Obsession (TOS - S2E13)

[Hailing Frequencies Open]

In this episode of Treks and Tangents, Brian and Jaci tackle Star Trek: The Original Series episode Obsession. When a deadly cloud creature resurfaces from Kirk’s past, the captain turns into spacefaring Captain Ahab: ignoring a vital medical mission, snapping at his officers, and dragging the Enterprise into a personal hunt fueled by guilt and revenge. Meanwhile, Spock and McCoy attempt an intervention, Ensign Garrovick gets caught in Kirk’s emotional crossfire, and everyone spends an alarming amount of time asking: “Do you smell honey?” 

We break down the episode’s Moby Dick parallels, Kirk’s increasingly questionable command decisions, the underused question of whether the creature is intelligent, and a final plan involving antimatter, red blood cells, and some extremely questionable trap placement.

Did Kirk’s obsession make him unfit for command, or was hunting the creature the right call? Leave your answer in the comments!

[End Transmission]

Transcript

Intro/Turbolift Tease Recap

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Alien Frequencies Open and welcome aboard Treks and Tangents. I'm your co-host Brian.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

And I'm your co-host Jackie. I'm the Star Trek movie who trekked off on tangents.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

And I'm your Star Trek expert who is here to get the tangents back on track. Each episode we watch and talk about a different Star Trek episode, and this week we watched Star Trek, the original series, season two, episode 13, Obsession. Welcome back, everyone. Welcome to the halfway point of season two. Oh, look at us. So don't forget to stick around to the end of this episode to find out what our bonus Star Note episode is going to be. That's where we'll post over at our Patreon and dive deeper into the episode. But for now, before we get too far into it, let's just quickly revisit our turbo liftees from last week. That's where we gave Jackie the title of this week's episode. And without any other information or context, Jackie tried to guess the plot of this episode. So, computer, what was Jackie's guess last week?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Jackie's prediction last week was the crew of the Enterprise has come back from shore leave because, you know, things get rough. But a yeoman has turned magical, and now every single person that resembles a male, she becomes completely obsessed with, and it bounces around, whoever is front of her. But they have to figure it out before time runs out because something bad might happen to her.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

So, Jackie, how accurate do you think your guess was? I mean, last episode we were on Shorelief. Sure. Not exactly a pretty picture for this unnamed female crew member of just following around male crew members like a lovesick puppy, is how I picture your description.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

I mean, it was it sounds like a great episode for this 1960s show. I mean, sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

I would say that this plot point belongs in the original series in the late 60s. But I tried. You tried. Instead, surprise, surprise,

Initial Impressions

SPEAKER_01 2:14

it's the fart episode. And I call it the fart episode because it's just so many fart jokes where they run around and they go, You smell something? Like, there's just so many examples of like interrupt, like, oh, what's that smell? Honey. It's honey. No, that's terrible. Terrible, terrible, terrible. Anyway, we we will try not to have too many fart jokes in the episode. Jackie, what are your initial impressions to this episode?

SPEAKER_02 2:41

I think it went like way off, like at the very beginning, we see this mound of shiny things, and we learn that it's 20 times harder than diamonds and all this stuff. And then we don't even go back to it. We we follow the honey, and I don't like we totally I wish we would have stayed with the sparkly thing. Yeah. And then the the pliers that they almost lost the sample. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

So very much I mean, I I agree with you for a different reason. I think it goes off the rails because we have we basically have a retelling of Moby Dick, but then we try to insert this subplot of the ensign, who's the son of the captain that died 11 years ago that was Kirk's commanding officer, and that whole interaction between Kirk and the Ensign, and Kirk seeing a younger version of himself in the ensign, all going on at the same time that we're trying to just enjoy this little sci-fi monster mystery plot that's going on, and it just feels very shoved in for no reason.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

And then like he magically comes to like peace while he's talking to the ensign.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Yeah, a very awkward moment where that's his cathartic self-realization moment of oh ensign, it doesn't matter, dude, because your your um freezing up or momentary hesitation wouldn't have affected anything. Oh my god, it didn't mean anything when I froze up and hesitated 11 years ago. Like it's just so exaggerated in this moment. I'm honestly surprised they didn't insert some little animation of a light bulb going off above Kirk's. I wrote light bulb. Yeah, because it's just that kind of a moment and it's exaggerated on the screen for us to see. So, but yeah, it would have been fine as just a Moby Dick retelling and a monster mystery, but we had to try to throw in this subplot too, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

And he like this ensign like comes onto the bridge as if he's like some powerful dude. He's like in his face, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Hello, I'm here for duty. Yeah, and I've got it in my notes. We'll get to it when when we get to it again, and I'll mention it again. But the fact that there's like this moment where Kirk goes, Oh, you're the new security dude? Like, what's your name? And I'm like, in what world does Kirk not be brought into the fold that the son of your past commanding officer is now going to be assigned to you your ship and serve under you? And there's no recognition, there's no moment where Kirk goes, Oh yeah, like I re it's just like, Oh, whoa, what are you doing here?

SPEAKER_02 5:40

You know? Well, he did refuse to listen to her uh earlier when she had her message to give.

unknown 5:46

Right.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

She could have been there.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

When did he no, because he wouldn't have been there? Where did he come on board from? He's been on that ship for weeks, I bet you.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

It's just so weird how they all just pop up as if I don't know, 400 souls when I only see ten.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Yeah, there's only ten of them.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

And some of them get reused, some of them, I mean Yes, one of the um security guys, he's always a security guard in some fashion.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

He dies a lot.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Well, and specifically in this episode, I didn't write it in my notes, but I read it. There, one of the red shirts that ends up dying in the attack from the cloud, you later see him in the episode walking around in the background. The reason for that is because there was the way I read it, it was originally intended that they weren't gonna have all of these people die, that they were going to revive them. The cloud wasn't killing them per se. They were interrupting the cloud and getting them back before they were fully killed, but it it never got filmed, it never got into the final episode, which could explain why they're just up and about again, but it makes for an awkward moment where it's like, Bob, I thought you died last episode. What's going on?

SPEAKER_02 7:04

So And killing them makes it more intense because McCoy actually has to pull the I have to write you up, dude.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yeah, there's also yeah, that's that's kind of a weird thought to go into that we don't see on the screen is at what point does Kirk get in trouble for any of this?

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

So but any case, it's gonna be interesting to see. Well, I've almost decided that we should ask Jackie what she would rank the episode at the beginning because by the time we get to the end, she's been so influenced by recording the episode that she changes her mind. But it'll be interesting to see where she puts it this time. So there's a reason why we asked for her ranking before my ranking.

Treking Through the Episode

SPEAKER_01 7:47

But before we go too far, let's just get into the episode. Jackie, why don't you walk us through it?

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Okay, so we have our landing party on their way mission on this planet. I don't even know the name of the planet yet. I have never known it.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Uh, it is Argus 10. And you're right, it doesn't get explained, it gets mentioned like briefly halfway through the episode, but it is Argus 10.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

All of these planets have numbers in them.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Yes, because the are it's Argus is technically not the name of the planet, Argus is the name of the system, and this is the tenth planet in that solar system.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Oh, okay. Well, that makes a lot more sense.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Well, on Argus 10, they found this giant mound of sparkly things, and it is 20 times harder than a diamond. And so Kirk just easily uses his phaser and cuts off a piece to take a sample with him, and as he gathers it with those giant pliers, Spock almost, you know, drops it. I found that funny. But while he's doing that, he smells the sweet honey that we talked about earlier. And he's like, I met the smell 11 years ago on another planet. And so actually, this smell is from something called Dicronium, and then he sends the security officers off to find where the source is.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Well, yeah, I don't think the smell itself is from Dicronium. So he he does tell the officers to go scan for Dicronium, which everyone seems to find to be odd, but it's not the cause of the smell. It's just the fact that we find out later that when Kirk encountered this entity on the other planet, he was almost able to trace it, this being left behind on their sensors the signal for this element. And so that's why he's having them scan for it because he recognizes the smell.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Well, that makes more sense because now it's only in laboratories. So, okay, thank you. The this opening was super confusing for me. Right. So the three of them go off to look and scan, and they're overcome by this gas, this cloud, and only one of the what is called red shirts now, um, was able to reach Kirk and say something was choking them, and they're dying. So Kirk and Spock run to find where their men are, and they find two dead and one barely holding on. And then of course, during this intense moment, Scotty is like intercoming in saying, When are you guys coming? We're supposed to meet with USS Yorktown in eight hours. It's like we're dealing with an emergency here, dude.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Yeah, and and of course, that's where the the opening ends, the little teaser, and we get the opening credits. I like this little teaser to this episode. Uh, it doesn't waste any time in getting anywhere. There's no frivolous scenes, they're already on the planet. We don't have to watch them beam down, we don't have to watch them locate this sample of Tritanium that they're looking for. It's just very quickly thrown into the action. I also really like the practical effect of the cloud where it's the smoke that they have that kind of appears. Anytime that that starts to appear in the scenery of the set is kind of cool because it's unexpected expected, but it's not immediately obvious where it's gonna come from. So I kind of like that as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

I'm right there with you. Like it says it went A through Z. That's all you need to know.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

So after our musical intro, we are in Sick Bay. And did you notice that that giant screw acrylic piece is from iMud?

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

I was like, hey.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

It was recycled.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

So I just I was like, whoo, I know what that is. And so they have evacuated everyone that was on the planet doing research. So they are now back on the Enterprise, and McCoy is in the autopsy of both dead crew members, and now they're like, okay, good, we've done our reports, it's time to go. We we have to deliver these vaccines to Theta 7. And you know, Scotty's keeping time, and we only have seven hours left. Right. Kirk again is like, we're not leaving. We have to find out this cloud, we have to figure out how to kill it. They'll they'll have to wait. And so McCoy begins to explain his report to Kirk, and he deems it there's no medical explanation how they died.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

No medical explanation as to the cause of death, which he is able to determine. And he gives this in-depth medical explanation, but the long and short of it is something has drained the crew members of all of their red blood cells, which gives us the reason why. Jump back to the intro to the episode when they find their crew members dead on the planet, they've got that bluish tint to their skin.

SPEAKER_02 13:19

And Kirk also asks to have Insign Rizzo come out of his coma because Kirk wants to ask him a question. And so McCoy's like, I can do that, but just be aware. He's still medical, you know, he's drugged. And all Kirk asks is, Did you smell something?

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Backtrack a little bit. Did you notice the drug that they gave him to revive him? Was cordrazine. Any recollection to what cordrazine was? That was our knockout drug. Cl uh the opposite. Oh, sorry. Or a wake-up drug. It was the drug that McCoy accidentally overdosed himself on in The Guardian of Forever that caused him to go absolutely crazy. That was a good one. Too much stimulant. Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

I like when they like do flashbacks to things.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

I like when they have consistency in the lore and they actually have these made-up things consistent from episode to episode. They're calling it cordrazine again as a reference to a stimulant that can uh wake someone up instead of accidentally saying cordrazine, it'll knock them out again. It's nice when Star Trek starts to get consistent.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

That makes complete sense. And so when he does wake up, he does say that he smelled honey, like that smell of honey, and that he also felt a smothering, like the life force was being sucked from them.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Right. And more specifically, and it's a question I think that gets left on the table and it shouldn't, he references that he felt an intelligence from this entity, this cloud when he was being attacked and smothered and so forth. I say this question gets left on the table because they kind of address it, but is the cloud intelligent? Does this actually present an intelligent life form? At which point, should we really be hunting it down? Should we really be trying to kill it?

SPEAKER_02 15:28

No, totally, because like we've already learned that it can come and go as it wishes.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Right. And it can travel through space and so forth.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

Yes. So they wait a really long time to all call it a creature. Right. Which would be like a live, intelligent thing. And so um poor Ensign Rizzo, he then falls back into his coma. And Kirk also tells McCoy to do some research on the USS Farragut, and that was the ship 11 years ago that he was on that this whole thing is based off of.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Yeah. Let's not explain what the connection is. Let's go a third of the episode without touching on the fact of what Kirk's relationship is to that ship and this cloud entity. Let's really draw this out.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

And I mean, and it's Nurse Chapel herself who is the one that notices right off that he's not right. She's like, he's acting weird. Yes. And nobody like believes him, like believes her. Right. And I'm like, she's on point. And so now we're on the bridge, and her is trying to relay a message, but Kirk blows her off, and he's like, make sure to send in my new security officer. Then he goes straight to Spock, and Spock reports that there he can't see any life form, so why we can't be in danger from the planet.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Well, so specifically, Spock says that there's no trace of Dicronium on the planet. And then Spock suggests that the creature might be able to change its molecular structure, which isn't how that would work, but okay. But he's suggesting that, well, it doesn't necessarily mean that this cloud isn't on the planet, it just means that this element isn't anywhere. Perhaps it can change itself to avoid sensors. What a weird conjunction from Spock to leap to, because how many I would just think it would be more natural for Spock to say, well, the element's not there, so this thing, the cloud's not there, or it's not the same cloud, or whatever. But instead, he's just like, maybe it can metamorphos and change itself. Metamorphosis is a different episode. We'll get to it.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

But but I mean, he just like he like wood and ivory, like that. How is that logical?

SPEAKER_01 17:57

No, yeah. It makes it even more of this weird leap to go to.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

And so Spock is leaving to go help McCoy and go learn more about this cloud. Like he just goes away and Chekhov takes over the scanners. And Spock is leaving in walks our new security person.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

And it's Ensign Garovic.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Right. And as Garovic is entering the bridge, we do we do get this message in the scene that Rizzo has has died, succumbed to his injuries.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

And then the Ensign confirms that yes, I am his son, and then I don't expect any special treatment. And Kirk's like, well, good, because you're not getting it here.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Right. And again, this is the weird, awkward moment where Kirk is confirming that Garovic is the son of his former commanding officer from the USS Farragut, that all of this ties together. Hell of a coincidence.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

And he also graduated with Rizzo.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

So he's like super like middle, like meatballed in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Be interesting to know what the graduating class at Starfleet Academy would be during the original series and how many people serve in Starfleet. I'll have to look that up later. But again, Kirk doesn't know who's being transferred to be assigned to the Enterprise. He doesn't get these detailed personnel reports to know.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

You would think so, but he also didn't know about that one young lady from Mirror Mirror.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Right. Who had been there for a week. There's many examples where it's just kind of like, oh, hey, you're new.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

And if it's a girl, he's like, hi.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Yes. It's very weird that there's no sort there's no knowledge by Kirk as to new personnel that's being assigned. Which leads to the question, does he know when people are assigned away from the enterprise and people are leaving?

SPEAKER_02 20:03

I mean, that's a good question. I know he knows when he's telling people to go to their quarters and not come back.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Wouldn't you think that that would be the quality of a leader that you need on a starship is to know who's being assigned and unassigned?

SPEAKER_02 20:19

Yeah, and who's doing a good or a bad job.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Is Kirk a bad captain? Scandalous. We'll get to it later.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

Well, he's super excited though to have this new member because he is gonna be part of a four-man team. So he says four-man team, but then when we go down to the planet with our phaser twos, there's five of them. So it's a four-man team plus him and Kirk.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Yeah. Because Kirk has asked Garovic, hey, this is probably the same thing that killed your dad. Do you want to go kill it? And he's like, sure, let's go. What are Phaser 2's? So we had to pause for a second and pull up images so that we could show Jackie. So the Phaser 2 would be what is colloquially described as a phaser ray gun. It has very much the look of a gun, a ray gun with the little handle and everything. Yes. And then the phaser ones would be what we would have seen in The Guardian of Forever, where the person found McCoy's and accidentally overloaded it and so forth. So the setting of Disruptor, I think I read was just this is the only episode we're gonna see that order being given. So the Phaser 2s and the Phaser Ones, they all have different settings. They've got I mean, the more common accepted would be what we kind of fall into with the next generation, where we get set it for phaser set for stun, phaser set for kill. Okay, makes sense and then You can use it to overload it. Some of the phasers you can fire out different spread patterns and so forth. But stun and kill makes it seem like there's only two settings. I argue that there's not. There's multiple settings. Stun, it would just be the weakest. Kill would be like the extreme. But that doesn't mean that if you if there's 10 settings, if you use it on something like setting five or six, that's not kill, quote unquote, but it would probably take out a weaker life form.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

So to say disruptor setting, I it's a made-up term that doesn't carry over to the rest of Star Trek, but essentially what he's saying is get your phasers set up so because we're not going to try to stun this thing. We're trying to do damage to it. Like buckshot. Right. Buckshot versus slugs. So back on the planet, we've got Kirk, we've got Garovic, we've got a party of four security officers, and we're all hunting Kirk's white whale. I should say white cloud.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

So they split up in teams of three, and they're gonna go around because they smell it. They smell the honey. They're gonna go around the mountain. And as they're going around, I think you're being pretty generous in calling it a mountain. It's uh Well, it's like a little thing. They're gonna go around and uh around it.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Yeah, it's it's a prop rock hill, is what it is. It's a little cliff.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

Well, they should have just gone straight over. But anyways, the cloud ambushes the ensign's team of three. And while he does fire at it after hesitating, the cloud does kill his security team. Right. And so he's he feels very guilty.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Right. I would also say to point out, if you haven't watched the episode, it's not really like he freezes up for a terribly long period of time. There is a pause, and it feels like a long period of time because we have to have the exaggerated effect of the cloud coming in and killing them and all of that, but it's to imply that it's not really he froze up and panicked and didn't act, he just had a momentary pause, and that's what should be enforced and noted was it was very slight, and because eventually we're gonna learn it don't matter.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Exactly. And I also added that when the cloud is killing everybody, it's like with uh sparklers.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Yeah, it's very much very much like the other episode that we watched, metamorphosis that I referenced earlier, where the little creature envelops them and we get the little light show and everything. It's kind of the same effect. It's kind of too bad that there's such a difference between the practical effect of the cloud forming and the smoke machine coming up out of the rocks and this quote unquote CGI or this film effect of the cloud enveloping them, and it's so different. It's kind of too bad.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

So then we have our break, and we are in the briefing room. Thankfully, one of the crewmen who he thought was dead, he survived. Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Conveniently again.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

And so, like, and Kirk is getting more and more pushy about this being the same creature that took out everybody 11 years ago. And like Spock, Scotty, and McCoy, they're like kind of pushing back. Like, calm down, dude. Uh we shouldn't are you sure we should be fighting this when we have this other responsibility to do, like, especially with you know, Yorktown?

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Yeah, because the Yorktown that they're supposed to rendezvous with um and keeps getting pushed off because Kirk wants to hunt this cloud entity, it's because the Yorktown has medical equipment, vaccines, medicine that is perishable. They will, if they're not delivered to where they need to go, they they will no longer be useful. Also, again, another example of Federation and Starfleet inefficiency in this moment that no one else can be diverted to get the medicine. Why did we put the medicine on the Yorktown when it just needed to get to the Enterprise to then get to the planet? Stick it on a faster ship next time, maybe. I don't know. But in any case.

SPEAKER_02 26:23

So they bring the ensign Garovic in and they want to learn exactly what he saw, like with the cloud, because he was there and Kirk was coming around. But the ensign, he is he's such he says such wide range, like 10 to 60 meters in size, and it's kind of gassy, kind of solid in it in composition, and it changed shape while hovering above them.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Yes, congratulations. You just described a cloud, Ensign.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

Well, that's why I found it really like that part was kind of dumb.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Yeah, just call it a cloud.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

And this is also where Kirk gets mad at him for not shooting.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Yeah, this is the moment where we get the first kind of tie-in. And again, I think this subplot is messy, but the tie-in between Ensign and Kirk, where it's a repeat of what happened to Kirk. The guy hesitated, Kirk places blame on him for hesitating, and now two people are dead because Kirk blames himself for hesitating 11 years ago. It holds your hand through the entire thing, this little subplot. I don't I don't like it.

SPEAKER_02 27:37

And he's sitting in front of a green screen the entire time. I was wondering if something else was supposed to be back there.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Yeah. Well, green screens weren't really the same thing in the 60s. It was just It was just odd. It's just we're trying to sell color television still, and so we're gonna make it really colorful. And let's throw a green light up there on the wall.

SPEAKER_02 27:59

And so he's relieved of his duties, and he like is like a little kid and pouts going back to his quarters.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Yeah, we get the little scene where he walks into the quarters, then he like sighs really heavily and then flops down on the bed. I think it's kind of well, it's it's let's talk about it. Is it too far to relieve him of duties? I mean, I I What are his duties? Well, his duties would have He's not gonna go on any more away missions. He's not gonna serve as security patrols on the ship or anything like that. He's basically just confined to quarters, like grounded, like a little kid?

SPEAKER_02 28:34

Yeah, pretty much like or like you did a bad job at work, so you don't need to come in tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Yeah, you're on you're you're placed on administrative leave until we decide what to do with you. So yeah, it's kind of weird, kind of ridiculous, kind of an overreaction from Kirk. Yeah, McCoy tells him. Yes, and that's what I like about the episode is Kirk gets called out several times.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

Yeah, at this point is when McCoy is being super vocal and Spock is always his normal, like logical, you shouldn't have done this according to regulation 2.0.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Yes. And could it have gone farther? Could they have relieved him of command? Uh I just like the fact that it's addressed each time it happens, and it's not like it's not like we have to watch three-quarters of the episode and then Spock and McCoy have a light bulb moment and they go, Holy crap, Kirk's not right in the head. They recognize it from the beginning and they address it as they go.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

And then he pouts, telling them to put their opinions in their report.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

Ugh. So now we're on the bridge and Scotty. I love him. He's like, Hi, are we are we going are we going to the Yorktown now? Because, you know, uh uh I can we can leave in half an hour because I cleaned all of these vents.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

Yeah. He was in the process of he was in the process of fixing a vent too, which becomes kind of Yeah, I was like, all these like special little things.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

He's like, we can go faster now.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yeah. Kind of weird that it's like we can leave in half an hour if we if you give me enough time to finish, because I've got this little vent problem that I'm going with, and I'm like, they're gonna go to warp with this thing open. That's a problem, but in any case, Kirk says, no, they're not leaving. Scotty's disappointed, everyone's questioning this. Because again, up until this point, do they have evidence of this cloud? Sure, they've got people dying, they've got people being attacked, but they don't really have anything else that shows it's important.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Or how dangerous it hasn't left the planet yet. That that would be my like, isn't it just gonna stay there and we can go deliver these vaccines and maybe on the way home check on it?

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Yeah, because everyone who gets in trouble and dies or gets attacked are the ones that are stupid enough to go down to the planet. Just don't go down to the planet anymore, guys, and take off.

SPEAKER_02 31:14

And again, he like gets mad and says, Everyone's conspiring against me, and they all look at him.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 31:21

He's like, Oh may sorry, I didn't mean to use that word.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Yeah, he's oh maybe I shouldn't have said conspire.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

And then he just yells at Chekhov to keep scanning for any molecular change, a cloud, just keep scanning.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Okay, yeah, Chekhov's like fine, whatever. I don't have to wear the wig this episode, so I'll keep scanning, no problem.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

And then, of course, now we're back in sick bay because McCoy has to do all these autopsies and he has a lot to do. And Spock asks for advice, and then McCoy's like, I need a drink.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

I thought it was funny. Yeah, it's a cute little, it's a cute character building moment between McCoy and Spock that with their super adversarial and conflicting relationship, this little moment where they confide in each other.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

And it's where I think they both agree that something is up. They are trying to be as supportive as possible, but we have a lot to do.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Right. But this is also where because this the reason why Spock is going to McCoy in this moment is Spock is finished reviewing the log reports from the USS Farragut, and this is where we get the explanation of this is why Kirk is so obsessed with the white cloud creature. This is why Kirk knows Ensign Garovic, and so forth. And the explanation of Ensign Garovic's dad was Kirk's commanding officer. They encountered the cloud creature on this mission. The cloud creature managed to kill everyone except Kirk somehow, but Kirk now wants to seek revenge, etc., etc. Again, we're 19 and a half minutes into the episode where we get this revelation. So we've gone this whole point, even though we've mentioned it several times in the podcast. A viewer is just now getting this info. They've gone this entire time wondering, why is Kirk so obsessed with everything?

SPEAKER_02 33:28

Yes, we're just assuming, but yes, this is when the word obsession, yeah, obsession comes to play.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Yes, and this is what's going to end act two and go to act three. So again, we're 19 and a half. Well, by the time we get to the commercial break, we're uh 20 minutes into the episode, but for plot purposes, we're halfway through the episode.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

And we come back and we're in Kirk's quarters, and he is finally thinking, Am I letting past happenings affect me in the present? And McCoy, so again, we have no knocking, no anything. McCoy just walks into the room.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Yeah. Not only walks into the room, he doesn't like open the door and pause just inside the threshold. He like takes those extra three or four steps to like put himself into the sleeping quarter area because Kirk's laying down on the bed. And it's like, no one knocks in this, it's so bizarre.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

And like, and he waited until the sleeping area. Oh, do you mind if I come in?

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Yeah, he's like, hey, what's up? I mean, cool. And again, it's it's not just the fact that no one knocks and everyone just walks in. They're doing this to the highest ranking officer on the ship. Like, no consideration to the fact that this is literally the captain. He might be on a subspace transmission with an admiral and he doesn't want people to overhear it. And so, yeah, totally bizarre. Can't wait till we get to the next generation where people actually use the damn doorbell on people's quarters.

SPEAKER_02 35:07

Oh, wait, there is one person who does use the doorbell, and that's my girl nurse chapel, but that's later.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

True.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

So, like, as soon as McCoy comes in, Kirk like jumps up and he goes to the little computer, check off a report. And Chekhov's like, I got nothing. And this is when McCoy's like, Well, sometime our biggest monsters is guilt. Yeah. Like, here, let me, you know, sling it at you all softly so you you don't get mad at me.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 35:42

And like, Kirk, you're doing well as captain, but we still need to go forward.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Yeah, because again, the cloud hasn't left the planet. It's still down there. We've got this other mission. We literally have to get these vaccines, medical equipment, whatever, from the Yorktown to the other planet to save millions of people, I think they say. Yes. And you are just refusing to acknowledge because again, Kirk is refusing to leave orbit. He's refusing to even communicate with Starfleet Command. He refuses to make any commitment to a timetable to get to the Yorktown. He's leaving them all in the dark.

SPEAKER_02 36:27

There's so much repetition until I hear, and Kirk like says, Don't use our friendship against me. And McCoy is standing up saying, No, I I have to write a report and I have to work on my opinion. And then he like steps aside and Spock comes in because in this report, McCoy needs to have another command witness. And if Kirk isn't unbiased, Spock is the next choice. Yeah. So we're not using our friendship, dude. We kind of have to go by the rules now.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

Right. And I'm going to say I really like this whole scene. Yes. From when McCoy says, I'm just going to burst into your quarters. I don't care. Through Spock arriving and everything. I like it because of the way it depicts proper protocol and regulation. Because in other episodes, we just get like weird little moments where it's just like, oop, let's all have a tribunal. Let's all have a hearing. Let's all have a trial. And it just seems so weird in those other episodes. Yeah. Where it's just like, oh, we we got to do it because we want to have this dramatic courtroom scene. And here it's just very much like, no, we just need to confront you and we need to talk it out and we actually need to have the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

And we care about you.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

As opposed to pulling the rug out from under you and just hauling you up on charges. It's like, no, no, no, we're going to follow protocol and we're actually going to do it. I just really like it because it seems more believable and realistic to how it should be.

SPEAKER_02 38:07

And I enjoyed this is also when Kirk opens up to his friends and fellow command that he's so interested in this creature because when it came to him 11 years ago, he felt the intelligence as he was blacking out. Yeah. He felt something hard to explain, but that it was alive and intelligent and able to do bad or good.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

Yeah. And again, I think they leave this topic on the table. If you if you had to, if I had to rewrite the episode, I would get rid of Ensign Garovic completely and that whole story. And I would make this a story about Kirk hunting this cloud creature for a sense of revenge. And then in the moment when he has to make the decision, do I kill it or do I not kill it? That's when the final evidence is presented that this is an intelligent creature. Give it even the cheesy moment of it's not trying to kill people, it's just trying to live and it doesn't understand and make it understand. Completely stereotypical Star Trek plot, but it would have been a better episode. Instead, they just kind of mention it willy-nilly throughout the episode. It might be intelligent, it might not be intelligent, and they never really address it. It never comes into play as a thing that drives their decisions. But in any case, to get out of this little bro moment in Kirk's quarters, we get the report that Chekhov has picked up the cloud and it's heading into space, it's leaving the planet. Oh crap, now it's gonna really take off. And so they set it on red alert, and the cloud books it at warp eight.

SPEAKER_02 39:57

I was like so surprised. We were just having this quiet time, and then now we've been chasing it. And Scotty, again, we can't go this fast for much longer. We'll blow up. And check off, he has his viewer at maximum magnification so he can see it. So that tells me that they are super behind the cloud.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

Yes, very much again, drawing a parallel to the comparison of Moby Dick and them chasing the whale in the ship, and the whale always being able to go faster than the ship and outmaneuver them and so forth. It's a fun little moment, but I want to move forward for time purposes because we're now going to have probably my favorite scene in the episode as far as a character, Nurse Chapel bringing Garavick his dinner in his quarters.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

So she rings the buzzer, but still walks in. Yeah. Like she at least rung the buzzer, and she brought a tray with his dinner, because you know, he's everyone's on red alert, but you need to eat. And he's like pouting and says he isn't hungry, but Nurse Chapel is like, maybe you need this soup that will help you. And again, I'm not hungry. And then the best, super smart, she holds up one of those tapes and it's yellow, so I'm like, yay.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:28

And she's like, on here is a prescription from Dr. McCoy, and it only has one word. And if you don't follow a doctor's orders, you're gonna get in trouble. That one word is eat.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 41:42

And she's like, if you don't eat, you have to go to sick bay and be tube fed.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

Yes. And she leaves it in his hands, she walks out, we get the little shot of Sick Bay with her returning the tape to McCoy, and McCoy's like, What is this? And it's basically just a medical journal.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

Yeah, some nasty respiratory disease.

SPEAKER_01 42:06

Yeah, and he's like, Why'd you have that? And she's like, Oh, no reason. But again, I like the scene because again, it gives Nurse Chapel personality. It's a cute little scene without being over the top, yes, still matching the overall mood of the episode, but it's good. It also, we should also mention, in and amongst all this, after Nurse Chapel leaves, Ensign Garovic goes to the tray of food, he takes the tray lid off, and then he gets angry because he hears another alert. So he and he's stuck in his thing, so he throws the lid, it hits the ventilation thing, and jams it open. We'll get to that in a minute, but important to note.

SPEAKER_02 42:48

And then like foreshadowing.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

Yeah, and then he decides to ignore the orders to remain in his quarters, he doesn't eat, and he goes running out of his quarters onto the bridge.

SPEAKER_02 42:57

And they're moving in on the creature, getting there, close, close. And Insigarovic asks to return to a post and he's totally ignored.

SPEAKER_01 43:08

Right. He's they just kind of ignore him. But also of note, this is the moment where the reason why the alert came, the reason why they're catching up, it's not because of anything that the enterprise has done, it's because the cloud is slowed down and turned around to confront the enterprise. Much like a creature who feels threatened showing a sign of intelligence. This is ultimately the action that leads Spock to go, yeah, it's probably intelligent, guys. And again, we're not going to do anything about it.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

But they do shoot at it and then they try the photon torpedoes, and nothing.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

Yeah, they they shoot the phases at it, and the cloud assumes the shape of a donut, and it's just like, Oh, it can't hit me, guys. I just you just I just make a little hole in myself and it just shoots right through me. And I'm like, I'm a cloud, yeah, and it Again, doesn't matter. It wouldn't have mattered who shot it first. You can't kill it. You can't affect it.

SPEAKER_02 44:06

Then it comes into the enterprise via the ventilation system, the one that Scotty was working on.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

Right. Again, maybe we shouldn't have gone to warp and left the window open.

SPEAKER_02 44:17

And the cloud has messed up so much like plane in the ventilation like airways that they only have two hours left while there.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

It hasn't messed anything up. They the cloud can't pass through solid objects. So it's stuck in the ventilation system looking for an exit. And what they're doing is they're shutting down the ventilation system. They're closing all the vents. Oh, that's what I missed. And so it's going to be stuck in the ventilation system rather than being able to escape out of a hall out of a shaft into the hallway or someone's room in a minute. And so that's why they close it all down. But because they've closed it all down, the ship systems isn't designed to do that. So now they're basically breathing their air that is now trapped outside the system. And so that's why they only have two hours left because they've cut themselves off and they've basically shut it down so that there's no new oxygen coming in.

SPEAKER_02 45:21

Well, that all makes more sense.

SPEAKER_01 45:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 45:23

And then but they suggest to flush the radioactive waste and see if that will get it to leave.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

What a dumb idea.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

I would think so. That I I just heard radioactive and I went, huh?

SPEAKER_01 45:39

Radioactive in your air vents.

SPEAKER_02 45:42

Yes, that sounds awful.

SPEAKER_01 45:44

Like deadly. Even even if you want to take it to the point of, well, all the vents are closed, so there's not going to be any radioactive air leaking out to poison anyone, you have to clean it from your ventilation system. I don't know how long that takes, but I don't know when this is going to get solved. So basically, what they've done is they've really committed to, they never address it. This is never something that's going to come up. But if they start to run out of air and the thing is still trapped in the ventilation system, at some point they can go, okay, let's all isolate ourselves and let's try to isolate it from other sections of the ship and let's, you know, gather in the cargo bay or the shuttle bay and open the vents to that, and we can breathe the air from that and keep it trapped at another part of the ship's air ducts or whatever. But no, let's just flood the whole damn air system with radioactive whatever. Terrible idea. Terrible, terrible idea. Plus, from a science fiction standpoint, when has it ever been a good idea to expose a monster to radioactive waste? That's literally how we got the swamp thing. Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 47:12

Right. So get over it, kinda. But then now Spock goes to visit Insign Garovic, and he does the same thing at this one, explaining that it is what it is, and to not wallow in human emotion.

SPEAKER_01 47:28

Yeah, basically playing ship's counselor, playing ship psychologist to kind of I don't even know why Spock is visiting Garovic. I mean, it's not his duty to do so. Garovic, they they've got a they've got two hours of air left. They got more important things than Garovic's ego and feelings.

SPEAKER_02 47:46

Right? Like that's why like why are you talking about like you know, human emotion, blah blah blah?

SPEAKER_01 47:53

But if we didn't do it, we wouldn't get the scene. So then the payoff of his little temper tantrum of throwing the lid against the ventilation controls because now they're stuck open, and we get the fog machine turned on, and it's found the open vent into Garovic's chamber. Do you smell honey? Yeah, you smell that? Two men trapped in a room, and ooh, what's that? And so the thing starts to come in, they can't close it off because it's jammed. Spock orders Garavik to leave. We get the very illogical choice to try to block the air vent with his hands.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

I laughed out loud, like for real.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

Yeah. But Kirk and company come to Garovic in the hallway. They order that the air pressure be uh reversed to push because again, it's just gas. So vent the room, vent it back into the air duct, and they they do so. It must go away because then they're able to open the door, and surprise, Spock is still alive because his blood is copper-based and not iron like humans. Right. So his green blood saved him. He has no red blood cells for the creature to to eat. So, and of course, then we get the awkward moment we mentioned earlier in the hallway with the light bulb moment for Kirk where he's just telling Garavik, hey, doesn't matter that you hesitated and didn't shoot it because we tried to shoot it just now and it didn't kill it. It just avoided it, turned into a donut. And then ding. Oh my god, I Kirk couldn't have changed anything eleven years ago. Oh, I guess we're still just so alike and in the same position. Like his face even changes to like a light bulb. Yeah, whatever. Then there's this awkward moment where they try to explain that trying to eat Spox blood left a bad taste in the creature's mouth, and now it somehow has left the enterprise through that same open shaft and it's sprinting. And Kirk goes, It has to be going back to where I encountered it 11 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 49:55

Right. I was like, How'd you get to that?

SPEAKER_01 49:57

Why? Where, yeah, how do you get to that? Oh, it's going home. How do you know it's home? How do you know that it's not a nomad and has no home?

SPEAKER_02 50:06

The feeling when I was going to be unconscious along with everything else.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

Yeah, dumb. And so, kind of to wrap up the second half of this fourth act here, they come up with the plan to use antimatter to blow this thing up. Okay, cool. And they come up with this idea that they only need to use a fraction of the amount, but it's gonna be this huge explosion. The math doesn't work. It reminds me of Armageddon. Yeah, the math ends up not working out. Don't try to calculate how why they're gonna get this big reaction or whatever. But of course, who's gonna go down to the planet and save it? Kirk. Kirk. And his new bestie. And his new bestie Garovic. And so they go down with this bowling ball strapped to this anti-grav unit because it floats.

SPEAKER_02 50:57

Oh, that I was gonna ask you if the whole thing was the bomb or if just the ball, because it had like a hanger.

SPEAKER_01 51:05

So the little ball, the ball thing, the bowling ball, has to be the containment that can keeps the antimatter in the vacuum.

SPEAKER_02 51:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 51:12

The little claw thing that's gripping it is an anti-grav unit, and it would also be the detonator.

SPEAKER_02 51:20

Like the thing they used to move the changeling, just a different pretty much. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 51:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:26

That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 51:26

I don't know why it takes two people to move it around. Anti-grav is supposed to make things easier to move, so only one person could go down. But in any case, it's also important to note they also go down with just a vat of red blood cells.

SPEAKER_02 51:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 51:41

As bait. But they get down there and the very first thing that they do is move the bomb away from the bait.

SPEAKER_02 51:52

Right. I I thought that was so stupid because the the bait is literally baiting.

SPEAKER_01 51:57

Yeah. So it's like they leave the bait. It would literally be setting a steel trap for an animal, but instead of putting the food in the steel trap, it would be leave the food on the ground and then take the steel trap away with you to watch for the creature to eat. That's exactly what they do. The creature, the cloud shows up, eats all the red blood cells in that container, the bait. With the sparklers. And then Garavik and Kirk just kind of go, damn it. Our plan didn't work. Now what are we going to do? Now one of us has to be bait. And of course, the most pointless scene of the episode is Kirk going, Yeah, I'm going to be the bait. I'm the captain. Get out of here, Garovic. And Garovic karate chops him. We get 10 seconds of them wrestling. And then they both just unanimously decide, okay, no more fighting. We're done.

SPEAKER_02 52:50

Yes, okay, we have the same opinion. Like, why are we doing this?

SPEAKER_01 52:54

Yeah. Serves no purpose. So, of course, the creature goes after the new bait, which is just Kirk and Garovic. They arm the bomb, and now we get down to the classic trope moment where set off the bomb, beam them out at the exact moment the bomb goes off. We get the dramatic little pause where, oh no, the transporter may not work. It may not recover them. It may be too late. But of course, they both safely arrive back on the Enterprise. They reunite with everyone. We get the little awkward comment where Kirk's like, Why don't you come by my quarters later, Garavik, and I'll tell you some tales about your daddy, you know? I'll tell you, I'll tell you all about your father. Yes, that was kind of odd. It was even odder his reaction because he was like, Well, I'd like that very much, Captain. And I'm like, Okay, we're just gonna drop the acting skills for this closing scene. But that's it. There's nothing else. I mean, roll credits, that's the end of the episode.

SPEAKER_02 53:57

So yeah, it stopped very abruptly.

SPEAKER_01 54:00

Yeah.

Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 54:01

So, Jackie, what final wrap-up thoughts? Let's talk about kind of wrap it up for what did you think about season two, episode 13, Obsession?

SPEAKER_02 54:11

Overall, I liked it just by watching it and seeing McCoy and Spock kind of working together and trying to, you know, knock Kirk like into like, come on, get on straight.

SPEAKER_01 54:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:29

Because we always have Kirk being, I'm gonna be Superman and do everything, and they're just like wingmen.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

Yeah. And so is it an okay episode? Sure.

SPEAKER_02 54:41

Yeah, I mean, I wasn't like excited and and like, ooh.

SPEAKER_01 54:46

And again, it just has this messy sub, but it's a first and foremost, it's fine. Allegory, analogy, parallel to Moby Dick. Yes. Cool. Enjoy the fact that we get crazy Captain Ahab Kirk going after his white whale, his white cloud, fine. The crew confronting the crazy captain, trying to get him to see sense, cool. Where it goes off the rails for me is that messy subplot with Ensign Garovic. The fact that there is no real reason or sense behind it. You could have had it removed completely. You could have rewritten Kirk's light bulb moment and given him another reason. You could have just even had Kirk give the light bulb moment as soon as they shoot it with the ship's phasers and the cloud turns into a donut to evade it. Light bulb moment, oh, it wouldn't have mattered 11 years ago if I had fired the phaser at it. You could have written Garivik out of this episode completely, and I think it would have been a cleaner episode.

SPEAKER_02 55:52

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 55:53

Especially if you would have taken it off the table and addressed the idea of this is an intelligent being. Should we be killing it? Do we really need to be killing this thing? They don't address that at all in the episode.

SPEAKER_02 56:07

So right, and that's one of the like rules of the Federation. Don't mess things up.

SPEAKER_01 56:13

There's plenty of episodes where it's like you've just encountered a life form, you have to tread lightly, and you can't just kill it because it's convenient.

SPEAKER_02 56:23

And it took them 45 minutes to figure out that it was a life form.

SPEAKER_01 56:28

Yeah, pretty much. So, eh, okay. Not the strongest of episode, but it ain't gonna be the worst one that we see. So, before we get to our final quote, um, to round out our final thoughts, don't forget to jump over to our Patreon for a bonus star note episode. Free for everyone who follows the Patreon. We take a deeper dive into a topic or two from this episode. And we've kind of hinted at the subject and we've kind of talked about it a little bit, but I don't think we've answered in the episode. So I think this bonus star note episode question is gonna be Did Kirk's obsession make him actually unfit for command?

SPEAKER_02 57:07

Ooh, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_01 57:08

So join us over at Patreon, patreon.com slash treks and tangents. We'll post that bonus star note episode same day that this is live. Go check it out at the end when you're done listening here. But round out the final thoughts, Jackie. What's gonna be your favorite quote?

SPEAKER_02 57:23

So mine is at the end, and it's McCoy as they're trying to bring Kirk and Garivik back, like because they keep on like sprinkling in and out. And McCoy's like, crazy way to travel, spreading a man's molecules all over the universe. Okay. I think that all the time, whenever they come over, I'm like, that's really awkward.

SPEAKER_01 57:46

So this is gonna be one of the rare examples where Jackie and I have the same quote. Yay! I picked the exact same quote from Dr. McCoy talking about the transporter. I picked it because, yeah, I think in the Star Trek timeline, transporters are not something that have existed for a huge amount of time leading into the original series. They're certainly commonplace, they would be everywhere, but I would like to think that there would still be some level of hesitation by some people in Starfleet to use a transporter. If you go back further in the timeline and you get to Enterprise, they very much did not want to use the transporters because it was such new technology. So I'd like to think that in the original series time there would still be a huge amount of hesitation. We would have used shuttlecraft more in moving personnel, not cargo necessarily, but I like to think that it there'd still be that hesitation, and I like the fact that it's kind of inserted in there, even if that's not the intention of the writers in the dialogue in this moment. I like to think that that's what it's shining a light on.

SPEAKER_02 58:59

So No, I mean, and also um Spock says it earlier above, because Scotty's like, Thank heaven they got here, and Spock's like, uh, no God played a part of this. I just did bypass to be, and that's how they came.

SPEAKER_01 59:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:17

Like, I didn't it was all me, dude.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

Yeah, it's a good backup quote. So, but let's

Tribble Tidbits

SPEAKER_01 59:23

talk about our triple tidbits or interesting facts to the episode, and why do we call them triple tidbits, Jackie? Because they're the best. Because tribles can be cute, fun, cuddly, interesting, horrifying. I see we're getting close to the episode. We are two away from trouble with tribles. So, two more weeks and we'll get to that episode. Yay. And then we'll we won't see. Well, well, we'll see tribles, but they don't become a fixture in Star Trek like I think they should be. Certainly not as much time is spent on tribles as we spend on them here in the podcast. So but for our triple tidbits for this episode, this episode first aired December 15, 1967. This is the same day that the Silver Bridge collapsed in Point Pleasant, Virginia. And it is notable because this is the natural disaster that is tied to the Mothman, and that is the bridge that they saw the Mothman on before the bridge collapsed. This is the period 13 months of sightings of the Mothman in the area, and then the bridge collapsed, and then no one sees the Mothman again. Interesting cryptid legend, go check it out. But since it's the day the bridge collapsed and it's tied to that, I thought I'd mention it. So the USS Farragut was named after David Glasgow Farragut. He's a he was a flag officer in the United States Navy during the American Civil War. He was the first rear admiral, then vice admiral, and eventually ended his Navy career in the United States Navy as an admiral and is credited for the misquoted phrase of damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:09

So he did not say that?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:12

He it's a it's not a misquote as to the fact that he didn't say it. It's not the exact wording. Correct. He does say damn the torpedoes, but then the part of full speed ahead is kind of conjunction. He does give the order for the ship to go full speed, but he says it in nautical command terms, not just full speed ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:35

So got it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:36

Uh, we already knew that Vulcan blood was green from previous episodes, but this is the first episode to note that the reason why it's green is because it's copper-based, not iron-based, like human blood. That's the first reference.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:48

That was good to learn. That was interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:51

In Star Trek periodic table, Dicronium has the atomic number of 112. In reality, the element that eventually becomes the atomic number 112 is Copernicium, and it was discovered in 1996, so it wasn't even around in the 60s when the show was written. So we're living a different timetable at this point. They saw the future. And then my last triple tidbit, Jackie, did you notice anything different with the opening credits? Maybe no, I don't know. This is going to be the first episode where they decided to reduce the volume of that background vocal singer and let the instrument musical portion of the of the song be louder.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:36

Yeah, I was singing over her, so that's probably why I didn't hear it.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:41

Because I usually sing her part.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:43

Yeah. So they reduced the vocals on that. So does it stay like that? For a while, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:51

See, they knew it.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:52

Those are going to be your triple tidbits.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:54

Those were good.

Episode Ranking

SPEAKER_01 1:02:55

And we've danced around the subject, but let's finally get to our episode ranking. This is where we're going to assign a Starfleet rank to the episode, and it's going to represent how entertained we were by watching the episode, but also more importantly, it's going to assign them a rank on our fictitious starship for the season. A higher rank means not only we were more entertained by the episode, but we find the episode to be a more valuable member of our crew. And of course, the opposite is true. A lower rank means we weren't as entertained, and we find them to be a more disposable member of the crew. Our ranks start at the bottom with ensign, lieutenant junior grade, and lieutenant. We can have an unlimited number of those. And then we get into the quote unquote officers of the ship, the lieutenant commanders, we can have a total of seven commanders, we can have five, we can have one captain, and we can have one admiral or our favorite episode for the season. If none of that makes any sense, don't worry. Just like our bonus star note episode, we'll post a graphical representation over at our Patreon, patreon.com Treks and Tangents, free for anyone, and we'll post that Wednesday, the day after this episode goes live. Jackie, for your starship, the USS Luminara, what rank do you give this episode? I'm going to rank it Lieutenant Junior grade. Lieutenant Junior Grade says second from the bottom. Yes. Same rank that you gave last week's episode. Why this rank?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:21

Because I think Spock and McCoy and they're being together trying to support Kirk in a solid manner, that storyline kind of kept it floating from being in my ensign pile.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:36

Okay. Otherwise, it would have been an ensign. So if they had kind of gotten rid of McCoy and Spock, and instead, if this was just another episode of Spock pulling the rug out from under Kirk and going, Let's have a tribunal to decide if you're fit to serve. And even though we've got two hours of oxygen left, everyone change into your dress uniforms and let's go to the briefing room for a formal trial, you would have made this an ensign.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:00

Okay. I don't disagree with that.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:02

And then, like, why are we gonna have a a fight at the last five minutes of our episode?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:09

That that was silly.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:10

Well, from my rank, I'm gonna go a little bit better than Jackie. I tend to rank the episodes a little higher than Jackie. Um, Jackie finds episodes that she really, really likes and then she really, really doesn't like, and there's nothing really in the middle.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:23

Then it's hard to make them in the middle.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:25

Yeah, I tend to do the opposite. I put everything in the middle, and I don't find a lot that I hate or that I really, really like. But this one's gonna be a lieutenant. It's gonna be third from the bottom, one rank above Jackie. It's gonna be the same as my Apollo episode. Again, the analogy and the parallel to Moby Dick, cool. I like it. What's gonna keep this from ranking higher is pretty much going to be what I discussed. The fact that the subplot with Ensign Garovic and his dad and all of that is just gonna drag it down so much. It's so messy.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:57

I mean, that's good to know, but they didn't do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

Justice. Yeah. They could have replaced that entire subplot, as I mentioned, with the fact that it's an intelligent creature and that moral dilemma, and they just completely ignore it. There are the other little random things that keep it from getting a higher rank. That little scuffle fight at the end, the weird little let's beam down a bomb and uh blood is bait, but then let's not bait the trap correctly. Let's move the trap away from the bait. It's a messy fourth act overall. Yes. So lieutenant is going to be my final rank. And again, don't forget, if none of that makes any sense, pop over to our Patreon, check out the graphical representation. It's all pretty. Over on IMDB. Oh no. So again, uh we we make Jackie take a guess. Again, five or six is gonna be terrible. Sevens are gonna be average, eights are gonna be above average, and nines are gonna be the top episodes out of ten. I'm gonna say seven. Okay, it's gonna be a seven point two. Woo! Last week's episode was seven point three, so yeah, pretty much right in the same range. So again, I wish Memory Alpha had a ranking system, but we're stuck with IMDB.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:15

Is that bad?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:16

I would just prefer that Memory Alpha, the wick, the official quote unquote fan wiki of Star Trek, had a some sort of ranking system. I know I understand why they don't do it, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:29

It has so many links. I get lost. How how can we have that? I get oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:35

But

Turbolift Tease

SPEAKER_01 1:07:36

we'll be back next week. But before we go, let's give our turboliftees or elevator pitch to next episode's plot. I'll give Jackie the title of the next episode, and Jackie, with no other information, will give a brief guess or pitch to that plot. Jackie, next week's episode is entitled Wolf in the Fold.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:56

Alright, the Enterprise is going to the galaxy, doing their charting because they're on the edge. And suddenly they're able to see that there are distress signals coming from an area that they don't even know about. And so they go over to check it out, and they find out that once I bring it onto the enterprise, this person is actually someone on the run. And they were hiding in this end of the galaxy trying to stay away until they got picked up by the enterprise being nice and noops, now you have to go to jail.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:34

And tune in next week to see how accurate Jackie's prediction is. If you want more show information, you can find and directly support our podcast on Patreon, patreon.com/slash treks and tangents. Again, we post the graphical representation of our ranking system. We post our bonus Star Note episode, all free for people who want to follow along. For those that support the podcast as a crew member, we have our series where we dive deeper into the animated series for Star Trek. We're kind of off schedule for that, so we'll get to it. But we're ready. We're ready. We just got to get it finished. Uh, we also had a staff meeting, quote unquote, a briefing, if you will, on uh bar trek. So that's gonna come soon. We almost had an episode recorded and then, well, we got tired. Maybe we'll talk about it in Bar Trek.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:25

Yeah, yeah. But we laughed a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:27

Yeah, and I don't know, we don't really know how that whole thing is gonna pan out. We we know we'll post it on Patreon, so go go check it out for there. Probably should post more show news on Patreon, maybe get a newsletter. We'll see. We're working on it. Give us feedback. What do you want to see on Patreon? Where are you guys listening? Are you guys on the website? Are you guys on Spotify? Are you on YouTube? If you're listening on YouTube, we're close to a show milestone on there. So keep listening, keep sharing, and comment wherever you're listening to this. And review. And leave us a review, share us with friends. All that helps support, grow the show, and we really like engaging with the comments. So please keep keep keep interacting with us and we'll keep interacting with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:13

We'll send an emoji.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:15

There you go. Uh, you can also follow us on x.com at trucks underscore tangents. We're on Instagram and Blue Sky at Trucks and Tangents, but Jackie, where can people find you? And what are you up to?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:25

Oh, I am on Instagram. I have so much content I have to post. I'm behind. But I well, I should probably tell you who I am. It's at Jaboom J I B O O M. I am doing great after my first hip replacement. I am getting the second one done in just a few weeks. And then hopefully I'll be able to like skip around for Christmas.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:53

There we go. Well, you can always watch me stream a variety of video games when I have time over at twitch.tv slash piratepoundtown. It's hard in the summertime to stream in this tiny little room for longer than a couple hours, but we'll try. I'm on YouTube. Uh first I'm on YouTube at PiratePoundtown, where you can watch me post video game content. I'm also on YouTube at Pirate Treasure Hunting for hobby content. I'm socially on Blue Sky, and I do post on Instagram as Pineapple Cannibal. Links to all social media mentioned can be found in the episode description. Thank you everyone for tuning in to this week's episode. We hope you had fun like we did, and we will see you all next week. Make sure your blood is the right color. End transmission