“Soon the air is filled with mosquitoes. Some are male, and they will suck nectar somewhere and we can forget about them. But with the females the story is different: they are the blood suckers. And even if they suck a milligram each, the amount will be considerable…”

from “The Green Land” (2005)

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“.

“I’m not the one who set myself up with a were-midget!”

“Hi. I see you are a woman, and breathing.”
“Yes, I see you are a man, and also breathing.”
“We are in love now.”
“Yes.”

Actually, what I’m referring to is this tidbit from the Knight Rider Online Wiki:

Brandon Tartikoff, youthful head of programming at NBC, once gave California magazine this version of the creation of Knight Rider: It seems he and one of his assistants were discussing the problems of casting handsome leading men in the series, because many of them can’t act. Why not have a series, he mused, called “The Man of Six words,” which would begin with the guy getting out of a woman’s bed and saying “Thank You.” Then he would chase down some villians and say “Freeze!” Finally the grateful almost-vitims would thank him, and he would murmur, “You’re welcome.” End of show. In between, the car could do the talking. The series that made it to the air as Knight Rider was scarcley less preposterous than that, but it was played with such a twinkle in the eye that viewers–especillay kids–made it one of the hits of the 1982 season.

That said, I still think my car looks cooler than KITT. Even (especially!) the new one. Heck, it’s not even as hot as Bumblebee from “The Transformers” movie…

I have a long-time love affair with the original “Tron” movie.. it inspired me as a computer programmer when I just a kid, and to see that there is a sequel with Jeff Bridges is awesome. And it looks like he may even be the bad guy..?

P.S., If you want to know why the original Tron was so awesome, check out the infamous “light cycle” duel video…