It seems that Spock is getting restless. In “Requiem for Methuselah”, he surprises everyone by expressing a desire to get drunk while listening to some sick Brahms’ sonatas. Later, in “The Way to Eden”, he drops out, turns on, and tunes in with the cast of a 23rd Century traveling production of Hair. Plus! Richard is very worried about Abraham Lincoln.

Contents

4:00 “You spend a century doing something, you’re going to get good at it.”

12:55 “It’s unrealistic to expect a man to write that kind of ending for a television show in 1969.”

15:50 “What are you going to do with the body of your sexbot? You’re not going to throw it out, so you just kind of put in the secret room.”

21:50 “It takes Spock over the falls from being an extremely smart and well-educated person, to being a robot.”

31:35 “I thought you would be a little more prouder of me getting my first series-wide Star Trek theory.”

35:05 “This episode encapsulates everything that is wrong with the third season of The Original Series, everything that is wrong with Star Trek as a concept and as a franchise, and everything that is wrong with television.”

42:40 “No one dances like that!”

54:25 “To go back to nature is a fallacy because it will kill you much faster and much more completely than technology ever could.”

58:40 “To really love Star Trek in the way that only a Trekkie can, I think you have to have a patience and an appreciation for the stupidity of Star Trek.”

1:02:35 “I’m going to let you discover that for yourself.”

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We’ve had some strong contenders, but, finally, we’ve found an episode of The Original Series that’s as terrible as “The Alternative Factor”: “That Which Survives”. The less said about it, the better, so let’s move right along to “The Lights of Zetar”, which isn’t much better, but at least features a strong and capable female character written by Shari Lewis. So you know, that’s something.

Contents

4:30 “It’s very grim.”

9:10 “He’s going to his possible death willingly.”

12:50 “And each time, the episode chose the non-interesting direction.”

18:30 “This is an episode written by someone who was a total Spock fanboy.”

26:30 “Every single person that interacts with her, respects her.”

27:10 “It’s very clear that he’s enjoying the entire package.”

34:10 “Scotty will fight for her, but she doesn’t necessarily need Scotty to fight for her.”

39:25 “I’m learning to accept that sometimes the solution is not going to be a real solution.”

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In this episode of Counterweight, Eric Brasure and Joel “HM” Goodwin discuss the rise of personality and celebrity in indie game culture. Developers are finally being recognised as individuals – but not everyone can be Notch.

Contents

01:20 “How many times do they say the word Mario in this movie?”

08:40 “You just don’t eat for about three years and you’ll be a millionaire at the end of it.”

10:20 “I think it would be really instructive to follow the failures… to see what happens to people who don’t make it.”

14:40 “[Twitter] really has exploded the concept of the personality as opposed to the art the person is making.”

18:20 “I don’t think that the mass market cares so much about what they’re making to really buy into the cult of personality.”

24:50 “Well, what did you expect?”

33:40 “How much more interesting would Indie Game: The Movie had been if Anna Anthropy had been a subject?”

37:40 “It’s a bit strange to feel that solidifying around you.”

43:50 “Richard [Hofmeier] doesn’t really like having all the attention but that act he did will actually increase his reputation.”

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Ah, 1969. America’s Gandhi was dead. Race riots had broken out in many American cities. The Cold War was at full tilt. But don’t worry! Here is “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” to browbeat us with the message that “racism is bad”! Later, “The Mark of Gideon” tries to convince us that mass sterilization is the appropriate way to control population growth. Seriously, Star Trek? Go find an analyst. It’s socially acceptable to go to one. It’s 1969.

Contents

5:50 “I can have a legitimate grievance with someone without wanting to kill their family.”

13:20 “The show very carefully makes you not sympathize with one or the other.”

14:40 “I do have a question. Is it black and white all the way down?”

23:00 “Okay, shit. Slavery’s over.”

28:30 “Were people watching this episode in Mississippi and going, ‘Oh! Yeah! You know what? We’re fuckheads.’”

30:35 “If your planet is that overpopulated, then why don’t you just, like, stop moving.”

35:50 “I’m not really sure how that got past NBC.”

48:55 “When Spock needs to do something ‘immoral’ or disobedient, he figures out a way of working in the system.”

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The third season of The Original Series has slowed its rate of terribleness with “Elann of Troyius” and “Whom Gods Destroy”. While not classic episodes, they’re at least entertaining pulp nonsense, and at this point, that’s about all we can ask. Also! Richard can’t hear.

Contents

1:05 “She takes a role that could have seemed really, really, really sexist… and almost convinces us that it’s not.”

10:20 “Kirk has no patience for people who complain about their jobs.”

17:00 “Let’s not go crazy and start calling Starfleet a military organization.”

23:10 “There’s a lot of different directions that this episode could have gone in that probably would have been better than what we got.”

27:35 “This is where Star Trek gets its reputation as sort of this pulpy nonsense.”

30:45 “A lot of the episode worked with whether or not you liked Garth and the actor who played Garth, and I particularly didn’t.”

42:55 “You want to have some sort of safeguard in place to make sure that none of the criminally insane people are beaming up with your captain.”

48:15 “I think that’s probably the moment in the episode where it feels most like Star Trek.”

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The Original Series continues its problematic relationship with female guests stars this week. In “Wink of an Eye”, our female guest star’s personality switches multiple times over the course of the episode because plot. In “The Empath”, the show manages to one-up that treatment and give us a female character with literally no personality. Oh, and she can’t talk. Yeah.

Contents

2:00 “We should find all copies of it and burn it.”

4:20 “Naked ladies were hard to find in 1968.”

14:15 “It’s like an arranged marriage in a lot of ways. If you happen to love the person, that’s a great bonus.”

19:50 “This is going to completely revolutionize everything.”

22:05 “If you can say one thing about Star Trek, it doesn’t believe in evil.”

30:05 “Even though you have a silent character, you still have to write a character.”

36:10 “I think they treat the Enterprise better than her.”

43:15 “I guess because they thought maybe people had fallen asleep, which was not a bad thing to assume.”

50:20 “Chekov stumbles out with a half-open bathrobe: ‘Guys! There’s a lot of rape in the mess hall!’”

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In this episode of Dialogue Tree, my guest is Konstantinos Dimopoulos, aka Gnome. We speak about the Bundle in a Box, the diminishing economic returns of indie development, and a possible way forward for indie developers.

Contents

4:20 “I’m not really comfortable with the category of ‘gamer.’”

8:25 “We’re not living in a world where competence and hard work and artistic vision are a priori appreciated.”

12:45 “It was too easy to game the poll, the voting, if everyone could vote.”

16:55 “The first two bundles were obvious losses. We lost quite a bit of money.”

20:15 “People obviously do not know what goes into a game.”

22:25 “Even the indie developers are playing it as safe as they can.”

29:25 “There was a period where you could build your audience, and I believe that this period is mostly over.”

32:45 “The fact that you can play with literature, they find it amazing.”

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This episode’s music:

Woody Guthrie, “All You Fascists Bound to Lose”

It’s not dead, Jim: The third season roars back this week. “The Tholian Web” features a new alien menace, growing madness among the crew, a disappearing starship, and Spock and Bones at each other’s throats. “Plato’s Stepchildren” features telekinetic jocks, the first (sic) interracial kiss on television, and a singing Spock. Plus! Scotty gets drunk and wanders the corridors of the Enterprise in a kilt at least once a week.

Contents

0:45 “It was either this or give out blowjobs.”

3:05 “You don’t have a bad day because your mother dies.”

7:50 “It’s one of the reasons ‘The Alternative Factor’ is my favorite episode of this series.”

13:50 “Spock’s biggest flaw is that he fails to recognize the limits of his logic.”

19:25 “I feel like this episode was made because Shatner wanted a week off.”

28:20 “Are you talking about the one with the magic cat?”

36:15 “It’s nice to see one of those roles not going to Warwick Davis.”

42:40 “That must be horrifying to her.”

47:05 “Even a saint would be tempted into doing something evil.”

57:25 “Even if it wasn’t the first interracial kiss, it may have been the first significant one.”

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8 episodes into the third season of The Original Series, and we’ve cracked the code on why it’s so disappointing: everyone involved has decided to give us a steady diet of fight scenes, love scenes, and general half-assed pulp nonsense. In “Day of the Dove”, the Klingons and the Federation learn that the cure for violence is comedy. In “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”, McCoy contracts a fatal illness called marriage.

Contents

0:05 “Everybody’s just… just given up.”

4:50 “Human death camps, and things like that, and that’s fine!”

8:40 “I don’t know which one it’s supposed to be, and I don’t know that the episode knows.”

10:40 “I really don’t think McCoy’s comments every day really are that fun to deal with.”

15:55 “And then you have Jimi Hendrix’s version of the Star Trek theme.”

27:10 “Let’s end this on a high note: Chekov gets tortured.”

28:10 “That’s the motto for the third season: it could have been good.”

36:40 “Most of the plots of these episodes are focusing on the wrong things.”

42:30 “I am starting to believe that the Federation isn’t very good, and it’s bothering me that the show doesn’t seem to realize this.”

45:30 “If you want subtlety, you have to wait for Picard.”

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In “Is There in Truth No Beauty?”, the crew of the Enterprise wanders around for 50 minutes while a guest star does her best to convince everyone that she’s blind, and then she leaves. In “Spectre of the Gun”, the crew of the Enterprise wanders around for 50 minutes while guest stars do their best to kill them. In episode 31 of Trekabout, we wander around for 50 minutes because hell, third season of The Original Series, man. Also! Richard likes to use the word “eschew”.

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