Archive for July, 2010

Star Trek Re-Watch: “Assignment: Earth”

– July 15, 2010 5:16 pmPosted in: TOS Re-Watch

“Assignment: Earth”
Written by Art Wallace (story by Gene Roddenberry and Art Wallace)
Directed by Marc Daniels

Season 2, Episode 26
Production episode: 2×26
Original air date: March 29, 1968
Star date: 1968

Mission summary

While on a frivolous time travel mission to research Earth’s history, circa 1968, Enterprise accidentally intercepts a transporter signal from an unknown source over a thousand light years away. A well-dressed man holding a black cat beams onto their transporter pad and looks at them dramatically.

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Tags: black cats, Cold War, computers, mysterious strangers, nasa, nosy secretaries, perfect bodies, stock footage, time travel

Star Trek Re-Watch: “Bread and Circuses”

Torie Atkinson & Eugene Myers

– July 8, 2010 5:30 pmPosted in: TOS Re-Watch

“Bread and Circuses”
Written by Gene Roddenberry & Gene L. Coon
Directed by Ralph Senensky

Season 2, Episode 25
Production episode: 2×14
Original air date: March 15, 1968
Star date: 4040.7

Mission Summary:

Enterprise finds the debris of the S.S. Beagle, a merchant ship, but no human remains. A nearby planet might have survivors, and the Enterprise intercepts a broadcast “once called video” (even though they’ve seen video before as recently as in “Patterns of Force,” but nevermind…). It’s a news program:

VOICEOVER: Today police rounded up still another group of dissidents. Authorities are as yet unable to explain these fresh outbreaks of treasonable disobedience by well-treated, well-protected, intelligent slaves. Now turning to the world of sports and bringing you the taped results of the arena games last night.

They watch a gladiator fight before the transmission cuts out. Spock identifies one of the gladiators as a flight officer aboard the Beagle.

KIRK: Slaves and gladiators. What are we seeing, a twentieth-century Rome?

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Tags: ancient rome, bad history, forgotten slavegirls, gladiators, guns solve everything, half-naked man-fighting, history, jesus christ solves everything, old movies, romans, where are all the tunics?

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?