PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Kid In The Hall Season 4

Season 4 has Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thomson all return to play. We've got a ton of sketches, so many short little bits and pieces, bunches of which I found entertaining. There's the whores waiting for their tricks and the Police. Here's a sketch with both of them. Kathy and Cathy have a shake up at work. Darryl returns and there are monlogues from Buddy Cole. The season had a new contest - Spot Bellini. You write in when you spot Bellini in a sketch. The winner got breakfast with Bellini at the airport near their house. He arrives in his traditional towel. There's a Tammy video with Bruce playing Tammy. The white trash couple gets into a fight in a pizza place which really brings home what a pain in the ass it is to work in retail. Sex Girl Patrol are coming. Here's a good reason not to loan anyone your art. Francesca Fiore making movie in Yugoslavia. Kevin dreams of an affair wth his maid and he doesn't know what h doing. The whores are helping their pimp get a GED. The Chicken lady visits her old house much to the concern of the current residents. Buddy Cole has a whole episode to himself and it guest stars the Queen of England. There's a weird sketch about sausages. There's the first Steps sketch. Here's  the dvd commentary from the second one.

Mark McKinney was born June 26 1959 in Canada's capital Ottowa. His father was a Canadian diplomat and he lived in a lot of cities around the world. He was a member of The Loose Moose Theater Company. It's where he meet Bruce McCulloch. They later were in The Audience with a couple of other comedians. They moved to Toronto where they met the other guys in the Kids - Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald. After Kids Mark was on Saturday Night Live for a couple of years. He continues to work in tv and movies. I don't see a lot of the stuff that he does.

Scrubs Season 9

I finally got to the final season of Scrubs.  I hadn't seen them when they were broadcast from December 2009 to March 17, 2010. Nine seasons is pretty good for a show nowadays. Most don't seem to last beyond a couple of seasons. Scrubs last season featured a big change as the show. Sacred Heart Hospital moved to a different location. It's still a teaching hospital but the location is now at a college.  Most of the cast are gone except for Donald Fasion and John C McGinley who return as teachers. A few of the old Scrubs cast members make guest appearances and some are semi-regulars like Ken Jenkins who appears in 9 episodes, Zach Braff in 6 and Sarah Chalk in 4. Zack and Sarah have married in the show and are expecting a kid. The new cast are the new students and they're a mixed bag. Kerry Bishe gets to do the narration in some episodes. There were only 13 episodes in the season and they were mostly ok. I just can't get too excited about them and neither could the public as the rating fell to an all time low. Maybe after seeing so many better episodes they just weren't quite as good on average or maybe they were just tired of the same old thing. I noticed Iwas drifting away more often than I normally do when watching a series. It's not that there isn't competiton here. There's always something shiny to pull me away from the tv at my house. I got the set for about 5 bucks so I don't feel too bad. I'll probably watch them again when I go to watch the series over but I'd play them at 1.5 speed. You can see a 22 minutes show in 15 minutes. If I don't get around to watching them it won't matter much either. There are so many favorites to rewatch sometmes it's hard to justify wasting time on lesser shows.

The Dick Tracy Show

I saw this 4 disc set of The Dick Tracy Show at Half Price Books for 3 bucks and I had a 15% off coupon to sweeten the deal. It was a $40 set when it came out in 2006 and it's currently 10 bucks on Amazon. The complete series is 130 5 minute cartoons that were made by UPA in 1961 for the TV syndication market. Local stations would buy the cartoons and show them on their local kid's programs. You need something to fill up the show and keep the kiddies coming back to your station. You can read a bit about some hosts that showed these cartoons at Toon Tracker's Dick Tracy Page. I can't be certain I had seen these when they were new. They were in syndication for a long time until the complaints about the characters caused them to be pulled.

Dick doesn't actually do most of the crime solving, he's got some detectives to help him. At the beginning of each episode we have an opening credit that's followed by the episode title card. Then we cut to Dick behind his desk talking to the chief on the intercom. Finished he turns to his two way wrist radio to call one of his detectives to pass along a new assignment. Each of the 130 episodes uses the same exact piece of animation of Tracy talking to his crew. It gets intercut with a different detective answering the call each episode. That probably saved them a lot of money reusing that scene over and over. They even covered his mouth in the shot so his lip movements wouldn't matter. The detective gets going and occasionally checks in with Tracy. In less than 5 minutes the crook is snagged and Dick makes an brief appearance to take him into custody. In some of the later episodes he appeared a bit more often.

That's the four detectives that appear on the show. Early in the run there were more episodes of Heap O'Calory. He was a clueless bumbling cop that sounds like Andy Devine. He disappeared after a while. I imagine they got tired of him. I know I did. Hemlock Holmes is a dog with a blue hat. He sounds like Cary Grant and he's often joined in his crime work by The Retouchables. They are more like the Keystone Kops than The Untouchables. At first there were a few jokes that related to Cary Grant, you know, like Judy Judy Judy, but luckily they went away. The guy with glasses is Joe Jitsu. He talks like Charlie Chan used to in those movies from the 1930's. People didn't complain about that in the early 1960's but as time went on there were more complaints. The same thing goes for the guy in the sombrero. He's Go Go Gomez and he's sounds a lot like Speedy Gonzalez. He's good at disguises, well, at least he fools the crooks briefly. He couldn't fool Mexican Americans into liking him and they complained about the stereotypical character. Needless to say none of these detectives appeared in any Dick Tracy comic strip.

The villains are more to do with the Dick Tracy strip though they are weak ass versions of their paper counterparts. We've got Flat Top, Pruneface, Mumbles, Itchy and 7 more. They team up in pairs for some silly criminal activity. There's a lot of repetition in 130 episodes. Lots of banks get robbed but no one ever gets shot or killed. Many of those crooks died violently or ironically in the comic strip. There's a small comic book of Dick Tracy strips by Chester Gould with the set. I haven't actually read it yet. I read the strip in the newspaper back in the 60's and stopped before the 70's. Somewhere in there it had become a science fiction comic with travel to the moon. I haven't had much interest in revisiting it even with the nostalgic feelings I have for stuff I liked back in those days.  

The cartoons syndication stopped in 1985, mostly because of the complaints. They surfaced briefly when the 1990 Dick Tracy movie came out but the complaints started again and that was the end until the DVD appeared 6 years ago. Now you can see them for free on the internet. A good place to complain from what I've heard. I've hidden a link to the whole series somewhere in the post. Sampling a few would give you a good idea what the whole series is like. They follow a pretty strict formula. It's limited animation of the kind you'd expect on tv from that era. Where they do a good job is the background drawings which are often quite imaginative. Sadly the stories aren't the same quality.

Star Trek S1D8

   

Space Seed is the episode that introduces Ricardo Montalban as Kahn. It was the 24th episode produced and the 22nd aired. That was February 16, 1967. I had watched The Wrath Of Kahn a while back and was curious to see this episode. Mostly the reason I decided to NetFlix the series. The Enterprise comes across the Botany Bay floating in space and they find some frozen folksicles in the freezer. They thaw Kahn out and soon as he wakes up the 20th century superman tries to take over the galaxy. Kahn was part of a group of genetically altered humans who thought they should step into commanding the Earth of the 1990's. Normal folks didn't put up with that and fought back. Kahn, and 84 others, escape in a ship and three hundred years later they wake up to a new galaxy they think is just waiting for them to take over. You'd think if you were that smart you'd figure out that people would fight back. Sure enough Captain Kirk has to take Kahn down and it's a pretty good struggle. Madlyn Rhue plays the ship's historian who falls for Kahn. She betrays the ship and when Kahn and the super bunch get exiled Kirk lets her go with them. How fun would it be being the stupidist person on a planet full of smug, sarcastic braniacs and rocks? It was a good episode that was written by Gene L Coon and Carey Wilber. It was enjoyable to see it again.

   

A Taste Of Armageddon is another Gene L Coon script, this one co-written with Robert Hamner, and it's an interesting story but a bit goofy. The Enterprise as on a diplomatic mission to a planet that had been contacted by the Federation 50 years ago. The ship disappeared after reporting in. Kirk, Spock and a few others beam down and meet with the head man. Soon after they arrive there's an an attack by people of the third planet in the system. Spock quickly figures out that the two rival planets use computers to fight. Yep, says the head man, we've been fighting for 500 years without destroying our society. Look how civilized we are, our patriotic casualties line up willingly for the disintegration booths and our planet remains intact. Kirk is appalled, especially after he's told that the Enterprise got hit and the crew must report to those murderin' booths we were just talking about. James T is not going to take being a prisoner lying down and he organizes the shore party into a revolt. They capture the head guy and destroy his war computers. Faced with a real war the two planets get to making nice. An entertaining story for the most part but you'd think that they would have figured that fake war is not a solution to their problems themselves wouldn't you. Some societies just suck I guess.

   
This Side Of Paradise is the 24th episode. It aired on March 2 1967. Jerry Sohl wrote the original story and after D C Fontana rewrote the story and wrote the screenplay Jerry took his name off the episode and the credit goes to Nathan Butler. The Enterprise comes to a planet that has a small group of colonists living there. The planets radiation should have affected them but they are fine. In fact they are better than they were when they arrived on the planet. What's up with that? Dr McCoy gets to work on the enigma while Mr Spock gets infected by some flora. It turns on his emotions and he falls for the pretty Jill Ireland. Spock infects the crew and pretty soon the only one on the ship is the Kirk unit. When he gets infected he gets mad and it breaks the infection. He calls Spock back to the ship and gets him mad. They fight and Spock is back on track. They save the crew from paradise. Life goes on and the Enterprise is off to some other planet next week. Another one that isn't too bad, sad though. Poor Mr Spock says it was the only time he was happy.

The disc has two short featurettes. One on romance in the 23rd century and one one Star Trek Conventions. Both kind of fluffy but mostly entertaining.

Scrubs Season 8

Scrubs Season 8 ran from January to May in 2009. I barely watched any when they were first broadcast. I had given up trying to catch shows as they aired before that, everything good was probably coming out on dvd. It can wait. There were 19 episodes and all the regulars are still on the show. The series moved from NBC to ABC as a mid-season replacement. The budget was smaller. To save money main cast members aren't written into every episode. Courtney Cox joins as the new Chief of Medicine and she fires the Janitor for picking on JD. She only last three episodes before she's fired. The Janitor gets his job back and JD and Elliot get back together. There are the usual sick and dying stories along with some fun stories. There are new interns to boss around. Some of them don't last too long. Doctor Cox gets to be Chief of Medicine and that's a job and a half. He gets help from the retired Dr Kelso. That guy always makes me laugh. Ted, the hospital's sad sack lawyer finds love in the form of Kate Micucci. She plays the mandolin and is cute as a button. Carla gets pregnant and makes the Janitor think he going crazy. There's a bit of tough medical news for some poor sad sick person. Thankfully it isn't me or you. Mostly me. The show goes to the Bahamas for a couple of episodes. The Janitor is getting married. It's not one of those great weddings but there were a few laughs. Then the season ends with Zack leaving the hospital to work nearer his son. He wasn't planning on returning for the next season but that changed. I enjoyed most of the episodes. I'm still partial to the characters and the writing has maintained a good level. This is another set that I got with a coupon at HPB. It was under ten bucks. I plan to re-watch the whole series again but not for a few years. They are the perfect thing to have on while doing stuff on the computer or building and if I miss something I can just rewind it. Aren't recordable media great or what!

Star Trek S1D7

   

Tomorrow Is Yesterday has the Enterprise go back in time to the 1960's. The 19th episode aired Jan 26 1967. The Enterprise gets spotted by a pilot that they bring on board via the transporter. What to do with him now he's seen the future? First Kirk wants to take him back to the future but Spock does some research and the pilot needs to stay in his own time. Soon enough Kirk is down on Earth stealing the film from the planes cameras. He gets caught by security. Don't worry he's rescued. They figure that they can get home by slingshotting around the sun and when they get to the right time they can teleport the pilot back to his plane before he sees the Enterprise. It's dangerous but we all know the season is still in production, so they're going to be fine. There's a little of that shaken, not stirred, camera action as everyone leans left and right while the ship fights hard against the sun's gravity. This episode was written by DC Fontana and it was a pretty good one. I think it would be cool to be kidnapped by your decedents and brought to the future. Unless it's that whole Terminator future, or the one with the monkeys. I wouldn't like that so much.

   

Court Martial has Kirk on trial for the death of a crewman. They are at Starbase 11 for repairs and the Commodore investigates the accident. He charges Kirk because the computer said it was a yellow alert not red like Kirk insists. The computer has some damming evidence, a movie showing Kirk giving a command while the light is yellow. Spock also says it was red alert. Was the captain negligent? Of course not but it's touch and go there until the truth comes out. Spock figures that the computer has been tampered with when he can beat the machine at chess. Since he programmed the machine their games should have come to a draw. They figure it out and Kirk is back in command. In one scene Kirk has to go in the Jefferies Tube. I learned that it was made from one of those large cardboard tubes they use to mold concrete footings and such. What you can do with a lick of paint and some wires and lights.

    

The Return Of The Archons has Kirk, Spock, McCoy and some crew members down on the planet Beta III where the USS Archon had stopped 100 years ago. Nothing had been heard of the ship since. Kirk and crew find humanoid people who live like it's late 1800's America and have odd customs. Turns out they are all connected to some force they call The Body. Crew members get connected and abondon the Enterprise for planetfall. Kirk and Spock get tossed into jail. It's up to them to figure out that it's a rogue computer controlling the people. Kirk convinces it that it's failed it mission to help the people and the computer blows itself up. That would suck, huh, having your whole belief system tossed in the garbage. Poor computer. Hopefully the advisors Kirk leaves on the planet will help the citizens get all futuristic. We'll never know as the Enterprise blows town off on a new adventure.

So a group of fine episodes with some interesting ideas and the like. I find I'm liking the series more than I thought I would. For extras there's a 20 minute intereview with Billy Blackburn. He was often at the helm controls before Walter Koenig came onboard. He also played several aliens and landing party members. He shot a lot of color silent film on the stages and locations while they were making the series. Some of the bits and pieces are pretty entertaining to watch. Nice of them to put it in there. None of the episodes is having a commentary which is too bad. I'm not compaining much but they might have been entertaining.

The Adventures Of Pete & Pete Season 2

Season 2 was broadcast from September to December 1995. There are only 13 episodes and they are all on the dvd set you can still buy. In Grounded For Life Little Pete destroys the lawn and gets grounded for the summer. He's also forbidden from attending the 4th of July which knowing LP is some harsh punishment but he's a trouble making kid who needs some punishment occasionally. LP decides to tunnel out of the basement with the help of a statue of Lady Liberty. Michelle Trachtenberg appears for the first time as Nona F. Mecklenberg and Iggy Pop plays her dad. With casting like that how can you not like this show. Field of Pete has Big Pete playing baseball for a coach who's addicted to Orange Lazarus, a slushy brain freezing frozen treat. There's a lesson to be learned here and that's baseball is absolutely uninteresting to me. Still the show was good and made me laugh. Mind you all the episodes do. In The Call Little Pete decides to answer the pay phone that's been ringing off and on for 27 years. It's for his mom! Little Pete has to deal with the death of his pet lizard Gary in The Big Quiet and he's hurt again when Big Pete abandons him for a girl in Time Tunnel. Little Pete wonders who the Inspector 34 is after finding the little inspection sheet in the pack of Kreb brand underwear. He befriends the guy, emulates him, and helps him loosen up and find a girlfriend. Nice guy that Little Pete, huh.

Little Pete wants to collect a new record for houses visited in Halloweenie and wants Big Pete to help. Trouble is BP thinks he's outgrown the holiday. I remember that happening to me. The year I stopped I took my dog, tucked him under my arm, and went to some of the neighbors. I got a couple of candy bars ad Scamp II got a wiener. We sat on the curb and ate them. It was a nice way to end that part of my life. Ellen asks why in X = Why? and it drives Miss Fingerwood from the school. Ellen has to fix that up and get her favorite teacher to come back to the school. Janeane Garofalo is a teacher in the episode. On Golden Pete has the family on vacation at a lake. BP contemplates mortality and fishing. David Johansen plays a park ranger. The International Adult Conspiracy thinks Artie, The Strongest Man In The World, is too much of an influence on their children. They drive him out of town by lying in the 2 part story Farewell My Little Viking. Little Pete, the viking in the title, no longer has a personal superhero to save him from Papercut, one of LP's mortal enemies, and he has to learn to stand up on his own. Artie returns briefly only to leave again. His job is done and Little Pete is able to stand on his own. In Yellow Fever Big Pete has to deal with bullying and Little Pete fakes sick to stay home in Sick Day. Ellen Cleghorne played bus driver Stu's girlfriend in YF and Chris Elliot is a meter reader in SD. LL Cool Jay appears as a teacher in Sick Day.

There's a bonus episode from what the Wikipedia calls the Pilot season. Space, Geeks and Johnny Unitashas Ellen and Big Pete working on their science project together. They are trying to determine if there's alien life on earth. One of the kids in their class fits all the criterion on their checklist. Martin Donovan plays the crossing guard in the episode. All in all a great bunch of episodes that were fun to watch, even for the umteenth time. The writing continues to be top notch and all the actors step up that level.

Star Trek S1D6

     

In the first episode of 1967 The Galileo Seven has the Enterprise heading to Makus III with medical supplies. They stop for Mr Spock to look over a strange space phenomenon. The Galileo 7 shuttle craft goes off course and makes an emergency landing on Taurus II. They've got some problems. The shuttle needs some Scotty time and there are giant furry guys with 10 foot spears. One of the crew gets skewered pretty quick. There's some action and another guy gets slaughtered.

     

Scotty eventually fixes the shuttle, it's only got a bit of power, enough to get them into space, not enough to keep them in orbit very long. With the radio gone it's one of those times when they really need the Enterprise to spot them or it's aaaaaagh, Galileo flambe. Mr Spock dumps the fuel, lights it up, and the Enterprise sees it. Yahoo for the shuttle crew. The 16th episode broadcast was the 18th one made. The usual remastering looks great, they really highlight the fuel dump flare very well. The story is pretty good; there's a nice bit of tension created when the coldly logical Mr Spock seems more interested in the spear than the dead crewman. Sometimes the crew members seem so clueless, like they just didn't know anything about the way of the Vulcan. That never changes I guess, people not knowing much.

     

January 12, 1967 saw the first broadcast of The Squire Of Gothos. I remembered the episode from when I had first seen it but my memory lacks details like dialog and such. The Enterprise is traveling somewhere and they cross paths with a rogue planet. They haven't got time to check it out and Kirk tells Sulu to go around it. Sulu disappears and soon after so does the Captain. Spock figures they are on the rogue planet and they head there to check things out. Kirk and Sulu are all stiff and green when the landing party arrives. They get thawed out and we all meet the Squire.

     

He's a powerful being in human form. He's got a nice crib, kind of old school, and some magical like powers. He's Trelane and he makes the crews life miserable. He dresses Yoman Ross in a nice dress but nearly hangs the Captain. Kirk goads him into a hunt to stall for time. He's saved when Trelane's parents come and take his toys away from him.  William Campbell plays Terlane and he's highly entertaining. The show looks good and there are some nice sets, I like that door.

     

The 18th episode is Arena. It's one I remember seeing the first time around. It's the episode with the Gorn. Who can forget that guy. I had just seen him in a recent episode of The Big Bang Theory. It was one of those Star Trek episodes that I only got to see the last half of when it premiered. The rest of the tv watching people in our house wanted to see some other show in the first half hour of the Star Trek time slot and I got to watch the last half of most of the episodes that season. I would get filled in at school with what happened the next day and eventually I'd see the whole episode in the repeat. I remember times in school hanging out with all the other tv watchers orally recreating entire shows for someone who might have missed them. We'd do the same thing with comedy routines of comedians who told their jokes on the numerous variety shows. It's no joke when the Enterprise stops at an outpost only to find it's a wreck when they beam down. A lone survivor tells the crew that they were attacked by unknown aliens. Damn, aliens. The landing party gets attacked and a couple of crew members get snuffed out. They get back to the ship. The aliens run and the Enterprise gives chase.

  

It's one of several episodes filmed at Vasques Rocks. That's one of my favorite movie locations. You can see it in countless movies since first appearing in the 1936 film Werewolf Of London. The screenplay was written by Gene L. Coon and the studio thought it was enough like Fredric Brown's story Arena that they paid him for the story. It's not that similar. The Enterprise follows the aliens into an unexplored bit of space. Some powerful aliens, the Metrons, take Kirk and the Captain of the Gorn ship and make them fight to the death. Kirk wins but doesn't kill the Gorn. The Metrons send everyone back home and tell Kirk to have the humans look them up in a couple of thousand years. Burn. Nice to know super intelligent beings are funny. It was a pretty good episode, reminding me to keep my ass down on the ground.

Kids In The Hall Season 3

 

All the guys are back for the 1991-1992 season and they are still makin' me get my giggle on. The Chicken Lady, and her friend the Bearded Lady, attend a male strip showand CL blows up once Rooster Boy hits the stage. He did have a big red comb, stickin' up an all. Mark McKinney says on the commentary he got hurt when the orgasm mortar went off. The perils of show biz, huh. Like the first 2 seasons this 4 disc set has 20 episodes of new material and 2 episodes built from parts of the others. It's those compilation shows that have the commentaries.

The police continue to be pretty useless but you can see they are outstanding in their field. Dave Foley is a businessman who's addicted to girl drinks. His life is a downward spiral topped with a tiny umbrella. Bruce appears as Tammy the pop star for the first time. Buddy Cole discovered her. Buddy is back with more monologues about his life. Bruce is the Flying Pig. He shows up to amuse the people in line at a bank. He'd later be shot for being bacon. Don't worry, he tasted good. Tanya's the temp is done at AT & Love and her goodbye party goes badly. Danny Husk of AT & Love gets kidnapped but he escapes. The Kids often have a lot of harsh things to say about businessmen. Where does that animosity come from? Sir Simon Milligan has to fire his man servant Hecubus from the Pit Of Ultimate Evil for drinking too much. Hecubus finally figures out he needs some help when he wakes up in Africa with a $7000 bar tab.

Gavin shows up on several shows, chatty as ever. He's got a hard time this season; he falls for his babysitter and his mother dies. His Dad, out of jail for the day, brings his new mom to the funeral. Bruce does Gavin and he also plays the 45 year old hispster who appears in several sketches this season. I'm not as fond of the hipster guy. One of the Sizzler sisters is cured of insanity and it's sad that the other sister doesn't have anyone to be insane with. The cute It's A Fact girl shows up again. The head crushing guy returns with an elaborate trap. It's almost painful to watch Kevin get screwed over by the other guys in his garage band. He writes the songs, sings, and plays the guitar. He gets no credit for that. It helps remind me that people sure are awful sometimes.

Kevin McDonald was born in Montreal in 1961. He lived in Los Angeles and Toronto as a kid. He had acting lessons in high school and attended Humber College as a drama major where he was kicked out because he only did comedy. A smart teacher there enrolled him in Second City Improv classes and it was there he meet Dave Foley. They would join up with Luciano Casimiri to start the first version of The Kids In The Hall. After the Kids tv series ended Kevin appeared pretty regularily in many shows and movies. I haven't seen hardly any of it. I just saw him in the 2007 Epic Movie where he played Harry Potter. Sadly, it's a pretty poor movie. Hope he got paid well. He also does a lot of voice work for tv cartoon shows. That's a nice gig. Two more seasons to go.

Star Trek S1D5

   

The Conscience Of The King is #13, both in production and broadcast which was December 8, 1966. Kirk is asked by his old friend Dr Leighton to come to Planet Q. Kirk joins him at a production of Hamlet. Leighton, who is scared on one side of his face, tells Kirk that the actor on stage is Kodos, the executioner of Tarsus IV, who killed 4000 people including members of their families. Yep, it's where The Simpson's alien character Kodos got his name. The Kodos in Star Trek was burned in an explosion but there was never a positive ID of the body. Sadly the creators of the Star Trek universe never figured out some of the technological break throughs that we had in the later part of the twentieth century, like DNA testing. At times the show seems down right primitive, the crew of the Enterprise still uses tapes to store data. I'm not holding that against the series the stories are still pretty good some of the time. Kirk listens to Leighton but isn't sure that the actor is Kodos but he likes Kodo's daughter. She's all blond and legs. That's her in the fur dress. Leighton turns up dead and Kirk works out a chance to get father and daughter on board his ship so he can dig into the mystery. It comes to a sad ending with a nice helping of crazy heaped on top.

   

Balance Of Terror was the 14th episode broadcast. It appeared December 15, 1966 and it was the 9th show produced. It's the first appearance of the Romulans. Mark Leonard plays the Romulan ship Captain. He'd come back to the series as Spock's father. The Romulans and Humans had a war a century before and they haven't spoken since. They don't even know what the other one looks like which makes a tense time on the bridge when they get a look of Mark's ears. What's up Mr. Spock? He speculates they split off from the Vulcans centuries ago, from a time when the Vulcans were a more agressive race. There's a neutral zone between the Federation and the Romulan sections of the galaxy. The Federation has watching posts and someone is blowing them up. Kirk comes to investigate and runs into Mark in his invisible Bird Of Prey ship. They battle it out like it's a submarine movie, running silent, blindly shooting in the dark. It was a pretty good episode that shows off Kirk's skills. Of course he wins the battle but we haven't seen the last of the Romulans.

  

Shore Leave was the 15th episode shown and the 17th made. The weary travellers on the Enterprise have sent Doctor McCoy and Lt Sulu to check out a nice looking planet with no life at all. It's all pretty and green. It might be the place for the crew to take a much needed break. Soon the Doctor sees a giant suit wearing white rabbit who's followed by Alice In Wonderland. Then it's party time. People get chased by a knight, a samurai, and a WWII airplane straffs them. Dr McCoy gets killed but he turns out ok later. He turns up at the end of the episode with a couple of gals in furry costumes. Kirk shots the knight and it turns out to be a robot. Turns out the planet is an amusement park for smart aliens. They let the crew come and play. Another good episode, and no wonder, this one was written by Theodore Sturgeon.

There's a nice 18 minute long featurette that has some cast and crew talking about working on the show. It was fun to watch.