What does a starship need with God? Archive

Re-watching Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

– November 3, 2011 8:00 amPosted in: Movies

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Screenplay by: David Loughery
Story by: William Shatner & Harve Bennett & David Loughery
Produced by: Harve Bennett
Directed by: William Shatner

Release date: June 9, 1989
Stardate: 8454.1

Mission Summary

Shore leave at Yosemite Park is cut short by a hostage situation on the planet Nimbus III, where a Vulcan named Sybok has taken three ambassadors hostage. The Enterprise is dispatched to resolve the situation, and they find that Sybok is Spock’s fully Vulcan half-brother. He has a unique ability to purge a person’s pain, a neat trick that both Spock and McCoy take him up on (Kirk refuses, saying his pain makes him human). Unfortunately, Sybok also happens to be a raving cultist in search of god at the planet Sha Ka Ree in the center of the universe. Meanwhile, a Klingon named Klaa is in pursuit of Kirk, for personal glory and because the movie needed explosions.

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Star Trek Animated Series Re-Watch: “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth”

Torie Atkinson & Eugene Myers

– August 4, 2011 8:00 amPosted in: Animated Series Re-Watch

“How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth”
Written by Russell Bates and David Wise
Directed by Bill Reed

Season 2, Episode 5
Production episode: 22022
Original air date: October 5, 1974
Star date: 6063.4

Mission summary

In an ominous beginning, a mysterious space probe takes a scan of Earth’s system and then self-destructs. The Enterprise’s mission is to trace the imploded propulsion system’s destructive matter trail to its origin and find out where it came from and who sent it.

They don’t make it very far before they find a huge “crystalline ceramic” ship twice the size of the Enterprise. It’s pretty far away but they can’t get any closer for inspection–some kind of “globular force field,” firm yet flexible, has entrapped them. As the offending ship becomes more visible they realize it looks like a giant winged snake. Needless to say, it’s not anyone the Federation has had contact with before.

Luckily, this week’s minority helmsmen is Walking Bear, not Sulu, and he recognizes the ship’s design immediately: it looks kind of like the winged serpent Kukulkan.

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Tags: aliens probably built the pyramids too, godlike beings, horrible horrible children, immortality sucks, loneliness, native americans, omnipotent beings, shakespeare, space douches, the gods must be crazy, What does a starship need with God?, zoos

Star Trek Re-Watch: “The Ultimate Computer”

Eugene Myers & Torie Atkinson

– July 1, 2010 5:57 pmPosted in: TOS Re-Watch

“The Ultimate Computer”
Written by D.C. Fontana
Story by Laurence N. Wolfe
Directed by John Meredyth Lucas

Season 2, Episode 24
Production episode: 2×24
Original air date: March 8, 1968
Star date: 4729.4

Mission summary
Enterprise receives puzzling instructions from Starfleet to report to a space station and offload all but a skeletal crew. When they arrive, Commodore Robert Wesley beams aboard and explains that the ship will be participating in war game exercises to test a new multitronic computer, the M-5, which was designed to assume control of all a starship’s systems. Kirk wonders what his role will be during this automated test, and Wesley replies, “You’ve got a great job, Jim. All you have to do is sit back and let the machine do the work.”

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Tags: computers, crazy scientists, logic, poetry, Starfleet is stupid, talking to death, the singularity, war games, What does a starship need with God?