Thursday, March 26, 2015

17 to 01: The Naked Time


In which everyone is bad at their jobs. They're just so bad at them.


Contains explicit language and explicit discussion of sex.

3 comments:

SkilTao said...

Basic competence and security, yeah... another ep where "lock the away team in isolation" would've solved a lot.

They eventually decide that this brand of Space Madness is carried by virulent water molecules, right? So what's with the red hand-seeking goo defying gravity in this first scene?

What I remember of the planets was like... if you had a tray of swirling clouds underneath a cutout circle, and you pulled the tray sideways so that, when the camera looks at the cutout circle, it looks kinda convincingly like a circular planet is rotating. (As long as you don't watch too closely.) I can't say for sure if this is from TOS or TAS or where I saw it, though; it's been so very long since I saw an unmodified ep of TOS. Also, I guess their visual effects aren't good enough to show the planet sloughing pieces off.

3D checkers in the break room! I am awed by how bored that girl is through the whole scene.

-All musketeers are required to train with muskets, rapiers and, of course, botany. His flourishes and the ease he switches to ladder-climbing grip makes me wish for more swashbuckling.
-I like that Uhura would've been exposed the same time Kirk was and she holds it together better. Kind of a pity that wasn't called out beyond their one neat exchange.
-How did a drunk Irishman trick Scotty (and the other duty personnel) out of the engine room?
-Mad painter what paints at midnight is not carrying any paint.
-Kinda wish "Yeoman Rand deals with bullshit" had gotten as much screentime as Sulu and the Irishman. I wonder if her scene with singing guy in the hallway is a vestige from a previous draft.

The AI that controls the doors also controls the mood lighting.

That is weird, that Spock has memorized the formula but they don't have it recorded on a computer tape somewhere.

Hah, the tailor! I never got that meta-joke before. Good on ya, DS9 writers.

I wonder if this foreboding time travel scene closes the episode just because "woooooo ominous space shit!" or if they already had a specific future episode they wanted to foreshadow.
-I figure the ship has both an on-board clock to track time while at Warp Speed, and an astrometric clock to calculate real time from celestial motion.

PS: Your link goes to last week's file.

VanVelding said...

Maybe the red stuff is an organism that carries the virus? It's not like red goo was growing all over the Enterprise, right?

I'd like a good source on the effects. I watched 1,000 documentaries on it as a kid, but now when I need it most, I can't remember any of it. Need to do more research. Def. picking up some of the books on Star Trek history whenever we reach the end of season one.

Showing Uhura reacting to the infection would've required that she be given more than 10s of screen time per episode. :-\

I...will just attribute Kevin Riley's skills to some weird Irish magic.

I'm always in favor of more Rand.

Yes on AI Director.

I was thinking of that while watching "Assignment: Earth." I like the idea of Star Trek going back and silently recording/investigating historical events.

There was a novel I haven't read called Killing Time where Romulans use it to go back and prevent the formation of The Federation. I like the theory that the slingshot is kind of a simple thing to do, but a society has to be ever so curious, intelligent, and scientific to do it; the only people who think of it are the ones that wouldn't use it irresponsibly.

Except the Romulans.

Thanks for the heads-up on the file. I couldn't even get it to play when I double-checked it. Everything should be good now.

SkilTao said...

I guess the decontamination worked, then. Kinda weird script-wise that it doesn't come up again even in passing, though. Maybe they didn't want to repeat the visual effects every time. (I've never tried to research Star Trek's visual effects; good luck.)

Leave it to the Federation to discover apocalyptic physics, and then use it to settle bar bets between historians.