Five Less Than Great Spock Moments from Star Trek

I love Spock, who doesn’t? Leonard Nimoy was just about perfect playing this character and what he gave us will live forever. Spock is awesome, in every single scene he is in and every single line of dialogue he says.


Or, is he? I mean I love Spock as much as everyone else but that doesn’t mean there aren’t times when his smug attitude doesn’t get annoying, or he does something that’s, well, illogical!  Now some things seem silly but we get what’s going on so we forgive it. For instance, we have no idea what Spock is exactly doing to save the ship at the end of TWOK, but it works so we let it go. In “Galileo Seven” jettisoning the fuel seems so out of character that it would ruin the episode..except the episode goes out of its way to give Spock an “out” at the end so that it makes “logical” sense. In “That Side of Paradise” he is waayyy out of character, but we blame that on those darn spores. His whining when he mind melds with the Horta in “Devil in the Dark” is goofy out of context but it makes sense from the Horta’s point of view. He acts silly in “I, Mudd” but that is just following orders. And in “Plato’s Stepchildre” he does some truly crazy things, but he’s under mind control and it’s dealt with in the episode.




Here are five Spock moments that are not explained away, they’re just silly or annoying.




Spock explains what amusement parks are to Kirk

Ok this is a small one I suppose and maybe it’s just me. The point of having Spock explain something is so that either audience or the characters will understand what is going on. Ok, fine. But in the episode “Shore Leave” he does it at a stupid moment. At the end the caretaker is trying to explain that the planet provides experiences (see the episode long story) that were intended to amuse them all by giving their fantasies reality. But it’s all fake. Spock then sums it up by saying the term is “amusement park”. He then turns to Kirk and explains that amusement park is an old Earth term for a place humans would got to see and do fascinating things. Uh, you know Kirk is human right? I really can’t believe Kirk has never heard of amusement parks. Sure in the 23rd century they would be different, but if Kirk knows what trick or treating is I’m sure he’s heard of an amusement park! It’s a small one but that still bugs me. Why even have Spock say that at all? Did they really think the audience were going to be confused by that term? It would have worked better to have given Kirk the line and Spock be confused by it. It’s like in TNG when Data would be confused by things he should understand for a cheap gag. This isn’t even that! And finally, the word amusement park doesn’t even make sense here really. Why not a carnival? Or a circus? All in all, that line was just stupid.

My Top 10 Biggest Blunders from My Last 300+ Blogs

Been almost three years since I tried one of these, because thankfully after my last biggest blunders list I stopped making mistakes and have been perfect.


Yeah, sure.

Truth is I haven’t done one of these in awhile. The last two times I did these it was because my #1 was something I felt I really needed to address. Since then nothing has seemed that big a deal…but something has come up which I feel I  need to clear the air about. But we’ll get to that when we get to that. The last one I did was shortly after my 300th blog. A few weeks ago I had my 600th, so these will cover the articles from late 2013 to the present day. And for the most part come from comments left after the blog posted.



10.Don’t Say Awful if you don’t mean Awful
In my article covering prime time cartoons inspired by The Simpsons, I titled it as “Awful” prime time cartoons. That would be fine except the article became a general overview of shows, good and bad. I cited Dilbert and The Clerks as examples, and those were pretty good. I changed the title but not after getting some flack.




9.First Contact not Nemesis!!!
Yeah this one is small but it hurt. In an article on Time Travel in Star Trek I talked about the movie First Contact. But somehow I labeled the movie as Star Trek-Nemsis. Yeah a minor one but I should have caught that.

A Look at Supergirl-Season 1

Well since the CBS series Supergirl has wrapped up I guess this would be a good time to go over my thoughts on the series. Last year when I did this for The Flash the article was a tad….to long. So I will try to keep this short and sweet, and list only five things I liked and did not like versus fifteen endless categories. But there were will be spoilers, sorry it’s hard to talk about the series as a whole without them.








Before I do that let just let me generally say if I liked the show. To be honest, I did not ar first. The pilot looked pretty cool, and I didn’t mind the tweaks to the character;s backstory (they repeat it at the start of every episode if you don’t know it). But then I was disappointed. It looked like they were just going for a copy of what the (same creators) had done over on Flash. I dropped it for a couple weeks. But then I came back when I found out about Martian Manhunter. Why the creators used the name Hank Henshaw I will never know, even a casual Superman fan should know that name. But the series got better and I enjoyed watching it. The bizarro episode was real good, the black mercy episode was a great re-telling of one of my favorite Superman stories by Alan Moore, and the red kryptonite episode was just fantastic.




1.Supergirl

Well, duh. But to be fair it could have been a bad casting choice. Instead, Melissa Benoist is simply perfect as Supergirl. She is strong and tough when she needs to be and is cute and adorable when she needs to be. Her Supergirl kicks major ass, and she isn’t bad as the alter ego Kara either. Even when she was evil because of red kryptonite she sold every scene..including the end when she was normal again and had to accept what she had done. Nice scene.

Underrated Trek-Allegiance (TNG)

Welcome back to Underrated Trek, where I take a special look at Star Trek episodes that I love…which may not be the most popular or even liked by most. Today I wanted to look at an episode I always loved, even though it seems to fly under most people’s radar’s. It seems like these underrated episodes follow two categories, just bad episodes I like for some reason. Or like today’s, a filler episode meant to save money that didn’t have the most effort put into it…but it’s not god awful. This is….

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Of course just because I really like it doesn’t mean it’s perfect……

Ten Craziest Superman Comic Team-Up’s Ever

 

I talked a few weeks ago about all of the times Superman has teamed up with Batman. But of course, Superman has teamed up with many other heroes. In fact one of the first books I loved was DC Comics Presents which was exclusively Superman team-ups. And that was followed up by a brief time when Action Comics became a team-up book. From Green Lantern to Hawkman to Wonder Woman, these team-ups were great!

But then you got the odd one’s, that make no  sense whatsoever. You know, The Metal Men, the Legion of Substitute Heroes, The Joker…Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew????  These team-up’s that make no sense but they exist anyway. Sometimes they’re pretty good….and sometimes not so much.



Here are ten superman team-up’s which make you say “Huh??”



10.Superman meets Jerry Lewis

I love the silver age. No I don’t, it was stupid. But one of the many real life Superman met in comics was Jerry Lewis. Yeah he has his own comic book back in the day..and no I don’t get it either. He also met Pat Boone and Orson Wells in these very strange times.




9.Supeman vs Spider-Man

The thing that always struck me as funny with this one is that Superman has like thrifty years on Spider-Man. But I guess he was the most popular at the time so this crossover made sense. And to be honest, it’s a damn good one. They both feel in character, the interactions work, and the scope of the book is very big. My one complaint is the plot is rehash, you can find the same exact plot done in better in DC Comics Presents Annual #1, but to see these two heroes who should never be together actually be together…it’s worth it. I mean c’mon, Lois Lane and Mary Jane Watson kidnapped in the same story? How can that possibly fail!

Oh and yes there was a second team-up but while the first was big, epic, and exciting the second was bloated, slow, and really boring.

Top 10 Favorite Actors/Actress’s with Expressive Eyes

Being an actor is not an easy job, they need to make us believe they are feeling what they are feeling. Most do this by being able to say dialogue in a way that sounds real and sincere. But there are some talented enough to go beyond that, and can do this same thing with no words at all. They have the ability to make their eyes do the acting, whether it’s to convey an emotion or just get us to laugh.



Here are my ten favorite examples of actors that let their eyes do the talking…


#10.Bob Hope

While I’ll be fair and say that Bob Hope was never big on conveying drama, his eyes do manage to say a lot. Sometimes that he knew he was being a wiseass, sometimes it was to indicate and attraction to some girl, and when another comedian got the better of him with a joke Hope’s reactions always seemed natural..and annoyed!



#9,Gilda Radner

I feel sad that she died before I could really appreciate how awesome she was. But of course she will always live on in clips from classic SNL. She was another one who made you believe what she was doing because her eyes believed everything she said. Yes of course she was a fantastic physical comedienne too but love those eyes, they way they looked so big when she said “Never Mind” as Emily Litella was a guaranteed laugh.

Ten Earworms From Cartoons That Will Never Go Away!!

Remember about a month ago I talked about those songs or jingles that crawl into your head and stay there..even if they’re incredibly annoying or stupid? Cartoons are really guilty of this. In fact on my list last time I mentioned the Ducktales theme, which will never leave!

Here it is again if you forgot..

Aren’t I a wiseass?



Yep, cartoons are prime for ear worms. Of course this makes perfect sense, with kids attention spans being as brief as they are you need something quick and catchy that they will remember. Sometimes it’s the theme song, sometimes it’s a song in one of the episodes, and sometimes it isn’t a song at all but a piece of music that is just so…awesome!! Either way, cartoons always find a way to make them unforgettable.


Here now are ten earworms from children’s cartoons that never left my head…sadly.



The Brady Kids Opening
Yeah I hated this cartoon. Actually I hate any cartoon based on a sitcom, it just gets stupid and I guess my imagination just can’t go that far (Happy Days gang in a time machine? Ugh). But even though I hated the show, the theme song is one that I can never forget it. It’s a good tune (since it’s sung by the kids it has a quasi professional tone to it) and does sum up this stupid, stupid show pretty well.

A Look at Star Trek Novels & Books

We’ve talked a lot about Star Trek in TV, movies, and animated form. But the truth is Star Trek has deep roots in other media as well. There are dozens of Star Trek comic books out there, even though I only really read the DC run other companies from Marvel to Gold Key have carried the license at various times. And then there are video games, toys, and all kinds of other stuff. But the big one after the TV shows and movies has to be the Star Trek Novels and books. While not nearly as big as it was used to be, there was a time when Pocketbooks, Bantam and Ballantine Star Trek books were HUGE. They ranged from novels written by respected authors to fanzines literally written by fans of the show.  Yeah of course none of them were canon but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t enjoy them.


The list of them all could go on and on (it’s on Wikipedia if you don’t believe me). Today I want to go over some of the one’s I read…for good or bad. Because while some were damn good others were…silly. Now the problem I had with the novels in many cases was that the story just didn’t feel like it could be an episode. And that’s a big deal for me! Anyone can write a story and throw the names Kirk and Spock on the characters. If it doesn’t feel like the characters than it just isn’t going to work.



Here are some books I did read, and this is going to be a drop in the bucket of the amount of books out there but I only read so many. To be honest as I went through the list I found I remembered less than I realized. There are dozens of books covering not only the five series but new frontiers that were created just for the novels.



Yesterday’s Son

 If you’re a fan of the animated episode “Yesteryear” and the classic episode “All Our Yesterday’s” then this the book for you. Written by A.C.Crispen and I don’t have much to say about it.