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Sunday, October 20, 2013

Goofball Review of Goofball Star Trek Episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?"

At the start of this week's Star Trek, a new dame lieutenant is wandering around the bridge and apparently we're supposed to imagine she's so sexy that Scotty has to spool his tongue up off the floor every time she and her beehive hairdo sashays by.  She's actually sexy only in the 1960s sense, which is to say that in the far-off future of, say, 2013 she'd be lucky to get as close to Hollywood as a TSA worker at LAX.  She also has a huge pimple on her chin for most of the episode, but unfortunately in the distant future of 1968 Proactiv hasn't been invented, so the makeup department has cleverly concealed it with about eight pounds of pancake makeup.  It's so pointy that if she turns fast, she could pop Uhura.

Lt. Beehive tells Kirk that Polyps 5, the planet they've just checked in on, is stupid.  We learn that, in fact, the entire region of space they're flying through is stupid.  I knew all those episodes of Two and a Half Men and How I Met Your Mother we've been beaming out into space would have to land somewhere.

The Enterprise flies up to Polyps 4, where a giant floating green hand appears and grabs onto the ship. 

Yeah, you read that right.  I'd maybe try to say that a different way, but there's no way to write it without it sounding as stupid as it looks.  Speaking of looking stupid, Chekov's wig looks like the rats it's stitched out of got in a turf war over who owns the sideburns.

A big head floats up on the viewscreen wearing a laurel, but doesn't offer a hearty handshake.  The big floating head tells Kirk to come down to the planet, but Kirk says he's busy having his hair dry cleaned.  I thought they were supposed to be going boldly and exploring strange, new something-or-others.  I figured giant floating heads and huge green hands that can grab onto his ship like it's a Frisbee would qualify.  What, is something good on TV he doesn't want to miss?  I know it can't be Two and a Half Men.  Good Lord, even the commercials for that show are horrible.

The floating head makes the floating green hand shake the ship, and Uhura squeaks like a mouse.  Or maybe that's just a Crips rat in Chekov's wig getting a shiv in the tail.

Kirk beams down to the planet with Bones, Chekov, Lt. Beehive and Scotty.  I'm sure there will be no complications due to the fact that Scotty is sweet on Lt. Beehive, and that the floating head will keep his remaining big green hand to himself.

The floating head is actually a guy who says he's the Greek god Apollo, and to prove he means business he's got his voice permanently set on reverb, which is something all the ancient Greek gods did according to the Iliad. 

Apollo breaks Kirk's communicator by looking at it, because that hasn't happened in two whole planets.  Those things are so unreliable, Kirk would be better off climbing to the top of the nearest mountain and hollering up at the ship.

Apollo starts listing god names from the index of the copy of Bulfinch's Mythology that Gene Roddenberry obviously checked out of the Paramount library for the afternoon. 

Bones surreptitiously examines Apollo with his swirling lipstick while Chekov checks him out with a transistor radio he lifted from Beach Blanket Bingo.

You know, it's a good thing they spoke modern English in ancient Greece, otherwise nobody would understand what anybody else was saying.

In order to demonstrate his godliness, Apollo grows really big using high-tech 1960s TV technology that superimposes one image over another in the most amazing special effect since the Enterprise first bounced up to the tennis ball planet utilizing something the visual effects crew calls "string."


 
Oh, yeah, like you've never seen a god's junk before.

"You seem wise for a woman," Apollo tells Lt. Beehive, and makes her uniform turn into some backless fiberglass gown.  Instead of screaming bloody murder, she giggles, says, "Oh, it's beautiful," fetches his slippers and cooks him a pot roast.  No, there definitely won't be a problem between him and Scotty. 

Why is it that every female officer on the Enterprise is fiercely loyal to Starfleet only up until some spray-painted god with fat rolls around his waist magically sticks her in some gauzy evening gown, at which point they all immediately turn into blushing Geishas who start shuffling around happily picking up laundry and ironing the togas?  I knew this would happen when they started letting dames into Starfleet, but nobody listened.

They try using phasers on Apollo, but he winks and they stop working too.  Why do they even bother carrying those things down to planets?  I'd put a rock in my holster instead, but if the Federation issued it it'd probably turn to sand before I could throw it at a Nazi on Planet Nazi.

Scotty tries to attack Apollo a couple of times, even though Kirk orders him to keep it in his pants, and he gets smacked and zapped for trying to defend the honor of a tramp who obviously doesn't have any.  Yeah, no guy knows what that's like.  Apollo also strangles Kirk a little, but fades away in embarrassment when he sees Shatner's over-the-top performance. 

Apollo starts listing god names from Bulfinch's again.

Apollo makes out with the dame and either his awesome Olympian powers or the camera angle make the pimple on her chin miraculously disappear.

Every time Apollo strangles Kirk or beats up Scotty, he fades and disappears.  Kirk assumes he's getting weak and has to go off and sit on a battery recharger.  It doesn't even enter into his toupee that Apollo might just be going off to yon porcelain Argo to pincheth a Herculean loaf, forsooth.

Kirk's big idea is that they should all yell mean things at Apollo when he gets back, which is basically the same idea Sir Bedevere had for the French taunters in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and even Graham Chapman thought it was stupid.  Kirk figures Apollo will get weak and they can kick him in the crotch or something and then run into outer space and climb in an open window on the Enterprise.  I mean, I figure that must be his plan since Apollo is still in control of the ship, the phasers, the communicators, and everything on the planet.

As stupid plans go, this one would probably take the blue ribbon at the state fair.  I'd think the amount of effort Apollo would have to expend on four hecklers would be insignificant compared to whatever juice he's putting out to hold a starship in orbit in the grip of a giant green floating hand.  Charlie Callas put up with worse from the front row of the Sands on any given Saturday night, circa 1975.

Apollo shows up from his nap, and Kirk, Bones, Scotty and Chekov start yelling mean things at him.  He's about to smite the crap out of them, but before he can turn them into four burned patches and two smoking wigs on the ground, Lt. Beehive intervenes.  She insists that Apollo is kind.  Let's take stock, shall we?  He rattled a ship full of people like dice in a plastic Yahtzee cup, strangled Kirk, beat the crap out of and electrocuted Scotty, is holding the landing party hostage and is threatening to kidnap and enslave the entire crew of the Enterprise.  Yeah, he's a real sweetheart.  Maybe you should lay off the ambrosia, zit-face.

The pimple chick talks in that 1960s sexy way that isn't sexy at all, like that fat bleached broad singing "happy birthday, Mr. President."  She insists that she loves Apollo.  Yeah, they've been down on the planet for about 20 minutes, so it's about nineteen and a half minutes past Stockholm Syndrome setting in for your average female Starfleet officer.  If she can't have Apollo, maybe she can get into one of those correspondence romances with a nice serial killer on death row.

Meanwhile, Mr. Spock is upstairs figuring out a way to make a hole in the giant hand that's holding onto the ship.  Once he clips its fingernails and phasers a little stigmata, he's able to holler down to Kirk.

Kirk tells Lt. Beehive to be mean to Apollo, and she does in spite of all the sweaty Harlequin Romance bosom-heaving she's been getting up to with him.  Apollo gets so mad that he shows her some stock footage of lightning with his floating head superimposed on it to show her what she's missing out on.

While Apollo is distracted threading the projector to run some stock footage of a blizzard tying up traffic in downtown Chicago, Spock shoots Apollo's gazebo.  The gazebo glows and then turns into Styrofoam rubble, and Apollo gets so mad that he holds his hand to his chest like Fred Sanford and tells Hera and Elizabeth that he's a-comin'.

You'd think a guy who patiently waited on an unrealistic outdoor set with felt grass for 5000 years for some humans to finally fly out and find him wouldn't give up so easily after meeting only five people out of untold billions for a half-hour.  I've had longer conversations with strangers in doctors' waiting rooms.  And if he took just two seconds for a little introspection he'd maybe realize he was the one who was being a big jerkwad, what with all the strangling and giant, ship-fondling green hands.  Instead, he fades away and dies, leaving nothing behind but Roddenberry's copy of Bulfinch's and an episode title which I'm sure is supposed to be clever but which I don't know what the crap they're even talking about.


Wednesday, October 9, 2013

After another nightmarish day of toiling in a yard that somehow went jungle over the summer...sore, sweaty, cold...it's nice to stumble in from working well into the dark of night to find this warming little ray of light.
Click here to go to Reader's Favorite review of Royal Flush.
 

Monday, October 7, 2013

On the Government Shut-down

I still don't get how you close a mountain. Hasn't a government that thinks it can close a mountain -- and does -- gotten just a smidge too big for its britches? I have this image of a Terry Gilliam cartoon where some guy in a trench coat unplugs the Rockies from the horizon, sticks them in a briefcase and walks off grunting angrily. When real life has become a Terry Gilliam cartoon, something is desperately, fundamentally wrong with real life.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

On Horror Movies...

I don't do horror movies. While I wholeheartedly approve of teenagers being hacked to pieces by masked maniacs, I find the actual eviscerating depressing to watch. I DO sometimes do comic horror movies, although rarely and I hadn't seen a good one in many years. (One of my favorites from years ago was Fright Night, made on the cheap but clever and a lot of fun with a great performance by Roddy MacDowell.) If anyone cares, I recommend Zombieland, which is a couple of years old but which I only just recently saw. A smart movie on a shoestring budget, and not too gory after the first ten minutes or so, once the premise has been established.