ST: Condition Alert

Tonight's exciting episode is The Corbomite Maneuver. I thought about titling this post "The Made-Up Words" episode, but before I got logged in all the way the Enterprise encountered an interstellar Rubik's Cube that someone had already helpfully solved and gone to "Condition Alert". Apparently they don't have the red and yellow alerts that I remember from TNG. I'll try to remember when those first appear. Now! On to the silliness!

Kirk is getting his physical and apparently part of it is that he has to use a reverse incline stairmaster where the stairs are built into the wall and he lies on a bench to push them in and out. 'Cause... yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I guess it was an excuse for Shatner to take his shirt off this episode.

Ooh! We almost had the first "I'm a doctor not..." moment. McCoy asks "What am I, a doctor or a moon-shuttle conductor?"

And apparently Kirk has no problem just walking to the bridge sans shirt.

We have a new Lt. on the bridge who has locked horns with Spock a couple times. I predict he dies before the episode is over.

They've been experimenting with camera shots this episode. They had a crane shot early on where it moved up to a 90 degree view down onto the bridge and now they just had a hand camera shot with the shakes and everything following Kirk onto the bridge.

The Lt. is now making smart remarks to Kirk. He's definitely going to die; he wanted to shoot first and ask questions later.

"It's still coming toward us!"

Apparently one can fire phasers while travelling faster than light in reverse. Who knew?

Now McCoy is warning Kirk that the Lt. is not ready for the big show. Kirk, of course, despite what he's seen refuses it to credit him.

Baelok, or whatever the name was, sounds an awful lot like the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. Awesome. I can't convey how incredibly corny and awesome he sounds.

The alien is the worst sort of puppet. It's ridiculous.

The Lt. has his nervous breakdown on the bridge. 10 to 1 Kirk won't apologize to McCoy.

Kirk is surprisingly pacifistic about the whole thing. He keeps wondering why they aliens don't realize that they're really a bunch of peaceful people bent merely on exploring space. He keeps making platitudinous statements about it will eventually become obvious that they mean no harm.

Hah! Now he's making up words and resorted to the "I'm rubber, you're glue" bluff. It will, of course, work, since Kirk used "corbomite" as part of the bluff. Basically, Kirk tells the aliens that if they shoot the Enterprise it'll bounce back and destroy them too. Why they don't just launch a probe and shoot them from it, I don't know.

Aww! Now the Lt. has recovered his senses and has returned to duty. I guess he won't die after all. Pity.

Now the aliens are going to tow them off to a prison planet with their small ship instead of just shooting them with it? Bizarre.

Uhura has said almost nothing but "Hailing frequencies open."

Kirk has learned a little bit. He's at least leaving Spock behind in case something goes wrong. On the other hand, he's taking the Lt who just had a nervous breakdown. So, he hasn't learned too much.

They managed to overheat the alien's engine.

Turns out the alien was a puppet and was a front for the fact that the aliens look like six-year olds. Six-year olds with really bad teeth. And badly dubbed.

It also seems that the whole set-up was a test so that the alien could vet them for an exchange student program.

This was the stupidest episode to date. By a significant margin.