Treat each episode as if this is the first time viewig (treat this as the 1960s)
This is discussion is once a week and going in air date order no later episodes may be discuses unless you invoke rule 3
You may make a modern observation and comparrison so long as it is bracketed with [2005] [/2005]
You may make 60s references but please try to keep most of the conversation relevant to the episode.
etc…
Ok now for the fun
Synopsis: Kirk and his tactical officers are invited down to Cestus III only to find that the planet has been attacked. It is a trap by unknown assailants who attack the Enterprise crew. Through the use of photon shells the landing party escape and the Enterprise begins a high-speed pursuit of the mysterious enemy.
As they draw near they are suddenly seized by a race known as the Metrons who abhor violence and have decided to settle the dispute by having the two captains face each other in a one on one battle. The winner can go peacefully, the loser will be destroyed along with their ship. Kirk’s opponent is a giant lizard known as a Gorn who possesses great strength and endurance. Kirk must use his agility and intelligence to save his crew.
I like new aliens…. These gorn could be an interesting foe. They are tough and it seems their ships are faster and tougher than the Enterprise.
I noticed Kirk made reference to being the only ship protecting that sector of the Federation. What Federation is he talking about? Is there a Federation on earth of the Countries? I thought it was known as the United Earth (UESPA)
Anyone else catch on to the gunpowder thing before Spock?
Kirk’s reluctance to kill the Gorn Captain is a nice touch. He was ready to kill them all for violating Federation (?) space but when he finally meets one and is faced with the fact that it may be the earthers that are the invaders he is able to put his prejudices aside. It seems to be a successful space captain you have to be Military tactician, father figure, authoritarian and diplomat all at once. Kirk is quite good at that in this episode.
Hey Thwartme, aside for falling into the trap I don’t think there was much of a case of Stupid crew. (Mind you the guy in the red shirt should have ducked when he noticed movement on the ridge.
The Metron seemed kinda fruity… was it a male or female? Oh yeah is this another super being??? Ability to stop ships and transport teh crew milions of miles away.
Not a bad episode had nice action, real out door locations (looking suspiciously like the same place Kirk fought Finnegan in Shore leave… I call it “fighting canyon”) and a decent morality play.
OK, this one was just plain cool. I’m hooked on this show now.
I wonder if other people might like to get together someplace and talk about it? Maybe even wear costumes, trade stuff, etc.? Maybe we could even get someone involved in the production of the series to show up!
That Gorn guy hisses more than Gollum, which emphasizes his creepy reptilian feel. Still, I think his eyes could be done better – they look pretty fake.
I liked this one. I liked that he beamed down with his tactical staff, people we hadn’t seen before. It makes sense that on such a big ship the Captain has advisors beyond Spock. Makes it seem more real.
My favorite line:
Advisor: We’re pretty close to use one of these little jewels.
Kirk: It will be even closer for them.
The writer listed was Frederic Brown, and a story called Arena is in one of his collections. It is basically the same plot - a showdown between a human and and alien, but besides that it is very different from this show. The problem to solve was that the human was separated from the alien by some sort of force field. There was also no “I won’t kill” moment at the end. I wonder what is going on. I suspect that Roddenberry, who is a writer, touches the scripts quite a bit before they air. And I wonder if Brown, who has never written a script to my knowledge, really had anything to do with this one.
But I like them using sf writers - Jerry Sohl, Sturgeon and now Brown. It adds a lot. Harlan Ellison and Robert Bloch are both scriptwriters - I hope they get signed up also.
I understand that Gene Coon (IIRC) started writing his script before someone pointed out the similarity to Brown’s “Arena”, and altered his to fit the Brown story when the similarity was pointed out (a la the recent debacle that was I, Robot).
In any case, the screen story isn’t completely faithful to Brown’s. as noted above, the problem to be solved was bvery different, as was the nature of the aliens. And in particular
the ending is completely different. The hero in Brown’s story was supposed to kill his opponent. If Kirk had met Brown’s super-aliens he would’ve doomed Terran civilization. I’m sure Roddenbury would not have approvede.
Brown’s stotry has been ripped off before and after this. (See the original Outer Limits episode “Fun and Games”, for instance.)
Nevertheless, I think this is one of the better star Trek episodes. Certainly one of the ones that approaches classic SF, rather than a homogenized series cliche.
Fredric Brown tried to get Hollywood to film his stories. I don’t know if he ever actually wrote any scripts, but he pitched what was to become “The Mind Thing” unsuccessfully. It would’ve made a pretty good low-budget SF film. A few of his mysteries were filmed – Knock 1-2-3, The Screaming Mimi, although considerably altered. His classic SF novel Martian, Go Home! was filmed, badly (by the same guys who later made Indepence Day and the American Godzilla) I’d love to see a faithful adaptation, for once. I’ve been filming “Arena” in my head for years. With CGI, I’m convinced you could make a heluva goof film out of it.
By the way, Marvel comics adapted “Arena” in its 1970s series Worlds Unknown. think that they felt that a hairy orange sphere wasn’t much of a threat, so they made the alien look like a cross between Brown’s description — and a Gorn!!
Aw, heck, just another alien-wrasslin’ pulpfest, straight from the Fifties. This show had promise, some interesting scripts early on, but it looks like they ran out of ideas. Too bad. Time for Desi Arnaz to pull the plug.
A movie about I Robot? That would be good. I hope they do it some day. And what is this Independence Day of which you speak.
[2005]Hint - read the OP [/2005]
Don’t forget the diamonds for ammunition…
If I recall correctly, the classic gunpowder formula is 15 to 3 to 2. I’ll leave it to you to determine which proportion goes with which ingredient – in other words, I forget.
One of the Foxfire books had a chapter on making black powder. It was filled with good advice, chief among which is Don’t do it unless you know what you’re doing
For instance, grinding all the ingredients dry in a mortar is just an invitation for a spark to set it off.
Luck and chance are perverse. I had a couple of friends who made up a black powder bomb, took it out to a secluded area, stuck a fuse in it, and lit it. It didn’t go off. (Like Martin Padway’s in Lest Darkness Fall).
But I could easily see Mother Nature deciding that some fool with a cannon-like mortar full of dry incipient black powder really deserved to have it go off.
I’d hate to see a Doper lose digits or worse to uninformed fooling around with incendiaries.
It’s still light-years more sophisticated than an albino gorilla with a unicorn horn stuck on its head.
Mugatu, my butt.
Try and come up with a sane ecosystem that would fit into.
I’m just glad to see that Kirk’s uniform shirt didn’t rip like it did in “Shore Leave.” Looks like Starfleet finally issued some sturdier uniforms; hopefully they’ll stay that way.
Well, this episode is a red-letter event for two reasons. First the crew is actually exploring again (I know there’s already a base there, but it’s way out on the edge of nowhere) and pretty much no one falls prey to SCS (Stupid Crew Syndrome). Yeah, kingpengvin is right, that guy could have ducked or reacted a little quicker, but that’s just nit-picking.
And I disagree with rjung . I think the Gorn make-up looked great. Sure, you could tell it was a guy in a suit, but at least they actually tried to make the alien look different. As much as I liked the Romulans in “Balance Of Terror”, or Spock as the Vulcan, or the Squire of Gothos, they all just looked like humans with minor variations (or no variations at all.) The Gorn looked, well, alien. The Metron, however…
I didn’t catch on to the gunpowder thing. I got as far as “I know sulpher burns, but how do you use that?”. Kirk and Spock are both cleverer than I. Sigh. No starship captaincy for me. I guess I’ll have to dress up in a costume I made myself and pretend. Hey BrotherCadfael , when’s that event you’re planning?
Dunno. We have to come up with some sort of cool name, so we can market it to other Star Trek-enthusiasts (Boy, that’s a clumsy term. Gotta shorten it.) But calling it a “conference” sounds so dry and academic.
I thought it was a good episode. I think war will be eliminated by the year 2000 as the Age of Aquarius dawns, and I saw this episode as a portent of that. By then, we will have colonies on Mars and will be exploring other solar systems. Our role will be like that of the Metrons, to enforce peace. I do think that the captain — what is it, Kirk? — was a bit too brutish. Perhaps if he had tried more earnestly to negotiate with the Gorn, just as we should be doing with the Vietnamese.
