On this week's Star Trek, the Enterprise crew lands on Planet Anorexia,
where emaciated husks of sci-fi plots shuffle like zombie runway models;
an inhumane TV world in which poor withered plots aren't left to die
merciful deaths behind the nearest Styrofoam rock, but are instead
dragged to their bloody feet and padded up to sixty minutes, minus
Clapper commercials.
Kirk, Spock and Bones beam down to Planet
Truckasaurus on which a scientific expedition was studying the
environmental effects of gray spray paint and a couple of truckloads of
pool sand on a Paramount sound stage. The men and women are all dressed
in the multicolored jumpsuits that are so popular in the far-off
distant future as well as with retro Sixties James Bond henchmen. I
wonder given the difficulties their wardrobe choice presents if they
even bother with bathrooms up in outer space and down in volcano lairs
or if everybody just gives up and goes straight for the Depends.
The
science crew are all dead and have been arranged around the unrealistic
set to look like Jonestown, if those cult people were wearing jumpsuits
and were up in space. For some reason there is something that looks
like the blackened and smoking ruins of an old stereo system in the
middle of the carnage, and I think that maybe they were listening to Led
Zeppelin and got too close to the stage. Will mankind
ever learn that Zeppelin rocks?
The
only survivors of the expedition are a bunch of ugly kids in 19th
century ladies bathing costumes. One of them is Felix Unger's daughter.
An
interesting 23rd Century sociological fact is revealed: in the future,
kids have two parents each. Take that, current inner city 80 to 90%
out-of-wedlock birthrates!
The children are taken aboard the
Enterprise where the homely nurse who got her job because she was
married to the homely producer feeds them pudding, and I catch Bones
taking a quick glance at William Shatner's toupee. No fooling.
When
the kids are alone they utter a magical incantation that summons an
alien who looks like the fat, green ghost of Thomas Jefferson but
wearing the giant blancmange costume from the science fiction episode
Monty Python
where giant blancmanges played tennis. Blancmange Thomas Jefferson
says he's the kids' friend, but I don't like the way he tries to lure
them into the back of his ghostly van with promises of Snickers and
Wii. It's a good thing they're full of pudding, and he goes away.
The
ugliest kid is a creepy ginger wearing the most bizarre of all the 19th
century bathing costumes. He goes up on the bridge and discovers that
Kirk and Spock are watching TV and are about to make a startling
discovery on the colored plastic casino chip recordings they brought up
from the planet. The ugly ginger kid makes an emphatic rude hand
gesture and the Enterprise's TV reception goes out. There is no
explanation at any point during the entire program of how the rude hand
gesture that is repeatedly employed has given the ugly kid the ability
to knock the tinfoil off the Enterprise's rabbit ears or how, moments
later, it can be used to hypnotize Sulu into flying off to Planet
Disneyland.
Frankly, I'm less interested in the explanation for
the magic rude hand gesture than I am in the security crewman extra
who's hanging around in the background staring straight at the ugly
ginger kid the whole time but who doesn't think anything's odd when the
TV goes out as soon as the ugly ginger kid makes the rude hand gesture
or how Sulu flagrantly disobeys orders and takes off from the planet
after the ugly ginger kid makes the exact same rude hand gesture moments
later. For a minute I think that these red shirt security guys are the
biggest morons in law enforcement, but then I think of the cops here in
town like the one who ran naked through the nursing home or the one who
shot another one in a blind panic and got a medal for it and I realize
maybe this red shirt isn't so incompetent or unlike real-life after all.
"Yes, captain, I do not dispute that they rock. However, it was illogical to invite Great White to perform at the annual Starfleet WACs and WAVES rave."
Kirk and the others figure out that there were space pirates or
something at some point on Planet Truckasaurus and even though they have
been dead for a long time they vowed to return someday.
Yaaarg, me hearties! Or something ridiculous like that. Who knows? God help me, I thought Planet Gangster was stupid.
Down in engineering, a different kid makes a different rude hand gesture. Hey, kid. Up yours with bells on.
Kirk
goes to the bridge and the ugly kids chant and Blancmange Thomas
Jefferson shows up. The kids make a rude hand gesture that makes Uhura
look old, but not as scary as she was when she actually
was old
in the movie where she did the naked fan dance. For some reason she's
got a mirror glued to her console. I guess it's because she's a girl,
and you know how hard it is to pry them away from the mirror even in
outer space, am I right fellas?
The kids also make a rude hand
gesture that makes Sulu see cartoon knives from a Bugs Bunny cartoon
flying at the ship. Seeing cartoon knives scares Sulu into being a
worse actor than usual.
It seems to me that Kirk and Spock have
had reason as well as ample opportunity to isolate these kids or at
least to punch them in their smug little kissers, especially when the
evil Blancmange Thomas Jefferson shows up, but instead Kirk just stands
around and watches until the little brats rude hand-gesture into
submission every bridge crew member one-by-one.
Spock gets rude
hand-gestured into disobeying Kirk's orders, but manages to fight off
the hypnosis somehow. Kirk gets rude hand-gestured into acting like a
sissy and nearly Frenches Spock in the elevator. The terror of almost
kissing Leonard Nimoy snaps him out of it, and Kirk butches back up
again, more or less.
On the bridge, the ugly ginger kid in the
19th century ladies bathing costume is in Kirk's seat. Felix Unger's
daughter is there too. Kirk picks them up and rattles them around a
little, but a less ridiculous plot doesn't fall out.
Kirk has
Spock play a casino chip of the chant the kids sang earlier to summon
the blancmange pirate ghost man. Dogs know the difference between
sounds coming from TV and those in real life, but the super-intelligent
alien Thomas Jefferson Blancmange ghost comes a-runnin' like I used to
as a kid when the Stooges were on. Maybe his hearing was damaged when
the science crew's stereo blew up way back at that rockin' Led Zeppelin
show at the beginning of the episode.
Kirk says he's going to
show the kids what the blancmange truly looks like. He plays a casino
chip of them and their parents playing space volleyball on the planet
with the gray spray paint and the pool sand next to a giant wart. It
looks like the wart is the only structure on the planet, and if everyone
was piling in there to sleep at night I wonder if the kids might not be
better off in the back of the van of the glowing green pervert who
taught them the magic rude hand gestures.
The glowing green
blancmange-man wants to fly the ship to some planet that has lots of
people on it who he can hypnotize so he can take over Planet Poland or
something. I don't know, and I haven't really cared for fifty minutes.
All I know is that for a dead member of an extinct alien race who's
been locked on an isolated, uninhabited planet for eons, he sure knows
his way around the modern-day galaxy.
The kids cry and it gives
Thomas Jefferson acne. Then they cry some more and gives him Elephant
Man. Then they cry some more and it gives him Wicked Witch, and he
melts away.
Bones shows up and I wonder: where the hell has Bones been?
Kirk
orders the ship off to Starbase Something. He felt kind of bad earlier
in the episode when he beamed two crewmen into outer space and killed
them when he thought they were still orbiting Planet Truckasaurus, but
he doesn't seem too worried about the landing party he's abandoned back
on the planet to which the green ghost of fat Blancmange Thomas
Jefferson Pirate is probably heading back right now, and pretty mad I'd
imagine, ye scurvy Starfleet knaves!