No, wait. I'm sorry. That might actually be interesting. Instead, the crew has to fight a space amoeba hell-bent on committing the intergalactic sin of...mitosis!
I've complained before that the Star Trek writers never took junior high school science. Someone must have sent my gripes back through a wormhole in the space-time continuum because this week they decided to prove me wrong by dusting off their old notes from Mrs. Mulcheck's sixth grade biology class, inserting "Spock" and "Enterprise" a few dozen times, and passing them in to Paramount as a brand-new script.
The show begins with the Enterprise returning from a grueling mission on Planet Cowboys & Indians, and Spock suddenly gets a headache and tells Kirk that the Force has told him that millions of voices cried out, and then went silent. A shipload of Vulcans are dead and an entire solar system has been wiped out. Spock is more worried about the 400 Vulcans who died than the billions of others we're told are dead as well. Maybe Kirk should have left him back on Planet Nazi, because it sure sounds to me like he'd finally be happy there.
The Enterprise travels to the spot where the solar system used to be and they find through the amazing magic of high-tech sci-fi special effects that someone has spilled a bottle of ink out the window. Provided this glimpse into my psyche doesn't make me the next Jeffrey Dahmer, I think the ink blot looks a little like a monkey kissing.
Kirk orders a probe sent into the kissing-monkey ink blot, and there's such massive feedback that Chekov is momentarily a worse actor than Shatner and Spock cops a feel off Uhura. Everyone gets dizzy and McCoy starts shooting them all up with stimulants from the same needle. Did this guy get his medical degree in a crack house? Chekov's going to have a hard time selling everyone on the idea that he and Sulu are "just friends" when McCoy's dirty needle gives him space AIDS.
The kissing-monkey ink blot suddenly swallows the ship and all the stars go out. Inside the ink blot the Enterprise finally encounters the giant cell. That's right, I wasn't kidding up top. The villain of the week is not a monster, it's not a god, it's not another ship...it's a big, floating cell, 11,000 miles across. Next week the Enterprise is set to do battle with a massive hair follicle, and the week after that a gigantic toenail clipping threatens all life on Earth!
McCoy suggests they pinpoint the cell's vulnerable spot and Kirk tells him it's a rock, it doesn't have any vulnerable spots. 50% of that is true.
Speaking of 50%, the ship's power is 50% drained, and everyone's getting sicker. Spock and McCoy both want to take a shuttlecraft to fly out and penetrate the space cell, and I resist the urge to make about a hundred childish "penetration" jokes.
Spock takes the shuttle, and the super computer onboard is so far advanced beyond anything we have now that it looks like a cigarette vending machine with those colored plastic rings babies play with lying on the top.
I have programmed in two packs of Lucky Strikes and a Baby Ruth for later.
Spock radios back to the ship to tell them how to kill the cell, but speaks juuuuuuuuust slowly enough that all the important stuff is drowned out by static bursts. Gosh, if he'd just spoken faster they'd have been able to kill the thing, but now they're all going to die. Too bad in the far-off distant future there's no method to communicate other than hollering through a microphone. If the human race wants to save itself from huge floating space cells, we're going to have to figure out some new methods of communication that don't involve talking into microphones, pronto.
Bones examines Kirk with a whistling cigarette lighter, and says he's getting worse. I wonder if McCoy's cigarette lighter came as part of a set with Spock's cigarette-machine computer.
The Enterprise flies into the cell and everyone gets tossed around and flies out of his seat. It's too bad they haven't invented seatbelts in the future because this seems to happen a real lot.
Kirk has a great, foolproof plan for killing the space cell, but he didn't bother to tell anyone before they flew into it and got bounced around, so if he'd gotten whacked on the toupee and knocked out they'd all be dead in forty-five minutes when the power is set to give out. It seems pretty stupid to me that he didn't tell anyone his great idea, but maybe he didn't trust blabbermouth Scotty wouldn't tell the top secret plan to all the single-cell sympathizers in that petri dish on deck eight.
Everybody thinks Spock is dead, but that doesn't happen until Star Trek 2. Spock is still alive on the shuttle and he leaves a message about how swell everyone on the Enterprise is. Kirk doesn't know Spock is still alive on the shuttle and leaves a message about how swell everyone, including Spock, is. Then Kirk sells his wig to buy Bones a watch fob, and Bones sells his watch to give Kirk a pretty comb for his hair, and everyone onboard has the merriest Christmas ever!
Chekov says they're ready for lunch, which I hardly think is appropriate since they're supposed to be shooting an antimatter probe out to kill the space cell, but then I realize he said "launch," not "lunch" in his funny accent, so that's okay.
Lots more bouncing around without seatbelts, the space cell dies, the kissing-monkey ink blot evaporates and the stars turn back on.
The stars aren't the only things that turn back on. Kirk announces that it's party time on starbase six, and makes a transparent double entendre while leering at a crew-lady in a beehive hairdo. All the men laugh at the casual sexual harassment while the crew-lady goes downstairs to file a lawsuit.
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