The Enemy Within

I did not care for this episode.

The first 23 minutes or so, and the last 10, were highly entertaining as Chill Kirk and Dick Kirk (as they appear in my notes) played a cat and mouse game of Concussed Kirk chasing Rapey Kirk, but the entire middle after capturing Asshole Kirk was duller than Alexander’s mek’leth.

Zing!

It felt like they had a solid plot in separating Kirk’s impulsive hothead side from his intelligent chill side, but then they needed to pad out half an hour.

There’s just not enough interesting material to pad it out. Sure, there’s the Spock/McCoy riffing science/heart, but once it’s established that these are two halves of one Kirk it’s BORING. I kept looking at the clock to see when they’d finally figure out the transporter crap and save the away team, whom I only care about because Sulu is down there and he proved to be a fun guy in the last episode.

What a card.

So without much interesting in the way of the plot’s concept, I’m left with the actions and attitudes of Drunk Kirk and Stoned Kirk (as they appear in my notes.)

This is your Kirk on meth.

This version of Kirk tried to rape Yeoman Rand, there’s no way around it. He didn’t succeed, but he assaulted her, and she was clearly traumatized by it, even willing to let it go almost! That poor woman. Let’s not also forget he physically assaulted Fisher afterwards. No wonder Janice leaves the ship, she probably couldn’t get over the man she moons over harboring an animalistic lust inside that gets brought out by a technological glitch. I’d have transferred the fuck off the Enterprise too, it was nothing special yet. 

Then there’s your Kirk on weed, who seems very relaxed and calm and supposedly embodies Kirk’s intelligence, yet all he does is kind of mosey around like he’s got a concussion, leaving Spock to solve all his problems. Did Harvey Weinstein Kirk get all the motivation for action as well? 

Topical!

For a few minutes I was wondering why not just beam the away team up, have a ton of security armed with stun set phasers in the transporter room, and drag a pile of stunned split-up crewmen to the sick bay to sort out later? Even toss a couple of red shirts in to test the re-fusion. 

I like to imagine Chill Sulu as a total gymbro going “No need to get me to sick bay, Mr. Spock, I’d prefer to head to the gym and get my protein shake on, do some reps, maybe fence a little with Riley” and Evil Sulu going “WHERE IS MY RAPIER AND LT. RILEY I’M GONNA TAKE HIM HOME AGAIN!”

He’s lucky he pulled his shit in the 23rd century, Picard cleaned out engineering after the D’s experience with restructured water molecules. 

Of course, that thought was vetoed when Evil Kirk started dying on everyone. 

Let’s talk about Wilson.

Wilson enters an empty transporter room and sees his captain acting weirdly before bailing and says nothing to anyone about it!

Nice Kirk tells Scotty not to leave the transporter room unattended, so I’m assuming that it’s protocol not to do so - Scotty screwed up a little, but Wilson enters the unattended room and see his captain acting strangely after an issue with the transporter! His boss isn’t there! He should have contacted SOMEONE!

I don’t even care to talk about the alien doggo, this episode was garbage and an example of bad TOS. Yeah, there’s Kirk’s little “I’ve seen a part of myself no man should ever see” at the end, Spock’s coy amusement after he says his bit to Rand, and some stuff about “you can’t let the crew sense weakness” but I’m out of anything positive to say about this episode.

Rating: 2/5; SKIP.

This is a totally nonessential episode that aged badly and drags throughout its entire middle.

The Naked Time

I found this episode highly enjoyable. 

We’ve seen Spock smile twice so far, we’ve seen him annoyed, but we haven’t seen him like this. Well, I guess that at episode 5 there really hasn’t been time. Spock goes from neutral, to focused, to irritated, to having had it up to here with everyone’s shit, to his emotional nature breaking through and breaking him down. It’s a great arc and without it this would not be that good of an episode.

Then again, there is Kirk’s bit about love. Kirk loves that ship like the wife he never had (almost married that blonde lab tech though), but not because it’d be against protocol to date his space-secretary - because the ship is the only thing that he can protect, that is there for him, day after day, and that he can die with if necessary. A female crewman love interest may die in an attack or on an away mission, be reassigned, or sent to an escape pod. The Enterprise is the only woman Kirk can love without the fear of losing her obstructing his duties, because preventing her destruction is his duty. 

It is these two arcs from TOS’ principal leads absolutely make the episode. 

Oh, wait, I’m sorry; Sulu going balls out camp makes the episode. “Joey just died? Well I know what’ll cheer us up - how about we go to the gym and get our fence on!” What a card. 

Now, here’s what’s sort of bothering me about TOS this time: Joey takes off his glove to itch his nose under the thermal environmental whatever suit, right? He doesn’t bother to put it back on right away! Don’t they teach these people anything at the Academy? Or in basic training for enlisted men? Spock reminds him after the fact - he shouldn’t have to!

Note the mannequin standing in for a dead, frozen body.

I noted that this is the first episode in which I believe EVERYONE is present; this is the first episode with Nurse Chapel, after all. Why didn’t the reboots have Rand and Chapel? Probably because JJ is a plebeian and a casual. 

Apparently she’s in love with Spock to boot. Her wig was awful, which is surprising. She gets drunk off the virus and stands around rubbing herself with a piece of medical equipment...I wondered if it...nevermind. Don’t go there, keep Star Trek clean.

QUIET, CADET!

I was wondering - why do they have to burn open the access panel for the engineering door controls? My theory: along with the analog controls and lack of view screens, this was a hold-over from the early wars of the Federation. The Romulans are probably dope at invasive malware; imagine reprogramming a ship to shut off all power to life support, jettison escape pods and shuttles, then turn into a giant drone that can terrorize enemy planets. That’s practically Cardassian now that I think of it...

Riley is going to eat shit over this. Joey is dead, and while Starfleet may understand the conditions, it clearly doesn’t file it under ‘important’ since it happens again 100 years later in The Naked Now, which I remember as being much, much less well done than The Naked Time. 

No, Mr. Riley is going to get thrown under the bus for nearly destroying the fucking ship! He shut off the engines! TO A STAR SHIP! He shut off the engines to a star ship orbiting a planet breaking up. If he appears after this, Starfleet either really needs crewmen or it is really understanding when it comes to space crazy - I like to consider the latter regardless of the hazards, because we’ve all done embarrassing things when we’re drunk. Still, the man deserves a court martial for subjecting the crew to intense psychological torture in the form of repeated renditions of ‘Kathleen’. I’ll take him home again - home to the penal colony in New Zealand. 

Btw, they invented time travel off the cuff by mixing matter and antimatter and kickstarting their engines. Maybe Riley gets off with a demerit because of that.

Misc.; 3D checkers! 

Personal Rating: 4/5; Don’t Skip.

This would be just another one of those wacky 60s Star Trek episodes if it weren’t for the profound reveal into Kirk and Spock’s characters in the last 15 minutes or so. In fact, it’s such a good episode I didn’t mind re-watching it to review it; I saw it a week or two ago but life has been happening pretty hard and I didn’t take notes. 

END.

Where No Man Has Gone Before

Where No Man Has Gone Before is my favorite episode of TOS so far in this viewing.

Because it was the second pilot commissioned, it was the second episode I watched (after The Cage, naturally) but I wanted to review it in the order it was aired, which is why I had to slog through The Man Trap and attempt to make a case for Charles Evans as a victim of abuse before I moved forward.

I really enjoyed this episode because it features Kirk at his finest: punching a god-like dick in the face.

I think a lot of people might call out Gary’s attitude towards Dr. Dehner as problematic, but I've got a few thoughts on that.

The guy has a bit too much of a navy attitude (in the words of Bert Cooper) to be serving aboard a deep space mission, but he's not an idiot; after all, third-optioning his way to pass Kirk's class at the Academy was a smart move and probably impressed Kirk enough to put him on the shortlist for the Enterprise - it was something I suspect Kirk admired, and he did almost marry that blonde lab technician (who is never named or gone into any depth - I'm going to say it's Carol Marcus because that's fun.) He's also revealed to have taken a poison dart for Kirk, so we know he's Starfleet material deep down. 

Where Kirk is the consummate professional, Mitch is still very much young, dumb, and full of cum - he lacks the discipline that Kirk has earned at his level of command, and the way he remembers Kirk at the Academy (a stack of books with legs) suggests he was one of those guys who puts more faith in his fists (and by extension, power) than he does scholarly knowledge (and by extension, wisdom.) One last thing - as far as I can tell, this is the Enterprise's first mission with Kirk at the helm, and therefore Gary's first posting, so him being a bit of a dickhead can be forgiven. Plus, you know, he’s only banting with Kelso because he got shot down.

Captain! We’re detecting large quantities of Gary’s bruised ego!

I have less to say about everyone else - Dr. Dehner is clearly fresh out of med school on her first space assignment, Sulu is the head of physics instead of a helmsman (let's say he transfers to command after this to fill Gary's vacated spot), the doctor isn't McCoy, Uhura and Rand aren't present, and the red shirts are beige (uniforms standard change effected when they pick up the rest of the crew.) You could say they’re just not seen, but I think it’s a Farpoint situation where the Enterprise is going to pick them up and Doc Grandpa is a temporary fill-in on his way to the Retirement Planet. 

So you know what happens; they hit the edge of the galaxy, crazy psychic energy, Gary becomes a dick, the engines shit out, and they make a desperate bid to ditch Mitch and gas up at the same time.

Yet another desert planet, but at least the matte painting is nice.

Seriously though, did Gene have something against deserts? In The Cage, the Mojave is a giant public park and all the shitty planets are deserts or mining operations. How you can live in SoCal and think the desert sucks is beyond me, I spent a few months in the Kaibab out in AZ and loved it. The desert calls to me (but I digress.)

There’s a lot more at stake here than in The Cage, and a little more than Charlie X; Gary is going to murder the crew and set himself up as a god. I keep thinking about Marc Antony in Egypt, because Gary is going to fuck his brains out, eat a bunch of rare animals, and ultimately get murdered by someone in a fit of arrogance. 

All things considered, I found this a much more interesting, exciting episode than The Cage; the characters have more charm, it feels like Kirk is actually making a tough decision putting his friend down, there’s a nobility in Dr. Dehner’s sacrifice, and I like a good old round of fisticuffs. I really hated those fringed collars, and Spock’s makeup was just awful.

But I’m intrigued by 3D chess. 

Personal Rating: 4/5; Don’t Skip

Where No Man Has Gone Before is an enjoyable TOS episode that establishes Kirk’s character fairly well in a way The Man Trap doesn’t and Charlie X doesn’t do very well. If you’re interested in watching TOS, start with this episode. 

END.

Charlie X: Teenage Asshole, or Victim of Abuse?

I like Charlie X  because an alienated 17-year-old boy who has been fostered by a reality-bending species is a fairly interesting antagonist to feature. Yes, it's another monster-of-the-week episode, but at least this one is presented as more than a dumb animal trying to survive only to be put down for being too dangerous. 

You may remember being 17. Being 17 was one of the worst years of my life; my hormones were on fire, my home life was awful, I was constantly torn between wanting to burn down a church (punk raaaawwwwk!), fuck everything that moved, serenade a beautiful woman, find something to believe in and crusade with, go on a month-long bender, write a book, build a house, join a cult, work on a ranch, run for public office...in short, I wanted to do everything right away right away and if I didn't do it soon I would never do it at all; this is what Billy Corgan meant about the urgency of now. 

Charlie is no doubt feeling that way, but he's also got reality warping powers, a raging hard-on, and he's on a ship full of people like him for the first time. Actually, this episode was a little like my first punk show. 

Punk rock!

I don't blame Charlie for the way he acted, because based on how insecure he was and the things he did to people who rejected him or he suspected were making fun of him, I came to the conclusion that Charlie had suffered abuse under the Thasians.

Goddamn energy dicks.

It's a bit cliche, but not untrue, that the abused go on to abuse others. Was Charlie using his powers creatively, or was he doing to people the things done to him as punishment? I go for the latter over the former. How many times had the Thasians lost their patience with Charlie and removed his face, or turned him into an iguana, or made him disappear completely? It took them a while to see that he was missing, so I'm thinking Charlie ran away - speaking from experience, it may have been the adventurous spirit of youth longing to join those like him, but it was also probably abuse. (Maybe I'm biased toward the abuse argument though.)

...and she can only sob.

The crew of the Enterprise did their best to be patient with Charlie, I'll give them that. Like so many foster parents charged with the care of an abused child, they simply didn't have the tools or expertise to deal with this sort of thing and managed as best they could. I'm sure if Charlie had been able to control himself (and what 17 year old victim of abuse can?), he would have found rehabilitation and constructive therapy at Earth Colony 5. I believe that even the young Federation would have a massive and effective mental health system in place for orphans abandoned on alien worlds and lone survivors of destroyed ships and colonies. (That's the kind of hopeful optimism for the future that Star Trek gives us.) 

How could the crew know that Charlie was anything more than an emotionally troubled teenager? As far as we know, they've encountered space orphans before and have shuttled them back to the proper facilities without any incident greater than a possible tantrum - but Charlie's tantrums remove voices and faces. They could not have known. 

I am not defending what he did, I'm trying to explore the reasoning behind his behavior. We usually charge teenage murderers as adults, after all, and Charlie murdered the crew of the Antares - the damning thing is he tried to pretend it wasn't a big deal, that it would have blown up anyways and justifies it by saying the crew of the ship were not nice to him. Well Charlie, my parents are bags of shit but I never murdered them, so that's a big no-no, son. 

Punk rawwwk!

In the end, the Enterprise simply cannot contain this terrible child and the Thasians come to the rescue, hitting a mild reset button (sorry, Antares) and taking back their ward.

And Charlie is terrified!

This was the most damning evidence of abuse to me, because Charlie does NOT want to go back! He wants to stay, because even though he's acting like a jackass, he's afraid of what the Thasians will do to him. Unfortunately, Charlie fucked up too badly to stay, like so many kids who fall through the cracks in the system...but then again, Charlie isn't some foster kid who broke a few streetlights; Charlie is too alien, too powerful to contain. In the end, Charlie is just too much for the Federation, much less the Enterprise, to effectively rehabilitate. It's sad, and Charlie is probably going to grow up and murder the Thasians before going on a rip-roaring rampage of revenge, but that's a story for another time (apparently Tim Russ thought it was one for his, but that's far beyond the horizon of this plain and simple blog for the time being.)

It's well earned to be honest.

Now that I've finished my novel on Charlie, I want to point out that this is the first example of how much of a raging badass Captain Kirk is. The man fearlessly confronted and stood up to Charlie even after being made aware of how dangerous the kid is. I used to wonder if Kirk being a badass was a meme, that it was 90% Shatner trying to hype up his character, but this alone puts him over Sisko in my opinion; Sisko punched Q, Kirk sent this reality warping kid to his room without supper.

He's just not great at being anyone's surrogate father. Riker could have probably shaped Charlie up pretty well, he's adept at telling aliens about sexual organs.

Pic related.

Of course, if anyone had the duty to shepherd Charlie through his hormonal reactions, it was McCoy. He's a doctor, damn it! And you get the feeling that he's Kirk's personal counselor (friendship notwithstanding), so why can't he sit Charlie down, give him a finger of whiskey (hey, it was the 60s, and if Mad Men taught me anything it's that lessons can be learned from a handsome professional with a bottle) and show him some diagrams accompanied with some colorful metaphors about birds and bees? 

I like Spock and Uhura a lot in this episode. As emotionally provocative as music is, I'm surprised it is practiced on Vulcan; perhaps this is a challenge for them, a meditative practice in keeping their emotions in check. Doesn't seem to be working very well for Spock, though...

The smile is a rare treat (Where No Man Has Gone Before and The Cage notwithstanding), even if it could probably be filed under early installment weirdness. On the other hand, Uhura's singing is something I hope that sticks around, though I don't recall it recurring much. It adds a bit of character to the space-telephone operator and already makes her more interesting than Hoshi "everything scares me and I'm going to cry" Sato. 

(I've basically seen all of Star Trek in some form up to this point, and I'm trying to keep future references to a minimum as I re-explore the canon and re-calibrate my understanding of events, plots, episodes, and characters.)

I guess that just leaves us with Yeoman Rand, who is present to be leered at and creeped on by Charlie. I get the sense that her and Uhura are friends, but not much else - she has good rapport with the bridge crew, and it's sad to know she'll unceremoniously disappear after a few episodes. If this were a TNG-era show she would have been an integral part; then again, she's already done more than most of the Discovery crew in 7 episodes (5 to be fair) so...quantity>quality? 

Personal Rating: 3/5, Don't Skip

It's not a great episode, but it's a watchable episode.

I don't recommend watching this before Where No Man Has Gone Before, since that second pilot has a different doctor in place of McCoy and it should be the first episode viewed. 

END.

The Man Trap

What can I say about The Man Trap? As an episode of Star Trek in context of the entire series, it's a less well done note in one of the melodies that makes Star Trek what it is. It's not bad, it's not good, and it's not exactly necessary.

I'm surprised this was chosen as the first episode to air over the second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before, because this was such a formulaic monster-of-the-week episode. Then again, it had a good old pew-pew laser fight, nice shots of the ship, a Spock-is-an-alien-lol moment, some crewman hijinks, a Rand appearance, a desert planet, some redshirt deaths...in short, all the ingredients are there for a solid TOS episode; it's just not a very interesting TOS episode.

These guys are the Beavis and Butt-Head of the Enterprise. 

The most interesting thing about this episode was the salt vampire. Dialogue alluded that it was part of the race that built the ruins Crater was investigating, but I wonder if they weren't what destroyed that civilization.

See, I know we humans require a minimum of sodium to survive (cats and dogs require significantly less from external sources, if any), and I would guess that these Salt Vampires (or M-113 Creature if you want to get technical) evolved on this planet where salt was readily available, likely in the form of salt water; the star got hotter or something happened to dry up the seas, but the creatures persisted (they probably weren't building rockets but the ruins are evidence of culture and society) on the residual salt pans and deposits left by the evaporated seas until the end, one sad, desperate creature driven by instinct.

Oh, except they're also psychic and can suck salt out of people's bodies...maybe sodium in this ecology like...carbs do in ours? I'm not a nutritionist, I just want to Watson up a history for this creature beyond "they did a vampire episode in space."

It is an effective vampire story, and from that angle I was able to enjoy it on its own merits. I spoke to some people and they put the creature itself in context; apparently this thing was scary as fuck back in 1966, and I suppose I can compare that to my own experience with The X-Files as a child - namely, a little monster named Flukey. 

The resemblance is somewhat uncanny

I felt like this episode may have been chosen as the first one because the characters were all there - Sulu, McCoy, Uhura, Kirk, Spock, Scotty, even Rand - all the characters one thinks of when they think about classical Star Trek. They're also more or less in their proper form; Uhura flirts aimlessly with Spock (who is visibly annoyed), McCoy is cantankerous, Kirk utters out a fortune cookie navel-gaze at the end, Rand is a secretary. Where No Man Has Gone Before had Spock smiling (and being a smart-ass, which is in character but he was a grinning jackass in that chess match), some old fart doctor, and no Uhura; Charlie X had Spock smiling as well, but I rather liked the coy smile he was giving Uhura as he strummed his lyre. 

I wonder what the Kelvin version of The Man Trap was like...

Finally, I can't help but wonder what a post-Devil in the Dark Kirk and Spock may have done with this creature; would they shoot it, or would they try to reason with it, offer it salt until they could get it to some sort of starbase or planet capable of supporting its needs? If they can make Pluto in less than 9 minutes, they can surely get mass quantities of salt for an alien. You know Picard would have had Worf and Data wrestle it to a replicator and start force-feeding it all the salt it could consume. 

Personal Rating: 2/5; skip.

It's not a terrible episode, but there's nothing here that other, later episodes don't do much better. I'd suggest finding the scene between Spock and Uhura on youtube, or watching only the scene simply because it's a good establishing moment for Spock. 

END. 

The Cage

"A person's strongest dreams are about what he can't do." 

I watched TOS for the first time earlier this year, and I loved it, yet I never bothered with The Cage because it's partly recycled in The Menagerie and to be frank, every time I tried I was bored to tears within the first ten or fifteen minutes.

Setting aside the aesthetic differences, the original pilot lays the foundation for a fairly standard episode of Star Trek. I'm not going to sit here and lay out the whole plot - that's what Memory Alpha is for. Instead, I'm going to talk about how it made me feel.

Having sat down for the entirety of the episode, I found that I did not care for The Cage - but there were things I did like and could even appreciate about the episode.

I liked Pike. Looking past the fact that he's uncertain of remaining in command (a very un-Trek attitude when contrasted against James "don't let them make you retire" Kirk and Jean-Luc "not planning on it" Picard), he's a pretty solid Starfleet officer. For the duration of his captivity by the  Talosians, Pike tries to use his wits and reason over violence to escape, only turning to the latter as a matter of last resort. That's standard Starfleet operating procedure if I know anything about it.

The man has a despairing loneliness about him and soulful eyes, but he lacks the swashbuckling charm of Jim Kirk, and I think Shatner's (and by extension Kirk's) charm is at least 60% of his performance and 5% of what makes TOS great. You won't get that from Pike.

The Talosians were assholes. They apparently nuked their planet, fled underground, then got into mental fantasies so intense and addictive they couldn't even maintain their facilities, then they go about luring aliens to their world in order to capture them and feed off their fantasies (and hopefully enslave, breed, and use to repair their infrastructure.)

They look like humans with oversized heads, but they don't know how to put Vina back together? She must have been a real lump of meat, but once they got her to a certain point, they should have realized "oh hey, she kind of looks like us but with hair!" and fixed her up.

I did read that in the original draft the Talosians were supposed to be crustaceans, and someone online posited that maybe they still were and the humanoid forms were also mental projections...in which case why did they not project straight humans? Whatever, it services the overall plot.

The point I'm trying to make is that the Talosians made their bed and now they have to lie in it - and I don't give a shit about that, but they picked the wrong species to try to enslave.

Dicks.

Other things I noted were the usual early installment weirdness things - like Spock ordering they engage hyperdrive, warp factor (7, presumably.) When they meet the (illusory) scientists, one officer excitedly talks about how the time barrier has been broken, which is some new development in the 18 years since the crash. There's some interesting, pre-streamline warp drive stuff here, like there's maybe some hard science going on with relativity and what not.

The show struck me as more 50s futurism than 60s; the bridge was very military looking, like if someone raised the ceiling on the NX-01 and replaced everything with office furniture from the 60s - I thought those tiny monitors were lamps. How the hell do they even read those things? The monitor is the size of an old Nokia flip phone!

It's interesting how Nimoy adopted Number One's logical demeanor and defined a race in the first season of TOS, but I didn't find her so logical as much as aloof and professional. She's not cold, she's working.

That kid by the elevator looked super uncomfortable the whole time.

Apparently Earth is all public parks surrounding major cities, according to the illusions. How quaint a future is that? Reminds me of some old article from a newspaper published in the early 1900s about how 100 years from then we'd pave over all the grass and drive non-essential animals to extinction...only Gene went the opposite way and people have pet horses and the Mojave Desert is completely terraformed. I guess that's fine, because most of the planets we visit in TOS are nice, dry American Southwest style deserts and studio back-lot wastelands.

Hot, dry; comfy. Can't beat the matte views. 

I bet kids would have loved seeing spooky aliens and ray guns on TV, cerebral or not - I've never seen Lost in Space, but I bet it's trash compared to the positively cerebral episode of television I saw in The Cage.

I found it incredibly humorous when Yeoman Smith asked the captain who was to have been Eve. That was a nice note of levity after a fairly dark and heavy episode.

It was a heavy episode. Star Trek history notes that NBC turned it down for being "too cerebral", and I can't say that I disagree. I don't know how audiences were back in the mid-60s, but if they're anything like audiences now then nobody tunes into TV to think, and I sure as hell didn't either. Many say the strength of Trek lies in its morality plays and the depth of subject material, but I believe that's a half-truth at best; there is always a large part of the audience tuning in for the alien TnA and pew-pew laser fights over "what is it to be a man?"

I'm not really ashamed to say I fall into the latter category sometimes; after all, I felt the second pilot (Where No Man Has Gone Before) was a much stronger episode for having gone almost straight into the action and ending in a physical confrontation. What can I say, I'm a man of my time.

I don't find Star Treks strengths to be in the morality play, although that certainly is a strength of the franchise it's not necessarily the foundation; that belongs to the interaction between characters and their development, and that's just not here - Where No Man Has Gone Before may be comparatively brainless, but it also has the tragedy of Kirk's friend becoming a callous god and Kirk having to put him down like a dog to save his crew. (THAT would have been a better movie than Into Darkness.)

Without the charm of the characters and interactions though, The Cage is sort of bog standard sci-fi.

Personal Rating: 3/5, skip.

While it's not necessarily a bad episode, it's a very boring episode and only a hardcore Trekkie (or an acolyte determined to watch all of Star Trek such as myself) should view it, and even then there is no real reason (other than perhaps hipster irony) to watch it more than once. 

END

NOTE: It's been a few days churning this out, editing information from my original post on reddit discussing it and trying not to sound like a raging plebeian. I'm a little backed up in reviews, but I'll try to push one out per day, maybe every few days as I continue to boldly go where millions have gone before. Right now I'm probably 20 minutes into The Enemy Within, with intention to finish by Thursday and have at least two more entries in my log posted by then.