I, too, love the scene where Data instructs Worf on the care and feeding of Spot:
*Data: “He will need to be fed once a day. He prefers feline supplement number 25.”
Worf: “I understand.”
Data: “And he will require water. And you must provide him with a sandbox. And you must talk to him. Tell him he is a pretty cat. And a good cat.”
Worf: “I will FEED him.”
Data: “Perhaps that will be enough.”
(As Worf leaves, holding Spot at arms’ length, he sneezes.) *
Two of my favorite aliens discuss a soft drink:
*Quark: “I want you to try something for me. Take a sip of this.”
Garak: “What is it?”
Quark: “A Human drink, it’s called root beer.”
Garak: “Ahh, I don’t know…”
Quark: “Come on… aren’t you in the least bit curious?”
(Garak drinks.)
Quark: “What do you think?”
Garak (in wonderment): “It’s vile!”
Quark: “I know. It’s so bubbly and cloying and happy.”
Garak: “Just like the Federation…”
Quark: “But do you know what’s really frightening? If you drink enough of it, you begin to like it.”
Garak: “It’s insidious…”
Quark (nodding in perfect understanding): “…just like the Federation!” *
Data, in Star Trek: Generations, has his emotion chip in. He takes a sip of a drink offered by Guinan, and goes on and on about how unredeemedly nasty it is. Guinan offers, “More?” And he promptly responds, holding out his glass, “Please!”
Wesley, dressed as Blue Boy, eating pie with his hands in TNG “Hollow Pursuits.”
Wesley, about Picard: “He expects the impossible!”
Geordi (wearily): “That’s the short definition of ‘Captain.’”
Bashir and O’Brien, tired, hungry and on edge, feverishly clutch their weapons and wait for just the right moment to attack the groom as part of Worf’s and Jadzia’s wedding ceremony.
R+D costs for emotion chip : 20 thousand bars of Guilt Pressed Latnum.
Ship destroyed, largely due to android’s cowardice : 200 Million bars of GPL
Glass of root beer : 1 slip.
Look on Data’s face : priceless.
I just remembered another one from TNG. I can’t remember the episode, but Data had created a program to spout meaningless smalltalk BS. There was a reception in ten forward where some Starfleet person was notorious for talking the same way, so he and Data engaged in an endless conversation where they both babbled in small talk.
There was a great scene where Data was trying this out on Riker and Troi, and I’d swear that Brent Spiner was actually cracking up Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis - their reactions looked like they were breaking character and genuinely laughing.
That was indeed The Cage, later shown in the two part Menagerie.
It’s even funnier when you see it first after having seen Spock as the Controller of My Emotions for a couple of years, as many of us no doubt did, what with the syndication of the 70s throwing eps at us willy nilly.
No, the one where he’s making small talk with Commander Hutchinson (“call me Hutch”) is “Starship Mine,” the one where the Enterprise is getting a baryon sweep by that big green thing that went bzzzzssshshshshsh and Picard had to go back to the ship and ran into terrorists and had a big fight with them pkow, pkow! pew, pew pew! and they made that flashy thing out of Geordi’s visor ka-bzzzzzaaappo and everybody fell over and the good guys won.
In Insurrection, when Riker shows off his newly-shaven face.
Riker: “Smooth as an android’s bottom, eh Mr. Data?”
Data: “May I?”
Runs his hand across Riker’s jaw, than shakes his head.
To be fair though, at that point Mr Spock was just a funny-looking near-human, and it wasn’t until the pilot got rejected that they took the cold, emotionless aspect of “Number One” and grafted it onto Spock. Of course it was well worth doing, not least because Nimoy could act.
As an aside, it was great to hear the Amok Time battle music on Futurama before Fry’s fight as a national anthem.
But back to the OP, “Trials and Tribbleations” was a laugh for the scene highlighting the difference between TOS Klingons and the New Klingons™. Colm Meaney and Alex Siddig were good in that episode too, their discussion of whether the Dr. would still be in existence at all when they got back to DS9. I got a kick out of the sychronising of the tribble thrown out of the storage bin by Dax landing on Kirk’s head
But my point was that it was not what we knew about Spock when we first saw that scene. Whether we saw the shows in or out of order when we first saw them, we still were only familiar with Spock as the half Vulcan half Human who controlled (or tried to) his emotions. So then suddenly seeing that reaction makes it even funnier. As my earlier post made clear, I was speaking of the first ever viewing of it. At this late date, everyone has seen The Cage and Menagerie scores of times.
Of course you do. I was presenting it as conversational grist to the mill, not seeking to fight your putative igerrance.
Yes. Similarly, when viewing Balance of Terror, the first glimpse of the Romulan captain is the cue to imagine Spock thinking “Dad?! What the fuck are you doing over there?”
