mushroomxfrog

[diabeticgirl4]

Thinking about the spoiler that (at some point, somehow or another) nott the goblin permanently(?) becomes veth the halfling. Thinking about the other spoiler that nott dies in this episode I'm listening to (83). Wonders if they're related.

[mirrorfalls]

Lego Liveblogs ST: TOS, part 22 (of who-the-hell-knows-how-many?)

Drawing another big blank on this title. Return of the Archons is something you could use for almost any fantasy setting, so all I can do is keep my mind open.

* Welp, I see the writers are by now completely comfortable with dropping whatever weird shit they want in the teaser, no context required. I approve. * On top of that, looks like Tomorrow Is Yesterday kicked the door wide open for costume-shows of all sorts, so here’s Kirk and friends as... 19th century Methodists...? ** And also Spock as a poison-apple peddler * So this is some kinda Invasion of the Body Snatchers/The Stepford Wives plot going on, right? ** Ooooooor not. Maybe it’s actually The Purge: Swingin’ Sixties. ** (Also - the “how do words fit together” cadence of this planet’s inhabitants is sweet, but it’d be even more impressive if the Redshirt at the very beginning didn’t talk the exact same way.) * Pour one out for Kirk’s sleep schedule * Starfleet is the Archons? Now there’s a twist. * Uh, guys? Guys? They killed a dude and all you do is stand there and watch? ** Jesus Christ is this going to be our first Prime Directive episode * Oh, now you find your backbone. ** Aaand it’s gone again. If you already know these guys can’t do jack shit with their sticks, why not KO and interrogate them? *** (Wait, why can’t these guys do jack shit with their sticks? Weren’t they the same ones that Assimilated Sulu?) * Whole town becoming a homicidal hive-mind - nicely creepy, even nicer soundtrack. ** “He’s an Infected, we need to leave him!” Even better. Predates Night of the Living Dead, donnit? * So what we’ve got now is a “help the plucky underground liberate this Space Commie hellhole” plot. I’m game - though the “the Enterprise is useless and also going to fry in twelve hours!” subplot feels a little cheap. * Ooh, another all-powerful asshole in a sheet. Got a pretty little “Our Culture Is The Perfect Ideal” speech all prepared, I bet. ** Holy crap, his voice is so annoying it literally shuts our heroes’ brains down! * Oh, now I remember where I saw this ep’s title before. In one of those innumerable “Kirk’s best Evil Computer takedowns” lists. * Assimilated Bones... not gonna lie, Kelley’s performance here is absolute gold. * This Redshirt is my new favorite character on the strength of “Are we just going to stand here?” alone. * Alas, it looks like Kirk and Spock are bent on doing exactly that. Make with the nerve-pinches, man! * Aaaaand it turns out this brainwasher guy (but not the one who worked on Bones? What, are they working in shifts?) was part of the underground all along! How utterly anticlimactic. * Interesting character note - Spock doesn’t see the idea of a “soulless” society with anything besides disgust and pity. * Oh, so this is the first Prime Directive episode! Wonder how many of the previous eps now retroactively count as war crimes. * We’re all agreed, right? Bones being extra-violent with Kirk is his natural personality clashing with the brainwashing? * Took you long enough to remember the nerve-pinch, Spock. * “It's time you learned that freedom is never a gift. It has to be earned.” Bit late to start putting Heavy Messages in a story that’s already kneecapped itself six ways to Sunday, but points for effort, I guess. * Guys, we sussed out this planet was being run by a computer two acts ago why are you treating it like a Big Reveal now * See, this is what you should’ve led the episode with - the computer effortlessly zzzt’ing our heroes’ Phasers so they have to play nice if they don’t want to face worse. * And now, the first of the series’ iconic “out-logic the computer into a smoking crater” dialogs... is pretty damn bad. Mostly it’s just Kirk and Spock preaching Good Old ‘murican human values at it ‘til it presumably decides it’d rather self-terminate than hear one more second. ** But then, I suppose turnabout is fair play... * Sooo... are we ever going to learn what the fuck that six o’clock Purge thing was about? No?

I’m gonna level with you guys: most of what this episode did well (or at least interestingly) What Are Little Girls Made Of? did better, and the rest is an incompetent mess with no grasp of dramatic tension or coherent philosophy. In fact, it’s so incompetent I can barely even get angry at it, despite knowing it’s opening the doors to a bajillion more “Enterprise beams down on a random third-world planet, tells everyone their culture sucks, then wrecks their entire society and leave without even sweeping up the pieces” plots down the line.

I’d thought we’d be free of this kind of stuff after Mudd’s Women. Evidently I was wrong.

Next: War games, before Wargames made ‘em cool!