Our most recent Star Trek episode was “Journey to Babel,” in which the Enterprise ferries a number of Federation delegates to a meeting, with murder and other danger in the offing. How long had it been since I’d seen that particular episode? More than 40 years? Probably. In this case, it was worse than I remembered.
Sure, we’re talking about a weekly TV show slapped together and broadcast without a care about anything beyond a rerun or two. The wonder is that some of them are as good as they are.
Still, I feel like grousing. Sometimes you should run with that feeling.
How is it that Kirk didn’t know his first officer’s father was an important figure in the Vulcan government? What kind of personnel records does Starfleet keep?
There’s no kind of surveillance on the Enterprise. During this episode at least. Do I remember right that the ship’s computer can, on request, find the location of a specific person on the ship? So how come there’s no record of a murder committed in one of the corridors?
How could the suicide mission ship be fooled so easily by the Enterprise playing possum? Also: a suicide mission. Man, that’s Al-Qaeda-level devotion to a cause that really boils down to facilitating smuggling and arms dealing. Well, that’s alien psychology for you.
Why wasn’t the blue alien with faux antennae who attacked Kirk in shackles when they brought him to the bridge? Aside from his known murderous tendencies, as a rule aliens on the bridge have an unfortunate habit of taking over the ship or otherwise causing trouble.
What was the point of his attacking Kirk anyway? We got to see Kirk going mano-a-mano against a knife-carrying blue alien — guess that was the point.
In sick bay, Spock had something important to communicate to the captain, but McCoy rudely knocks him out instead of, you know, giving him a communicator —
Why didn’t Sarak seek treatment on Vulcan in the first place? Turns out it wasn’t a surprise medical condition (except to his wife) so he left on an important diplomatic mission knowing full well he could fall deathly ill in a place where treatment was no certain thing — where’s the logic in that?
When Spock has his dramatic confrontation with his mother, he goes on at length about needing to be in command right now, this very moment, something he’s manifestly not doing. Why wasn’t he on the bridge?
What’s the deal with Vulcan-human mating anyway? How could that possibly work, even within the not-very-consistent confines of the show?
I wanted to see more quarreling among the delegates. Kirk made a big deal about how they were at each other’s throats, but mostly they seemed pretty mellow at that cocktail party. The belligerent pig-men mixing it up with the gold-skinned dwarfs would have been a thing to see.
Not as full as the one on my street, but it had a few items, including a stack of booklets whose subject is Baha’i prayers. I took one for a look-see. In each are prayers for various occasions and situations, such as Aid and Assistance, Children, The Departed, Healing, Morning, Parents, Tests and Difficulties, and so on.
