To quote Han Solo...

[happydalek]

"I feel terrible." 

I won't go into nasty details, but suffice it to say that my digestive tract is apparently in a hurry today.  Thought it was just next-day ickiness from eating too much Labor Day leftovers, but I've been feeling worse as the day's gone on.  In addition to a general malaise, I feel strangely giddy.  My stomach's had that "Oh boy, we're about to go down the big hill on the rollercoaster" feel for hours now, and everything's making me giggle like I've had too little sleep and/or too much Jack Daniels.  So luckily, even though I feel like crap, I don't really mind that I feel like crap.  Har har.  Hehe.  
Lacking the strength to do anything else, I've thus spent my day watching old episodes of Star Trek on tape (as opposed to Star Trek: On Ice, which would be so. darn. funny.  Hey, they did it for Star Wars). 

• I started out with the TNG two-parter "Best of Both Worlds," which wasn't nearly so boring as it seemed the last time I watched it.  The very last scene, where Picard is standing in his ready room, his face bandaged from the Borg implants, contemplating his cup of tea, was so incredibly well-acted.  i luv u, Patrick Stewart. 

• Then, I watched "Tomorrow is Yesterday," a first-season OS episode where the Enterprise goes back in time and accidentally abducts a fighter pilot from the 1960's.  It was written by D.C. Fontana, whom I love because she knows how to write characters, although I was severely disappointed to realize that Kirk and Co.'s ultimate solution to their problem effectively voided everything else that had just happened before it.  I mean, if they could just zip back in time and beam everybody back to where they belonged so none of it happened, why in the name of Jeebus did Kirk and Sulu think they had to beam into the military facility to destroy the surveillance film of the Enterprise?  All that did was get them arrested and cause the ship to beam up yet another 1960's military official.   For that matter, even though the Enterprise was damaged at the start of the episode, they had enough sensor capability to identify the pursuing craft.  It was Spock's deduction that the jet might be carrying nukes that prompted Kirk to blow it up and beam the pilot onboard in the first place.  Why couldn't Spock use the sensors to find out if the jet actually had nukes or not so they could have saved themselves the trouble?  *tsk tsk,* D.C. Fontana.  But I nitpick.  It's still a fun episode.  

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Comments

[stoplookingup.livejournal.com]

YAY for a ST:TOS comment! I haven't seen the ep in a million years -- is that the one where they intentionally time travel to observe history, or is that the one where they accidentally slingshot around something-or-other? If the latter, I think they didn't realize they could successfully time travel again until the script called for a quick denouement Scotty or Spock or someone figured it out.

[happydalek.livejournal.com]

It's accidental time travel, where they first realize they can sling-shot around the sun to go back or forward in time. (They use the concept again in both the second-season ep "Assignment: Earth" (historical research) and in the fourth movie, "The Voyage Home" (the one with the whales).) Of course, the first season also had "The City on the Edge of Forever," which was another accidental time travel situation where McCoy got hopped up on meds and leapt into the the 1930's, causing Kirk and Spock to leap in after him, but in that case they had a funny rock arch called The Guardian of Forever that took them back in time.

[stoplookingup.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's right! Assignment: Earth was the episode that was supposed to be a pilot for a possible spinoff. Who could forget Teri Garr in that? City on the Edge of Forever is my single favorite TOS ep, even though Harlan Ellison swears Rodenberry screwed it up.

It's incredible -- I've forgotten more about TOS than I ever knew about anything else.

[happydalek.livejournal.com]

"City..." is generally considered THE best episode of original Trek, ever. There are some great lines in it, from Kirk's line about a "mechanical rice-picker," to Spock's comment about building a radio out of "stone knives and bear skins."

For a long time, "Assignment: Earth" was awesome for me solely because it established that Spock was a cat person.

There's something about TOS that none of the movies or ensuing spin-offs were ever able to recapture, and when my other fandoms lose their sparkle, I find myself drawn back in.

[stoplookingup.livejournal.com]

There's something about TOS that none of the movies or ensuing spin-offs were ever able to recapture

It's not just me, then? I always thought it was mostly because ST was my first (maybe THE first?) fandom. I was obsessed with it as a kid. In the age before VCRs and DVDs, I watched every ep way more times than I've ever watched anything since. And I was lucky enough to go to those really early conventions in New York in the mid '70s. I get absurdly misty about ST. (And I still can't get used to designating it as TOS -- to me, when you say "Star Trek," it means only one thing.)

[happydalek.livejournal.com]

I'm sure for some people nostalgia is a big part of it. Some of my oldest and best summer memories are of watching Star Trek repeats on NBC in the evenings. (I remember that my eight-year-old self had a bit of a crush on Captain Kirk, though now I'm much more of a Spock girl.) When they stopped showing the repeats, I'd go to the local library, which had a number of the episodes to rent on VHS and get my fix that way. I have a special place in my heart for TNG and Voyager, too, but they all seemed too out-of-touch with reality and took themselves waaaay too seriously. That gloriously liberal sense of adventure got totally supplanted by the conformist, militaristic attitude that dominated, and in my view, killed, Star Trek in the later decades. Have you heard of Star Trek: New Voyages (now called Phase II)?

[stoplookingup.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you mentioned New Voyages, because I'd sort of vaguely heard about it but never checked it out. (How the hell can they afford to produce those things, anyway?) I'm so old, when I hear New Voyages, the first thing I think of is the book published in the 70s (http://www.amazon.com/New-Voyages-Star-Trek/dp/0553246364) and how at the time I was completely thrilled to death to read new ST stories.

[happydalek.livejournal.com]

That book looks like something I'll have to hunt down for my collection one of these days! I do love me some short stories. Phase II (http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/episodes.html) was originally funded, I'd heard, by James Cawley's work as an Elvis impersonator (supposedly he's really good at it). I think they've got some more money nowadays, what with the increased interest in their work, but everybody on it still works for free. Given they've only completed four episodes in four years, it's really a labor of love.