A guest blog Mindless-Droid

This week’s Original Series Star Trek episode is Who Mourns for Adonais? You can watch the original version here http://www.startrek.com/watch_episode/kftsT0dA8PNh and the episode summary is here http://www.startrek.com/database_article/who-mourns-for-adonais

This is one of those episodes that was a mixed bag for me. The Enterprise encounters a powerful alien being claiming to be the god Apollo. The concept of the ancient Greek gods being aliens is an interesting one in sci-fi (but not on the history channel). There were some things I liked about this episode and some that I didn’t. I found that Scotty being head over heels for Lt. Palamas was a bit out of character. The plot line of Lt. Palamas and Apollo was another thing that I didn’t like that a Starfleet officer could just go gaga over some guy just seemed odd at least she realized her duty to the crew when she spurned Apollo. This was also very similar to Lt. McGivers falling for Khan in Space Seed. I liked the scenes of Spock rallying the crew to rescue the landing party. I also liked that Apollo’s power wasn’t some mystical force and was a form of advanced technology.

On to some Mindless thoughts

What is up with Scotty and isn’t Bones the busy body.

Although Trek was forward thinking the “She’ll find the right guy and leave the service” well at least Kirk didn’t want to lose an officer and Chekov doing the everything is from Russia thing I know the show was made during the height of the Cold War but they should have realized that the Soviet propaganda would be gone by the 23rd century.

Why do they take Lt. Palamas and Scotty on the landing party when Kirk had such misgivings about their relationship?

Was Chekov the fifth Beatle or Monkey with that hair and wouldn’t have made more sense to switch Chekov and Scotty’s roles in this episode.

Kirk calling Scotty a “Thistle head”

You can really notice it’s an indoor set when they are on the planet in this one.

I think this was the debut of Sulu’s scanner at the helm.

Why does Scotty keep attacking Apollo?

Nice touch at the end feeling sorry for Apollo.

This week the edits were mostly confined to two main scenes. The opening sequence was shortened somewhat which wasn’t that bad. The second major edit was of Spock rallying the crew trying to free the ship, part of Uhura trying to reestablish communications was left in but Lt Kyle being given orders to find a way to punch holes through the force field and Sulu’s attempts at locating Apollo’s power source were cut. This is one of those edits that just doesn’t make sense since this scene is important later in the episode as it explains how they reestablish communications and coordinate the attack on Apollo’s temple. They also cut a bit of dialogue when Chekov is making a very detailed report and going on and on McCoy comments that “Not the whole encyclopedia Chekov” “Spock’s contaminating this boy Jim”.

This week the re-mastered effects included a reimaging of the force field hand coming up from the planet while the Enterprise is in orbit and the hand itself was enhanced. With the new effects they also fixed an error in the original version. During the phaser attack in the original version the force field hand was left out since the crew only could punch holes through the field this was a mistake the re-mastered version fixed that by adding the hand back in and added the effect of the hand disappearing as the temple was destroyed.

That’s it for this week see you next week for The Changeling.