About This Blog

The idea for this blog officially came about on August 11th, 2012; mark your calendars, it is a glorious day--maybe even a good day to die. I'd been watching through the three seasons of Star Trek. This is the original stuff, I'm talking here. Most know this as The Original Series or, simply, TOS. I received this idea from on high (that is, my really geeky mind) when I decided to compare "Trouble with Tribbles" (TOS season 2, episode 15) with "Trials and Tribble-ations" [Deep Space Nine (DS9) season 5, episode 6]. I decided, "Hey, it would be fun to write a little bit of an observation and analysis about each episode." Thus, this blog was born. Well, sort of. I shelved the idea (you could call it forgetting about it, I suppose) for a while until I decided to spend some time watching TOS on Blu-ray. So, this blog is now (for real) born.

To whet your appetite, I'll post some things I've noticed about the differences and similarities between the two episodes (which, if you didn't know, essentially combines the two episodes into one). The DS9 crew has made a ton of references to TOS material. The production crew did a great job of putting the actors into the old scenes through a combination of computer graphics and reconstructed (perhaps original?) sets. They were amazingly consistent, which shows the script writers did their homework--they knew the old episode really well. In the final scene, Sisko goes to see Kirk, but I'm not sure from where they pulled the original footage.

The top image is from the original episode,
and the bottom is from DS9.

Kirk and Sisko

My favorite moments included Bashir's quote, "I'm a doctor, not a historian." Worf artfully dodges the question on why Klingons went from dumpy-looking white guys to the full blown BAs (and I don't mean men holding bachelor of arts degrees) they are in every other series (including Enterprise, which occurs chronologically before TOS--don't even get me started). Worf also filled us in on the history of Tribbles. Apparently, they had been the mortal enemies of the Klingon Empire until they were wiped out and their home world was destroyed by the end of the 23 century.

Can you imagine this:

(Borrowed from StarTrek.com)

Locked in mortal combat with this:

I plan to spend time in each entry pointing out some things I think are interesting. This will probably include things like, "Hey, wasn't that guy or gal in another show I've watched," and "Did Spock just quote a William Blake poem?" Since I'm a husband, father, and Lutheran pastor, I may look at each episode and movie through those lenses, too.

I think that will do for now. Next week, we will take a look a the never aired Star Trek pilot, "The Cage."  Leave your comments below.

Qapla'!