January 4, 2020: 3 Episodes

Series: Star Trek: The Original Series

Season, Episode #,and Episode Name: Season 1, Episode 9, “Miri”, Episode 10, “Dagger of the Mind”, and Episode 11, “The Corbomite Maneuver”

Setting the Stage: I started at 12:30 pm on January 4, 2020, still watching via Netflix, so I’m using their viewing order. Professor Zoom was ever present on my lap. Tempura joined in for the first two episodes and Thor joined for the last episode. This is try #2 at this post, because I accidentally hit the back button, sigh.

Quick Summary with my reactions: “Miri” opens to a deserted 1960s Earth clone, but at least Rand in the landing party. A zombie-like creature is sad about his bike and then dies… that escalated quickly. We meet Miri, and is Kirk being a creep to her and I’m so confused. I guess he thinks being sweet will help, but it’s really fucking creepy since she’s just a child. Ah, sassy Spock is back and we’ve got a medical mystery on our hands. Turns out we’ve entered a sci-fi version of Peter Pan, complete with a Lost Boys group. As the Lost Boys steal the communicators, the crew flips out and starts to act like children. As McCoy makes a breakthrough, Miri gets jealous and concocts a plan with the rest of the Lost Boys to separate Kirk and Rand. The line “I never get involved with older women”, by Kirk had me howling with laughter, it was delivered beautifully. It was so nice to end an episode on a high note for once, considering all of the sad endings so far.

“Dagger of the Mind” makes me glad prisons have good security and sad that technicians still don’t read the damn manual. However, all I’m thinking about when the box is beamed up is: “What’s in the box?” The answer to that is: THERE’S A HANNIBAL LOOKING DUDE IN THE BOX! McCoy has the worst attitude, and Spock just hands it back to him – but then the prisoner busts in and wants, *checks my notes*, asylum? Okay, the “crazy” dude laughs just like Goofy and then we find out he was assigned as a doctor to the colony, curiouser and curiouser. Kirk and McCoy get into a bit of a tiff, and they decide to beam down to the penal colony to meet the enigmatic “Dr. Adams”. So we’re going to get to see Spock do some Vulcan mind magic, excellent. Back on the colony, there are mind tricks afoot. Dare I say, Jedi mind tricks? Bwahaha, I know Star Wars came out after Star Trek, but I’ve been a Star Wars geek since I learned to talk so you’re going to have to sit through all of my references. Back on the colony, Spock saves the day as Kirk gets handsy with Helen, and we have another not so sad ending.

“The Corbomite Maneuver” has me wondering why is Uhura in a yellow outfit? Wait, what is that Windows 95 looking Rubix cube doing just sitting there? I do love me some sassy Spock and Scotty who doesn’t have a clue and won’t speculate, like a damn fine engineer should. Bailey is a little annoying this episode, especially when he almost screws up locking onto the object. Now there’s a sphere and the man behind the curtain decides that the Enterprise, and its crew, must die. Kirk decides to play poker instead of chess with the attacking vessel, clearly inventing corbomite. Kirk continues to remind everyone what the mission of the ship is as he makes decisions, one of those being to board the ship and encounter the Muchkin-looking alien, which was a big shock for everyone. That’s two “Wizard of Oz” references in one episode for anyone keeping score. Apparently this was all a test and Bailey is going to stay on board with the alien for a bit. Three episodes, three not sad endings… score!

My Impressions: 

“Miri” was super creepy at times, especially with the Kirk/Miri relationship. It would be find if she had a crush on him, but he’s flirting back and it’s all very uncomfortable. I find it interesting how much the crew relies on the computers and communicators, it’s very “now” as our current society relies so much on our smartphones. Kirk clearly doesn’t understand children, logic doesn’t work on them. It was very amusing to see Kirk get beat up on by the Lost Boys, but also a little frightening as children shouldn’t resort to violence like that. Despite the creep factor, I liked this episode a lot.

“Dagger of the Mind” opened with a few shots of Uhura’s boots and got me thinking about cosplaying as her sometime soon. I mean, a short dress is excellent during the Atlanta heat. I am also in giggles every time they mention “Dr. Adams”, as that is the name of my work mom and one of the reasons I am watching Star Trek. This episode is another Captain Kirk story hour, with very little of the crew and Enterprise. As someone with a counseling background, I was intrigued by the science and psychology put into the episode, so it’s definitely worth a rewatch in the future, but I missed the rest of the crew.

As an avid fan of poker, “The Corbomite Maneuver” kept me intrigued the entire episode. I also really like how Kirk and Spock interact, I can see how they likely have a good working relationship both in and out of the command structure. The pacing of this episode seemed slow, at time, and not a lot really happened here. I mean, you can boil it down to: there was a weird object, it got blown up, then there was another object, and there was some alien interference. Seems like a lot of things got stretched out to fit the episode length, but in the end it turned out the alien was doing something similar to the mission of the Enterprise, so there’s that.