Bones is so excited to get some that he makes a racist comment about Spock's ears that everybody thinks is hilarious. Given the thin skin that everybody on planet Earth has developed by the early 21st Century, I kind of miss the innocence of the far-off future of the 1960s where you could casually mock an entire race for a common physical feature and not wind up having the 23rd Century version of Al Sharpton camping on your front lawn in his velour tracks suit, burning down your grocery store and inciting galaxy-wide riots.
Kirk, Spock, Bones and three expendable guys beam down to Cesspool III and find it's a bombed-out, uninhabitable wasteland. Maybe Sharpton got there first after all.
Unseen aliens attack from a distance, and a guy in a red shirt is first to get melted. I am shocked by that startling plot twist. Either that or I'm startled by that shocking plot twist. Either way, wow. Who saw that coming?
Monty Python explosions start erupting all around, but I can't see Tim the Enchanter on top of the mountain next-door. All I can say is that it's a good thing beings that can build spaceships that can brave the inky depths of space and cover vast distances at speeds greater than light have not developed the ability to target a simple mortar or Sulu would be in command and hanging new drapes on the bridge window right now.
Kirk runs heroically in those places where the special effects guys told him the explosions wouldn't be, he does a little "serpentine, Shelly" from The In-Laws, tosses in a shoulder roll or two, then hides behind a sofa.
Lt. Kilowatt shows up to tell Kirk that the other expendable guy is dead, and to ask for a transfer to a ship where the chance for survival until retirement isn't limited to just seven bridge officers.
Kirk launches an exploding blue billiard ball and blows up a mountain and a ship that's been shooting at the Enterprise takes off.
Up in sickbay, Kirk questions the only survivor from Cesspool III. The guy has a severe case of Silly Putty stuck to his face. I think I can see Andy Capp's head from where Bones pressed the guy's cheek against the Sunday funnies.
Kirk insists that the only conclusion they can come to is that some fiendish, unknown alien superpower has invaded Federation space. Spock clearly doesn't agree, but doesn't offer any alternatives, like, for instance, space pirates, Klingons, Romulans, or one of those superintelligent flashing light shows they're always running into every other week. Kirk insists that Freedonia is going to war.
The Enterprise gives chase to the alien ship, which suddenly slams on the brakes and tries to get Kirk to rear-end them so they can claim whiplash and sue the pants off the Federation.
It doesn't occur to Kirk that this might be a trap to draw him in close, since the script has decided that this week he's going to be a tactical moron. The almighty script has also decided that he's going to be a bloodthirsty maniac, because he's all set to blow up what he thinks is a stalled and unarmed ship right up until the Enterprise suddenly slams on its brakes as well. Will there be no end to these shocking plot twists?
A groovy talking light show appears on the Enterprise's TV screen, and I check my watch to confirm that it's been two weeks since the last talking superintelligent flashing light show took over the Enterprise.
The groovy light show says it's a Metronome, and that it just popped over from a Laugh-In rerun to say it wants to sock it to Kirk for being militaristic and for wearing such an obvious a hairpiece, like he's fooling anyone.
Kirk vanishes from the bridge and Uhura screams like a girl and covers her mouth in terror. Because, you see, she's never seen technology that could make a person disappear. How did they get her up onto the Enterprise in the first place, with a pulley and a very long rope?
Kirk appears on a desert planet next to a guy in a rubber lizard suit who is wearing a picnic tablecloth miniskirt and who makes grunty noises like he's constipated, which I hope he continues to be because I don't think he can get out of that rubber suit fast enough if necessary.
The lizard in the rubber suit is called a "Goon," and he and Kirk are supposed to fight to the death for the fate of their respective ships. The Goon has a giant rubber head with a mouth that has lots of pointy teeth but which doesn't move. I wonder with a completely immobile mouth, even when he talks, how the Goon eats, but at least Kirk doesn't have to worry about being bitten in this exciting fight to the death, so that's nice.
Kirk throws a papier-mâché rock at the Goon's chest and it bounces off, proving that Goons are immune to papier-mâché. They wrestle a little and Kirk punches it in the ears and the Goon lets him go and starts overacting like Max Bialystock took its blue blanket. Kirk runs off and reports into the alien tape recorder that he's been given by the Metronomes that the Goon has withstood attacks that would have killed a human. He threw one papier-mâché rock at its chest, punched it in the ears, then ran away. I call the ambulance when I get a hangnail, and even I could withstand Kirk's lethal attacks.
No tongues.
The Goon is still making all kinds of grunty, hissy noises. Someone please get him some lizard-strength Ex-Lax.
Kirk runs up a hill and throws the biggest papier-mâché rock of all down on the Goon, who is down below making girlish "hee-hee-hee" giggles like Homer Simpson when he thinks he's being clever.
Kirk figures no creature could survive such a terrible avalanche of papier-mâché, so he skips tra-la down the hill with a disturbing grin of triumph plastered on his face. The Goon jumps up and goes "Boo! Grunt! Hiss!" and Kirk runs away and falls into a diabolically clever papier-mâché rock trap set up by the Goon.
The Goon looms, ready to strike!
Close up on Kirk!
This is the end!
Luckily, an exquisitely timed TV commercial break gives Kirk time to regroup and run away. The Goon is so mad that he walks into the camera and knocks it down.
Up on the Enterprise, the groovy light show returns and turns on the TV ostensibly so that the crew can see Kirk die, but actually so that Spock can narrate Kirk's genius last-minute plan down on the planet. Uhura reacts like a girl again when she sees the Goon. I don't want to tell the Federation how to staff its ships, but maybe it'd be a good idea to get someone to answer the phone who doesn't screech like she's seen a mouse every time some new alien calls to say hi.
Kirk constructs a rudimentary lathe and shoots diamonds into the Goon. We're led to believe that he now has the opportunity to kill the Goon but shows compassion and spares it. But, wait. A boulder dropped from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro didn't squash the thing like a bug, but it can be knocked over by diamonds fired out of a bamboo blunderbuss? And if that huge rock didn't crush it, how is Kirk's little pointy rock supposed to hack through its neck?
Too late for logic. Kirk loudly announces he won't kill it, and the diamond-riddled Goon vanishes like Zsa-Zsa Gabor two months after the wedding.
A scrawny little fruit appears on a rock above Kirk so that he can see up its tinfoil dress. He announces that he's a Metronome and that Kirk showed the advanced trait of compassion, because no human being has ever demonstrated compassion before, except all those other times we did.
The scrawny little fruit says that the Metronomes are thousands of years more advanced than humans and are, therefore, better. He says that in a few thousand years, maybe humans can be swell like the Metronomes. Which means we have a future to look forward to in which we are all arrogant, androgynous little turds in tinfoil dresses with sparkly fireflies flying all around us. Somebody drop a papier-mâché rock on me.
Kirk appears back on the ship with all his boo-boos healed and his yellow pajamas dry-cleaned. The Enterprise sails off back to Cesspool III for some reason, even though everybody there is dead and the Goons who slaughtered everyone on the planet are still floating around out there ready to attack again, so the main issue that got the whole story rolling has still not been resolved.
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