It's been a while. It's been a serious while. Like two years. A plan to watch all the episodes of Star Trek for the 50th anniversary fell completely by the wayside... and I've decided to rectify that.
With a flood of new Trek content coming over the next couple of years (Picard looks great), it does seem rather appropriate to go back onto this.
I'll link to the previous episode I reviewed here.
I'm going to be aiming for medium length reviews every week or so, but I can't guarantee anything...
****
So, "Friday's Child"... is full of woe. In multiple ways.
The Enterprise arrives on the planet Capella IV to negotiate a mining treaty with the warrior culture that inhabits the planet while wearing some very silly outfits, only to discover a Klingon representative has gotten there ahead of them. A coup happens and our main trio must flee with the pregnant wife of the former leader. It's suggested that McCoy might be the actual father... which sounds something more like Kirk would do.
There is an episode with a lot of problems in it. The guest cast is poor all around, with phoney accents and bad acting a plenty. Julie Newmar's whatever accent as Eleen is badly distracting, I'm not sure what Tige Andrews was trying to do as Kras the Klingon and Maab just looks silly throughout.
In fact, the whole Capellan portrayal is, shall we say, very much of its time...
We have some frankly dubious scenes where McCoy decides to touch Eleen's belly without warning, gets slapped twice... then slaps her back. With this show of 'male dominance' he then becomes the only person allowed to touch her!
The fight scenes are ridiculous with Kirk Fu galore and a lot of clearly polystyrene rocks.
Where this episode works is whether Lieutenant Commander Scott, Uhura and Chekov in fine form back on the ship as they deal with a reported distress call that is in fact fake. Scott's willingness to take firm decisions is great and we get a wonderful bit of him doing the 'Captain's Log' live on the bridge.
Finally, it is a law universally acknowledged that any pregnant guest character must give birth in an awkward situation... although we don't actually see the birth itself, probably because that wasn't acceptable in 1968.
Conclusion
This is really a rather poor episode, only saved from being awful by some very strong Scotty material.
5/10
With a flood of new Trek content coming over the next couple of years (Picard looks great), it does seem rather appropriate to go back onto this.
I'll link to the previous episode I reviewed here.
I'm going to be aiming for medium length reviews every week or so, but I can't guarantee anything...
****
So, "Friday's Child"... is full of woe. In multiple ways.
The Enterprise arrives on the planet Capella IV to negotiate a mining treaty with the warrior culture that inhabits the planet while wearing some very silly outfits, only to discover a Klingon representative has gotten there ahead of them. A coup happens and our main trio must flee with the pregnant wife of the former leader. It's suggested that McCoy might be the actual father... which sounds something more like Kirk would do.
There is an episode with a lot of problems in it. The guest cast is poor all around, with phoney accents and bad acting a plenty. Julie Newmar's whatever accent as Eleen is badly distracting, I'm not sure what Tige Andrews was trying to do as Kras the Klingon and Maab just looks silly throughout.
In fact, the whole Capellan portrayal is, shall we say, very much of its time...
We have some frankly dubious scenes where McCoy decides to touch Eleen's belly without warning, gets slapped twice... then slaps her back. With this show of 'male dominance' he then becomes the only person allowed to touch her!
The fight scenes are ridiculous with Kirk Fu galore and a lot of clearly polystyrene rocks.
Where this episode works is whether Lieutenant Commander Scott, Uhura and Chekov in fine form back on the ship as they deal with a reported distress call that is in fact fake. Scott's willingness to take firm decisions is great and we get a wonderful bit of him doing the 'Captain's Log' live on the bridge.
Finally, it is a law universally acknowledged that any pregnant guest character must give birth in an awkward situation... although we don't actually see the birth itself, probably because that wasn't acceptable in 1968.
Conclusion
This is really a rather poor episode, only saved from being awful by some very strong Scotty material.
5/10
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