Planet Loony Bin is called Elba II, and while none of the crazies are dressed up like Napoleon, Batgirl is there covered in green paint and wearing a muumuu, so I suppose that's something.
For the rest of the inmates, the makeup department rummaged around the half-empty hatbox where they stored all their crazy, out-of-this-world alien transformation tricks and pulled out the same pig-man costume and can of blue spray paint they used every third episode. At this point it's like emptying out the Winter Warlock's pockets after he goes good, but at least the Warlock had corn that made reindeer fly. All the Star Trek makeup people have are the same pig nose and white fright wig with the antennas sticking out they used in twenty other episodes. I hope they at least sprayed the wig for lice before they glued it on this latest poor extra's head.
There are only fifteen inmates on all of Planet Fruitcake. So instead of renting a couple of rooms in an existing building on Earth, the Federation allocated massive resources to build a state-of-the-art facility with an impenetrable shield that extends around the entire surface of a gas giant in a remote corner of the galaxy and spared no expense to schlepp all kinds of workmen and equipment out there to the middle of nowhere all to set up a facility that houses only fourteen men and Batgirl. Actually, as a government-run taxpayer-sinkhole-1960s-vision of the future, this is about as chillingly accurate as anything Star Trek has ever come up with. Maybe outer space is where all that missing stimulus money wound up. Frankly, it makes about as much sense as anything we've been told down here.
The head of Planet Cracker Factory is Charlie Chan's Number One Son, and when Kirk and Spock beam down with the buckets of Loonie-Be-Gone!, he leads them to a cell that is supposed to hold Garth Brooks. I figure it's about time somebody stuffed that twangy fatboy and his giant smelly cowboy hat in jail for crimes against country music.
It turns out that the Garth Brooks of the future isn't a tubby country singer who swings on a rope, he's an ex-starship captain hero of Kirk's who went bonkers and tried to wipe out an inhabited planet. Last week the Federation didn't care much when an untold number of inhabited planets were being wiped out in a supernova, but this week it's bad. Is there room in cell number sixteen on Planet Crackpot for the schizophrenic Federation?
When they get to the cell, it's not Garth Brooks hanging on the coat rack in the corner but an exact twin of Charlie Chan's Number One Son. Or maybe Star Trek is making some pretentious statement about racial stereotypes, specifically the one about Asians looking alike. Then I remember that coming up soon is the episode with the guys with half their faces painted black and the other half painted white who hate each other because the wrong sides of their faces are painted the wrong colors and I realize that Star Trek is about as subtle in these matters as a mule kick to the testicles.
It turns out the real Number One Son is locked in the cell while nutbar Captain Garth Brooks is running loose impersonating him and singing terrible songs. Garth learned on another planet -- which I think is called Planet Stupid Plot Devices -- how to take the shape of anyone. If I was able to do that I'd have killed Charlie Chan's Number One Son, destroyed the body, claimed that Garth Brooks died while trying to escape, and got myself beamed up to the Enterprise disguised as Charlie Chan's Number One Son to effect my daring escape. Instead, Garth parades Spock and Kirk through the hallways like a drum majorette leading the Fourth of July parade and reveals that his great diabolical plan is to...wait for it...beam up to the Enterprise to effect his escape. So why on earth did he show them the guy he's impersonating and let them know he's a fraud? This is the great military tactician who is still studied at Starfleet Academy and who is Kirk's hero? No wonder half the Starfleet ships the Enterprise encounters are burning hulks floating dead in space.
Garth Brooks impersonates Kirk but Scotty won't let him beam up to the Enterprise because his shoes will get the transporter room dirty and he just mopped up in there. Plus his wig is on crooked.
Garth Brooks throws a temper tantrum while he still looks like Kirk and it turns out that Garth-Kirk is an even worse actor than Shatner-Kirk. Then he turns back into Garth in mid-tantrum and as soon as he doesn't look like William Shatner anymore he immediately and mysteriously becomes a better actor.
You know, while William Shatner was kicking the floor like a two year old who doesn't want to go in for nap time, I was thinking. Instead of a whole planet insane asylum, they should do in the future what we do with our loonies and let them live in cardboard refrigerator boxes and pee in the fountains in a public park, but I guess they'd probably suffocate in the airless vacuum of space if they tried running out with a squeegee to wash windshields and bum change from passing starships. Just a thought. Here's another one. I wonder if the fifteen inmates are the writers for this season's episodes so far. After all, only a loon would come up with the one where Spock's brain gets swiped out of his head like a scoop of Haagen-Dazs. Okay, Shatner is done kicking. Back to our thrilling story. God help me.
Up on the Enterprise, Scotty, Bones, Sulu and Uhura sit around playing cards because they have nothing better to do in this episode. The planet-wide force field is too sturdy for their phasers to shoot through, which means whatever they're using to protect a planet of fifteen nutjobs and one of Charlie Chan's kids is sturdier than the shields on the Enterprise which pop like a soap bubble whenever it flies too close to one of the points on a star.
Garth Brooks throws a party and invites Kirk and all the lunatics from the asylum. Except Paramount skimped on the budget again so there are only half as many loonballs there as we were told were on the planet. I wonder why all the inmates who have taken over the asylum are armed with phasers. What need would there be at the Federation's Funny Farm for a fully stocked armory?
Batgirl does a striptease to distract us from the logical mess-of-a-plot.
Garth Brooks gives Kirk a huge opportunity to smack him on the head and take his laser gun but Kirk doesn't, maybe because he's averting his eyes from Batgirl's striptease. I mean, c'mon...she ain't no Agent 99.
Loonies in party hats bring out the Comfy Chair and make Number One Son sit in it and they cook his brain like a ham, but only a little. Then Kirk sits in it but since he's already a ham they only cook his toupee until it smokes a little.
Kirk waits until there are the maximum number of people in the room and then tries to fight his way out. Do you think maybe they're teaching tactics with the books upside-down at Starfleet Academy?
For some reason the blue guy with the stubby rabbit ear antennas is wearing a feathered bathrobe from the Zsa-Zsa Gabor After Midnight Collection. If cross-dressing is a sign of insanity in the unenlightened future, he should take the nearest time machine back three hundred years to Massachusetts where a judge will order taxpayers to pay for his high heels, men's large brassiere and all the blue lipstick he can eat.
I feel pretty.
Crazy Batgirl makes out with Kirk and then tries to stab him with the same knife they've used in all 79 Star Trek episodes. I think Chekov was smearing cream cheese on a bagel with it a few episodes back.
Kirk sneaks up to the planet's shield control panel while everybody is looking right at him. He's so obvious about it that I expect his tiptoes to make that "tink-tink-tink" piano key noise Wile E. Coyote's make when he sneaks up to look around the corner just before the train comes out of the tunnel and knocks his head off. Can someone please take this guy's Emmy back and melt it down into something useful like fillings for Third World children or a hubcap?
Garth Brooks runs in to the room but now he looks just like Spock. He can also do the Vulcan nerve squeeze just like Spock. He also sounds just like Spock. Come to think of it, he sounded just like Charlie Chan's Number One Son and Kirk when he impersonated them. Why is it whenever someone impersonates someone on TV they always not only wind up sounding just like them too, they also get their speech patterns down perfectly? Or is it time for Batgirl to do another half-naked dance?
Nope, not this time. Kirk discovers that Garth Brooks is just impersonating Spock and Batgirl is suddenly out the window in the green fog of Planet Dahmer. Garth Brooks has wired her with explosives. Batgirl blows up which, if you've squeezed in next to her on the bus recently, is some of the best foreshadowing in the history of Star Trek.
Kirk walks right behind Garth Brooks but misses yet another opportunity to hit him over the head and take his gun. Maybe all the books about military-type stuff at Starfleet Academy were glued shut by Captain Blutarsky and the rest of the rowdies at Delta Alpha V. Why, I'll expel those punks if it's the last thing I do as space-dean!
Garth Brooks suddenly looks like Kirk again because Spock has just come into the room. The logical thing to do would be to stun both Kirks and let Bones sort them out. Instead, Spock lets Kirk get into a ten minute wrestling match with William Shatner's stunt double who is even shorter and fatter than the guy he's supposed to look exactly like. I'm just wondering where Garth's gun magically disappeared to when he turned into Kirk. Even if it fell to the floor right now, I probably wouldn't pick it up, if you know what I mean.
Kirk wins the fight with himself. Other-Kirk turns back into Garth Brooks. Number One Son gives Garth Brooks some happy juice and puts him in timeout in the Comfy Chair where he gets some space-age electroshock therapy. When he wakes up, Garth doesn't seem to know who Kirk is or about all the stuff he did these past 50 minutes, including hanging Charlie Chan's kid from a meat hook and blowing up Batgirl. Kirk and Spock apparently believe Garth Brooks is telling the truth this time, even though he lied to them about a hundred times today. Five minutes after this episode ends, Garth Brooks glues on a false mustache, impersonates a space-plumber to get aboard the Enterprise and takes control of the universe by next Friday.
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