Sunday, January 27, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Goofball Review of Goofball Star Trek Episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
You know that gentle tickle you get at the back of your head when
someone's whacked you with a twenty pound sledgehammer? I don't know
why I thought of that. Oh, and on an entirely unrelated note, this week
Star Trek tackles the knotty issue of race relations.
At the start of this week's episode, the Enterprise is on a mission of mercy to planet Airy Anus. Someone there caught a cold and now all the inhabitants have weepy brown eyes, so the Starfleet CVS has ordered Kirk and crew to schlepp over a bottle of Purell and a box of Kleenex.
A ship appears in their path and the pilot is flying all over the place, which means it's probably one of them crazy women drivers and she's dropped her lipstick under the warp drive pedal again.
They see that it's a shuttle craft that was stolen from the Federation parking garage when some careless ensign left the keys in the ignition. In the future, spaceships look less like our space shuttle and more like our boxes of Kellogg's Corn Flakes with a couple of cardboard paper towel tubes glued to the bottom.
The shuttle craft is hauled onto the Enterprise and a guy whose face is painted half black and half white falls out. Oh, boy, get ready for the launch of the heavy-handed race lecturing in T-minus ten seconds...nine...eight...seven...
I notice that the guy is wearing gloves which either means he doesn't want to catch the Airy Anus pandemic or the makeup department ran out of paint for his hands. He also looks like he mugged his silver pajamas off a street mime. Before he can get crushed in an invisible box or walk against the solar wind, he passes out.
Kirk brings the guy to sickbay where the first thing he sees when he wakes up is Nurse Chapel. I'm wondering now if the writers are subtly saying that Kirk is racist and is trying to erase the alien's black half, because I'd turn whiter than Casper's bleached bed sheets if the first thing I saw when I woke up on an alien ship was Nurse Gargoyle staring down at me.
The alien says his name is Loci, but tells Kirk that he's too tired to answer any other questions. He proves how tired he is by practically doing jumping jacks in his bed while he hollers at Kirk about how tired he is.
Kirk goes back to the bridge where everybody's marveling at an invisible ship that's flying circles around them. They talk for fifteen minutes about the wonderful technology of the invisible ship, which is not so invisible that they didn't detect it, so why the need for it to be invisible? All that talkety-talking about the incredible invisibility of the invisible ship finally manages to wipe away my suspicion that Star Trek didn't have money in the budget that week to spray paint a toilet paper tube with silver glitter and dangle it on a string in front of the window.
The invisible ship blows up invisibly and deposits a visible alien on the bridge. He's half-white and half-black too, but look out! It's that nefarious ne'er-do-well the Riddler! What criminal conspiracies does this treacherous trickster have in store for the citizens of Starfleet? Beats the crap out of me. It's just too bad they blew up green Batgirl in last week's episode.
To prove how exciting things have just gotten, the camera bounces like a rubber ball on a close-up of the red alert light flashing on the wall. It doesn't seem exciting to me so much as a precursor to those Japanese cartoons with the flashing lights that put those kids in comas. Or maybe I'm suddenly falling violently ill because I remember the ham-handed moralizing I'm about to be subjected to.
The Riddler is wearing silver pajamas and a dog collar and says his name is Veal.
Kirk gets the Riddler and Loci together, and we're told that they are different because Maaco reversed their spray paint job. Instead of embracing as brothers under the skin while celebrating the wonderfulness of their differences and the unique superness of their awesome individual spectacularness and what that individual differentness can bring to the universe, it turns out they don't like each other too much. It's the whole "reverse spray paint" thing. Gosh, if only I could figure out a way that we could apply the lesson of these foolish far-off distant space aliens to our own era, which is the retro 1960s, but I'm stumped.
Each paint-job says the other is a criminal: one for being an oppressor, the other for being a violent revolutionary. Nope, I'm still not getting what the Star Trek writers are trying to say here. I do, however, see that they're both lucky that full-throated, overacted moralizing isn't a crime in the future or they'd each get the chair.
For a few seconds the Riddler stumbles and forgets the name of his planet, teaching us the first important lesson of this episode: in the 23rd century there are no retakes.
All of a sudden the Enterprise is off course. I'm hoping that it's heading for a less preachy plot. What direction do those little cooing fuzzballs live in?
The camera bounces all over the red alert sign again, not once this time, but twice. By now I'm praying for the sweet release of a Japanese cartoon-induced epileptic seizure.
There's some more overacting by everybody on the bridge, but I really can't blame them this week because they're doing all they can to prop up the flimsiest plot since the one where the war-painted alien idiot-men in fright wigs tossed bananas down a papier-mâché head.
The Riddler says he now controls the ship with his mind and that instead of going to Airy Anus they are going to his home planet of Charon to prosecute Loci. Phasers don't work against him because I guess his silver pajamas have the same kind of shields that the Enterprise has. But -- wait -- Kirk knows that Bones was able to inject the other guy earlier, so I'd at least stop aiming at his pajamas and try hitting him over the head with a fire extinguisher. Instead, Kirk decides to take a less drastic course and blow up the ship.
I notice that the Enterprise utilizes the exact same destruct codes that it did in one of the movies twenty years later, which means both of these aliens -- who survive at the end of the episode -- and I could've blown up the ship whenever any of us felt like it during that twenty year period. I change my online passwords more than Starfleet changes its destruct codes.
The Riddler blinks first and stops the ship from flying to Charon, and Kirk stops the auto-destruct with only five thrilling seconds to spare by giving the com-pu-tore 17 1/2 minutes of instructions.
Kirk lectures the Riddler that violence and force are never necessary as I wonder how many tiny little Romulan ships are stenciled to the side of the Enterprise's cockpit.
Kirk makes the brilliant decision to let a guy who stole a Federation shuttle craft and a guy who just hijacked the Enterprise, each of whom wants to kill the other, have free reign to wander around the ship. What can go wrong? Actually, nothing this week because the script doesn't call for it, so rest easy, ghosts of all the red shirts who haunt engineering where you died when some alien strangled you, beat you over the head, slammed you against the wall, or zapped you with laser guns or crazy alien mind powers before taking over the ship.
The Enterprise arrives at Airy Anus, and Kirk has Scotty fly around the planet spraying Lysol on all the doorknobs. I'm surprised they don't circle Airy Anus looking for Klingons, but maybe they were never 13 year old boys so they didn't hear that joke.
The Riddler takes over the ship again, and this time sabotages the self-destruct so Kirk can't blow up the ship. Kirk also mispronounces "sabotage" the same "succotash" way he does in that famous behind-the-scenes audio clip for that 1970s margarine commercial where he yells at the guy who corrects his mispronunciation.
Shatner is so busy mispronouncing words again that he doesn't think that maybe he can just beam troublemaker mime-Riddler off his ship.
We were told earlier in the episode that Charon was on the other side of the galaxy but, hey! Look out the window, 'cause there it is! So it turns out Charon is pretty much right next-door to Airy Anus, so all that hijacking stuff that padded out the episode wasn't really necessary after all.
There was a race war on Charon while the Riddler and Loci were on vacation, and somehow everybody managed to kill everybody else. Can't we all just get along?
Apparently not, because the paint-job aliens run off the bridge like loons. Kirk says not to alert security because -- you know -- it's not like these guys have posed any kind of risk to his ship and crew or anything.
Kirk gives a hammy speech about what we all learned in the previous hour, but at least he doesn't mispronounce "sabotage" again or yell at a Promise margarine commercial director, so it could be worse. In the meantime, Itchy and Scratchy beam off the ship one by one to return to the surface of their planet to strangle each other in their silver pajamas in the ruins of their civilization as the Enterprise soars off to wag its finger in some other poor unsuspecting alien species' grease-painted face.
At the start of this week's episode, the Enterprise is on a mission of mercy to planet Airy Anus. Someone there caught a cold and now all the inhabitants have weepy brown eyes, so the Starfleet CVS has ordered Kirk and crew to schlepp over a bottle of Purell and a box of Kleenex.
A ship appears in their path and the pilot is flying all over the place, which means it's probably one of them crazy women drivers and she's dropped her lipstick under the warp drive pedal again.
They see that it's a shuttle craft that was stolen from the Federation parking garage when some careless ensign left the keys in the ignition. In the future, spaceships look less like our space shuttle and more like our boxes of Kellogg's Corn Flakes with a couple of cardboard paper towel tubes glued to the bottom.
The shuttle craft is hauled onto the Enterprise and a guy whose face is painted half black and half white falls out. Oh, boy, get ready for the launch of the heavy-handed race lecturing in T-minus ten seconds...nine...eight...seven...
I notice that the guy is wearing gloves which either means he doesn't want to catch the Airy Anus pandemic or the makeup department ran out of paint for his hands. He also looks like he mugged his silver pajamas off a street mime. Before he can get crushed in an invisible box or walk against the solar wind, he passes out.
Kirk brings the guy to sickbay where the first thing he sees when he wakes up is Nurse Chapel. I'm wondering now if the writers are subtly saying that Kirk is racist and is trying to erase the alien's black half, because I'd turn whiter than Casper's bleached bed sheets if the first thing I saw when I woke up on an alien ship was Nurse Gargoyle staring down at me.
The alien says his name is Loci, but tells Kirk that he's too tired to answer any other questions. He proves how tired he is by practically doing jumping jacks in his bed while he hollers at Kirk about how tired he is.
Kirk goes back to the bridge where everybody's marveling at an invisible ship that's flying circles around them. They talk for fifteen minutes about the wonderful technology of the invisible ship, which is not so invisible that they didn't detect it, so why the need for it to be invisible? All that talkety-talking about the incredible invisibility of the invisible ship finally manages to wipe away my suspicion that Star Trek didn't have money in the budget that week to spray paint a toilet paper tube with silver glitter and dangle it on a string in front of the window.
The invisible ship blows up invisibly and deposits a visible alien on the bridge. He's half-white and half-black too, but look out! It's that nefarious ne'er-do-well the Riddler! What criminal conspiracies does this treacherous trickster have in store for the citizens of Starfleet? Beats the crap out of me. It's just too bad they blew up green Batgirl in last week's episode.
To prove how exciting things have just gotten, the camera bounces like a rubber ball on a close-up of the red alert light flashing on the wall. It doesn't seem exciting to me so much as a precursor to those Japanese cartoons with the flashing lights that put those kids in comas. Or maybe I'm suddenly falling violently ill because I remember the ham-handed moralizing I'm about to be subjected to.
The Riddler is wearing silver pajamas and a dog collar and says his name is Veal.
Kirk gets the Riddler and Loci together, and we're told that they are different because Maaco reversed their spray paint job. Instead of embracing as brothers under the skin while celebrating the wonderfulness of their differences and the unique superness of their awesome individual spectacularness and what that individual differentness can bring to the universe, it turns out they don't like each other too much. It's the whole "reverse spray paint" thing. Gosh, if only I could figure out a way that we could apply the lesson of these foolish far-off distant space aliens to our own era, which is the retro 1960s, but I'm stumped.
Each paint-job says the other is a criminal: one for being an oppressor, the other for being a violent revolutionary. Nope, I'm still not getting what the Star Trek writers are trying to say here. I do, however, see that they're both lucky that full-throated, overacted moralizing isn't a crime in the future or they'd each get the chair.
For a few seconds the Riddler stumbles and forgets the name of his planet, teaching us the first important lesson of this episode: in the 23rd century there are no retakes.
I hate people with reverse colors so much that I repeatedly kick myself in the crotch every morning while shaving. True story.
All of a sudden the Enterprise is off course. I'm hoping that it's heading for a less preachy plot. What direction do those little cooing fuzzballs live in?
The camera bounces all over the red alert sign again, not once this time, but twice. By now I'm praying for the sweet release of a Japanese cartoon-induced epileptic seizure.
There's some more overacting by everybody on the bridge, but I really can't blame them this week because they're doing all they can to prop up the flimsiest plot since the one where the war-painted alien idiot-men in fright wigs tossed bananas down a papier-mâché head.
The Riddler says he now controls the ship with his mind and that instead of going to Airy Anus they are going to his home planet of Charon to prosecute Loci. Phasers don't work against him because I guess his silver pajamas have the same kind of shields that the Enterprise has. But -- wait -- Kirk knows that Bones was able to inject the other guy earlier, so I'd at least stop aiming at his pajamas and try hitting him over the head with a fire extinguisher. Instead, Kirk decides to take a less drastic course and blow up the ship.
I notice that the Enterprise utilizes the exact same destruct codes that it did in one of the movies twenty years later, which means both of these aliens -- who survive at the end of the episode -- and I could've blown up the ship whenever any of us felt like it during that twenty year period. I change my online passwords more than Starfleet changes its destruct codes.
The Riddler blinks first and stops the ship from flying to Charon, and Kirk stops the auto-destruct with only five thrilling seconds to spare by giving the com-pu-tore 17 1/2 minutes of instructions.
Kirk lectures the Riddler that violence and force are never necessary as I wonder how many tiny little Romulan ships are stenciled to the side of the Enterprise's cockpit.
Kirk makes the brilliant decision to let a guy who stole a Federation shuttle craft and a guy who just hijacked the Enterprise, each of whom wants to kill the other, have free reign to wander around the ship. What can go wrong? Actually, nothing this week because the script doesn't call for it, so rest easy, ghosts of all the red shirts who haunt engineering where you died when some alien strangled you, beat you over the head, slammed you against the wall, or zapped you with laser guns or crazy alien mind powers before taking over the ship.
The Enterprise arrives at Airy Anus, and Kirk has Scotty fly around the planet spraying Lysol on all the doorknobs. I'm surprised they don't circle Airy Anus looking for Klingons, but maybe they were never 13 year old boys so they didn't hear that joke.
The Riddler takes over the ship again, and this time sabotages the self-destruct so Kirk can't blow up the ship. Kirk also mispronounces "sabotage" the same "succotash" way he does in that famous behind-the-scenes audio clip for that 1970s margarine commercial where he yells at the guy who corrects his mispronunciation.
Shatner is so busy mispronouncing words again that he doesn't think that maybe he can just beam troublemaker mime-Riddler off his ship.
We were told earlier in the episode that Charon was on the other side of the galaxy but, hey! Look out the window, 'cause there it is! So it turns out Charon is pretty much right next-door to Airy Anus, so all that hijacking stuff that padded out the episode wasn't really necessary after all.
There was a race war on Charon while the Riddler and Loci were on vacation, and somehow everybody managed to kill everybody else. Can't we all just get along?
Apparently not, because the paint-job aliens run off the bridge like loons. Kirk says not to alert security because -- you know -- it's not like these guys have posed any kind of risk to his ship and crew or anything.
Kirk gives a hammy speech about what we all learned in the previous hour, but at least he doesn't mispronounce "sabotage" again or yell at a Promise margarine commercial director, so it could be worse. In the meantime, Itchy and Scratchy beam off the ship one by one to return to the surface of their planet to strangle each other in their silver pajamas in the ruins of their civilization as the Enterprise soars off to wag its finger in some other poor unsuspecting alien species' grease-painted face.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Goofball Review of Goofball Star Trek Episode "Whom Gods Destroy"
At the start of this week's Star Trek, we're told that the Enterprise is
traveling to Planet Nuthouse with a gallon of happy juice that'll make
crazy people sane. And that's not all! Order right now and get TWO silver canisters of Loonie-Be-Gone! for the fabulous price of just $19.99! That's two cans
plus the special brain spatula applicator for the same insane low
price! The United Federation of Planets...we're not crazy, but our
prices sure are!
Planet Loony Bin is called Elba II, and while none of the crazies are dressed up like Napoleon, Batgirl is there covered in green paint and wearing a muumuu, so I suppose that's something.
For the rest of the inmates, the makeup department rummaged around the half-empty hatbox where they stored all their crazy, out-of-this-world alien transformation tricks and pulled out the same pig-man costume and can of blue spray paint they used every third episode. At this point it's like emptying out the Winter Warlock's pockets after he goes good, but at least the Warlock had corn that made reindeer fly. All the Star Trek makeup people have are the same pig nose and white fright wig with the antennas sticking out they used in twenty other episodes. I hope they at least sprayed the wig for lice before they glued it on this latest poor extra's head.
There are only fifteen inmates on all of Planet Fruitcake. So instead of renting a couple of rooms in an existing building on Earth, the Federation allocated massive resources to build a state-of-the-art facility with an impenetrable shield that extends around the entire surface of a gas giant in a remote corner of the galaxy and spared no expense to schlepp all kinds of workmen and equipment out there to the middle of nowhere all to set up a facility that houses only fourteen men and Batgirl. Actually, as a government-run taxpayer-sinkhole-1960s-vision of the future, this is about as chillingly accurate as anything Star Trek has ever come up with. Maybe outer space is where all that missing stimulus money wound up. Frankly, it makes about as much sense as anything we've been told down here.
The head of Planet Cracker Factory is Charlie Chan's Number One Son, and when Kirk and Spock beam down with the buckets of Loonie-Be-Gone!, he leads them to a cell that is supposed to hold Garth Brooks. I figure it's about time somebody stuffed that twangy fatboy and his giant smelly cowboy hat in jail for crimes against country music.
It turns out that the Garth Brooks of the future isn't a tubby country singer who swings on a rope, he's an ex-starship captain hero of Kirk's who went bonkers and tried to wipe out an inhabited planet. Last week the Federation didn't care much when an untold number of inhabited planets were being wiped out in a supernova, but this week it's bad. Is there room in cell number sixteen on Planet Crackpot for the schizophrenic Federation?
When they get to the cell, it's not Garth Brooks hanging on the coat rack in the corner but an exact twin of Charlie Chan's Number One Son. Or maybe Star Trek is making some pretentious statement about racial stereotypes, specifically the one about Asians looking alike. Then I remember that coming up soon is the episode with the guys with half their faces painted black and the other half painted white who hate each other because the wrong sides of their faces are painted the wrong colors and I realize that Star Trek is about as subtle in these matters as a mule kick to the testicles.
It turns out the real Number One Son is locked in the cell while nutbar Captain Garth Brooks is running loose impersonating him and singing terrible songs. Garth learned on another planet -- which I think is called Planet Stupid Plot Devices -- how to take the shape of anyone. If I was able to do that I'd have killed Charlie Chan's Number One Son, destroyed the body, claimed that Garth Brooks died while trying to escape, and got myself beamed up to the Enterprise disguised as Charlie Chan's Number One Son to effect my daring escape. Instead, Garth parades Spock and Kirk through the hallways like a drum majorette leading the Fourth of July parade and reveals that his great diabolical plan is to...wait for it...beam up to the Enterprise to effect his escape. So why on earth did he show them the guy he's impersonating and let them know he's a fraud? This is the great military tactician who is still studied at Starfleet Academy and who is Kirk's hero? No wonder half the Starfleet ships the Enterprise encounters are burning hulks floating dead in space.
Garth Brooks impersonates Kirk but Scotty won't let him beam up to the Enterprise because his shoes will get the transporter room dirty and he just mopped up in there. Plus his wig is on crooked.
Garth Brooks throws a temper tantrum while he still looks like Kirk and it turns out that Garth-Kirk is an even worse actor than Shatner-Kirk. Then he turns back into Garth in mid-tantrum and as soon as he doesn't look like William Shatner anymore he immediately and mysteriously becomes a better actor.
You know, while William Shatner was kicking the floor like a two year old who doesn't want to go in for nap time, I was thinking. Instead of a whole planet insane asylum, they should do in the future what we do with our loonies and let them live in cardboard refrigerator boxes and pee in the fountains in a public park, but I guess they'd probably suffocate in the airless vacuum of space if they tried running out with a squeegee to wash windshields and bum change from passing starships. Just a thought. Here's another one. I wonder if the fifteen inmates are the writers for this season's episodes so far. After all, only a loon would come up with the one where Spock's brain gets swiped out of his head like a scoop of Haagen-Dazs. Okay, Shatner is done kicking. Back to our thrilling story. God help me.
Up on the Enterprise, Scotty, Bones, Sulu and Uhura sit around playing cards because they have nothing better to do in this episode. The planet-wide force field is too sturdy for their phasers to shoot through, which means whatever they're using to protect a planet of fifteen nutjobs and one of Charlie Chan's kids is sturdier than the shields on the Enterprise which pop like a soap bubble whenever it flies too close to one of the points on a star.
Garth Brooks throws a party and invites Kirk and all the lunatics from the asylum. Except Paramount skimped on the budget again so there are only half as many loonballs there as we were told were on the planet. I wonder why all the inmates who have taken over the asylum are armed with phasers. What need would there be at the Federation's Funny Farm for a fully stocked armory?
Batgirl does a striptease to distract us from the logical mess-of-a-plot.
Garth Brooks gives Kirk a huge opportunity to smack him on the head and take his laser gun but Kirk doesn't, maybe because he's averting his eyes from Batgirl's striptease. I mean, c'mon...she ain't no Agent 99.
Loonies in party hats bring out the Comfy Chair and make Number One Son sit in it and they cook his brain like a ham, but only a little. Then Kirk sits in it but since he's already a ham they only cook his toupee until it smokes a little.
Kirk waits until there are the maximum number of people in the room and then tries to fight his way out. Do you think maybe they're teaching tactics with the books upside-down at Starfleet Academy?
For some reason the blue guy with the stubby rabbit ear antennas is wearing a feathered bathrobe from the Zsa-Zsa Gabor After Midnight Collection. If cross-dressing is a sign of insanity in the unenlightened future, he should take the nearest time machine back three hundred years to Massachusetts where a judge will order taxpayers to pay for his high heels, men's large brassiere and all the blue lipstick he can eat.
Crazy Batgirl makes out with Kirk and then tries to stab him with the same knife they've used in all 79 Star Trek episodes. I think Chekov was smearing cream cheese on a bagel with it a few episodes back.
Kirk sneaks up to the planet's shield control panel while everybody is looking right at him. He's so obvious about it that I expect his tiptoes to make that "tink-tink-tink" piano key noise Wile E. Coyote's make when he sneaks up to look around the corner just before the train comes out of the tunnel and knocks his head off. Can someone please take this guy's Emmy back and melt it down into something useful like fillings for Third World children or a hubcap?
Garth Brooks runs in to the room but now he looks just like Spock. He can also do the Vulcan nerve squeeze just like Spock. He also sounds just like Spock. Come to think of it, he sounded just like Charlie Chan's Number One Son and Kirk when he impersonated them. Why is it whenever someone impersonates someone on TV they always not only wind up sounding just like them too, they also get their speech patterns down perfectly? Or is it time for Batgirl to do another half-naked dance?
Nope, not this time. Kirk discovers that Garth Brooks is just impersonating Spock and Batgirl is suddenly out the window in the green fog of Planet Dahmer. Garth Brooks has wired her with explosives. Batgirl blows up which, if you've squeezed in next to her on the bus recently, is some of the best foreshadowing in the history of Star Trek.
Kirk walks right behind Garth Brooks but misses yet another opportunity to hit him over the head and take his gun. Maybe all the books about military-type stuff at Starfleet Academy were glued shut by Captain Blutarsky and the rest of the rowdies at Delta Alpha V. Why, I'll expel those punks if it's the last thing I do as space-dean!
Garth Brooks suddenly looks like Kirk again because Spock has just come into the room. The logical thing to do would be to stun both Kirks and let Bones sort them out. Instead, Spock lets Kirk get into a ten minute wrestling match with William Shatner's stunt double who is even shorter and fatter than the guy he's supposed to look exactly like. I'm just wondering where Garth's gun magically disappeared to when he turned into Kirk. Even if it fell to the floor right now, I probably wouldn't pick it up, if you know what I mean.
Kirk wins the fight with himself. Other-Kirk turns back into Garth Brooks. Number One Son gives Garth Brooks some happy juice and puts him in timeout in the Comfy Chair where he gets some space-age electroshock therapy. When he wakes up, Garth doesn't seem to know who Kirk is or about all the stuff he did these past 50 minutes, including hanging Charlie Chan's kid from a meat hook and blowing up Batgirl. Kirk and Spock apparently believe Garth Brooks is telling the truth this time, even though he lied to them about a hundred times today. Five minutes after this episode ends, Garth Brooks glues on a false mustache, impersonates a space-plumber to get aboard the Enterprise and takes control of the universe by next Friday.
Planet Loony Bin is called Elba II, and while none of the crazies are dressed up like Napoleon, Batgirl is there covered in green paint and wearing a muumuu, so I suppose that's something.
For the rest of the inmates, the makeup department rummaged around the half-empty hatbox where they stored all their crazy, out-of-this-world alien transformation tricks and pulled out the same pig-man costume and can of blue spray paint they used every third episode. At this point it's like emptying out the Winter Warlock's pockets after he goes good, but at least the Warlock had corn that made reindeer fly. All the Star Trek makeup people have are the same pig nose and white fright wig with the antennas sticking out they used in twenty other episodes. I hope they at least sprayed the wig for lice before they glued it on this latest poor extra's head.
There are only fifteen inmates on all of Planet Fruitcake. So instead of renting a couple of rooms in an existing building on Earth, the Federation allocated massive resources to build a state-of-the-art facility with an impenetrable shield that extends around the entire surface of a gas giant in a remote corner of the galaxy and spared no expense to schlepp all kinds of workmen and equipment out there to the middle of nowhere all to set up a facility that houses only fourteen men and Batgirl. Actually, as a government-run taxpayer-sinkhole-1960s-vision of the future, this is about as chillingly accurate as anything Star Trek has ever come up with. Maybe outer space is where all that missing stimulus money wound up. Frankly, it makes about as much sense as anything we've been told down here.
The head of Planet Cracker Factory is Charlie Chan's Number One Son, and when Kirk and Spock beam down with the buckets of Loonie-Be-Gone!, he leads them to a cell that is supposed to hold Garth Brooks. I figure it's about time somebody stuffed that twangy fatboy and his giant smelly cowboy hat in jail for crimes against country music.
It turns out that the Garth Brooks of the future isn't a tubby country singer who swings on a rope, he's an ex-starship captain hero of Kirk's who went bonkers and tried to wipe out an inhabited planet. Last week the Federation didn't care much when an untold number of inhabited planets were being wiped out in a supernova, but this week it's bad. Is there room in cell number sixteen on Planet Crackpot for the schizophrenic Federation?
When they get to the cell, it's not Garth Brooks hanging on the coat rack in the corner but an exact twin of Charlie Chan's Number One Son. Or maybe Star Trek is making some pretentious statement about racial stereotypes, specifically the one about Asians looking alike. Then I remember that coming up soon is the episode with the guys with half their faces painted black and the other half painted white who hate each other because the wrong sides of their faces are painted the wrong colors and I realize that Star Trek is about as subtle in these matters as a mule kick to the testicles.
It turns out the real Number One Son is locked in the cell while nutbar Captain Garth Brooks is running loose impersonating him and singing terrible songs. Garth learned on another planet -- which I think is called Planet Stupid Plot Devices -- how to take the shape of anyone. If I was able to do that I'd have killed Charlie Chan's Number One Son, destroyed the body, claimed that Garth Brooks died while trying to escape, and got myself beamed up to the Enterprise disguised as Charlie Chan's Number One Son to effect my daring escape. Instead, Garth parades Spock and Kirk through the hallways like a drum majorette leading the Fourth of July parade and reveals that his great diabolical plan is to...wait for it...beam up to the Enterprise to effect his escape. So why on earth did he show them the guy he's impersonating and let them know he's a fraud? This is the great military tactician who is still studied at Starfleet Academy and who is Kirk's hero? No wonder half the Starfleet ships the Enterprise encounters are burning hulks floating dead in space.
Garth Brooks impersonates Kirk but Scotty won't let him beam up to the Enterprise because his shoes will get the transporter room dirty and he just mopped up in there. Plus his wig is on crooked.
Garth Brooks throws a temper tantrum while he still looks like Kirk and it turns out that Garth-Kirk is an even worse actor than Shatner-Kirk. Then he turns back into Garth in mid-tantrum and as soon as he doesn't look like William Shatner anymore he immediately and mysteriously becomes a better actor.
You know, while William Shatner was kicking the floor like a two year old who doesn't want to go in for nap time, I was thinking. Instead of a whole planet insane asylum, they should do in the future what we do with our loonies and let them live in cardboard refrigerator boxes and pee in the fountains in a public park, but I guess they'd probably suffocate in the airless vacuum of space if they tried running out with a squeegee to wash windshields and bum change from passing starships. Just a thought. Here's another one. I wonder if the fifteen inmates are the writers for this season's episodes so far. After all, only a loon would come up with the one where Spock's brain gets swiped out of his head like a scoop of Haagen-Dazs. Okay, Shatner is done kicking. Back to our thrilling story. God help me.
Up on the Enterprise, Scotty, Bones, Sulu and Uhura sit around playing cards because they have nothing better to do in this episode. The planet-wide force field is too sturdy for their phasers to shoot through, which means whatever they're using to protect a planet of fifteen nutjobs and one of Charlie Chan's kids is sturdier than the shields on the Enterprise which pop like a soap bubble whenever it flies too close to one of the points on a star.
Garth Brooks throws a party and invites Kirk and all the lunatics from the asylum. Except Paramount skimped on the budget again so there are only half as many loonballs there as we were told were on the planet. I wonder why all the inmates who have taken over the asylum are armed with phasers. What need would there be at the Federation's Funny Farm for a fully stocked armory?
Batgirl does a striptease to distract us from the logical mess-of-a-plot.
Garth Brooks gives Kirk a huge opportunity to smack him on the head and take his laser gun but Kirk doesn't, maybe because he's averting his eyes from Batgirl's striptease. I mean, c'mon...she ain't no Agent 99.
Loonies in party hats bring out the Comfy Chair and make Number One Son sit in it and they cook his brain like a ham, but only a little. Then Kirk sits in it but since he's already a ham they only cook his toupee until it smokes a little.
Kirk waits until there are the maximum number of people in the room and then tries to fight his way out. Do you think maybe they're teaching tactics with the books upside-down at Starfleet Academy?
For some reason the blue guy with the stubby rabbit ear antennas is wearing a feathered bathrobe from the Zsa-Zsa Gabor After Midnight Collection. If cross-dressing is a sign of insanity in the unenlightened future, he should take the nearest time machine back three hundred years to Massachusetts where a judge will order taxpayers to pay for his high heels, men's large brassiere and all the blue lipstick he can eat.
I feel pretty.
Crazy Batgirl makes out with Kirk and then tries to stab him with the same knife they've used in all 79 Star Trek episodes. I think Chekov was smearing cream cheese on a bagel with it a few episodes back.
Kirk sneaks up to the planet's shield control panel while everybody is looking right at him. He's so obvious about it that I expect his tiptoes to make that "tink-tink-tink" piano key noise Wile E. Coyote's make when he sneaks up to look around the corner just before the train comes out of the tunnel and knocks his head off. Can someone please take this guy's Emmy back and melt it down into something useful like fillings for Third World children or a hubcap?
Garth Brooks runs in to the room but now he looks just like Spock. He can also do the Vulcan nerve squeeze just like Spock. He also sounds just like Spock. Come to think of it, he sounded just like Charlie Chan's Number One Son and Kirk when he impersonated them. Why is it whenever someone impersonates someone on TV they always not only wind up sounding just like them too, they also get their speech patterns down perfectly? Or is it time for Batgirl to do another half-naked dance?
Nope, not this time. Kirk discovers that Garth Brooks is just impersonating Spock and Batgirl is suddenly out the window in the green fog of Planet Dahmer. Garth Brooks has wired her with explosives. Batgirl blows up which, if you've squeezed in next to her on the bus recently, is some of the best foreshadowing in the history of Star Trek.
Kirk walks right behind Garth Brooks but misses yet another opportunity to hit him over the head and take his gun. Maybe all the books about military-type stuff at Starfleet Academy were glued shut by Captain Blutarsky and the rest of the rowdies at Delta Alpha V. Why, I'll expel those punks if it's the last thing I do as space-dean!
Garth Brooks suddenly looks like Kirk again because Spock has just come into the room. The logical thing to do would be to stun both Kirks and let Bones sort them out. Instead, Spock lets Kirk get into a ten minute wrestling match with William Shatner's stunt double who is even shorter and fatter than the guy he's supposed to look exactly like. I'm just wondering where Garth's gun magically disappeared to when he turned into Kirk. Even if it fell to the floor right now, I probably wouldn't pick it up, if you know what I mean.
Kirk wins the fight with himself. Other-Kirk turns back into Garth Brooks. Number One Son gives Garth Brooks some happy juice and puts him in timeout in the Comfy Chair where he gets some space-age electroshock therapy. When he wakes up, Garth doesn't seem to know who Kirk is or about all the stuff he did these past 50 minutes, including hanging Charlie Chan's kid from a meat hook and blowing up Batgirl. Kirk and Spock apparently believe Garth Brooks is telling the truth this time, even though he lied to them about a hundred times today. Five minutes after this episode ends, Garth Brooks glues on a false mustache, impersonates a space-plumber to get aboard the Enterprise and takes control of the universe by next Friday.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Goofball Review of Goofball Star Trek Episode "Elaan of Troyius"
On this week's Star Trek, the Enterprise is turned into the Love Boat, with Captain Kirk as Captain Murray from The Mary Tyler Moore Show,
Chekov as Gopher and Bones as Doc Siegfried. Hello, I'm Uhura, your
cruise director, and welcome to the USS Interstellar Princess. Romance
is in the air, but remember to hide your dilithium crystal necklaces
from zany Klingon jewel thieves Tom Bosley and Bob Denver!
Kirk has been ordered to the Rodney King Star System where the inhabitants of two populated planets just can't get along. Planet Elastic is always playing its music full blast in the middle of the night and won't turn the stereo down no matter how much Planet Troyius bangs on their moon with a broom handle and hollers for them to knock it off because they've got a population of three billion that has to get up early for work in the morning. Planet Elastic, on the other hand, is ticked at Planet Troyius for hogging all the best sunlight in the solar system.
Ambassador Petri from Troyius tells Kirk that the grand diplomatic solution is an arranged marriage between the chick Doorman of Elastic and the top muckety-muck on Troyius, who we never meet but who I naturally assume is Troy Aikman. I wonder if Ambassador Petri is a descendant of Rob Petrie from The Dick Van Dyke Show or of the guy who invented the dish. Also he looks like a Smurf.
The Doorman of Elastic shows up with her three male bodyguards who are wearing miniskirt outfits that look like they were cobbled together from a bunch of kids' plastic shovel-and-pail set and a couple of Frisbees. The Doorman is wearing a purple bikini, so maybe they were playing beach volleyball at the equator when the Enterprise beamed them up.
The Doorman is given Uhura's quarters for the trip over to Troyius, but she doesn't like them so she starts tossing around all of Uhura's silk pillows and Johnny Mathis records. Too bad she doesn't find and smash Uhura's copy of "Learn Geriatric Fan Dancing in 30 Short Years!" before Star Trek V. I still get night terrors.
The title of the episode is Helen of Troy with a French accent but the plot is Taming of the Shrew. Kirk doesn't have time to play Petruchio, so he leaves Ambassador Smurf downstairs to smack Kate around and teach her some manners while he exeunts turbolift left.
On the bridge, Spock says he saw a sensor ghost following the ship but it's probably not Banquo's because they're not ripping off that play this week.
Downstairs, the Doorman gets ticked at the Smurf ambassador for telling her not to eat her peas with a knife so she sticks it in his back. In sickbay, Nurse Chapel asks injured Ambassador Smurf why men are so attracted to Elastic woman. He says there's some kind of love potion in their tears. Too bad for Chapel it only works for Elastic women because she could bawl a river and I'd drown myself in it with a cinderblock tied around my neck before I'd ask her to the prom.
Back in Uhura's quarters, the Doorman is eating some green chicken and multicolored Mattel blocks and wearing tinfoil space seashells to cover her modesty. She smacks Kirk. Kirk smacks her back. She throws a knife at him. Kiss me, Kate!
Kirk tells Spock that Vulcan is the only planet in the universe where women are logical, and the Doorman throws a temper tantrum and locks herself in the bathroom, then burns a pot roast and jumps up on a chair when she thinks she sees a mouse in the corner. Then Betty Friedan marches over to Gene Roddenberry's house in her combat boots and busts his jaw with a symbolic frying pan.
The Doorman starts crying and Kirk wipes her tears with his fingers, even though Captain Dumbass was standing right there when Ambassador Smurf said her tears are as potent as the love candy that made that gorilla fall in love with Curly when the Stooges were making a movie in the jungle. The Doorman asks Kirk to spank her for being naughty and setting fire to Castle Anthrax's grail-shaped beacon, and I'm thinking Star Trek is about to lose its G rating.
Meanwhile, one of the Doorman's bodyguards, still wearing his plastic toy shovel miniskirt from the Ming the Merciless Summer Fun Beach Collection, is down in engineering pulling out spark plugs. Only one crewman is on duty to interrupt him, and he breaks the engineering guy's neck by -- at least by the looks of it -- aggressively trying to make out with him, sort of like Lennie with that farmer's daughter-in-law babe in Of Mice and Men. The camera cuts back and forth from the saboteur to Kirk upstairs a couple of times, and it sure seems like he's left alone down there for hours on end. McDonald's has more staff working the night shift fryolator than the Starship Enterprise has manning its engineering room.
Kirk bangs the Doorman, which seems like kind of a faux pas to me, but I'm not versed in the intricacies of interstellar diplomacy vis a vis banging the soon-to-be wives of the leaders of war torn planets. What I do know is that this guy must spend half his time setting his phaser on penicillin to shoot at the eight-legged space herpes that are chasing him from one Enterprise bedroom to another.
The Doorman tells Kirk that he should use the Enterprise to wipe out Troyius and then he can rule the system as King Penguin, but Spock and Bones walk in and squirt them with a hose to separate them. Kirk tells Bones that he needs to find a love potion antidote. I figure hanging a photo of Nurse Chapel on the headboard should do it, but Bones probably doesn't want to risk permanent impotence so he decides to do it the hard way with test tubes and stuff.
The sensor ghost Spock saw earlier is a Klingon ship, and the Enterprise can't shoot at it or warp away because the guy in the plastic miniskirt caused too much damage during the 17 1/2 hours the engineering crew were down for nap time. Kirk wants to take the ship out of the star system for "maneuvering room," because you know how crowded it is inside a solar system. Why, just look at ours, what with all the planets always bouncing off each other and with the gas giants dropping into that corner pocket black hole left and right.
Scotty says they can't do nuthin' because all the dilithium crystals that power the ship were fused when Ming the Merciless, Jr. stuffed his used gym sock up the Enterprise's tailpipe. I wonder yet again why starships don't carry a couple of spare dilithium crystals in the glove compartment since the things are always burning out or fusing together or getting launched out into space. Scotty says shields will soon fail and phasers won't work. I wonder like I always do why they never think to fire photon torpedoes in these situations but maybe, just maybe, there's finally an utterly moronic and implausible explanation coming up in a couple of minutes. I'll just have to wait and see.
In the midst of the heated battle, Spock says that he's detecting unusual energy readings on the bridge, and he uses McCoy's whistling lipstick to find a bunch of spare dilithium crystals hanging on the necklace around the Doorman's neck. It's a good thing Tom Bosley didn't get his hands on that necklace the previous day down by the swimming pool while Bob Denver was pretending to drown but then almost really did drown and had to be saved by Isaac the bartender!
So it turns out the Klingons are interested in Elastic because they have so many dilithium crystals lying around on the ground that the Elasticians are turning them into cheap costume jewelry. Which makes me wonder why the Klingons would need to risk interstellar war when all they need to do is beam down to every gift shop on Elastic and buy out all the necklaces on the planet and claim they're just picking up something nice for their girlfriends.
The engines start to work again and now the photon torpedoes work and so I finally get my answer. Nothing works on a starship when the check engine light comes on, not even torpedoes which -- since there is still some power and they are basically ready-made bombs that just need to be shot out the torpedo tube -- seem like they should work independent of the juice that feeds the shields and the phasers, but don't. Don't they have news magazine shows in the future to expose dangerous incompetence like this?
"Coming up on StarDatelineNBC, Engineered to Kill! What the Federation doesn't want you to know about its deadly dilithium dilemma!"
The Doorman sees that Kirk doesn't finish off the Klingons once he gets the upper hand, and suddenly she's all about compassion and submission and doing her duty and hanging around the kitchen barefoot like a good gal. She beams down quietly to Troyius for an unhappy marriage and a couple of kids and a lifetime of dutiful misery, while on the Enterprise McCoy finally bursts in with the antidote for the Doorman's love-potion tears. Spock tells him that Kirk was infected by a love potion that was even stronger before he even met the Doorman
Kirk has been ordered to the Rodney King Star System where the inhabitants of two populated planets just can't get along. Planet Elastic is always playing its music full blast in the middle of the night and won't turn the stereo down no matter how much Planet Troyius bangs on their moon with a broom handle and hollers for them to knock it off because they've got a population of three billion that has to get up early for work in the morning. Planet Elastic, on the other hand, is ticked at Planet Troyius for hogging all the best sunlight in the solar system.
Ambassador Petri from Troyius tells Kirk that the grand diplomatic solution is an arranged marriage between the chick Doorman of Elastic and the top muckety-muck on Troyius, who we never meet but who I naturally assume is Troy Aikman. I wonder if Ambassador Petri is a descendant of Rob Petrie from The Dick Van Dyke Show or of the guy who invented the dish. Also he looks like a Smurf.
The Doorman of Elastic shows up with her three male bodyguards who are wearing miniskirt outfits that look like they were cobbled together from a bunch of kids' plastic shovel-and-pail set and a couple of Frisbees. The Doorman is wearing a purple bikini, so maybe they were playing beach volleyball at the equator when the Enterprise beamed them up.
The Doorman is given Uhura's quarters for the trip over to Troyius, but she doesn't like them so she starts tossing around all of Uhura's silk pillows and Johnny Mathis records. Too bad she doesn't find and smash Uhura's copy of "Learn Geriatric Fan Dancing in 30 Short Years!" before Star Trek V. I still get night terrors.
The title of the episode is Helen of Troy with a French accent but the plot is Taming of the Shrew. Kirk doesn't have time to play Petruchio, so he leaves Ambassador Smurf downstairs to smack Kate around and teach her some manners while he exeunts turbolift left.
On the bridge, Spock says he saw a sensor ghost following the ship but it's probably not Banquo's because they're not ripping off that play this week.
Downstairs, the Doorman gets ticked at the Smurf ambassador for telling her not to eat her peas with a knife so she sticks it in his back. In sickbay, Nurse Chapel asks injured Ambassador Smurf why men are so attracted to Elastic woman. He says there's some kind of love potion in their tears. Too bad for Chapel it only works for Elastic women because she could bawl a river and I'd drown myself in it with a cinderblock tied around my neck before I'd ask her to the prom.
Back in Uhura's quarters, the Doorman is eating some green chicken and multicolored Mattel blocks and wearing tinfoil space seashells to cover her modesty. She smacks Kirk. Kirk smacks her back. She throws a knife at him. Kiss me, Kate!
Kirk tells Spock that Vulcan is the only planet in the universe where women are logical, and the Doorman throws a temper tantrum and locks herself in the bathroom, then burns a pot roast and jumps up on a chair when she thinks she sees a mouse in the corner. Then Betty Friedan marches over to Gene Roddenberry's house in her combat boots and busts his jaw with a symbolic frying pan.
The Doorman starts crying and Kirk wipes her tears with his fingers, even though Captain Dumbass was standing right there when Ambassador Smurf said her tears are as potent as the love candy that made that gorilla fall in love with Curly when the Stooges were making a movie in the jungle. The Doorman asks Kirk to spank her for being naughty and setting fire to Castle Anthrax's grail-shaped beacon, and I'm thinking Star Trek is about to lose its G rating.
Meanwhile, one of the Doorman's bodyguards, still wearing his plastic toy shovel miniskirt from the Ming the Merciless Summer Fun Beach Collection, is down in engineering pulling out spark plugs. Only one crewman is on duty to interrupt him, and he breaks the engineering guy's neck by -- at least by the looks of it -- aggressively trying to make out with him, sort of like Lennie with that farmer's daughter-in-law babe in Of Mice and Men. The camera cuts back and forth from the saboteur to Kirk upstairs a couple of times, and it sure seems like he's left alone down there for hours on end. McDonald's has more staff working the night shift fryolator than the Starship Enterprise has manning its engineering room.
Kirk bangs the Doorman, which seems like kind of a faux pas to me, but I'm not versed in the intricacies of interstellar diplomacy vis a vis banging the soon-to-be wives of the leaders of war torn planets. What I do know is that this guy must spend half his time setting his phaser on penicillin to shoot at the eight-legged space herpes that are chasing him from one Enterprise bedroom to another.
The Doorman tells Kirk that he should use the Enterprise to wipe out Troyius and then he can rule the system as King Penguin, but Spock and Bones walk in and squirt them with a hose to separate them. Kirk tells Bones that he needs to find a love potion antidote. I figure hanging a photo of Nurse Chapel on the headboard should do it, but Bones probably doesn't want to risk permanent impotence so he decides to do it the hard way with test tubes and stuff.
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's this endless war with Elaan, or maybe it's just being stuck out here in the vast emptiness of interstellar space, but lately I've been feeling a little blue."
The sensor ghost Spock saw earlier is a Klingon ship, and the Enterprise can't shoot at it or warp away because the guy in the plastic miniskirt caused too much damage during the 17 1/2 hours the engineering crew were down for nap time. Kirk wants to take the ship out of the star system for "maneuvering room," because you know how crowded it is inside a solar system. Why, just look at ours, what with all the planets always bouncing off each other and with the gas giants dropping into that corner pocket black hole left and right.
Scotty says they can't do nuthin' because all the dilithium crystals that power the ship were fused when Ming the Merciless, Jr. stuffed his used gym sock up the Enterprise's tailpipe. I wonder yet again why starships don't carry a couple of spare dilithium crystals in the glove compartment since the things are always burning out or fusing together or getting launched out into space. Scotty says shields will soon fail and phasers won't work. I wonder like I always do why they never think to fire photon torpedoes in these situations but maybe, just maybe, there's finally an utterly moronic and implausible explanation coming up in a couple of minutes. I'll just have to wait and see.
In the midst of the heated battle, Spock says that he's detecting unusual energy readings on the bridge, and he uses McCoy's whistling lipstick to find a bunch of spare dilithium crystals hanging on the necklace around the Doorman's neck. It's a good thing Tom Bosley didn't get his hands on that necklace the previous day down by the swimming pool while Bob Denver was pretending to drown but then almost really did drown and had to be saved by Isaac the bartender!
So it turns out the Klingons are interested in Elastic because they have so many dilithium crystals lying around on the ground that the Elasticians are turning them into cheap costume jewelry. Which makes me wonder why the Klingons would need to risk interstellar war when all they need to do is beam down to every gift shop on Elastic and buy out all the necklaces on the planet and claim they're just picking up something nice for their girlfriends.
The engines start to work again and now the photon torpedoes work and so I finally get my answer. Nothing works on a starship when the check engine light comes on, not even torpedoes which -- since there is still some power and they are basically ready-made bombs that just need to be shot out the torpedo tube -- seem like they should work independent of the juice that feeds the shields and the phasers, but don't. Don't they have news magazine shows in the future to expose dangerous incompetence like this?
"Coming up on StarDatelineNBC, Engineered to Kill! What the Federation doesn't want you to know about its deadly dilithium dilemma!"
The Doorman sees that Kirk doesn't finish off the Klingons once he gets the upper hand, and suddenly she's all about compassion and submission and doing her duty and hanging around the kitchen barefoot like a good gal. She beams down quietly to Troyius for an unhappy marriage and a couple of kids and a lifetime of dutiful misery, while on the Enterprise McCoy finally bursts in with the antidote for the Doorman's love-potion tears. Spock tells him that Kirk was infected by a love potion that was even stronger before he even met the Doorman
Thursday, January 3, 2013
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