moby dick Archive

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Re-Watching Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

By
Eugene Myers & Torie Atkinson
– October 13, 2011 8:00 amPosted in: Movies

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Screenplay by: Jack B. Sowards
Story by: Harve Bennett and Jack B. Sowards
Produced by: Robert Sallin
Directed by: Nicholas Meyer

Release date: June 4, 1982
Stardate: 8130.3

Mission Summary

The U.S.S. Reliant makes an unexpected discovery on a scientific mission to the Ceti Alpha system: the genetically-engineered superman Khan Noonien Singh and the surviving crew of the S.S. Botany Bay, who has been cooling his heels on the inhospitable fifth planet for the last fifteen years. Khan’s somewhat pissed that his old friend James Kirk never called or wrote since marooning them there, so he takes over Reliant and begins plotting his revenge, which mostly revolves around a) inserting gross, brain-controlling slugs into Captain Terrell and Commander Chekov’s ears, b) stealing the Genesis Device, an experimental probe that can terraform a dead planet within days (what could possibly go wrong?), and b) killing Kirk. A person has to dream big, and galactic overachiever Khan is reaching for the stars.

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40

Re-Watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture

By
Eugene Myers & Torie Atkinson
– October 6, 2011 8:00 amPosted in: Movies

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Screenplay by: Harold Livingston
Story by: Alan Dean Foster
Produced by: Gene Roddenberry
Directed by: Robert Wise

Release date: December 7, 1979
Stardate: 7410.2

Mission Summary

A giant space cloud, impervious to conventional weapons but massively destructive, is headed straight for Earth. Naturally the Enterprise, fresh from a renovation, is the only ship in interception range. Admiral Kirk temporarily takes control of the ship from its captain, Captain Decker, and reassembles his old crew–including Spock, who just failed to complete the Kolinahr–to confront the cloud.

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2

Star Trek Re-Watch: “Obsession”

By
Eugene Myers & Torie Atkinson
– March 25, 2010 12:00 amPosted in: TOS Re-Watch

“Obsession”
Written by Art Wallace
Directed by Ralph Senensky

Season 2, Episode 13
Production episode: 2×18
Original air date: December 15, 1967
Star date: 3619.2

Mission summary

Kirk, Spock, and some red shirts are surveying Argus X for tritanium, a substance Spock says is “21.4 times as hard” as a diamond. As they look at a rock, a strange fog rolls over the rocks above them, but it retreats when they harvest a tritanium sample with a phaser beam. Kirk hasn’t seen the fog, but he notices a sweet odor. The smell triggers the memory of something on another planet eleven years ago. He sends the security officers out to look for a “gaseous cloud,” and asks Spock to scan for dikironium, an element rarely seen and even more rarely pronounced. From Enterprise, Scott reminds him that they’ll be late for their rendezvous with Yorktown if they delay, but Kirk doesn’t care. A little ways off, Ensign Rizzo monologues on how the thing he’s scanning seems to be changing, while the fog surrounds his two friends and appears to suffocate them. Instead of firing at it, he calls Kirk and Spock to tell them about it. By the time they rush to his aid, he’s unconscious, and Kirk already knows the dead security men are missing all of their red blood cells. Spock asks what they’re looking for, and he replies, “Something that can’t possibly exist, but it does.”

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12

Star Trek Re-Watch: “The Doomsday Machine”

By
Torie Atkinson & Eugene Myers
– October 27, 2009 9:00 pmPosted in: TOS Re-Watch

“The Doomsday Machine”
Written by Norman Spinrad
Directed by Marc Daniels

Season 2, Episode 6
Production episode: 2×06
Original air date: October 20, 1967
Star date: 4202.9

Mission Summary:
When the Enterprise receives a garbled distress signal (only the word “Constellation” is intelligible), they approach system L-370 to discover that all seven planets in the solar system have been destroyed—there is “nothing left but rubble and asteroids.” They continue to system L-374, which has fallen to a similar fate. Suddenly they pick up a ship’s disaster beacon, and find the U.S.S. Constellation drifting in space. It is heavily damaged, presumably by the same thing that destroyed the solar systems in this sector. Kirk, in his green command sarong, Mr. Scott, Dr. McCoy, Lt. Washburn, and two others beam to the ship to investigate.

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