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Sunday, July 21, 2013

Goofball Review of Goofball Star Trek Episode "Dagger of the Mind"

On this week's Star Trek, the Enterprise is delivering medical supplies to the Tarantula penal colony.  Judging by the gigantic prop pill bottles on the transporter pad, I assume it's the zany CBS sitcom version of a "penal" colony and the bottles are filled with Viagra.  Oh, Charlie Sheen, how I miss your Madame Tussaud's wax figure face and your unfunny, coked-up single entendres.

The Enterprise beams up a giant box with a "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL XMAS!" sign taped to the side.  The box is juuuust big enough for a guy to fit in, but since it's a prison colony they trust that nobody's hiding out inside so Kirk sees no reason to peek under the lid. 

I find it odd that the beamer thing isn't programmed to automatically detect humans crouching inside boxes, because you'd think it'd be pretty important to automatically detect organic material of any kind when you're beaming stuff up and down on alien planets all the time.  Or maybe it's a Magician's Alliance rule to keep snooping Starfleet personnel from figuring out how the "saw the woman in half" trick works.

There's a shocking twist right off the bat this week when the lid of the box pops open and an escaped lunatic pops out!  I never saw that coming.

Uhura has green plastic onion rings hanging from her ears.

The loony beats up the transporter room guy and runs up to the bridge with a phaser, demanding $100,000 in cash in nonsequential bills and a plane to Neptune.  He also demands that Uhura do a naked fan dance because, as I said, he's crazy.

That is some security they have on that ship.  First, a twitchy, acne-scarred loon can run around the hallways and no one stops him.  Then he manages to get all the way up to the bridge, which along with engineering should be one of the most heavily defended areas of the ship but which, like engineering, is always getting taken over by every blob of light, space flea or hitchhiking Ricardo Montalban the ship picks up.  Can't they even bother to hire one asthmatic octogenarian security guard just to keep maniacs from leaping through the door and scaring the vig off poor Chekov every other week? 

The loon is actually Dr. Charlie Horse Gelding, who was assistant to the head of penal (stop laughing) planet Tarantula IV.  Down in sickbay he gives a performance so ridiculously over-the-top that Bones insists Kirk turn the Enterprise around and go back to Tarantula IV and arrest his acting teacher.

Tarantula IV is run by Inspector Luger from Barney Miller, who was senile as a cop but who is supposed to be brilliant as a scientist, but if I was crazy I'd still feel more comfortable with Harris, Fish or even Wojo as my psychiatrist.

Lt. Helen Noel accompanies Kirk to the planet, bringing along nothing but a short skirt with her underwear hanging out and accompanying sexy music.  I'm just glad it's not one of the politically correct Star Trek series that came later on or we'd have been treated to Kirk's ass hanging out and I would have had to put my eyes out with the TV remote.

Kirk, always the professional military man, ogles his subordinate like he's drooling over a centerfold and I suddenly wonder why Starfleet only hires hot dames.  I assume that in the future there are pills to make you skinny or maybe there's a "no fatties" sign hanging on the gates outside Starfleet academy.  I also assume Kirk, Scotty and Uhura are allergic to the former and managed to avoid the latter by sneaking inside in a pastry truck.

Inspector Luger wears a unitard with a picture of a huge hand crushing a bird to death on it.  He's also so open and honest and friendly that you know by TV rules that he's actually a lying maniac who's going to try to kill Kirk about two scenes from now.

Upstairs, Spock mind melds with Dr. Charlie Horse Gelding while downstairs Dr. Inspector Luger demonstrates a special barber chair invention with a glowing bedpan glued to the ceiling above it.


The usual.  Trim back and sides, glue it to the top.

Everybody on the planet marches around like Zanaxed-out zombies, but Kirk doesn't hightail it back to the ship for the cavalry the minute the bedpan starts shooting out mind-control rays on some poor slob.  Instead, he decides he wants to see how it works up close and personal and so he sneaks back and sits down in the barber chair.  I'm glad it was the crazy-house kind of penal (stop laughing) colony and not the criminal type, or this genius would have had the bright idea to cook his breakfast by sitting in the electric chair with a plate of bacon in his lap and having Lt. Sexy-Music throw the switch.

Lt. Sexy-Music tells Kirk he molested her at the company Christmas party, but in a good way.  Dr. Inspector Luger comes in and takes over the sparkly bedpan controls.  He turns the machine up to 11 and tells Kirk he loves Lt. Sexy-Music more than pie itself.  So he's not a villain after all, he's an intergalactic matchmaker.  Isn't that nice?

The bedpan fries Kirk's wig and makes him drop his phaser.

The two lovebirds get locked up together, but wait!  It turns out that the procedure that always rips out everybody else's mind, shoehorns in subliminal suggestions and turns them into walking human husks doesn't work on superhero Kirk.  Gosh, isn't he swell, gals?  Just don't go swimming in his pool.

Kirk orders the dame to climb through some ducts, because that's never been done before.

Dr. Inspector Luger sticks Kirk back in the barber chair again and tries to get the glowing bedpan to get him to stop treating his costars like crap and overeating but -- c'mon -- the thing doesn't work miracles.
 
Lt. Sexy-Music shuts off the power at the power-shutter-offer, and Kirk hits Luger with a Mason jar and heads for the hills, leaving Dr. Inspector Luger unconscious on the floor of the bedpan machine room.

Spock shows up and turns the power back on, and when the power comes back on in the bedpan room, Dr. Inspector Luger loses his mind completely and winds up getting transferred over to the 12th Precinct.

At the end we're told that Dr. Charlie Horse Gelding (who, recall, was as crazy as a loon for the entire episode) has been put in charge of Planet Psych Ward.  So Kirk thought it was a great idea to literally put a lunatic in charge of the asylum.  I guess Spock finds this hilarious, because he's grinning like a loon himself as the Enterprise takes off from the mess they've just made as fast as its little warp nacelles can carry it.
 

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