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Sunday, February 10, 2013

Goofball Review of Goofball Star Trek Episode "That Which Survives"

At the start of this week's Star Trek I was reminded of those kickballs we used to try to kick up on the roof in grammar school.  Evidently those suckers had a lot more bounce than we thought, because at least one of them cleared the solar system.  The Enterprise flies up to Giant Planet Kickball Floating in Space which Spock says is the size of Earth's moon.  I figure it's probably not one of ours after all, because we couldn't have pumped that thing up with a bike pump by the end of recess.

Kirk thinks Planet Kickball is a spooky ghost planet because it shouldn't be there, it should be in the closet at the end of the second floor hallway with the half-deflated basketballs and the tangled volleyball net from 1957.  He decides to beam down to investigate with Sulu and Bones, and he orders Senior Geologist Inevitable Corpse to meet them in the transporter room.

As they are beaming down, a chick in a purple genie costume appears in the transporter room and kills the ensign who is running the beamer.  But wait!  What foul feline fiend is this?  Could Captain Kirk have a clawed criminal cat-astrophe on his paws?  Watch out, Enterprising souls, for this purr-fect purveyor of perilous pandemonium is none other than that villainous vixen...Catwoman!  But...oh, wait a second.  Everybody hold onto your hairballs, because she's the least interesting one after Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt.   

As soon as Kirk, Bones, Sulu and Senior Geologist Inevitable Corpse arrive on the planet, the Enterprise is thrown out of orbit and vanishes.  Sulu thinks the Enterprise blew up and suggests that men in certain dire situations resort to actions they ordinarily wouldn't to fulfill certain -- you know -- needs.

After a quick survey, they find that there is no water on the giant kickball, and all the plants are poisonous.  Not to worry though, since they'll soon have a Thanksgiving dinner's-worth of dead geologist to eat a la a South American soccer team.

Genie Catwoman shows up and talks to Senior Geologist Inevitable Corpse for ten minutes before he suddenly recognizes her as the woman who murdered that guy in the transporter room eleven minutes before.  Either a.) he needs glasses, b.) he needs to survey his own head for rocks or c.) there must be one whole crapload of genie Catwomen in purple bikini pantsuits wandering around up there in outer space.

In a shocking twist that no one could have seen coming, Catwoman kills Senior Geologist Inevitable Corpse.  I'm stunned.  I was sure he'd make it to the movies.

Later, at the "he's dead, Jim" after party, Bones says that each one of the geologist's cells were scrambled like a milkshake and that this is a cat-egory of meowing medical malfeasance not cat-alogued before.  Why, it's a virtual tabby-la rasa.

Upstairs, the Enterprise has been sent a thousand light years away, probably because Spock put a woman in Sulu's place at the helm and we all know what gals are like with that whole sense-of-direction thing.  Am I right, fellas?  (Oh, lighten up, Bella Abzug...I'm building to something for the last episode.)  This one looks like a leftover witch from the Halloween episode and demonstrates her respect for Spock by rolling her eyes, making "pfft" noises and standing in front of the viewscreen and insisting he talk about his feelings during the best part of the show.


I don't like the way Captain Kirk keeps dressing me with his eyes.

Scotty says the ship doesn't feel right, so he sends his assistant in his pajamas out front to pop the hood.  The assistant meets the chick in the purple bikini pantsuit who kills him like she killed the ensign in the transporter room, then vanishes into a dot like a TV turning off.  I think that's a pretty good idea right now, but I decide to stick with it anyway.

Back on Planet Kickball, Kirk thinks the joint is artificial and might be hollow, and I assume we viewers aren't supposed to remember the last hollow planet they were on where Bones thought he was dying so he got married, but then he got better and gallantly ditched his wife of five minutes and took off so fast that all he left behind was a Bones-shaped puff of cartoon dust.

Kirk says they should sleep in shifts and tells Sulu to take the first watch.  Kirk fluffs up a Styrofoam rock as a pillow and Sulu hikes around a corner and about a hundred miles away to keep a lookout.  How all these tactical geniuses survived more than two minutes let alone three seasons and six movies against the Klingons is beyond me.

The chick in the purple bikini pantsuit shows up again, and Sulu tells her, "I don't want to have to kill a woman."  That's not all he doesn't want to have to do with a woman.

Catwoman touches Sulu's arm and he screams that she's a yucky girl with cooties.  Kirk jumps in between them to valiantly get felt up by the hot babe.  Catwoman grabs him but for some reason when she touches Kirk she doesn't milkshake his cells like everybody else's, so she disappears in a TV dot while some sexy "La-la-laaaaa!" singing screams over the soundtrack.  I wonder why if she can appear and disappear at will, she just doesn't appear right next to Sulu and scramble his cells.

Back on the Enterprise, Scotty says the chick in the purple bikini pantsuit has set the ship to blow up in 15 minutes.  The show still has 32 minutes left, so I guess the last 17 minutes will just be scenes of Sulu's post traumatic stress from being touched by a girl intercut with images of floating space debris.

On Planet Kickball, Catwoman comes back for Kirk this time.  It turns out each Catwoman who appears can only kill one guy at a time, which is why Kirk didn't get milkshaked before when she grabbed his goodies.  Sulu's melted shoulder is mysteriously better with no explanation whatsoever, and Captain Courageous bravely hides behind Sulu and Bones while Catwoman tries to grab him.  It occurs to me that this is probably the first time that Kirk has run from a hot babe, and I wonder what exactly happened between him and Sulu during those scenes where the show cut back to Spock and Scotty on the Enterprise.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Up on the Enterprise, Scotty feeds yellow crackers to the computer.  Spock talks to the com-pu-tore!  Then Scotty sticks tools down his underpants like Sandy Berger with top secret documents.  Apparently the advanced technology for constructing a so-called "tool belt" was lost to mankind sometime during the Great Handyman Wars of the 2120s, so the only place to shove your screwdriver now is down your underwear.

Unlike William Shatner in an earlier episode, both Scotty and Spock pronounce "sabotage" correctly, so that's nice.

Down on Planet Kickball, a Styrofoam wall rolls away and Kirk, Bones and Sulu decide it's a good idea to walk single-file into secret cavern on a poison-plant kickball world where their ship may or may not have blown up and Catwomen in bikini pantsuits keep popping out from behind the nearest molecule to kill them.  What could possibly go wrong?

On the Enterprise, Scotty is trying to fix the ship with a giant lipstick, but it sticks.  Then it unsticks and he shoves it in the toaster and everything is fine.

Back on Planet Kickball, Kirk and co. have found a secret computer room dedicated to producing Catwomen in purple bikini pantsuits.  This time three of them show up in a special effects-laden finale that will leave you baffled. Although I figured it out.  (Spoiler Alert!  Lee Merriweather has been triplets in real-life all along, like that magician movie with Wolverine and Batman.  End spoiler!)

There is now one Catwoman programmed to kill each of the landing party, so Kirk decides to play the worst shell game in the history of the universe.  Kirk, Bones and Sulu jump around waving their arms like the puppets in Team America, thus confusing their attackers.  This is probably the absolutely most moronic decision he could make under the circumstances, since running around in circles around the three Catwomen would only serve to confuse the attackee.  Each Catwoman knows who she's after, and has announced it to the room, so running around in circles absolutely will only confuse the guys from the Enterprise.  If, for instance, the Dionne Quintuplets show up in your living room with a murderous glint in their Canadian eyes, don't start doing laps around the sofa.  If Yvonne says she's going to kill you, stay put and keep your eyes locked on her rather than risk mixing her up with Annette.

Luckily Spock shows up with a ray gun and shoots the plastic box glued to the ceiling and all the Catwomen vanish in a puff of sexy "la-la-laaaa!" music.

It turns out that Catwoman has been dead for a million years and the plastic box on the ceiling was just sending out projections of her to kill intruders because it was taking a nap and it was sick of the Space Girl Scouts ringing Planet Kickball's doorbell every five minutes with their damn mint cookies.  Or something.  I don't know.  Who cares?

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