STAR TREKKIN' - DAY 18

Episode: Arena
Stardate: 3045.6
Episode number: 18th episode aired, 20th episode produced
Written by: Gene L Coon, Star Trek producer and hated by the NAACP, based on a 1944 story of the same title by scifi writer Fredric Brown (apparently accidentally; Coon didn't mean to rip off Brown's story)
Directed by: Joseph Pevney, who directed probably the best original series episodes, including City on the Edge of Forever and Amok Time

Captain's Log: There was a porn series called Sex Trek that tried, for at least a while, to match the episodes of the original Star Trek (ie, they had one called Where No Man Has Cum Before). I don't know if they're still making these parodic porns, but if they ever did get up to episode 18, Arena (Are In Ya? Ass in Ya?), they would have some ready made porn humor: Kirk, Spock, McCoy and a bunch of guys just itching to get killed off are about to beam down to the colony of Cestus III. See, you could make that Incestus III! This stuff writes itself. Anyway, the away team is getting ready to beam on down, and they're talking about Commodore Travers, who is the honcho of Sexus III (there's another one. Take it for free. My gift to you, the people of porn who have given me so much) and what a dope spread he always has laid out. My man is a gourmand, you see, and he has a personal chef. In one of the best exchanges ever in Star Trek, Kirk say 'Rank hath its privileges!' and McCoy, with the creepiest, sleaziest look on his face, says 'How we both know that.'

It seems to me that this line opens a whole new possible word of slashfic. Why are we getting so hung up on Kirk and Spock doing it when we could be writing UseNet stories about Kirk and McCoy having their way with red miniskirted cadets? At the same time? Imagine Kirk and McCoy doing the Eiffel Tower over Yeoman Rand's milky white back*, Jim looking deep into Bones' eyes as he pumps wave after wave of hot, captainy sperm into Janice's supple, suckling mouth.

Ahem. Excuse me. Anyway, they're talking about good eats and Spock is all sorts of disapproving. He accuses McCoy of being a sensualist, and McCoy says 'You bet your pointed ears I am!'

Another little trip off the path here, if I may. Why does no one bring McCoy in for harrassment? This is really beyond the pale - you pointy eared so and so, you green blooded muckety muck. Does Starfleet have no regulations? Does he go up to Sulu and say 'You bet your squinty eyes!' or to Uhura and say 'You bet your nappy black hair!'? I imagine he doesn't. Fuck slashfic, let's write some workplacefic, where Kirk has to sit McCoy down and talk about his out of control racism. When McCoy refuses to apologize to Spock, Kirk bends the doctor over and begins spanking his aged yellowy ass. Yeoman Janice Rand walks in and gets her miniskirt caught in the automatic door, tearing her clothes off and...

Whew. Okay. Let's get back to the show. The landing party beams down and discovers that there won't be any meal today: Insectus III has been blowed up, but good. Days before, in fact. Which means that the message Kirk got from Commodore Travers was faked by whoever blew up the base (and since the message has Travers calling Kirk 'Jim' it's a pretty weird thing that the show never actually gets into), and that this was all a trap. If only Admiral Ackbar was in this franchise the entire episode could have been avoided.

Spock gets life readings, so they go investigate. It's a dude in a white shirt who, judging by what's on his face, was in an industrial Silly Putty accident. Mufucker is dealing with lots of radiation poisoning, and he'll be dead in a half hour unless they do something about it. While they're talking about how fuxored this dude is, Spock picks up more life readings. But they're not human. They're cold blooded. Is it possible that your ex-girlfriend is responsible for this attack?

Kirk sends a dude to check it out... and it's a red shirt! Finally! The red shirt meme has just not been all that present in the first 17 episodes of Star Trek, so when this cracka ass cracka gets disintigrated, everybody lets out a big cheer. Red Shirt Death in the hizzouse!

And if that's not bad enough, the landing party starts getting shelled from what appears to be the hills of Burbank. Kirk calls up to the ship, but they are shit out of luck - an alien vessel is attacking the Enterprise, and with their shields up (although Sulu keeps calling them screens, like they exist to keep flies out of your house on summer days), the away team cannot be beamed up. Spock says that the situation is looking real grim, as they're completely outnumbered. Kirk, remembered how in twenty five years it will be said that he cheated at the Kobiyashi Maru and that he hates no-win situations, says that they'll make do.

How will they make do? Kirk begins an elaborate series of barrel rolls and weird crawling on his elbow maneuvers in an attempt to get to the armory of the destroyed base. He stops halfwat to phone home; things are not going well up in space, and Kirk orders Sulu to get his woman, the Enterprise, out of there. Sulu is like, 'Dude, you're gonna get killed down there,' and Kirk is all, 'Don't worry about me, save my ship!'

Meanwhile, Spock sees that Kirk's current strategy is standing in the middle of a clearing, talking on a radio device that can be triangulated. He runs over to warn the captain that maybe getting out of the middle of the Cestus III public square would be a good idea, almost getting hisself shelled for his efforts. When he gets there, the aliens hilariously turn his tricorder into a bomb, which he tosses off screen.

While all of this mishigoss has been happening, Kirk has found himself a photon mortar, and he lobs a photon shell into the Burbank Hills, just left of where the PF Changs is. There's a big flash of light, and it turns out that Spock's math is better than the aliens, since the blast has spooked them off. They beam up off planet; Kirk orders a search party beamed down to check for Cestus III survivors and then he gets on his ship and orders immediate pursuit of these alien cocksuckers.

As the Enterprise follows the aliens to an unexplored part of the universe, the dying white shirt guy tells Kirk that the base saw a ship coming in on their sensors, and the bad guys knocked out their phaser banks first thing. Cestus was taken by surprise because they didn't have anything of value. The colonists - who had women and children hanging around, as those useless types are wont to do - tried to surrender, but the aliens would have none of it and just kept on fucking them up.

Kirk is furious about this. He says it's the opening salvo of an invasion, and Spock is like 'But how do you know' and Kirk is like 'AAAAARGH I WILL FUCK YOU RIGHT IN THE MOUTH I AM SO MAD AT THIS SHIT' and even Spock's Vulcan logic can't surmount that line of thinking. The first officer says that if this is an invasion, they must make sure the alien ship never reaches its home base.

Kirk is so worked up about this that he orders Sulu to take the ship to Warp Factor 8, which makes everybody all nervous. Apparently Warp Factor 8 is faster than they should be going, and if they go too long at that speed they'll blow up. Somewhere Ralph Nader weeps, declaring the Enterprise unsafe at any speed. Anyway, Kirk doesn't care. He'd rather blow up with his ship than... well, then live to warn everybody else that an invasion is happening, I suppose.

By now the alien ship has really taken the Enterprise off into hicksville (which is a real place in Long Island. Fuck Long Island, by the way), and nobody knows where the heck they are. Then Uhura notices that some sort of scanning beam is coming from a nearby solar system. It's not overtly hostile, but it's scanning them like a kiddie toucher scans the monkey bars, if you know what I mean. While everybody is wondering who the heck is scanning the ship, the alien craft slows down, and then stops. Kirk thinks it's coming around to attack, but it's just dead in space. And then the Enterprise starts slowing down, until it too is motionless. Engines are dead, as are weapons, but all life support functions remain operational.

And then it becomes clear - the scanning was from a nearby race of aliens called the Metrons. They present themselves by taking over the bridge's main display and turning it into a Microsoft Media Center visualization. The Metrons want both of these asshole races off their lawn, and don't appreciate them bringing conflict to the Metron sector of space. The race decides that the disagreement will be settled in the most civilized way possible - a mano y mano brawl to the bloody, painful death. Er... okay, Metrons. Whatever you say.

They make Kirk and the captain of the other ship - the race is identified by the Metrons as the Gorn - disappear and reappear on a nearby planet. They say that the planet has all of the resources necessary to make one captain, whichever has the most skill, smarts and contractual obligations to appear in future episodes of Star Trek, the winner. When Kirk appears on the planetary surface he's shocked to see that his opponent, the Gorn captain, is a big ass lizardman in a gold lamé one piece dress. Horrified by the notion that space lizards crossdress, Kirk is slow on the uptake as the Gorn wastes no time in running to a nearby tree and pulling down a huge branch, most likely with the thought that he's going to pummel Kirk with it. Our captain runs to his own conveniently placed tree and spends like a minute trying to pry something off and ends up with a twig. It looks like Kirk wants to roast marshmellows with his opponent.

The two enter deadly combat! Deadly combat that looks like it was shot at the bottom of a pool, since the guy in the big foam rubber Gorn suit might as well be moving in slow motion. It's actually hilarious to see Kirk gingerly delivering two-handed punches to this monster and then slowly miming a dodge away from the Gorn's retaliation. You've heard of combat as ballet? This is combat as a line dance.

Eventually this becomes too ridiculous even for a 60s television series, so Kirk runs off. When he puts some distance between himself and the lumbering Gorn (whose paint is already chipping at joints. Oh the wonders of watching old shows at definitions beyond the original filmmaker's wildest dreams. Hey there, balsawood bridge doors!), he starts narrating into this recording device that the Metrons gave him. He does the full Blair Witch thing, a whole 'Whoever finds this let it be known I was killed by a stunt man suffering from heat stroke in a costume that has cheese graters for eyes' monologue. He remembers that the Metrons said that the planet would give him all he needed to beat his enemy, but he sees nothing but diamonds around him, and no Orthodox Jews to whom he can sell them.

In the middle of his monologuing, Kirk hears the rasping, gurgling, phlegmy sound of the Gorn captain's attempts to breathe. It's sort of sad to listen to the guy; you'd think a lizard would thrive in a desert environment, but this dude sounds like he has the worst case of asthma ever. As Kirk formulates a plan to steal the Gorn's inhaler (sucks to your assmar!), he comes up with a new solution.

The Gorn is at the bottom of a hill, whittling or carving his name in a rock or something. It's unclear, but he's wheezing to beat the band. Inspired by his academic studies of ancient docutapes, especially the bloody and frightful records of the Great Roadrunner/Coyote Wars of the late 20th century, Kirk decides to drop a big fucking boulder on the Gorn's head. This works (aided and abetted by an editor who puts together a truly hilarious reaction shot of the Gorn looking at the offscreen boulder, followed by a cut to Kirk, 100 feet above, having puffs of dust dirty his boots) and Kirk thinks it's all over. But not so fast! That lizard is tough to kill (unlike my own iguana, Huey, who froze to death in the bathroom of my Brooklyn apartment. Kirk should have really just forgot to turn on the Gorn's heat lamp), and he shrugs off what would have been a fatal bouldering for you or I. Things look hairy when Kirk gets caught in a trap the Gorn set (he gets wonked by a smaller boulder that smooshes his hips), but as the lizardman is about to deliver his excruciatingly slow death blow, Kirk escapes and hobbles away. Even with a smashed pelvis Kirk easily gets away from this dingleberry beast.

Back on the bridge McCoy is being a total dick, demanding that Spock help Kirk. Spock is like 'Guy, I don't know even know where the fuck he got off to. Space is big and the Metrons are yet another in a long series of aliens we encounter who embody that Arthur C Clarke quote about advanced science looking like magic and/or lazy writing.' But fret not, crew! The Metrons realize this contest of wills could be a big ratings winner, so they broadcast it on the ship's monitor.

It's at this point that you realize we're one Jeff Probst away from a particularly good final challenge on Survivor. Forget building a fire or breaking tiles or constructing a puzzle - have the sides build cannons that will shoot diamonds at the other tribe!

Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. Kirk is resting up when the Gorn starts talking to him through what Kirk thought was a recorder. It's a universal translator! The Gorn heard Kirk whining the whole time - no wonder he really wanted to kill our captain. The Gorn says that if Kirk stops running, his end will be quick and merciful. 'Like those on Cestus III?' Kirk says, all indignant, and then the Gorn is like 'What the fuck, dude. Y'all were invading OUR space.'

Back on the Enterprise McCoy is horrified by the dumb moral lesson of this episode. 'What if we're the bad guys,' he wonders, as a lone Indian cries in the background. Except you're not, Bones - even if you set up your base on their planet, they showed up and fucking murdered everybody. By this morality I should be filling Jehova's Witnesses with buckshot every Sunday morning for being on my doorstep. Well, I should be doing that anyway, but you get the point.

Back on the planet, Kirk figures out what the Metrons were talking about. There's all the diamonds, and then there's a whole bunch of colored dust, and Kirk remembers the formula for gunpowder (Spock figured this out a whole commercial break or so earlier, just by watching it on TV. You don't want to watch Jeopardy with this guy. No fun at all). So Kirk begins constructing a rudimenatry lathe.

As the Gorn gets closer, Kirk finally has his weapon ready. It's a cannon made from bamboo; shit looks like Pier One went into the Army/Navy business. The Gorn gets close and Kirk shoots him right in the chest with a full barrel of fucking DIAMONDS. I'm surprised some bling obsessed rapper hasn't stolen this idea already. And if this was an 80s action movie, Kirk would have said 'You've been... iced!' or 'Diamonds lacerate forever!'

The Gorn lays on the ground, really wheezing this time, his chest filled with precious stones. Kirk lifts a stone dagger the Gorn has made over his head and is about to kill the beast but then decides he won't. He's going to spare the bad guy!

The Metron shows up, and Kirk is shocked. The Metron claims to be 1,500 years old but looks like a boy. A twink boy you might see wandering the streets of West Hollywood. He's dressed in a toga and shit, and I've totally seen dudes dressed like that on Saturday nights in WeHo, taking massive hits of amyl nitrate**. The Metron is pretty impressed - he thought for sure that Kirk would kill the Gorn. Since the humans have shown mercy and compassion, the Metron says that they may be just a few centuries from actually hanging out with us. Then he teleports Kirk back to the Enterprise, shoves the Enterprise 500 parsecs away and everything is just okay and nobody important died anyway.

* and since both Grace Lee Whitney and DeForrest Kelly were prostitutes in later life, you could have probably acheived this dream if you had a couple of Ben Franklins on your person.

** is this still a thing gay people do when they're partying? I'm making my broad based stereotype jokes based on possibly outdated knowledge.

Review: While Squire of Gothos was the epitome of shitty, boring Star Trek, Arena is iconic in another way. This is one of the ass-kickingest episodes of any of the Treks, and features one of the ultimate Trek shooting locations - Vasquez Rocks, outside of Los Angeles - one of the cooler alien designs (even though modern eyes see the Gorn as a hyper cheesy foam rubber Godzooki looking dude, at the time he was the ultimate in space beastery. Every kid of the era had space adventures in their back yard featuring some Gorn-esque alien, I wager). It's also one of the most action-packed episodes in the series. There's very little trademark Star Trek fucking around on the bridge or gobbledygook going on here - it's all an excuse to have Kirk fight a giant lizard man.

While the episode is almost extraordinarily dated - even the lowest budget SciFi Channel shows can engage in more varied action these days - and while I find the moral center laughable (seriously, the Gorn way overreacted. They are the bad guys, no ifs and or buts, but I appreciate the ballsiness of this message during America's Imperial Age), this episode really takes the standard Trek high-mindedness and attaches it to excellent two-fisted action. Arena holds up on most levels and delivers great science fiction action fun.

Kirkin' Out: Oh man, where to start? Kirk gets to do so much action this episode; I'm tempted to give it to the barrel rolls and elbow crawls, but I think the real Kirkin' Out moment is when he grasps his hands in that trademark double-fist punch and slowly hits the Gorn in the small of the back. You can almost hear the stunt man say 'Ah, my sciatica!'

Spockmarks: When Kirk shows up on the view screen, Spock immediately notes the dust around him. When McCoy asks him what's up, Spock says something like 'Maybe nothing.... maybe everything' or whatever. In any case, this is a moment that marks Spock as a guy who probably talks through movies, wondering aloud why the hero doesn't go through that door, or why the heroine hasn't secured the window. Keep it down, you pointy eared jerk!

Redshirt: Huzzah! There's an actual red shirt death, and he gets disintigrated, just to make it more fun. There are a couple of blue shirts also killed on Cestus III, but nobody cares. I'm not sure if Silly Putty radiation man pulls through.

Dilithium Bullshit: The Metrons are super magic. They can stop the Enterprise with an unknown force and can teleport people and entire starships ludicrous distances. Warp 8 is introduced as the equivelent of going on the Autobahn in a Yugo.

Support Staff of the Week: McCoy manages to be creepy and essentially useless in this episode. His outburst at Spock on the bridge, demanding that they find Kirk when all reason indicates it's impossible, is a perfect McCoy moment. My man is all emotion and not a shred of logic.

Continerdity: Amazingly, the Gorn do not recur until Enterprise. I'm not really sure why, especially because the Mego toy release of the Gorn (just a repainted Marvel Superheroes Lizard), etched the character in the minds of the next generation to discover Trek after it got canceled. I imagine there will be a Gorn at some point in the new film series - they've already worked in green bitches. Vasquez Rocks were used in a number of Trek episodes, but Arena is what they're best known for. In the original script, it was revealed that the Metrons were going to destroy the ship of the winner, for that race must have been most savage. That was cut from the episode, but was in James Blish's novelization. Arena marks the first episode to have someone talking about the Federation.

Set Phasers to Quote: "Grr! Slurgh, gasp, ralgharch achthsh!"  - Gorn Captain