Once Upon A Planet

WHY AM I WATCHING ONCE UPON A PLANET

In which Sulu is menaced by a dragon. No, seriously.

Space. The final frontier. 

PREVIOUSLY, ON STAR TREK

This episode is a direct sequel to the original series episode Shore Leave. It's been a few years since I've seen it, and I don't remember it too well. But I do remember that is was not very good.And Sulu had a gun. Luckily, Bones, Sulu, and Uhura are here to spend the first ten minutes of this episode recapping the old one.

Don't mind me. I found this gun on the ground, so now I'm firing it in random directions. What?

AND NOW, THE CONCLUSION

So yeah. Sulu is all "This is exactly where we beamed down last time!" and the camera pulls out to show basically the same shot from Shore Leave. And then Bones is like "And Alice in Wonderland wandered by" and then Alice in Wonderland wanders by. Really thrilling stuff. Everyone settles in for some relaxing down time. Then the Queen of Hearts shows up with her playing card army and chases everyone away. Uhura is kidnapped by robots, because of course she is.

Since they already went through this in the 60's, Kirk knows what to do. He tries to contact the planet's main computer, but he's not answering his phone. So, they head back down to the planet to knock on his door. There they find the computer's grave site, which I have so many questions about. Meanwhile, Uhura gets the backstory out of her captors.  When the old computer died, a bunch of young computers led a revolution. They're sick of being slaves to the meatbags and are taking back their planet. The computer also thinks Uhura is a slave to the Enterprise, so.... there's a lot to unpack there. Also, while this is happening, the Enterprise is doing things without the crew telling it to, so Scotty's gotta figure out what's going on there.

Remembering how they met the computer last time, Spock pretends to have a tummy ache, so the planet's medical robots will take him underground to where the computers live, and I guess the hospital is? Kirk runs after him, because damned if Spock is gonna get to beat the bad guy! Upstairs, Scotty has found a computer in his engine room that looks just like the ones on the planet, and it's controlling the Enterprise's computers! Summoning all of his engineering expertise, Scotty hits it with a crowbar until it explodes.

In the evil computer's house, Kirk asseses the situation, and then engages in one of his favorite pastimes. Logicing a computer to death. Except, it's a kids show, so he just logics them into being friends. Seriously, this is Kirk's favorite hobby. It's like knitting to him. And now that everyone is friends, Sulu and McCoy have a pic-a-nic with a dragon. It's an appropriately goofy ending for this goofy but fun episode.

Do you mind? I'm on the phone!

RANDOM THOUGHTS

• For the other times a magical computer that can take your every thought and make it reality then tries to kill you, please see like every goddamn holodeck episode. There's no reason those malfunctioning deathtraps are standard issue on all starships.
• So, I'm reading this oral history of Star Trek called The Fifty Year Mission, it's a really good in depth look at what happened behind the scenes of all the various Star Trek productions. I highly recommend it if you're interested in Star Trek or how TV works.
• I bring it up though, because it's kind of sad to find out that no one really liked working on this cartoon. Both the actors and the writers were miserable. This isn't the greatest show ever, but it's enjoyable enough and it's disheartening to find out everyone involved hated it.