After the topic turned to classic Star Trek episodes, Kevin and I sat around, remembering.
First we remembered the Star Trek fight song, as heard in “Amok Time”, also known as the “Spock gets horny” episode:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rl46Dpy-P4&hl=en&fs=1]
Kevin said, “When would they use that song?”
I replied, “Oh, that’s easy. Whenever they would fight Klingons.”
Kevin searched his memory. “But I don’t remember any specific episodes with Klingons.”
“Well,” I said, “there’s ‘Day of the Dove’.”
“What’s that episode about?”
“That’s the one where the Enterprise blows up a Klingon ship and takes all the Klingons aboard as prisoners. Then, unbeknownst to them, an energy being shows up and releases the Klingons from the brig, and makes everybody fight. Because it feeds off the anger and hatred from when they fight. Kirk figures it out and they have to try to drive off the creature with laughter and love.”1
“Oh, right,” Kevin said. “I remember another episode where they were in a cafeteria-type setting, and there were Klingons on one side, and the Enterprise crew were on the other, and they had a fight.”
“That was in ‘The Trouble With Tribbles’! Universally acknowledged to be the funniest classic Star Trek episode.” I said, then added, “intentionally funny, I mean.”
“Ah, yes! That was a funny episode! And the one with the flying vomit things…” Kevin said.
“Right. ‘Operation – Annihilate’” I said. “It’s so funny how many of those old episodes’ titles I remember!”
“You. Are. Amazing!”
“Thanks! I have committed an awful lot of memory to classic Star Trek. It’s what I did when I was younger instead of making friends.”
“You know,” he said, “I’ve never see the Khaaaan! episode. The original one.”
“‘Space Seed’” I said, confidently.
Kevin laughed. “You could be telling me any random words and I would have to believe you. It’s not like I can check you.”
“Seriously, I really do remember a lot of them! I could write a blog post and link them all, and you’d see. C’mon, try to stump me.”
“OK, let’s see… There was one with a square robot thing… and he was doing something to the crew, looking for something…” Kevin held his hands up to indicate the shape and size of the robot thing.”
“Sure!” I said, “that was ‘The Changeling’. It was very similar to the first Star Trek movie, actually: a space probe gets damaged, and repaired by an advanced machine intelligence and sent back out. The probe finds the Enterprise, and is now artificially intelligent, and mistakes Kirk for his creator, Jackson Roykirk.”
“Ohhh, he got confused.”
“Right! Because his memory banks were damaged and they didn’t put him back together right.”
Kevin held his hands up, palms outward, fingers spread apart. “What about… the suction cups?”
“…suction cups?”
“The monster with the suction cups.” He was still wiggling his fingers and curling them like claws. Claws or suction cups.
“Ohhhhh… you mean the salt monster!” I knew the episode… but the title wasn’t coming to me.
Kevin watched me, his eyes getting wider. His smile grew, too. The pause in conversation lengthened as I said… nothing.
“Ah-ha!” Kevin stood up and thrust his hands in the air. “I win!”
“…annnnnnnnnd that’s how my blog post will end – with me getting bested.”2
1 I did that from memory last night. Here’s a summary; how did I do?
2 By the way, the episode was ‘The Man Trap’.