The Flip Medley

I’m not a Trekkie, but since I bought Season 1 on Blu-Ray, I’m rediscovering the MST3K-worthiness of the original series with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.

Let me attempt to explain why this episode is so fantastic….

First of all, it combines elements of what we’ve come to know and love in a forensic procedural like “CSI” with the campiness of a 60’s show that takes itself seriously enough to be dramatic, but is hokey enough to make me belly laugh when I watch it.

This is also the episode where Mr. Sulu loses his mind and runs around shirtless with a rapier threatening random people who simply do not know how to respond to a shirtless wannabe pirate on board of a starship.

Then we have a scene where a woman who barely knows Mr. Spock starts telling him she really, really loves him and since this whack mental condition is passed through skin-on-skin contact, when she kisses his hand…

…it causes him to lose his everlovin’ mind. Which manifests itself with the best acting ever in a sci-fi comedy as Mr. Spock proceeds to rant about never telling his mother that he loved her while crying. Seriously. This is epic stuff.

Of course, the Enterprise is in peril — and Capt. Kirk is losing his mind because a crewman is singing over the intercom, which is driving him bonkers — which leads to a slapfight (!) between Kirk and Spock.

Of course slapping involves skin-on-skin contact, so that means Kirk gets infected, which leads to him showing his chops as a Shakespearean thespian as he begins to ramble on and on about how the ship has to be a “she” because he loves her… and let me just say, it appears we were a few seconds away from Mr. Shatner dry-humping the bulkhead when they got back on track with the plot.

I am not going to spoil the ending, but… trust me, if there is one YouTube video that lasts close to an hour you need to see, it’s “Star Trek: The Naked Time“.