Early this week after I had finished my evening’s writing I found that I could not fall asleep. I spent a fitful twenty minuets in bed, but In knew I wasn’t falling asleep anytime soon. So instead of bothering my sweetie-wife by tossing and turning I got up, de-equiped my CPAP mask and such, and returned to the living room.
I decided to watch a TV show on disc, figuring about 40-50 minutes should put me in a more accepting mode for snoozing. I took out my latest TV acquisition, Star Trek The Original Series Season 3 on blu-ray.
Yeah, yeah, season three the one that gave us space-hippies and Spock’s Brain. However I selected The Tholian Web as my late night Star Trek Fix.
I had seen the episode before of course, but not in like twenty years or more. This is a much better episode and very strongly written. The science isn’t terrible — how nice to see c used as a unit as speed as it should be in this sort of setting — and the character dynamics were very nicely played out.

I had two out of episode thoughts that kept occurring to me.

1) I kept watching James Doohan’s right hand. Scotty has a lot to do in this episode and I marveled as what skill Jimmy Doohan showed in constantly making sure he right hand was out of frame or hidden from the camera.  (Doohan lost a finger in WWII and concealed the fact on camera.)

2) I wondered why they had written an episode with so little Kirk in it. Usually you make sure you get the most out of your stars. They cost big bucks and you pay them even if they aren’t there. I know often episode like this will happen is a star is sick or engaged. I have no idea if this is the case with Shatner and The Tholian Web, but I am happy with the results.