that you know they they know that they're not more powerful that there is a balance and therefore there is peace yeah that's right so so we have Kirk who makes the

hard decision that the ship must be destroyed but there's someone on board and I'm I've got to think it's McCoy who was absolutely opposed to destroyed Romulan ship because McCoy is a he's a big pacifist on the the ship so I am am

I I can't remember the episode but there someone on board who's really really opposed to destroy Romulan ship maybe you can clarify that one it was let's just say my client okay I know I know Spock decided that logically the Romulan

ship has to be destroyed so I'm pretty sure it's McCoys it's just a board the idea of a following the ship and then destroying it went in when the ship's basically trying to get away from them mm-hmm so so there's that so now how

does Captain Kirk actually win this battle I can't quite remember because they're not allowed to go in the neutral zone now if i remember correctly they same their ship has been weakened or crippled right and so they draw the

Romulan ship to work they draw them out so that the pride of the Romulans will be dumb suit to you know finish the job and of course it is in the Romulans best interest to do that just so that there was there's no proof that that it was

the wrong ones who actually came the Romulan leader knows that Kirk has something up his sleeve so he's hesitant to to do that because which is really great you have to interplay where the wrong in leader does something and then

Kirk Kirk falls into and he's like he does he did just what I would have done and then when kurt does something the wrong end leaders like oh that's ass pride devil he did just what i was going to do yeah oh they have they earn each

other's respect that's right the mutual respect of the the two commanders and it kind of reminds me of the movie that the three amigos are supposed to do at the beginning of their movie but right

before they get fired we're then go out and they meet the Bandit and at first day five but they learn to respect each other and at the end their friend Barry Morris you know Romulan Romulans and the Federation can never be friend despite

how much they they respect each other and then the guy doesn't even make an attempt the Romulan doesn't even make an attempt to save his life so the Romulan ship is destroyed and and that's that that's that and the Romulan is uh of

course played by Mark Lonard who I guess loved having pointy ears stuck on him because he also played a Spock's father later yeah so so that's kind of that's kind of interesting and he played and that's like his main role he played to

box father in a few times even even in next generation you still for this box father so but anyway balance into a really really good episode is kind of like a that it was all a lot of these early ones they kind of go against the

the intro you know exploring new life and new civilizations you when you think of Star Trek you think okay they find a planet and there's something weird and they figure out what's weirder than they leave but this particular episode and a

lot that follow it are are are just kind of different types of stories this is like a naval battle almost you know something like that like master and commander or something like that yeah so they kind of use this you know science

fiction and the star trek universe to kind of tell a different type story and this was a nice change of pace don't you think it's very different and very unique and very very fun to watch yeah yeah it was a good episode also brings

up a really really basic point about Star Trek grades and maybe we should have discussed earlier these brought up is that even though you know right now when we send people into space it's under the purview of the Air Force right

mm-hmm but in the future it's all it's the Navy it's like the Navy is a is they run space operations right yeah so so maybe you joined the wrong branch the military yeah I'm never going to get on board a starship yeah you're never

gonna be on board starship you know you thought you're shooting for the stars but you're really just shooting for the clouds in the Air Force yeah which brings us to the next episode which is shortly which actually is a lot like

your description of the basic Star Trek episode sort of plan and figure out what's wrong and lead but this is a this is a this is a fun episode and we ought to be able to discuss it pretty quickly so they're all taking leave on this

planet that they don't there's no life-forms right but it's kind of like a Garden of Eden started planet it's really beautiful and they take decide to take shore leave and believe it's dr. McCoy who said that it kind of reminds

him of alice and wonderland and no sooner does he say that but he sees the White Rabbit bouncing away saying his late and then Alice follows in tow and it just kind of goes from there you find a suit Sulu ride Sulu finds a handgun

and he said he was just thinking about how fun it would be to shoot a handgun or whatever and so it seems to be the whatever these people think of happens and you think okay that's good but it's not just the good things they think of

that happen it's also if they're thinking of something that are scary that happens to know which it does get scary when because McCoy is hanging out with the you know can I just say really really hot new yeoman on board the the

woman who replaced yeoman Rand the kindof Victoria Jackson looking blonde da hood now we have this redhead Gilman with kind of cool hair and she's really pretty and she's totally cuddling up to dr. McCoy but she unfortunately thinks

of a knight in shining armor while she's with him and the knight in shining armor comes and oh my gosh he killed dr. McCoy wait yes if i watch that for the first time I would have been horrified if I didn't

know dr. McCoy would live for another you know 90 years or whatever yeah in fact it kind of becomes a hallmark through the second half of the first season and also the second season the major characters seem to die a lot only

to be saved in one way or another so yeah McCoy gets killed and we're thinking how crummy is this place after all but then the creators of the place or kill themselves and they say was the display is it's an amusement park you

think of it it comes true and even the bad things nothing is permanent so who do we see coming out of the brush we see McCoy comin he's been completely fixed he's not dead and he's a starter kylo the ladies yen yes because he had been

thinking of a lovely cabaret show him seeing one and so so what so even though we had some really scary brushes with death on this planet when it's revealed that nothing's permanent and you can have a lot of fun as long as you're kind

of careful you think about Kirk immediately ordered shortly for the entire ship and and that's the end of the episode so he's like try not to imagine yourself dying yeah his final orders which I thought okay now I was

watching this episode just before we started doing in the podcast I was like oh let me finish or leave you know before we start so I could talk about it and you're like oh okay good yeah that's a good one but it it kind this episode

kind of bug me okay because it's a lot like a lot of the others and you're kind of like okay someone's controlling someone has some weird agenda something weird is going on but then the whole episode we're exposed to these um these

weird things happening and then at the very end this guy just comes out and says this is my amusement park you whatever you think that comes through and they're like oh really and we're like yeah well we kind of know that

already and then trick just kind of laughs and says oh that's kind of funny and then that's it like there's no that like we know that you know whatever they think of comes true and um and and you know surely there has to be

something more than that and and surely you know I kind of wanted you know Kirk to have a fist fight with that guy but he didn't he just kind of laughed it off this this episode was kind of like shore leave it really it literally was shore

leave as far as like Star Trek deepness goes you know it was like it was like it was seriously a break you know from you know from handling all this stuff like Kurt didn't even want to handle the deeper implications of what was going on

so we just kind of said okay well it's a vacation yada yada yada that's it yeah it is it's kind of like an entire planet that if i remember correctly it becomes like oh like the holograph chamber in the next generation right yeah it's a

precursor to holodeck which you know maybe and you know let's let's be honest um I I think I'd have a holodeck addiction problem if I was like if I was on a on a starship it would just be you know I mean there's your life and then

there's whatever you want yeah so it could be it could be trouble something of course this is is touched on in let's see what else were we talking about in the menagerie of course a lot of is this is just this is really another episode

of Missouri and and you know obviously you know Matt now that you and I are talking over the Pacific Ocean and we have all this great stuff when you have the internet we have all this stuff and technology is so amazing it we can

almost do well we can't do whatever we want but we can kind of experience anything we want right now and i think that's it you know this all this kind of stuff that they talked about in the 60s they kind of you know for told you know

what life would be like you know when we have so much freedom that we have would we indulge in freedom or would we you know indulge in in progress yeah i don't know i mean this this is yeah you kind of feel like this is one of

them so them just like you said you can't you almost expect kurt that have a fixed fight with a guy because he's in the situation in other episodes and he but it's not real and love above it I think you're right in saying that that

it not only is it surely for the members of the crew but it's shortly for the show yeah so yeah and most of the issues were already taken care of and in other episodes but it was a good excuse to just have a lot of goofy stuff happen

yeah yeah I imagine this was one of the episodes it was probably fairly fun for the actors to uh to do so so there then alright ours and that was one of the Gallup Galileo seven right oh yeah yeah now I think you probably really like

this one I'm so so on it but this is one of those episodes really entire episode is about how much Spock's logic sucks and how everyone hates them because of it and of course employers in the center of it there's this I think we all know

the McCoy and Spock habit have it regard for each other and even friendship but they sure bicker and argue along this episode is basically an hour of that Ryan tovahleh why don't you set it up okay I'll set it up the ship the

enterprise they're on their way to deliver medicine to some dying colony very important medicine but on the way there oh my gosh they discover a quasar and and Kirk is like I gotta see this quasar let's go send a shuttlecraft out

to see this quasar it can be awesome which is kind of lame I mean how lame is that oh they send out the Galileo which is the shuttlecraft and there's seven people on there and the quasar sends an ion storm or something causes them to

crash on the planet and and they're stuck down there and there is there are big giant ten-foot creatures there who are trying to kill them and Bach is in command of the Galileo seven and he rules with an iron fist of

logic and you know they almost mutiny because they're like you know we're going to die here how can you be so cold and he's like look I'm just doing the logical stuff to keep us alive and you know for the first um I thought you

might really like this episode because the first half of the show it's just it's it's pocket his best no yeah t'kul eee hee hee you know people but I think McCoy or someone says well now's your big chance for command you know what do

you think of that and in Spock says I don't relish or fear command it just exists it's just something you know I don't have any aspirations for command but when it presented to me I'd do it and I do it to the best of my abilities

you know very very just straightforward about it and I thought the most the most interesting Spock moment was one of one of the red shirts dies the the creature kills them a giant off beer to the chat a johnny is a huge spear it's like a

giant shovel yeah I deerhead nugget yummy and the aliens are giant they've got terrible teeth and I think they reappear in season two but go ahead oh do you think really I look forward to that and and and so they carry the crew

guy away to carries body away and they're like Spock we need to bury this guy and you know we need to have a service for him in Spock's like that's a logical I have so much to do to keep us alive and they're like you know how

could it be so cold and he's just like this this is this is ridiculous I have to keep us alive I have to keep working at this other stuff we can worry about his body later because there's nothing we can do to bring him back and they're

like oh and so they kind of get annoyed with that and then they're like the creatures are coming if we use our phasers we can stop these creatures and then spot goes I just don't understand you know how you can take life so

lightly which is is is really funny because Spock was taking life lightly or at least you know I or at least life life services and you know it would seem to be a little ambiguous in in that he disregards this

guy's body but then he also says you know it's not up to us to take the lives of these aliens whether the hostile or not and so I kind of thought that was kind of unique kind of going back to what we talked about last week when when

you said you know under logic you know this Spock is perfectly logical like most computers who are perfectly logical when they just start killing people because that's what happens when computers take over but but Spock is

part of his personality is that he's closer to McCoy than Kirk in his treatment of life but that life is sacred and you know while he won't bury a guy even even if someone's trying to kill him he doesn't want to he'll

avoided it any cost which i think is interested in it's brought up again in season two when someone makes a point how do volkens are so much better than humans why haven't they conquered and McCoy says because the Vulcans worship

peace above all else or something like that so I think I think the point is that you know okay so he doesn't want to do the funerals but you can't have the idea of killing the natives there I mean they haven't done anything except

they're just protecting their own land but my interpretation of this is the Spock his prime directive is to protect life well the people who are about to be buried they're already dead and all they're doing is reducing the likelihood

of protecting life that still exists by burying them you're putting more life in jeopardy so it's too bad they're dead but his prime directive is protecting life right right so that's that's kind of how I see it and then of course you

go through all this about how Spock is so cold and then the end of the episode what happens Spock's logic dictates that everyone takes off and he stays behind and we sacrifices himself right buttons but they are human and they don't do

that and then they dragged my board yeah and everything kind of almost almost works and this was foreshadowing 22 he says it's kind of he says one line 46 leave me here it's just very life is very basic for him I sacrificed myself

so that and it's not like you know he would never use the word martyr he's just like well this is obviously what needs to be done and but because they did that they have less of a chance of being rescued by the ship but you know

it's it's TV and a miraculously are which is which is really nice yeah but also on Spock towards the second half he starts making the wrong decisions because he and he doesn't understand he's like I've done everything logical

and and I think McCoy says to him you've done everything logical in trying to understand beings that don't feel but anybody who feels would understand and so that was kind of Spock's drawback is that he didn't he couldn't really feel

what these aliens that were attacking work what was going on with them and they probably should have been taking a different stance than he took ya so as it was only was a very revealing episode as far as Spock personality goes and you

know you can get up to this the point in this episode there's been a little bit of back important bickering between Spock and deploy of course this one there's a whole bunch of them but you also get this the feeling at the end

that the socket McCoy actually really respect each other and I don't remember how to end it but i'm sure there was some sort of quick quickie quickie remarks made by both of them of the very and I'm sure their last word y-you

green-blooded why thank you doctor something like that yeah but but they add they respect each other just like Romulan commanders do yes yes okay going on then so go on yeah so let's see the squire of gothos is this episode was all

right now the squire we're going to see him as a Klingon in season 2 by the way oh well I am sparing out did you recognize him under all my makeup oh well I don't know if you've seen very many Klingons the agencies in water to

you and you're watching but there's not a whole lot of makeup i think the the Klingon look that we know from the next generation I haven't seen a ton of it but I know enough they've got the huge forehead bone structure well there

really isn't any of that yeah if we were actually doing these days I can't remember but they do explain why the physical structure of the Klingon head changes between seasons are they attempt to explain it and I'm not exactly sure

what the explanation is because I stopped watching star trek by that point but but you know maybe maybe I'll explain later like I get around to doing that okay so what happens the we end up on this planet and you're gonna have to

correct me if i'm wrong i think the entire planet is uninhabitable except for like this very small space that's right that's right they beam down to it and it looks like 18th century england and you've got this guy calls himself

the squire i think and he's kind of running the place and again it's one of those situations where he kind of offers them whatever they want and what's his restriction I she'll have to refresh my memory is he holding the ship he's

restricting their freedom somehow hurt me he won't let them beam back yeah and and I think oh and the planet itself is it kind of like in the corbomite maneuver it's like in their way controls the entire planet like where it goes and

somehow it somehow this planet I guess traveled with the speed of light the enterprise's way which is pretty feet worthy and and I mean he doesn't quite give them what they want he kind of you know if someone says like it for her Oh

wants to play the harpsichord and some 18th century song then he'll let her but I eat kind of you have a few more limitations but still the crew is at his mercy yeah and it's more like they're there to entertain him he's been waiting

for someone to help fill out his 18th century England sort of fantasy that he's trying to live he's been living it by himself and now I've got some people to cut it to kind of do it with right and right and so then there it's not so

much that Jesus benevolent person who wants them to these happiest can be but he's a-- but he's kind of using them for self amusement and so they have all this enough on correct they have this big table with all this food but the food

tastes like nothing right because the guy has no idea what to taste like right because you kind of give you the impression that he's been observing Earth's through like a telescope kind of thing yeah annual and it was their plan

is mine his plan is nine hundred light-years away from her so it's like nine hundred others in the past which doesn't make any sense at all because that would put that would put his viewing in in the 14th century or or so

like not not the 18th century you know what I mean yeah they didn't really established I'm like exactly when Star Trek is taking place until until like a while later there's still establishing something because like in

other episodes like they talk about Space Command or or the United something-something of interstellar probing or something like that it wasn't until just a couple episodes ago that they finally decided on Starfleet and I

think in the queue up something with you to the other side oh yeah this is the 23rd century so but yeah he's he's kind of the humanity to him is what he observes not not what he experiences and it's what he observes in the past and

he's really stuck on this whole 18th century stuff okay yeah and and so you kind of got got it wrong a little bit but so what way comes across as is he's on it's like a spoiled child playing with his playthings and his and his

playmates don't want to play along and so Kirk notices why that he's never away from the moon this big mirror and so he figures out that the mirror is that what you using to control everything right and so oh I don't hate i don't remember

exactly what happens is kirk able to destroy the mirror or why but it gets to the point where everyone is released and it's just kirk and this guy and the curve has worked it out so everyone else is free and he's allowed himself to be

hunted by this guy it's been a while since I've seen this episode yeah hunts welcome to be stalls he plays with him and then then they start fighting and Kirk breaks the store and you as a tantrum trucks laughs so many acts

like a child and then we learned that more or less he is because we hear these two voices of a woman and a man and I guess this Squire is like their kid right yep he's just illuminating playing with toy at the moment you don't have

the responsibility to play a few toys you have so overindulgent parents and they should have corrected him earlier and they're finally cracking down so that they more or less tell them that I'm sorry you're done until until season

two when you come back as a Klingon yeah yeah maybe the meatman into a cleaner because I me a little thing yeah okay well that was sounds yeah we've been all right up so it wasn't great yeah okay okay moving on moving on where's my list

arena yes arena okay arena is it could have been a half hour long I think yeah I think my kids love this episode because of the bad guy really so let's see there's a mysterious alien race that destroys the earth colony and the

enterprise pursues and what happens they're about to start fighting each other but there's this alien race and they can't handle the idea of these two these two other races that are trying to fight and kill each other so they come

to the conclusion that the best way to deal with this is to have the commanders of each ship Duke it out right right and so find it like in a more glowing version the balance of terror you have this hand battle between Kirk and this

lizard like the horn and the Gorn is really big and strong but he's also the slowest thing you've ever seen yeah it doesn't seem like it slugging along it wouldn't be too hard to be this guy I mean yes he has maneuverability and I

mean you just kind of stay behind them the whole timing Kiba keep punching him in the back of the head yeah that's probably what I would do maybe pull that I am damn watching trip but nothing they did to this guy could

kill him and so what uh everyone on the star on the enterprise is able to watch but he can't communicate with Kirk and they notice that there's some some things on this planet that Kirk could use to kill and then Kirk more or less

fashions what like a kind of a team hosting a cannon yeah out of a bamboo pole and sums and find stuff that when dynamism to build a gunpowder and uses a diamonds in a bamboo as I go it's like a diamond bullet which would probably hurt

and and it works it works but Kurt refuses to kill the Gorn and boy does that shock the alien race that said the whole thing up yeah which is definitely my favorite part because this alien race they come they bring these to the Gorn

and the Starfleet together and they say you guys you know just like so many other advanced alien races we see you are unnecessarily violent and you know your hunters and your predatory and you know we don't understand that and so

we're going to you know make you do this to kind of teach you a lesson and so and so Kurt does it he defeats the Gorn and he passes and they say congratulations you know wait a way to be merciful but will still kill the Gorn vessel if you

want us to which makes no sense at all like you know they're they're all being all self-righteous and being like you guys go around killing people and you know you need we need to teach you a lesson but you know if you pass the

lesson we'll go ahead and kill your enemy yeah so I don't know what their deal is there in what are they that the Metatron's are like these angel type things that are the emitted message got what they're called Metatron's I cook

and kind of interesting the gorn's are kind of interesting because they weren't that bad they obviously seemed to be a little bit more aggressive and a little bit more evil than Starfleet but what Starfleet didn't know is that they build

a colony on their space and they were simply kind of defend they're their space and constructively didn't know where they were and so it's kind of a misunderstanding that could have been figured out if if those

meddling aliens didn't interfere okay we're going to talk about the last last episode for this session and we'll made it through ten episodes and so next session we'll just have to do ten more yep nuts and uh okay so let's see

tomorrow is yesterday episode 19 so what happened is the Starship Enterprise ends up in a black hole and of course every time you end up in a black hole you get thrown back to earth and the 20th cent yeah despite the fact that the movie

black hold of them to pick that at all you said everyone what happened yeah so what happens is they're in and they're not in outer space either they're kind of like flying up with normal air traffic in outer space and I don't know

how that is because can the star ship enter the atmosphere I guess so uh so a funny you should mention that because later i think they say that it can't okay well right cam anyway they're reacted to buy some air force pilots and

we have some great stock footage in this episode of air force pod and so what happens I think that they have to erase any any any proof that they were there because they don't want to alter the future and so they have to destroy the

aircraft of the pilot of in but they also have to take him with them so they they destroy his aircraft that they d memo board the starship at the same time and so he's on the starship and they figure okay well he's just gonna have to

stay with us forever and there's no proof that we were there and and you know their spacecraft had been seen before people always write it off as weather balloons or whatever so they're not

worried they look in the guy's history and he doesn't do anything important so it's not going to alter blustery but what do they find out that his son that his unborn son is very important and the point is the space exploration with the

suspect and review visit this son never gets blown so something Jessica so any Star Trek series Star Trek neurons were listening because this podcast if I'm really wrong I'm sorry but I think that's the gist of it right so so

they've got to return him to earth but they also learn from him that the air base reef station that has proved from the audio recordings of I think of his of his uh his aircraft they have proof of the existence of the Starship

Enterprise so they got to go back and take care of that stuff too so this sounds a lot like that episode of Simpsons where Homer builds the time toaster and keeps going back and keeps changing things and have to fix things

yeah and that it's a lot like that and i wish i've seen this more recently but based basically they they go back to try and fix it and then there the guy i guess is going to promise that he won't say anything to alter the the future but

they've got to go back a little earlier and and take we've got to take their records from the base and of course they get caught by security personnel and and it's a mess and I wish I had a better summary front of me because I can't

remember how it gets resolved but um but it does well it sounds like the summary the worst episode it's the worst one ya know professionally the worst thumri that we've given code yet well maybe so the most of them you know and I I don't

remember seeing this episode but it sounds kind of like another summary for this episode is is two-thirds of the way through the first season the Star Trek production crew runs out of money and so they need to find an excuse to cast this

episode in present-day and so they come up with this whole story of how they have to you know get information from you know present-day people and they have an excuse to use stock Air Force stock footage for the

night over to the episode yeah so did you did you like the episode at all or was it just kind of it was kind of it kind of another genre swapping was like a little bit of covert stuff and wasn't I good it was okay it just became it

became a kind of a mess up okay you even know if that'll fix it and all on our attempt to fix that we messed it up again we got to fix that too and and that uh this is probably one of the episodes where I probably would have

been easily distracted by anything else going on so it didn't even make a good enough impression on me to remember how it all got resolved but uh I think maybe they got the captain back to earth and not a great episode that makes sense

what you're saying that is that it was a bunch a column they must have gotten some budget back Kathy they got ten more episodes ago it'd be great if they if they got like if they kept keep screwing more and more things up until finally at

the end of the episode they go back in time and just destroy the earth because there's no such thing about yeah so anyway so I mean that and there's that episode so I think that this is a good set of episodes most of these diverse

are pretty darn good couple my favorites right here even though I lost my reference material so let's see what we had we had the menagerie and concert to the king and bouncing tear i thought were both good and of course conscience

of the king post and really a serious question you know that was ethical and what's right in the justice to put juxtaposed them on on acting it's an acting team and it's like he's acting as a different person and she's acting it's

a different person yeah kind of kind of some cool concepts yeah yeah so is that and then shortly was fun gallows Galileo seven was a big another character development episode for her first part and Rena which was pretty

good tomorrow was yesterday is yes so so but I think it's a good set of episodes then this is a more enjoyable than than the first or this evening yeah yeah good crop very good i would say conscious of the king and balance of terror were to

write back to back that were just that were just I think both of them kind of went a little bit beyond Star Trek if you know what I mean they both like it if the same stories we're told in a different in a different medium than

Star Trek they they could have easily done that they could have been on any show or it could have been any stories that's outside of the star trekking of universe and I think most people would really get into them and think it was

they were very well done so i think i really like those one thing I forgot to mention about balance of terror is what do you think of of the Romulans now that we've met them how do they get to be named Romulans isn't that a purely earth

they're from the planets Romulus and Remus and they all have Caesar haircuts did they steal that from us or that's never really i'm going to call that anything yet the cop out period is all about the human i'm a collective

consciousness and despite the fact these people may have never had experiences etc etc and inevitably our history will go through some of the same phases so that's pretty uh had some pretty deep stuff like yeah sure is i even said

union didn't i yam union zippity zappity okay well i guess that does it do you want to sign off i'm going to say from Salt Lake I'm John Manson and and live long and prosper all right from Honolulu this is a junior

fillmore and zap yeah one more episode recaps oh also I'm at the point where I wait are you taking the phone to the bathroom looking yeah you