aria: ([star trek] ship)
valinor spider party ([personal profile] aria) wrote2010-08-28 08:19 pm
Entry tags:

bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish

Having now watched The Trouble with Tribbles, these are my deep and serious observations:

1. Tribbles ... actually kind of freak me out. IDK, they were cute at first, but by the time they were all over the bridge, ugh. I was really entertained by the CASCADE OF TRIBBLES that fell on Kirk, though.

2. Klingons apparently wear ~fabulous~ clothing. Also, the background Klingon with no lines who was, I guess, there to look intimidating and give the head Klingon some kind of authority, was not very intimidating but instead kind of attractive. Maybe it was the goatee? (Probably this means I should but Mirror, Mirror next on the queue. EVIL GOATEES.)

3. I don't even know what to do with Kirk's hideous green shirt in this episode. Despite his awful fashion choices and the part where he was a dick to the undersecretary out of all proportion to how annoying the undersecretary was making his life, I am actually starting to like Kirk. Maybe it is because I like Reboot!Kirk? Maybe it is because Shatner actually has pretty good comedic timing? Maybe it's just Stockholm Syndrome? Who knows.

4. Related to Shatner's decent comedic timing, the scene where Scotty admits that he started the bar fight reduced me to tears of laughter simply on the strength of Kirk's indignant reaction to finding out that the fight was started over the Enterprise's honor, not his.

5. I don't actually know what to do with how married Kirk and Spock are. Like, on another show the fact that they are able to communicate entire conversations via the twitch of an eyebrow, or the fact that Kirk comes out with things like "Why, Mr. Spock, I didn't know you had it in you," and those would be, like, big important ridiculous slashy moments, but on this show -- every episode is like that.

6. I also now know what people are going on about when they talk about Spock/McCoy! I feel kind of enlightened, and also really charmed. I'm not holding out for McCoy to ever win one of their battles of wits, though.

7. According to McCoy, "bisexual" is synonymous for "has the ability to reproduce asexually." Protip, Bones: a Tribble is not bisexual. Your friend Jim, on the other hand, is.

8. I am a bit sad there was no Sulu! It was made up for by more Uhura than usual, though. <3


Also, two alternate versions of the episode: We Has Tribbles and Also Troubles and The Trouble With Tribbles by Edward Gorey. The latter pretty much does sum up my feelings on Tribbles. Their purring does not work on me. PERHAPS I AM KLINGON.
tiltingheartand: (Default)

[personal profile] tiltingheartand 2010-08-29 01:42 am (UTC)(link)
7. According to McCoy, "bisexual" is synonymous for "has the ability to reproduce asexually." Protip, Bones: a Tribble is not bisexual. Your friend Jim, on the other hand, is.

Brb, dying.

(Also, all I have seen of this episode is the bit where Kirk is standing near a -- I think it might be a Jeffries tube? And there's an avalanche of tribbles, and then the scene keeps going, and every so often a tribble comes down the tube and hits him in the head, and I just think: someone had the job to throw a tribble at William Shatner every ten or fifteen seconds, and that must have been so amazing.)
gehayi: (Default)

[personal profile] gehayi 2010-08-29 09:36 am (UTC)(link)
And that was the scene that David Gerrold started with. Before there was a story, even, he knew that he wanted to create a script that ended with Kirk waist-deep in fluffballs with other fluffballs bouncing off his head. Basically, he took that scene and wrote a script around it.
ellen_fremedon: overlapping pages from Beowulf manuscript, one with a large rubric, on a maroon ground (Default)

[personal profile] ellen_fremedon 2010-08-29 03:00 am (UTC)(link)
It is so amazing that in the DS9 episode where they go back in time to this ep, they have Sisko and Dax in the compartment throwing the tribbles down, while they frantically search for one that has a bomb hidden in it.
holli: (shatner!)

[personal profile] holli 2010-08-29 02:43 pm (UTC)(link)
oh my GOD that DS9 episode. Everything Dax does in it is gold.

[personal profile] feverbeats 2010-08-29 01:49 am (UTC)(link)
6. YOU HAVE FINALLY BECOME CORRECT.

7. . . . Laughed out loud.

My absolute favorite part of this episode, except maybe Kirk's obsession with Scotty, is how FURIOUS Kirk keeps getting that he's the only one who hasn't heard of that stupid grain.

[personal profile] feverbeats 2010-08-29 02:02 am (UTC)(link)
KIRK/SPOCK IS STUPID AND SHOULD FEEL STUPID. <--not my actualfax thoughts, but. Kinda. You know how I am contrary!

The alien bbs are only now getting ready to make their way out, Aria. Get ready.

IT REALLY IS. And then it gets all ~deep~ and about the ~human condition~ and then we're back to dance moves and Spock/Uhura flirting.

[personal profile] petere_capere 2010-08-29 02:59 am (UTC)(link)
Perhaps he meant hermaphrodite, but somebody got hold of the script and decided to change the wording to something that, I dunno, small kids could pronounce better?

(Executives thought it was a kids' show. Like Doctor Who is a kids show. Or like how Sarah Jane Adventures isn't for adults. Which is why Torchwood is FULL OF SEX because OMG IT'S FOR ADULTS SO IT MUST HAVE TO BE FULL OF SEX -- and yet, body counts for Torchwood are so much lower than for the same number of Doctor Who episodes, new or old.)
tei: Rabbit from the Garden of Earthly Delights (INTERNET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

[personal profile] tei 2010-08-29 04:22 am (UTC)(link)
I don't actually know what to do with how married Kirk and Spock are.

I feel like somebody had the job of thinking up billions of little context-not-required "Kirk and Spock are married" scenes that could be inserted into the script as needed. Plus an extra one at the end. Every time. (I've only watched the first season of TOS, but I've watched every single last-thirty-seconds-of-episode. I think that's cheating? But it's always hilarious.)

Also, William Shatner went to my university, and hence our Student Centre is named after him. I am having so much trouble not giggling every time I hear, "Okay, we'll meet in Shatner".
inanimategrace: (Default)

[personal profile] inanimategrace 2010-08-29 06:10 am (UTC)(link)
(1) Did I give you that song by Voltaire? I've lost track of how many people I've introduced it to...

(2) GO WATCH THIS NOW!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuCKHO-xPjU
inanimategrace: (Default)

[personal profile] inanimategrace 2010-08-29 06:14 am (UTC)(link)
Let me just say:

"There's no such thing as a safe tribble."

"You... sold... tribbles... on a Klingon planet?"
"Well I didn't know it was a Klingon planet."

And, the best, by you know who:

"We could always throw tribbles at them, Captain."
"I thought Vulcans didn't have a sense of humor."
(Lifts his eyebrow, surprised) "We don't, Captain."
graycardinal: Shadow on asphalt (Default)

[personal profile] graycardinal 2010-08-29 07:11 am (UTC)(link)
I am morally certain that David Gerrold -- author of the "Trouble With Tribbles" script, which was the first pro writing sale he ever made (boy, was TV different then) -- talks somewhere in his book about the making of the episode about the "bisexual" reference being either Not His Fault or the result of network intervention. But I cannot now find my copy of that book to check. I have two copies of Gerrold's other book about the making of the original series, but my copy of The Trouble With Tribbles has disappeared.

gehayi: (uhura (so_out_of_icons))

[personal profile] gehayi 2010-08-29 09:31 am (UTC)(link)
According to McCoy, "bisexual" is synonymous for "has the ability to reproduce asexually." Protip, Bones: a Tribble is not bisexual. Your friend Jim, on the other hand, is.

He's actually using an old definition of "bisexual"--which was "physically contains primary or secondary sexual characteristics of both sexes." The word has changed a lot since the 1960s, but that's not McCoy's fault--the usage was correct at the time.

. I don't even know what to do with Kirk's hideous green shirt in this episode.

That's the shirt that they used when Shatner was gaining weight and couldn't fit into the regular pullover. Incidentally, the regular shirt was green too. All of the captain's shirts were. But thanks to the lighting of the time, everyone viewing the show saw the green shirts as gold.

Despite his awful fashion choices and the part where he was a dick to the undersecretary out of all proportion to how annoying the undersecretary was making his life, I am actually starting to like Kirk. Maybe it is because I like Reboot!Kirk? Maybe it is because Shatner actually has pretty good comedic timing? Maybe it's just Stockholm Syndrome? Who knows.

Shatner is a Large Ham of tremendous proportions, but he does have good comedic timing.

I don't actually know what to do with how married Kirk and Spock are. Like, on another show the fact that they are able to communicate entire conversations via the twitch of an eyebrow, or the fact that Kirk comes out with things like "Why, Mr. Spock, I didn't know you had it in you," and those would be, like, big important ridiculous slashy moments, but on this show -- every episode is like that.

And now you know why Star Trek fans have been saying that Kirk/Spock is canon since roughly 1965. BECAUSE IT'S TRUE. Seriously, it doesn't matter if they ever have sex or not, because they couldn't BE more intimate emotionally.

6. I also now know what people are going on about when they talk about Spock/McCoy! I feel kind of enlightened, and also really charmed. I'm not holding out for McCoy to ever win one of their battles of wits, though.

You totally need to see Journey to Babel, featuring Spock and his father and his mother, and nd McCoy finally getting the last word with not one but two Vulcans. (This is also the reason that I will never forgive Reboot for killing off Amanda Grayson, because Amanda Grayson is AWESOMESAUCE.)
gehayi: (donna looking up (knifecontrol))

[personal profile] gehayi 2010-08-29 09:34 am (UTC)(link)
And yes, it's dumb that "bisexual" meant that EVER.

[personal profile] oldstarnewshine 2010-08-30 03:41 am (UTC)(link)
Ah, so you've met the Green Shirt of Captaintude. It's hideous. Get used to it. I echo the sentiment expressed above re DS9! It makes the episode so much funnier, if you can believe that, and you get to watch everyone fanboy the whole series.

And re: 5, neither does anyone else, they had to invent slash fic to deal with it...
gehayi: (shinykaylee (aladriana))

[personal profile] gehayi 2010-08-31 11:04 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, and this LOLCAT seems weirdly pertinent:

funny pictures-TribbleKat is on yer ship Keepin Klingons away
see more Lolcats and funny pictures