Moon'll stop doing that if it knows what's good for it

"Oh, crap" indeed!

The Doomsday Machine: where the FUCK is Uhura. Who is this blonde

Actually so funny that McCoy gets so mad in "The Doomsday Machine" that Jim isn't in charge and Spock hasn't just fixed everything that when Decker tells him to leave the bridge he just leaves the whole episode.

I'm only about 10 minutes into "The Doomsday Machine", but William Windom's performance as Matt Decker is genuinely making me tear up. You can just tell how traumatized and in shock this man is from probably seeing his entire crew die.

Now I love TOS and I love The Doomsday Machine as an EP generally speaking. However, I don't think I'll ever understand how Commodore Decker made it onto the bridge never mind assuming command when Dr. McCoy and a few other witnesses saw how precarious Decker's mental state was when they found him on the Constellation. McCoy even commented on it. The only place Decker should have made it to on the Big E was sickbay.

The Doomsday Men by Kenneth Bulmer, 1965

In the future, detectives can connect to the brains of murder victims to find out who dun it. So let's find out if this is a thriller or a mystery!

Me for the past day: I like that Kirk was yelling at the enterprise crew to warp him off the ship right up to the end. Dude might’ve copied Decker’s plan but he sure as heck wasn’t planning on dying alone on that ship.

Me about 5 minutes ago: wait a minute what did Kirk say in Star Trek 5…

Me now: OH SHIT HE ACTUALLY THOUGHT HE WAS GONNA DIE

After a period of Star Trek "detox", I’ve just begun my umpteenth rewatch of TOS, starting with Season 2, and - maybe I don’t remember correctly - but it certainly feels like Elizabeth Rogers (in the role of communications officer, filling in for Uhura in the Planet Killer episode) had more (consecutive) lines than Nichelle Nichols had in the entire series. At least while sitting at her communications console. 🤔

The Star Trek novels trying to explain the Doomsday Machine as an anti-Borg weapon bothers me for three reasons.

1: it removes the mystery of this extragalactic eldritch monster

2: the Planet Killer was a lot more powerful than the Borg were ever shown to be

3: it undermines the original episode’s specific political allegory about cobalt-salted nuclear weapons. It’s like if Dr. Strangelove got a followup that said “actually, the Soviets didn't make a doomsday bomb because they were afraid of American imperialism. They did it because they were being invaded by aliens.”

USS Constellation, piloted by Captain Kirk, heads toward the maw of The Doomsday Machine.

You know, there are two things that I think we should bring back from the 1960s that the modern audience is too weak to actually accept.

1. Very dramatic, not very subtle music

2. theatrical brawling

If you know,you know.

Spock: random chance seems to have operated in our favor.

Bones: in plain, non-Vulcan English, we’ve been lucky.

Spock: I believe I said that, Doctor.