Goofball Review of Goofball Star Trek Episode "A Private Little War"

This week's Star Trek began with Kirk, Spock and Bones poking around the surface of an incredible alien planet that, if my guess is correct, is probably an hour-long bus ride away from Paramount Studios depending on Freeway traffic.  Kirk says the place is a Garden of Eden, an overused Star Trek theme if there ever was one.  I think he's been in space too long because it looks like the same bleached-out California desert scrubland that's in every episode.  Kirk, who has been there before, insists that the natives are peaceful just before a bunch of them in giant black wigs and pajamas show up with flintlocks and shoot Spock.  The landing party beams back to the Enterprise and Bones treats Spock's bullet wound with an air conditioner filter sprayed with Pledge.   

Kirk is determined to go back to the surface to find out why there are guns, since the planet's culture is only supposed to have evolved as far as arrows, pajamas and stilted English ("Me Tarzan, you Romulan").  Instead of bringing an army of Red Shirts as backup, he takes Bones.  It strikes me as a dumb idea to take the scrawny chief surgeon into a war zone while your first officer best pal is dying in sickbay, but that's probably why I'm not a starship captain.

As soon as Kirk and Bones land, a guy in a white gorilla suit and a unicorn spike gives Kirk a poison hickey.  The bite of the gorillacorn is supposed to be deadly, and it has the immediate visible effect of making Shatner's acting even worse.

Domo arigato, Mr. Mugato.

 

Some natives in giant yellow wigs show up and bring Kirk to their leader, who apparently got the job as boss-man for having the giantest, yellowist wig of all.  He has a little diamond starfish on his head and talks like Tonto.  His wife is a witch with Charo's pants and Cher's furry halter top from The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.  Her acting is so bad that the instant she walks into the Styrofoam cave everybody else's acting immediately jumps ten points up the Strasberg Scale in comparison.

Her terrible performance saves Kirk's life, and Kirk has his shirt off again this week for some reason.

It turns out the Klingons are responsible for giving guns to the tribe with the giant black wigs and setting them against the tribe with the giant yellow wigs.  Kirk's brilliant idea is to arm the yellow wigs with the same guns, and if the Klingons decide to escalate then he'll do the same.  As a general rule I'm all in favor of guns and blowing the crap out of your enemies, but there are about ten people in the yellow wig tribe and a whole planet out there.  Wouldn't it be easier to beam the yellow wig tribe to the other side of the continent?  If the black wigs want to walk 2000 miles to slaughter the yellow wigs, maybe the yellow wigs deserve to be slaughtered. 

Another gorillacorn attacks, and Charo Pants hits Kirk in the toupee with a rock and takes his phaser to the black wigs.  For her trouble she's stabbed a little bit in the right shoulder and promptly dies.  Bones, on the other hand, is shot in the arm and is none the worse for wear. 

Suddenly a Batman fight breaks out between the yellow wigs and the black wigs with everything but cartoon balloons with "POW!" "ZAP!" and "KLINGON!" flying at the screen.

In the end we're treated to another Garden of Eden metaphor with Kirk calling the flintlocks he wants Scotty to build "serpents."  In fact, Kirk himself as well as the Klingons would be more analogous to the Serpent, but I've never seen a chaplain on board the Enterprise so maybe he comes by his ignorance honestly.