#the squire of gothos | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

je-brille-dans-la-nuit · 3 months

Text

Watching TOS: back to fun & Spirk

The Galileo Seven: loved it!

Much tension very drama

Really liked the difficulties of Spock in command. I thought it was interesting to see him in such a tense context on an inhospitable planet. He's not the leader Jim is, but it's clear the men's behavior also come from them being prejudiced against him bc of his Vulcan nature

Spock still analyzing while they're being attacked is hilarious

This exchange i cackled

SCOTT: Mister Spock, you said a while ago that there were always alternatives. SPOCK: Did l? I may have been mistaken. MCCOY: Well, at least I lived long enough to hear that.

"No one out there to see it" Except!! Of course the Enterprise is still here!!

"Captain, transporter room just beamed up five persons. Alive and well." The relief on Jim's face is not his usual big smile and it gets to me

The whole ending scene had me clutching my heart I loved it okay! The happy ending we deserve!

Jim "You mean you reasoned that it was time for an emotional outburst" all the while leaning way closer than is necessary!!

KIRK: Mister Spock, you're a stubborn man. SPOCK: Yes, sir. EVERYONE LAUGHING ♥

The Squire of Gothos

It's fun!

Jim is good at handling people!

SPOCK: I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline. I object to power without constructive purpose.

Spock being his little shit self gives me life. Besides, when he says that, we have a close-up on Jim smiling lovingly! This only happens when Spock speaks! This is on purpose! I see you!

The fact that Trelane, to get Jim to do what he wants, threatens Spock of all crewmembers. I mean.

The ending was funny!

Arena

"Nevermind about me, protect my ship" smh

Spock calling him 'Jim' instead of 'captain' or 'sir' when he's trying hard to get through to him, to make him listen

The sounds the Gorn makes were really getting on my nerves argh

Spock's live-comment ("Good. Good") on the fight

I liked the message of the episode! Hopeful ending! He wins by being merciful!

Jim you could just tell Spock he was right about not killing them

Tomorrow is yesterday

Not bad but pretty unremarkable except for:

CHRISTOPHER: I never have believed in little green men. SPOCK: Neither have I.

krrkrrkrr

Jim playing dumb in front of the soldiers was hilarious

What was that? What was what?

Believe me, Colonel, you wouldn't believe me

Court martial

I liked it enough, although it's a pity it's never really about what Jim may have done wrong. As viewers we never doubt he didn't do it.

Look, I'm an easy girl, it doesn't take much to make me happy and Spock saying

It is impossible for Captain Kirk to act out of malice or panic. It is not in his nature.

is enough for me. That and Spock and Bones working together to save Kirk's ass, again.

JIM: And nothing is more important than my ship.

He means Spirk right?

Who knows? You may be able to beat your next captain at chess.

Cute

#Star Trek #Star Trek TOS #watching TOS #i love them #the Galileo Seven #is in my top 5 I think #Court Martial #Tomorrow is yesterday #The squire of Gothos #Arena

16 notes · View notes

sshbpodcast · 7 months

Text

Character Spotlight: Nyota Uhura

By Ames

All channels open! We hope you’ve been enjoying our character-by-character spotlight series here on A Star to Steer Her By, because we’ve got a ways to go! This week, we’re shining the spotlight on the OG Enterprise’s communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura, whose mere presence on the bridge did more than people give credit for. I talked about this a bit when I covered Nichelle Nichols’s autobiography, but everything she did as a prominent Black woman character on this show was progressive, boldly representative, and kickass.

While we wish her character got more to do (that’s the understatement of the year), she also got some absolutely triumphant moments, and also a handful of moments that could have been handled better. So join us as we celebrate Nyota Uhura as you scroll on below or listen to the banter on this week’s podcast episode (coverage starts at 1:19:26). We hope you brought your dancin’ fronds.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best Moments

Sorry, neither I’d say you can’t get much more badass than this, but I also know what else is on this list. When Sulu is swashbuckling around and wants to rescue the “fair maiden” in “The Naked Time,” Uhura’s response of “sorry, neither” drops so many mics it blows out the speaker. And Nichelle adding the line herself, especially this early in the series, is nothing short of awesome.

Now that’s what I call music, stardate 2126.1 This is just a fluffy moment from “The Squire of Gothos,” but when Uhura starts playing the harpsichord per Trelane’s request and she seemingly magically knows how, it’s super adorable. Watching the pleased look on her face as she rocks out on an unfamiliar instrument is a fun moment from a fun episode, even if Trelane did address her pretty tactlessly first.

I can think no one better equipped to handle it Throughout The Original Series, we see background characters sliding into other roles when needed, and we’ve seen Uhura or Rand at the front stations before for sure. But when Scotty’s away in “Who Mourns for Adonais?” and Uhura hops into a technician’s uniform to rig up a subspace bypass circuit AND get commended by Spock, it’s clear she knows her stuff!

The game has rules Uhura really gets to shine in “Mirror Mirror,” so much so it’s on this list twice. Even though she’s dropped into the deep end, Uhura adapts to the situation, blends in with the mirror crew enough to enact a plan, and uses mirror Sulu’s obvious lechery as a weapon against him in an act so convincing she has him eating out of the palm of her hand!

There’s not enough room on this pad for the both of us Later in “Mirror Mirror,” Uhura straight up overpowers Marlena Moreau, yoinking a phaser out of her hands and cooling off a tense situation in which the captain’s woman was demanding that she go with them back to the good (or at least better) universe. Sorry, toots, there’s only room for one femme fatale on this ship, and she just handed you your own ass.

Only the sweetest creature known to man Could you blame Uhura for naively succumbing to the cuteness of tribbles and bringing one aboard? I mean, you could, but you’d be wrong because Uhura’s inclination in “The Trouble with Tribbles” to accept the tribble as a gift from Cyrano Jones and to share her offspring with the crew comes from a place of generosity and kindness, and I’ll not hear otherwise.

It is not allowed to refuse selection Sorry for the whiplash because we’re going from a fun episode about tribbles, to watching a Black woman having to fight off a rapist in “The Gamesters of Triskelion” (this is what happens when I order lists chronologically). It’s an uncomfortable scene and you have to listen to Uhura brutally screaming offscreen and watch her battle off a giant brute in shadow, but holy shit, she beats him back.

The future feminists want Somehow, it takes until The Animated Series to finally see women in control of the Enterprise. We give so much kudos to Uhura and Nurse Chapel in “The Lorelei Signal” for showing that each and every one of them is capable of commanding the ship, rescuing the men, and saving the day, all while having to wear those really unfortunate skirts that don’t even cover their asses.

Fool! Human females are intelligent “The Slaver Weapon” is a fascinating episode because it doesn’t feature Kirk at all, giving other characters a chance to shine. We already covered that Sulu becomes the champion of the episode by virtue of being neither a female or a vegetarian (both shunned in Kzinti culture), but Uhura does get some moments herself, like when she escapes their police web, if only briefly.

Get in the closet What might be Uhura’s best highlight comes in The Search for Spock, because movies have more time for secondary characters to do stuff. So when Uhura locks Mr. Adventure in the closet, it is a triumph for her character. Not only does it help her and the crew save the day, but this guy was being a prick to her about her job assignment, and she shuts him the hell up. Hell yes.

Shakespeare is better in the original cetacean Spock may have figured out that the probe in The Voyage Home was trying to communicate with Earth’s whales, but Uhura is the one to clean up the probe’s signal to hear what it would sound like somewhere in the ocean underwater. How does one even know how to do that? Do they train all communication officers how to translate messages in and out of whale song?

I’ve always wanted to play to a captive audience Speaking of singing, there’s more singing to talk about (though some of that will come in the next section). Last on the highlight reel is Uhura singing “The Moon’s a Window to Heaven” and using her fan dance in The Final Frontier to distract a bunch of natives while the others steal their horses. Is it also a little cringey and sexist? Probably, but look at her go! As you’ll see, it’s also one of few instances in TOS that her singing didn’t end in calamity…

—

Worst Moments

Oh, on the Starship Enterprise, there’s someone who’s in Satan’s guise In contrast to recent episodes of Strange New Worlds, bad things always happen to Uhura whenever she sings in The Original Series. Her mocking songs about Spock and Charlie in “Charlie X” make Charlie jealous and perhaps a bit offended (rightly so; it’s hella rude of her!), so he takes her voice from her. And to add insult to injury, no one in the mess hall even notices!

Does she not have object permanence? This small moment always bugged me. In “Arena,” after the Metron have boinged Kirk down to the planet to fight the Gorn, Uhura lets out a piercing scream. It’s always struck me as out of place and out of character for someone who’s usually so level headed and cool as a cucumber to go ballistic over an action the Metron literally just told you they were about to do. Overreact much?

I'm sorry, Captain, I can't do that Okay, she may have been under the influence of mind-altering spores, but it still hurts a little to see Uhura sabotage the communications system in “This Side of Paradise.” And since we haven’t given other characters a pass when they were possessed by things or mirror universe equivalents of themselves or are just pod people, we’re going to do the same here.

No singing on the bridge Yet again, Uhura is singing and something bad happens! It’s like she didn’t learn from the “Charlie X” incident. The instance in “The Changeling” is particularly horrifying though because Nomad finds her singing illogical and wipes Uhura’s memories. All of them! And we’re left for the rest of the whole series to wonder if she was able to get them back and still be herself!!

Immortality and eternal beauty Every so often we get glimpses of Uhura’s vanity as well, which is probably just a little bit of latent misogyny on the parts of the writers. We certainly see Uhura almost get tempted by Harry Mudd in “I, Mudd” when he offers to put her in one of the robo-bodies of his androids and keep her young and beautiful. Lucky for us, she uses this offer to her advantage to turn the tables on the robots instead.

It’s not the sun up in the sky It was bad enough for us that “Bread and Circuses” focuses on another parallel-development planet. But Uhura revealing that the denizens aren’t sun worshippers but followers of the Son of God just makes us groan out loud. Not only did this planet somehow develop one of the same religions as Earth (the one that matters to the producers, for those keeping track), but it’s revealed in a terrible pun. Groan.

I see my death! Here’s another strange moment in which Uhura comes across as vain. Like Sulu’s hallucinating knives in space, Uhura suddenly sees herself as an old woman in her reflection in “And the Children Shall Lead.” Gorgan finds the one thing in her mind that would freak her out, and that’s getting old and wrinkly and infirm. Maybe she should have taken one of those android bodies after all.

I would hear your voice and my fears would fade As much as it’s extolled for featuring one of the first interracial kisses on television, the Uhura-Kirk scene in “Plato’s Stepchildren” is not okay. For one thing, it is nonconsensual as hell and played to be unwanted from both parties, but Uhura’s finding comfort in memories of the captain’s leadership gives the impression that she has found a way to get through it by rationalizing that it’s okay. It is seriously not. And it makes what could be a progressive moment in history into something gross.

We’ve learned not to fear words The writers of TOS had some outdated ideas about the utopian future. When Lincoln calls Uhura “a charming negress” in “The Savage Curtain,” for instance, and then apologizes because of how belittling a term that was in his time (and for viewers of the show), Uhura shrugs it off as if, because so much time has passed, the intention in old Abe’s words are just erased. It’s complicated and there are much better ways this scene could have gone than clean-slating centuries of history and context, is what I’m saying.

I refer to the sky machine which enslaves you Oh boy, here’s another complicated moment for Uhura that could have been handled better. The Shore Leave computer in “Once Upon a Planet” has kidnapped Uhura, spends a while explaining slavery to her (of all people!), and then only listens to reason when Kirk and Spock show up to save her. Come on! Uhura was in prime position to save herself, but the two white men have to bring us home?

Feelings we’ve always been afraid to express Sorry, shippers, but whatever the hell is happening between Uhura and Scotty in The Final Frontier just comes across as weird and forced to me. When Uhura is under Sybok’s influence and starts coming on to Scotty, I just find it uncomfortable, and I give Scotty credit for his line “I don't think I could take it in my present condition. ...Or yours.” Otherwise it’d just get gross.

Dujvetlh 'oH nuq? rIn. Finally, and absolutely the worst of all, Uhura is made to look absolutely incompetent at her job in The Undiscovered Country. How, after all these years, does your communications officer seem to not know a damn word of Klingon? In what was meant to be a comic scene of the crew flipping through dictionaries in a panic, Uhura simply makes a fool of herself. In this final movie, it brings a character we loved down a couple pegs and that’s a crying shame.

—

Signal lost, folks. That’s it for this week, but we’ve still got some The Original Series characters to give their moments in the sun, so keep your eyes here. You can also battle with us through season one of Enterprise in our watchthrough over on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast, hail us on Facebook and Twitter, and maybe don’t sing in front of lifeforms we pick up in space.

8 notes · View notes