What I've got is the new releases with the enhanced special effects - I'll comment on these as best I can, shame I haven't got the originals to compare and contrast, but such is life. I put up the "spoiler" just on the off chance that there's someone here that hasn't seen all these a million times - you never know, I suppose.
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Speaking of new projects (which I was over here), I’m now tackling Star Trek. (Don’t “:TOS” me, or I’ll have to slap you one.) The challenge for this show is that I’m overly-familiar with the material. Even with episodes that I haven’t seen in
yearsdecades, I sometimes find myself anticipating lines. I need to look at this with fresh eyes.Thankfully, modern tech is giving me a hand. I’m watching uncut, beautiful, remastered blu-rays. There are little restored syndication cuts here and there that I’ve never seen before, and everything is not only cleaner, sharper and more vivid than I’ve ever seen it, it’s cleaner, sharper and more vivid than anybody’s ever seen it. And I’m watching it with the new, “upgraded” special effects (which don’t bother me, although I’m enough of a purist to be glad that I have the option of turning them off if I want to.) In short, I’ve got plenty of reasons to keep my eyes glued to the screen and pay more attention than I have in years.
And it’s working. Since I’m watching in broadcast order, I’m starting off with a run of episodes – “Man-Trap”, “Charlie X” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before” – that I never really liked … but I’m finding things to like about them now or (at least) discovering new things that I never noticed before.
Speaking of which ...
Case in point – there’s a very obvious bit of editing in “The Enemy Within” that I never, ever noticed.
Which I will now bore you with.
You won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t bother reading the rest of this. SPOILER ALERT for a 50-year-old TV episode if you choose to.
Bear with me …
The pre-title sequence finds Kirk, Sulu and other crewmen on the surface of a planet. One crewman transports up, followed shortly by Kirk. Unbeknownst to any of them, a strange mineral on the crewman’s shirt has royally screwed up the transporter, so that after Kirk and the transporter crew have left the Transporter Room, a second version of Kirk – let’s just call him Evil Kirk, shall we? – appears and leers like a loon at the camera. Cut to titles and commercial.
Act One then consists of 7 scenes, as follows;
1. Evil Kirk goes to Sick Bay and barks for some saurian brandy (made of fermented dinosaurs, I guess), then heads for Yeoman Rand’s quarters to throw her a surprise party.
2. Spock goes to Kirk’s quarters, having been tipped off by McCoy that the Boss is acting loco, where he finds Kirk #1 (a/k/a Wimpy Kirk). Wimpy Kirk is shirtless and toweling off, and convinces Spock (who’s easily convinced) that McCoy was pulling his leg. Spock excuses himself with the Vulcan equivalent of “Catch ya later.”
3. Cut to Spock and Wimpy Kirk (now wearing that green, v-necked wrap-around shirt/thing that can’t possibly be regulation) who, for no apparent reason, are rushing into the Transporter Room, clearly men on a mission – from the dialogue that follows, it seems likely that they were called there by Scotty. Scotty is holding the weird doglike creature last seen snuggling with Sulu down on the planet. He explains to WK and Spock that moments after Fido was transported up, a second dog-thing – not just a duplicate, but a “savage, ferocious opposite” – appeared. They’ll have to shut down the transporter, says Scott, because “if this should happen to a man…” WK stares into the camera, stricken, and says “Oh my …” (while George Takei was undoubtedly taking notes).
4. Rand is assaulted by Evil Kirk in her quarters. Crewman Foster is also assaulted by EK (but not in the same way) in the corridor.
5. In Kirk’s quarters, Spock confronts WK (still in his green shirt) about the assault on Rand. WK insists that “I’ve been resting here since you left me.” They leave for Sick Bay, where McCoy is tending to Rand and Foster.
6. EK watches WK and Spock get on a turbolift, then goes to Kirk’s quarters to pout. (Later, in Act 2, he’ll help himself to some makeup Kirk just happens to have lying around, which really???)
7. Rand tells her story to WK, Spock and McCoy in Sick Bay. She describes fending off “Kirk” by scratching his face. WK points out that he has no scratches, but Foster stumbles in to shout “J’accuse!” Says Spock, “There is only possible answer. We have an imposter aboard.”
DUM DUM DUUUUUMMMMMM!!!!! Cut to commercial.
Aaaannnndddd … Act Two opens with Spock, Scotty and WK “back” in the Transporter Room … exactly where we left them at the end of Act One, Scene 3, except that now WK is holding Fido.
There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Scene 3 was originally written, shot and intended to be the “act out” for Act One. Kirk and Spock realize (in Sick Bay) that there must be an imposter, Scotty calls them to the Transporter Room to show them his new pets, the penny drops that the “imposter” is a transporter-created “savage, ferocious opposite” Kirk, cut to commercial, and the action picks up right where we left off at the top of Act Two.
Somewhere in editing, someone decided to move that scene forward in the Act – maybe to spell out the "what" and "how" of Evil Kirk a little earlier, maybe just because “We have an imposter aboard!” seemed like a stronger act out than “Oh my …” Who knows?
But I guarantee that’s what happened.
{drops the mic}
I never noticed the bit about Kirk having make-up lying around.
From a character perspective that was a good episode. You realize a lot of the things that made Kirk a good captain came from the darker part of him. Later on I wondered if this happened in the Mirror/Mirror universe and what the evil Kirk was like when he was split up.
RIP DC Fontana
Sad to hear, She may never receive adequate credit for helping to shape the Trek franchise.
RIP Robert Walker Jr "Charlie X"
"I WANNA STAY... Stay... stay..."
Joanne Linville, who played the Romulan Commander in this episode, has died.
The Baron said:
Since "following" discussions with emails from Ning no longer works for me, I can't find new posts if they are embeded somewhere in this years-long thread.
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