Matrix Resurrections - 2021

I haven’t read any other review but I can’t imagine anyone loving this… probably not even the authors, since that interactions at the beginning of the movie sounded very much like they’ve been forced to make a new Matrix movie, like it or not, just like Neo was being forced to make a sequel of his videogame, which was a trilogy and should have ended there. I mean, it’s nice that they’re alive and together and all, but this movie makes no sense and I barely understood what they were saying a lot of the time. They just kept using little things that would make us think of the other movies as if that was enough, even used flashes, scenes taken from those, but the other three movies had an actual plot, and even though I never much liked the idea of programs having children or of the Merovingian, whatever he was doing in there, a program collecting information, whatever, at least the general plot made sense, and it kept the spirit. This new movie is just a shadow of that, and it’s not enough showing me a white rabbit or a black cat to make me like this farce. 

Unless of course it’s genius and my little mind can’t work around it, which would change nothing because I really liked the other movies and could very well work my head around that, and hoped for something on that scale here. 

The idea that Neo and Trinity’s love is so powerful and eternal and that they’re alive is nice, indeed, but the reason for them being alive is rather farfetched, and the Analyst kept talking and talking, and the new Smith had a new young face but was still him… why? And Morpheus is now a program that actually is a freed program/Agent? How? I had to ask Google because I had no idea…

Basically it is like this, in as much details as this thing deserves:

They both died in the last movie, and the machines kept the promised peace, so whoever wanted to leave was allowed to do it, and apparently so many wanted to that there was not enough energy for the machines anymore - Really? So many people wanted to be free? How did that happen? Nobody had any life/family/loved ones/anything they cared for, and had no problem whatsoever leaving it all behind? 

There was a war among the machines and a new faction won, the Architect was deleted, probably the Oracle as well, and a new regime came to be. The Analyst is the new boss, who got the idea that it’s emotions that drive humans, it’s hope and frustration that fuel everything, giving them so much energy. He said that Neo and Trinity, when close but separated, generated a lot of energy, so he chose to regenerate their bodies and put them inside the Matrix, living close to each other but separated.

… so he decided he wanted them alive a long time after they had died? How did he regenerate their bodies and minds??? And how could he know how much energy they would produce before he put them inside the matrix again? 

The analyst created this new matrix based on emotions and generated so much energy they got no more energy problems. Still, because of that war, of the fact that the analyst deleted old programs, and of Neo’s sacrifice to save both humans and machines from Smith trying to destroy everything, many machines escaped and ended up with the humans, hiding among them and helping them with new technology that can even produce real strawberries. 

Neo is a sad, frustrated videogame programmer, who keeps seeing an analyst because he thinks he’s going crazy, and keeps taking blue pills to keep the weird thoughts away. He sees Trinity in their favourite bar, but they don’t know each other. 

And I wonder: they tell us that we see Neo as Keanu Reeves but the other people around him see another man, a completely different appearance, so I wonder, what does Trinity see? How can he trigger any memory if she sees him so different? And why doesn’t she look any different? Why only him?

Neo is a programmer who created the Matrix trilogy, videogames, very popular, but now he also made a modal where apparently he unconsciously gave life to a new Morpheus… somehow. 

A group of rebels, grown up hearing about the One, find him and want to free him. The captain, called Bugs, has already found Morpheus, meaning an Agent in Neo’s modal that is now free and wants to help like he were Morpheus for real, and he can even materialize in the real world…

Morpheus appears in Neo’s office, which is already crazy because Neo created that character and now it’s there… Neo thinks he’s imagining things, having another break down, and refuses to take the red pill. Meanwhile many guards are sent to deal with the rebels, and there’s shooting all around. His boss touches a gun… and just like that he remembers everything about being Smith and starts shooting at Neo.

How come he remembers already even if Neo doesn’t?

A black cat appears and next thing he knows, Neo is talking to his therapist, the analyst, who convinces him it was all in his mind… but the memories keep coming and he’s going crazy, he almost jumps off a roof but Bugs stops him.

I’m not sure about that story, he tried once already to jump off a roof to see if he could fly, and Bugs saw him before she was free, and he seemed like frozen, never falling… I think, now, that it’s because the analyst can control time so he stopped it, saving Neo… but he looked different in that scene… and are all those people around him bots, or how could they not notice anything weird… 

Now Bugs makes him a nice speech, on how there are bots everywhere so he can’t trust anybody, and how if he wants the truth he has to follow her, and then she shows him her tattoo, a white rabbit on her shoulder… and now he goes: “okay” and follows her… from the roof to a train in Tokyo to a room looking like the one he met the first Morpheus in (which they know because those are scenes from his videogame…). Neo takes the red pill. It’s been 60 years since the last movie, even though he doesn’t look it (of course, for the actor it’s been 18 years only). Back on the train, everyone around them is a bot, and they have to fight… I wonder, can Morpheus be killed? This new Morpheus has no real, corporeal body, he’s a program, so how could he be killed by bullets? Couldn’t he stand in front of them and shoot without needing to jump or hide?

Bugs says they don’t need to look for a phone box anymore, but it seems they do need mirrors to get out of the Matrix… anyway, Neo wakes up once again inside his pod with all those tubes attacked to him, and he is able to see that in the next pod there is Trinity… even though it’s dark and it’s difficult to see inside those pods… and even though she’s still plugged in, we see her raising a hand… I don’t know how that’s possible… poetic maybe, but not possible…

Morpheus says Neo created him as a “reflection of two forces that helped you become you, Morpheus and Agent Smith”. He says that Neo is addicted to what Matrix kept feeding him to keep him good, so Morpheus gets him to fight him, to… get it out of his system? Get him to fight to live? It takes a while, but then Morpheus talks about Trinity and tells him to “fight for her” so he gives out like a shield of energy.

Bugs explains things to a very bitter Neo: it was not all in vain, what he did changed everything and gave them peace for a while, and it brought some machines on their side as well, which also changed a lot.

This ship, called Mnemosyne, was “made in the Eu year 2274”. He meets the crew - I don’t remember that girl’s grandfather Roland, who was he?

The machines on humans’ side are called “synthients” because they prefer it. Morpheus can appear thanks to “an exomorphic-particle codex”. He asks about Trinity right away, it’s the only thing he cares about now, but they don’t know how to get her out, yet.

The new human city is Io, pronounced like the English i plus o, aio.

The general in charge of everything is Niobe, so Jada Pinkett acts like a 90-y-o or something. We see how the synthients work with humans and add their knowledge of technology, and they can grow strawberries and blueberries now. We learn of the machines civil war and of a new power rising, of how Morpheus was elected High Chair of the Zion Council, but he ignored every rumour of things changing because he was sure that Neo had stopped the war for good… and I guess that Zion was destroyed, along with him and those who believed like him, while Niobe and others accepted the synthients’ help and created another city… now Niobe puts Neo in a cell because trying to rescue Trinity could endanger them all - which is so not fair because they brought him here, he didn’t start this.

Now, here Neo tells Sheperd, the man who takes him to his cell, that he can fly, and yet later on Neo is asked if it’s true that he can’t fly anymore… *confused*

Bugs and her crew help him escape, so they enter Matrix to look for Trinity. They meet Smith who says the analyst understood the bond between them - Smith and Neo - “and turned it into a chain” but with a bit of “altered-code update” which I guess means that they were always together but neither remembered the truth. Now Smith says that Neo must stay out of the Matrix and leave the analyst to him… that he doesn’t want to be his slave anymore, which I understand, but what does Neo staying away has anything to do with that? I know that if Neo is out of the Matrix he can’t be controlled like before, I think the analyst changed things more than once every time Neo started to remember or whatever, and the analyst could do the same here, and trap Smith again… and he worries he might not be able to stop him since he doesn’t know how he did it… ok, but still, the analyst could do it to him anyway, with Neo inside or outside of the Matrix, right? 

I liked nothing of this scene. First Smith talking to Neo in that flirty way, not necessarily flirting with Neo but maybe with himself or the world, in a dandy sort of way, and then the exiles come, old programs that weren’t purged, and are now looking like homeless people, and there’s the Merovingian too who can’t stop blabbering nonsense and I can’t stand him/it. Again, I don’t see how they could have their lives back only if Neo dies… the analyst would still be there and in power and stronger than them because he created this Matrix.

The rebels fight the exiles and it’s harder than I think it should be, they should do better against old programs, I think… and Neo fights Smith like two equals, and I don’t know what that is but behind them while they fight there is something yellow and it’s mirrored image and it looks like the infinity symbol… is it me or is it done on purpose, because these two will forever be connected one way or the other?

They fight a lot, but as I said about this Morpheus, this Smith also doesn’t have a body, right? I mean, in hte previous movie they sort of did because they took over people’s bodies, but here? I don’t think so, no, maybe bots? Or not even that. 

Neo is in a bad shape, and Smith keeps talking instead of finishing him, talking about Neo being the one who set him free and then about the fact that “you’ll never see her again”… I know, he was asking for it, wasn’t he? Hearing that, of course Neo reacts, he uses his energy shield again and then more energy to blast Smith away. Neo wants to talk to Trinity, so he reaches her… but the analyst appears and he can stop and rewind time… he says he was there when Neo died, “the anomaly of anomalies”, so he decided to regenerate him… why? not clear at this point. He says it took them years to do it and he then discovered that they’re the key to everything… why?

Then… he goes away and the anomaly take him out again… and he meets an adult Sati. Her father worked at the Anomaleum, “designed the resurrection pods” and always regretted it. She says: “Neo’s escape has destabilized the Matrix, the Anomaleum draws its current from Trinity alone now” … what? 

“A fail-safe has been triggered to reset the Matrix back to the previous version” why? 

“The Analyst halted the reset, he’s convinced the authorities that you will soon return voluntarily” - who are this authorities? I thought he did whatever he wanted with Matrix.

Saati says there’s a chance now to free Trinity, thanks to some synthients help they can get her out of her pod, but to free her mind she must choose it.

There’s a long explanation of what they’ll have to do, like in a heist movie.

“To unplug Trinity’s body while her mind still remains connected to the Matrix, I’m gonna need a second human brain to implement the bypass”, and she’ll use Bugs for this… and it will be a weird scene, where Trinity and Bugs alternate on the spot for a little bit, but I really don’t understand how this helps or why it’s necessary, since it’s only for a minute, even less, just a bunch of seconds, and then Bugs is out but Trinity is still in… and it’s not necessary for her to take the red pill again because they’ll transfer “her consciousness onto the ship” … what? 

Sati hates the analyst because he purged her parents. 

Neo says that he never believed to be the One but Trinity did, she believed in him, and now it’s his turn to believe in her - that she’s still Trinity and will choose to come out - is this ‘believing’ the reason why she becomes a sort of ‘chosen one’ herself?

Neo goes to talk to the analyst, in his bar, the “simulatte” where he’s surrounded by Swat agents. Trinity comes in, looks around but says nothing. It all looks like the ‘dream’ she had, where they then will escape together. They sit and talk, she played his videogame and it ‘feels’ like a memory… but then Chad and two kids enter, they’re this new her - Tiffany - ’s family, and they say the third kid got into an accident and needs her… she tells Neo it’s too late and stands to leave… but before reaching the door she turns to look at Neo, taken by all those agents, and returns to herself. While Chad (Tiffany’s husband, another bot) tries to pull her out, she stops, says she’s Trinity and fights him, and then yells Neo’s name, but the analyst freezes time because he has no intention to let them go. The surprise is that it’s Smith to the rescue here, he says that once Neo was out he was “free to be me” (then why did they fight before?)

Smith fights the analyst, so time is normal again; the rebels plus our duo fight all those swat and Fbi agents. The anayst tries to get to the black cat… I guess he wants to make some changes in his favour, but the cat was once just a cat…

I don’t get it, Bugs was plugged into her for a few seconds, then out, and they were still there by the pod, and then they weren’t… they managed to get Trinity’s body inside the ship and plugged her in inside the ship? Theoretically it makes sense, only they didn’t have the ship near, and I don’t know how they could do this…

They keep fighting and then Trinity and Neo manage to reach each other, producing an energy that blasts everyone off of them, and Smith shoots the analyst.

Sheperd asks “I don’t suppose you can still fly?”, and I wonder why he asked instead of thinking, positively, that he can. Neo does try but “that’s not happening” because nothing happens… not sure why, but this is a different Matrix.

I don’t like the big, long escape scene, where a swarm of bots is activated and it looks like half the city is after them, and some other bots are activated to get out of their beds and jump off the window trying to stop Trinity and Neo’s bike. 

We see Bugs laying Trinity’s body inside the ship.

Yeah, I think I get it know, thinking about it, they took her away by keeping her connected to Bugs to stabilize her mind… or maybe not, Bugs wasn’t into Matrix, how could it work?

Anyway, Neo uses his energy shield to fend off every assault; they enter a building and he uses the shield to stop bullets. They go up to a roof, he stops bullets from two helicopters… they kiss and she remembers about the two of them, and they join hands to make ‘the jump’ together, but only midway he falls… or would fall if she wasn’t holding his hand. She doesn’t fall, she’s like frozen in the air, holding him by the hand so he doesn’t fall, and there wasn’t really any need for Neo to say he wasn’t doing this, yes, we can see that. She holds him tighter and starts flying up, away from the helicopters.

They’re unplugged and are finally together in the real life, and it is touching to see them finally together again… because the actors are good.

Next scene, Trinity flies to see the analyst, Neo appears there coming from another room… it seems that now she can hurt the analyst and put him together snapping her fingers… and they say they don’t need to negotiate anything, they’ll just change what they want, because apparently they can do anything now in this world… why can they do anything they want?

It is nice to see the two of them talking together, in perfect armony and synchrony, I  loved that, very lovely and cool. Neo and Trinity both fly together, not just her. They simply wanted to thank him for giving them ‘another chance’, since they were dead.

So… in this new Matrix based not on facts but on feelings, she’s the One? 

There’s lots and lots of bots in this movie, as if to justify that they shoot so many, they’re just bots, but it looks like half the city if not more, it seems a bit absurd that all these bots are hidden among other humans and living like them, marrying them and stuff. I mean, I think I understand that a lot of effort was put into hiding Neo while keeping him trapped there, so maybe everyone around them was a bot, everyone but Neo and Trinity… which would make her family bots as well… but then again, Bugs saw him and she was not a bot, so not everyone…

Neo is Keanu Reeves

Trinity is Carrie-Anne Moss

Morpheus is Yahya Abdul-mateen II

Smith is Jonathan Groff

Bugs is Jessica Henwick

The analyst is Neil Patrick Harris

Niobe is Jada Pinkett Smith

Sati is Priyanka Chopra Jonas

Sheperd is Max Riemelt

Berg is Brian J Smith

Lexy is Eréndira Ibarra

Star Trek season 3

 TOS 3, Where we learn of the Vulcan Idic, and we have great episodes like Let that be your last battlefield and The cloud minders.

Intro: “Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission, to explore strange new world, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”

William Shatner as James T Kirk

Leonard Nimoy as Mr Spock

DeForest Kelley as Dr McCoy

James Doohan as Scott

Walter Koenig as Chekov

George Takei as Sulu

Nichelle Nichols as Uhura

Majel Barrett as Nurse Chapel

1- Spock’s brain

ITA Operazione cervello

A woman appears on the bridge, there are buttons on her bracelet that can put everyone to sleep. When they wake up, al is normal for the humans, but Spock… his brain has been removed surgically. The body still lives, the surgery was done with great mastery. 

5431.4 Kirk chases the woman, of course. On a planett where it should be all gracial and primitive, big men, all males, are scared of “the others” that give “pain or delight”. Kirk, Scotty, McCoy and a machine-controlled Spock find ‘her’ easily and stun her. But she’s not the same one. This Luma is Eymorg. The purple-wearing woman Kara knows nothing about it too, she did it by putting a knowledge hat on; Spock now controls everything for them, like air and water… they say he’ll last 10.000 years…

McCoy puts the hat on because she won’t help them, and it’s now quite easy for him to work on putting Spock’s brain back… only the knowledge only lasts for like three hours and he forgets mid-surgery… so he connects his speech first so that Spock himself can guide him in what to do…

They say there’s been a separation, men are on the surface, it’s cold and they’re primitives. Women are below ground, it’s warm (obviously, so they can show skin) and don’t know anything without the ‘controller’, they’re like children… but there are men down here, the ones that were guarding Kirk and McCoy and Scott…

2- The Enterprise incident

ITA Incidente all’Enterprise

5027.3 Kirk may be very stressed, he’s very unpleasant to all, and sets course to the Neutral Zone. They go on and enter Romulan space. Kirk is faking it, of course. It’s a secret Federation mission. The Enterprise is stopped by three Romulan ships, Kirk and Spock have to go on one, Kirk calls Spock a traitor for saying he was acting alone and attacks him so Spock uses the ‘Vulan death grip’ on instinct, and Kirk is believed to be dead. On the Enterprise, he’s changed to a Romulan appearance - meaning pointy ears and eyebrows going up. The Romulan commander tries to entice Spock into joining her, and he rather likes her indeed, but he has his duty. He tells Kirk where the cloaking device is, so Kirk steals it and Scotty has to make it work on  the Enterprise. When Spock is beamed back on the Enterprise, the Romulan commander is too. She orders her ship to destroy the Enterprise but Scotty succeeds and they’re now invisible. A few goodbye words between Spock and the commander, and Kirk will probably leave her somewhere neutral.

3- The paradise syndrome

ITA Il paradiso perduto

They want to stop an asteroid from destroying a beautiful planet, with scenery and plants just like Earth, and the inhabitants are American indians, a mix of tribes.

4842.6 Kirk is curious about a mysterious obelisk and falls into it, and somehow forgets who he is. The Enterprise must go to deal with the asteroid, and Kirk is welcomed by the people there, who were borught to this place “from far away”. Kirk saves a boy who almost drowned by practicing emergency treatment like mouth-to-mouth and moving his legs, so now they make him the chief medicine man, taking Salish’s place. Their legend says that a God will come from the temple and save them, and they believe it’s him. Miramaree is the chief’s daughter and by tradition will have to marry the medicine man. Salish is not happy about this, but Kirk is happy in this paradise. Spock fails in destroying the asteroid and as usual McCoy is all accusing, as if he could do better. It’s been weeks with Miramaree, Kirk loves her and they’re expecting a child. But the time has come for him to save them, and he doesn’t know how.

Spock finds out what the obelisk is: “it was left by a super race known as the Preservers, they passed through the galaxy rescuing primitive cultures which were in danger of extinction and seeding them, so to speak, where they could live and grow”, that’s why there’s so many humanoids in the galaxy. The obelisk is a deflector but it’s not working. The people throw stones at Kirk and Miramaree because he can’t.

Spock and McCoy arrive and only think of Kirk, ignoring Miramaree completely. With the mind meld, Kirk remembers who he is. They get inside the obelisk/temple and activate the deflector. The planet is safe but Miramaree will now.

This is infuriating, they let her die, and Kirk had nothing, how come, he lether take all the stones? Of course it’s easier for him now, Kirk doesn’t have to abandon wife and child now, but it’s rather disgusting.

4- And the children shall lead

ITA Sul pianeta Triacon

5029.5 A distress signal from the scientific colony on Triacus. They go and find everyone dead. They all killed themselves to kill the enemy within. The five children are alive, and don’t seem to care that their parents are dead. There’s an alien that induced the adults to suicide, but the children talk to him, believe he’s on their side, and obey what he tells them. The children move their fists a few times and everyone on the ship sees what they want and do what they want. When the children call him on the bridge, Kirk and the others see him. The children call him their friend. Only Kirk and Spock get free of the control. Kirk shows the children videos of them playing with their parents, all happy, and then the parents dead as they are now. They cry and stop believing in this Gorgan or whatever who keeps talking of exterminating everyone. Two crewmembers are bead because they were beamed down after changing course and there was no planet to go to. Somehow this is the end, the children don’t want him anymore, he becomes ugly and disappears.

5- Is there in truth no beauty?

ITA La bellezza è verità?

5630.7 Escorting the Medeusans’ ambassador back to their home planet. Their thoughts are sublime but they’re so ugly, so horrid that to look at them will drive people insane. Only Spock will stay, with a visor. The Ambassador Kollos is inside a sort of box. Even so, Spock and Dr Jones keep the visors and the corridors are empty. Spock was asked to work with the ambassador before but refused because his life in here. When the box opens so that they can greet him, all we see is stroboscopic lights. Dr Jones is a telepath and because of this she studied on Vulcan. When alone, she looks at Kollos without the visor, because she’s blind, and she’s very jealous of Spock. The other man here, Larry, is obsessed with Miranda Jones and can’t stand it that she wants to leave to go with Kollos, and it’s so revolting to hear things like “try to be a woman for once”, as if being a woman means falling in love/bed with any man who likes her. Disgusting. This Larry tries to kill Kollos, but he can’t stand those lights… he goes insane. Larry pushes the engines so hard they reach the boundary of the galaxy, then he screams a bit and falls down dead…

Kollos is the only one who can help them go back to where they were, so Kirk keeps Miranda occupied giving Spock the opportunity to mind-talk to him. Here too Kirk speaks as if it’s abnormal for her to be alone, for sure she’ll want a man…

Spock melds with Kollos, Kollos brings the ship where it should be, then to interrupt it, Spock looks at him with no visor. Miranda is the only one who can help his mind recover, and Kirk is quite harsh with her, yelling at her that she wants him dead. She finally helps him and Spock is back, same as ever. He wears his “Vulcan IDIC” for her: “the glory of creation in its infinite diversity, and the ways our differencies combine to create meaning and beauty”

6- Spectre of the gun

ITA Lo spettro di una pistola

4385.3 They go to the Melkotian planeet, ignoring their warning to stay away because God forbid they don’t do what they want… he’s all ‘we come in peace but we’ll defend ourselves’… it’s like they entered your property ignoring all the keep out signs… 

What looks like a sort of green lizard made of papier-mâché appears and tells them they’ll die, and Kirk will determine how… and then they’re at Tombston in 1881, and they’re the Clantons, that lost the battle against the Earps and died. There’s a force field all around so they can’t leaev the city. It’s the battle at the ok corral. Wyatt Earp and his men are the villains… 

It’s all in their minds, though, so if they believe that the guns and bullets are not real, they can’t harm them. McCoy and Scott would never be able to believe this firmly enough to survive, so Kirk suggests a mind-meld. At this point, they just stand there and do nothing. But Kirk does not kill the Earps. Suddenly they’re on the ship, they never left, it seems to me, and now the Melkotian appears with an invitation to the planet, because he didn’t kill, because this is the way of Kirk’s people… yeah, right.

7- Day of the dove

ITA La forza dell’odio

A distress call brings both the Enterprise and a Klingon ship to a planet where they accuse each other of killing their people. Kirk takes the surviving Klingons on the ship, but they’re all controlled by an alien made of energy - it looks like a ball of changing colours. It wants them to fight and hate each other. Chekov even thinks they killed his brother, even though he’s an only child. This alien entity feeds on violent emotions, on violence. Kirk convinces Kang’s wife Mara and then him, and they stop fighting, and the truce is not liked by the alien, so they all laugh at it and it goes away. 

The Klingons thought Kirk broke the treaty after three years of peace.

8- For the world is hollow and I have touched the sky

ITA Ho toccato il cielo

5476.3 McCoy says he only has one year left to live because of a serious illness; he tells kirk but doesn’t want anyone else to know. There’s an asteroid-ship following them, so they meet “Natira, the High Priestess” of Yonada, she and her people think it’s a world, they’ve been travelling for 10.000 years, and don’t know it’s a ship - how does Kirk know it’s been so long?

McCoy has xenopoly-cythemia - written like that. Natira likes McCoy a lot, it’s love at first sight, so he tells her about his illness: she still wants him. Their “writing is definitely Fabrini”: The Fabrini sun went Nova and destroyed its planets, so towards the end the Fabrini people lived underground to protect themselves, like these people here. “Some of them must havebeen put aboard this ship and sent to another planet, and these are their descendants”. They’re forbidden from climbing the mountains but years ago a man did.. Now an old man, he tells our trio that he did and “things are not as they teach us. For the world is hollow and I have touched the sky”. 

They all have the “instrument of obedience” under their skin. Spock and Kirk are found snooping in the Oracle room and should die for this, but Natira accepts to let them go to please McCoy, who stays here and is joined to her. But this ship is on a collision course. Kirk and Spock go back to help, and Natira believes them, and they find the entrance to the computer room. Spock looks at the medical knowledge of the Fabrini and McCoy is cured. For some reason, now she says she’s got to stay but not him… she was always supposed to stay, and he was supposed to stay with her, they sort of got married… but he doesn’t, he goes away, and Kirk suggests meeting them again when they’ll find the planet they’re looking for to stay, in 390 days.

9- The Tholian web

ITA La ragnatela Tholiana

5693.2 They find the lost ship Defiant. The whole crew is there, but they’re all dead, bodies everywhere. The Defiant is like fading out of existence. It disappears with Kirk still inside. Chekov may have now what caused the crew of the Defiant to kill each other: he yells and attacks people until Spock stops him. Suddenly they’re contacted - it looks to me like the vague shape of a stuffed dog crouching, but with evil slits for eyes, and all blood red against a blue/black background.

It’s commander Loskene, and “you are trespassing in a territorial annex of the Tholian Assembly” so they must leave but they won’t because Spock wants to wait for the interphase when the Defiant is visible, to get Jim back. Once again McCoy is all accusing because he should have left immediately. Now they attend Kirk’s funeral. The more they stay here in this space the more they fall victim of the madness.

McCoy keeps spewing vitriol on Spock, then they listen to Kirk’s last message telling them to work together. Two Tholian ships create a web all around the Enterprise. It’s a long process…

Uhura then Scott see Kirk sort of floating around. When he appears on the bridge, they all see him. He’s alive. So somehow they escape the web and beam him aboard - one moment in the web then poof= out of the web. McCoy says they never listened to Kirk’s last orders, and Spock confirms that they had no time: “no, you see, the crisis was upon us…” - “… but that’s a lie, and Vulcans don’t lie, do they?”

Which makes me wonder: Vulcans don’t lie because they can’t or simply won’t? Because if it’s the latter, then maybe it could happen that somehow chose for the right reason that they will, in fact, tell a lie…

10- Plato’s stepchildren

ITA Umiliati per forza maggiore

5784.2 A distress call from a planet that registers uninhabited. The Platonians live here; they’re like Gods, meaning they’ve lived more than 2000 years and have telekinetic powers. These people think they’re so superior; the leader is Parmen and Philana his wife. They humiliate Kirk and Spock, or think they are, what they’re actually doing is hurting them cruelly. Christine and Uhura are brought here. They make Spock sing, then Christine and Spock kiss and Kirk kisses Uhura, all of it forced by these Platonians… until their experiment works and Kirk gains the same powers so it all stops, and they keep their promise and take Alexander with them, the honorable dwarf that these people treated like a slave.

11- Wink of an eye

ITA Velocità luce

On planet Scalos because of an emergency distress call. There’s the only survivors of a race that survivied radiation and became accelerated, they move in the blink of an eye and normal people can’t see them, and only hear buzzing. It’s not clear to me why they need to kidnap people though. What they do is: they rurn their chosen one who become accelerated like them, and Deela says they do it to survive because they have no children and can’t have any… and when the accelerated people eventually die they’ll kidnap someone else… and yet there’s still only five of them, so what’s the point? Anyway, Spock figures out the truth and with McCoy they create a cure, so they stop Deela and her companions. A red-uniform died because afterr you’ve been accelerated, even a small scratch can kill you.

12- The empath

ITA Il diritto di sopravvivere

5121.5 They go to evacuate a couple of researchers before the world is destroyed by a supernova or something, but instead Kirk, Spock and McCoy find the two men are dead, used by the Vian for some experiment. Now they are captured for the same reason, kept underground with a girl that McCoy calls Gem. This girl can’t talk, and she’s an empath. She can cure people by taking their injuries on herself before curing it entirely, but when it’s a lot she gets very reasonably scared.

(I’m a doctor, not a coal miner)

Kirk is tortured first, and then McCoy puts both Kirk and Spock to sleep so he’s next. He’s hurt very badly, almost dead. The Vians can only save one planet of their system, and they want to know if Gem’s people are worth it; they say our trio taught her to sacrifice oneself for others, and they want to see what she’ll do. She does help McCoy, but they want her willing to sacrifice herself for him… which is absurd and atrocious, and Kirk tells them that they don’t know any love or compassion anymore… bringing one of them to finally help McCoy and take Gem away. They’re free to go.

13- Elaan of Troyius

ITA Elena di Troia

4372.5 Elaan, the Dohlman of Elas, must marry the ruler of Troyius to bring peace. Ambassador Petri of Troyius, with green skin and hair like Trump, tries to ‘soften’ her a bit, but nothing seems to be enough fo her: any of his gifts, or even her quarters. She even calls her supposedly future husband “a Troyian dog”. The council decided for ehr, she didn’t want this. Still, she stabs the ambassador but he’ll live. Kirk tries to explain things to her, basically he yells at her calling her… all true things, I guess, and when she slaps him, he slaps her back. He wants to teach her how to behave and she says “you can teach me nothing captain, if I have to stay here for 10 light-years I will not be soiled by any contact with you”… and the next moment she goes “I don’t know how to make people like me”… … really? I mean, I don’t either, but I’m just a common adhd girl, while she goes around demanding people kneel in front of her, breaking stuff, insulting and stabbing people… this change of hers is ridiculous… but she cries and he touches her tears, and Petri told us that there’s a biochemical reaction between men and Elaas women’s tears that make them so irresistible. She wants Kirk to kill all Troyans for her… but of course he won’t, and she’ll go to Troyius and fullfil her responsibilities and obligations.

14- Whom Gods destroy

ITA Il sogno di un folle

5718.3 Elba II is a planet with a poisons atmosphere used to keep an asylum for insane criminals. Kirk and Spock are to bring dr Donald Cory a medicine against all mental illnesses.

There’s 15 cages of insane criminals who could not be cured, the last one is “Garth of Izar, a former Starship fleet captain”, one of Kirk’s heroes hwen he was young. It turns out dr Cory is in a cell now, and Garth has control and has freed the other inmates. Since they believed him to be Cory, they gave him the medicine and he destroyed it. Now Garth takes Kirk’s appearance but he doesn’t know the right code to convince Scotty to beam him up. Green-skinned Martha - of those women that always dance - says she writes poetry and when Garth points out that specific one was written by Shakespear she says “which does not alter the fact that I wrote it again yesterday” :lol:

At the end it’s not too difficult for Spock to outsmart two of the inmates; he’s briefly delayed when he sees two Kirks, but when one of them finally shows more interest in the Enterprise than himself, he can shoot Garth so that the Enterprise will send down more medicine. Everyone is cured and they can go away.

15- Let that be your last battlefield

ITA Sia questa l’ultima battaglia

5730.2 Planet Ariannus is to be decontaminated. They bring aboard an alien who has the left side of his face black and the right side white. He’s Lokai of the planet Cheron, then another man appears on the Enterprise, his name is Bele and the left side of his face is white while the right side is black. Bele says Lokai and his people are savages, while Lokai says Bele’s people are opperssors, slavist…

Bele interferes with the ship to be brought to Cheron, he insists on taking Lokai to trial. There are shield around both of them. So, to have his ship back or stop them, Kirk starts the destruction procedure, then first officer Spock and then Lt Cmdr Scott, it’s a 30 seconds countdown. He gets command back, of course. 

Kirk and Spock talk to Bele and Spock mentions that they are of the same species. When Bele says that “it is obvious to the most simpleminded that Lokai is of an inferior breed” Spock says “the obvious visual evidence, commissioner, is that he is of the same breed as yourself”. Bele is shocked, “are you blind Mr Spock?” This is all because “I am black on the right side, but Lokai and all his people are white on the right side”

Spock tells him that Vulcan was once on the verge of destruction because people were wildly emotional, irrational, and only the discipline of logic saved them. 

They decontaminate Ariannus, then want to go to Starbase 4, but Bele took again control, this time disabling the self-destruction. Now they’ll have to go to Cheron. Bele and Lokai start fighting while still on the Enterprise, calling each other half-white and half-black. They arrive and see that Cheron is uninhabited, only animals around but no people “they have annihilated each other totally”. 

No matter all this, Bele and Lokai will never stop hating each other; Lokai beams himself down on Cheron, and Bele follows him, and they’ll keep fighting to the end. The Enterprise goes away. 

I remember watching this episode for the first time years ago when I was a young girl, and the thing that stayed with me was Kirk and Spock’s blank faces when Bele explained his point, because of course it’s nonsense, a totally stupid concept, like any kind of generalized racism.

16- The mark of Gideon

ITA Il marchio di Gideon

5423.4 The planet Gideon is not yet part of the Federation, but now they agreed to talk as long as it’s Kirk going there. He finds himself on an empty Enterprise, with only one Gideon girl, Odona. They chose him because they knew he had nearly died of Vegan Choriomeningitis. Gideon has no illnesses, they’re all always healthy, so there’s too many of them, it’s literally impossible to be alone, every space is full of them, but now Odona got sick. They want Kirk to stay and get other people sick… their theory is that seeing the sacrifice, the death of such a young woman will inspire others to volunteer… But Spock finds him and they take Odona aboard and cure her, so now she’s like him and can take his place.

17- That which survives

ITA Un pianeta ostile

A planet with no life anymore, just a ‘woman’ that comes for a specific man and her touch kills him disrupting all his cells. The Enterprise gets thrown very far away but Spock and Scott put it right and come back to the planetjust in time to destroy the computer creating this ‘woman’ and saving Kirk, McCoy and Sulu. The planet belonged to the Kalandans, killed by a disease. Losira was her name. spock says beauty is transitory, intelligence is better. Kirk disagrees and says beauty survives… :-/ 

18- The lights of Zetar

ITA Le speranze di Zetar

5725.3 Lt Mira Romaine is a specialist who came on the Enterprise to supervise the transfer. Memory Alpha is a planetoid used as a control library for all Federation planets. mr Scott is in love. The Enterprise encounters a strange ‘storm’, like very colourful fireworks that affect them while watching. It ‘attacked’ Memory Alpha, the computer is irrevocably damaged and all the people there are dead. Mira tries to tell Scott she saw teh dead bodies in her mind, but he downplays it, saying it’s her first space travel playing tricks on her… oh how annoying it is when men treat women like they’re so silly and fragile they don’t know what they’re saying or thinking… sometimes they do it with the really young too, but always with women. 

Spock says those lights are a lot of alive beings. Mira’s brain has changed to match theirs, and now this alien community enters her and can speak: they’re from Zetar, a planet destroyed long ago, all corporeal life was destroyed too. These beings are the desire and the will of the last 100 of Zetar, the force of their lives.. Now they want to live using the girl’s body, but she wants to live her own life. So Kirk and co find a way to push them away from her - and I guess to sort of kill them…

Mira survives, so she’ll continue her work at Memory Alpha.

19- Requiem for Methuselah

ITA Requiem per Matusalemme

5843.7 There’s a raging epidemic on the Enterprise, Rigelian fever, so Kirk, Spock and McCoy go down on an inhabited planet to get the Ryetalyn they need for the cure. They meet Flint, a man of more than 6000 years, a man who was Methuselah, Leonardo da Vinci, Brahms and many others, come here to be alone and in peace; to overcome the loneliness, he built an android, Rayna, the perfect woman, and of course Kirk fell in love with her too. Obviously. He awakens human feelings in her, and Kirk fights Flint over her until she yells at them to stop because it’s her life and she only should choose, but it’s too hard because in her own different way she loved them both, so she falls down, she ‘dies’. For whatever reason McCoy says Flint will die, someday. Kirk can’t forget her and McCoy says he pities Spock because he’ll never know what it is to love, but when he leaves, Spock approaches a sleeping Kirk and makes him forget. McCoy knows nothing, as usual…

20- The way to Eden

ITA Viaggio verso Eden

5832.3 Six people steal a ship but before they cause its destruction Kirk beams them aboard. They look and act like annoying hippies and want to go to Eden, a mythical planete. The leader is Dr Sevrin, a brilliant engineer. One man is the son of an ambassador and a girl is known by Chekov, she dropped out of the Academy. 

Sevrin is carrier of a disease that might kill many people if not properly vaccinated, but he’s also insane so he doesn’t care about it. The other five blindly believe in him and won’t believe anything anyone says. This man is dangerous and they keep singing like stupid spoiled children. He takes control of the ship and steals a shuttle to go down to the planet Eden. It is incredibly beautiful, but the vegetation is covered in acid and the fruits are poisonous. Two men die, the singer Adam and Sevrin, but the others are all injured because they’re barefoot and with little clothes on. Well, Irina’s outfit was pretty indeed. Anyway, the four survivors are cured and sent on their way. Spock wishes for them to not give up their search for Eden.

21- The cloud minders

ITA Una città tra le nuvole

5818.4 A botanical plague threatens a planet, so they need a cure and for this they go to planet Ardana. Stratos is their cloud city. Down on the planet there are the mines and the workers, while on Stratos they’re intellectual, art lovers, in other words, rich. Plasus, the “High adviser of the planet council” helps them when the troglytes attack them, he says they’re violent. While they try to organize the delivery of what is needed for that cure, Kirk and Spock visit Stratos. Plasus’ daughter Droxine comes to meet them and is introduced by him as “one of our planeet’s most incomparable works of art” - “I have never before met a Vulcan, sir” - “Nor I a work of art, madam”. Smooth, Spock, smooth.

Plasus  says the troglytes’ demands are totally unreasonable. 

Droxine: “do you think that captain Kirk and his very attractive officer will feel that we are responsible for their injuries?”. In Spock’s thghts she’s charming, particularly so. With purity and sweetness of mind. Lovely. But she sees nothing wrong in the fact that the troglytes are not used to light and warmth because they’re the workers, “they perform all the physical toil necessary to mantain Stratos” in Spock’s words, because that’s their function in their society. Again Spock: “but they are not allowed to share its advantages”. There’s an absolute “separation of toil and leisure” that “has given Ardana this perfectly balanced social system”, and sure for Droxine it must seem perfect since she’s got all the advantages and none of the work. She says troglytes are violent and that there is no violence on Stratos, and yet she watches her father torture a girl with some kind of rays. The troglytes are considered an inferior race, but they’re more ignorant only because they’re not allowed to learn. Also, the mines are harmful to workers. Kirk brings a protective mask to the girl Vanna asking her to trust him… quite naive maybe but he’s used to everyone falling head over heels for him. Vanna captures him for a while but Kirk has an idea, and he has Spock send Plasus down in the mines where Kirk wants to prove them that the gas is real. So Vanna gives Kirk what he needs in exchange for gas masks.

Droxine is very sorry to see them go.

22- The savage curtain

ITA Sfida all’ultimo sangue

They’re investigating a planet made of molten lava, when suddenly Abraham Lincoln appears on their screen. Can you believe that McCoy asks: “Jim, do you really believe he’s Abraham Lincoln?”…

He is beamed aboard, and he talks like he’s still in the 1800s.

5906.4 Lincoln was something of a hero for Jim, and on the planet - on a small area similar to Earth that suddenly appears - Spock meets Surak, the greatest of all who ever lived on Vulcan.

The world is called Excalbia, and a being made of burning rock speaks about a play that everyone will see.  There are other historical figures, including “Kahless the Unforgettable, the Klingon who set the pattern for his planet’s tyrannies”

So, four evil figures against four good ones, meaning Kirk and Spock plus Lincoln and Surak. Since they don’t want to fight, the creature threatens the Enterprise. Now of course Kirk wants to fight, but Surak is against war of any kind, and he goes to talk about peace. He gets killed, Lincoln suggests a sneakier approach and he too gets killed. Kirk kills one and the other evil ones escape. Our duo has won and the only difference between the two groups is that the evil ones wanted power, Kirk wanted his people safe. The alien only wanted to learn, so now it turns back into a rock and they can leave.

23- All our yesterdays  

ITA Un tuffo nel passato

5943.7 A sun will explode so they investigate its planet to see if there’s life. They meet Mr Atoz, the Librarian. Everyone else has long gone. He has many duplicates to run the library because he’s the last one. Of course, Kirk annd the others don’t listen to any instructions, they just act; the people of this planet chose a period and place to go and the time portals got them there after Atoz helped them prepare. Now Kirk is in trouble with some musketeers because he helped a thief, just because he heard a woman screaming. Spock and McCoy are together in some kind of Ice Age. McCoy is freezing and a girl helps them: Zarabeth. She tells Spock she can’t go back because she was altered when she was sent there - as a punishment, she didn’t choose it - and if she goes back she’ll die. I’m very disappointed in Spock here, he now believes he can’t go back either, but Atoz yelled twice that they had to be prepared… and weren’t…

Kirk also meets someone from the Library - what a coincidence, huh? - and when told that he was prepared, brain and body, for this period, he says he was never prepared, so he’s informed that he only has a few hours in this time then he’ll die.

Something is changing Spock in this time and place, he doesn’t really want to go back now, and reacts emotionally to McCoy’s “you pointed-eared Vulcan!” by raising him by the collar: “I don’t like that, I don’t think I ever did, and now I’m sure”. 

Kirk goes back to the Library. 

Zarabeth: “It has been lonely here. Do you know what it’s like to be alone, really alone?” - Spock: “yes, I know waht it is like” and then “you are beautiful, more beautiful than any dream of beauty I’ve ever known”. He likes to eat meat and he sleeps with Zarabeth, he also gets angry when McCoy speaks harshly to her. He’s reverting to how his ancestors were thousands of years ago. So now they go back, and because they entered together, they can only go back together. They go away quickly because there’s no time left.

24- 

ITA L’inversione di rotta

5928.5 A distress call from some scientists “exploring the ruins of a dead civilization”. The only survivors are Surgeon Dr Coleman and the leader Dr Janice Lester. She’s part of Kirk’s past, they were together for a year at Starfleet. Kirk: “I never stopped you from going on with your space work”. Janice: “Your world of Starship Captains doesn’t admit women, it isn’t fair”. She uses something there to switch their bodies. She’s very resentful, and able to kill. She doesn’t only because the others arrive. She already killed the other members of the expedition! Both Spock and McCoy are suspicious, and Spock speaks to ‘her’ and now after a mind meld he believes she’s Kirk. Fake-Kirk puts Spock on a court martial trial for treason, for mutiny. Fake-Kirk acts hysterically, and he also sentenced Scott and Bones to death for treason because they believe Spock. After this neither Sulu or Chekov obey him, so fake-Kirk asks Coleman to kill Kirk, but somehow they get transferred again and all is well. 

Joanne Linville as Romulan commander

Jack Donner as Tal

Diana Muldaur as Miranda Jones

Michael Ansara as Kang

Susan Howard as Mara

Kate Woodville as Natira

Michael Dunn as Alexander

Barbara Babcock as Philana

Liam Sullivan as Parmen

Kathryn Hays as Gem

France Nuyen as Elaan

Sharon Acker as Odona

Lee Meriwether as Losira

Louise Sorel as Rayna

Jan Shutan as Lt Mira Romaine

James Daly as Flint

Charles Rapier as Adam

Mary-Linda Rapelye as Irina

Charlene Polite as Vanna

Jeff Corey as Plasus

Diana Ewing as Droxine

Lee Bergere as Lincoln

Barry Atwater as Surak

Mariette Hartley as Zarabeth

Ian Wolfe as Mr Atoz

Sandra Smith as Janice Lester

End of season 3.

Star Trek season 2

This is the series where they go to the Mirror universe, where Ensign Chekov compares everything to his beloved Russia, when we first meet Cochrane and Sarek and the Tribbles, and also when they kill Jack the Ripper. It haso has some not so good episodes like Who mourns for Adonis? or The omega glory, but no series is totally perfect right? ^_^

William Shatner as Kirk, James T

Lenard Nimoy as Spock

DeForest Kelley as Dr McCoy

Majel Barrett - Christine Chapel

George Takei - Sulu

Nichelle Nichols - Uhura

Walter Koenig - Chekov

James Doohan - Scott 

1- Amok time

ITA Il duello

Spock is acting weird, he’s aggressive and doesn’t eat. He asks for a shore leave, to go to his planet. He needs to go to Vulcan. 

3372.7 Spock doesn’t give any explanation, but after examining him, McCoy says if he’s not on Vulcan within a week, he’ll die. He doesn’t really know why though. It’s “a deeply personal thing” and “it has to do with biology”. During this time Vulcans lose all their logic. “How do Vulcans choose their mates?” Not logically, no. There’s a “ritual and customs shrouded in antiquity”, “it strips our minds from us, it brings a madness which rips away our veneer of civilization” . “It is the Pohn Fahrr, the time of mating” and like salmons he has to go back home for this. “The ancient drives are too strong, eventually they catch up with us, and we are driven by forces we cannot control to return home and take a wife or die”. 

Starfleet command doesn’t allow it, but they go to Vulcan anyway… doesn’t allow it? They’d leave their officer to die just like that? 

Christine is quite happy to assist him and bring him soup. Spock asks Kirk to go down “and stand with me”. There is a brief ceremony. By tradition, the male is accompanied by his closest friends. Spock also asks McCoy. T’Pring is the wife. The Koonut Kaliffee means “marriage or challenge”, “in the distant past, Vulcans killed to win their mates”.

T’Pring is his wife only “by our parents’ arrangement, a ceremony while we were but 7 years of age, less than a marriage but more than a betrothal. One touches the other in order to feel each other’s thoughts. In this way, our minds were locked together, so that at the proper time, we would both be drawn to Koonut Kaliffee”. The marriage party arrives. There is T’Pau, “the only person to ever turn down a seat on the Federation Council”, officiating at Spock’s wedding. His family is quite important .

She’s not too fond of having Kirk and McCoy here. “This is the Vulcan heart, this is the Vulcan soul, this is our way”. T’Pring chooses challenge, though. Poor Spock has the blood fever, he just waits without talking. She’ll be the property of the victor … :-/ … and she chooses Kirk. A Vulcan guy had come forward and is not happy about that, he wants her. Kirk has a weird way to help, and he doesn’t want to back down, and he doesn’t really listen to what others like McCoy tell him. It’s a challenge to the death. He should have asked first. Spock wins, McCoy says Kirk is dead. Spock asks for an explanation from T’Pring. She didn’t want to be the wife of a legend, and Spock has become one amongst his people, for some reason, and she wanted this guy Stonn “but by the laws of our people I could only divorce you by the kahliffee” so she reasoned “if your captain were victor, he would not want me, so I would have Stonn. If you were victor, you would free me because I had dared to challenge, and again I would have Stonn. But if you did not free me, it would be the same, for you would be gone, and I would have your name, and your property, and Stonn would still be there”. 

Spock is all better now. Is this the first time Spock goes “live long and  prosper” ?

Of course Kirk is not dead, McCoy infected him with something that knocked him out mimicking death, but he’s now alive and well. When he sees Spock ,Spock is quite elated, he smiles big, crying “Jim!”

2- Who mourns for Adonis?

ITA Dominati da Apollo

3468.1  The Enterprise is suddenly stopped by a hand. Yes, a huge green hand that seems to come out of a planet and that holds the ship between its fingers…

This episode was quite chauvinist, I didn’t like… basically anything related to this new character of Lt Palamis. She’s a pretty blonde, so all men are drooling. Right away, we have Kirk and McCoy comment on how they will soon lose a good officer, because a girl liket hat will find a man and then leave… becaues of course they think she’ll marry and only care about staying home with her children… I mean, they say she’s an expert in Archeology, Anthropology, and Ancient Civilizations… and then of course there’s Apollo!

This creature who looks likea man but has the power to trap their ship and to attack them just lifting a finger, and can also appear huge as a building, he says he’s Apollo, and wants their loyalty, their tribute and their worship, in exchange for what he calls Life in Paradise… yeah, he says: dismantle your ship to build what you need, and they’d also need to work a lot, agriculture, animals, shelters, and everything else since right now there’s only pretty flowers and his temple… weird idea of Paradise, to work all day long for the priviledge of kneeling at his feet…

Apollo and Lt Palamis, Carolyn, are so so annoying. He starts saying “you seem wise for a woman” and instead of holding it against him forever, she just melts when he says that she’s beautiful… :-/

The nice thing of the episode is Chekov.

“I am Apollo” - “And I am the Tsar of all the Russias”.

When he goes on with some list, he insists “the captain requires full information” so McCoy: “Spock’s contaminating this boy, Jim”. And again it’s Chekov that noticed how Apollo looked tired when he disappeared in front of their eyes. “He disappeared like the cat in that Russian story” (Google suggests the Moscow cat story :lol: about a cat who leaves his home in Moscow to become ‘the boss of the forest’ but it doesn’t seem a real ‘dsappearing act’, there’s probably other stories) 

Kirk also doesn’t know it, because he thinks of Alice in Wonderland: “don’t youmean the English story, the Cheshire cat?” - “Cheshire? No, sir. Minsk perhaps” :lol: So what, there is really a Russian story they’re thinking of here, or they’re saying that this young, brilliant officer thinks Alice in Wonderland is Russian? That’d be stupid, there are very few stories that scream English like AinW, really all the characters, all the dialog, it couldn’t be more English if they tried. Anyway, it’s kind of adorable how he thinks everything comes from Russia :-p

The loveliest moment is between Spock and Uhura, when she’s working on something like an engineer, and is not sure she can do it because she hasn’t done it in years, and he says “I can think of no one better equipped to handle it, Miss Uhura”. She does look stunned, and it is understandable, this is Spock. If he says he can think of ‘no one’ better than her, he means it, and it’s one hell of a compliment.

Apollo gives Carolyn a… dress - I mean, it’s a beautiful color, like a sparkly lilla, but other than that, what it does is leaving a lot of skin bare. She appears in front of them like that and Kirk wants to be the one to “handle it” saying Chekov is too young - he’s 22. Why’s that? :-/

And this girl who became a lt and must have studied a lot is all smiles, saying Apollo wants to provide for them and give them everything, and doesn’t really understand when Kirk speaks of “work to do”. After a few words and kisses, she’s all ready to throw her old life away and live there!

Kirk tells her to reject him because all their lives depend on her - there’s 430 people on board, not changed - and she’s like “I love him”… Oh my God. She says that Apollo is kind and lonely and it would break his heart… unbelievable. Spock has discovered that the temple is the source of energy, so they plan to destroy it. Carolyn does her duty - after a few kisses - and tells him that as a scientist she was only studying him. Apollo calls foth a storm, and so Kirk gives the order. The Enterprise fires, a lot, and the temple is destroyed. Apollo shows one tear and is all “I would have loved you, did I ask so much?”

This guy, really! He acts heartbroken, then he calls to the other Gods and disappears to go with them.

3- The changeling

ITA La sfida  

There should be four billion people and they were alive a week ago, now the Melurian race seems to have been destroyed. A green light hits the ship strongly. They make contact and bring Nomad on the ship, a meter high floating robot that speaks. It’s an old probe “in the early 2000s” but it has changed, it absorbed power and “is perpetual” now. Nomad looks at a star map, realises they’re from Earth and “you are the creator, the Kirk. The sterilization procedure against your ship was unnecessary”. 

“My function is to probe for biological infestations, to destroy that which is not perfect, I am Nomad”

In the Melurian System, Nomad destroyed “the unstable biological infestation”. Spock thinks that old probe somehow repaired itself. It was created to be the perfect thinking machine, capable of independent logic, created by Roykirk. Puzzled by Uhura’s singing, Nomad scans her brain and kills Scott, but then Nomad repairs him. It can’t repair Uhura though. It wiped her mind clean, so now she has to learn it all again. Christine teaches her how to read English…

To prove his theories, Spock melts his mind with Nomad - which means the actor hugs this piece of metal and speaks to the air. This probe got damaged, had a collision with a meteor, its memory banks destroyed or most of it, “it wanered without purpose and then it met the other. The other was an alien probe of great power. Somehow they… merged, repaired each other, became one” So it’s not the same probe launched from Earth. “It took from the other a new directive to replace its own. The other was originally programmed to secure and sterilize soil samples from other planets… probably as a prelude to colonization”.  “A changeling”, Kirk knows of the “Ancient Earth legend”, “the changeling was a fairy child that was left in place of a human baby, the changeling assumedthte identity of the human child”

I must say I’ve never heard this story, is it a commonly known American fairy story?

3541.9  Of course Kirk wins over Nomad in a battle of wits. First he says he’s a biological unit - these security men are stupid or nobody informed them not to fire? Shooting at Nomad simply results in being obliterated… Kirk should really inform his men of things.

Nomad reasons with Kirk: Nomad thinks it’s perfect, but Kirk explains how it mistook him for its creator, 1 error, also it did not discover the mistake until Kirk told him, second error, so it means it’s flawed and imperfect, so the third error is it did not sterilize itself - as it should with all things imperfect, so they beam Nomad out into open space, or Nomad destroys itself. 

McCoy tells us that Uhura is at college level, and soon she’ll be ready to work…

4- Mirror mirror

ITA Specchio specchio

Kirk, Scotty, Uhura and McCoy beam up during a violent magnetic storm, or something, and something happens. Our four have slightly different outfits, the Spock they meet has a goatee and is armed. And he punishes people for their mistakes with pain. 

Stardate unknown. This is not their universe, it’s a parallel universe, on another dimensional plane. There was an exchange and their counterparts are now on the Enterprise we know… our Kirk has the order to destroy their world below but he won’t. Chekov rebels and attacks him, so without him they’d all advance rank, but is stopped. Nurses bets on how long someone will last before they pass out from pain, it’s quite the opposite world, this one. And yet the world down below is the exact same one, here too they’re pacifists who refuse to give their dilithium crystals if they’ll be used for violence, and will die before that happens…

Scott is the one who must work to bring them back, of course, and mcCoy must help him: “I’m a doctor, not an engineer” - Scotty: “now you’re an engineer”.

On our Enterprise, mirror-Kirk and the other three are locked up, of course our Spock understood easily. 

Our Kirk keeps making ‘weird decisions’, like not destroying the Halkans or not killing Chekov…

Mirror-Spock warns our Kirk that he’s been ordered to kill him if he doesn’t come back to his senses and do what he’s been ordered to do… maybe it’s true that he doesn’t want to be captain…

I really like this Uhura, she acted better than all the others :-)

When Sulu and three men attack them, intending to kill both Spock and Kirk, Marlena makes the three men vanish. She’s mirror-Kirk’s woman, who likes this new Kirk. 

Mirror-Spock lets them go, wanting his captain back, and our Kirk convinces him to make a few changes towards peace.

Spock says their counterparts “were brutal, savage, unprincipled, uncivilized, treacherous, in every way, splendid examples of homo sapiens, the very flower of humanity, I found them quite refreshing”. Kirk: “I’m not sure, but I think we’ve been insulted” and McCoy: “I’m sure”. 

Then there is a Lt Marlena Moreau, on board since a week ago, and Kirk immediately thinks that way, and makes his move… it’s not nice on his part to seduce his officers! Not nice at all.

5- The Apple

ITA-La mela 

They’re studying a planet, apparently very beautiful, very fertile. Chekov: “it makes me homesick, just like Russia” - McCoy: “more like the Garden of Eden, Ensign” - “Of course doctor, the Garden of Eden was just outside Moscow, a very nice place”. Then a flower shoots a man dead.

3715.3 On Gamma Trianguli 6. Another man dies, and Kirk says he’s the third… I guessed I missed one…

The planet won’t let them be beamed up. Kirk punches the man that’s been following them, and the man cries. “I am the eyes of Vaal. He must see”. At the obvious question, this man replies: “Vaal is Vaal. He is everything”. This Akuta is “the leader of the feeders of Vaal”. These people don’t know what ‘love’ or ‘children’ mean, and they’re not growing old. Two youngsters copy Yeoman Martha and Chekov after seeing them kiss. Vaal orders to kill them all, and teaches them how to break a head like a coconut, and of course they fail - Martha defended herself here. An energy fiedl threatenss the ship, so Kirk stops the people from ‘feeding’ Vaal and orders Scott to fire at it. Vaal ‘dies’. Well, they say it’s a machine, but still. 

Now these people will have to provide for themselves and evolve and change. Spock doesn’t like it that they interfered so much, while McCoy wanted this, because to him this was not life… to him, but of course he sees nothing wrong in changing other cultures to make them more like his. 

6- The doomsday machine

ITA La macchina del giudizio universale

An entire solar system has been destroyed, seven planets. Then “every solar system in this sector blasted to rubble”. They find the ship Constellation. Lt Palmer is in Uhura’s place. On the ship there are no bodies, ony Commodore Matt Decker in terrible shock.

4202.1 All the crew beamed down on one planet, the third planet that is not there anymore. “An automated weapon of immense size and power” destroyed everything. Spock: “Its apparent function is to smash planets to rubble and then digest the debris for fuel. it is, therefore, self-sustaining as long as there are planetary bodies for it to feed on”. It’s from another galaxy. Kirk: “Bones, did you ever hear of a Doomsday machine?” - “No, I’m a doctor, not a mechanic”.

Kirk thinks it’s a terrible weapon “that somebody used in a war uncounted years ago. They don’t exist anymore, but the machine is still destroying”. I don’t really know why he speaks of ‘years ago’, how can he know that…

The Enterprise sees it now, it’s like a giant tube open at its front, a large ‘mouth’ that looks like it has a sun inside. More like the shape of an ice cream cone, put horizontal and all grey, like stone grey.

It attacks the Enterprise once, then it moves towards another solar system. Decker takes over command from Spock, he wants to leave Kirk behind and chase that thing to destroy it. Decker puts the ship in danger. When Kirk orders Spock to assume command again, Spock does, but Decker won’t back down easily. He enters a shuttlecraft and heads for the machine. He feels guilty for the deaths of his crew, and heads straight to the machine’s mouth… and simply dies. I thought he’d be blowing up the ship… and maybe he did, but we didn’t see it. This gives Kirk the idea to bomb the Constellation right inside it, so Kirk alone stays on there, and he puts his plan in action while the others try to repair the ship and the transporter. Of course it breaks down again when they need it, but of course Kirk makes it, with no seconds to spare. The machine is not working anymore, no energy at all.

7- Catspaw

ITA Il gatto nero

Scott, Sulu and Jackson are exploring a planet, but Jacksono comes back alone, and also dead. Still, his mouth opens and a voice warns them to go away or die because there’s a curse on the ship. 

3018.2  Kirk, Spock and McCoy go down to investigate. The image of three witches warns them to go away, then they enter a black castle and encounter a black cat. They’re easily captured and chained, then Scotty and Sulu free them with a vacant expression. A man, Korob, says they’re controlled. Korob listens to the cat for instructions. Korob offers food and then gems if they go away, and is puzzled that they don’t accept. The cat goes outo and Sylvia appears. With a miniature ship on a chain, she almost burns the Enterprise. Kirk refuses to speak to Sylvia. Korob does not approve of how she behaves, it’s not what they should do, they “come from a world without sensation” and now she wants more. Of course Jim charms her immediately and she wants him. He kisses her to get information, but not reading any fire in his mind she gets angry and dangerous. Korob frees Kirk and Spock but the others are controlled by Sylvia. The cat is now huge. Kirk takes Korob’s wand and breaks the sort of crystal ball at its top, and without that transmuter everything vanishes, leaving only two very bizarre and very small creatures, like if Picasso sketched two parrots, all blue with orange heads and legs. I’m not sure why but they crouch down and… die, from the smoke htat comes out and how still they are.

8- I, Mudd

ITA Io, Mudd

Mr Norman, been on board only three days, worries McCoy but Spock dismisse him. He was right, and he starts taking control of the ship, changing course and increasing speed. He says that ‘they’ intend no harm but require the ship. He opens his belly and surprise, it’s an android!

4513.3  He wants Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura and Chekov to go down on a planet with him. It appears all androids are ruled by Harry Mudd. He escaped prison and kept frauding, so he kept escaping, and found this planet full of androids. They serve him, but they also won’t let him go. The androids were made by beings from Andromeda but the makers all died and they need a purpose so now they serve Mudd. 207.809 androids. Mudd’s androids took the ship and had everyone go down. Kirk rightly worries of how his crew will react to have all the androids serve them… there are a few models - many a Alice, Annabelle, etc, even a few male ones, but only one Norman. Whey they don’t know something, they ask Norman. To overload them, they have two Alice watch while the others play invisible instruments and act like fools. Spock’s pinch fails - of course… what’s the logic in trying that on an android? - so he tells one Alice that he loves her, and the other Alice that he hates her, and they’re out in seconds. And on they go, talking gibberish and acting foolishly, and it’s all so irrational and illogical that Norman burns out. Now free, they reprogram the androids to be productive and keep Mudd there.

9- Metamorphosis

ITA Guarigione da forza cosmica

3219.8  They’re bringing Federation Commissioner Nancy Hedford to the ship because she contracted a very rare and fatal illness, but something makes their ship land on a strange place, where they find Zefran Cochrane “of Alpha Centauri, the discoverer of the space warp”, a man who supposedly died 150 years ago, but he says that when he crashed here he was old (87) and dying and the “companion” saved him and made him young again. This companion doesn’t have a form per se, we see some lights form a sort of wobbly arancino shape but he say he can communicate with it, and it gives him everything he needs to live. Cochrane knows why they’re here, to keep him company! Because he said he fel lonely, hoping he would be let go, instead the companion brought them here. The commissioner, who was doing so well until now, has a breakdown - she was really ill, so we understand. Spock adapts a translator and they can talk to the companion, who has a female voice, and she wants the ‘man’ to ‘continue’ and have company. Cochran spoke of feeling affection towards it for caring for him all these years, but when they explain that the companion is female and acts like a lover, he calls it monster annd disgusting. :-/

Kirk tries to convince the companion that they’re too different and she can’t love him like this, Cochrane’s spirit will die just as Nancy is dying… so the companion goes to Nancy and they merge, become one; Nancy is healthy again and will finally experience the love she never had, while the companion is mortal now, but she still can’t leave this place so Cochrane stays here with her.

Alpha Centauri? Was he not from Earth at this point?

10- Journey to Babel

ITA Viaggio a Babel  

114 delegates come aboard for two weeks, they’re all in high uniform. From Vulcan, we have Ambassador Sarek and his wife Amanda.

3842.3  They haven’t seen each other in four years, and his father is very old. Sarek says Spock “chose to devote his knowledge to Starfleet instead of the Vulcan Science Academy”. Amanda is quite calm when she says father and son haven’t spoken as such in 18 years… 

There will be a vote on whether to accept the Coridans into the Federation. The Tellarite Ambassador is killed after he threatened Sarek. There is an unknown vessel following them, small but fast, that’s been communicating with someone on the ship. Sarek has heart problems, he’s had three heart attacks already, and needs surgery. Spock comes up with ideas to convince Bones to do it, and to use his blood for a transfusion, but there’salways objections of some kind, the last one being: “too dangerous” to which Amanda agrees and forbids it, because it would risk Spock’s life too.

Then Kirk is injured by an Andorian who attacked him, so Spock has to take charge. He’s in command now, and must find out who’s following them, and why the Andorian attacked Kirk… and of course now is when Sarek gets worse and Bones says they have to do it now, and Amanda is all “your duty is to your father!”. Wow, no more concerned for her son’s life?

“Nothing is as important as your father’s life”. Not only that, she brings up when he was a little boy tormented by other kids because he was also half human, and tries all she can to convince him, she even tells him she will ‘hate him for the rest of her life’ and slaps his face, the beeech…

When Kirk wakes up and learns of the situation, he pretends ot be ok so that Spock will go help Sarek. Kirk should have left command to Scotty, but the vessel attacks, it was in contact with the fake Andorian who attacked Kirk. Once defeated, the vessel self-destruct and the man poisons himself. Surgery goes well, Spock is not even out of bed yet that he’s solving the mystery, saying they were from Orion: its smugglers wanted to cause a war. Kirk says he didn’t think of it sooner because he probably had something else on his mind - meaning his dad dying - and Amanda wants Sarek to thank Spock, and is really frustrated to hear him talk about logic - really? She still has’t learned anything, after all these years?

Spock: “emotional, isn’t she?” - Sarek: “she has always been that way” - “Indeed? Why did you marry her?” - “At the time, it seemed the logical thing to do” but then Sarek raises the two fingers to join Amanda’s. Then both Kirk and Spock are forced to stay in bed.

Kirk: “Dr McCoy, I believe you’re enjoying all this” - Spock: “Indeed captain, I’ve never seen him look so happy” - Bones: “Shut up”

11- Friday’s child

ITA Una prigione per Kirk e co

3497.2 Bones spent months on Capella IV to understand them, because they need a commercial treaty with them. Kirk, Spock and McCoy go down with another man who gets killed right away because he drew his weapon as soon as he saw a Klingon there. There’s a battle for power there, and the old chief is killed. The Enterprise must leave to help an attacked freighter. Kirk breaks their laws by saving a woman destined to death, so when they escape they take her along. 

McCoy wins her over and she allows him to touch her, but only him.

“I’m a doctor, not an escalator”

Chekov: the ‘fool me once shame on you…’ “it was invented in Russia”

The woman Eleen delivers her baby, and since here children belong to the husbands and hers is dead, she says it’s McCoy’s. At the end, the Klingon goes crazy, the  new chief sacrifices himself so his men can kill him. Bones confuses Spock with all his “oochy-woochy kootchie-koo”. So now she’s the new Regent until her son’s of age, and she signs the documents or Kirk. The child was named Leonard James Akaar.

Spock: “I think you’re both going to be insufferably pleased with yourselves for at least a month”

12- The deadly years

ITA Gli anni della morte

3478.2  They go to bring supplies to “the experimental colony at Gamma Hydra 4”. All the pople there have aged a lot, they should be under 30 and yet people have already died of old age. Those that went down to check are already suffering from something. They age 30 years a day. Lt Galway is the youngest, 10 years below Kirk, and yet she’s aging faster, and then dies. Chekov is not affected at all.

McCoy: “I’m not a magician, Spock, just an old country doctor”. There’s a very boring hearing to declare Kirk unfit for command - he should be 34 but he’s between 60 and 70… well, he acts much older.

Finally Spock and McCoy understand: Chekov got scared and the adrenaline protected him, so they find a cure. And just in time to stop the Romulans from destroying the ship, because Commodore Stoker had no experience and didn’t know what to do.

13- Obsession

ITA L’ossessione

11 years ago on another ship, the Farragut, Kirk met an entity that killed people draining them of red cells. Now he’s find it on the planet that they wanted to mine or something, and he’s obsessed with killing it. He should leave and continue the mission regarding vaccines.

Around 200 people of the Farragut got killed. The entity/creature leaves the planet, the Enterprise follows it and attacks and the creature enters. Spock is attacked when it enters through the ventilation systemm, and he tries to block it with his hands… really Spock? But he’s not dead because his “hemoglobin is based on copper, not iron”. Kirk sets a trap, and blows it up on the planet.

14- Wolf in the fold

ITA Fantasmi del passato

The Argelians think a lot about pleasure. Kirk and McCoy take Scotty su Argelius 2 so he might have a good tiem with a woman… but then they find the girl dead, and Scott with a knife in his hand.

3614.2  Scott doesn’t remember anything. “The Argelian empathic contact” can tell the truth. Before that, Kirk calls forLt Tracy to analyze Scott’s memories, but she also is found dead, stabbed many times. The chief’s wife Sybo detects an evil presence that hates women. “It has a name, Beratis, Kesla, Redjac!” And then she’s stabbed as well and Scott is near her. Redjac is the ancient name for Jack the Ripper, not a man but an entity that can move from body to body. When it possesses a dead body, they put a strong tranquilizer in him and beam him into deep space to die.

15- The trouble with tribbles

ITA Animaletti pericolosi

Chekov sasys this area “was first mapped by the famous Russian astronomer Ivan Borkov” but Kirk says John Burke, British. 

4523.3 Deep Space Station k-7 (or k-t?) signalled a disaster and Kirk suspects Klingons. On the outside is all ok, there was no disaster, but Mr Lurry wants security to guard an important type of wheat. Chekov thinks it a Russian invention :lol:

A merchant, Cyrano Jones, sells Tribbles and Uhura loves it and takes one. Klingon captain Koloth is at the station too. Uhura’s tribble had babies and there’s lots more on the ship, they multiply very very quickly. The Klingons hate tribbles. A Klingon insults Kirk and the ship until Scott and Chekov start fighting them, putting an end to their shore leave.

Half way through the episode, the ship has tribbles even on the bridge, everywhere. The tribbles had predators on their home planet, but none here. They hate all the station wheat. They died, though, because the grain was poisoned. There was a Klingon spy undercover that did it.

He was found out because the tribbles hate Klingons too.

Scott got rid of the ship’s tribbles by sending them all on the Klingon ship :-p

16- The gamesters of Triskelion

ITA La posta in gioco

3211.7  They should go down to Gamma 2 to check on the facilities, but instead Kirk, Uhura and Chekov appear in some kind of arena. 

3211.8 “Galt, Master Thrall of the planet Triskelion” calls them ‘thralls’, like slaves, and says they’ll stay here forever. He can control their collars to stop them from escaping. Spock is in command, trying to find them, and McCoy is so irritating, complaining constantly but having no useful suggestions.

They fight and are bought by the ‘provider 1’. Kirk’s trainer is a girl so he starts seducing her… *rollingeyes* Spock finds them, of course. The providers were once humanoids but ‘evolved’ to a basic mental state, they look like three coloured brains. So they’ve got nothing better to do than to bet on games, fights. Kirk has them promise that if he wins against three opponents they’ll all be freed, and of course he wins. 

17- A piece of the action

ITA Chicago anni ‘20

100 or more years ago the Horizon visited this place, and left behind books on how to do things, but also a book about ‘Chicago mobs’ and they’re all ‘the book tells us how to handle things’! Spock and McCoy manage to go back on the ship and then… they go back down and are captured again… it’s up to Kirk to save them after he freed himself. Now they wear suits and try to stop this constant war among the various bosses… and maybe in fear of their weapons, everybody agrees when Kirk decides which one of them will be the only boss.

18- The immunity syndrome

ITA La galassia in pericolo

4307.1 They’re approaching Starbase 6 for a period of rest, but Spock ‘feels’ the 400 Vulcans on the Intrepid die. Also the solar system it was investigating, billions of inhabitants, dead.

Spock: “I’ve noticed that about your people, doctor. You find it easier to understand the death of one than the death on a million” and also: “you speak about the objective hardness of the Vulcan heart, yet how little room there seems to be in yours” because McCoy won’t believe him.

McCoy: “Suffer the death of thy neighbour, eh, Spock? You wouldn’t wish that on us, would you?” - “It might have rendered your history a bit less bloody”

They investigate and find a sort of black shape in space. They enter this “zone of darkness” and they all start feeling sick. In there there’s a thing, sort of fish-shaped, rather colourful, with something brownish like it was an eye. McCoy says it’s an amaba. They need to get close in a shuttlecraft to study it, and McCoy, Spock and Kirk all volunteer. Spock is chosen to go. It looks like he’ll die but he sends important information. The Enterprise goes into it, we see like they were sailing through blood. They plan to attack it with antimatter now, and they need to get out quickly but they try to rescue Spock all the same. He protests, of course, tells the captain “do not risk the ship further on my behalf”, and it’s Bones who answers: “shut up Spock, we’re rescuing you!” - “why, thank you captain McCoy”. Spock making a joke… :lol:

In seconds there will be an explosion so they need to get out first, but no, luckily the explosion frees them, their power returns and Spock’s shuttlecraft is still with them, and he’s alive.

19- A private little war

ITA Guerra privata

On a planet Kirk visited while young, they find people iwth rifles. 13 years ago, they had barely learned to forge iron, but “Spock was shot with a Flintlock”.

4211.4 Kirk is attacked and poisoned by a Mugato, a huge white beast. His friend Tyree could help, but his wife Nona is different, has him under a sort of spell; she saves Kirk by joining their souls, legends say he won’t be able to deny her anything… Tyree’s camp is at war with the villagers because those people can suddenly make fire weapons. The Klingons are aiding them, of course. This episode has a very bad ending… I explain: Kirk says that at this point the only things they can do is to balance the power between the Hill people, meaning Tyree, and the villagers. So he wants to give them the same weapons. Tyree refused to kill, but after the villagers kill Nona, he’s all for it. It doesn’t matter that Nona was betraying him, ready to join the villagers with Kirk’s phaser because they’d be willing to use it and win. They killed her so now Tyree wants to kill them. Kirk will have Scott prepare 100 weapons and then they’ll leave… but we saw and heard the Klingon: his plan is to give the villagers better weapons as soon as they’re ready to use them, but if Kirk goes away, there will be no balance, he won’t be here to give Tyree the same kind of advanced weapons…

Since Spock got shot, he was fighting to live in the Vulcan way, to concentrate on it deeply and then they need pain to come out of it. Christine’s helping him when Scotty stops her so Dr M’Benga hurries to help Spock by repeatedly slapping his face.

20- Return to tomorrow

ITA Ritorno al domani

4768.3  A dead planet, a voice: “the energy of pure thought”, wants to communicate with Kirk. Only Kirk, Spock, McCoy and a female biologist, Anne Mulhall, are allowed there, and they see a big sphere that intermittently lights up whenever this Sargon speaks, the essence of his mind is in there, and he thinks humans may be his descendants because they were once like us, only with greater minds. 500.000 years ago. Sargon possesses Kirk’s body and asks the girl to host Thalassa who was his wife, and Henoch of the opposing faction would be in Spock. For a short time only, to build androids for their minds. Kirk says he knows Sargon now, and believes him fully. So they agree. McCoy thinks they’re crazy, of course, but they really want it. It’s done on board, so McCoy can monitor them; only Spock’s body is strong enough for it, and Henoch wants to keep it by killing Sargon while inside Kirk. Henoch uses Vulcan ways to have Christine forget about it. Henoch tries to corrupt Thalassa and it’s rather easy at first, wants to keep this body and hurts McCoy but like Galadriel she wins over herself, apologises and stays herself.

Sargon is thought to be dead for a little while, but he was in the ship and survived… so Sargon put Spock’s mind into Christine’s body to kill Henoch and then restore Spock to himself. It’s not clear to me what will happen to Sargon and Thalassa now since their globes are destroyed, will they die too? Also, it’s rather absurd: since Henoch could read their minds, Kirk could not know that Spock was in Christine, which means he thought he’d die with Henoch… and we are to believe that he accepted this without a single complain? Preparations took what, two minutes? 

21- Pattern of force

ITA Gli schemi della forza

John Gill was one of Kirk’s instructors at the Academy and is now missing. Kirk wants to investigate Zeon and Ekos, neighbour planets or something, but what they find is Nazis on Ekos killing all Zeons they can find. Kirk and Spock are believed to be spies and whipped. The leader appears to be John Gill, but he’s been drugged. Instead of just observing, he interfered with this planet’s culture because they were too divided, but one man took over, Melakon, and started this war and persecution. With the help of rebels like Daras they infiltrate command, find Gill, bring McCoy to help, fill Gill with enough stimulants it could kill him, and have him made another speech to stop the war. When Melakon kills Gill, he’s killed too.

22- By any other name

ITA Con qualsiasi nome

They answered a distress call and found some people who want the ship to go back home to their own galazy far far away. Rojan of Kelva leads them, and they can immobilize them at will. That’s why they win so easily. 

4657.5 Rojan has red-uniform Yeoman Thompson first turned into a small chalk shape and then killed for good. I bet it was quite the shock back then that the black guy survived while the pretty white girl died.

They can only get on the ship because Spock pretends to be ill and dying… why would they care is not clear, but the hero’s always lucky so it does work. They all reach the end of the galaxy and go through the barrier. Rojan turns most of the ship crew into chalk forms - 14 sides, un tetracaidecaedro, specifically sfenocorona, 2 squares and 12 triangles. These aliens are changing because they took human form, so Tomar starts eating food - well, food, those very colourful geometrical shapes on a plate…

Realising that they’re no more immune to emotions, Kirk of course tries to seduce the blonde  girl Kelinda. Scott tries to get one drunk, McCoy injects one with stuff and Spock gets Rojan jealous. When Rojan gets so jealous he fights Kirk, they finally give up on hteir idea and decide to colonise a planet in our galaxy, so Kirk takes them back to where they met. 

23- The omega glory

ITA Le parole sacre

Written by Gene Roddenberry

The Enterprise finds the ship Exeter, inside there’s all the uniforms but the people have been turned into small crystals, no more water in them. Captain Tracy is still alive because he was not on his ship but on the planet. Kirk seems shocked that Tracy may have violated the Prime Directive… not sure why, it seems to me it’s all they do, interfere… 

Tracey believes that the Kohns have some secret to longevity, or immortal life, but McCoy says they’ve lived so long only because it’s natural for them. The savageYanks believe in the sacred words… this is an evil communists against  honorable Yankees story. The sacred words are the Us constitution. So the Yanks take control and everything will be fine… Tracey is arrested, he who killed so many…

24- The ultimate computer

ITA Il computer che uccide

Dr Daystrom’s computer is the most complex ever created and the Enterprise is to test it. This new M5 computer would replacethe entire crew, and do everything by itself.

4729.4 The M5 controls the ship and the drills go well, but then it starts acting dangerously, it destroys a freighter, luckily without crew, but it also kills two members of the ship. They can’t turn it off. Daystrom says it’s programmed to think like a human, and the next drill doesn’t go well because the M5 fights for real. Daystrom keeps defending the M-5, and lots of people die. Finally Daystrom talks to the M-5… but he’s going insane. The M-5 has Daystrom’s mind,  and Kirk once again outwits a computer. It was designed to substitute a human crew so that people would not die in space, but it has killed many now, so it stops itself. Kirk keeps all power down so that the Federation ships would not attack, and Commodore Wesley does not, so they’re safe. The end.

25- Bread and circuses

ITA Nell’arena coi gladiatori

4040.7 They’re looking for the crew of a missing ship, the Beagle, on a plane almost like Earth. There are slaves and games like gladiators fighting in the arena, but they also have cars and fireweapons and tv. It seems like the captain they’re looking for is now the first citizen, the tyrant or something. When his ship got damaged, he came to this planet and decided to stay. His crew either survived the games or died. The games air on tv with fake cheers and boos. Spock’s ‘game’ only lasts long because he didn’t want to kill anybody, and then he knocks one out and ‘pinches’ another to help McCoy. “I’m trying to thank you, you pointed-eared hobgoblin!” (E lei non mi aiuta di certo :-p )

Scotty is in command, and ordered to not interfere, but he still tampers with their power source at a very opportune moment, helping Kirk escape.The proconsole despises Merik because he gave up without a fight and admires Kirk, so at the end Merik is killed by him because he tried to help Kirk, and he does, giving him a communicator back so Scotty has their coordinates and can beam them up.

26- Assignment: Earth

ITA Missione Terra

Back to the 20th century, a historical research on how they survived 1968. Mr Seven appears on the ship, says he’s from the 20th century Earth, although he knows about space travels and Vulcans. He talks to his black cat Isis.  He says his people want to avoid Earth destroying itself, but Kirk doesn’t know if it’s true, and tries to stop him. Seven beams down and wants to stop a rocket launch. He s super mens available, way more advanced than James Bond but that kind of cool. It’s really ridiculous that Kirk and co. never think of checking their history to see if this launch happened or not. They came back in time voluntarily, they should have a complete history in their computers. Anyway, the rocket is launched, but Seven changes its course and then makes it explode, no harm to anyone. His secretary Miss Lincoln will keep helping Seven, she looks jealous already. The cat Isis is also a woman, of course, we gathered that. 

Leslie Parrish as Carolyn

William Windom as Commodore Decker

Elizabeth Rogers as Lt Palmer

Glenn Corbett as Zefran Cochrane

Elinor Donahue as Nancy Hedford

Miss Jane Wyatt as Amanda

Mark Lenard as Sarek

Julie Newmar as Eleen

William Campbell as Koloth

Stanley Adams as Cyrano Jones

Nancy Kovack as Nona

Booker Bradshaw as Dr M’Benga

Diana Muldaur as Ann Mulhall

Valora Noland as Daras

Skip Homeier as Melakon

David Brian as John Gill

Warren Stevens as Rojan

Barbara Bouchet as Kelinda

William Marshall as Daystrom

William Smithers as Merik

Rhodes Reason as Flavius

Robert Lansing as Mister Seven

Terri Garr as Roberta Lincoln