Tag Archives: star trek TOS

Boldly Going: What Are Little Girls Made Of?/Miri

27 Feb

It’s the New Year now, and one of my resolutions is to be better about keeping up with Star Trek and Boldly Going. Seeing as I’m not even halfway through the first of three seasons of the first of five series (just typing it out that way is enough to give me a panic attack), I’ve got my work cut out for me and need to get moving on this project if I’m going to finish by the time my son is in high school (not that that’s really the goal). I’m hoping to get at least a column up each week, though even that may be more ambitious than I realize right now.

I will say this: watching the two most recent episodes of TOS, “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” and “Miri,” I felt really happy. As I get older, fewer and fewer things make me happy. Maybe I’m getting more jaded (if that’s possible) or maybe I’m losing my patience with things or maybe the more I see the more things lose their novelty. Whatever the reason, I can almost count on two hands the things that make me genuinely happy (yes, my wife and son are number one), and even some of those have been lost. Comic books have become prohibitively expensive. Thanks to Adult Onset Juvenile Diabetes, I can’t drink Pepsi anymore. There’s two things that have bitten the dust.  But watching Star Trek, I realized that it made me happy and I became really thankful for discovering this 40+ year old sci-fi show, late as I may be to the party. I’m happy being in that world. I’m happy being on board The Enterprise. I’m happy watching Star Trek, and even realizing that fact makes me happy.

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Lost Star Trek Script Now Available

23 Feb

An unfilmed script from the original series of Star Trek has been discovered after 40+ years.

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Boldly Going: Mudd’s Women

16 Feb

Annnnnnd…I’m back.

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Germany is Finally Cool with “Patterns of Force”

8 Nov


“Patterns of Force,” otherwise known as the “Nazi episode” from Season Two of Star Trek, has finally been shown on German television, more than 43 years after it originally aired in the U.S. Continue reading

Boldly Going: The Naked Time/The Enemy Within

1 Nov

It’s been weeks since I’ve written an installment of Boldly Going, and it sucks to be away. Unfortunately, when life careens out of control and a newly-mobile baby demands every minute of your attention, it’s the overly-ambitious Star Trek experiment that’s the first to go.

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Boldly Going: Where No Man Has Gone Before

17 Oct

So, the title of this column pays off just four episodes in. It’s all downhill from here.

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Boldly Going: The Man Trap/Charlie X

15 Sep

Originally published January 26, 2010 at TVVerdict.com

When Star Trek’s original pilot “The Cage” was scrapped for being too slow and talky, NBC actually did something unprecedented: they ordered a second pilot of the same show. So, the producers went back to the drawing board and retooled Star Trek, giving the show a slightly different vibe (though not really), several new faces and, best of all, a brand new captain. Star Trek got a second lease on life with that new pilot.

“The Man Trap” is not that episode.

For whatever reason, NBC decided not to air Star Trek’s second pilot as the series’ premiere. Instead, they ran this solid whodunit (the sixth show produced) which dropped us right on board the U.S.S. Enterprise and let us fend for ourselves. Continue reading

Boldly Going: “The Cage”

9 Sep

Originally published January 26, 2010 at TVVerdict.com

And so it is that I dive into “The Cage,” the original pilot shot for Star Trek in 1965 but not aired until over 30 years later. What’s most notable about the episode is that it features hardly any of the characters that would eventually make up the crew of the Enterprise — including the Captain himself, James T. Kirk. At the helm of “The Cage” is original captain Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter), a square-jawed and mostly humorless hero straight out of 1950s sci-fi. The only eventual crew member to show up on “The Cage” is Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, but even he isn’t yet exactly what he would eventually become — he’s less stoic and serious, even delivering his final lines of the show with half a smile. The rest of the crew in the pilot is mostly a generic collection of white faces; I guess the Enterprise hadn’t yet become the melting pot that Star Trek would turn out to be. Continue reading

Boldly Going: A First-Timer’s Journey Through Star Trek

29 Aug

Originally published September 8, 2009 at TVVerdict.com

Star Trek turns 43 today. To most people, that fact probably doesn’t mean much. It didn’t used to mean much to me.

To a small group of people — call them Trekkies or Trekkers (I know the latter is the “preferred” term, but it’s all kind of made up anyway, right?) — the anniversary of Star Trek‘s premiere means a lot. For those devoted individuals, it’s more than a show; it’s a way of life. That’s an oversimplification, of course, but can you think of another television show that’s had the effect on its fans the way Star Trek has? I’ll answer for you. No. Continue reading