2-3. The Practical Joker.

Trapped in the holodeck (sorry, "recreation room").

THE PLOT

After a narrow escape from a Romulan ambush, the crew of the Enterprise finds itself subjected to a new ordeal: a run of practical jokes. They start small: Trick glasses that splash everyone's uniform when they drink, some food and laundry mishaps. But as the jokes become steadily more regular and destructive, Kirk and Spock realize that they have a serious problem on their hands.

Spock determines that, somehow, the jokes are being created by the Enterprise's main computer. Kirk calls all officers to quarters, intending to run a full diagnostic on the ship. But McCoy, Sulu, and Uhura have just stepped into the ship's rec room to enjoy some holographic leisure time... and the latest practical joke has blocked them from hearing Kirk's summons, as the three crew members find themselves the target of a potentially deadly game!


CHARACTERS

Shatner is allowed to unloose Capt. Ham, as Kirk tricks the computer by feigning terror. Shatner really goes for it. It's a pity this is animated, as I'm sure his facial expressions and bugging eyes (not badly replicated by the artwork) would have been priceless. Beyond that, this episode is one of the better ensemble pieces of the series, with all of the regulars getting something to do.


THOUGHTS

So Kirk's Enterprise now has a precursor to TNG's holodeck? Well, I suppose that's fair enough. This series precedes TNG by more than a decade, after all, and it's certainly believable that the basic technology was introduced during Kirk's time and refined over the following decades. An early Enterprise episode would later establish that holodeck technology existed among other spacefaring races long before Kirk, making it easy enough for me to accept Starfleet adding something along those during the original five-year mission.

I also find it particularly appropriate that the franchise's first ever "holodeck episode" involves it malfunctioning and putting crew members in danger.  From one generation to the next, some things just never change :)

Holodeck or no holodeck, I enjoyed The Practical Joker.  This is a particularly well-paced episode. It moves briskly, but spaces out the action just enough for some nice character bits. The rec room scenes provide strong visual moments as well, with the moment when a holographic blizzard fades into a springtime hedge-maze sticking in my mind.

I've noted in previous reviews how much the animated series has struggled with comedy. The lack of the actors' physicality plus the often stilted voice track editing has led to gags being both mispaced and mistimed, leaving episodes that might have been enormous fun in the live action series falling flat. Here, that manages not to be a problem. Comedy is a strong part of this episode... but this time, the comedy works. The timing is on, the actors are giving their all, and the situations play out in such a way that the incidents are genuinely amusing.

I could carp about the convenience of Spock resolving a nitrous-oxide crisis offscreen in the captain's voice-over, but I'll let it slide. This is a good episode, one where the elements really come together. With a perfectly-judged pace and some terrific character interaction (not generally the animated series' strong suit), this may be one of the most purely enjoyable entries presented.


Rating: 9/10.

Previous Episode: Bem
Next Episode: Albatross

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1-11. The Terratin Incident.

A shrunken Kirk struggles with his communicator.

THE PLOT

The Enterprise receives an outdated radio signal with only one decipherable word: "Terratin." They follow the message to its origin source - a planet with substantial volcanic activity, whose surface is dotted with crystals and satellite dishes. No sooner have they entered the planet's orbit than the ship is hit by a strange beam that affects all organic matter. The crew is now shrinking steadily - and if something isn't done soon, they will soon become too small to retain control of the Enterprise!


CHARACTERS

Not much of interest here, though it's worth noting that the crew largely sympathizes with the Terratin people once they learn why they affected the Enterprise. Kirk gets a nicely ruthless bit in which he locks the ship's phasers on the Terratin city and threatens to destroy them if they don't respond. Otherwise, the characters are just pushing the plot through its somewhat labored paces.


THOUGHTS

There's a lot of Idiot Plotting in this installment.  One example: Kirk discovers that using the transporter returns him to normal size. So he immediately orders all crew members to go to the transporter room... No, wait. He tromps around the ship for several minutes, threatens the Terratins (who have somehow kidnapped his bridge crew in the meantime), reaches an agreement with them, and then bothers returning his crew to normal size. On top of all that, it's mentioned right before he beams down that the transporter might restore Kirk to normal size. Which means the crew knew the transporter was a possible solution... and chose not to use it!

In fact, nothing is actually attempted in terms of solving the shrinking problem. They stand around and debate the situation, with Spock giving them a running countdown until they'll be unable to use the ship's controls. There's a bit of forced suspense with Nurse Chapel falling into a fish tank(!), before Kirk finally beams down. And outside of that very manufactured situation, the characters never even seem terribly concerned about their predicament.

Which is an incredibly pointless predicament, by the way. The ending reveals that the shrink ray was the Terratins' way of shrinking the Enterprise crew down to size so that they could communicate with them. We discover this when... a normal-sized Kirk hails the Terratin city and gets a response, allowing Kirk and the Terratins directly communicate with each other. I guess just contacting the Enterprise in the first place (something they're clearly capable of doing) would have been too much trouble.

Alternately padded and rushed, with so much Idiot Plotting that Cletus could probably write a better script, The Terratin Incident is another stinker in a series that has had a few too many of these already. It's clear that when the animated series is good, it's very good... but that a disappointingly large portion of its scripts were dashed off in a hurry to boldly fill airtime where no airtime had been filled before.


Rating: 2/10.

Previous Episode: Mudd's Passion
Next Episode: The Time Trap

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1-10. Mudd's Passion.

Kirk and Spock, fueling slashfic for the next few decades.

THE PLOT

Harry Mudd (Roger C. Carmel) has escaped from his prison on the robot planet, and is once again swindling his way across the galaxy. Kirk and Spock catch up with him at a mining colony, where he is peddling "love crystals," guaranteed to make any member of the opposite sex fall in love with you at a single touch. When Spock exposes Mudd as a fraud, the colonists prepare to take justice into their own hands.  This prompts Harry's immediate surrender to the gentler justice of the Federation.

But Harry Mudd has never been one to accept arrest, even from "old friends." He insists that his love crystals are the genuine article. Observing Nurse Chapel's unrequited crush on Spock, he tempts her with the prospect of testing a crystal on the Vulcan, to make Spock hers forever. Of course, it's all a ruse, a distraction to allow him to make his escape. But there's one thing Mudd hasn't counted on: The crystals actually work!


CHARACTERS

Nurse Chapel's big episode... which plays her both as a dupe and as a thoroughly unprofessional officer. Nice to see those '60's gender politics continuing into the '70's. Meanwhile, a lovesick Spock provokes more cringes than laughs. The moment at which Spock and Kirk, under the crystal's influence, throw their arms around each other's shoulders and talk about how nice it is "to have a friend like you... That's the way I feel," seems like the grist for 1,000 slashfics. 

At least Harry Mudd is still entertaining. Slick, slimy, and charming in a repugnant sort of way, he feels absolutely authentic to the live action Mudd. The artwork for him is well-drawn, and the script makes him as much the nasty piece of work of his first appearance as the comedy creation of his second. Roger C. Carmel is the star of this show, and he at least manages to elevate this above the bottom rung inhabited by The Infinite Vulcan and The Lorelai Signal.


THOUGHTS

I've come to the conclusion that comedy episodes just don't work in this animated format. The animation is too crude to provide the subtlety of expression needed to sell a gag, and the voice editing is too slack to really raise the pace. As with More Tribbles, More Troubles, things need to get hectic in the closing Act. But voice tracks are edited so that one line follows another, even when comic energy demands that some of them overlap. As a result, there is no comic energy, just a series of leaden line readings.

I don't think Mudd's Passion would have been a very good live action episode, either. It's an Idiot Plot. The story only works if Nurse Chapel carefully removes her brain and falls for Mudd's sales pitch. I simply couldn't make myself buy into her stupidity. I certainly can't believe that she could compromise ship's security and use a piece of alien technology against a superior officer, with no consequences of any kind! 

The planet set succeeds in looking as cheap and bare as the papier mache planets of the live action series' third season - Hardly the kind of authenticity to source material the makers should strive for. An attempt at an action climax involving two rock monsters is hobbled by bad animation, leaving the monsters just roaring impotently while mostly not even moving... which doesn't stop Kirk from doing one of his typically impractical somersaults in the midst of evading them (that last actually is a nice touch).

Mispaced, largely unfunny, and with a script relying on a major character behaving like a moron... Yes, it's fair to say I didn't much like this one.


Rating: 3/10.

Previous Episode: Once Upon a Planet
Next Episode: The Terratin Incident 

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1-4. The Lorelai Signal.

Spock falls under the influence of the sirens' call.

THE PLOT

The Enterprise investigates a region of space in which ships have disappeared at regular, 27-year intervals. The latest interval is closing, and the starship is deliberately acting as bait. It isn't long before they receive a signal - a literal siren call, lulling all the men aboard into a euphoric state.

Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a redshirt beam down to the planet that is the signal's source, and are greeted by several beautiful women. They are treated to a feast, in which they are (apparently) drugged. They wake up with headbands that drain their life energy, feeding it to the women. If they cannot escape soon, they will be dead within four days!


CHARACTERS

Uhura takes command of the Enterprise for what I believe is the only time ever (unless she gets to do so in a later animated episode). Kirk retains enough sense of duty that, even under the sirens' spell, a word from Spock is enough to get him to battle their influence. Spock's magical Vulcan Physiology enables him to retain enough strength to retrieve a communicator and call for an all-female rescue party, while his Vulcan Voodoo lets him telepathically communicate with Nurse Chapel.


THOUGHTS

Guuuhhhh...

A mind-numbingly dumb episode, this makes some of the stinkers from mid-Season Three look almost respectable. I won't comment too much on the obvious over-doubling of Majel Barrett's voice, given that the doubling-up of voices was just a function of the show's thin budget. Besides, half the cast having the same voice is the least of this episode's problems.

The basic idea of patterning a Star Trek story after the sirens from Greek mythology is not a bad one. But even though the script is by yet another TOS veteran, this time that veteran is Margaret Armen. In fairness, Armen did write one good episode - but she was also responsible for a couple of real stinkers. The Lorelai Signal belongs squarely with the stinkers.

Idiot Plotting is a major factor here. Spock gets to the communicators and requests an all-female rescue party, who then have to search for Spock. Too bad the Enterprise doesn't have some handy technology that could just whisk Spock away from danger and back onto the ship, isn't it? Meanwhile, the Song of the Space Sirens has no effect on women. So we are to believe that every starship that has been lured to them prior to Enterprise has had an all-male crew? All righty, then.

The Space Sirens are thuddingly stupid adversaries. My favorite scene involving them has to be Kirk's grand escape. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Random Redshirt (who gets to live, this being a family cartoon) take refuge in the only cover available - a big urn. The women run after them, only a few steps behind... and standing in the middle of a deserted landscape, with the urn literally right in front of them, not one of them thinks to look inside the big giant piece of obvious cover.

Nor do they think to use their handy-dandy viewscreen, a device we repeatedly see will show anything upon request. In fact, Uhura finds them at the end by having the lead Space Siren ask the viewscreen to show the men. I guess asking on their own initiative was beyond the Space Sirens' ingenuity.

Bad, boring, and insultingly stupid. "Only a kids' cartoon" or not, they should have been embarrassed.


Rating: 2/10.

Previous Episode: One of Our Planets Is Missing

Next Episode: More Tribbles, More Troubles

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