And now, the 60's.

Starting to skip forward a bit on Star Trek. Too much of a time investment for too little gain - the original series is really just mostly bad.

"The Space Seed" introduces Khan for the first time, and while Khan is a charming type of sociopath, that's actually the worrying part of it. Khan comes from the 1990's, when we apparently invented prolonged space travel and cryogenics (agh), and also when a eugenics program created a bunch of perfect men and women who managed to take over most of the world (aaaagh). Khan's one of these, and this makes him an incomparable badass whom the ladies on the ship are instantly infatuated with (aaaaaaaaagh).

He takes a mildly obsessed officer and converts her into a dedicated servant with ridiculous speed - pretty much the most uncomfortable portrayal of gender roles in the 60's possible. It would be enough to make me throw up my hands and move to Next-Gen were it not for the continued presence of Lt. Uhura, who fortunately continues to have a spine and a brain, both in excellent repair.

The final decision of Captain Kirk after the conflict is over is interesting, and pretty morally ambiguous. The more episodes there are like this - where the choices Kirk makes aren't necessarily the right ones, and his morality gets tested without being proven right by divine providence - they're the interesting ones of the batch. Still, I don't much like Khan's existence, as it assumes a lot of stupid things about the nature of the world that shouldn't be assumed, based on bigotry, sexism and general ignorance. I hear "The Wrath of Khan" is quite good though? Hmm.

While Star Trek is still just a constant string of god-creatures who can't be fought by any rational means, the classy aliens are starting to show up at last. "Balance of Terror" introduces the Romulans and makes a good showing of portraying them as a flawed race with some great people in it. "Errand of Mercy" introduces the Klingons and isn't nearly as nice about it, but still shows a little spark of shared character between Kirk and the enemy general. And then they both get fucked by ANOTHER race of god-creatures who can do whatever they want with reality and choose to waste it pissing about with the mortals and both creating and solving all their problems for them. There have been at least ten in one season. Q seems less and less appealing when you consider all of his predecessors.

Time travel is still pretty popular too, and already overplayed, but "City on the Edge of Tomorrow" is still pretty great. Still, there was this unfortunate sequence. Ah, the 60's.