Star Trek: The Cage (Extended)

One of the nice things on the Star Trek season sets is the extras. Season three comes with two versions of The Cage, the original Star Trek pilot. The extended version is unique because it restores footage from the very first version, in black and white, with the color pieces used in the first season's two-parter, The Menagerie. The blending of black and white with color footage is seamless, if disconcerting, and you get to see little things not seen in the two parter. The voice overs of the aliens are different, deeper (they were actually all women in the roles), and many of the known cast are not yet in place. Mr. Spock is there, but much more animated, even shouting many of his lines, smiling, and duded up with some weird arcing eyebrows.

The captain is Christopher Pike (not the horror writer) and his Number 1 is played by the woman would be Nurse Chapel by the time the series aired. There is no Lt. Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, or Dr. McCoy. You get to see interesting glimpses of what the show might be, but obviously the retooling for the second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before, with the regular cast, was a huge improvement.

The storyline concerns a race of cereal aliens, the Talosians, with bulbous heads, who want to start a new world atop the surface of their planet, which was wiped out in a world ending war, forcing them to evolve beneath ground. They snatch Pike, hoping to make him their new Adam, and put him in a glass cage with a beautiful woman, so he'll get horizontal and populate the planet. For some reason he objects to this. This is why I am not a starship captain. They would have had me at green girl.

The Cage shows what Star Trek might have been had it been accepted as it was first filmed. An interesting show, surely, but lacking the chemistry of the version we all know and love. Jeffery Hunter, who played Captain Pike and died in 1969 after a stroke and subsequent skull fracture, declined the second pilot, and William Shatner stepped in. There is also a remastered version of the episode on the disc set, including many CGI enhancements.

The set ends with features including some Star Trek home movies from one of the extras on the show, a retrospective of Season Three with interviews from some of the actors and an explanation of the big interracial kiss. There is also a short piece with the maker of Star Trek collectibles, such as phaser props.

The Great Toy Mystery Solved!

Ok, so maybe not a great mystery to anyone but myself, but it's been bugging the tiddly winks out of me for a spell now.

See, there were these two toys I had as a kid that are pretty nostalgic to me, one of them a Christmas present and one a cereal premium from Kellogg's, both from circa 1967 or '68. I knew in my mind what they looked like, what they were, but could not recall their names. Hours of googling--apparently I am a Googletard--brought up nothing. I tried every permutation. Nada.

So last night I Tweeted both of their descriptions and within seconds, literally, Google Queens extraordinaire Amy Smith and Lisa Hendrix had the answer for me. I owe them my sanity. Oh, wait, I already misplaced that. I owe them a big thanks. Yes, little things like that plague me.

Anyway, the first one was an incubator type toy with a red metal base to which is attached a plastic cone with sliding door. Also part of it is a vise. You would take these colorful flat plastic squares, which looked like large Starburst candies, maybe 2x2 or 1x1, can't recall, and place them in the incubator. I remember a kind of nasty electrical, burning odor to the thing. I'm sure there had to be some really bad chemical in them that was harmful to me, but toys just weren't fun without a bit of danger. The plastic squares would, under heat, unfurl into dinosaurs. When you reheated the dinos and stuffed them into the vise, you could compress them back into squares. I loved that toy, and didn't burn down the house with it (what were my parents thinking giving that to a seven-year-old, anyway?)

It was from Mattel and called The Strange Change machine. One mystery solved. But now I want one again. And they go for big bucks on eBay.

The next item or items, were little two inch high figures with round heads and felt clothing based on many of the stories we knew growing up--namely, Red Riding Hood, Robin Hood, Friar Tuck and, I think, Pocahontas. You clipped the tops off Raisin Bran boxes, sent them in and a few centuries--actually six weeks--later got one in the mail. I had them all, I think, or at least most of them. I was also constantly constipated. They were called Little People. Mystery two solved. I want some of them, too. Also a fairly pricey item on eBay. I really wish I had held onto some of these things--it would have been a lot cheaper than trying to get them back as an adult. I am really annoyed my Green Hornet twisty got ground up in the dehumidifier, but most of them I just gave away or they got tossed out. One poor Little People got chewed up by the dog. A terrible way to go, I'm sure. And is it my imagination, or does Robin Hood look like Herbie the Elf from Rudolph?

While I am on the subject, remember when you actually got cool toys right in the cereal boxes? I mean good stuff you could play with that was made well enough to hold up for quite a while, not cardboard things you cut off the back of the box or have to pay an arm and a leg for on today's boxes.

One thing I liked in the late '60s was the little rubber figures that came in Lucky Charms and a few other cereals. Lucky Charms also didn't constipate me and is magically delicious. I didn't mind eating that. The rubber figures I recall were Underdog, Rocky and Bullwinkle and the Lucky Charms dude. I thought originally as a kid they were erasers, but they didn't erase anything. They were just rubbery. They would stand up, even. Not on their own, of course. I mean you could make them stand up. I remember distinctly needing that Lucky Charms Leprechaun still after twenty boxes of cereal and trading for it with some kid at school. Third grade. Big deals went down there.

Oh...I just recalled Tuffy Tooth...but that's a story for another blog.

What about you? What were your favorite premiums for cereal boxes or that special toy?

Star Trek: Turnabout Intruder

Turnabout Intruder was the final episode of season three and of the series. A woman from Kirk's past, driven mad by dreams of power, pretends illness in order to lure Kirk to her side. She then, through the use of alien technology, switches her mind with his, and beams up to the Enterprise, now in control of the ship. McCoy and Spock begin to suspect something amiss due to the captain's erratic behavior, who is doing his best to eliminate the woman within whose body Kirk's mind is trapped. OK, then. This, of course, brings up some interesting and odd questions. If Kirk is trapped in the body of a woman, does that make him a lesbian? And if he/she makes nookie with his body within whom is trapped the woman's personality is that considered mast...er, nevermind. It's complicated. Let's leave it at that.

I never much cared for this episode, but upon rewatching it after so many years I found I liked it much better. Shatner gets the spotlight and does a nice job of playing a hysterical woman. Enhancements are fairly limited, but the ship sailing into a nebula at the end is a nice touch. Nurse Chapel's hair changes from blonde to auburn. One assumes this was not an enhancement. Lt. Uhura is oddly missing from this final episode.

Tonight's Treks

The Savage Curtain is another of my favorite episodes and gets the award for the most creative use of Abraham Lincoln in a sci fi show. When the Enterprise arrives at a volcanic planet they encounter the image of President Lincoln sitting out in space. He beams aboard the ship, and seem to be who he says he is--our 16th president. He asks them to beam down to the planet, where a mysterious inhabitable area has appeared out of nowhere in the midst of molten rock. Once down they encounter the Vulcan hero, Surak, also long dead, but now, not so much.

Also awaiting them is a strange alien of living rock who has set up a test, so that his race may understand good vs evil and which is stronger. The alien plucks four of the universe's most vicious killers from--actually, who knows where (at the end the explanation for Lincoln and Surak were that they were constructed from Kirk and Spock's thoughts, but it's never said where the killers came from.) At any rate, they must battle for the fate of the Enterprise and the jollies of the rock man.

The episode is a little loose but still one of the more innovative of the series. Enhancements help quite a bit where the molten planet is concerned.

All Our Yesterdays is another episode I am quite fond of. The Enterprise races to evacuate the race of a planet whose sun is about to go nova, but when they arrive they find nobody there, except a curious old librarian in a deserted building. He urges Kirk, Spock and McCoy to search through library tapes for a time period they like. Apparently the planet's inhabitants have been escaping into past periods of their history. Kirk winds up stuck in a swashbuckling period, accused of being a witch, and Spock and McCoy get trapped in a snowbound period 5000 years in the planet's past. In this episode, oddly enough, Spock gets the girl, a spicy cave girl played by Mariette Hartley when she was young and hot. I always loved the concept of walking through a door into other time periods, probably because of this episode. The enhancements apply mostly to the ending nova swallowing the planet and are well integrated.

Star Trek: The Cloud Minders

Kirk and Spock beam down to a mining planet and are immediately attacked by troglytes, the worker bees of the planet. They are saved by the head of the cloud city, who beams in just in time to stun the attackers. Seems these trogs want equality and to live in the cloud city, and are subverting and attacking. Kirk needs a specific mineral mined on the surface to help cure a virus on another planet (plot point just used in the epsiode before last), but when he tries to help a beautiful miner gal with a bad attitude (go figure) he incurs the wrath of the cloud leader. Meanwhile they discover the mineral gives off a noxious invisible gas in its raw form that is retarding the miners' intellectual growth and causing aggressive behavior.

I never cared much for this episode and still don't. Its political message is pretty heavy handed and the supposed intellectual gal in the cloud city seems pretty dim, though how she manages to keep up that top is a mystery. Some of the enhancements help, but the cloud city shots are a bit jarring for me. A very average episode.

Star Trek: The Way to Eden

Herbert, Herbert, Herbert! That's right, it's hey-hey with the space hippies and it totally reaches, pops! The Enterprise intercepts a stolen ship before it can cross into Romulan space, beaming aboard a gaggle of space hippies searching for the mythical planet of Eden. They are led by a Doctor Severin, him of the cauliflower ears, a man carrying a potentially deadly disease and a shuttle short of a full crew. Along the way they sing jaunty hippie tunes and are generally annoying.

This is not a high point in the Trek series. Trying to pass Mr. Spock off as a "with it" Daddy-o just doesn't work and you're not too disappointed when some of the members meet untimely ends. Enhanced effects are limited but are groovy.

Star Trek: Requiem for Methuselah

An outbreak of Rigelian fever strikes the Enterprise, so they beam down to yet another supposedly deserted planet, only to find it is guarded by one of those damn floating robots with a bad attitude and a grumpy old guy who wants them gone. But Kirk, McCoy and Spock need a mineral on the planet in order to synthesize a cure for the fever or everyone on the Enterprise will die, so they are not going anywhere.

The old guy turns out to be roughly 5000 years old, possessing many works of music and art by masters such as DaVinci and Brahms, never seen on Earth. He also has the requisite hottie chick who Kirk simply must have--because the universe is an empty place and he has no other women to chose from...except the roughly 1000-odd he's already mined for dilithium crystals.

Of course, things don't end well, and nobody gets the girl. Sorta girl. The episode is based on The Tempest and is pretty good. The enhanced panoramics are a bit jarring, but the rest of the enhancements are fine.

Star Trek: The Lights of Zetar

The Enterprise finds itself attacked by a set of giant Christmas lights in space...well, not really, but they are groovy. Except these lights attack certain portions of the brain, shutting them down. However, they affect the weekly skirt in a different way, giving her some sort of precognitive power and altering her nrmal brain waves. To make matters worse Scotty has a big ol' crush on her, and that never turns out well.

Turns out these lights actually have the minds of ten personalities (though at the end of the episode they claim they are 100, which doesn't make much sense) from a race of aliens from Zetar who were wiped out by natural disaster, leaving only their brain essence to drift through space searching for a proper host to let them live again. Of course the proper host has to give up his/her own personality. I like this episode quite a bit, but the ending makes very little sense. The girl is put in a gravity chamber and they increase gravity until the lights/aliens are crushed out of existence. Um, huh? Seems to me it would be tough to crush brain waves, and not crush the human being they are inhabiting first. But I'm no scientist, though I did stay at a holiday Inn Express once.

Despite faults, its a good episode and the enhancements add a lot.

Salvage 1

While I like Andy Griffith, I am probably one of the few who cannot watch the Andy Griffith Show without nodding off. Weird, because I like Don Knotts, too. Mrs. B....er, well, best left unsaid.

However Andy had another show in the late '70s I was quite fond off, though it only went 20 episodes (of which only 16 aired). The pilot was called Salvage, and the show Salvage 1. It was homespun science fiction, and in fact, Isaac Asimov served as the show's science advisor. Andy played the owner of a scrap and Salvage company who got the bright idea he wanted to go to the moon and scarp up some left behind NASA equipment and do it using junk from his salvage lot. So he builds a spaceship with some pals, a former astronaut (Joel Higgins, prior Silver Spoons) and a NASA fuel expert (Trish Stewart), and off they go. See, you really don't need a lot of money to go to other planets when Andy is at the helm. NASA please take note of this and pluck him out of that annoying healthcare commercial he mumbles through.

The TV movie aired on January 20, 1979 to high ratings and soon became a series. Unfortunately the series ratings weren't very good and the show quickly faded without even airing the final four episodes. You wouldn't really think anyone could build a rocket ship out of scrap, but Andy sure made it seem possible, and the show's chemistry was good. But once you've built a ship and gone to the moon, it's hard to top, and apparently the writers couldn't. Now maybe if he had made a android Mrs. B. the show would have continued...

Star Trek: That Which Survives

While the Enterprise orbits a deserted planet with strange properties even Mr. Spock can't explain, Kirk, McCoy, Sulu & the sacrificial new guy beam down to explore. The moment they start to dematerialize a strange beautiful woman appears in the transporter room and kills the operator, then hurls the Enterprise 900 light years away. She appears a couple more times on the ship, each time bringing death and subverting the ship's function.

On the planet, the woman appears and kills with a mere touch, then vanishes. The woman is played by the exquisite and big time bodacious Lee Meriwether and this is one of my favorite episodes. Enhanced effects are seamless. There are some plot points you don't really want to think about too closely, and you'd figure a pretty alien chick who wants to touch you would be the perfect way to kill Kirk, but I always found the way she flattened, turned sideways into a line and vanished a pretty neat effect.

Star trek: The Mark of Gideon

On a diplomatic mission to the planet Gideon, which will not let anyone set foot on their surface, Kirk is invited to beam down alone. But when he does, he finds himself instead on a deserted Enterprise with--wait for it--yep, another alien hottie chick he's just gotta smooch. (She calls him a gentleman, incidentally, which is not quite the term I would have used. Lucky, maybe?)

The Gideon Ambassador claims Kirk never arrived and refuses to let anyone beam down to look for him, so you just know he's up to something. And he is. Spock gets nowhere with him, even remaking, interestingly, "Diplomacy is only a way to extend a crisis." It turns out Gideon is a completely overpopulated planet--as in sardine can overpopulated--because there is no disease or death, so they want a life-threatening disease Kirk is carrying but is immune to, to waste some of their population.

Cheerful. This is not an episode I am fond of. The green faces creeped me out as a kid and the enhancements to them only make their eerier. Other enhancements are seamless and add to the episode. Really not convinced an alien race who has never seen the Enterprise could duplicate it so exactly, or have the space on a planet literally packed with people. The Ambassador seems to have plenty of move about room in his suite, too. And introducing the virus to start killing off people, a virus to which no one is immune or can treat...doesn't really seem like the best of plans.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

The 1960s, I personally feel, gave birth to some of the best shows ever on television. There was diversity and imagination, and while many will dismiss much of it as lacking "realism" (yes, we all know Mrs. Brady and June Cleaver moms really didn't exist) it offered two things much of today's offerings, especially idiotic reality shows, don't: escapism and classy entertainment. Not every show needed to reflect the social ills of society, though some certainly did, but usually in a less depressing way, or make sure the word penis or vagina occurred whenever the laughs started to lag. We got The Wild Wild West, Dark Shadows, Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, The Munsters, The Addams Family, et al., shows that are still entirely watchable and enjoyable today.

A number of truly fun comedies came out of the decade. The Lucy Show (with Mr. Mooney), Mothers in Law and one of my favorites, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. The show ran only a couple seasons, 1968-70, and 50 episodes, and was based on the 1947 movie of the same tittle (and book). It starred Hope Lange, Edward Mulhare and Charles Nelson Rielly, won two Emmys. It was one of the supernatural comedies along with Bewitched and Jeannie and concerned the widowed Mrs. Muir moving into a Maine cottage that is haunted by the chauvinistic ghost of Captain Gregg.

The show is funny and charming, and Mulhare is certainly excellent in Captain's role. Many situations eveloved around the fact that only Mrs. Muir and the Reilly character could see the ghost. And the growing romance between Mrs Muir and her huanting house guest. The theme song is one of those that stuck in your head (as were many of the '60s' shows themes, something else lacking sorely today). Unfortunately it has not come to DVD, though MPI had purchased the rights to do so. They let the rights lapse so the sets were never released, which is shame.

Star Trek: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield

On their way to a mercy mission, the crew stumbles across an alien being in a stolen shuttlecraft. They take him aboard, discovering he is from an unknown planet in a little explored section of the galaxy--the southern section. Half his face is white, the other black.

Soon, another alien ship shows up and another half-white half-black dude shows up on the bridge and demands they take him to Charon, along with the other alien he claims is a killer. The tale is about race relations and prejudice, each alien ostensibly the same, except the white and black sections or their faces are opposite. One is black on the right while the other is black on the left. Frank Gorshin does an excellent job as one of the aliens--though I have a hard time not thinking of him as the Riddler--and while not normally the political message type of episode I like, it is a good one. The CGI effects are fine, though there seem to be some odd close up shifts. I can't recall if these were in the original episode or have been changed for the enhanced version.

Western Wednesday: Hell on Hoofs Rides a New Trail

I am pleased to announce Hell on Hoofs is to be my 33rd Lance Howard Western hardcover release. Contracts have been signed and much gratitude goes to Robert Hale’s new Managing Editor for the Black Horse Western line for taking a chance on a Western that, for me, is somewhat more realistic than some of my more happy ending horse operas of the past. Hell of Hoofs does push some boundaries and is a gritty bleak tale of a manhunter looking to just disappear into the woodwork before he becomes a casualty of his occupation. Whether that works out or not…well, you’ll have to read the story. This Western takes some chances, and not all of them work out well for the lead characters, but in Old West life that was far too often the norm rather than the exception.

Robert Hale’s Western line has always been a friendly place for traditional Westerns and Westerns that don’t ride the same dusty trails. They are highly supportive of both new and established authors and over the years have embraced many of my more untraditional tales. It’s not often a publisher, despite reservations, will let an author ride with something new or boundary pushing, but the Black Horse line literally has something for every Western fan, and even many non-western fans. I am honored to be a part of it.

I would also point out they have now ventured into the ebook arena with a four-pack Western deal currently sitting in the first position on AmazonUK’s western charts. They have selected a quartet of top-notch books from some of the best authors in the Black Horse Corral. The future is looking bright for the Western with Hale leading the way.

From the Hell of Hoofs Blurb:

John Laramie rode into Lancervile looking to escape the life of a manhunter and settle down, before he became as bad as the outlaws he tracked.

But a life of serenity was not in the cards. When a young woman seeks his help with a vicious outlaw, he’s torn between the dark demons of his past and the hope for a brighter future.

Fate, however, makes the choice for him when the murderous Cross Gang attacks him and misses the target—putting the life of the young woman in dire jeopardy and forcing him into a deadly showdown that may cost him more to win than lose.

My name is Chloe Everson…and I kick demon ass…
THE CHLOE FILES by Howard Hopkins
In the tradition of Sookie Stackhouse and Buffy, The Vampire Slayer…
In paperback from www.bn.com and www.amazon.com

Star Trek: Whom Gods Destroy

Kirk and Spock beam down to a planet with a poisonous atmosphere that houses an asylum in a force field protected dome to deliver an experimental medicine. But the monkeys have taken over the zoo and our intrepid duo is held prisoner by a deranged starship captain who wants to take over the Enterprise.

What is a a pretty good episode is made far better by the inclusion of Yvonne Craig as a loony Orion slave girl. My first crush as a kid when she played Batgirl, half naked and painted green doing a slinky dance she's enough to make my libido explode. I would have killed for the guy whose job it was to paint her green. I s'pose there were some other things going on in the episode, but I lost all interest in them the minute she came on screen. She did have this small if-she-loves-you-she-stabs-you-to-death drawback, but I tend to do well with psychotic types anyway, so meh.

Anyhoo...this episode unfortunately suffers with the enhanced cgi planet effect. Got to be one of the ugliest planet updates I have seen, plus it just looks fake and oddly proportioned at first. Of course, it might have improved after the green chick came on, but by that time I didn't give a damn...

Bionic DVDs

The Six Million Dollar Man languished in copyright hell for a number of years until recently when Time-Life acquired the rights and released the entire series in a boxed set that is, to say the least, pricey. However, they have begun releasing individual seasons as of a month ago, starting with season one, which includes the three telefilms and first 13-episode season, as well as extras. This will run you $39.95 on Time Life's site, and since they have exclusive rights to sell it, it's the only game in town for official purchase. But the good news is, it's well worth the tag.

The pilot is an excellent transfer, sharp and clear and the TV show does something rare for an adaptation--it surpasses the book, Martin Caidin's "Cyborg" upon which it is based. The chemistry elements aren't all quite there in the pilot, but the casting of Lee Majors was brilliant. The pilot episode includes Darren McGavin as an OSO superior (later changed to OSI) who foots the bill and recruits Steve Austin, former astronaut, for the job. I like McGavin immensely, but not in this role. Fortunately Kolchak: The Night Stalker was right around the corner and further pilots and episodes replaced him with Richard Anderson as Oscar Goldman. The love interest, played by Barbara Anderson of Ironsides fame, was cut after the pilot and thankfully so or there would have been no Bionic Woman. The pilot also did not included the sound effectsd and slow motion effects for which it became known. Amazing how much they added to the series. The theme song is also missing and missed.

Star Trek: Elaan of Troyius

Kirk's mission: transport a little alien hottie princess with a ginormous attitude problem to another planet to be married to a prince and create a truce between the two worlds. Simple, yes? Except she doesn't want to go and stabs the diplomat assigned to instruct her in Troyius' traditions. This woman of Elas also cries tears that can make a man fall irrevocably in love with her...any guesses on who ends up drying them? Yup, the good old captain. Like he needed any help jumping alien chick bones.

To complicate matters, one of her men is s Klingon spy, who sabotages the warp drive to make the Enterprise vulnerable to attack by a warbird--or explode. The system has some valuable dilithium crystals the Federation did not know about, and the Klingons want them.

This is a very good episode, and the French actress who plays Elaan, France Nuyen, is just a perfect combination of beauty and bitch. She also wears one of the sexiest outfits of the series, a blue dress slit from shoulder to ankle. The enhancements apply mostly to the Klingon ship and realistic planets and add a lot, especially during the attack.

Star Trek: The Empath

In a solar system with a sun about to go nova, Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down to a deserted planet with an outpost, only to find the two men supposed to be there have disappeared. Soon, they too vanish in a burst of light and find themselves in an underground chamber with a creepy woman who does not speak and two ass-headed aliens who are conducting a strange experiment--one the usually results in dead starfleet officers.

The girl turns out to be an empath; she can heal with a touch, and the aliens are actually experimenting to see whether she can absorb humanity and sacrifice, and therefore save her planet. So they torture humans to that end.

It's actually a pretty good episode that focuses more on the hope for humanity and learning empthay for each other. The chick creeps me out a bit but does a very good acting job. The enhanced scenes are all seemless and only add to the show.

Star Trek: Wink of an Eye

So the crew receives a distress call from yet another uninhabited planet, beams down, finds nothing but loses another red shirt, then beams up again and carries yet another alien life form (forms) back with them. You'd think they would have learned by now. The unwanted passengers turn out to be aliens who can move so fast nobody can see them. The lead hottie alien of course brings Kirk into her world and immediately sticks her tongue down his throat. Ah, the dreary life of a star ship commander.

Generally this is a pretty good episode, but one of the enhanced effects really intrudes this time. The matte painting used to update the city looks entirely fake. When Kirk is in front of it, it is almost like a stage backdrop. Other effects are fine and an improvement. The lead space chick incidentally is Kathie Browne, wife of Darren McGavin, so I guess we know what he was up to when he wasn't Night Stalking...

Star Trek: Plato's Stepchildren

Kirk, Spock and McCoy encounter a supposedly deserted planet where a race of perfect people, except for the dwarf they kick around, has formed a society based on the ancient Greeks. They are over 2000 years old and possess telekinetic powers that can even affect the Enterprise. But since there is no disease, a minor cut can cause a deadly infection and they need McCoy to patch up their leader. Only problem is they want him to stay after and won't take no for an answer. They also want their existence kept secret and plan to destroy the enterprise.

This is one of those weird episodes I just don't like. Apparently these guys have gotten so arrogant and bored they make Kirk recite twiddle Dee and Spock cry, and mistreat little people. Michael Dunn (the inimitable Dr. Loveless from Wild Wild West) plays the dwarf and does a bang up job at it. He makes the episode.

The show is noted for portrayng the first interracial kiss, between Kirk and Uhura (it isn't, according to other sources that state the first one occurred four years earlier on British television and Sammy Davis, Jr. smooched Nancy Sinatra on another program pervious to this). Though Kirk seems to have kissed every species in the known universe and even an alternate one, execs worried this might cause on uproar. However, the response was almost 100 percent positive and it all seems pretty silly now, but wasn't in the late '60s. Of course, belly buttons were taboo then, too, though you could definitely smooch genies and witches.

Star Trek: The Tholian Web

The Enterprise goes to the rescue of the Defiant in an uncharted area of space, only to find the other ship is not registering on their sensors, despite the fact they can see it floating dead in space. The ship is unstable and becoming more so. When Kirk, Spock, Chekov and McCoy beam over to it (which seems like a pretty dumb idea right off the bat to have the Captain, First Officer, Helmsman and Doctor go to ship that is dissolving), they discover the crew has murdered each other (but not why there isn't one left, which there should be, unless he committed suicide). The section of space not only makes ships unstable, but the minds of people in them as well.

Of course this affects the transporter (didn't everything?) and Kirk is left behind on the Defiant, only to be lost in interdimensional space when the ship vanishes from view. Spock has only three hours to try to get him back--Kirk is caught partially in the transporter beam--but a race known as the Tholians shows up and attacks, claiming that part of spaces belongs to them. (Why they are not affected by the space anomalies is another question left unanswered.) They begin to construct a glittering filament web around the Enterprise to trap it after a discovering the Enterprise's phasers out gun them.

Despite script flaws, this is a very good episode. The enhanced effects really help matters, too, especially with the Tholian ships, which no longer look like rejects from a seventies video game, the web and Defiant. The Dynamics between Spock and McCoy work very well.

Star Trek: For the World is Hollow...

For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky is a pretty good episode, though the tie up is a little too easy. The crew encounters an asteroid on a collision course with a planetary system and plan to destroy it. They discover it is hollow and uninhabited and beam in since there is a breathable atmosphere. However, they are immediately attacked by a hottie humanoid and a bunch of guys in their pajamas. Not sure they ever explain why they didn't show up on sensors, but assume it had to do with the controlling mechanism protecting the asteroid, which is really a giant spaceship carrying a race of aliens from a system whose star went nova to a new home.

The hottie for some inexplicable reason has a thing for McCoy and marries him, but McCoy has come down with a terminal disease and only has a year to live. The inhabitants, for some strange reason, have been implanted with a device that prevents them from knowing they are on a ship bound for a new world. They will not be told until they get there, when they are allowed to read the sacred book. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense, nor does why they are punished and/or killed if they even question it. Seems odd for a benevolent race to institute such a policy and no safeguards against engines going off course. Sure it's a 10,000 year journey but...another odd thing is the thing emits atomic age signatures such as old ships, yet when Kirk and Spock manage to get into the control room they find it is nearly like the Enterprise and there are archives of knowledge, both technical and medical, far beyond Earth's current science. McCoy does a sudden about face too that is a bit inexplicable and the whole marriage thing is totally forgotten when he leaves (ok, I guess removing the implant could be technically said to nullify the whole betrothal thing, but taking vows goes a bit beyond that...)

Despite inconsistencies, it's a decent episode and the enhanced asteroid and missile sequence help make it better.

Star Trek: Day of the Dove

Star Trek sometimes reminds me of a brothel in space--because every time they go somewhere they come back with something that is hard to get rid of. In Day of the Dove, they beam down to an outpost to find 100 people have simply vanished (and it is never really revealed what happened to them, which is one of those things that annoy the hell out of me.) While there, Klingons beam down and accuse Kirk of killing many of their crew and attacking their ship, though they never actually saw him do it. It must be some new super secret Federation weapon.

So up everybody goes to the Enterprise, only to find they are suddenly at each other's throat, phasers are being turned into swords and mortally wounded men are springing back to health. Racial tensions are heightened, delusional hates manifest. It appears they have brought aboard a glowing alien life force that feeds on hate and anger, and is manipulating the crew and Klingons and sending them into a never ending journey of perpetual war.

It's a decent if heavy handed episode and we get a hot Klingon chick--this was before they turned into boneheads. (Did they ever offer an explanation as to why original Klingons look different from Next Gen Klingons?) There are some added scenes and better explosions for the enhanced version.

Tonight's Treks

Is There in Truth No Beauty? Concerns an ambassador of the Medusans, who is actually just a big box of ugly, and his lady traveling companion, Dr. Jones, who are being transported on a special mission. Anyone who gazes upon the true face of the Medusan becomes hopelessly and fatally insane. Mr. Spock with his Vulcan mind control can peer at the alien, but only through the use of special glasses. Dr. Jones has some strange jealousy problems and in the end must confront them. This is a pretty good episode. New effects integrate well and are mostly in the blue effects of a space-time barrier. Strange little goof at the end where Spock is wearing the glasses and Kirk isn't.

Spectre of the Gun is one of my favorite episodes, maybe because I write westerns and sci fi is essentially a western in space, especially Star Trek, which I believe was intended to be just that. After ignoring a warning from an alien beacon, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Chekov are transported to an alien world to reenact the gunfight at the OK Corral as punishment. Pretty cool ending gunfight and the western town has an interesting surrealistic quality to it. Enhanced effects are mostly on the alien beacon and force fields. This episode holds up well, and they probably should have started the season with it.

Tuesday Treks

Continuing onward with Season 3 enhanced shows...both of tonight's episodes are ones I liked a lot as a kid and still have a fondness for. The Paradise Syndrome involves a big ol' asteroid about to obliterate a peaceful little planet full of American Indians. There is an alien obelisk that can deflect the asteroid, but the secret of how it works has been lost to the tribe. When Kirk accidentally activates it and gets zapped he loses his memory. The Indians upon seeing him emerge from the structure think he is a god come to save them and before we know it Kirk is dressed in buckskins and has the hottie Indian maiden horizontal and knocked up. Enhanced effects help this one quite a bit where the asteroid and laser effects are concerned. This episode again points to the "seeding" of the galaxy by an advanced alien race, and in this case they took certain peoples facing extinction and relocated them on habitable planets (which is nice, unless of course you are the ones being transported and don't particularly want to go).

The second episode, And the Children Shall Lead, finds the team beaming down to an outpost on an uninhabited planet to find all the adults have killed themselves and their children acting like nothing has happened. The children are brought to the Enterprise and soon enough they are causing all sorts of mayhem with powers (and a gesture that looks a lot more dicey as an adult than it did to me as a kid) granted by the thing they have brought back with them--an alien they call the "angel" and summon with a chant. The angel looks strangely like lawyer Melvin Belli and is an evil entity who wants to spread his nasty intent across the universe. The effects on Gorgan, the angel, have been enhanced but how much scarier can you make a celebrity lawyer, anyway? I'm not sure whether a small piece was cut from the episode, but Kirk suddenly comes out with Gorgan's name when nobody appears to have said it or maybe I missed it. Normally not a big fan of children taking over eps, but I like this one.