This year I read 32 books, which in terms of sheer numbers is the worst book reading year I’ve had in BRFY history. In terms of pages it’s probably not quite as sorry since I read several very long tomes. But either way, it’s been a fairly weak year of reading, I’m sad to say. I didn’t read as much as usual and I didn’t love a lot of what I read.

I can cite a few logistical reasons. It was just a darn busy year. I changed jobs twice, which means I spent many evenings pouring over job listings and tweaking resumes and cover letters rather than sitting in my basement reading sci-fi books. (It all turned out fine, by the way. If I blogged more about real life sometimes instead of Star Trek this would probably be more clear. But I took a detour out of the library world last summer, which turned out to not really be what I’d hoped, then I had a good opportunity to go back into libraries, so I did. Quite happy with the new situation, thank you.) I also took a statistics class last summer which, while highly educational and interesting, was thoroughly brutal. It was everything I could do just to keep up with it. So, my reading time was hampered for a large portion of this year. I don’t know how this happens. I hate being busy. When will I be done being a grown-up? Most of this stuff is laaame.

What I did read was quite often very long. After looming on my bookshelf for years, I finally got around to Neal Stephenson’s gargantuan Baroque Cycle. I liked it fine. Naturally you’d want to like something 2700 pages long more, but there it is. I started Robert Caro’s The Power Broker some time ago, and read it for like forever and haven’t even finished it for this year. I tackled a bunch of thick nonfiction. Even the graphic novels I read this year took weeks.

Best of the year goes to an author, rather than an individual book. This was the year I finally read some Kurt Vonnegut, and man, I loved it. Cat’s Cradle was probably the best, but I also devoured Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions, and Mother Night and dug them all. One caveat: K says that she read a bunch of Vonnegut years ago and liked it all a lot, but the problem is that in retrospect, she can’t really remember what happens in each particular book. They’re all just Vonnegut stuff. I’ve read them all in just one year, and I kind of agree. But still! You can’t beat the return on investment. Recall my post on The Barbecue Zone. Similar principle. Very outstanding read, and incredibly fast and absorbing. I like Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace, but those dudes are out to destroy me. Vonnegut packs wonderful ideas into simple language like no one else. Planning on filling out my reading of him this year.

Other highlights:

• Read Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin trilogy. The first one is truly great sci-fi. The second and third really can’t live up to their predecessor but I was happy to have completed the set. I should also say that Spin is a great sci-fi book for non-sci-fi readers who are curious about the genre. It doesn’t have the typical sci-fi problem of being weak on characterization and it’s a terrific story.
• So remember how for years I was trying to read Hugo award winners? I read, uh, zero this year. (Well, I re-read a couple, but nothing new was crossed off the list.) I meant to knock out the two David Brin winners from the Uplift Saga, but I burned out on the second one, so that didn’t happen. This is actually a topic for a longer post. I came to some decisions about this ongoing project.
• Best nonfiction book I read was The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Makes you pretty much hate yourself for going to the grocery store, but there’s a lot that everyone needs to know in there.

Some goals for the upcoming year: Resume some Hugo reading. I’d like to get through more books in general for the variety, but frankly, I’m reading a huge one now and want to read several others soon. So we’ll see about that. Will this be the year of Gravity’s Rainbow? Maybe. Read a few of the things that have been unread on my bookshelf forever. Re-visit some Brian Aldiss. I used to love that guy but haven’t read anything of his for years. I’d also like to tackle some of those notable titles that I always hear about that pop up on lists like this. The ones I have read on there are terrific.

The complete list, favorites in bold, listed with date of completion:

1. Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut, 5/3/11
2. Asterios Polyp, David Mazzucchelli, 5/5/11
3. The Far Arena, Richard Ben Sapir, 5/23/11
4. Baseball Hacks, Joseph Adler, 5/24/11
5. The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan, 6/21/11
6. Quicksilver (Baroque Cycle #1), Neal Stephenson, 7/5/11
7. Round Ireland with a Fridge, Tony Hawks, 7/14/11
8. Fuzzy Nation, John Scalzi, 7/18/11
9. An Off Year, Claire Zulkey, 7/18/11
10. The Final Reflection, John M. Ford, 7/21/11
11. Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, Grant Naylor, 7/22/11
12. Web Analytics 2.0, Avinash Kaushik, 8/11/11
13. The Power of Positive Dog Training, Pat Miller, 9/8/11
14. The Other End of the Leash, Patricia B. McConnell, 9/13/11
15. Don’t Shoot the Dog!, Karen Pryor, 9/26/11
16. Studs Terkels’ Working: A Graphic Adaptation, Harvey Pekar, 9/28/11
17. Stranger Things Happen, Kelly Link, 10/8/11
18. Neutron Star, Larry Niven, 10/16/11
19. Ringworld, Larry Niven, 11/2/11
20. The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon, 11/11/11
21. The Confusion (Baroque Cycle #2), Neal Stephenson, 12/4/11
22. Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut, 12/8/11
23. Sundiver, David Brin, 12/19/11
24. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguri, 12/30/11
25. Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut, 1/2/12
26. You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried, Susannah Gora, 1/30/12
27. The System of the World (Baroque Cycle #3), Neal Stephenson, 2/23/12
28. Spin, Robert Charles Wilson, 3/2/12
29. Axis, Robert Charles Wilson, 3/12/12
30. Vortex, Robert Charles Wilson, 3/25/12
31. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, 4/2/12
32. Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut, 4/17/12

List is stashed here and on GoodReads (which has ratings and very occasional reviews)

“Yeah, Steve. I think it’s definitely panic time for Albert. Baseball may be a game of hot and cold, but even though he’s one of the greatest hitters ever, as he’s proven over years and years, he’s been cold for almost a whole month now. I say, start pounding that panic button like there’s no tomorrow. In fact, assume there isn’t. It’s definitely time for him to just completely lose his mind.

“Maybe he should try batting left-handed. He could bat from his knees, or sitting down. Or he could jump out of the batter’s box just as the pitcher throws. Maybe it would screw up the timing. I did that once in Little League and it worked. He might want to bribe the umpire–he does make a lot of money these days. He could also try not wearing his shirt when he bats. He’ll feel like he’s getting down to work.

“Another thought I had–I have a few ideas here–is that he could go up to the plate and just start crying. Maybe the pitcher would go easy on him. I think this one has some merit. I assume he’s pretty much crying night and day at this point, drinking heavily, calling ex-girlfriends, asking them if they think he might try a wider stance.

“He might actually want to to just pack it all in, actually. Quit, get divorced, move to Hungary. Or just like, go out into the desert, dig a hole, and live there for a few years. Nothing like some good desert hole time to clear your head or pick up a slow bat.”

“Thanks a lot, Nomar. Next I want to ask you if the Tigers’ recent losing streak should be the reason everyone in the organization begins their path down the long, dark road to suicide.”

14. Balance of Terror.

Trek tropes:

• Really nothing, but I’m going to lump Mr. Groom’s death into the ‘Anonymous redshirt killed’ category just because the death could not be less surprising

15. Shore Leave. Deeply flawed but thoroughly entertaining. This one starts off with a tremendously awkward scene where Kirk is fidgeting on account of a sore back. He’s also having a conversation with Spock, but he’s so twitchy that Yeoman Barrows dives right in and starts massaging him in his chair. Kirk doesn’t bat an eye but for some reason assumes Spock is doing the massaging. Why would ANYONE be doing the massaging, much less the coldly dispassionate Vulcan? I guess the idea is just to introduce Yeoman Barrows as a slightly less annoying Yeoman Rand, though only because that’s such an easy competition. We get to spend the rest of the episode rolling our eyes at this terrible character, whose highest dream is apparently to be dragged off by Don Juan while wearing Princess clothing. (We miss you, Helen Noel.) In her defense, all the characters have their deepest wishes become known, though, as the Enterprise visits a planet where every thought becomes reality. Sulu, as we already know from The Naked Time, is a warrior at heart who finds a loaded gun and battles a samurai. McCoy gets to go along with Yeoman Barrows’ princess fantasy, and he later materializes with a cabaret dancer on each arm. Kirk gets to whale on an old Academy nemesis, a character astoundingly Even More Irish than Lt. Riley. (I wonder why a show that made such strides towards racial equality let itself have so much fun insulting the Irish. Was this the socially acceptable outlet for ’60s white guys?) And seriously, their fight (actually their SECOND fight) might go on longer than the Rowdy Roddy Piper/Keith David fracas. Anyway, as a whole, “Shore Leave” is a wild one. It doesn’t really have a story so much as a bunch crazy bunch of stuff that happens until time’s up and the proprietor reveals himself and everyone has a good laugh. Killer Spock line: “To me it is quite illogical to run up and down on green grass using energy instead of saving it.” Overall: 4 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

• We make fun of the Irish because we love those drunken rabblerousers
• Even in interstellar space, the best way to resolve problems is with your fists
• Kirk meets up with an old flame
• Lighthearted banter to close episode

16. The Galileo Seven. It’s important to remember that Trek isn’t really a sci-fi show. It’s really just a western set in space. The plots and themes line up much better. I guess the Enterprise is like a traveling band of vigilantes or a law enforcement posse or something. U.S. Marshals? I risk overdoing this analogy. Anyway, they go about solving problems and righting injustices, whether it’s on the 19th century United States frontier or the edge of explored space, it’s the same deal, ‘cept with lasers. I believe this because unlike it’s later-generation brethren, science and logic are generally glossed over in favor of action. “The Galileo Seven” displays another symptom, its lousy treatment of nerds. Spock commands a small shuttle crew which ends up stranded on a dangerous world, and Spock finds himself in his first crisis of command. (Worth noting that the shuttle has a crew of seven–hence the episode title–which is like, the same number of regulars that seem to be needed to run the Enterprise. I’m always happy when we see more Federation working stiffs other than security guards.) Of course he wants to do all the logical things to get the shuttle operational again and save the most possible lives. But while his actions look good on paper, his dispassionate approach rubs the crew the wrong way, even to the point of mutiny. Of course, logic doesn’t really work when trying to control the actions of illogical humans (and caveman monsters, or whatever the heck the bad guys are in this one), and he just ends up pissing everyone off without really solving all the problems. It’s a well-written episode, genuinely suspenseful, and hits right at the logic/passion theme of the series, although the difference here is that for better or worse it picks a clear winner and really hammers it home. (The AV Club review nails it, calling the episode a “fixed fight”.) Generally these things are much more ambiguous. Not this time. Kirk’s human stubbornness totally pays off, completely glossing over his delay delivering medicine to a plague-ridden colony. Worth repeating: he dragged his feet delivering medicine to a diseased colony in favor of hoping a few members of his crew would somehow, against all odds, not be dead. Meanwhile Spock’s Vulcan logic gets thrown right back in his face. At the end, he even gets hounded by the entire bridge crew about showing some emotion, like the smartest but most socially inept kid in class. As a bonus, we learn later in the series that any emotional displays are deeply embarrassing to him. Kirk even defends Spock over the matter. So basically, we are seeing Spock get humiliated by a bunch of jocks. Nice. Killer Spock line: “It is more rational to sacrifice one life than six, doctor.” Bones: “I’m not talking about rationality.” Spock: “You might be wise to start. ” Overall: a very good episode tainted a bit by some logical flaws (that’s right, LOGICAL flaws) 4 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

• Anonymous redshirt yellowshirt killed (eh, close enough)
• Highly experimental plan with low probability of success somehow works anyway. Actually two of them! Although only one ends up working, I guess. Scotty wants to fly a shuttle using phaser batteries and Kirk wants to randomly beam down to a planet in hopes of landing near the stranded crew.
• Lighthearted banter to close episode

17. The Squire of Gothos. I feel like I’ve seen this episode a million times. The crew gets trapped by a brash but bored alien that demands entertainment and stimulation. Kirk feels like there’s some danger because he can’t quite know what the antagonist is capable of, but ultimately he just sort of stalls by appealing to the bad guy’s base nature. Eventually Kirk wins. Worse, the reveal here turns out to be the same thing they just pulled in The Corbomite Maneuver: the villain is but a child. I’m really bored by these kinds of episodes. This is a quintessential “Badger the alien until you get what you want.” Meanwhile, we are subjected to forty minutes of boasting and threats. On the other hand it DOES faithfully re-create the experience of getting trapped in a conversation you can’t escape from. Some highlights:

• At one point Spock sends some crew members to the planet, but says that neither he nor Scotty can be spared. What? Since when do essential crew NOT beam down to a planet?
• Once in a while I read something about stories that couldn’t have happened in the modern era of cell phone ubiquity. But in Star Trek, where they have communicators, they go dead or are jammed pretty much every episode. If Trek is any indication, I don’t think we’re going to lose drama in the future, even with cell phones. There is always an easy way to negate this problem.
• I like one line when Trelane gets mad and yells, “You’re all dead men!” Then, to Kirk, “You especially!” Especially…dead? Like, extra dead?

Killer Spock line: “I object to you. I object to intellect  without discipline. I object to power without constructive purpose.” Overall: I really couldn’t wait for this one to be over. It’s not bad like third-season bad, but, 2 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

• Badger alien until you get what you want
• Recent Earth history will always be relevant
• Lighthearted banter to close episode

1. Have K and I become hopelessly irredeemable beer snobs?
2. Can I honestly say I can tell the difference between a delicious and expensive top shelf craft brew and a traditional blue collar American macrobrew, or have I been marketed into a corner of self-delusion from which I can never escape?

The idea for the experiment came from a few places. First, we have long suspected we have gone overboard on the beer snobbishness. To the point that we have genuine fear not having enough disposable income to afford it. “What would we do?” This is a discussion we’ve had driving home from the grocery store more than once. If we only had one income, could we still have Dogfish Head or would we still have any dignified quality of life with only New Belgium? Second, we ended up with a couple of Sam Adams Boston Lagers in the fridge after we’d started out with a whole variety pack, which we invited people over to consume. Like a particularly well-adapted species of antelope, the plain janes survived the predatory hunting and consumption of all the more tempting offerings. And we wondered aloud how we would dispose of them. Because, when would we be compelled to drink something so gauche as the humblest variety of the largest craft brewery in the country. (See point number one, beer snobbery).  Third and finally, we have had great, great amusement at the commercials we see for national brands, like the one for Miller Lite or some such national brand winning a probably fictional award for being the best “American-style light lager.” Or whatever the heck Bud Light Platinum is supposed to be and for whom such a thing could possibly be intended.

So we would pit the Sam Adams, probably among the best of its kind, and another of its kind, against some of the mass-market varieties in a blind taste test. Here, I give you learning.

The Setup

We decided to bring in one more craft variety, settling on Bell’s Lager, to compete against a Budweiser and a Bud Light. The field of five was rounded out with a Yuengling. It would be a blind taste test, so we wouldn’t have any identifying information except color, scent, and taste.

Skip to the next section if you wish, as I will now geek out a little and painstakingly describe My System. Yes, I have a System for things like this and was excited to employ it. Here’s how it works:

• Everyone leaves the room but one volunteer, Person 1, who pours each drink into portions for each taster. The drinks get labeled A through E. Person 1 writes down which drink goes with which letter and pockets the information to keep it secret.
• Person 1 leaves the room, Person 2 enters.
• Person 2′s job is to encrypt the letters by randomly assigning numbers 1-5 to each letter. Person 2 writes down which number goes with each letter, and keeps that information secret, but labels the cups by number. Person 2 also has to bring the drinks out to the testing area so that Person 1 has no knowledge of their order.

I love this system. Person 1 knows which beer goes with what letter, but that information is encoded into the numbers. Person 2 knows which letters go with which numbers, but has no information about which drink was associated with each letter. At the end of testing, both keys are revealed to find out what’s what, and everyone can participate without anybody having to sacrifice delicious testing to be the organizer.

The Testing

We sampled the beers in order, together, discussing each, then ordered them from favorite to worst. K and I put them in the exact same order:

Number 4: The most complex and hoppy, and quite tasty. M rated this one lower, not being a fan of the stronger flavor.

Number 5: Similar to #4 and also very good, though a little less interesting to me. M rated this one the best.

Number 1: Definitely different than 4 & 5. Good, but certainly a different class than those better entries. Still drinkable and good. We liked the darker color and aroma. K and I had this one right in the middle, M put it second, above #4.

Number 3: A significant drop-off here. A creepy dandelion-yellow color that seems more and more wrong with time. Very little flavor at all, and entirely odorless.

Number 2: Also pretty bad. Really hard to tell 2 & 3 apart, but we arrived at a consensus that this one was slightly worse. I described it as “vaguely not water.”

The Reveal

We were sure that 4 & 5 would be Sam Adams and Bell’s, in some order. We were right, but the surprise was that 4, my favorite, was Sam Adams. I like Sam Adams, but assumed Bell’s would beat it out. Good job, Sam. Proof that a mass-market craft beer is doing a pretty swell job.

We assumed 3, the good but not great one, was Yuengling, and we were right about that. Yuengling is pretty distinctively good but not great. A good lesson here: Yuengling is exactly what you expect it to be.

1 & 2 were not surprisingly Bud & Bud Light. But again, a twist! Though they were really similar, we definitely felt like 3 was a bit better, and this turned out to be Bud Light. Budweiser was the weakest of this whole bunch. It’s not saying much for Bud Light, but interesting that it’s actually sort of better.

Lessons

First and foremost, my beer snobbery is real and authenticated. I understand craft beers are not for everyone. They can be really strong tasting (my Mom calls them “too yeasty” whenever we are home and having them) or just have a lot more alcohol. K noted a few times that macrobrews are for people to drink a lot of, for cheap. That’s fine. I generally don’t care for them, but I understand their purpose.

Second, yes we can tell the difference. That’s not a huge surprise but it’s good to have confirmation.

Third, taste tests are fun and beer is good.

Thank you for your time.

9. Dagger of the Mind.

Trek tropes:

• Kirk meets up with an old flame
• Spock displays Vulcan superpower never really seen again
• Invisible Space Powers

10. The Corbomite Maneuver. Certainly the best TV episode ever about a maneuver. But the ceiling has not been set all that high, so if you have other maneuver-based fiction, do not lose hope. Ultimately this episode is just weird. It was only the third one produced so they hadn’t really ironed everything out yet, maybe. Let’s start there. They spend a lot of time establishing some of the routines on the ship – we learn lots about Kirk’s physical health and his dietary needs, for example. This must have been before the producers realized that’s pretty boring. A salad is still a salad, even if you’re eating it in space and Kirk calls them “green leaves.” It’s also a classic Dangerous Encounter in Space episode. This time, they encounter a cube. Yes, a cube. Thought it does rotate and has its own music. (I love how when Spock pipes the video feed of it to Kirk’s quarters, he also gets to hear its music.) Then they destroy it. And a much bigger ship shows up to tell them it was his probe and now he thinks humans are terrible and is going to blow them up. Kirk pulls a brave gambit…a maneuver, if you will…and gets away. And learns the truth behind the aliens’ facade, which is Clint Howard as the creepiest child ever. I kind of felt like most of this show just didn’t really work. They tried to fit in a lot of character moments, but they seemed flat, save for the McCoy-Kirk stuff. The “Lt. Bailey can’t handle this stuff” was a bit of a dead end, to me. All that said, the episode certainly wasn’t boring. The Corbomite Maneuver is actually a pretty clever maneuver. And there’s a lot that’s memorable: the horribly fake-looking alien that we learn actually is horribly fake, Clint Howard’s frightening performance and offering of tranya, and the line, “You have ten Earth Periods, known as minutes…” (“We better make it sound science fictiony! Call them Earth Periods! But so it’s not confusing, note that they mean minutes, and not femtoseconds or decades.”) Killer Spock line: “[Adrenaline] sounds most inconvenient however. I’d consider having it removed.” Overall: 3 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

• Strange probe encountered in space
• Only Kirk can truly make command decisions

11/12. The Menagerie. Since it’s such an unusual entry I’m not really going to provide a full-on review of this one short of saying it might be the best clip show ever. Just a ridiculously clever re-use of the otherwise useless original pilot. It doesn’t actually have the best reputation but I totally dig it. Overall: 5 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

• Enemy allowed easy access to highly sensitive area of the ship
• In the future, computers are magic, but still make teletype sounds

13. The Conscience of the King. Another really good one. TOS season one is SO MUCH BETTER than season three. Man. Even the worst episode of these four is better than almost everything in that miserable final season. “The Conscience of the King” is a terrifically written and acted bit of Shakespeare homage. It got a little heavy-handed with the Shakespeare at the end just to remind us all that it was being really, really literary, but that can be forgiven with the more reasonable application everywhere else. Star Trek VI definitely owes some of itself to this one. I’ll be lazy and not bother developing any kind of theme for this one. Instead I’ll just point out some highlights:

• The Star Trek lounge music playing during the party season. It’s the Trek them, just lounged up. Awesome. I’ll also note that this is the second episode of the last three that I’d love to link to a clip of the music but the only Trek allowed on YouTube, apparently, is some annoying guy narrating short versions of the episodes.
• The first really top-notch Spock/McCoy “Humans rule/Vulcans drool” scene.
• Extremely Proud of His Irish Heritage Lt. Riley in an extremely rare secondary character re-appearance. Then he dies.
• The never-used-again call for “Double Red Alert”. OMG DANGER!!!!

Killer Spock line: None, but highly enjoyable facial expressions as he overhears Kirk hitting on Lenore. Overall: 5 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

• In the future, computers are magic, but still make teletype sounds
• Kirk hits it off with alien babe (let’s take a moment to clarify this doesn’t mean a woman of some weird gross space race, it just means, some girl who isn’t a part of the crew)
• We make fun of the Irish because we love those drunken rabblerousers
• Enemy allowed easy access to highly sensitive area of the ship

5. The Enemy Within.

Trek tropes:

• Shatner Showcase
• Enemy allowed easy access to highly sensitive area of the ship
• Highly experimental plan with low probability of success somehow works anyway

6. Mudd’s Women. Well, that last episode had some sexist overtones, hopefully this next one will have a more progressive attitude…aw, hell. TOS, for all your progressive views on race and multiculturalism and peace, you just really don’t know what to do with yourself in the realm of sexual equality. Sure, women can have real jobs on starships (not captain though!) if they’re into that sort of thing but otherwise they’re pretty cool with being sold as wives to miners on desolate wasteland planets. Somehow this episode has a pretty positive reputation, but I didn’t like it much. There’s one good sci-fi idea of a youth-preserving drug, but the direction they take it is very odd, and mostly I see this one as wasted potential. It should be kind of funny, but it isn’t. It should be kind of character-driven surrounding Mudd and the women, but it isn’t that either. Mudd is memorable but feels like he should be more of a lovable rapscallion (a la Cyrano Jones from “The Trouble With Tribbles”) but instead he’s just kind of a sleazebag. I think this is one that people can remember like The One Where They All Get Old or The One Where They Are 1920s Chicago Gangsters, where the fact that it’s memorable must mean it’s good, but that’s really not the case. I do like one bit of trivia about it–it was one of the very first episodes produced and was under consideration as the “second” pilot. But NBC postponed airing it because they were concerned about its central theme of (per Memory Alpha and Inside Star Trek) “selling women throughout the galaxy” and the guest stars being “an intergalactic pimp” and “three space hookers”. But by the sixth episode I guess that was fine. Killer Spock line: “I’m happy the affair is over. A most annoying emotional episode.” Overall: 2 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

• Kirk hits it off with alien babe
• “Doctor” McCoy admits he has no idea how Vulcan physiology works
• Lighthearted banter to close episode

7. What are Little Girls Made Of? Watching the third season before this one again gets weird because I’ve seen the main theme presented here before in “Requiem for Methuselah,” only it actually came much later in the series. I thought it was more or less fresh then, and stale now, but I’m backwards. I’m not really worried about spoilers here, so to get it out in the open, there’s a genius whose secret (!!!) is that all his companions are robots he built. Though it is handled differently. In “Methuselah” it’s a big reveal that the cute companion girl is a robot – only after Kirk is in love with her! Oh no! No man should be in love with a machine! Here, we learn what’s up really early on so Kirk can rhapsodize about human superiority over machines, etc., and then he smooches on the robot girl anyway retroactively undercutting every theme and plot point of both episodes. Well anyway, I liked “Methuselah” and I liked this episode. Both are fertile ground for Trek’s overarching theme of humans being totally the best life ever. This one had some extra humor, good pacing, and generally a well-told story, thought it had its wacky moments. For example, of all the sci-fi ways to make android copies of humans, surely having the human lay on a spinning table until the android is generated is the oddest. Maybe, like, angular momentum distills out one’s genetics, if it’s done right, or something. I also liked how the way to distinguish which of the Kirk copies was the real one was for the android girl to offer him a kiss. When turned down, she instantly knows she’s talking to a lifeless android (Real Kirk never turns down a kiss) and vaporizes it. I’ll note there was one major flaw in the whole scheme. Korby loves his whole android-building scheme because he claims you become immortal. Duplication isn’t immortality, guy. That’s great for my duplicate if it lives on forever, but it’s not like that does anything for me. A guy who was clever enough to make clones using a giant merry-go-round never thought of this? Killer Spock line: “Frankly I was rather dismayed by your use of the term ‘half-breed,’ Captain. You must admit it was an unsophisticated expression.” Overall: 4 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

• Anonymous redshirt killed
• Kirk hits it off with alien babe
• Computers can be buggered by logical traps
• The indomitable human spirit conquers all

8. Miri. I’m not really calling some of the common setups in Trek “tropes.” Even though they probably are. Here we have feral space kids. The last one we had androids. I think they’re more like themes, though. Especially in the sixties, maybe. Everyone was scared about creeping technology and the crazy younger generation. (Not like today! Those fears are totally in the past now!) And AGAIN, a recycled plot from the third season emerges. “Miri” parallels “And the Children Shall Lead.” This time I think the original is much better, as does most of the internet, I think. Though still, the whole idea of crazy space kids is never all that good. At least this time they have a leader in swell character actor Michael J. Pollard, and a pretty well-developed character in Miri. The show is very effective an conveying the crew’s frustration in trying to solve a medical mystery, under deadline, while also having to babysit. It really actually works quite well, and succeeds where ATCSL fails. I can’t find the exact quote or information anymore, but I recall from when I watched ATCSL that third-season producer Fred Freiberger thought his kid episode was good and “Miri” was terrible, and it gave me something to think about as I watched the two seasons. I’ve already ripped on Fred enough in third-season reviews, but man was he wrong, and man did he make some lousy Trek. Killer Spock line: “It could be a beakerful of death.” Overall: 4 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

• Anonymous redshirt killed No wait! They didn’t die! These were the luckiest redshirts ever, they avoided disease and killer children for weeks
• Badger alien until you get what you want

1. The Man Trap. I watched a lot of Trek growing up. And in my twenties and thirties I’ve periodically rediscovered the show, getting really excited and watching like four episodes before the feeling wore off and I forgot about it again. But the point is I’ve seen most or all of them by now, only sometimes it’s been a year, or twenty years, since my last viewing of a particular episode. When I was watching “The Man Trap” I had the distinct feeling I’d seen one where an alien looks like different people to different members of the crew. But it was probably, in fact, this episode. Or maybe it wasn’t, because if Trek has no qualms about recycling its plots. Anyway, like a lot of original Trek, it starts out with a really promising premise but just kind of ends up being a lot of running around and time fill. Though a marked improvement from what I’d grown accustomed to with Season 3 is that the characters are still being thoughtfully developed, so there’s some nice time devoted to getting to know them. Though this unfortunately includes a lot of Yeoman Rand, whose lone character trait is that she is supposed to be cute (and has an elaborate hairstyle modeled after a big woven basket). I don’t know how long she’s featured on the show but I know we’ll be glad when she’s gone. Killer Spock line: I have to confess it’s now been a month or so since I watched the show and I didn’t write anything down, so I’ll steal one from Memory Alpha: “Fortunately, my ancestors spawned in another ocean than yours did. My blood cells are quite different.” Overall: a decent episode though clearly a purposefully neutral start to the series. 3 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

• Anonymous redshirt killed. Actually lots of them. It was a tough episode on the ol’ redshirts.

2. Charlie X. Usually I watch these shows in a basement, where all good Trek watching is done in the world. But this episode was watched on a laptop with headphones. It might have contributed to my enjoyment of it. I remember it being sort of a weird episode, but it’s actually quite good. The ship takes aboard a suspiciously nice teenager named Charlie, and then weird things start going down. Of course Charlie is responsible, and eventually they figure out that he’s pretty much a space god or something and can imagine whatever he wants to happen to make it so. Downside is that means he can just vaporize people who tick him off. The production is really well done here, and quite tense. Kirk knows he has a huge disadvantage and really can’t stop Charlie in any way, except for the simple fact that Charlie respects him as a sort of father figure. So he has a manage a really fine line of being stern and compelling Charlie to not, you know, kill anyone else, but not without getting him all surly and teen-agey. Definitely works better than the show’s other attempts and scary godlike children. Killer Spock line: “Your illogical approach to chess does have its advantages.” Overall: good sci-fi and suspenseful. 4 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

• Badger alien until you get what you want
• Only Kirk can truly make command decisions
• Invisible Space Powers

3. Where No Man Has Gone Before. A weird one and kind of hard to review. It was the first episode produced after the pilot and there are characters and protocols we see only in this episode, and the pacing is really uneven. Also I watched it months ago at this point and took no notes. I’ll call it 3 out of 5 and move on because I can’t wait to get to the next one.

4. The Naked Time. Actually features no “naked time.” Though it’s not far off: it IS the one with Sulu’s famous crazed shirtless fencing spree around the Enterprise. That’s probably a good metaphor for it, in general. It’s insane and ludicrous but thoroughly entertaining. It’s a classic that shows the blueprint of what TOS would strive for throughout its run. Starting with the standard Trek plot. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: people beam down to a strange planet, and pick up some weird space disease, and pretty soon the whole crew’s got it and everyone acts crazy for a while. It’s even sillier here. Everyone on the planet is dead for unknown reasons and the landing party guy is apparently so unfazed by it that he doesn’t think twice about taking off his glove to scratch his nose and touch stuff around the base before putting it back on. They even make a show of decontaminating him when he gets back, though there is a stab at explanation for why that fails. When things start getting weird Spock theorizes it could be a new form of space madness (and as much as I loved THAT, it STILL wasn’t my favorite of the show) and later spouts another good line about how instruments can only scan for what they are designed to scan for (i.e., no as-yet-undiscovered space madnesses). We then have the standard Trek Act II of Sixties TV-Style Madness as everyone on the ship gets crazy while Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty stay normal and start to grasp the fix they’ve gotten into. Then, the standard Trek Act III of Glory as everything works out against all odds on account of either Kirk’s overwhelming charisma or some longshot science thing. And there’s even a doozy of a bonus here: they accidentally discover time travel!

No, really. All events considered, for all the Federation’s storied successes and history, they’d have to regard the incidents that took place on the Enterprise on Stardates 1704.2-.4 as a shamefully embarrassing example of failure to follow protocol, right up until the crew made one of the most amazing fortuitous discoveries in the history of civilization. Some Admiral somewhere had to have reviewed Kirk’s logs and thought someone was playing a joke on him as he tried to comprehend the chain of events that led to the Enterprise, again, accidentally discovering time travel. Because they do! Let’s review the ridiculous coincidences and breakdowns of Federation protocol:

1. Despite overwhelming evidence of contagious disease, member of landing party removes glove, immediately contracts new form of space madness.
2. Decontamination protocols fail to detect bug, so no one bothers to report crewman’s insane ranting. Majority of crew soon succumbs to disease.
3. One infected crew member infiltrates engineering, and despite being untrained as an engineer and suffering from space madness, manages to lock out all personnel and disable all ship systems.
4. Chief Engineer can only regain access by painstakingly cutting through an extraordinarily delicate circuit system with a phaser.
5. By this time, orbit and planetary conditions have deteriorated to the point that warp drive must be engaged immediately, but the engines require a 30-minute restart time, well past the point when the ship will be destroyed in the planetary atmosphere. Chief Engineer reports that they can attempt an experimental mix of matter and antimatter to cold-start the engines but there is only a 1-in-10,000 chance of success (the other 9,999 times, they can expect to be obliterated).
6. Captain and Engineer need Science Officer’s help finding the right formula, only they can’t immediately locate him. He is eventually found crying to himself in Briefing Room 2, as a result of space madness. Note that the Science Officer is a Vulcan. Science Officer pulls himself together enough in just a few minutes to develop an experimental antimatter formula to cold-start warp engines utilizing an obscure, untested theory of the relationship between antimatter and time.
7. Formula applied and engines engaged, the Enterprise escapes. They realize they are traveling backwards in time, though. Note that time travel has the side effect of producing a somewhat irritating noise.

Based on later Treks, Federation brass evidently decide not to change anything and to continue let crazy stuff go down going forward. We see this throughout the series. Engineering never becomes difficult to access. Diseases will continue to be brought aboard. I guess the goal is scientific discovery, and if that’s what it takes, so be it. Killer Spock line: “Take D’Artagnan here to sickbay.” Overall: Ridiculous Trek at its best. The only answer is 5 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

• Only Kirk can truly make command decisions
• We make fun of the Irish because we love those drunken rabblerousers
• “Doctor” McCoy admits he has no idea how Vulcan physiology works
• Invisible Space Powers
• Enemy allowed easy access to highly sensitive area of the ship
• Highly experimental plan with low probability of success somehow works anyway

Nevertheless I was playing blackjack and since it wasn’t real money the dealer was able to give us strategy tips. I got into a situation where I wasn’t sure what to do so he says, “According to Hoyle, you should take a card here.” So I took a card and naturally busted.

Today I am out to get this “Hoyle.”

Well, fact is this summer was a blur. I got a new job, a dog, we did some traveling. Mostly it was probably the job taking up a lot of mental space, though still, I don’t know where all my time went. Seriously. There were three months this summer, right? Like, the usual amount? I remember spending a lot of time mowing the lawn and sweating.

Guess I’ll fill in some details. Then, maybe three more months of silence? I dunno. The blog lives in a weird netherworld these days. Though I’m back to watching Trek again, so there’s that.

*Let’s get the puppy pictures out of the way first.

*Job blogging is generally not appropriate and often boring, so I won’t be doing that, but I will note that I’m doing something pretty new after several years as a librarian. I still liked being a librarian but had an opportunity to round out some experience with web analytics, programming, and statistics. And I was able to do it without moving and while getting a raise. So, yeah. It was the right thing to do for now.

*Seriously, if I’m not going to talk about my stupid projects on this blog I may as well not even have the thing, so: more on that Ticket to Ride thing I mentioned a while ago. I spent a bunch of time developing a new map for the game Ticket to Ride. They were running a contest for new designs, and winners scored $10K and they’d publish your map. Well, the deadline for them notifying winners came and went, and I barely mentioned it here because I was too busy sobbing in my basement. Recently they announced the winners. They’re pretty great, though in retrospect it seems like they probably had something specific in mind and I was pretty far outside the box. Come on though, Steampunk tie-ins! Clearly they made a terrible oversight here.

*I started out the summer with the intent to read Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. But I failed very, very miserably. Part of the failure was the general busy-ness and not having as much time to read. The other part was that I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I’d hoped, and it ended up being a bit of a trial to get through. I slogged through book one, then got pretty far into book two before putting it down for a while. I intermittently read some other things but I am grappling with whether I’ll actually even bother finishing. I love Neal Stephenson, but these haven’t really been doing it for me.

*I took a statistics class, which, come to think of it, was a major culprit in my loss of time. It cost me at least ten hours a week when I was already busy. All for education and self-improvement and professional development. Which sucks, because I could have played Metroid: Other M this summer instead.

Although not now. The last few months have been a little crazy with lots of goings-on and blogging has been pretty much the lowest priority. For now I offer only tantalizing* highlights:

• I get a new job
• I waste hours painstakingly developing a new Ticket to Ride map for a user design contest and lose…or did I????**
• I take a ridiculously intense summer class on statistics that might kill me***
• I undertake Neal Stephenson’s 2700-page Baroque Cycle, which will finish me off if stats class doesn’t

I’ll try to touch more on all of these in a bit later on when I have more than ten minutes to type stuff on the internet.

*Not really.
**Yep, sure did, barring some sort of ridiculously contrived miracle. (“Josh, this is the President of Days of Wonder. We just discovered your entry under a pile of Alan R. Moon’s laundry. You would not believe the number of frock coats we have had to deal with. Anyway, we are deeply sorry. You win double prize money for this oversight.”)
***I like it though! It’ll be really useful in the new gig. If I survive I’ll take more later.