Nerd Movie Reviews

Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 36 Catspaw

This is one I both love and hate.  For one I think the basic premise-creatures from a place so alien they cannot survive without their technology using illusion-to be pretty cool.  This episode did some amazingly cheesy (in that they were both amazing and cheesy) perspective and camera tricks to make the cat look huge.  In the days before CGI studios actually had to use talent to make effects work.  Also as a kid I really, really wanted one of the voodoo model Enterprises but never got one.  I should look around now.

Image courtesy of the Star Trek T Shirt category.

However, can anyone tell me what the hell Korob and Sylvia were doing on Pyris VII in the first place?  Was this some kind of Halloween trick-or-treat prank?  Their plan was to build a castle on a desolate world and wait until some random losers happened to come exploring just to scare them with ghosts and witches?  I seem to recall something about studying humans but if you have the technology to assume any form and keep completely hidden why not just go to Earth and participate in Lebowskifest?  Odds are you will learn more about humanity there than you will by scaring a bunch of guys to death.

Also the furry blue and yellow mud bugs that Korob and Sylvia turn into kind of creep me out even to this day and I’m going to give Checkov a D- for his worst haircut in the entire series (and that is saying a lot).  Seriously, I know they brought him in to try to capture some of the younger Beatles fans but this was ridiculous.  Thank god he sharpened up a bit by TWOK.

Anyway, not the first episode I would look for but not the last.  It did introduce the idea of VR as a means of maintaining illusion so I guess that’s good.  Decent episode overall.

By the way I recently started reading TrekMovie.com and they just posted a notice that the rumors about Netflix doing a new Star Trek series are not true.  Given the dross we were fed with Enterprise I’m kind of OK with that.  That being said if they did do so I would be very curious to see what they came out with, as long as they stuck to the original story line and not the mutant medical waste that the canon has turned into to ever since the JJ Abrams reboot.  JJ burn in hell.

the Infamous Dave Inman