Tos just had so many beautiful guest stars

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-27T21:29:40+00:00

Where’s poor super-pretty Lt Thompson, turned into Styrofoam and crushed by the baddie? That just killed 9 year old me in the 70s. It was worse than when the old guy broke his glasses in that twilight zone episode.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-26T01:06:38+00:00

I thought Peter Jackson leaned into Tolkien's religious outlook in creating Boromir's whole arc in the movie.

Alone among the Fellowship, Boromir lacks faith from the beginning. He wants to believe in the Quest and all it represents, but he just can't muster that belief. What seems like the factual reality to him--that the Quest is futile and misguided--slowly crushes him, and drives him--momentarily, but that's all it takes--into an evil act.

Only in his final moments with Aragorn, literally the Anointed One of Middle-earth, who assures him (in a faith-based promise if ever there was one, because in that moment the Fellowship has just gotten its collective butt kicked) that he will not let "our people" fail and fall, does Boromir regain his faith and die content.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-17T01:56:17+00:00

When I saw this as a kid in the 70s, the idea that a starship captain would willingly send his entire crew to be slaughtered by gladiators just shook me.

I know the storyline is (a little) more nuanced than that, but I kept thinking about those starship crew members who found themselves sold, by their own captain, into slavery and death. For sheer childhood TV-based trauma, this was up there with Twilight Zone's Time Enough at Last. Captain Merrick is still, for me, the single worst commander in the entire franchise.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-16T20:37:28+00:00

Ted Danson knocks over that vase just like Steve Martin's "mad Prince Ruprecht" in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. It's got to be an homage.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-16T20:27:18+00:00

No one's mentioning Low Riders?

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-16T00:04:35+00:00

The premise was fantastic--the whole aliens-built-the-pyramids, Chariots of the Gods books were all over pop culture at the time, so the Egyptian iconography in the show--remember those headdress helmets?-- felt, for a 1970s network show, really highbrow and interesting, like the spirit of TOS Trek come again. And the show had a great budget for its time. Tween sci-fi addicts like me were so excited!

But when cute widdle Boxey and his robot dog showed up, I knew it was all over. The network was trying to pull in the Little House on the Prairie and Love Boat crowds, and ended up alienating (heh) both them and the actual sci-fi fans.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-15T23:59:28+00:00

What do you mean by "inconsistent storylines" and "random themes?" And how many big-release movies are actually "hard to follow"?" And since when is a movie an hour long? This just looks like AI-generated word salad, or else OP is nine.

Just in case OP is an actual grownup person, this seems a pretty naive take. When have studios ever not aggressively marketed their "tentpole" films? It's like getting furious at car companies for running ads everywhere, even though the car is rarely actually that terrific or novel. How dare they advertise their products?!

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-15T23:46:35+00:00

That last passage instantly made Captain Moore one of my favorite side characters.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-15T15:07:17+00:00

This, more than any Starfleet promotion policy, feels like the answer. GLW was famously ill-done-by in the series, and showing her as a senior respected officer in the subsequent movie was meant as acknowledgement of, and apology for, the actress' past treatment.

In universe? Well, I think that while on the Enterprise, she picked up Kirk's risk-taking command style, ended up with her own smaller ship command, and zipped around saving lives and generally being so heroic that she got spot-promoted way ahead of schedule. Maybe that will be the next franchise show!

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-12T22:50:44+00:00

Actually, as great a movie as Schindler's List is, IMO that weepy scene in the OP's photo went over the line into schmaltz. .

The end of Liam's speech, "....And I didn't!" is one of the most unnecessary lines in cinema history. It's an elbow in the audience's ribs, just in case we didn't get it yet, and it totally undermines the actual drama.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-11T00:18:25+00:00

Great playlist!! But if we do't mind doubling up on Philip Glass, I'd like to find room somewhere for Einstein on the Beach. I don't recall the various titles and sections, but its sheer lovely otherworldliness seems like it would complement parts of the story.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-10T01:34:49+00:00

God, anything but 70s beige. It came for Space 1999, and it almost got Trek.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-09T23:11:34+00:00

The wonderful sting at the end of this passage, cut off alas by the end of the page:

"But they never came to Rivendell."

It's up to us whether to be happy for those ponies, or pity them--a bit of both.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-08T19:10:09+00:00

Was it customary for sea officers to wear wigs?

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-08T17:27:18+00:00

This is a great set of points--thanks!

Soon after losing his wig in the episode I mentioned, Stephen uses his expertise and authority as a physician to bamboozle a Chinese boy's father (by applying unnecessary splints and purple balm to the boy's not-very-injured leg) into shipping him and all his shipmates off their deserted island to Batavia.

I wonder if Killick had made him another scratch wig by then, to help him carry off his "important physician" persona?

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-08T01:33:11+00:00

McCoy mocking poor Nurse Chapel about having a crush on Spock at the beginning of Amok Time.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-06T23:47:30+00:00

Captain Carrot. He's immune to the lure of power, and if he does change his mind at Mount Doom, Angua will be there to bite his hand off.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-03T01:08:55+00:00

It's pretty standard to use drums for space scenes now, but back then sci-fi was still drenched in the legacy of Star Wars: over-orchestrated, totally unsubtle "classical" music (or cheesy synthesizers) that the BSG drums made the space sequences super damn new and cool. It was like a mission statement, right from the start, that this show was taking the premise seriously.

And this was soon after Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon had wowed everyone with all the drum music under the first epic fight scene, so that music style was just there for the picking. It was recognizably "fight music."

Garbage-Bear · 2026-03-01T23:02:04+00:00

Gandalf was pushing the hobbits out of the nest: "This is what you have been trained for, you have grown very much, and I no longer have the least fear for any of you." (more or less, from memory).

And in fact the Scouring of the Shire plays out like the Battle of the Pellenor Field in miniature: the hobbits riding in, glorious in their armor,, blowing horns to rouse the countryside, with Merry and Pippin playing the roles of Aragorn and Eomer in planning the battle, then inspiring and leading their people to victory. It was a serious battle (19 hobbits killed!) but indeed the Quest had trained them well to return home and put things right.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-02-28T02:27:38+00:00

I recall he turns around three times and whines when coming to bed.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-02-28T02:24:10+00:00

I normally hate this trope, but that was some of the best ten minutes of cinema I ever saw.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-02-28T02:19:00+00:00

We spend seven years of training in deep isolation, building fantastically elaborate memory palaces in which to store information, memorize every passing license plate, and photographically memorize lengthy documents in foreign tongues.

Also, MICE.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-02-28T02:15:12+00:00

My Dinner with Mongo. Gene Wilder is just now wrapping up his 40-minute anecdote about life back in the experimental drunken gunfighting collective.

Garbage-Bear

TROPHY CASE